1. What is Cisco’s overall direction in 2011 regarding providing customer care solutions for the enterprise?
In 2010 we disrupted the market with visionary new products such as Cisco SocialMiner (social media customer care), Cisco Finesse (next-generation Web-based desktop), and Cisco MediaSense (network-based multimedia capture and storage) that empower businesses to better collaborate with their customers.
In 2011 we're continuing investments in the recently-released products, but applying the bulk of our resources to maintain ongoing focus on our core customer care portfolio. One particular area of concentration is enhancing our agent profiling and contact routing capabilities.
2. What new products and/or services can we expect from Cisco in the near future?
Cisco employs the "Agile" development methodology, enabling us to make continuous improvements to all our products. For example, we recently introduced several enhancements to Cisco SocialMiner, including the ability to send notifications of social contacts through email, instant messaging (XMPP), and a new REST API, allowing application developers to implement SocialMiner in enterprise workflow solutions encompassing marketing, sales, and customer service.
Over the next few months we'll continue to improve Cisco SocialMiner and the other new products.
As I mentioned earlier, even as we continue improving the new products, we're also focusing on our core product line. As always, we're working to make our products simpler to implement and support, with lower total cost of ownership for our customers.
3. Please comment on the adoption rate for unified communication solutions. What applications are being adopted successfully? What applications are creating the greatest implementation challenges for enterprises?
Cisco considers Unified Communications to be part of broader Collaboration solutions that go beyond limited text or desktop-centric definitions to encompass capabilities including IP communications, mobile applications, regular and high-definition video, conferencing, messaging, social software, and of course customer care. Collaboration is one of Cisco's strategic priorities, and the adoption rate continues to be strong.
Many of the most successful and interesting applications being adopted are ones that engage customer care as part of larger, enterprise-wide Collaboration solutions. For example, some of our financial customers are deploying Cisco Telepresence with our contact center products to provide a more personal touch to remote financial consulting; we call this Telepresence Virtual Expert. Other customers employ Cisco Pulse and WebEx to help agents find enterprise experts that they can then bring into ad-hoc conferences with callers who need special assistance. The possibilities here are endless.
With respect to the challenges of implementing these solutions, most obstacles are more related to properly understanding business value and business processes rather than being tied to a particular UC or Collaboration application. What I mean by this is that businesses need to understand the value of deploying any application in their environment; if that application doesn't provide real value then using it will always be a challenge, regardless of how good the application or technology is.
Business processes must also be considered. For example, if enterprise experts aren't incented to occasionally assist contact center agents with customer calls, then not even the best presence application or ad-hoc conferencing will help a company achieve success with expert consults.
Applications should only be implemented if they provide business value and can be accommodated by business processes. It is crucial for solutions providers and their partners to educate customers about this and to help them understand what will help them be successful.
4. There are now several major “players” offering unified communication solutions. How does Cisco differentiate themselves from their competitors?
The power of the network has always differentiated Cisco from other vendors. So while access methods, services, and end-user devices may come and go, the network remains -- even as it evolves and improves. Cisco implements UC and Collaboration functionality on network devices such as gateways and routers, enabling premise, hosted, and cloud deployments that support any user, anywhere, on any device.
5. Please cite some ROIs regarding improvements in first resolution issues from the implementation of your collaboration platforms.
We're very excited about the return on investment customers can realize by deploying Cisco MediaSense in conjunction with a speech analytics application from our technology partners. MediaSense enables the network to stream live conversations between agents and callers to third-party analytics applications that listen for key words, phrases, and even caller voice stress levels and then advise the agent in real time how best to handle the call. For the agent it’s like having their best supervisor and a wealth of experts listening in and coaching them how to resolve the call the first time, except it's all done automatically.
The ROI from integrating Cisco Customer Collaboration solutions extends well beyond first call resolution and traditional notions of customer service. One of our customers deployed Cisco SocialMiner in 2010 to help them engage with new and existing customers on social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Six months after deploying SocialMiner, this customer reported a number of improvements in customer engagement, including 21% more Facebook fans, and an increase in revenue of over 400% from Facebook-related sales. This is more than first call resolution, this is demonstrable business growth.
6. Many industry experts have stated that companies need to solve the challenges presented by multi channel customer touch points before they adapt some of aspects of unified communications. Do you agree?
While I agree that companies may need to address multichannel issues, I wouldn't necessarily say that this must happen before they adopt other aspects of UC or Collaboration. These efforts can proceed simultaneously, and iteratively. A common example is that a company might introduce voice-only web conferencing to allow enterprise experts to assist customer care agents on select calls, and later add video to support richer interactions.
7. There has been much talk lately about cloud based solutions. Cisco has entered the fray for small businesses with your Customer Interaction Cloud solution with Salesforce.com Please explain the benefits of this solution?
Designed specifically for small and midsize businesses requiring from 30 to 300 agents, the Cisco and salesforce.com joint solution follows a cloud-computing or software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, resulting in faster deployment times with no capital investment. Customers have better cost control via predictable total cost of ownership, while rapid deployment and adaptability increase operational productivity and responsiveness to changing business conditions.
8. As we know, the hardships created by the economic downturn have resulting in the “tightening of the belt” for many companies. How has this environment affected acquisition of your technology solutions in contact centers?
Despite the downturn, Cisco has picked up momentum and we're gaining market share. But your question is still very appropriate. I believe that the downturn has had a lasting, yet beneficial effect in that, more than ever, companies are asking the hard questions before they buy a contact center solution. They want to know how a product will deliver true business value and the greatest return on investment--not just compared to the initial purchase price, but over the lifetime of the product. And they want to do business with a strong, proven company that will be there ten years from now, and which has the resources to continue investing in innovation as well as core product capabilities even during difficult times. When customers ask these kinds of questions, we're confident that our solutions can address their current and future needs.