IP Contact Center (IPCC) Welcome Kit

Your IP Contact Center Services team will help guide you through the full scope of services from contract signature to the eventual handoff of your network services to the Verizon Network Operations Center (NOC).

Design Document

• The Design Document is a vital portion of IPCC Services offering. The customized document provides you with the technical details related to your solution and works as the source document Verizon leverages for all of your VOIP Services.
• The Solutions Architect (SA) is responsible for developing the high level design.
• A typical Engineering Design Document would include these sections
  • Network details
  • Access type
  • VPN information
  • IP addressing
  • VoIP/IP telephony*

Customer action

Service activation requires customer to check    connectivity prior to the scheduled date for activation. Please review the following site readiness details below, and take appropriate action as needed.

Turning up IPCC services, the customer must ensure the following items are checked before the schedule activation date.

• Customer has received all Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) peering information from Verizon
• Validate the Verizon SIP configuration pre-activation material
  • Domain Name System (DNS), Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), Customer IP, Customer Media IP, Verizon Session Border Controller(SBC) subnets
  • Customer network is receiving the Verizon SBC’s IP Address subnet advertisements
  • IPCC enterprise’s come with SBC diversity (n+1)
  • Each Verizon SBC IP Address subnet will be a /24 broken down to two /25 subnets
  • Sample-Verizon SBC1 - 172.31.20.0/25 and 172.31.20.128/25
  • Sample-Verizon SBC2 – 172.31.25.0/25 and 172.31.25.128/25

Note : The Verizon SBCs are “pooled”, meaning that each Verizon SBC will have a logical SIP trunk to “each” of the customer termination IP Addresses (i.e. many-to-many connectivity)

Customer can check core network connectivity with an ICMP PING to one of the Verizon SBC management IP Addresses

• Sample 172.3x.x.1, 172.3x.x.2, 172.3x.x.3
• Successful PING test with just one of the above is sufficient

Customer SIP termination IP Address (Host IP address only, no ranges) are configured and advertised, including the correct UDP port of 5060

• Sample Customer CPE is 10.1.1.5 listening on UDP port 5060

SIP  option keep-alives are sent by Verizon SBCs and require a customer response for keeping the SIP trunk in-service

• Any valid customer SIP response is accepted
  • Sample 2xx, 4xx
• If the customer provided equipment does not reply back to the OPTIONS ping, the service will not work
• Verizon will also reply to customer generated OPTIONS ping but this does not guarantee that services will work 

Any questions and concerns can be addressed prior to the scheduled formal Activation Call.  The Activation Call should be used to place successful test calls, verify two-way audio and voice quality, as well as capture call logs.  Joint troubleshooting of issues encountered are worked on these calls. The customer is responsible for all configuration of customer managed equipment including network and CPE devices.  Customer should plan ahead to have all applicable network and CPE personnel necessary to support the Activation Call should troubleshooting be required. 

Note: The Order Manager will hold the order until responses are received.

• The Implementation Engineer builds the Verizon side of the order.  A Provisioning Integration Test (PIT) is conducted by the Implementation Engineer to validate the Verizon configuration and retrieve all the necessary configuration details to provide to the customer (e.g.  Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Signaling IP Addresses, User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Ports, Domain Names, test toll free numbers, etc.) This information is then sent to the Order Manager.
• The Order Manager provides all the configuration details in an email to the customer identifying that the service is ready for activation, and requests the customer identify a date/time that a formal Activation Call can be scheduled.  The Order Manager requires a 72 hour advance window to coordinate resources for an Activation Call.  After hours and weekend Activation Calls are by special request only, and subject to Verizon resource availability.  
• At this point, the Verizon service is complete from a Verizon perspective.  If a customer has their side already completed, a customer may go ahead and make some non-production test calls prior to the formal Activation Call.  
• During a formal Activation Call, customers can expect to work with the Implementation Engineer to place test calls, validate two-way audio and voice quality, monitor for SIP messaging errors, and assist in troubleshooting. Additional Activation Call scheduling may be required if extended troubleshooting is required.
• Upon mutual agreement the activation was successful, the Implementation Engineer will complete the manual test and turn up the task in Provisioning Controller, and designate the order complete.  The Order Manager will close the order out, noting that the formal Activation Call was successful.
• Formal activation is required.

