The present invention relates to contact centers with SIP Microsoft RTC Messenger type clients for callers and/or agents. As telephony networks evolve from conventional PSTN to IP-based networks, there is need for the next generation of call centers to support these new forms of communication and the new call centers should provide improved customer service by exploiting this voice/data convergence. This is achieved by a call center having a real-time communication server (120) that processes user instant text messages and voice transmissions. The RTC server determines a suitable routing destination for the voice call based on analysis of one or more instant text message exchanges (304). In some cases, the RTC server may supply documents, instant messages containing HTML links and multimedia audio and video in order to seek to satisfy the caller without routing the voice call to a human agent. The RTC server also provides Session-on-hold, IM Help, Multichannel Interaction, and Call Center Buddy capabilities. |