ANALYTICS/PERFORMANCE MGT.
In an effort to optimize retention, sales and collection efforts in contact centers, Assurant Solutions companies are utilizing a series of dynamic customer and agent analytics to save revenue, promote sales, reduce attrition and enhance collections. The system is a series of deep analytics on customer and agent data combined with a call management process that have shown to increase retention, or sales and collections revenue. The success of Targeted Retention, Targeted Sales and Targeted Collections (which is referred to collectively as Targeted Solutions) bases its success on linking the right customer with the right agent to optimize the desired outcome for each call. By doing so, Targeted Solutions captures revenue that would have been left unrealized, retains customers who would otherwise have canceled a service or product and improves the success of collection efforts. Targeted Retention, Targeted Sales and Targeted Collections utilize patented and patent-pending call processing systems. http://www.assurantsolutions.com
Autonomy etalk introduced the Intelligent Contact Center, which provides the ability to capture, analyze, and share critical structured and unstructured data in the enterprise. The Intelligent Contact Center is enabled by the Qfiniti Enterprise suite of contact center solutions, a unified, centrally managed platform for multi-channel interaction analysis, real-time agent support, and contact center performance, including call recording for quality and compliance, agent evaluations and eLearning, and customer satisfaction surveys. The Intelligent Contact center allows an organization to manage and understand all of its customer interactions, whether they be voice, email, or chat-based, to deliver actionable insight across the enterprise. http://www.autonomy.com/
BBN has released Version 3 of its AVOKE Caller Experience Analytics platform, which provides new caller experience dashboards, a complete user interface re-design, and user annotation of calls. New dashboards provide role-specific views of end-to-end caller experience, including weekly executive summaries, line-of-business dashboards for high-value calls, as well as dashboards for the IVR team and center managers. Web 2.0 architecture and task-centered design greatly enhances user productivity. And, new user annotation capabilities complement automated call analysis with skilled analyst observations.
The Version 3 release includes AVOKE Full Text & Keyword Search, the newest addition to its AVOKE Caller Experience Analytics platform. Leveraging technology from 30 years of BBN research in speech and language processing, BBN claims that users can now find calls of interest using simple keyword searches. This new capability is the first and only to provide full text of all audio from the entire call, including: all prompts played by the IVR, all queue & hold messages, all in-house and outsourced agents, and everything the caller says from dialing to hang-up.
www.bbn.com/avoke
Nexidia, the developer of an effective phonetic based technology for rich media search and speech analytics solutions significantly increased their technology’s indexing and search speeds to help companies uncover valuable data from their audio files by optimizing the algorithms of their own core phonetic-based audio search technology. With these enhancements the index speed has increased from 66 to 82 times faster than real-time and the search speed has increased from 169,000 to 548,000 times faster than real-time on the same hardware. According to Nexidia, this solidifies their ability to index audio data faster than any other audio search technology available today. http://www.nexidia.com
NICE introduced NICE SmartCenter™, which leverages the synergies of the combined capabilities of NICE Perform,IEX® TotalView® and Performix™, by providing a holistic view of contact center operations and business insight into market and customer dynamics. These capabilities are unified within an open Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based framework and are now offered together with NICE’s structured service and implementation methodology. NICE is pioneering the use of SOA in its markets and has enhanced and adapted it to the specific environment of the contact center, providing improved sharing of information and business processes and investment protection. NICE will make this enhanced framework available to third parties and will continue to develop it as the industry standard. http://www.nice.com
Performix Solutions announced their latest product release of Performance Manager™ release 4.1 which includes enhanced graphical scorecards to facilitate managerial decision making and boost the user’s overall experience. Performix now delivers additional appraisal capabilities to its Evaluation Manager™ application to provide deeper information on soft skills for a complete view of performance. http://www.performix.com
Verint Systems Inc., announced a new version of its performance management solution combining speech analytics with performance analytics to enhance performance across contact centers, back office and enterprise departments. Verint Performance Management is designed to enable organizations to identify the most important performance indicators buried in large volumes of contact center and back office data and transforms performance management from a metrics-driven to results-driven initiative.
