In the last 50 years, call center has been changed greatly in its technologies, services and application areas. Especially with the widely use of Internet and development of multi-media applications, call center has been integrated with many applications such as CRM, ERP and other business automation software. Call center has gradually involved from the first generation into the fifth generation Contact Center. Here introduced is Vida Network OfficePal, a fifth generation Contact Center application.

In the history of call center development, the first generation is based on PBX technology. These kind of Call Centers are usually costly and only deployed in big enterprise network. With the development of telecommunication technologies, CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) technology has been introduced into Call Center applications. It enables a computer to act as a call center, accepting incoming calls and routing them to the appropriate device or person. This is considered the second generation With the sophistication of IP technologies and IP PBX, Call Center began to build up over the business intranet and route calls to IP extensions. This is considered as the third generation of call center. Nowadays, Call Center has been integrated with more business applications like, CRM, ERP and other business applications. It further takes advantage of soft switching technologies to support businesses with multiple branch offices over the Internet. This kind of call center is considered as fourth generation Therefore, distributed call centers are possible.

Vida Network OfficePal has all of the functions that included in the last four generations and is considered as the fifth generation call center application. It has additional functions as the following:

• Software As A Service (SAAS): OfficePal is a hosted service that integrates call center functions, business applications and management software. The hosted service could be ordered directly from Internet according to your requirements. The service enables you to pay as you go, without any equipment or software purchase.
• Reliable and Distributed: Deployed in multiple telecomm data centers, OfficePal has applied the latest cloud computation technologies to achieve distributed processing, 1-to-1 redundancy and remote backup. It allows your support or sales agents to share all of your resources remotely from anywhere and at anytime.
• High compatibility (SOA): By utilizing SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) methodology, our OfficePal software modules are highly compatible with existing call center applications by providing SOA application interfaces. It's more easily to be integrated with any other business applications (e.g. CRM, ERP, or other business software) as part of the individualized services.

Vida Network OfficePal delivers live help to website visitors exactly when they need it. Or proactively invite web visitors into a live chat to close more sales online. Your website visitors could also use the click-to-talk feature to connect to a live sales agent with a live voice conversation.

OfficePal software has a build-in chat client and soft-phone. It is an additional communication channel for serving customers online and allows customer service agents to engage in a 1-to-multiple chats with your website visitors in real-time. It provides instant live support, visitor tracking, and proactive sales for all your products and services. (Coming soon)