Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine Size: Full Page, 8.125 X 10.875” Account Executive: Karl A

cvr2_1 10/29/04 11:50 AM Page 2 cvr2_1 10/29/04 11:51 AM Page 3 s the publisher of the their core competency to high-quali- industry’s Number 1 ty, reputable and domestic outsourc- publication since 1982, ing teleservices companies. which laid the founda- • The future belongs, by and large, tion of the present to the companies that are customer- By: Nadji Tehrani, multibillion-dollar centric and those that focus on cus- Executive Group Publisher, contactA center/CRM industry, here tomer experience management. Technology Marketing are my visions for 2005: • To be successful in 2005 and Corporation

LOOKING INTO THE CRYSTAL BALL… out having an outstanding call center: 1. The functionality of an effective The Dawn Of A New sales department is nearly 100 percent, depending on the principles of outbound and inbound telemarket- Era In Fast-Growing ing. This is the undeniable fact of business survival regardless of what Contact/CRM Centers! the FTC thinks about it. 2. As we indicated above, the suc- • The future of our industry has beyond, the companies need to be cessful companies of tomorrow are never been better! able to think outside of the box, those that are customer-centric and • I see 10 to 12 percent growth in because innovation is the key to sur- those that focus 100 percent on cus- high-end B-to-B enterprise sector. vival. tomer experience management. As • I see 6 to 8 percent growth in B- • The successful companies of the such, none of these goals can be to-C, mostly in the financial services future are the ones that place far achieved without having a powerful, sector. greater importance on the quality of well-trained and professional call • I see 15 to 20 percent growth in customer service and customer care center. domestic outsourced teleservices as opposed to focusing on cheap 3. No CRM (define - news - growth, inbound and outbound labor. alert) can be possible without hav- combined. ing an effective and reliable call cen- • Early adopters of VoIP Justification For The Above Vision ter. (define - news - alert) (i.e., com- When the do-not-call directive 4. The credit collection depart- panies using IP contact center solu- came from the FTC, many people ment of every company depends 100 tions) will not only save 80 to 90 had the mistaken belief that call percent on having a successful call percent on telecom costs, but they center growth would be reduced center and no company can exist will drastically increase their techno- substantially. As it worked out, without having an effective credit logical superiority and capability nothing could have been further collection call center. over competition. from the truth, because the liveli- 5. In any environment, fund-rais- • Early adopters of speech tech- hood of every corporation, regarding is an extremely important part of nology will also benefit not only less of size or type of business, a civilized lifestyle. And…we all from 80 to 85 percent labor cost sav- depends on having an outstanding know that effective fund-raising sim- ings, but also, they will gain consid- call center that will support every ply cannot exist without an effective erable superiority in competitive facet of business. outbound call center. advantage and productivity. In short, no company can exist 6. The American Red Cross has • The other winners are the enter- without the following services, and proven time and again that effective prises that outsource what is not the following is not attainable with- blood donation drives for our sol- 2 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Digital ) Clear ) Efficient

www.gnnetcom.com

Introducing the first telephone amplifier to offer incoming noise canceling.

With the growing use of mobile phones and open work environments, background noise from customer calls can impede agent productivity. The GN 8210 uses state of the art digital signal processing (DSP) technology to digitize and dramatically reduce the background noise. When paired with any GN Netcom noise canceling headset, the GN 8210 is also the first system to offer noise canceling on both the outgoing and the incoming signal. See all the enhancements that the GN 8210 offers and hear the difference for yourself: visit www.gnnetcom.com/stopthenoise/cs8 or contact us at 866-272-0805. GN 8210 with GN 2100 headset

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index

Customer Interaction Solutions magazine Size: full page, 8.125 x 10.875” Account Executive: Karl A. Sundstrom, 203-852-6800, ext. 119, [email protected]

GN Netcom, Inc., 77 Northeastern Blvd., Nashua, NH 03062 Creative Services: David Deutsch, 603-594-4722 (office), 617-794-4538 (mobile), [email protected]

■ = Trim ■ = Bleed diers in Iraq and elsewhere, as well as ‘‘ for the civilian population, simply cannot be organized without an The successful companies of tomorrow are those effective call center. In fact, when I that are customer-centric and those that focus 100 was invited by the American Red percent on customer experience management. Cross to make a speech on telemarketing with the members of the American Red Cross, the keynote 2004. The same is true for the out- duce outstanding call center serv- room where I made my presentation sourcing‘‘ companies (teleservices ices at even lower costs than off- was decorated with signs that read: companies) which are also reporting shore services and thus, they elimi- “Telemarketing is the link to life.” significant increases in business in nate the necessity of going offshore 7. The main ingredient of cutting- the latter part of 2004 and that and sending the lifeblood of our edge marketing today is integrated growth of approximately 15 to 20 companies, such as our customer marketing, and a major part of inte- percent seems to be a reality for 2005 databases and our customer service grated marketing depends heavily on and beyond (barring unforeseen and sales and marketing functions, the call center. developments). to foreign countries. It is unthink- In short, as I have outlined above, able that anyone would want to out- without exception or qualification, The Impact Of New Technologies source such vital functions as sales, no company can exist without all of Perhaps the greatest evolution in marketing, customer service and the above functions, and none of the the call center industry is that of CRM, not to mention parting with above functions are possible without emerging new technologies that have the lifeblood of the company, name- an effective call center. now become extremely functional ly, their customer database, to far- This is what convinces me every and useful for the success, survival away countries with considerable day of the week and every moment and rebirth of the call/contact cen- exposure to geo-political problems, of the day that our great contact center/CRM industry. not to mention language problems, ter/CRM industry is here to stay, Technologies such as IP contact cultural problems, rudeness, lack of and it will continue to prosper for center (define - news - alert) solu- proper management, fraud and wor- years to come. tions and speech technologies can rying about such extremely impor- The facts behind my predictions not only reduce the cost of telecom- tant matters as privacy and compli- for growth as stated above are not munications and labor by a com- ance with regulatory requirements based on an unemployed college bined 175 percent, but together, they (e.g., do-not-call list, etc.) And dropout who calls himself or herself will substantially enhance the ability above all, without having any assur- a market researcher (in my opinion, of contact centers to conduct their ance that their customers will be the findings of most market business in a far more cost-effective treated professionally. The more I researchers are practically useless to and technologically superior man- think about it, the more that valued those of us who really know what is ner. Both in customer service/CRM conventional wisdom comes to going on). Rather, my conviction and sales and marketing efforts, the mind, which says, “Don’t be penny- for the growth of the industry above technologies will give the early wise and pound-foolish.” comes from the only reliable source adopters a powerful competitive For more information on the that exists in our industry: day-to- advantage that cannot be matched above matters, I urge all of our val- day direct contact with the senior by any conventional technologies. ued readers to refer to my Publisher’s management of the call center Consequently, the most profitable Outlook columns for the last three industry, with whom I have a very leaders and market share dominators years to find considerable in-depth close relationship, since we helped of the future are those who embrace information on all of the above. to pioneer the contact center indus- these technologies immediately and try with our flagship publication differentiate themselves from their New Source Of Growth called Telemarketing® magazine back competitors. Another extremely As I have indicated in the last in 1982. Indeed, most manufacturers important benefit of the early adop- dozen or so editorials, the phenome- are reporting significant increases in tion of the above technologies is that nal business growth of several rep- sales, particularly in the latter half of they provide the capability to pro- utable teleservices companies has 4 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index been so powerful that many are ‘‘ actually turning down business. When asked the question,“To what The main ingredient of cutting-edge marketing today do you attribute this unprecedented is integrated marketing, and a major part of inte- growth during a slow economy?”, grated marketing depends heavily on the call center. most senior management replied that many of their customers who outsourced to India, for example, IP contact centers are at great risk of informative feature articles. were extremely dissatisfied and they losing‘‘ customers to their pro-IP com- 2. I strongly urge you to attend a have now become even more loyal petitors. IP opens the door to more new, cutting-edge conference and customers to domestic teleservices. cost-effective, faster deployment of exhibition titled Speech-World™ , Some even indicated that the CRM applications that give customer sponsored by TMC, Customer returnees are willing to pay even service contact centers the power to Interaction Solutions® and Internet higher prices than they paid prior to be more service-oriented, thus Telephony® magazines. Speech- outsourcing to the other countries. increasing new and current customer World™ will be co-located with our satisfaction levels resulting in greater IP Contact Center Summit™ along The Growing Economy Also Helps customer loyalty and greater cus- with the Global Call Center Obviously, the growing U.S. econ- tomer retention. Lastly, the ease with Outsourcing Summit™. Speech- omy, along with higher productivity, which IP links CRM to the contact World™ will take place May 24-26, will further boost the growth and center will encourage CRM vendors 2005 at the Westin Park Central need for call center services. to partner with as many IP contact Hotel in Dallas, Texas. center vendors as quickly as possible.” I look forward to personally wel- The Views Of Industry Leaders On coming you to Speech-World™, the Above Predictions The Bottom Line where you will find the necessary As always, I prefer to consult with Don’t be fooled by the “cheap information to acquire the new tech- other industry leaders to get differ- labor” sales pitch! Exercise powerful nology and knowledge that you need ent opinions on this extremely visionary leadership! Become an to make the right decision. important subject matter. For this EARLY ADOPTER of the new For comments by the above men- editorial, we have contacted five technologies, dramatically reduce tioned companies, please refer to our leading companies as follows: costs while enormously improving Web site at www.tmcnet.com. 1. Concerto Software your customer loyalty, CRM and As always, I welcome your com- 2. Envision competitive advantage. If running a ments. Please e-mail me at 3. Hispanic Teleservices Corp. state-of-the-art call center is not [email protected]. 4. Nuasis your core competency, then out- 5. Verint Systems, Inc. source to a reputable, award-winning Sincerely yours, I would like to gratefully acknowl- domestic teleservices agency so that edge the assistance provided by all of you can sleep at night knowing that Nadji Tehrani the above leading companies. your precious customer database is Executive Group Publisher Before proceeding with the out- protected and you are in full compli- Editor-in-Chief look and predictions of the above ance with privacy and other regula- If you are interested in purchasing reprints of companies, I would like to begin with tory requirements. this article (in either print or HTML format), an abstract of comments made by please visit Reprint Management Services online at http://www.reprintbuyer.com or con- Nuasis, which in my humble opin- Plan Now To Attend Speech-World™ tact a representative via e-mail at reprints@tmc- ion, clearly define the need for being In order to enhance your knowl- net.com or by phone at 800-290-5460. an early adopter in order to gain a edge about the above vitally impor- For information and subscriptions, powerful competitive advantage: tant matters, I suggest the following: visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800. “Nuasis predicts that 2005 will be 1. Please read my last dozen edito- IMPORTANT: THE year of the Great Migration to rials in the back issues of Customer Please remember where you first read this pioneering effort before the copycats copy IP.Companies that continue to have a Interaction Solutions®,along with many wait-and-see attitude for deploying us (as usual) and pass it off as their own. Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 5

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index CONTENTS Jan uary 2005  Vo l.23/N o.7  O ur 23rd Year of Excellence

DEPARTMENTS marketing automation, sales force automa- INNOVATIVE IDEAS tion and other aspects of CRM have FROM THE IP CONTACT evolved and matured over time. Nowadays, 2 Publisher’s Outlook CENTER EXPERTS 10 High Priority! it’s not hard to find a solution that meets A SPECIAL EDITORIAL SERIES SPONSORED most, if not all, your needs. 14 The CEO Spotlight BY FRONTRANGE SOLUTIONS, INC. 16 Recommended Vendors List MANAGEMENT SCOPE 18 Technology Highlights 38 IP Contact Centers 20 Customer Inter@ction News™ And The Agile Company 46 Customer 60 Speech-World By Rich Tehrani, 68 Managing By The Numbers Interaction Group Editor-In-Chief, Solutions®’ 70 The Integrated Marketplace™ Technology Marketing Corporation 71 Identification Statement 2004 Product 71 Advertising Index 39 Build Customer Loyalty While 72 Last Call Of The Year Reducing Operational Costs Awards By Mike Heberling, INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS Director of Business Development, FROM THE FrontRange Solutions Inc. 54 Knowledge Management TELESERVICES EXPERTS: As contact centers play an increasingly crit- Doesn’t Come In A Box A SPECIAL EDITORIAL SERIES SPONSORED ical role in customer transactions, many By Harold Hernandez BY WEST CORPORATION businesses are seeking tools and applications The core challenges are that knowledge to generate new revenue during interactions management is relatively new and remains 32 Outsourcing: Assembling Your with established customers, essentially mak- a broadly defined concept. The variables Best Options ing sales and service extensions of one that should be taken into account when By Tracey E. Schelmetic, Editorial another. Companies today have two objec- considering a KM implementation require Director, Customer Interaction tives: service the needs of their customers a level of understanding, vision and coordi- Solutions® magazine and turn their contact centers into profit nation that goes back to the early days of centers. ERP implementations. 32 The Benefits Of A Blended Customer Contact Solution OUTSOURCING By West Corporation TELESERVICES

CUSTOMER 40 Educating The Next Generation RELATIONSHIP By Tim Searcy, MANAGEMENT American Teleservices Association Like many of you, I spent time over the 34 Bolstering Customer Service Thanksgiving holiday “at home.” Home for Through Service Resolution me is Lincoln, Nebraska. While I was in Management town, my nephew Sean informed me that By Brian Kelly, KANA he was going to be joining the ranks of tele- Although most organizations realize that services professionals. He had recently been providing great hired by one of our member companies customer serv- (without my assistance), and was going to ice is an essen- begin selling credit cards by phone. I was IP CONTACT CENTERS tial part of thrilled! their everyday 56 Redundancy Key To High operation, CONTACT CENTER Availability Voice Services many are sad- TECHNOLOGY By David Weiss, Dataprobe dled with cor- It’s no secret that organizations today rely porate man- 42 Hosted CRM For on a constant stream of voice and data dates to The Contact Center communications to maintain contact with remain By Meenakshi Sharma, eGain customers, staff and business partners. It’s responsive but Often called “on-demand” solutions, hosted also clear that system architects must pro- cut costs. software applications for customer service, vide for the highest degree of fault tolerance

6 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com Document1 6/23/2004 3:03 PM Page 1 Executive Group Publisher CONTENTS Nadji Tehrani ([email protected]) Group Publisher Richard Tehrani ([email protected])

Editorial 203-852-6800 ([email protected]) Editorial Director, Tracey E. Schelmetic Assistant Editor, David R. Butcher

in maintaining critical communications TMC LABS TMCTM Labs and interaction. While many companies 203-852-6800 ([email protected]) have embraced redundancy in the data 62 TMC Labs Review Executive Technology Editor/CTO/VP, Tom Keating center, few have recognized the need to This month, TMC Labs examines Art 203-852-6800 ([email protected]) incorporate redundant systems into their FrontRange’s GoldMine 6.7 and Senior Art Director, Lisa D. Morris voice technologies. WebPosition Gold 3 Platinum. Art Director, Alan Urkawich

Executive Officers: Nadji Tehrani, Chairman and CEO Richard Tehrani, President

To Subscribe, Call: 203-852-6800

Or write to the circulation director at [email protected]. Subscription rates (published monthly): Free for qualified subscribers in the U.S.A. only. For non-qualified U.S.A. subscribers, $49. All Canadian subscribers, $49. All Foreign (air mail), $85. All orders are payable in advance in U.S. dollars drawn against a U.S. bank. Connecticut residents add applicable sales tax. TMCNET.COM ONLINE EXCLUSIVES Circulation Director, Shirley Russo ([email protected]) Reader Input: CIS encourages readers to contact us with their questions, comments and suggestions. Send e-mail (addresses Trends In E-mail Communications are experiencing global myopia when we above), contact our Web site (www.cismag.com) or send mail. Portend Significant Shifts For don’t consider the ramifications of the arbi- We reserve the right to edit letters for clarity and brevity. All sub- missions will be considered eligible for publication unless other- Marketers trage opportunity where telephony rates wise specified by the author. ExactTarget, a developer of on-demand e- orders of magnitudes higher than in the Reprints: For authorized reprints of articles appearing in CIS, please contact Reprint Management Services at 1-800-290-5460 mail marketing software solutions, has put states. or e-mail them at [email protected]. together its top e-mail marketing trends for Read the full article at Lists: For list rentals, please contact Lisa Horder at lisah@l-i-s- 2005, predicting some significant shifts in http://www.tmcnet.com/77.1 t.com or call 914-765-0700, ext. 107. the way e-mail marketing is conducted. Read the full article at Monitoring Isn’t Enough To Advertising Sales: 203-852-6800 http://www.tmcnet.com\76.1 Answer The Quality Question Kevin J. Noonan, ext. 124 ([email protected]) By Dr. Jodie Monger Executive Director, Business Development Allan Brown, ext. 278 ([email protected]) Service Providers: Follow We are continuously asked how well the Midwestern, Texas Regional Manager The VoIP Dollars contact center is serving the corporate asset Glenn Maiorano, ext. 279 ([email protected]) By Rich Tehrani, Group Editor-in- — how well is service delivered to cus- Eastern, Midatlantic, Canadian Regional Manager Chief, Technology Marketing tomers who call to resolve a problem or to John Coleman, ext. 280 ([email protected]) Corporation ask a question? In many centers, we must Western, International Regional Manager So where will service providers make money rely on a summary of operational metrics if prices in the US are eroding so quickly? with the assumption that certain metric lev- Exhibit Sales: 203-852-6800 els answers this critical question. We also Dave Rodriguez, ext. 146 ([email protected]) The answer is elsewhere, which is why com- Vice President of Conferences and Online Media panies like Vonage are launching VoIP serv- rely on quality monitoring scores to answer ice in the UK. While the media (myself the question. Online Advertising & Newsletter included) obsess endlessly about who will Read the full article at Sponsorship win the VoIP service wars, it is obvious we http://www.tmcnet.com/78.1 Dave Rodriguez, ext. 146 ([email protected]) Vice President of Conferences and Online Media Kevin J. Noonan, ext. 124 ([email protected]) Executive Director, Business Development Karl A. Sundstrom, ext. 119 ([email protected]) Northeastern, Canadian Regional Manager

Editorial Offices are located at TO RECEIVE FREE INFORMATION One Technology Plaza, Norwalk, CT 06854 U.S.A. Customer Service: for all customer service matters, FROM OUR PREMIUM call 203-852-6800. CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® magazine has been the voice of the industry since 1982. It is written by industry practitioners ADVERTISERS, PLEASE VISIT for industry practitioners and is regarded worldwide as the “Bible” of the industry. An annual Buyer’s Guide is provided as a feature of the December issue. Copyright © 2004 Technology Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission of freeinfo.tmcnet.com the publisher is prohibited. Customer Inter@ction Solutions® and the TMC Logo are registered trademarks of Technology Marketing Corporation. A Technology Marketing Publication One Technology Plaza, Norwalk, CT 06854 U.S.A. Fax#: 203-853-2845 8 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Sales Dept. Fax#: 203-838-4070 Contact Center

Now your contact center can reach out and touch everything.