Verint Performance Management also leverages the voice of the customer as a key source of performance intelligence and analyzes customer interactions captured in the contact center and back office for insight about ongoing customer issues, process breakdowns and service challenges. Using patented-pending speech analytics Verint Performance Management mines critical customer interactions to detect the root causes of performance trends— from average handle time and first call resolution to customer defections and sales conversion rates. http://www.verint.com
DISASTER RECOVERY
Aastra introduced CC:LifeLine™, a business continuity and disaster planning solution for contact centers of all sizes. CC:LifeLine is a hosted call center service providing a cost-effective customer service solution to ensure call center agents are available even if the physical customer call center location is not. CC:LifeLine clients continue to use their existing call center systems for day-to-day operations while implementing a business continuity plan should those systems ever become unavailable or unreachable. According to Aastra, CC:LifeLine is instantly available to respond to business disruptions from a few minutes to many months. http://www.aastra.com
FIRST CALL RESOLUTION
Upstream Works delivers advanced contact center solutions for mid-sized businesses. The eMedia suite of products improves the connectivity among all facets of a business, providing immediate access to key customer data and empowering agents to resolve customer issues efficiently while staying in compliant with business rules. The result is a rise in first-call resolution rates that reduces customer churn, lightens the overall call volume and raises employee morale, which makes the business more productive and increases customer retention The UpStart Experience Suite provides contact centers with UpStart, an award-winning agent operating environment with standard eMedia First Call Resolution reporting and eMedia Voice Services, which allows agents to direct callers to complete a short post-call survey. The UpStart Experience Suite included a set of agent and management tools for contact centers that provides three distinctive methods of measuring first call resolution rates along with quickly deployable tools to help increase management and agent effectiveness.http://www.upstreamworks.com
LANGUAGE SERVICES
The CTS LanguageLink nationwide call centers provide direct access to professional interpreters instantly over the phone. Their telephonic interpreting service is designed to let your company’s prospects and customers communicate easily and cost effectively with your non-English speaking clients by providing their services at a per minute rate with no set up fees, monthly minimums, or access fees. http://www.langlink.com
LOAD TESTING
In a continuing effort to help communication solution owners achieve ROI and customer satisfaction objectives, IQ Services released an enhanced version of loadtestonline.net this month. Loadtestonline.net provides managed load test customers with real-time visibility and actionable information about how their self-service customer-facing solutions perform under various levels of real calling traffic. Whether customers are facing new installations or upgrading and repairing existing solutions, IQ Services offers affordable and responsive managed services to companies who want to be confident their self-service communication solutions deliver the best possible customer experience at all stages of the business solution life cycle. http://www.iq-services.com
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, RECRUITMENT AND TRAINING
FurstPerson, Inc announced the release of Hire@Home, a web based assessment system that allows contact centers that are hiring home or virtual agents to pre-qualify their job candidates. Hire@Home is based on the 1stHire platform which allows hiring managers to assemble testing modules together to create a comprehensive, customized testing solution. These modules include EEOC consent forms, candidate surveys, integrated scheduling tools, interview guides, online reporting, and predictive assessment tests. At the core of the Hire@Home system are a series of assessments that evaluate work ability, work habits, and work attitudes. This includes a realistic job simulation that has been designed to be launched in the home environment.
In addition, Hire@Home contains an automated computer diagnostic tool that evaluates the job candidate’s home computer to determine if they can complete the testing process virtually and if their technical environment meets the need of the hiring organization’s computer requirements. http://www.furstperson.com
The Khoury Group has helped clients in over 125 markets across the United States, Canada and Europe raise profits by helping them build their own internal service-based sales cultures. The Khoury Service-Based Sales Culture is an existing employee-based sales support system that creates and maintains dynamic, immediate and long lasting peak sales performance without diverting valuable client resources from other key areas. The Khoury Group claims that their processes and products are not “training”. Training is a vital piece of sales-culture building, but the impact of training often dissipates over time without ongoing support, recognition, compensation strategy, expectation, management development, input, communication, motivation, recruitment and retention. The Khoury Performance Equation: The Right Environment + The Right Fit + The Right Action is a holistic and unobtrusive model for feeding these areas consistently in a simple, easy to replicate system. Results are quantifiable and guaranteed. www.thekhourygroup.com
Self Management Group’s ContactCenterPro is designed to help recruiters and manager assess the traits and attitudes found to be effective in selecting individuals best suited for your positions. They offer online psychometric profiles coupled with a fully integrated profiling system complete with an applicant tracking system. http://www.selfmgmt.com
QUALITY RECORDING
CallCopy announced their advancement to Gold-Level in the Avaya DeveloperConnection program which expands the scope of the solutions CallCopy delivers to the contact center industry. They also announced general availability of CallCopy, Version 3.2 which includes expanded VoIP recording capabilities and numerous enhancements to their Quality Management tools. And last but not least, CallCopy is proud to welcome Patrick Hall to their team as Director of Client Services. Patrick's background in contact center outsourcing is a great benefit to CallCopy's clients, bringing an added understanding of the diverse operating environments found in contact centers spanning multiple industries. http://www.callcopy.com
Coordinated Systems, Inc.’s Virtual Observer call recording and quality monitoring enables businesses to “Start Small and Think Big”, whereby a company can begin by recording a random sample of calls with screen capture for evaluation purposes, and eventually, and seamlessly, transition to a 100% call logging VoIP system with
e-learning, surveys, media encryption, or any of the other available add-ons. Virtual Observer also supports most of the common legacy digital and analog systems for extension and trunk side recording. CSI has become an alternative to high priced top tier products in the industry. http://www.coorsysinc.com
SPEECH
Voxify Automated Agents® are speech recognition-based applications that model the intelligence and personality of a trained customer service agent, allowing them to engage callers in sophisticated dialogue to perform advanced customer service functions, such as reservations, call routing, and account requests. Automated Agents are available ‘on-demand’ to meet unanticipated call spikes and have the conversational skills to consistently provide excellent service to callers at a fifth of the cost of live agents. Voxify has announced that specialty retailer Frederick’s of Hollywood will use their technology for its inbound marketing and customer service call center operations. Voxify Automated Agents will initially handle information-oriented call center calls, such as catalog requests, store locating and order status freeing up live agents to handle revenue-generating and product information calls. In the future, Frederick’s of Hollywood will be exploring the use of Voxify technology for market research and selected revenue-generating activities. http://www.voxify.com
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS/MULTI CHANNEL
Aspect Software promoted the latest version of Aspect EnsemblePro 6.1, from its Unified IP Contact Center product line. It is a complete contact center solution that unites inbound, outbound and blended multichannel contact (voice, email, the web and fax), while also delivering voice portal, recording and quality management, and unified reporting, routing and administration capabilities. The product was specifically created to unite multiple capabilities in a single platform and enables customers to unlock additional functionality, as needed.
