1. Aspect is a major player in Unified Communications for the contact center. There has been much discussion about the challenges in implementing these solutions beyond the center especially when there is a need to access knowledge workers in order to attain first contact resolution. Please comment on the issues involved in implementing a unified solution.
Any effort to bring the contact center together with the rest of the enterprise in order to exploit unified communications must first recognize the state of typical contact center technology implementations. In a word, they are a mess. Over the years, for all the best intentions, contact centers have implemented many disparate, proprietary products that are impossible to extend outside the contact center to engage knowledge workers. Administration, reporting and control of the customer experience are scattered and siloed. Companies need to recognize the costs and complications of this siloed world and evolve to a standards, software-based unified architecture.
Software solutions that leverage standards open doors for interoperability, greater flexibility and reduced costs, and we fully stand behind the use of open standards in the contact center for a number of reasons:
• Standards are vendor neutral and therefore provide our customers with more choice; customers are given the opportunity to mix and match products
• Standards create a positive and beneficial vendor-customer relationship
• Standards help make contact centers more flexible and productive, and
• Standards give vendors a solid platform upon which we can develop new technologies that easily interoperate with other contact center solutions.
A true unified architecture in the contact center obliterates the traditional lines between ACDs, IVRS, predictive dialers and the other products to allow these applications to be quickly applied to a particular contact to improve the customer experience. And this modern architecture can be integrated to presence engines from the likes of Microsoft OCS to give visibility of knowledge worker availability to a contact center agent.
Furthermore, the typical organizational boundaries between contact centers and other departments must also be broken down to formally make those knowledge workers available for customer assistance. Bbut the reality is that these type of collaborations between agent and knowledge worker are already happening today without the benefit of control of when knowledge workers are engaged or visibility through reporting to how effective their engagement is in improving customer needs.
2. When are a contact center and an enterprise ready for a unified solution?
Business executives and CIOs that are ready for a unified solution are asking themselves, “Can I address my customers’ changing business needs quickly and easily? Am I able to deliver an exceptional customer experience? Do I have a complete view into my contact center’s operations? Are agents empowered with the tools they need to make the most of my customer relationships? Does it take too long to implement changes? Does it cost too much to manage the integrations and disparate hardware systems?”
A software-based, unified solution provides all elements to help companies meet these challenges— automatic call distribution (ACD), predictive dialing, speech self service, Internet contact via e-mail or chat, recording, and logging and quality management, all with unified reporting routing and administration—within a single platform. This helps increase flexibility, reduce complexity, lower costs, inspire customer loyalty, and enhance productivity.
3. How does your UC offering differ from you competitors such as Avaya?, Cisco, and Siemens?
Unlike the Avaya and Cisco’s of the world who build on existing hardware centric products to attempt integrations to software UC solutions, Aspect Software understands that a new contact center model is required. A software based model that model includes all the contact center applications necessary in today’s contact center – not just applications like ACDs or IVRS but call recording, quality management and workforce management as well. And we recognize that bringing Unified Communications to the contact center requires an alliance between the ourselves and the leading UC provider in Microsoft. It is the combination of Aspect expertise in improving customer experiences and results with Microsoft technologies, like Office Communication Server and Exchange, that creates a significant differentiator. Bringing the contact center and the enterprise together for the benefit of the consumer may seem mundane, but it is critical for long-term success, and teaming with Microsoft promises the opportunity to positively impact more companies and consumers than any of the lightweight “partnerships” that our competitors attempt.
4. What new products and services can we expect from Aspect over the next twelve months? Please comment on the general direction of the company.
Aspect is fully committed to bringing unified communications to the contact center and will design its Aspect Unified IP contact center solution to interoperate with Microsoft’s platform for software-powered voice and unified communications and will offer it as the leading option to new and existing customers. In December 2008, Aspect plans to release a new version of its .NET-based Aspect Unified IP product, which delivers interoperability with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, and which will include a powerful ask-an-expert capability using instant messaging and presence technology in Office Communications Server 2007. Aspect is designing the feature to enable contact center agents to find and consult with experts anywhere in a company to resolve inquiries in a single interaction. Aspect plans to extend the interoperability of Aspect Unified IP with Office Communications Server to include software-powered voice in subsequent releases. This solution is being designed to enable contact centers to seamlessly escalate customer interactions to different channels— phone, instant messaging, e-mail or conferencing— while addressing reliability, scalability and reporting nears.
We will be building on this capability with additional releases throughout 2009.
We are also building out a services organization that is going to be a clear differentiator in the UC market. At this point in the adoption curve, companies need services and support to provide business solutions, rather than point products and ensure that the enterprise and contact center technologies seamlessly interoperate and are fully utilized for greater choice, control, and maximum business impact. The vendor that offers these standards-based, interoperable solutions coupled with high-touch, high-level services will be the one-stop UC shop. And that is where Aspect is headed.
5. Please comment on the status regarding product development and the implementation of the various elements of the Aspect/Microsoft strategic alliance.
Both companies are on track to deliver the product and service elements that were announced as part of the recent strategic alliance. In Q4, Aspect will be making Aspect Unified IP 6.6 generally available to deliver on unified communication for the contact center. Subsequent releases of Aspect Unified IP are also on schedule for delivery in 2009 and 2010. In addition by Q4, Aspect will also have its service offering in place to deliver Microsoft UC implementations.
6. PerformanceEdge is a comprehensive suite of applications designed for the contact center. Some centers would prefer to take the “best of breed” approach. Can this approach be adapted to PerformanceEdge?
Absolutely. PerformanceEdge is a comprehensive performance optimization solution that actually brings together best of breed applications. These applications (Aspect eWorkforce Management, Aspect Quality Management, Aspect Performance Management and Aspect Campaign Management) can be implemented on any interaction management platform (Aspect, Nortel, Avaya, etc) and can be implemented one at a time or as the full suite. When the full set of applications are synchronized, organizations will experience the greatest value, but taking the best of breed approach with one or all of these will certainly deliver significant benefits to contact centers.
7. In addition to Unified Communications, what do you consider the “hot’ areas of interest for “sophisticated” contact centers?
Performance optimization solutions are becoming essential for contact centers to equitably balance their resources and meet consumer demands, as well as to develop powerful customer service differentiators. In particular, performance management, speech analytics and quality management applications can make a significant impact on the success of a contact center. Performance management allows the contact center to align its performance with the overall corporate objectives and demonstrate to agents how their activities contribute to the overall performance of the organization. Quality management and speech analytics applications help contact centers identify gaps in processes or agent knowledge and allow them to easily create training to address those issues or modify processes to make them more customer-friendly.
8. Has the decision making process changed over the past twelve months? If so, how?
Naturally with the slow-down of the economy, organizations are more closely evaluating their business needs and having to strictly prioritize projects. This of course impacts the decision making process. In addition, the C-level executives are being engaged more directly in the decision making process. There needs to be a very compelling business requirement for organizations to give the green light to any new capital expenditure project.