You no longer have to choose between negative ROI and losing customers.

Built on a truly integrated architecture, FrontRange IP Contact Center was created to cost-effectively bring the world of the IP-based call center to the growing and distributed enterprise. It provides all the capabilities you need to promote effi ciency, leverage deep customer information, and keep customers coming back. And, it does so with an unprecedented From the creators of award-winning GoldMine® and HEAT® software. time to benefi t — offering features to fi t your needs and budget now, with the fl exibility to add more as you grow. It’s the fi rst contact center Customers don’t forgive inferior service. solution truly designed to change as you do. Don’t ask them to.

IVR for full customer self-service Visit TheContactFront.com/Loyalty and register to Multi-skills-based routing to the most appropriate agent download the white paper by Dr. Richard Feinberg, Dr. Jon Real-time and historical Web monitoring for maximum efﬁ ciency Anton, and Mike Trotter of Purdue University on making IP with uniﬁ ed messaging and PC phone for multi-media access the contact center the “strategic weapon of choice” for Built-in option with award-winning HEAT® CSM application and customer access. many CRM systems, including GoldMine®, for improved customer service and increased loyalty TheContactFront.com/Loyalty

Sales, Marketing Infrastructure IT Service & Relationship Management Customer Service Contact Center Management Management

IPCC_fpg_TMCNET_12_04.indd 1 12/14/04 10:14:11 AM or those companies looking for White Pajama. Somehow we are all com- first-rate customer interaction fortable e-mailing or searching the Web solutions but don’t want to with a company named Yahoo or Google, spend a fortune on equipment, but we just don’t want to have our contact hosting is making a major come- center running on software from a company back. In 2004, there were rela- with such a name. Actually, this is not quite By: Rich Tehrani, tivelyF few IPOs, but one of the most suc- true, as White Pajama has been successful Group Editor-in-Chief, cessful was that of hosted customer interac- with its unusual name, having weathered Technology Marketing tion solutions provider, Salesforce.com. The the bust and now thriving in the boom. The company is currently worth close to $2 bil- company is getting ready to take it up a Corporation lion. Only a few years ago, many “industry notch, and by changing the company name visionaries” said that hosted providers were to Contactual (http://www.contactual.com), all doomed. (Is there any industry in which they believe they are ready to do so. I am, the downside is very real and I have witnessed dozens of these vendors disappearing almost overnight during the burst- ing of the dotcom bubble. I don’t see a scenario in which this will be repeated, but as a responsible journalist, it is essential that I 2005: The Year Of put the risks out on the table and let you decide. One thing is for sure: If a hosted vendor is four years old or more, it probably The Hosted Solutions won’t see worse times than it has already experienced, and is therefore about as stable as it can be.

Hosting In Credit And Collections Fairfield County, Connecticut is home to writers, editors and analysts have to eat their I spent a good deal of time testing the TMC, the parent of Customer Interaction words more often than the technology Contactual system and found it to be quite Solutions® magazine. If there is one thing this industry?) robust and useful. The menus are simple to area produces a lot of (aside from a very I, for one, was a bit concerned by these navigate, and the GUI is easy on the eyes. high cost of living), it is trade show and dire predications, as I have been a champion Where Salesforce.com is more of a system publishing companies. I’m not sure why. of the hosted model for years. Hosting designed for CRM/sales-type applications, Perhaps the weather is so cold here that makes great sense for many organizations. Contactual is more contact center-oriented many of us launch trade shows so we can At our Internet Telephony events, we have and, in fact, the two systems can work get away to a warmer destination in the frequently had general sessions that focus together. winter. Perhaps this is the reason that on helping attendees decide if hosting With today’s Web services, the ability to Internet Telephony Conference & Expo makes sense for them. We call this session connect various hosted products to achieve will be in Miami this February. the “IP-PBX Shoot-out.” The most recent an integrated hosted solution makes appli- When we see a company that is in our event, held last October in Los Angeles, had cations extremely powerful. In many cases, field, our county and, more amazing, in our a standing room-only crowd and an audi- the openness of Web technology allows own hometown of Norwalk (population ence truly thirsty for knowledge about this software based on the Internet to be more 78,331), we want to get to know them. important technology. flexible and, subsequently, more powerful. Don’t get me wrong. Close proximity is Because I see hosted customer interac- So is hosted technology right for you? great, but this company does have a unique tions as positioned for a tremendous The answer: It depends on what your needs technology worth your time to learn about. amount of growth in 2005, I decided to are. If you feel you must have ultimate con- Before I go further, there is an important write about a few of the companies worth trol over everything, then hosting probably point worth making. Technology is deci- watching in the hosted space. isn’t for you. If you feel like you would pre- mating contact center jobs at a rapid clip, The first is White Pajama, a company fer to focus on your core competency and and soon we may worry less about off- created in the height of the dotcom area leave the details of contact center develop- shoring and more about technology taking when a name like White Pajama made a bit ment to someone else, then it’s worth look- away contact center seats. Of course, tech- more sense. You know, Yahoo, Google, ing at. Still, as much of a hosting advocate as nology is a double-edged sword: for every 10 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index LBS109.qxd 12/14/04 9:50 AM Page 1

Create your own organizational masterpiece.

It’s easier than you think. Because Monet gives you everything you need to manage up to 1,000 agents. At a price that makes sense for as few as 25. You get the tools to accurately forecast call volume and timing. Confidently schedule by agent skills and experience. Try ‘what-if’ scenarios. Manage seasonal volumes and create schedules for special days or day parts. Develop customized shifts and schedules. While you still have the flexibly to manage your team in real time. Monet also seamlessly integrates with nearly every ACD, and is as easy to install as it is to use. So easy, you’ll be up and running in just a day or two. Which not only helps you improve your team’s performance, but gets you started earning the fastest return on investment around – as fast as three months. Ready to be a creative genius? Find out how Monet can help you create an organizational masterpiece. Visit www.monetmasterpiece.com to learn more. Or call 310-207-6800 and we’ll create a customized online demo that will address your specific forecasting, scheduling and call center management needs.

The Art of Workforce Optimization™

Dealer and VAR inquiries welcome. Monet is a copyrighted software program. Left Bank Solutions, Inc. offers a complete suite of world-class Workforce Management, Quality Assurance, and Performance Management solutions. © 2004 Left Bank Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. Left Bank Solutions, Monet, and The Art of Workforce Optimization are registered trademarks. Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index advancement that is made to displace jobs, business, for every 100 calls to customers smaller balances. These customers were not the same advancement makes it less expen- that may have incurred fraudulent charges, contacted in the past, as their balances were sive for smaller companies to come and only a few of them are actual fraud. too low to warrant the call. compete in the market. Desktop publishing Using a hosted model and speech tech- In one scenario, a company was going to leveled the playing field in publishing back nology, when a credit card company detects take its collections functions offshore. After in 1982. As a result of technology, thou- fraud, the information goes to Adeptra, who evaluation, the company realized it would sands of new magazine titles, newsletters then place a call to the customer and, using be less expensive to use Adeptra technology and brochures were self-launched. In the text-to-speech technology, it communicates and keep 10 percent of the staff to take pay- process, however, some of the people with the cardholder to decide whether the ment information when necessary. So here involved in typesetting print publications suspect transactions are in fact valid. Just as is a scenario in which technology saved lost their jobs. a fraud analyst does, the system can read up American jobs. Having set the story up, I would like to to five transactions to a cardholder to ensure Whatever your thoughts on Adeptra and introduce Adeptra to you. The company is a they are all valid. what they do, one thing is for sure: This pioneer in helping credit card companies Adeptra is venturing into new markets, type of technology will change the way all combat fraud. Using its technology, you can such as collections, and the company has contact centers work. It has not only the do so much more than battle fraud, but the proven that its technology achieves better ability to save corporations massive company decided to pick this niche and results than live collection agents. amounts of money, it can be used to upsell dominate it. They are a major presence in Furthermore, the technology has allowed customers or to get them thinking about the credit card space. In a typical credit card some companies to call customers with shopping and buying. I would welcome a call from Amazon.com (quote - news - alert) reminding me in November to start my holiday shopping. What about a system that can call all of our Customer Interaction Contact Centers Embrace VoIP Solutions® readers, offering them an incentive to come to the next TMC-sponsored con- Although I can’t believe An entire educational Customer Experience ference? Then there are the obvious applica- it, Internet Telephony track is devoted to IP con- with Speech tions: a customer satisfaction survey, or the Conference & Expo is tact centers at the show, Technology ability for an airline to call and tell you now on its eleventh event, and we have the leading • The Role of about a delayed flight and offer to have the and while the technology speakers in the industry Technology in automated system rebook you on the next was in its infancy for the participating in the Complying with FTC flight during the same call. Again, the solu- first few years, it is now event…speakers you can’t Mandates tions are infinite, and you can likely come up being embraced by virtual- find anywhere else. • IP and Offshoring: with a better example of how to use it in ly all contact centers. In Here are some of the Options & your business than I can. fact, home agents, off- conference sessions you Opportunities Hosting seems destined to change the shoring and virtual call will benefit from at the The show takes place way contact centers operate. We can thank centers are a few of the show: in Miami, Florida, Salesforce.com, Contactual and Adeptra for entirely new things that • The Evolving Contact February 22-25 at the standing as solid examples of how compa- companies can do with Center Hyatt Regency Hotel. nies can make a good living from providing their contact centers • Open Architecture IP We recently moved to the hosted solutions. Better yet, these compa- because of VoIP and, Networks for the convention center, and nies are stable examples of why you should more amazingly, most of Contact Center the exhibit hall is sched- consider using hosted solutions in your these advances have really • Choose Wisely: uled to sell out. Please business. been made in the last few Migrate Your Contact book right away, as the years. VoIP and IP contact Center to IP hotel is close to selling Sincerely, centers are growing rapid- • Leveraging IP for the out (we sold out the show ly, and if you aren’t coming Contact Center hotel for the last two to ITEXPO to learn how • IP Contact Center events) as I write this, Rich Tehrani you can benefit from Shootout (panel) and airfares are going up Group Publisher, Group Editor-in-Chief them, you may be missing • Turbocharge Your quickly. I hope to see you [email protected] out on some key informa- Call Center with there, so please visit tion you will need to com- Integrated CRM www.itexpo.com to pete more effectively. • Balancing the register! For information and subscriptions, visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800.

12 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index IEX027 CIS Ad_1.qxd 1/11/05 1:52 PM Page 1

Spread Smiles Around Your Contact Center

IEX helps make everyone in and around your contact center happy. That’s because TotalView, our industry-leading workforce management system, enables better service delivery to your customers, empowers your agents and enhances your operating efficiency.

Backed by the support of the industry’s most experienced workforce management professionals, TotalView delivers real-world results and a quick ROI. Across the globe more than 2,600 contact centers, managing over 725,000 agents, rely on IEX to improve their operation… and their bottom line.

Connect with IEX today, and start spreading smiles around your center.

IEX TOTALVIEW WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT +1.972.301.1300 Improve Planning | Enhance Performance | Streamline Tasks | Integrate Data www.iex.com [email protected] © 2004 IEX Corporation. All rights reserved. TotalView and IEX are trademarks or registered trademarks of IEX Corporation. This month, the CEO Spotlight focus- TS: What kinds of improvements es on Scott Shute, President and CEO can call centers expect to see after they of etalk Corp., a global provider of properly implement evaluation and enterprise-class contact center per- measurement efforts? formance solutions. SS: Companies that monitor correctly and put their data to work always see improvements in agent productivity and customer satisfaction. The reason is simple: Quality monitoring platforms like Qfiniti enable companies to see customer interactions through the agents’ eyes — and hear them through the agents’ ears. And they get TS: In the last few years, call record- a better understanding of how their agents ing seems to have become even more are doing their jobs. All this information, important than it was before. Are you then, provides an opportunity for discus- finding that new industries are turning sion. The call center managers can share call to you for recording solutions? What Scott Shute recordings with their agents and be specific are the factors involved in this President and CEO, etalk Corp. in their feedback and coaching. Moreover, increased interest in recording and the data help managers see exactly where monitoring solutions? processes work and where they break down, customers better and to provide much more and they help managers do a better job of SS: The slowdown in the economy and personalized service. gathering feedback from agents as to why the explosion of buying choices, driven in In general, our customers are clamoring the contact center isn’t working as well as it part by the Internet, have combined to cre- for customer information, and a growing could. ate a fiercely competitive marketplace. As a trend is the practice of recording and analyz- Another powerful advantage of evaluation result, businesses are relearning an old les- ing every call, as well as capturing as much and measurement is that they help to ensure son: Every customer counts. So we’re hear- agent screen activity as possible. Using consistency. A company with multiple con- ing companies talk more and more about speech analytics, companies are now able to tact center sites wants consistency. Every customer retention and word-of-mouth, run reports that tell them how the contact agent in every location, anywhere in the because these are the most cost-effective center team, as a whole, is providing service. world, should be saying the same thing to ways to maintain and build market share. For example, companies can now capture the every customer and delivering the same Every customer interaction, then, needs to number of times agents didn’t tell a cus- standard of service. be positive, and the only way to ensure this tomer about a price promotion or didn’t get Our general “data message” is that quality is to monitor calls, assess the quality of serv- a manager involved when one was requested. monitoring isn’t a punitive activity. It’s not ice provided, and use that information to So we’re building onto our Qfiniti platform about “catching agents in the act.” It’s about train agents who aren’t delivering the best the ability to handle much more data and to giving employees the opportunity to listen to possible service. sort and analyze the information more easily their calls and talk about how they deliver We’re seeing this especially in the travel — because all those data are worthless if service, how they sound on the phone, and and tourism sector where there are two they don’t drive business results. what they can do to improve. types of customers: those who are brand Service quality, though, is only part of the loyal, like platinum travel club members who story. The need to capture every customer TS: In the past year, I’ve noticed that demand a high level of service, and price- interaction is growing, too, because of some of the hype surrounding e-learn- sensitive customers, who go where the deals increased regulatory scrutiny in the financial ing has died down. Is this because are. Almost every airline, for example, is industry. Here, recording is becoming almost rather than being a novelty, it’s now a playing the price game to some degree, but mandatory, as companies now feel the need necessity to most call/contact centers? the customers everyone wants are the ones to have a precise record of what each client What kinds of things are companies who keep coming back, regardless of price, requested and what the agent delivered. able to do with e-learning that they and the best way to attract and keep them is Companies want to make sure that simulta- were never able to do before? to deliver outstanding service across the neously they’re in complete compliance and board. So travel companies are investing in that agents are following company service SS: The hype has died down, but not the call monitoring in an effort to know their policies. necessity nor the enthusiasm for e-learning

14 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index in the call center. Companies have become pensation to performance goals, provide would be willing to take a service quality savvier about technology investments in gen- agents and their managers with reports survey. If the customer says “yes,” the survey eral, and they’re reluctant to throw e-learn- showing their real impact on the company begins immediately after he or she finishes ing at a problem unless they’re confident — in dollars and cents — and provide pro- speaking with the service agent. they’ll see value. As a result, e-learning now fessional growth through training opportu- Our philosophy with surveys is “Do it has to be easily integrated into business nities. now.” We don’t mail or call customers later; processes and directly linked to specific sales Another frustration for agents is not as a result, the response rate with our survey and service objectives. being kept up-to-date. I’ll go back to the systems is about three times that of most In the call center, e-learning is used most Sprint example. An agent at a telecommuni- companies. often to reinforce previous training around cations company who doesn’t receive infor- specific skills. E-learning systems are now so mation on the merger and doesn’t know how TS: What developments do you see sophisticated they can be set to start auto- to respond to customer questions would feel happening in both the near and far matically at an assigned time. For example, if ill-equipped to do his or her job. Agents are future of quality monitoring? I’m an agent working at my computer, a the face of the company, and they should screen may pop up and say,“Scott, it’s 9:00 never be left in the dark. SS: Everybody’s talking about customer am and time for your training to begin.” And Everyone wants to do the best job they information. Companies want it, and they for the next half hour, that’s all my system can, but they have to have the right tools. To want as much as they can get. This trend is will allow me to do. This ensures that both feel good about their role in the company going to continue — and it’s starting to the agent and the manager follow through and to do their jobs well, service agents must influence technology development in the on their training commitment. be informed, aware of how they are per- contact center. Because what better time is Another great development is the elec- ceived by customers, and provided with there to find out about a customer than tronic version of a “seat drop.” If a contact opportunities to learn and grow. For the when you’re interacting with him or her? At center manager had an update for the whole most part, they’ll take all the training they etalk, we’re going beyond,“Did the agent say, team — a price change or a product on can get. They understand, often better than ‘Thank you’?” to “Does the customer want to backorder — he or she would put a note on anyone else, that customer satisfaction know the agent’s name?” In other words, everyone’s chair first thing in the morning. depends on them, and they truly want to through voice analytics, we can gather and Now, in response to a market change, like improve. They want to do a good job. sort customer preferences and find out, for the recently announced Sprint merger, a example, if he likes getting new product manager can quickly create a course on how TS: What has been the experience of information when he makes a service call — agents are to handle related customer ques- companies that offer surveys to cus- and we can really get to know the customer. tions and distribute that training module tomers immediately after contact with And here’s what’s really exciting: We’re going through the IT system. Moreover, that an agent? What’s the most valuable to see contact center value increase as it training stays in the system, creating a “learn- data that can be obtained from such becomes a key information source for the ing library” that is available to agents when- surveys, and what’s the most effective marketing organization. ever they need it. way to use this information? The challenge with information, of course, is determining what you’re going to TS: Can you name the most impor- SS: Surveys are interesting, because most do with it. Our customers are looking to us tant steps a company can take in keep- people don’t like to take them, and they’ll to help them match data collection and ing call center turnover down? avoid the process if they can. But for a com- analysis with their business goals. We’re pany working to improve service, surveys are working to enable contact centers to gather SS: The No. 1 reason service agents give critical because they are one of the best ways and sort information about customers easily for leaving the call center is that they don’t to understand customer needs, train agents and more quickly than ever before. This is feel valued by their employers. They see few accordingly and fix service processes. critical in such a competitive marketplace rewards for a job well done, no career devel- To help companies gather this critical cus- because our customers want to fix service opment possibilities, and a lack of recogni- tomer information, we design survey prod- problems on the spot and make immediate tion for their contributions. As the people ucts that ask customers to evaluate the serv- changes in how they respond to customers, interacting with customers, service agents ice they received immediately after the call, with regard to everything from pricing to carry a huge responsibility, and good ones so we don’t lose them, and we can get their product availability. We’re committed to are expensive to replace, so it’s critical to immediate reactions. We can also set up the providing systems to help them do that. make them feel appreciated. To do this, survey system so that agents can gather cus- companies should recognize service agent tomer feedback, or we can ask a customer For information and subscriptions, improvements as well as successes, link com- who is still in the call queue if he or she visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800.

Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 15

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index The following Recommended Vendors have distinguished themselves by winning one or more of TMC’s coveted awards, earning them the TMC Seal of Approval.

Teleservices Outsourcing

West Corporation

InfoCision Management Corporation

CRM/Contact Center Software/Hardware

Amae Sennheiser Electronic Corporation

GN Netcom Spectrum Corporation

IEX Corporation Stratasoft, Inc.

Jacada Telephony@Work

Mercom

For information about how to get on the Recommended Vendor list, see http://www.tmcnet.com/mediakit/cis04/soa.htm

16 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index PLA_Call_Center_ad_CIS_Fpjb.qx6 8/5/04 3:38 PM Page 1

To improve customer satisfaction, start by satisfying your agents.

Your agents are the primary link to your customers. Keep your agents happy and they’ll take care of everyone else. Our new SupraPlus™ family of headsets can help. With superior sound quality and a stylish, lightweight design, they’ll keep your agents comfortable all day.

GET A FREE SUPRAPLUS HEADSET. TO QUALIFY, CALL 866-304-6652 OR VISIT PLANTRONICS.COM/SUPRAPLUS.

© 2004 Plantronics, Inc. All rights reserved. Plantronics, the logo design, Plantronics and the logo design combined, SupraPlus, the voice tube, clear-color trade dress and shape trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of Plantronics, Inc. Must complete a questionnaire to qualify for the free SupraPlus headset. Call 866-304-6652 or visit www.plantronics.com/supraplus for full details.

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index n Chris Cooper’s Oscar-winning per- tures and applications. tures, stock prices, currency evaluations, formance in the film “Adaptation,” his Using Strata CIX with FeatureFlex, users etc); and character breaks down simply and can customize their systems — modifying • To set up call management features that I ingeniously why he is so drawn to or programming new features — in fewer provide special handling for important calls plants: “Because they’re so mutable. than 10 minutes, rather than having to wait (such as follow-me routing to forward calls Adaptation is a profound process — means months or even years for their equipment to another number). It can also be set up to you figure out how to thrive in the world.” manufacturer to add the features they want. route calls from unknown callers (or any designated callers) directly into voice mail. FeatureFlex also opens the door to third- party application development: software Toshiba Eases developers, telecom dealers and systems integrators are able to create customized solutions for individual vertical markets and Evolution With others. Again, FeatureFlex is an option, not a requisite in using Strata CIX. Flexibility In its entirety, Toshiba’s Strata CIX, the native IP business communications system By David R. Butcher, upon which FeatureFlex is built, is designed Assistant Editor, Customer Inter@ction Solutions® Magazine for small to medium-sized enterprises or larger corporate users with multiple sites. (It That mutability of which Cooper’s charac- This tool may be used to create features on- supports up to 672 ports.) ter, John Laroche, spoke so passionately of the-fly, combining call handling with mes- Strata CIX was designed to deliver virtu- plants can be justly said, too, of the technolo- saging or other functions, because it is archi- ally every feature to every user, regardless of gy with which we deal in our industry. Are tected and abstracted to provide blended the type of device being used, whether the his words too dramatic for describing the solutions. user is mobile or stationary. So you can take driving force of our industry? I don’t think so. Examples of application creation your PDA (news - alert) anywhere in the building and continue your work. The IP Adaptation. Or adjustment. Or flexibility. offered by Toshiba, using the system’s telephony system supports IP phones, IP Or malleability.A sort of unreliable but con- built-in scripting language, are as fol- wireless handsets, both analog and digital trolled fickleness. However this innate flexi- lows: bility is described, at the base is the ability to • To connect with back-office thrive, to do more and to do it more easily. systems to allow important And so what preeminently, though not information (such as exclusively,made Toshiba America Information inventory management) Systems, Inc. (quote - news - alert), Digital to scroll across the Solutions Division (TAIS DSD)’s Strata phone or screen; CIX (a native IP business communica- • To c o n n e c t tions system) our choice for this month’s with online Tech Highlight focus was its offered option sources for of the FeatureFlex adaptability tool, which information allows users to customize their own individ- (such as ual features. weather Because knowing what will be the next most tem- important “killer application” is so difficult to pera- determine and because it can be different to each person, Strata CIX offers this “killer enabler” to endow enterprises with the ability to create their own personalized killer app. FeatureFlex allows enterprises to create user-definable features companywide, by department or for individual users. FeatureFlex makes the resources of the system available to create new or blended fea- 18 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index telephones, and IP softphones (news - alert)on Additional features of the new IP telepho- laptops, PDAs and tablet PCs. Strata CIX will ny system (200-plus features): My Phone also work with standards-based SIP phones, as Manager, a personal administration tool that it is built on open standards. (Toshiba has also allows individual users to program the tele- made available a new family of IPT telephones: phone program speed dial numbers and fea- desktop IP phones, wireless IP phones, PDAs, ture buttons via their PC’s Web browser laptop and tablet PCs, and security cameras.) The new system offers “never-before-seen IP- without administration support; robust voice based adaptability capabilities, making it the processing; eManager, a system administra- most efficient, easy-to-use, and customizable tion tool that unifies programming of CIX system available today,” according to Michael E. and the Strategy ES Voice Processing System; Durance, vice president and general manager of networking capabilities; TDM enablement; TAIS DSD. one number access; call monitor and retrieve; Strata CIX takes advantage of and voice mail return. Toshiba’s migration path and empow- Toshiba’s Strata CIX with FeatureFlex will ers Strata CTX and older Strata DK ship by the end of this month, and both CIX digital business communications and its optional FeatureFlex feature will allow systems users protection of invest- users to easily adjust their current system and ment, as the upgrade is affordable, Durance continued. Along with its to flexibly adapt to the consistently kinetic tech- new mix of IP features, CIX delivers nological world. His passionate belief being all previous features and functionality delineated, Laroche would be proud. of Toshiba’s traditional digital busi- For information and subscriptions, ness telephone systems. visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800.

Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 19

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Customer Inter@ction News TM New Products... Customer Experience Management Symon Announces SES 8.1 For Business Intelligence Symon Communications, Inc.,a provider of enterprise information for productivity and performance management solutions, has announced the release of Symon Enterprise Server (SES) 8.1. Symon has added more collectors and capabilities to SES 8.1 to further improve collection, transformation and distribution of both real-time and historical enterprisewide key performance indicators and other business intelligence throughout the organization. Included in SES 8.1 is Series IV and its various reporting options and product modules to enable large, advanced applications to more quickly set up without the wait of customization. SES 8.1 with the new Series IV options is intended to address enterprisewide data consolidation Symon Communications, Inc. and reporting issues across single or multisite and multi-vendor implementations, and to increase productivity and performance while eliminating data silos and reducing expenses. Data can be easily con- windows can be turned on to show that of the information windows, enabling solidated, aggregated, transformed and information. The information contained in dynamic re-sizing and font selection. ready for use in a variety of presentation these windows can be collected from other Additional graphics views are now avail- layers, including Web-based reporting with ACD ports and other data sources. able, as is a special “stealth” color-coded drill-down capability, agent scorecards, Version 4.0 has improved the flexibility alarm that can be set to display in the LED panels, plasmas and TVs, and Symon’s alerting and messaging solutions. http://www.symon.com Centergistic Announces AgentView PowerUser Dashboard Version 4.0 Centergistic Solutions,a provider of enterprise performance management software, has announced the release of AgentView Enterprise PowerUser version 4.0, sold as a module for Centergistic’s AgentView Enterprise Performance Management system. Version 4.0 of the interactive desktop dashboard provides contact center managers and other senior level managers the ability to create a dashboard of information windows, on the desktop, that show evolving views of real-time group statistics, individual agent “states” and historical summary information, all in one place. As additional capabilities are added, new customized Centergistic Solutions 20 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index background. Individual user authentication security controls have also been added. http://www.centergistic.com Telrex Announces CallRex v3.0 As Enhanced Multisite VoIP Call Recording Telrex, a developer of VoIP call recording and monitoring software for small and medium-sized businesses with IP or IP- enabled telephone systems, has announced the release of CallRex Version 3.0. “CallRex is entirely software-based, thus it is 50-60 percent less expensive than legacy-based solutions that require expensive proprietary telephony cards and are complex to install,” Robert Kapela, Telrex prod- Telrex uct manager, said. New features of this updated software: to pre-defined criteria; remote polling of the ability to automatically receive software look-back call recording; support for Citrix recorded phone calls; improved recording updates online; among other enhance- terminal services; the ability to export mul- quality; restart capability for remote data ments. tiple calls; improved trigger filtering; auto- collectors; improved call compression; CallRex currently supports 3Com, matic deletion of recorded calls according improved record-on-demand capabilities; Mitel, Avaya, Cisco, Shortel, Nortel,

Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 21

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Customer Inter@ction News TM

Siemens, NEC, Zulty, Artisoft, and many port standard IP protocols as well as data softswitches and gateways. The VoIP call switch spanning. Quick Hits... recording and monitoring software is sold http://www.asctelecom.com through a network of resellers. Oracle Buys PeopleSoft http://www.telrex.com/callrex.htm Oracle Corporation has announced its Contact Center signing of a definitve merger agreement to ASC Provides Free Software acquire PeopleSoft, Inc. after 18 months’ of VoIP Recording Solution hostility. Oracle intends to enhance FrontRange Launches New IT PeopleSoft 8, to develop a PeopleSoft 9, to ASC, a provider of integrated communi- enhance a JD Edwards 5, and to develop a JD cations recording and performance Service Management Solution Edwards 6. It also intends to immediately improvement solutions, has announced a FrontRange Solutions,a provider of extend and improve support for JD Edwards trial version of its new VoIP recording IT Service Management and CRM solu- and PeopleSoft customers worldwide. Oracle solution will be available for free to any tions for small to mid-sized enterprises revealed that it will be paying $10.3 billion (in company that requests it. The full, working (SME) and distributed enterprises, is cash) for the acquisition of PeopleSoft. This solution, EVOip, offered for use through announcing availability of its new modular translates to $26.50 a share. Oracle had insist- December 2005 with no stipulations, IT Service Management (ITSM) solution. ed its previous offer of $24 per share, or $9.2 allows companies to determine its value as Built on the Microsoft .NET platform, it billion, was its best and final offer. PeopleSoft a business tool. offers advanced technology capabilities and stockholders have tendered approximately 75 Completely software-based with no pro- was designed to “become the most inte- percent of PeopleSoft outstanding stock, as of prietary hardware required, EVOip may be grated ITIL compatible solution in the December 28, giving Oracle control of the installed on a PC running Windows 2000 marketplace.” company. The combined organization is now or Windows XP to record, store, search “The most significant vendor events in positioned to become the second-largest pro- and replay VoIP call data. Calls are catego- the service desk arena in 2005 may not ducer of business application software, after rized by selected parameters, such as date, be from the enterprise level players, but only SAP. start/end time, call duration, channel or IP from the mid-market,” John Ragsdale, http://www.oracle.com address, and then stored on the company’s senior research director for Forrester http://www.peoplesoft.com server. A browser-based graphic interface Research, said.“This release could allows users to easily play back, archive or change what ‘enterprise service desk’ IBM And Fujitsu Partner To Promote Open e-mail recordings. Features allow the com- means. This new suite, on a .NET plat- Standards For Autonomic Computing pany to perform search-and-replay through form, includes surprisingly complex func- Fujitsu Limited, a provider of customer- any browser. tionality across incident, problem and focused IT and communications solutions, The product requires that the IP tele- change management, all for an attractive and IBM, the information technology compa- phony solution currently being used sup- single price.” ny, have announced an agreement to collaborate on autonomic computing standards. Initial areas of collaboration are expected to include existing or new standardization efforts related to the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) Event Format, standardization of a set of actions to manage IT resources, and standards related to software installation and deployment. Through their collaborative efforts with standardization bodies, Fujitsu and IBM will promote the industrywide adoption of autonomic computing standards. www.ibm.com www.fujitsu.com CPT’s Voice Harbor Integrates With VoiceGenie’s NeXusPoint CPT International,a provider ofstan- dards-based voice application hosting services, has announced that VoiceGenie Technologies’ NeXusPoint software is now supported by CPT’s Voice Harbor. VoiceGenie is a provider of VoiceXML-certi- FrontRange Solutions fied platforms and solutions for speech ser-

22 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index FrontRange emphasizes IT Service Management solution’s “rare ability” to provide such an overview, with each of its seven modules launched from a single common architecture. This allows all applications to work from a single database and easily exchange information, intended to simplify reporting across all levels of the business. The seven service management modules that comprise the new ITSM product are as follows: • Incident Management; • Problem Management; • Change Management; • Release Management; • Availability Management; • Configuration Management; and • Service Level Management. “ITSM represents a significant milestone for FrontRange,” FrontRange CEO Michael McCloskey said.“With our new solutions, we will deliver the most Talisma advanced technology platform available in the marketplace for managing IT infra- structures. Within our advanced framework, we have codified our experience and best practices for delivering IT solutions to more than 8,000 companies worldwide.” The suite will be available by the end of January 2004. http://www.frontrange.com Talisma’s NetAgent 6.6 Intended To Increase Customer Satisfaction/Agent Productivity Talisma, a provider of multichannel CRM solutions, has announced the launch of NetAgent 6.6, a comprehensive multichannel interaction management solution for contact centers that is intended to make it easier for contact center and customer service agents to provide exceptional customer service. Key enhancements include an updated version of NetAgent Chat that allows agents to proactively engage Web site visitors, based on unique criteria, using real- time text messaging. It also enables agents to assist customers with form completion and provides the ability to “push” Web pages to potential customers while co- browsing. Developed specifically for contact centers, this latest release is comprised of NetAgent E-mail, NetAgent Chat and NetAgent CTI. Talisma NetAgent 6.6 can intelligently dispatch and route incoming Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 23

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Customer Inter@ction News TM

requests to agents across multiple channels, communications and empowers those cus- to ensure customers receive the optimum tomers to respond immediately. In addi- vices. The partnership offers to developers and level of service necessary to resolve their tion, companies benefit from “pay as you enterprise customers using the NeXusPoint issues. go” use; no hardware or software installa- platform an outsource alternative to CPE Additionally, NetAgent 6.6 ships with tion; automated, real-time access and man- deployment. CPT and VoiceGenie previously many new telephony enhancements, agement of campaigns; rapid campaign partnered on industry-specific voice applica- including multi-line voice conferencing and implementations; and high response rates. tion projects within the insurance, telecom screen-popup countdown. SoundBite 5.0 for Telecommunications’ services and government sectors. http://www.talisma.com new features enhance the real-time execu- http://www.voicegenie.com tion and administration capabilities for all http://www.cptii.com interactive campaigns within an organiza- SoundBite Launches SoundBite 5.0 tion. Those enhancements include the fol- Genesys Announces Reseller Agreement For Telecommunications lowing: With PeopleSoft, Forms Strategic SoundBite Communications,a • OnDemand Blended Suppression — Relationship With Unveil provider of on-demand customer commu- wherein a phone number or a group of Genesys Telecommunication Laboritories, nications solutions, has announced the phone numbers can be blocked from being Inc., a contact center software provider and availability of SoundBite 5.0 for called during a campaign; Alcatel company, and PeopleSoft, Inc. have Telecommunications, a Web-hosted solu- • OnDemand Enterprise Support — announced a new global reseller agreement. tion built on SoundBite’s patented interac- with which organizations have the ability Under the agreement, both companies will tive voice messaging (IVM) technology to create, manage and report on their collaborate on product roadmaps and contin- platform and designed specifically for SoundBite campaigns on a companywide ue their development of solutions that com- telecommunications companies. basis; and bine Genesys contact center software and Leveraging SoundBite’s experience work- • OnDemand Campaign Management PeopleSoft enterprise CRM applications. The ing with various types of companies, and Reporting — enabling companies to first offering under the new agreement is an SoundBite 5.0 for Telecommunications manage calling campaigns over the Web, in out-of-the-box computer-telephony integra- allows these organizations to rapidly reach real time, as well as to obtain real-time tion (CTI) solution that pre-integrates their customers with timely, personalized results. Genesys 7 software with PeopleSoft Enterprise Service applications and CRM analytics (versions 8.8 and 8.9). Also, PeopleSoft will sell and support the Genesys Framework and the new, server-side Gplus Adapter for PeopleSoft. In other company news,Genesys,with Unveil Technologies,a provider of conversational voice self-service applications for call centers, has announced that Unveil has joined the Genesys InterActs Partner Program as a strategic member. As part of the agreement, Unveil can resell both the Genesys 7 contact center software and the Genesys Voice Platform in conjunction with its Conversation Manager solutions. http://www.genesyslab.com http://www.unveil.com ServiceWare And Kanisa To Merge ServiceWare Technologies, Inc.,a provider of knowledge management solutions for service and support, and Kanisa Inc.,a provider of service resolution management (SRM) software applications, have announced the signing of a definitive agreement to merge in an all-stock transaction. The new name of the combined company, to be headquartered in Cupertino, California, has not yet been determined. The combined company (with 170+ joint customers) will KANA (see pg 25) offer a suite of SRM applications for agents,

