Integrating Cisco ThousandEyes into the Webex Suite and Contact Centers: What it means for EX and CX

Assuring Collaboration Experiences with Cisco ThousandEyes 

Observability is a top priority for enterprise organizations and fundamentally is a move beyond traditional monitoring to a proactive approach that provides comprehensive visibility into IT environments. It has surfaced as a priority across several departments, from HR and IT to Marketing and Digital Strategy because it impacts both CX and EX, the digital customer experience and digital employee experience. We'll address the integration of ThousandEyes into Webex collaboration suite, meeting rooms and Webex Contact Center 

 As a standalone solution, Cisco ThousandEyes is a differentiated platform for network and internet intelligence, helping organizations truly see and troubleshoot every step of the journey that a user takes across their network, the internet and into the cloud. As an integrated solution into large-scale collaboration suites like Webex and Contact Center, ThousandEyes can create contextual, relevant solutions that extend well beyond the network for vast and diverse groups of users. 

What is the integration of Cisco ThousandEyes into Webex? 

Cisco ThousandEyes and Webex have created bidirectional visibility and network monitoring in the Webex environment. ThousandEyes vantage points are integrated into Webex data centers and within the Webex Control Hub. This gives IT teams end-to-end visibility between user locations and Webex conferencing services, enabling rapid issue identification and troubleshooting to provide exceptional Webex user experiences. 

The impact on the employee experience with ThousandEyes integration 

Use Cisco ThousandEyes for proactive monitoring and improved collaboration experiences with your Cisco video endpoints and end-user computing devices.  
 

 Advantages for meeting rooms, endpoints and end-user devices:  

• Proactive issue resolution: ThousandEyes offers a comprehensive view of your RoomOS device network performance, including detailed metrics like latency, jitter, and packet loss, along with a hop-by-hop analysis. Agents for Windows and MAC, including a Browser agent, can monitor specific SaaS URLs and performance across VPN connections. Trace visualizations can show the path between the VPN gateway and the application or the path between the user and the VPN gateway. Enterprise agents can run from data centers or remote locations, all installed on physical appliances, virtual appliances, Docker and Linux.  This enables IT to identify and address issues before they affect employees.
• Effortless setup and management: Automatically monitor every new Webex or Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) without any manual configuration. Manage all your devices and troubleshoot bottlenecks directly from the familiar Webex Control Hub interface.
• Extensive device monitoring: Gain insights into hardware utilization (CPU/memory), LAN and Wi-Fi connectivity to identify the root cause of performance problems and resolve them quickly.

Empowering both IT teams and the general workforce you support. With this integration, IT managers can:  

• Proactively detect and resolve network issues affecting video endpoints and end-user computing devices.
• Ensure optimal performance for Webex and Microsoft Teams Rooms and employees' PCs and laptops.
• Simplify management of meeting room endpoints and troubleshoot them via the ThousandEyes integration within Webex Control Hub.
• Deliver an exceptional collaboration experience for end users.

Differences between Cisco and non-Cisco meeting rooms and devices  

There are differences in the simplified integration between Cisco devices and non-Cisco devices using ThousandEyes.  

While in the troubleshooting section of Webex Control Hub, Cisco RoomOS devices and end-user computing devices running the ThousandEyes agent will display a Network Path entry with path analysis information and a link to cross-launch into the ThousandEyes GUI for deeper path analysis.  This can help an engineer pinpoint where in the path issues are causing poor user experiences.  The following screen shots will show the progression of troubleshooting steps from Webex Control Hub troubleshooting, viewing how many participants had issues to cross-launching into ThousandEyes and viewing the user's poor upstream network latency.  

End-user computing devices running the ThousandEyes agent can still run tests to help monitor and troubleshoot Microsoft Teams and Zoom meetings, but they will not show up within Webex Control Hub and are not integrated with their corresponding admin portal.  

 Contact Center and the impact of ThousandEyes on both agent and customer experience 

Contact centers and the agents who staff them are the frontline of any organization's brand. The direct interactions between agents and the customers or constituents you serve need to be consistent, efficient and seamless. Any friction diminishes both employee experience and customer experience in one fell swoop. 

The prevalence of remote work and distributed contact center sites complicates equipping contact center agents with the tools and access they need. Contact center agents are often an organization's largest population of remote employees. This flexibility to work from just about anywhere mitigates staff recruiting and retention but also creates new IT challenges to ensure agents can perform their roles.  

ThousandEyes can troubleshoot agent connectivity anywhere, providing visibility into home and in-office environments from the agent to the cloud. It can also monitor agent desktop and third-party API dependencies, such as CRM and payment gateway, enhancing visibility into customer journeys through multiple platforms. For monitoring hybrid environments, we can link site-based ThousandEyes Enterprise Agents to Webex Cloud Agents to measure call quality and performance. 

Advantages of ThousandEyes for the contact center

• Continuity: Remote monitoring of contact center agents' device connectivity ensures continuity of experience across all agents and customers regardless of location.
• Faster remediation: Pinpoint root causes of problems immediately.
• Analytics dashboards: With this integration, contact center supervisors and IT staff can ensure every agent's digital experience isn't impacted by the digital dependencies that affect their performance, including VPN, last-mile ISPs, Wi-Fi and more.
• Proactive communication: drastically reduce the mean-time-to-know and proactively communicate issues internally and externally

Improved CX and EX with ThousandEyes integration with Webex 

Enterprise collaboration applications are built around a complex and interdependent ecosystem of microservices and APIs, as well as internet-dependent network infrastructure—all of which need to work in harmony. To provide a positive digital experience for employees and customers alike, organizations require visibility into the end-to-end experience of their collaboration platforms. Cisco ThousandEyes ensures that collaboration experiences are seamless, reliable, and optimized for performance across different network environments for contact center agents and the general workforce.