Easily Manage your Services Online

The Verizon Enterprise Center makes it easy for you to monitor, manage, analyze and optimize your Verizon products and services online. Available seamlessly between desktop, tablet and smartphone – you can act on your crucial data wherever your work takes you.

• With 38+ specific data headers highlighting information ranging from date and time to more specific caller information such as caller number, country/province/city and actual call duration, you have access to information that helps you trend your calls for specific operational conditions, measure the efficiencies of your outbound sales teams, or advertising response on an inbound calling campaign.  
  
• Call Detail Records can be extracted once you are a subscriber to the Verizon Enterprise Center.  In addition there are many self-help online courses to help you become familiar with your contact centers activities.
• For more information on available courses, reference: https://customertraining.verizon.com/

Note: For all Customer Training questions, please refer to the Training and Service Contact Information section below.

2.      Information needed to progress a ticket:

• If IPCC Inbound: toll free or local number(s) impacted, description of issue and call examples (originating number, terminating number, date, time, time zone)
• If IPCC Outbound: Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), Customer IP, description of issue and call examples (originating number, terminating number, date, time, time zone)
• If Data Circuit Issue: circuit ID, description of issue, local contact and site access hours in case dispatch is needed
• When opening a ticket on voice services, the more information provided will help make ticket resolution quicker and more straightforward.

Once a ticket is opened, additional information can be provided including specific call example (number called, number called from, time of call) when issue was experienced, traces, testing history, steps to reproduce the issue, and troubleshooting to date. To provide this information, send an e-mail to etms@verizon.com with the ticket number only in the subject line or access the ticket via VEC via the following link https://verizonenterprise.com/

Customer Trouble Management

(for both Inbound and Outbound IPCC service conditions)

Option 1: Customer inputs an automated ticket via the online portal (VEC):

Customers can access the Verizon Enterprise Center (VEC) via this link: 

https:// verizonenterprise.com/

In order to use this option for opening and checking status of tickets, customers must be registered….

Once in the VEC, follow these steps to submit necessary information for opening a ticket.  The process is the same for inbound and outbound services:

1. At the landing page, enter your User ID.
2. Choose “Manage Account” among the options at the top of the page.
3. Choose “Create a Repair Ticket”
4. Enter the IPCC Service ID in the “Service ID” box (you do not need to choose a state for the IPCC product scenario). 
5. Fill out the required fields as indicated by the red asterisk (*), and provide details in the text box about your issue.  You also have the opportunity to add attachments.
6. Click “submit”. 

To check status of your ticket:

1. Once logged into the VEC, choose “Manage Accounts”
2. Choose “View Repair Ticket”
3. A list of repair tickets that have been entered will appear.  Choose the ticket number that you are seeking status for.
4. Your status will appear. 

 Option 2 : for US Enterprise customers only

Customer or Sales calls U.S. Help Desk for general inquiries, billing support or technical trouble management. 

• If the customer has a special support number/group they should follow standard process to open a ticket.
• The agent might need to also select “any product” to ensure the ticket is associated under IPCC for the current platform.
• Customer/sales will need to include the pertinent information based on their trouble condition gathered in the previous Data Gathering section.
• When a ticket is opened, it will get routed based on the type of information provided.
• The agent will provide you with a ticket number; please make note of this number.

Escalation Guidelines                                                                            

Verizon’s objective is to restore your services to their normal operating conditions quickly and efficiently. To accomplish this objective, NOCs and the Service Desk use escalation guidelines set up to push or drive issues to resolution.

Instead of escalating on the basis of time, escalations are value-based. The objective is to add value to the escalation process across the board for all customers and all circumstances, as well as to add standardization to the processes.

Note: You can request escalations at any time during an outage through your ticket in the VEC portal or by calling into the Service Desk.

Value-based escalation may be understood as follows:

• Service Desk will assess whether escalations are needed. If there is no progress since the previous review, an escalation is made to the next level of management.
• However, if the appropriate focus and resources are being applied, escalations may be deferred. Technical escalations by the NOC to local-exchange or third-party carriers follow the same value-add process.