24 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index The platform also includes answering machine detection, which can eliminate ATTENTION VENDORS! hang-ups on a live person and clipped mes- Send your News and Product Releases via e-mail to sages on answering machines. The Direct [email protected]. Connect feature gives call recipients the option to connect directly to a live agent, Whenever possible, please include high-resolution and the Load Balancing feature allows out- (minimum 266 dpi) color graphics (.BMP, .EPS, .TIF, or .JPG). bound calls to be automatically adjusted to control the influx of inbound calls to the call center. SoundBite 5.0 for Telecommunications also enhances companies’ call center effectiveness by automatically capturing information to complete transactions, and enabling screen-pop and whisper functionality to improve agent efficiency. The platform can seamlessly integrate with existing call center infrastructure, such as automatic call distributors (ACDs) and customer relationship management (CRM), to create an end-to-end customer interaction management solution. http://www.soundbite.com

Web-Based Customer Service KANA To Optimize Service Resolution Management KANA, a provider of service resolution management (SRM) solutions, has announced the availability of KANA Resolution, a process-driven customer service solution exclusively focused on optimizing the resolution process. KANA Resolution can reduce service costs, improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue opportunities by enabling contact center agents to solve customer inquiries faster, more accurately and consistently across service channels. KANA Resolution is intended to improve the delivery of service by leveraging intelligence to automatically provide agents with the information and process required to resolve customer requests, thus reducing first-call resolution rates and decreasing call handling times. Built on KANA’s architecture, the solution provides deep enterprise application integration (EAI) support. This EAI support brings real-time enterprise information, such as customer history, shipping or billing information, into a single integrated view. Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 25

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Customer Inter@ction News TM

self-service and peer support, delivered on an integrated knowledge management and search platform. The merger is expected to close in the first quarter of 2005. http://www.serviceware.com http://www.kanisa.com Recruitmax Launches DIG And Raises Contribution For First Coast Brain Injury Support Group Recruitmax, a provider of workforce management technology solutions, has announced the launch of its Data Intelligence Group (DIG). Recruitmax DIG is composed of several in-house technology experts and certified professionals who will focus on business intelligence and the execution of data management best practices, including methodologies for data migration and integrations across business applications. Recruitmax also announced that its first Work-a-Thon raised $3,410 for the First Coast Brain Injury Support Group (FC- BISG), the local chapter of the Brain Injury Association of Florida — the largest donation to date for the support group. The Recruitmax Work-a-Thon, staffed by its engi- WebSurveyor Corporation neering and support teams, was held during the weekends of October 16 and 23 (October The agent is guided through the resolu- • Resolution management that guides is recognized as Brain Injury Awareness tion process, creating a consistent and agents through a step-by-step process to Month). Recruitmax donated $10 for each repeatable resolution environment. KANA solve customer problems; order filled between the hours of 6 p.m. on Resolution can capture and automate con- • KANA IQ integration, which pro- Friday through 8 a.m. on Monday for both tact center processes, to decrease agent- vides full access to the customer knowl- weekends. training time, call handling time and cus- edge database; and http://www.recruitmax.com tomer churn, while also increasing cross- • Treatments and offers to suggest sell and upsell opportunities. appropriate customer communication, VCom And Navigata Partner For KANA Resolution’s included features: including cross-sell and upsell offers. • A Resolution desktop that augments http://www.kana.com WiMAX Delivery Of Wireless existing service environments with an intu- High Speed Internet In Kamloops itive process-driven interface; WebSurveyor Releases VCom Inc. (formerly WaveCom Electronics Inc.), a designer and manufacturer WebSurveyor 5.0 For of wireless telecom products, has partnered DIY Online Surveys with Navigata Communications Inc.,a mem- WebSurveyor Corporation,a provider ber of the SaskTel group of companies, to of do-it-yourself online surveys, has provide the primary equipment required for announced the release of WebSurveyor 5.0, Kamloops to be the first location in Canada the latest version of its online survey tool. to receive the benefits of new WiMAX tech- This latest version of the Web-based tool nology. VCom will be the exclusive developer offers greater control through a compre- and supplier of the wireless technology used hensive survey dashboard, along with a in the pilot to undertake broadband WiMAX dynamic new user interface. The survey wireless network development in Kamloops dashboard provides centralized control and its immediate surrounding areas. over the survey process, displaying an inte- http://www.vcom.com grated view of survey activity, and present- http://www.navigata.ca ing the top five most recent surveys, http://www.sasktel.com 26 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index response rates, number of responses and more. New features/functions: list management; a gateway page; library management; survey detail report; online polls; quota controls; date controls; enhanced analysis; scoring; improved graphics; cluster reports; and improved branching. http://www.websurveyor.com

Speech Technologies Loquendo Releases Tool For Speech Applications Prompts, Offers Saskia To Accompany Willem Loquendo, an Italy-based speech technology company, has released its latest software technology, Loquendo TTS 6.4, to include TTS Director. Loquendo TTS Vocomo Corporation Director is a multiplatform Java development tool that supports users in design- voice portals and content providers — are “Our customers can leverage high quality ing effective prompts for their applica- currently using Loquendo TTS. Also suit- voices to deliver best voice applications: tions. ed for e-mail, personal assistants, talking this is not only a major milestone for Text is written and interactively refined heads, unified messaging, mobile and Loquendo, but the industry at large.” through a “listen & edit” procedure, allow- CRM applications, Loquendo TTS is To listen to the synthetic voices of ing fine-tuning for better TTS perfor- available in 16 different languages, in both Saskia and Willem and their expressivities, mance. Prompt designers can select the male and female voices, and runs on all rel- visit TTS voice, which may be changed through evant operating systems. http://www.loquendo.com control tags in the text itself; they can In other company news, Loquendo has choose among Multi-line, Paragraph or announced Saskia, the new bubbly Dutch SSML Modes; they can set acoustic and female voice to accompany Willem, the Vocomo Announces Immediate prosodic parameters; and they can save Dutch male persona. Saskia is the latest their edited prompts both in text and addition to Loquendo’s multilingual port- Availability Of IVR Desktop Tool audio formats. folio of lifelike synthetic speech. (See New Vocomo Corporation,a provider of The Control Tags menu provides access Products in Nov. 2004 issue of Customer next-generation interactive voice response to Loquendo’s TTS Control Tags, which Interaction Solutions® for more about (IVR) systems, has announced immediate are grouped according to a set of categories, Willem.) availability of its new release of enabling the right choice to be made more “The two new expressive voices, Saskia VocomoVoice Studio, a desktop tool for easily. and Willem, are the most human-sounding developing, testing and debugging The Effects menu guides users through voices available and provide our customers VoiceXML IVR applications. the software’s advanced features, which with a greater variety of TTS options to VocomoVoice Studio 2.1 is “an ideal include expressive cues and plug-in lexicons meet their business needs,” Rosanna Duce, desktop IVR programming environment to obtain the required effect. They are Loquendo VP Marketing & Sales, said. for the serious IVR application developer.” grouped according to intuitive linguistic Vocomo’s IVR software products can move categories. IVR solutions from the domain of custom The repertoire of Expressive Cues con- ATTENTION VENDORS! software and specially designed telephony sists of a set of prerecorded formulas that Send your News and Product boards to an open software model for stan- include conventional figures of speech, dard high-volume computing platforms, Releases via e-mail to such as greetings and exclamations, inter- accelerated by the following features for jections and paralinguistic events, to sug- [email protected]. IVR developers: full VoiceXML gest expressive intention, therefore making Whenever possible, 1.0/VoiceXML 2.0 interpreter; built-in vocal messages sound more lifelike and please include high-resolution text-to-speech (TTS) synthesizer; expressive. (minimum 266 dpi) color graphics VoiceXML browser support of the SSML “say-as” tag; playback of prerecorded audio Many customers from numerous sectors (.BMP, .EPS, .TIF, or .JPG). — such as telecommunications, banking, files; virtual phone keypad for DTMF Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 27

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Customer Inter@ction News TM

input; complete VoiceXML debugger with based structured interviews. Previously single step and variable inspection; full available via CD software and housed on Workscape Opens breakpoint capability for easy debugging; individual computers, the new Kenexa International Data Centers ECMA script debugging; execution history Interview Builder provides multiple users Workscape, Inc.,a provider ofhuman to allow developers to investigate a given with anywhere/anytime access to interview resource solutions, has announced its expan- execution path; on-screen script inspection questions and resources via the Web. sion of operations with the opening of two for ease of VoiceXML IVR programming; Using Kenexa Interview Builder, organi- new international data centers. Workscape’s support of remote application server access zations complete a Web-based job analysis European data center is located in Germany, via HTTP; compatibility with all Web to determine critical competencies for spe- and its Asia Pacific data center is located in application server environments; extended cific job functions and those that are Hong Kong. Workscape’s expansion into these VoiceXML Grammar Support; indicative of top performers. Key questions international locations enables it to provide VoiceXML tutorial; and full compatibility are then identified to successfully measure outsourced HR solutions for benefits and with VocomoVoice Response 2.1. those competencies and are posted to the workforce management to multiple-country A free download of VocomoVoice company’s Web site for hiring managers to companies with offices in Europe, Middle Studio 2.1 tryout software, at the compa- access prior to an interview. During the East, Africa, Asia and Australia. ny’s Web site, allows developers to sample interview, hiring managers can rate the can- http://www.workscape.com the product for 30 days before purchasing didates’ responses to the questions and the full version. electronically submit the scores into the UniPress And Contactual Partner http://www.vocomosoft.com Kenexa Interview Builder system for fur- To Deliver Integrated Customer Service ther analysis or retrieval. “When a company creates an interview And Telephony Solutions Workforce & Employee script, they think they know what they UniPress Software, Inc.,a provider of Management want to hear, but [they] rarely have the Web-based service desk automation solutions data to support the questions they ask,” targeting the mid-market, and Contactual Troy Kanter, president, human capital (formerly White PJ, Inc.), a provider of on- Kenexa Introduces Interview management for Kenexa, said.“Now, demand contact center solutions, have Builder, Web-Based Solution instead of making hiring decisions based announced a partnership to offer on-demand, Streamlines Hiring Process on gut feelings and personal likes and dis- Web-based customer service technology solu- Kenexa,a provider ofhuman resource likes, hiring managers and HR can select tions. The partnership links UniPress solutions, has announced the introduction candidates based on objective data, which Software’s FootPrints Web-based service desk also prevents potential legal ramifications of Kenexa Interview Builder, the company’s with Contactual’s OnDemand Contact and mitigates risk in the hiring process.” Center, providing organizations with an inte- comprehensive solution for providing HR Kenexa Interview Builder can be supple- and hiring managers with competency- grated service desk and telephony solution. mented with a series of ongoing training http://www.contactual.com programs to support http://www.unipress.com the roll out of the solution within the organization and to Voiceglo Products And Services To receive assist hiring managers Now Available Through eCOST.com in determining char- Online Retail Site And Catalog acteristics of a good Vo i ce g l o , a communications and network- free information interview. It also pro- ing company, has announced that online vides multiple levels of retailer eCOST.com will distribute Voiceglo’s from our access to various levels Internet phone products, including its propri- within the organiza- etary GloPhone service, through tion. Its reporting eCOST.com’s Web-based store and catalog. premium functionality has been updated for easier use As part of the distribution agreement, advertisers, when comparing can- eCOST.com will add Voiceglo’s USB phone didates. Kenexa product and GloPhone VoIP service to its Interview Builder is online inventory, allowing consumers and please visit currently available. small businesses to conveniently sign up for http://www.kenexa.com Voiceglo’s services and buy the corresponding hardware at the same time. http://www.voiceglo.com freeinfo.tmcnet.com For information http://www.ecost.com.com  and subscriptions, visit http://www.TMCnet.com Send your News and Product or call 203-852-6800. Releases via e-mail to [email protected]. 28 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Gain The Clear Advantage CC 530 Call Center Headsets It‘s all about clarity. When your call center operators and customers can hear and understand each other better, your bottom line becomes the clear winner. With Sennheiser’s award-winning audio, you get the best sound in the business. Plus, you get the durability and comfort only Sennheiser can deliver. The result? Headsets that reduce operator fatigue while delivering incredible clarity for as long as you own them. Get Sennheiser and get the clear advantage.

Sennheiser Communications • One Enterprise Drive • Old Lyme, CT 06371 • Tel: 860-434-9190 • Fax: 860-424-1759 • www.sennheisercommunications.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index

Call Center Ad 1 10/15/03, 1:40 PM Spread.qxd 1/11/2005 4:38 PM Page 1

Featuring:

The #1 IP Contact Center Conference & Expo! February 22-25, 2005 • Hyatt Regency Hotel • Miami FL

Contact centers may be the biggest beneficiaries of a switch to IP telephony. In addition the well-documented cost savings VoIP offers over traditional telecom service, IP telephony is the perfect application for home agents because it enables seamless connectivity to remote networks. The editors of Customer Interaction Solutions, the leading magazine in the contact center market, have contributed a two-day workshop to INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO filled with answers to your most pressing questions as you select VoIP. The conference sessions at "IP Contact Center Summit" address key issues for contact centers as they transition to IP, including: International VoIP Deployment, Distributed IP Contact Centers, Transitioning from TDM to IP, and Upgrading the Network to Support IP Contact Center Applications.

IP Contact Center Summit Program February 22-23, 2005 The Evolving Contact Center Tuesday - 02/22/05, 12:00-12:45pm Presented By: Hollie Moran, Product Marketing Manager, Aspect Communications

Open Architecture IP Networks for the Contact Center Tuesday - 02/22/05, 1:00-1:45pm Presented By: Rob Winder, Vice President of Business Development, Genesys

Choose Wisely: Migrate Your Contact Center to IP Tuesday - 02/22/05, 2:00-2:45pm Presented By: Kevin McPartlan, Vice President of Business Development, Nuasis Corporation

Leveraging IP for the Contact Center Tuesday - 02/22/05, 3:00-3:45pm Presented By: Wendell Black, Vice President of Sales, Telephony@Work

IP Contact Center Shootout Tuesday - 02/22/05, 4:00-5:45pm Presented By: Oscar Alban, Principal Global Market Consultant, Witness Systems Ross Daniels, Product Manager, Cisco Systems

Turbocharge Your Call Center with Integrated CRM Wednesday - 02/23/05, 10:15-11:00am Presented By: Jim Puchbauer, Director of Marketing, AltiGen Communications, Inc.