Designed to address the needs of companies that require extreme flexibility, Aspect EnsemblePro is architected and built from the ground up to scale from ten to thousands of seats and incorporates a robust set of core features that support sophisticated contact strategies on the customer’s transport of choice - traditional voice, open source IP, or closed source IP. The product also provides application service provider (ASP) capabilities enabling service providers to host multiple clients segmented as individual tenants. http://www.aspect.com
Hermes.Net is an integrated, full-featured multi-channel contact center solution based on a single IT platform. The major advantage of this architecture is that it combines all separate contact center elements; ACD, IVR, Predictive dialing, VOIP and CRM. It is a flexible platform specifically designed to be integrated with your existing infrastructure and IT applications. Hermes.Net is a completely browser-based platform enabling you to access all contact center functionalities through a standard Internet browser. http://www.vocalcom.com/Solutions-centre-d-appels_en.aspx
UNIFIED DESKTOP
Cicero recently announced its release of Cicero 6.2, a software integration framework which allows you to integrate processes without touching your applications. This latest release includes enhanced features in Cicero Studio, a comprehensive integration toolset, to shorten the time required to integrate applications. Cicero 6.2 also includes the ability to create visually organized agent desktops focused on the business processes and the required information to provide quality customer service. According to Cicero, their ability to improve operational efficiency was evident when it was implemented at N.E.W. Customer Service Companies with over 1,000 agents cutting average handle time 30-40 seconds per call resulting in approximately $1,000,000 in savings the first year. Implemented in weeks, Cicero claims that this new release, which can be implemented in weeks, further shortens implementation time and supports a rapid ROI of 3-6 months. http://www.ciceroinc.com
Having recently announced a joint marketing agreement with Avaya, Jacada has also signed on several significant customers including Capita - an outsourcer in the UK; Quelle - a leading catalog retailer in Germany; and Lillian Vernon, a leading catalog retailer in North America. The company's unified service desktop and process optimization solutions are helping companies across the globe decrease operational costs and boost CSR effectiveness by consolidating the many disparate applications on the agent desktop into a more simplified service environment. http://www.jacada.com
On-Line Technologies On-Line Call Center is a web-based application with both a hosted and on-premise delivery model which allows you to monitor and make changes to your business from anywhere with an Internet connection. Their order entry system supports business rules and dynamic scripting to keep sales agents focused on selling; integrates with your telephone system and provides you with blended call/order data and delivers “screen pops” to agents with instant access to an account before they answer the phone. The order management features a continuity engine to fully customize future auto-ship orders, increasing customer satisfaction and lifetime value. Meaningful drill-down style reports provide valuable insight for decision making. http://www.on-linetechnologies.com
Sentillion vBusiness-vThere is a packaged desktop virtualization solution, which eliminates the security and technology challenges associated with remote access. Through the leveraging of virtualization technology, vThere enables an organization to deliver a server-less, secure, corporate managed virtual computer to all users, regardless of their physical location.
For remote workers, such as virtual call center agents, contractors or temporarily displaced employees that require access to applications and corporate data in order to maintain productivity, vThere simplifies the process by creating a virtualized, secure end-point that runs on any contemporary Windows based machine. The secure end point both extends the network domain to include remote users as “managed” machines and provides the full benefit of the corporate security infrastructure. By allowing an organization to leverage their existing infrastructure investment, vThere can immediately address a number of diverse remote access business challenges such as desktop management of home based employees and business continuity. http://www.vthere.net
WALLBOARDS
Telecorp Products, Inc. showcased new products, capabilities and features of their CentrEE Solutions line of products. Wall Display Plus, a next generation solution for flexible management and publishing of rich digital media on networked, on-premise digital signage displays attracted a lot of attention. Any user can create, manage, and access high-quality and compelling digital media to improve communications. Wall Display Plus connects customers, employees, partners, or students anywhere, anytime. This cutting-edge communications solution provides customers in call centers and in many different industries with tools for marketing, sales, education and training, communication, and collaboration. The Telecorp team also presented Telecorp’s traditional CentrEE Solutions, that included Quality Monitoring, Recorder Plus, Historical reporting, Messaging, and Real-time Displays as well as the new web-based IQ Plus for displaying Real-time call center queue stats and agent statistics. http://www.telecorpproducts.com