Even as multi-channel communications across email, social media, and live chat gain in popularity, voice remains the #1 mode for surveying your customers. More than half of your customers (regardless of age) will use the phone to reach out to a service team, finds Zendesk. This makes it critical to invest in telephony channels, providing customers with a rich variety of options and interactive tools when communicating with your team via the phone.
This is where the conversation around CCXML vs. VXML comes in.
CCXML and VXML are both essential standards that govern telephony connections and interactions between humans and computers. They are both powered by the efforts of the worldwide web consortium (W3C), which, incidentally, is currently led by Tim Berners-Lee. While VXML and CCXML are two distinct concepts, they are both necessary to deliver effective and comprehensive voice-based communications in a contact centre environment.
So, what’s the difference between CCXML and VXML? Here are the key points of divergence.
- When was it developed?
While both standards are ratified by W3C, VoiceXML or VXML is the older of the two, established in 1999. Four organisations – AT&T, IBM, Lucent, and Motorola – came together to form the VoiceXML Forum in March, launching version 0.9 of the same later that year, in September. Currently, VXML is at a 3.X release.
CCXML, on the other hand, is much newer, launched as recently as the late 2000s. W3C released its recommendations for CCXML V1.0 in July of 2011, and several companies like Avaya, IBM, announced their toolkits to support CCXML soon after. This is because CCXML is an ancillary (technically non-essential) technology, which you don’t necessarily need to power basic telephony interactions. That’s why it was developed much later than the more foundational VXML.
- What does it do?
In terms of functionality, VoiceXML or VXML and CCXML are completely different. VXML helps you build interactive media and voice dialogues that act as the building blocks for any voice/audio-based app, such as digital IVRs, banking systems, automated customer service portals, etc. The VXML code is interpreted by the voice browser, which, in turn, interacts with the user through PSTN.
Simply put, VXML is an XML extension that enables connectivity to the internet via telephones and other voice-based devices, essentially governing all voice interactions between a machine system and the user.
A modern contact centre as we know it today, wouldn’t be possible without VXML.
CCXML, on the other hand, enhances this essential voice functionality (instead of actually powering it), by providing asynchronous event-based telephony capabilities. What this means is that you can control in-call functions like putting participants on hold, conducting multi-participant meetings, routing to a different device/agent, etc., using CCXML code.
- How do you use it?
While both VXML and CCXML tools, standards, and documentation are available in open-source, VXML is slightly different as it enjoys greater open-source support. CCXML is better deployed through a specific contact centre provider like Avaya or Genesys.