Balancing The Customer Experience With Speech Technology Wednesday - 02/23/05, 11:15-12:00pm Presented By: Joel Riciputi, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Nuance Communications

The Role of Technology In Complying with FTC Mandates Wednesday - 02/23/05, 1:00-1:45pm Presented By: Brian Chamberlain, CRM Consultant, Teleformix LLC

IP and Offshoring: Options & Opportunities Wednesday - 02/23/05, 2:00-4:00pm Presented By: Kevin McPartlan, Vice President of Business Development, Nuasis Corporation Ron Haigh, Senior Director of Engineering, Virtela Communications, Inc., Ross Daniels, Product Manager, Cisco Systems

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Spread.qxd 1/11/2005 4:38 PM Page 2

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index A Special Editorial Series Sponsored by West Corporation INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FROM THE TELESERVICES EXPERTS

Am I saying your company CFO isn’t Outsourcing: going to bounce off all four walls when you propose these types of new technology and overhead investments to him? Of course not — that’s what CFOs do. Assembling Your But after you leave his office and let him look over your proposal, more likely than not, he’ll agree with Terence of Best Options Rome: mixed solutions, interoperable and in moderation, lead to better things. ately, the business headlines on newer technologies are recouped on scream daily about their best the savings in long-distance bills, expen- Tracey E. Schelmetic advice for conducting business sively located call centers, agent turnover, Editorial Director ® and outsourcing. Outsource inefficiencies and customer churn. Customer Interaction Solutions Leverything to India! Stay put! Partner with a firm in the Caribbean! Co-source to the Philippines! Move to a cheaper The Benefits Of A Blended domestic location! Send all your agents Customer Contact Solution to work from home! Who’s right? In recent years, companies have been due to unforeseen service interruptions, Maybe all of them. “Moderation in forced to choose between either high West’s Virtual ACD automatically routes all things,” said Terence, an ancient quality or low cost when implementing a calls to other available sites or remote Roman comic dramatist (who lived back customer service solution. Domestic agents. West’s infrastructure is fully in the time when “outsourcing” referred contact centers generally provided the redundant and monitored by a state-of- to hiring mercenaries to sack Carthage). highest quality service, but competitive the-art network operations center staffed Is it shocking to suggest that the best pressures have forced many companies 24/7/365. solution to conducting business nowa- to go offshore to reduce costs. Ability to Prioritize Callers: Your best days is to take a little from Column A, a Today, many of America’s largest com- customers deserve extra-special attention. panies are discovering that the best way to With a blended solution, callers can be little from Column B and a little from maintain quality while reducing customer intelligently routed to the agent who Column C, and combine them in a bal- service costs is through a mix of locations best suits their needs. This specialized ance that’s right for your company? and solutions. As a leading provider of routing can be based on a number of Technology changes the landscape for customer contact solutions, West factors, including the quality of service outsourcing almost weekly. The array of Corporation provides its clients with an they require, cost or location. In most networking and data technologies available ideal balance of quality and cost savings cases, this prioritization can be imple- today allows the most seemingly haphazard through blended solutions utilizing mented with no additional contact costs. arrangement of buildings, countries, call domestic, near-shore and offshore con- West’s blended solutions are cus- centers, managers and personnel — a help tact centers along with home agents and tomized to meet the changing needs of desk in the Philippines, a work group of the latest in interactive speech technology. their dynamic corporate clients. Using agents in Des Moines, their manager on a In addition to higher quality and robust technological capabilities devel- reduced costs, there are numerous advan- oped and refined over the past 18 years, working vacation in Florida, a sales guy tages to blended solutions, including: West can provide its clients with up-to- lost on Interstate 80 somewhere in Expandability: One of the inherent the minute reports that are tied to Pennsylvania, some Spanish-speaking features of a West blended solution is benchmarks selected by the client. agents in Texas, Albert the Warehouse Guy that it combines multiple contact center West Corporation’s blended solutions on his lunch break over a pastrami on rye options and home agents with some of are changing the future of customer con- in Moe’s Diner, and the billing people at the largest speech-enabled port capacity tact centers and are becoming the most corporate headquarters — can easily be in the industry. This combination makes efficient and cost-effective way for “glued together” by technology to the point it easier for companies to absorb unfore- today’s companies to make sure cus- that the customer has no idea they’re not all seen spikes in call volume and offload tomers and prospects receive the type of in the same room with one another. transaction-based volume or FAQs. outstanding service they expect. Sound expensive? It’s not…compared Built-in Backup Systems: In addition to standard backup systems, a blended For more information, please contact to the costs of “traditional” (read: “old solution gives you additional security. West Corporation at 800-841-9000, fashioned and quaint”) systems of the Should any one location be unavailable or visit http://www.west.com. not-so-distant past. Costs splashed out 32 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Keep your Database in Compliance!

Make sure you know who is on the Federal and State Do-Not-Call Lists. Use infoUSA’s Call Filter™ to keep your own database in compliance. If you call people on the Do-Not-Call lists--the fines are big! We process your database against all Do-Not-Call lists and flag or remove persons who have registered.

It’s fast. It’s simple. It protects you.

Call John Barth: Call Sandi Walker: Call Marc Sabatini: Phone (845) 620.7022 Phone (866) 503.4290 Phone (800) 711.4913 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]

470 Chestnut Ridge Rd. 1 Blue Hill Plaza • Pearl River, NY 10965 5711 S. 86th Circle • P.O. Box 27347 • Omaha, NE 68127 Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677 CustomerCUSTOMER Relationship RELATIONSHIP ManagementMANAGEMENT

As companies look to grow their cus- as most companies already having a routing tomer base, they are continually seeking system in place to properly and efficiently ways to provide greater levels of customer route service calls to the right department service in order to attract and retain or agent within an organization. Obviously, patrons. Although most organizations real- this is a key component to customer sup- BY Brian Kelly, KANA ize that providing great customer service is port.It is,however,only the first step. an essential part of their everyday operation, The next step is case management, which many are saddled with corporate mandates manages customer contacts or correspon- to remain responsive but cut costs. In order dence. Case management tools allow com- to meet corporate goals and panies to build a record of those contacts still provide customers with and customer histories so the enterprise can BOLSTERING the answers they need quick- maintain relevance and begin to build a relationship with the customer. A successful framework of service resolution manage- CUSTOMER SERVICE ment is built with a knowledge base of customer data and information. Organizations must build a knowledge base for customer service agents with a holistic view into the THROUGH SERVICE customer lifecycle. Information in the ly, accurately and efficiently, knowledge base should consist of how many organizations are turning to times a particular customer has called, what RESOLUTION service resolution manage- type of calls he or she has made in the past ment. and which products and services the cus- There are three steps tomer has purchased. However, while these of customer service tools are an essential part of the customer MANAGEMENT transactions — rout- service process and are absolutely necessary ing, case tracking and service resolution. to automate and manage a call center, they The SSPA 2003 Support Industry are only the beginning of the process that Benchmark Study reported that routing makes up the customer experience. The goal calls is only five percent of the cost of proof customer service is to provide answers to viding customer service, 15 percent is the the customer. Call routing automation and case management portion, and service reso- case management are not the tools that lution accounts for 80 percent of the time actually accomplish that task. and cost of providing cus- The third and most tomer service. This is due vital step in a customer to a number of factors, service transaction is including disparate infor- Service resolution service resolution. Service mation, agent turnover accounts for 80 resolution focuses on and a lack of repeatable percent of the time resolving inquiries during guiding processes. The the customer support numbers are eye-opening and cost of providing process. SRM applica- and are causing organiza- customer tions reduce service costs, tions to take a closer look service. improve customer satis- at the process around the faction and increase rev- overall customer service enue opportunities by experience. By optimizing enabling agents to resolve the resolution process, a company can dra- customer inquiries faster and more consis- matically reduce the overall cost of provid- tently across service channels. The ability to ing service and create happy and loyal cus- provide an enhanced level of customer satis- tomers as a result. faction through SRM is due to the open The mature segments of the customer architecture associated with effective service service market are routing and case manage- resolution solutions. By enabling the service ment. Routing is a well automated process, resolution application to connect to estab- 34 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index CustomerCUSTOMER Relationship RELATIONSHIP ManagementMANAGEMENT

lished legacy knowledge bases, call center opportunities to bolster revenue and which results in happier customers and agents can automatically be presented with increase customer loyalty. However, the individuals who are open to upselling. By customer data that allow them to present most successful companies realize that it is automatically being presented with cross- the most appropriate solution to the cus- much easier to sell to a happy customer sell and upsell opportunities during the tomer. rather than one who is having difficulty SRM process, agents can work to bring Once agents are armed with the correct getting his or her inquiry addressed. This other products or services into the fold, answers, they then need to deliver the solu- is where SRM can help. By increasing a capturing additional revenue. tions to customers. This could involve pro- contact center’s first-call resolution rate, Imagine that customer Thomas Smith viding the best solution and offering alterna- phone conversation times are decreased, calls his cell phone service provider. He is tive solutions while also ensuring that opportunities to cross-sell or upsell are not missed. A service resolution application interfaces with existing case management and/or call center applications and opti- mizes the existing process. An effective service resolution application can solve customer issues by understanding the customer’s request and providing the agent with the right tools, information and guid- ance. A complete service resolution process involves several touch points with the customer: phone, e-mail, chat and self-service. The service agent’s job is easier when these communication tools are integrated with tools such as search, collaboration, authoring, response and knowledge bases. Workflow on top of each solution further streamlines the process and reduces time spent on resolving the actual inquiry.

Guessing Is Not A Best Practice The workflows associated with the service resolution process take the guess work out of finding and delivering the right answers, even to the most complex inquiries. Many best practices are often lost within call centers due to agent turnover or simply because they are not documented. A complete service resolution process is one that captures best practices and ensures they are available to all contact center agents so when common inquires are asked, both new and established agents can guide customers to the proper answers through a resolution workflow that encompasses best practices and also prompts agents when there is an opportunity for cross-selling and upselling. The ability to cross-sell and upsell customers is a critical component to any service resolution application. Cross-selling and upselling provides companies with Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CustomerCUSTOMER Relationship RELATIONSHIP ManagementMANAGEMENT

immediately connected with a call center ice resolution application, to a possible management, organizations improve the agent who retrieves his account informa- upsell opportunity. Because Thomas cur- quality of customer service with quick, tion. Thomas explains that he believes there rently subscribes to a certain cell phone consistent and accurate answers enabling is a billing irregularity on his latest state- package, he is eligible to take advantage of inquires to get resolved faster and allow- ment and he would like to talk with a con- unlimited picture messaging for an addi- ing companies to establish a greater level tact center agent to discuss the charge. tional $5.00 per month. By alerting the con- of customer loyalty. As the agent engages with Thomas, his tact center agent that Thomas is eligible for account information is verified and the this program, both the company and Brian Kelly is KANA’s executive vice presi- agent has been presented with a complete Thomas benefit because Thomas was inter- dent of marketing and product strategy. picture of Thomas’ information in a single ested in increasing his ability to send picture He has 15 years’ of experience in CRM at KANA with both current KANA analytics integrated view pulled from all CRM sys- messages and the company realized a rev- and enterprise CRM tools and in his for- tems that hold knowledge of Thomas and enue opportunity. mer role as executive vice president of the products and services that apply to him. By providing call center agents with the products at Broadbase Software, prior to This gives the agent a comprehensive pic- means to both resolve customer inquiries its merger with KANA. At Broadbase, Brian ture of Thomas and saves the agent’s time quickly and easily as well as cross-sell and was instrumental in product strategy and by eliminating the necessity of sifting upsell, organizations create longer lasting actively participated in its successful IPO in through multiple systems and screens. customer relationships and also increase 1999, and secondary stock offering in Now that the agent has all of Thomas’ their ability to capture additional revenue 2000. Brian has used his vast experience account information, he or she can work on for the company. in marketing, product development and strategy to ensure KANA remains a vision- providing Thomas with an answer regard- ary leader in the eCRM market. He is ing his inquiry — fast and efficiently. Overall Service Resolution Management responsible for KANA’s product vision, Because Thomas asked a question that Benefits marketing and strategy as the company often garners customer inquiries, the con- The benefits of implementing a service continues to develop its eCRM applica- tact center agent can work through an estab- resolution strategy include increasing tions optimized for key vertical markets. lished resolution workflow. By taking first call resolution rates, as agents have Thomas through an established workflow, quick access to the right information, If you are interested in purchasing reprints of this article (in either print or HTML format), the agent is sure he or she is providing reduced agent training costs and signifi- please visit Reprint Management Services Thomas with the best possible information cantly reduced agent turnover. As much online at http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact and answers. as service resolution impacts cost reduc- a representative via e-mail at reprints@tmcnet. While moving through the workflow that tion, it has the biggest influence on cus- com or by phone at 800-290-5460. will resolve Thomas’ billing inquiry, the con- tomer satisfaction and customer reten- For information and subscriptions, tact center agent is alerted, through the serv- tion. Through proper service resolution visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800.

36 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index SERad_CISJan05_revised.qxp 12/22/2004 1:33 PM Page 1

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index A Special Editorial Series Sponsored by FrontRange Solutions, Inc. INNOVATIVE IDEAS FROM THE IP CONTACT CENTER EXPERTS

nel expansion. A company like Apple IP Contact Centers leveraged a product, the iPod, to help it build a retail channel to in turn sell its legacy computer products. This channel is being used as a differentiator by more And The Agile and more companies. Consider the example of satellite radio operators opening kiosks in malls. Company What would happen if IP contact centers were used to change the way rental car companies did business? What if the he contact center has long allowing agents to work from home and contact centers to be linked together in rental company could have video screens been looked upon as a cost at airport counters instead of agents center in an organization. a loose network that appears a cohesive whole from a management perspective behind a counter, linking the customer to This stigma is what has kept a remote agent? Is it really necessary to Tmany organizations from investing more and to your customers. have a physical agent present? What if heavily in this area of their business. The Multimodality certain ATM machines in a grocery store introduction of technologies like VoIP Once IP enters the call center, it could have a virtual banker available to are changing the landscape, allowing a transforms into a living, thriving contact ask questions and buy additional services? corporation to use technology to differ- center and allows organizations to meet What about a healthy food manufacturer entiate itself from its competition and do the needs of their customers in the man- putting a video kiosk in a supermarket, business in entirely news ways. ner to which they are becoming accus- or a consumer electronics company set- Mobility tomed. Customer preference, whether ting up a kiosk in Office Depot? Perhaps the least overlooked benefit it’s e-mail, chat or even video, can now VoIP in the contact center is about of adding IP to the contact center is the be met on a case-by-case basis. Better saving money, increasing flexibility and power that is unleashed upon the yet, the proper resources to handle each even differentiating your company from knowledge workers in an organization. mode can be located anywhere there is your competitors. The incredible power Today’s mobile workforce is an under- an Internet connection. the Internet affords an individual is dwarfed by the opportunity and flexibil- used asset in most contact centers, as Monitoring most call center technology requires ity afforded to an entire contact center One of the often overlooked benefits agents in a queue to be sitting at a desk full of agents and, most important, the of VoIP in contact centers is the ability with a fixed telephone and a computer. organization for which the agents work. to use it to monitor agents in ways that Voice over IP technology changes the IP allows for new, unimagined ways of are far superior to traditional telephony. above paradigm, allowing knowledge doing business and, most important, it In fact, IP by its very nature is an excel- workers to travel around the world yet allows your company to do business in lent technology that allows information still be considered part of the virtual the manner your customers need most. to be recorded and shared from anywhere. contact center. IP-based solutions allow these workers to roam where their jobs New Ways Of Doing Business Rich Tehrani take them, yet still remain a vital, cen- What we are seeing in business today Group Editor-in-Chief tral part of the contact center. is the advent of differentiation via chan- Customer Interaction Solutions® Field Sales/Service Another area of enhanced integration when contact centers embrace IP is the field sales force that typically is considered a separate business unit in many organizations. Seamless connectivity including conferencing and collaboration with customers, partners, agents and field teams means increased service levels and higher sales. Virtual Contact Centers IP allows contact centers to function in ways never before possible, such as 38 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 telephones, VoIP enables companies to easily connect desktop computers, laptops, Build Customer Loyalty IP phones and softphones. Expansion is a snap because data networks are designed to scale with your company’s needs. You While Reducing can easily add and reduce staff based on seasonal sales cycles; and by implementing virtual private networks (VPNs), you can add remote agents as easily as you can add Operational Costs them in your corporate headquarters, without the need for special hardware or s contact centers play an their way to extinction. proprietary solutions. increasingly critical role in Small and midsized companies histor- To run a successful multichannel con- customer transactions, many ically haven’t been able to consider tra- tact center, you need a single-platform businesses are seeking tools ditional call center solutions because technology solution that can provide four andA applications to generate new revenue these solutions traditionally were large, vital elements. First, it should provide during interactions with established cus- time-consuming implementations given self-service applications, allowing customers, essentially making sales and serv- the technologies that have been avail- tomers to do business with you when ice extensions of one another. Companies able. Copper-based analog networks are they want. Customers can complete today have two objectives: service the extremely limited as a contact center transactions, initiate requests, check needs of their customers and turn their tool. Only telephones, PBXs (define - account balances and get status informa- contact centers into profit centers. news - alert) and ACDs (define - news - tion without human assistance. Second, Businesses that want to get closer to alert) can connect to a copper-based it should provide an extension of your their customers are pursuing goals that network; copper wire won’t accommo- network to include multiple sites and/or seem to be at odds: improving customer date PCs, laptops, IP phones, soft- remote agents, so your customer relations service while also reducing contact cen- phones and other data-driven telephony follow the sun. Third, it should allow ter volumes and costs. To accomplish devices. Trunk capacity limits the num- your customers more options to interact both, many businesses are transforming ber and type of interactions a system with your enterprise by communicating their conventional call centers into mul- can handle. over e-mail and the Web by queuing/ tichannel contact centers that support Solutions today should include the routing/handling all interactions, provid- telephone, e-mail and the Web. This convergence of voice and data onto the ing faster response times and enhancing change provides customers with more IP network. This will greatly simplify the customers’ personal experience. service options while it reduces the num- infrastructure management and reduce Finally, it should seamlessly integrate ber of calls that agents handle by phone. operational costs while increasing cus- your contact center solution with other It’s clear for the small to medium- tomer loyalty, upselling and cross-selling customer information applications (e.g., sized and distributed enterprises that new products and services, still attract- front- and back-end applications such as being able to afford and generate new ing new customers in this Internet-driv- CRM, service management and ERP). revenue in a contact center is critical to en, global economy. Each year, millions of customers their survival. Their ability to deliver With a converged network and the switch to competitors for one simple integrated services — whether they are adoption of voice over-IP (VoIP) (define - reason — poor customer service. revenue generating or service-oriented news - alert), a technology that carries Because contact centers are the natural — can make the difference between voice as data, this new generation of con- choice for interacting with customers, attracting and retaining long-term cus- tact centers provides significant advan- contact center managers are under more tomers, or just struggling to get by on tages. In addition to connecting regular pressure to do more with less. While A study by Bain and Company in 2003 found that a 5 percent increase in customer reducing operational costs, contact cen- retention improves profitability by 25 percent to 100 percent, especially where cus- ters must also increase productivity and tomers have ongoing purchasing relationships. efficiency, customer loyalty and must generate new revenue through cross-sell- In a recent Dataquest survey, 25 percent of the respondents reported integration costs ing and upselling activities. as their highest concern when thinking about adding a contact center. By Mike Heberling, Potential Operational Gains • Call volume reduced by 20 percent or more Director of Business Development, • Queue times reduced as much as 30 seconds FrontRange Solutions Inc. • Abandoned calls reduced by more than 35 percent For more information, please visit • 24-hour-a-day access across all time zones http://www.thecontactfront.com. • Customer satisfaction increased 20 percent or more OutsourcingOUTSOURCING

would select this profession was bewildering he does not want to be embarrassed. Good to them. Despite a lack of support, I pulled outbound telemarketing involves a more Sean aside to pass along some lessons about energetic use of voice, facial expressions and our business. I’ll share them with you. often body language. Sean did not think 1. Pay attention during training! Comp- that this kind of emotive behavior would anies spend millions of dollars cumulatively look very cool. My point is that if the person to create effective training. This training on the other end of the phone does not is designed to help the call center represen- know you and cannot see you. . . then who cares? 5. It IS personal! Making phone calls is EDUCATING THE difficult. Sean is going to face a lot of rejec- tion. The nonsensical beliefs that we can convince ourselves that this is a game, and that representatives should not take some of NEXT GENERATION this personally, is naive. If a representative tative to be an effective conduit of informa- does not take his or her job personally on tion. If Sean pays attention during training, the negative side, it will be difficult to create his success is not assured, but the probabili- a sense of enthusiasm for the positive side of BY ty of high performance improves. Good the job. Managing the stress is important, Tim Searcy, training exists in most firms and encom- but ignoring the stress is foolish. American passes lifelong skills on communication, 6. Be unusual . . . listen to your manager! Teleservices overcoming objections, vocal expression, etc. Much like my advice about stupid mistakes, Association 2. Avoid the stupid mistakes! Be a great this doesn’t take a genius to figure out. employee.“Show up on time, do what you’re However, listening to good coaching will told, be cheerful and make a difference,” I make Sean more popular, make him more told Sean. I know this isn’t brilliant advice, money, and make him better at what he but in reality, we have a problem in our does. country. In many walks of life, employers 7. Get into management training! No have found the next generation lacks other industry does as good a job promoting responsibility, a positive attitude and an from within than teleservices. The road interest in making a difference. If Sean from the calling room to the board room is commits to what he does each and every fairly straight. It’s not easy, but making tele- time, he will be perceived as an asset even if services a career puts destiny in Sean’s it is only by comparison. hands.“Promotion through performance” is 3. Follow the script! One of the worst not always a perfect approach, but I have things a call center rep can do is shortcut rarely seen failure as the cause for promo- what he or she has been taught. These mis- tion. (Cynics need not heed number 7.) Like many of you, I spent time over the guided attempts to save time and effort Sean is seventeen years old; soon to grad- Thanksgiving holiday “at home.” Home for remind me of the proverbial Road to Hell: uate; a skateboarding junkie; and an other- me is Lincoln, Nebraska. While I was in the shortcut path is also paved with good wise normal kid. So, as expected, he rolled town, my nephew Sean informed me that he intentions. Often, problems arise on the his eyes at me and pretended to pay atten- was going to be joining the ranks of teleser- calling room floor as reps under pressure to tion. But over a few minutes, it started to vices professionals. He had recently been perform start to become script authors. In make sense to him and I could feel that a hired by one of our member companies an effort to boost performance, representa- kernel of what I might call wisdom was (without my assistance), and he was going tives start to share “best practices” with one transferred. One down . . . millions to go. to begin selling credit cards by phone. I was another. These practices usually become Until next time, I am on the line. thrilled! increased material changes to the script. As Sean is a member of my family through I told Sean, not only is this against his new Tim Searcy my wife’s side. For years I have been a company’s policy, but it will be easily CEO, source of incredible confusion for my rela- detected and stopped through the loss of The American Teleservices Association tives. My in-laws could not understand how his job. anyone could choose to be in this business. 4. They can’t see you! Sean is no different For information and subscriptions, The fact that a second member of la famiglia than almost anyone else, which means that visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800.

40 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index If This Is How Your Contact Center Rep Feels, Think About Your Customer. Help Is Here.

We call it The Perfect Interaction. Spend a few minutes watching the Jacada Fusion demon- stration, and you'll see how you can make dramatic improvements in CSR productivity and the customer experience. It's quick, simple, and yields results that contact center managers could only dream about . . . until now.

Call today for a free demo CD and white paper.

800-773-9574 www.perfectinteraction.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ContactCONTACT Center CENTER TECHNOLOGYTechnology

This is a good time to explore and acquire notice and with limited resources. hosted CRM (define - news - alert) solu- Businesses want their contact centers to do tions for your contact center (define - news a lot more with a lot less. They want contact - alert). Often called “on-demand” solutions, centers to provide high-quality, integrated hosted software applications for customer customer interactions through multiple BY Meenakshi Sharma, eGain service, marketing automation, sales force channels, cross-sell and upsell at every avail- automation and other aspects of CRM have able opportunity, and provide critical infor- evolved and matured over time. Nowadays, mation and insight about customers to the it’s not hard to find a rest of the organization — and cut costs at solution that meets most, the same time. if not all, your needs. Is your contact center being asked to do HOSTED CRM Many companies are “new” things — use new Web-based inter- offering solutions that are proven in both action channels, know everything about hosted and in-house deployments, and your customers’ preferences and interaction FOR THE users can attain the best of both worlds. history at the moment you interact with the customers, or analyze customer interactions for insight about preferences and product issues? Do you have the tools to achieve CONTACT CENTER your new goals? Do you have unlimited Contact centers are using this approach time and budget to get there? Probably not. to practice and perfect their CRM strate- Can you afford to ignore the promise of gies. Hosted applications become “training speed that hosted CRM applications offer? wheels” for these contact centers, allowing For instance, if you were part of a retail them to incrementally implement and fine- organization and swamped by customer e- tune CRM initiatives and maximize the mail, wouldn’t an easy-to-deploy, easy-to- odds of CRM success. Contrary to popular use e-mail management system be a real belief, hosted solutions are not just hastily blessing during a holiday season? An experi- deployed, purely tactical quick fixes. Mature enced vendor can set up new tools in as lit- on-demand solutions offer exceptional func- tle as a week. It is therefore not surprising tionality and, in fact, encourage innovation. that even large organizations are now opting Solutions that are proven in hosted as well as for on-demand solutions to fix time-critical in-house modes offer unmatched flexibility, problems. allowing contact centers to get up and running quickly, prove ROI Don’t Dismiss The “Low (return on investment) TCO, Quick ROI” Claim and fine-tune require- Besides the speed of ments before seamlessly deployment, another switching to an in-house Contrary to popular belief, benefit of hosted CRM deployment, if they hosted solutions are not solutions that is widely choose. acknowledged but not just hastily deployed, pure- given enough considera- The Need For Speed ly tactical quick fixes. tion is that on-demand In a time of overlap- software offers low TCO ping markets and a dizzy- (total cost of ownership) ing array of products, and quick ROI. Even competitive advantages detractors of hosted soft- have moved from asset-based to adaptive ware admit that it is a “low-risk, high and capabilities; i.e., how fast can you learn, rapid returns” option. This characteristic change and respond? This is as true for the makes hosted software a good fit for inno- contact center as for the rest of the enter- vative, customer-focused organizations prise. In fact, contact centers, more than whose main goal is to adapt and respond to most other parts of the organization, are changing customer needs. being asked to reinvent themselves at short In an unpredictable environment where 42 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ContactCONTACT Center CENTER TECHNOLOGYTechnology

change is the only constant, it’s hard to dis- routine maintenance can be almost invisible. customized as easily as in-house options. miss the value of solutions that need low The “Pros” Are Numerous, Most Of The They also provide extensive configuration upfront investment and offer quick results. “Cons” Have Disappeared capabilities that reduce the need for custom What makes the proposition even more Here’s some more good news: mature coding. attractive is that vendors with proven solutions don’t have the three common lim- Lack of integration capabilities. Here too, expertise in both in-house and on-demand itations of early hosted CRM applications. mature solutions are designed to fit deployments now offer a hybrid approach Limited customization options.No longer into companies’ existing environments. that allows for seamless migration from must companies accept on-demand solu- Integrations with transaction and fulfill- hosted to in-house implementations, a path tions “as is.” Mature solutions can now be ment systems are readily available in these that is becoming increasingly popular with contact centers of all sizes.

Flexibility On Demand What attracts contact centers to on- demand solutions is the freedom to start small and expand on demand. They don’t have to pre-plan each small detail and the final state of a large deployment. They can determine the general roadmap, add pieces one at a time, monitor closely, and refine the system based on feedback from existing users and changing market demands. With hosted CRM software, companies can add users, interaction channels, capabilities and customization and integration, all on demand.

Attractive Features Of On-Demand Delivery It’s ideal for distributed contact centers and agents. One hosted CRM benefit that does- n’t get enough ink in evaluations is that most mature on-demand products are Web-based, which makes them perfect for virtual contact centers. A user can log in from anywhere as long as he or she has access to a Web browser. The product is easy to use. A bonus benefit that organizations typically discover later is that products designed for on-demand deployment are often easier to use than those meant for only in-house installations. With in-house deployments, organizations often run into huge hidden training costs. The very nature of on-demand applications makes vendors ensure they are easy to support. Web-based products tend to have particularly user-friendly interfaces. Upgrades and routine maintenance are easy. Most satisfied hosted CRM users rave about how little it takes to maintain the system. Businesses with limited IT resources are some of the biggest advocates of hosted CRM. Upgrades are not a nightmare and Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com ContactCONTACT Center CENTER TECHNOLOGYTechnology

solutions. proposition for hosted solution providers. ance. Inadequate security. Some hosted CRM Ask if the application scales easily.You Determine policies about routine maintenance solutions offer even more data security than should be able to expand usage of the sys- and upgrades. You may wish to ask about the what companies were planning to attain for tem easily and without any disruptions in vendor’s policies regarding security updates an in-house deployment. Of course, differ- service. Also ask about common customiza- and patches, spam filtering and application ent industries may have some different tions that the vendor performs for similar upgrades and patches. requirements (as is the case with some deployments. Ask how often backups are performed.Check financial services organizations), which may Check to ensure if the system will integrate for complete daily and weekly backup, incre- rule out the hosted option. with your existing systems. A hosted CRM mental transaction log backup, and onsite solution provider can provide integration and offsite storage Choosing A Solution with your in-house systems to allow you to Determine the vendor’s disaster recovery poli- Important guidelines that should be con- leverage current investments. Many users cy. It should include co-location sites, redun- sidered when considering a hosted solution look for out-of-the-box integrations that dant network access and backup servers and include the following: can help minimize the cost of ownership. hardware. Check customer references. Speak to the Does the vendor use a collocation facility? Hosted solutions address the Achilles’ company’s customers that use the product Your hosted solution provider should heel of traditional in-house CRM imple- on a hosted basis. house your applications and data in data mentations, which have classically failed Consider various deployment options.Many centers to ensure data security. You may because of their enormous scope, the com- companies allow users to “try it before you wish to ask about redundant heating, ven- plexity and requirements of organizational and behavioral changes, the challenges of process definition and improvement, metric development, and ever-changing business priorities that risk even the best run initiatives. However, hosted solutions should not be seen as the antithesis to in-house deployments. The implementation cycle should include the same phases: try, prove, optimize, scale and integrate. With some of today’s solutions in in- house as well as hosted deployments, companies are finding they can find the best of both worlds — they can seamlessly bring the hosted solution in-house if and when they need to. If this sounds too good to be true, it’s time for you to take a closer look at today’s hosted solutions. buy it,” and offer subscription-based pricing tilation and air conditioning; uninterrupt- for software and services; allow users to buy ible power supply (UPS) with automatic Meenakshi Sharma is marketing a software license and pay for managed serv- power transfer bridge system; and premises communications manager at eGain ices through a subscription; and enable security. (http://www.egain.com), a provider of customer service and contact center soft- users to easily migrate from on-demand to Ask about security measures. The hosting ware and services. eGain Service, the in-house deployment network architecture should include multi- company’s software suite, installed on- Match the product suite support to your con- level security that eliminates single points of demand as well as in-house, includes inte- tact center roadmap. Companies may wish to failure and security risks within the net- grated applications for customer e-mail include components such as knowledge work, systems and physical locations. management, live Web collaboration, management, interaction management, Determine if you are guaranteed availability service fulfillment, knowledge manage- process management, reasoning capabilities and performance. Many service providers can ment and Web self-service. and analytic capabilities. Check to see if it guarantee very high levels of availability. If you are interested in purchasing reprints of supports expansion to other interaction Look for built-in redundancies, failover, dis- this article (in either print or HTML format), types such as proactive contacts, self-service, aster recovery and wrap-around security for please visit Reprint Management Services online at http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a interactive service and escalated contacts, if round-the-clock availability. Additionally, representative via e-mail at reprints@tmcnet. these features are important to you. look for the provider’s ability to perform com or by phone at 800-290-5460. Consider the time it will take to deploy the proactive monitoring and maintenance for For information and subscriptions, product. Rapid time-to-benefit is a key value all critical services to ensure peak perform- visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800. 44 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope

Each year, Customer Inter@ction Solutions® magazine bestows its Product of the Year awards on companies that have demon- strated excellence in technological advancement and application refinements. These are products and services that have gone the extra mile to help improve both the customer experience and the ROI for the companies that use them. It is these companies’ contributions that lead the way in making the contact center technology industry the dynamic field that it is today. While the technology market may be coming back to life, CUSTOMER INTER@CTION it’s still vital that capital investment in technology and services be SOLUTIONS’ 2004 invested as wisely as possible in order to speed return on PRODUCT OF THE YEAR investment and improve the business processes and bottom line of the companies that AWARDS purchase these technologies. To t h i s e n d , t h e e d i t o r s o f Customer Inter@ction Solutions® have compiled a list of the best of the best for our readers. These products span a range of product categories, but all represent the pinnacle in their chosen arenas. As always, we encourage you to do research to help you select those technologies and companies that best suit your company’s business needs and, ultimately, your most important company asset of all: your customers.

ACCPAC, a choice of three WordALERT bun- databases or individuals; Uniphi Suite a Best Software company dles: Developer’s Kit; Station tracking/managing of agent, team Aspect Uniphi is designed to unify http://www.accpac.com Logging Kit; or Trunk Logging Kit. and campaign performance, used on the contact center and the enterprise ACCPACcrm.com 5.6 PC monitors, large display screens by integrating the applications that ACCPACcrm.com version 5.6, the AIT Limited or handheld computers; softphone drive customer communications, hosted version of ACCPAC CRM http://www.aitgroup.com capability to support distributed call contact center and customer infor- 5.6, offers users comprehensive, Portrait centers and remote agents without mation, and workforce productivity single-click integration with Microsoft Portrait is customer interaction man- the need to add hardware; and for better insight to business and Outlook; a faster and easier-to-use agement software that helps organi- enhancement of international com- customer activity—to simplify contact interface; and additional reports and zations dramatically improve the patibility. center development and manage- enhanced reporting flexibility over pre- quality of their interactions while ment. Based on open standards, it vious versions. The ACCPACcrm.com increasing efficiency and generating Aplicor Inc. provides organizations with a single hosted CRM service allows busi- significant new business. Interaction http://www.aplicor.com point of control and one view of con- nesses the freedom to move to on- Intelligence lets users: deliver a Aplicor CRM tact center operations, bringing the premises deployment of ACCPAC comprehensive, single, real-time The 2004 Aplicor CRM release is a separate databases, the separate CRM, at any time, and with all data view of each customer to the point hosted solution functionally equiva- reporting engines and the applica- and customizations fully intact. of interaction, across Web sites, lent to the decades-old, on-premise tion flows together effectively in one branch offices, contact centers or applications, while providing the suite. Acxiom Corp. distribution partners; and recom- delivery, cost and operational bene- http://www.acxiom.com mend relevant offers of genuine fits of the hosted model. Benefits ATG (formerly Primus Chomonicx interest; meet goals efficiently; and include a focus on business Knowledge Solutions) Acxiom’s Chomonicx is a lifestyle respond quickly to change. processes, not transactions, and an http://www.atg.com consumer segmentation system that emphasis on customer relationships, KnowledgeCenter 6 characterizes and differentiates AltiGen Communications, Inc. not customer data. It has a process- KnowledgeCenter 6 is a next-gener- demographic and associated con- http://www.altigen.com oriented workflow engine embedded ation software platform designed to sumer behaviors for each chome in AltiContact Manager 5.0 throughout the application and has help companies enhance customer Japan. Similar to block groups in the AltiContact Manager (ACM) 5.0, replaced the one-size-fits-all hosting satisfaction and loyalty by leveraging USA, and based on Japan’s 2000 AltiGen’s most advanced call center model so that each client has the knowledge and delivering precise census data, chome are grouped solution, supports individual same individualized processing answers to customers’ questions via into 32 consumer lifestyle clusters inbound, outbound or blended con- capabilities as if the software were self- and assisted service communi- using factor analysis and other pro- tact centers, up to 144 agents. ACM installed locally for each client’s cation channels. KnowledgeCenter prietary statistical techniques. The also supports multisystem network- exclusive benefit. is a modular set of integrated prod- ing for additional growth and is Chomonicx model is maximized by ASC telecom AG ucts designed to meet specific incorporating consumer expenditure designed to be managed and main- needs of organizations. Included and buying behavior data. tained in-house. Significant http://www.asctelecom.com platform features: enterprise scala- Chomonicx codes can be applied to enhancements address the following EVOip bility; true, seven-level natural lan- any customer or marketing database evolving needs: modular licensing; ASC’s EVOip is a software-based guage processing (NLP); detailed using the address and its associated advanced IVR/centralized call solution for recording VoIP calls, analysis and reporting capabilities of Chome geocode, providing a com- recording applications; distributed ensuring complete coverage. The customer experience; multiple lan- mon framework to view customers call centers; system redundancy; solution’s recording interfaces con- guage support; and seamless inte- across channels in the organization. and reporting. The nect with almost all traditional and IP gration with CRM systems. ExtensionAnywhere feature allows telephone switches, and its architec- Ai-Logix, Inc. cellular and PCS telephones to log ture is designed for maximum flexibility, scalability, easy installation Austin Logistics http://www.ai-logix.com into workgroups as remote agent http://www.austinlogistics.com extensions. and rapid integration with pre-exist- WordALERT ing systems. The product catego- Valeo WordALERT is a hardware-based rizes calls by selected parameters Austin Logistics’ Valeo is a predic- solution that enables real-time word- Amcat and then stores them on the compa- tive analytic application that can spotting for automated operator http://www.amcat.com ny’s own server. A browser-based enhance customer value by adding supervision and continuous monitor- Amcat Contact Center Suite graphic interface allows users to real-time predictive intelligence and ing. WordALERT recognizes key- 2005 easily playback, archive or e-mail value-driven queuing to existing pre- words while a conversation is in Amcat Contact Center Suite 2005 recordings, as well as to perform agent routing systems. Valeo progress and offers predictable per- incorporates new life-cycle manage- search-and-replay through any resides at the client site with access formance with dedicated speech and ment for interactions and adds new browser. Its two key components: to the telephony infrastructure, media processing hardware that management and VoIP capabilities: EVOip is a vendor-independent pas- where it adds predictive intelligence leaves system memory and CPU establishment of follow-up actions sive system; and “EVOip active” pro- to routing decisions at the point of available for applications. with data; sending of data or mes- vides selective recording. inbound call entry, before callers WordALERT allows easy sages via e-mail, fax or Web serv- have selected IVR (self-service) or grammar/language changes to ice, allowing follow-up information to Aspect Communications agent service. With Valeo, callers match a caller’s language. There is be sent in real time to Web sites, http://www.aspect.com can be prioritized. Valeo easily inte- 46 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope grates data on each caller from lega- and can grow and Best Software Call Compliance, Inc. cy host systems, disparate depart- evolve with businesses http://www.act.com http://www.callcompliance.com mental systems, customer databas- for complete invest- ACT! 2005 Wireless Number Blocking es and third-party providers. ment protection. It Best Software offers In response to the advent of wireless integrates robust two new versions of number portability (WLNP), and Autonomy, Inc. reporting and includes its ACT! sales effec- potential for an $11,000 fine per http://www.autonomy.com outbound dialing pre- tiveness tool: ACT! non-compliance incident, Call Authentify Intelligent IVR view contact capabilities, 2005, for individuals and Compliance offers an enhancement The Authentify Intelligent IVR sys- simple wizards and devel- small teams of up to 10 to its TeleBlock system, called tem is intended to allow enterprises opment tools for complete cus- users; and ACT! 2005 Premium Wireless Number Blocking (WNB). to effectively automate customer tomization. IP-enabled, it can be for Workgroups, supporting powerful The TeleBlock system contains daily service operations in call centers by extended to remote agents. With it, database collaboration for work- updated WLNP data and automati- forming an accurate understanding businesses can be up and running groups of up to 50 users. Included cally screens and blocks calls to of caller queries in real time and in hours. key benefits: low cost and ease-of- wireless ported numbers originating automatically providing an intelligent use, combined with advanced selling from predictive dialer subscribers response. The system permits Avolent, Inc. tools typically found in expensive that have enabled WNB screening callers to explain a particular prob- http://www.avolent.com CRM systems; little-to-no need for by calling campaign on their propri- lem in their words, understands the BizCast expensive IT resources; and scala- etary TeleBlock Web interface. This conceptual meaning of this query, BizCast is designed to help compa- ble relational data architecture. allows TeleBlock end-users using and automatically returns useful nies streamline financial interac- predictive dialers to screen and results. If a relevant answer is not tions between employees, partners Blue Pumpkin block their calls in real time against found within the system, it instantly and business customers. BizCast, http://www.bluepumpkin.com changing WLNP data, in addition to routes the call to a qualified agent an enterprise software solution for Blue Pumpkin Workforce screening against the available fed- for advice. Built on IDOL, Intelligent financial relationship management, Optimization Suite 4.5 eral, state, third-party and in-house IVR has a wide-vocabulary speech is intended to deliver cost reduc- The latest release of Blue Pumpkin DNC lists. recognition capability and is com- tion, improved cash management Workforce Optimization (WFO) Suite pletely speaker- and language-inde- and forecasting, and improved cus- ties together more of the contact Centergistic Solutions pendent. tomer care. It extends the founda- center processes needed for manag- http://www.centergistic.com tion of electronic invoice present- AgentView Enterprise Avaya ing and optimizing workforce—now ment and payment (EIPP) to including e-learning, a more flexible PowerUser 4.0 http://www.avaya.com encompass five key areas of finan- platform and other advanced AgentView Enterprise PowerUser Avaya Contact Center Express cial relationship management: enhancements. Each component is a 4.0 is a real-time desktop dash- Avaya Contact Center Express pro- online billing and payment; online best-of-breed solution that delivers board intended to make contact vides cost-effective, easy-to-imple- account management; process results to turn the contact center into center managers more effective. ment multichannel (voice, e-mail management; enterprise access; a strategic differentiator and competi- Each layout screen is tailored to the and Web chat) contact center solu- and decision support. BizCast is tive edge. The sum of the suite com- viewer, containing critical perform- tions designed and priced for mid- designed to easily integrate with ponents, however, is more powerful ance metrics depicted as colorful sized businesses. It leverages existing accounting, customer care, than the individual parts. The suite graphs and gauges. The new Avaya intelligent routing and inte- e-commerce and electronic pay- forms a logical roadmap to help con- PowerUser provides a performance grated IP technologies; works in IP, ment systems. tact centers evolve at their own pace. picture that the user can immediate- traditional and mixed environments; ly grasp. Version 4.0 includes: met-

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope ric and layout templates based on a improvement are ana- ContactPoint OneSight for Contact Centers variety of ACD types; additional lyzed and pinpointed; Recruiter Empirix’s OneSight for Contact gauges with font selection and auto- and finally, specific ContactPoint Centers is an end-to-end voice matic sizing; “stealth” background recommendations for Recruiter is a com- application management solution. color alert; drill-down, from highest improvement are petency-based hiring OneSight can proactively pinpoint level to individual agent; save/store made. management soft- and address customer-impacting of favorite layouts; and secure user ware application that issues hidden within an organiza- authentication. Concerto Software helps contact centers tion’s technology infrastructure http://www.concerto.com hire the most qualified issues that are obscured in black Cincom Systems FirstPoint Enterprise leverag- agents, streamline the recruiting boxes that underlie automated serv- http://www.cincom.com ing Cisco CallManager process and reduce costly turnover. ices provided by contact centers. Synchrony This newest version of FirstPoint The competency model lets contact OneSight provides a means for Synchrony is a customer experi- Enterprise is the first enterprise- centers define the skills, knowledge organizations to gain insight into the ence management solution that sized contact center solution that and abilities that agents need; once health of those automated systems. enables small and mid-size organi- incorporates full-featured functionali- this model is captured within zations and enterprise departments ty of a time division multiplexing ContactPoint, contact centers can Envision to deliver consistent and highly (TDM)-based contact center solution use Recruiter to create and adminis- http://www.envisioninc.com responsive customer service. Its in an IP infrastructure, including ter interview questionnaires based The Envision Performance architecture bridges multichannel queuing, routing and extensive on these standards. It analyzes Suite 8.3 contact center functionality with a reporting capabilities. responses to identify the best candi- The Envision Performance Suite 8.3 CRM universal view to provide a dates for each position. The applica- with Envision Business Intelligence consolidated, relevant portal of the Co-nexus tion also maintains baseline profiles allows anyone throughout the enter- resources and information neces- http://www.4cxm.com for every new hire. prise to access recorded interactions sary to optimize each customer CXM REPORT - SURVEY on a subscription basis. The integra- interaction. Its core features, func- Co-nexus’ recently introduced CXM Digisoft Computers, Inc. tion with the suite allows subscribers tionality, architecture and delivery REPORT - SURVEY module adds http://www.digisoft.com to identify breakdowns and to create model have been enhanced through customer satisfaction data to the coaching clips for the contact center, two significant software releases in eTelescript CXM voice/screen recordings and A Web-based call center software and thus improve efficiencies, reduce 2004. agent performance evaluations. The solution, eTelescript can maintain errors, lower costs and improve the SURVEY module is used for caller Cintech LLC central call center management con- bottom line. Because it resides on a polls and customer feedback by trol and provide the capability to single server, the suite can save http://www.cintechllc.com playing prerecorded survey ques- hardware costs and integration cTouch maximize the potential of home tions. With imbedded speech recog- agents or remote call centers. The expenses. Envision uses a univer- Cintech’s cTouch suite of Web inter- nition technology, the CXM SURVEY sal, browser-based interface to deliv- action tools enables organizations of application has an interactive agent module accepts verbal commands. interface and a comprehensive cam- er information to agent desktops. all sizes to cost-effectively increase The survey results are scored and the speed and responsiveness of paign management application to catalogued for later retrieval. Callers drive revenue and improve customer Epicor Software Corporation their customer care organizations can leave a personal message http://www.epicor.com while efficiently handling customer experiences. It’s designed to run recorded and attached to the survey using Microsoft’s .NET platform. Epicor Clientele CRM 8.2 requests across a range of chan- results. Survey results are also Epicor Clientele CRM is a scalable nels. cTouch is a thin-client/server- Integrated telephony features syn- linked to the recording of the callers chronize with the agent module to and flexible solution designed to based solution that includes two preceding call and the agents’ evalu- manage the complete customer life- product options: cChat, a live online provide telephony to local and ation score. remote agents. Some available mod- cycle. It provides integrated sales messenger/manager; and cMail, an and customer support functionality e-mail management and response Contact Center Compliance ules to choose from: Appointment Scheduling; Super-Dialing; CTI; that helps organizations acquire, application. Product additions http://www.dnc.com retain and grow profitable, long-term include licensing by contact type and Predictive Dialing; Monitoring; and DNCscrub Enterprise Edition Advanced Reports. customer relationships. Clientele duration, to give call centers a cost- Contact Center Compliance’s CRM is the first CRM application effective way to meet seasonal DNCscrub is a compliance program Edify Corporation built entirely on the Microsoft .NET needs. that contains the entire matrix of fed- Platform, which provides new levels eral and state laws, including all http://www.edify.com Citrix Online of accessibility, extensibility and inte- industry exemptions and existing Edify Voice Interaction Platform gration. http://www.gotoassist.com business relationship exemptions. (EVIP) 9.0 Citrix GoToAssist 6.0 The Contact Center Compliance The Edify Voice Interaction Platform etalk Citrix GoToAssist 6.0 is a managed system prevents calls to DNC and (EVIP) 9.0 provides customers with http://www.etalk.com service that enables companies to wireless numbers in real time; is application flexibility, scalability and cost-effectively provide remote-tech- Qfiniti 1.7 business-enabling, informing clients data connectivity to improve cus- Qfiniti can help customers to nical support. The service enables of existing business relationships tomer service and loyalty, as well as improve their call center service and support desks to meet the needs of that are nearing their expiration; operational costs. EVIP 9.0 offers productivity through quality monitor- complex and mission-critical support makes keeping track of conflicting 480 ports of speech on a single ing, performance optimization and environments with quality service rules easy and cost-effective; and server. The platform is a compre- process analysis capabilities. etalk and best practices-driven support allows users to clean their records hensive voice system that enables expands Qfiniti’s enterprise capabili- tools. GoToAssist requires no client- upon receipt. The product’s goal is companies to build, execute and ties with version 1.7, providing func- application installation step for to maximize callable records while manage voice applications across tionality for both single-site and Windows 2000, XP and NT devices. keeping you in compliance cost- the enterprise. EVIP 9.0 integrates large, multisite installations. Included Included functions: patented session effectively. powerful automation software with enhancements: virtually unlimited brokering technologies; automatic an open architecture that supports scalability of screen recording; session recordings and chat-log CosmoCom enterprise requirements to integrate improved centralized management archives; end-to-end 128-bit http://www.cosmocom.com emerging standards and technolo- for monitoring recording sites; Advanced Encryption Standard CosmoCall Universe 4.4 gies. advanced alarming capabilities; (AES); and GoToAssist CosmoCall Universe 4.4 is the lat- instant status updates regarding Management Center. est version of CosmoCom’s all-IP, eGain channels, users, servers and overall ClickFox unified contact center suite, which http://www.egain.com system health; and extensive and http://www.clickfox.com includes multichannel ACD, IVR, eGain Service 7 flexible client-side API for recording, CTI, predictive dialing, multimedia Customer Behavior Intelligence eGain Service 7 is a comprehensive data attachment and verification. recording and administrative tools. customer service application suite, ClickFox’s Customer Behavior Version 4.4 highlights: easy inte- Intelligence solution can help organi- available in-house or on-demand, Five9, Inc. gration with thin-client applications; that helps businesses transform con- http://www.five9.com zations align their business objec- robust N-way conferencing, includ- tives and their customers’ goals for tact centers into customer interaction Five9 Virtual Contact Center ing recording; streamlined tenant hubs for unified multichannel serv- Five9 Virtual Contact Center is a their self-service channels. ClickFox management; enhanced skill provides visibility of customer behav- ice, reduced costs, improved agent hosted contact center ASP with all of weighing; and enhancements to productivity and enhanced customer its customers running VoIP com- ior across self-service channels, as both CosmoDesigner and well as in-depth analysis of individ- retention. Included in the suite: pletely independent of a traditional CosmoDialer. RTP redirect has adaptive applications for self-serv- telecom company, and without any ual applications. Self-service opti- also been introduced into this ver- mization can occur with ClickFox’s ice; a common knowledge and serv- ties to a PSTN-based infrastructure. sion, and more languages have ice management platform; and Virtual Contact Center is built from three steps: users build a visual been added. model of the existing self-service adapters for easy integration with the ground up to eliminate third- CTI, content and business systems. channel; actual customer behavior is Dictaphone Corporation party license fees and to ensure mapped to the visual model of the http://www.dictaphone.com/ con- Empirix Inc. costs are kept low. Along with its VoIP functionality, the Virtual system, and potential areas of tactpoint http://www.empirix.com 48 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope

Contact Center offers the following: real benefits that analog feature a modular con- combines knowledge management, ACD; predictive dialer; CRM; IVR; devices cannot. The struction that allows natural language search and busi- CTI; remote agent capabilities; skills- amplifier is intended to developers to add or ness process support. Additional based routing; recording; silent mon- reduce background remove functionality enhancements: resolution wizards itoring; real-time reporting; chat; and noise on incoming sig- without reworking for process-driven self-service; centralized management for multisite nals, to automatically the entire system. Pagelet architecture for rapid and offshore contact centers. adjust incoming volume, deployment and easy customization; and to offer unsurpassed iPhrase detailed Web session tracking for FrontRange Solutions acoustic protection and the Technologies, Inc. multichannel support; machine http://www.frontrange.com ability for end users to tailor the http://www.iphrase.com learning and a reputation model; GoldMine 6.7 sound to their preferences. GN OneStep WebResolve and intuitive authoring with auto-tag- GoldMine 6.7 is a Windows-based Netcom intends for there to be less The new WebResolve product is an ging. application that provides SMB and repetition needed, for calls to be e-support solution that enables cus- distributed enterprises with sales- shorter and for the interaction tomers and partners to quickly solve Knowlagent force automation and CRM best between contact center agents and their own product and service prob- http://www.knowlagent.com practices, in an easy-to-use software callers to be smoother and easier, lems without engaging a customer r7 Solution package. It scales from one user up thus reducing contact center costs service agent. WebResolve offers Knowlagent r7, designed for the cus- to large organizations, has low TCO, and raising customer service levels. fast answers via search, navigation tomer service center, is a compre- rapid ROI, is flexible, and can be and personalization over the full hensive solution that can help con- implemented fast, even for large IEX Corp, a Tekelec company breadth of support resources. It can tact center managers and supervi- organizations. Included new addi- http://www.iex.com seamlessly escalate to e-mail, chat sors manage the lifecycle of contact tions: mobile real-time access for TotalView Workforce or phone agents while telling the center agents to ensure that agents Palm and WAP phones; addition of Management 3.8 agents what resources the customer both perform at their best every day iGoldMine, for Web access; capabili- The TotalView Workforce has already tried. The OneStep and can meet the changing needs of ties for campaign management; Management system version 3.8 WebResolve server runs on a competitive environment and of a improved opportunity management; enables contact centers to deliver Windows and several versions of demanding customer base. improved analytics for reporting; consistent service with lower operat- Unix, including Solaris, AIX and Knowlagent r7 functions: drives quick-sync for mobile users; ing costs and higher employee Linux. direction and delivers priority to enhanced APIs and integration for morale. It improves the scheduling agents or reps; provides for consis- linking to other applications; VoIP and agent management processes Jacada, Inc. tency in communicating with agents; support for softphones; and integra- in both single and multisite environ- http://www.jacada.com enables accountability of delivered tion with MS Outlook and Exchange. ments. The system’s advanced fea- information; and ensures the infor- tures include skills-based and multi- Jacada Fusion Jacada Fusion can reduce applica- mation is understood and applied by Fused Solutions, Inc. media scheduling, real-time and his- the agents. http://www.fusedsolutions.com torical adherence, intraday and per- tion complexity that negatively KnowPlex formance management, enterprise impacts many critical areas of call center operations. By fusing applica- KnowledgeBase Solutions A Web-native, database-driven tech- reporting and data exchange, vaca- http://www.kb.net nology, KnowPlex facilitates seam- tions to deliver a simplified user tion and holiday planning, and short- KnowledgeBase.net 4.0 less integration of customer care and long-term resource planning. interaction, Jacada Fusion can elimi- resources — in-house or distributed nate costly problems that arise from KnowledgeBase.net, an application that combines the most relevant agents, and self-service applications Inova Solutions the complexity and multiplicity of — and the efficient flow of applications that users must navi- aspects of document and knowl- http://www.inovasolutions.com gate in order to accomplish even edge management with search ticket/knowledge base information. Inova Performance Integration with existing CRM and simple business processes. Jacada technology and customizable por- Optimization Suite 5.0 Fusion “fuses” all types of applica- tals, can help organizations unlock service-related applications com- The Inova Performance Optimization pletes the information flow to deliver tions – Windows, Web- and host- the power of their knowledge by Suite version 5.0 helps the technolo- based – to deliver a simplified user offering a means to centrally store high-quality customer care/technical gies and human resources that are support. Included ticket-manage- interface. It integrates all three appli- and easily access information. already in place to perform at opti- cation types using a non-invasive KnowledgeBase.net 4.0 offers ment features employed by mal levels by integrating operational KnowPlex: automated ticket escala- approach at the presentation layer of numerous features, including self- and performance data from existing the applications. learning; searching; remote Web tion; full ticket history, analysis and systems to provide unified views of reporting; and a rules wizard func- site-searching; new reports; and metrics and measurements that KANA new portal options, among others. tionality. directly impact performance. The views can be presented in a variety http://www.kana.com GL Communications Inc. KANA Resolution KnowNow, Inc of formats suited to the unique infor- http://www.knownow.com http://www.gl.com mation needs of business users KANA Resolution is a process-driv- PacketSeries – PacketGen and ranging from agents to executives. en customer service solution exclu- KnowNow 3 Enterprise Edition PacketScan Version 5.0 enhancements: open- sively focused on optimizing the res- KnowNow 3 Enterprise Edition’s GL Communications’ Packet Series ness and scalability of real-time mid- olution process. This solution is a core is the KnowNow LiveServer products, PacketGen and dleware Inova LightLink; browser- new enterprise software application event-management engine. With this PacketScan, provide SIP call gener- based dashboards; interactive 3-D for service resolution management edition, events can be quickly and ation and SIP/H323/RTP/RTCP visualizations; dynamic multimedia (SRM) to improve delivery of service efficiently delivered directly to an analysis. The PacketGen and presentation; enhanced XML output; by leveraging intelligence, thus pro- application, to a browser or to both PacketScan products are ideally and data marts with report-ready viding agents with necessary infor- simultaneously. It provides a simple suited for simulation and analysis of data for use with third-party tools. mation to resolve customer requests means of integrating any system or VoIP networks, gateways, routers, and facilitating the process an agent business process together over the proxies and switches. The Packet should follow. Built on KANA’s open Internet, and it fits into existing archi- Intervoice, Inc. architecture, the solution provides tectures. The use of native Internet Series products are software-based http://www.intervoice.com and can reside on any Windows PC. deep enterprise application integra- protocols enables it to send and They build on, and extend, GL’s Omvia Voice Express tion (EAI) support; this EAI support receive data through firewalls and analysis and simulation from the Intervoice’s flexible Omvia Voice brings real-time enterprise informa- connect end points that may not be TDM world to the VoIP world. Express packaged speech application into a single, integrated view under the users’ domain or control. PacketGen provides call simulation tions enable small to large enterpris- that provides the information the The intelligent routing system han- over VoIP systems and can gener- es and carriers to connect people agent needs to resolve the cus- dles events as they are in motion, ate thousands of calls, providing vig- with information while reducing tomer’s request without having to including filtering, transformation and orous stress tests for VoIP networks. upfront development costs, deploy- access multiple systems or screens security. It controls all systems simultaneous- ment timeframes and the complexity to get the data. ly and provides statistics, call associated with application develop- Left Bank Solutions records and quality of service (QOS) ment. The process-based applica- Kanisa Inc. http://www.leftbanksolutions.com measurements. PacketScan pro- tions suite supports both Speech http://www.kanisa.com Monet AnyWhere Application Language Tags (SALT) vides real-time audio monitoring, Monet AnyWhere is a Web-based and Voice Extensible Mark-up Kanisa6 analysis and statistics on both SIP workforce management agent and Language (VoiceXML). Depending Kanisa6 is a complete suite of cus- and RTP/RTCP messages. supervisor portal. It provides agents on the need, Omvia Voice Express tomer service applications that auto- and supervisors with anytime-any- applications can be used as applica- mate the problem resolution process GN Netcom Inc. where access to scheduling, track- tion templates, turn-key solutions, across all channels. Included in http://www.gnnetcom.com ing, exception planning and man- applications as a service (ASP), con- Kanisa6: Support Center; Support GN 8210 agement functions. With Monet figurable applications or developer Site; Site Search; and Expert The GN 8210 digital amplifier makes AnyWhere, agents and supervisors applications. Powered by Microsoft Forums. Kanisa6 delivers a com- enhancements to improve contact can log in from anywhere they are SQL Server, these applications also plete self-service application, as center communications and deliver well as an integrated platform that handling calls. Changes, requests

Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 49

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope and explanations are displayed to and integrates customer NEC Unified results efficiently and effectively; and the supervisor; the supervisor can interactions across all Solutions by using coaching and monitoring then take the proper action. Once online channels. By http://www.necuni- tools. the approvals/denials are granted, supplying a unified fiedsolutions.com Monet AnyWhere automatically customer history that Communications Noble Systems Corp. updates and changes current and provides a 360-degree Portal http://www.noblesys.com future schedules, then updating view of the customer — NEC Unified Solutions’ Noble IVR Concierge individual agents with alert mes- coupled with intelligent Communications Portal Noble IVR Concierge allows contact sages. Individual agents and super- routing and escalation capa- integrates all channels into centers to improve the customer visors have numerous optional bilities — this multichannel com- a unified, Web-accessible portal that experience for callers in the hold functions to effectively communi- munication solution facilitates hand- puts the individual back in control of queue through an integrated combi- cate, approve, decline and docu- offs between service channels, his or her own communications. All nation of custom messaging, IVR ment daily changes and exceptions enabling organizations to deliver contacts are simply and easily man- menus and ANI detection: compa- in the call center. seamless customer service and first- aged from a single Web-based nies can announce the average wait contact resolution. The hosted mod- application, reducing the complexity time for a caller on hold; the system Linktivity, a division of Inter-Tel ular application also offers a user- of handling multiple communication then offers the caller the opportunity http://www.linktivity.com friendly operator console and inte- forms. Designed to work seamlessly to hang up but to remain in the call WebDemo 4.0 grates with existing infrastructure. with Microsoft Exchange, queue. The system keeps the call in WebDemo 4.0, the latest version of The application is comprised of tech- Communications Portal provides the exact place “in line” that the Linktivity’s Web-based, real-time nology that supports and manages customers with a simpler toolset. It caller would be if he or she conferencing and collaboration e-mail, live chat and self-service. combines scheduling, collaboration, remained on hold. When the next software tool, is a premise solution agent is available, the system auto- Maximizer Software telephony, e-mail and multimedia that offers the following: SL sup- activities within a single application matically calls the customer. Also, port; dynamic CAST 128-bit http://www.maximizer.com to improve user efficiency and pro- callers can enter a different phone encryption; Web meeting desktop Maximizer Enterprise 8 ductivity while enhancing customer number for callback and can request icon launchers; Maximizer Enterprise 8 is a CRM satisfaction through greater commu- a specific date/time. Windows/LDAP/Active solution that helps small to medium- nications control. Directory/Radius Authentication; sized enterprises improve sales, Nortel Networks popup blockers compatibility; fast streamline marketing and enhance NICE Systems http://www.nortel.com and easy installation; multilan- customer service and support, while http://www.nice.com Symposium Call Center guage support; and full integration delivering the fast deployment and NICE Perform Server 5.0 and customization capability. affordability expected by small to NICE Perform helps organizations Nortel Symposium Call Center Linktivity’s on-premise Web confer- medium-sized enterprises. Highlights transform countless daily interac- Server 5.0 can help create a more encing and remote access and of the solution include workflow tions into business intelligence to effective virtual contact center that support solutions are installable automation; accounting integration; benefit every function in the enter- best supports a company’s cus- server software. advanced reporting and analytics prise. Some ways it delivers these tomers. Two new included capabili- capabilities; anti-spam and do-not- capabilities: by capturing multimedia ties: Longest Idle Agent, by which LivePerson call legislation compliance; and interactions; analyzing the captured “Find the longest idle agent” can be http://www.liveperson.com advanced Microsoft Outlook integra- content based on various specifica- defined three different ways so it can Timpani Contact Center tion. tions; presenting the analyzed be tailored, as defining the longest Timpani Contact Center streamlines idle agent is the agent who has

NEW! TMC Award for 2005 For Cutting-Edge IP Contact Center Products and Services! Enter to Win and Differentiate Your Product or Service—Boost Your Marketing Efforts With This Prestigious Award.

Have you created an IP contact center product or service that is unique and superior to all other companies in this burgeoning field? It’s time to get the recognition you deserve. The IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer AwardTM is awarded to only a select few industry innovators who have created successful IP contact center products or services. This highly coveted award is an excellent way to show your prospective clients that you are the best in the field. Use this award in your marketing to differentiate your superior technology, and position your company as the industry leader in IP contact centers. The IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer AwardTM will be announced in the March issue of Customer Inter@ction Solutions®. Application Deadline: February 7, 2005 For Application Information Please Visit: www.tmcnet.com/ipaward/ ©2004 Technology Marketing Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

50 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope been most idle since initial log-in based development envi- and self-service pro- face. It is a multithreaded, open that day (used to assure a balanced ronment. Included grams, and for deliv- standards-based, J2EE-compliant workload across the virtual environ- updates with Version ering customized solution that supports an array of ment); and average speed of 2: at-a-glance views; messages to queu- operating systems and database answer, by which to find the site with simplified navigation ing calls. Advanced products, and allows for easy migra- the shortest average speed of for designers and features include tion from other campaign manage- answer so as to assure calls are developers; application extensive reporting ment tools. answered most quickly. accelerators; drag-and- and silent monitoring drop design aids; and push- and call recording stan- SER Solutions, Inc. Nuance Communications button project documentation. dard at install. http://www.ser.com http://www.nuance.com CPS Enterprise Edition Nuance 8.5 PeopleSoft RightNow Technologies SER’s CPS Enterprise Edition (CPS Nuance 8.5 is the latest release of http://www.peoplesoft.com http://www.rightnow.com E2) is an enterprise solution that Nuance’s speech recognition soft- PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 8.9 RightNow CRM 7.0 enables contact centers to manage ware. Optimized for key industries PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 8.9 is RightNow CRM is comprised of their business strategies rather than and applications, Nuance 8.5 the most significant CRM release in three applications that have been their technology. Designed for large enables accurate, scalable and the company’s history. The newest built on a common base: RightNow contact centers with complex list easy-to-deploy voice automation release includes 15 new products, Service, a multichannel customer management or collections require- solutions. The updated software including a comprehensive service and support application; ments, CPS E2 offers real-time port- offers numerous advanced features PeopleSoft Partner Relationship RightNow Sales, a powerful sales folio management to provide holistic, and capabilities that enable engag- Management (PRM) suite; three new force automation application; and real-time management of call ing and easy-to-use applications. industry solutions – Revenue RightNow Marketing, a multichannel records, campaign strategies, agent For example, callers can speak Management, Student Lifecycle marketing automation application. profiles, work sessions and agent more freely and naturally when inter- Management and Wealth workflow. Included CPS E2 features: acting with voice automation solu- Management; and more than 700 salesforce.com dynamic record management; cam- tions, and voice systems can auto- new features and enhancements http://www.salesforce.com paign recycling and dynamic agent matically detect and adapt to the across PeopleSoft’s Service, Sales Supportforce.com reassignment; flexible contact strate- unique speech characteristics of a and Marketing suites. PeopleSoft Supportforce.com is an on-demand gies; robust scripting and reporting; broad customer base as well as of Prescriptive Analytics, an embedded customer service solution that collections management capabilities; individual callers. AccuBurst opti- decision engine, also comes with enables companies to deploy global soft dial capabilities; and VoIP func- mizes the system resources for this release. Included enhancements contact centers and help desks tionality. improved performance. with Version 8.9: 38 percent usability without software, thereby easily Siemens Communications, Inc. Nuasis Corporation improvement; 46 percent reduction managing and sharing customer in business task performance clicks; information. Supportforce.com can http://communications.usa. http://www.nuasis.com and 30 percent faster performance. be integrated with a company’s siemens.com Nuasis NuContact Center 2.0 existing contact center infrastructure HiPath ProCenter Agile Nuasis’ standards-based approach Plantronics, Inc with the sforce Telephony API HiPath ProCenter Agile is a feature- attempts to lower the cost structure (STAPI) toolkit. Supportforce.com rich contact center solution aimed at of cross-platform integrations. Also, http://www.plantronics.com Plantronics CS50-USB includes complete customer support small and medium-sized businesses, Nuasis’ Pure IP system can reduce and help desk functionality; knowl- or large enterprises with high-vol- the total cost both of ownership and The Plantronics CS50-USB wireless headset system brings mobility and edge management capabilities; Web ume call-handling departments. As a acquisition. The NuContact Center self-service; and performance met- comprehensive solution, Agile deliv- 2.0 release includes the following hands-free conversations to contact center coaches and supervisors. rics. Easily customized without pro- ers the following with ease: intelli- new capabilities and integrations: grammers, the application can also gent call routing; graphical reporting; SIP integration with third-party IVR; The wireless USB headset system provides remote ring detection and be used anywhere, with only a Web innovative productivity tools; and SIP-to-SIP transfer between browser. It includes language and presence-enhanced features for NuContact Center and a SIP-based call/answer end capability, with eight hours’ of talk time. The CS50-USB currency capabilities that enable both agents and managers. Siemens IVR without occupying additional multinational companies to use the has incorporated Team Lists, Team voice trunks; integration with third- provides wireless mobility anywhere in the contact center, up to 300 feet, application across their entire Bars and a “one-click collaboration” party fax applications; integration organization. feature to consult, conference and with third-party monitoring and alert without missing calls. Conversations are secure with digital 900MHz, and transfer to offer better presence applications; agent capacity increas- Salesnet, Inc. management and collaboration fea- es (500 agents per system across a noise-canceling microphone provides clear communications. The http://www.salesnet.com tures. multiple locations); and CRM inte- Salesnet Advertising/Media gration. CS50-USB is compatible with most PC softphones. Sales Edition SoundBite Communications, Oncontact Software The Salesnet Advertising/Media Inc. http://www.oncontact.com Pro Tech Communications, Inc. Sales Edition, designed to effec- http://www.soundbite.com Client Management Software http://www.protechcommunica- tively manage low-margin business SoundBite 5.0 8.0 tions.com and high staff turnover, is a solu- SoundBite 5.0 is an on-demand cus- Client Management Software (CMS) Apollo Multimedia Amplifier tion fully adaptable to meet the tomer communications platform that 8.0, a CRM solution that automates The Apollo Multimedia Amplifier for industry’s unique selling environ- allows companies to instantly deliver sales, marketing and service areas contact centers utilizes noise sup- ment. This on-demand CRM solu- voice, e-mail and text messaging to of an organization, can be run in a pression and connective circuitry, tion designed specifically for customers via an ASP model, and Windows and/or Web environment. delivering the latest in circuit board Advertising/Media Sales industry empowers those customers to ClientNet and PartnerNet are technology. The desktop amplifier offers pre-built sales processes to respond immediately. As a Web- Oncontact Software’s audience-spe- was designed with call center train- guide selling best practices, hosted solution, SoundBite 5.0 pro- cific Web portals that enable compa- ing environments in mind. New fea- enabling sales to begin immediate- vides unlimited personalized calling nies to share information with all tures: conference mode to confer- ly. Instant insight into a business and e-mail capability; automated, business channels. CMS 8.0 builds ence over both the telephone and from pre-configured dashboards real-time access and management on the continued functionality of Internet call simultaneously; battery- and charts show deal performance of campaigns; high response rates; CMS, a completely customizable off mode for non-battery operation; and provide visibility into forecast, load balancing; answering machine CRM system that lets users manage easily accessible receive/transmit pipeline and business. detection; the ability to directly con- strategies from a single software volume controls; a separate headset nect with an agent; and short cam- suite. port for supervisor monitoring; a sep- SAS paign durations. Included new fea- arate mute control; a VOX back- http://www.sas.com tures for real-time execution and Pegasystems ground filter control; and a PC on/off SAS Marketing Automation 4 administration: OnDemand Blended http://www.pega.com switch for multimedia functions. SAS Marketing Automation 4 allows Suppression; OnDemand Enterprise PegaRULES Process users to rapidly create, modify and Support; and OnDemand Campaign Commander 4.2 Prosodie Interactive manage sophisticated, multichannel Management. PegaRULES Process Commander http:// www.prosodieinterac- marketing campaigns. Users can (PRPC) is a Java- and XML-based tive.com define target segments; prioritize SPIRIT enterprise platform that harnesses IT Prosodie Interactive’s Virtual selection rules; schedule and exe- http://www.spiritdsp.com/voip systems’ intelligence and processing ACD 2.0 cute campaigns; and perform TeamSpirit power into applications that stream- Prosodie Interactive’s Virtual ACD advanced analyses to predict the TeamSpirit is a multipoint VoIP plat- line key business processes. PRPC 2.0 service includes skills-based success of customer communica- form for large-scale applications is built for scale, performance and routing, multitenant functionality and tions. Built on the SAS Intelligence serving many users with different change, and includes the following live supervision displays. It comes Platform, SAS Marketing Automation network connections all over the features: built-in versioning; simple integrated with IVR for greeting includes robust, integrated analytics, world, and for enterprise collabora- rules creation forms oriented to busi- callers, for handling touch-tone and data management and business tion systems integrating VoIP with ness users; and a built-in, browser- speech recognition pre-qualification intelligence in an easy-to-use inter- corporate databases, business appli- Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 51

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope cations and groupware solutions. It multichannel interaction mented in 60 to 90 ULTRA IntelliCoach provides action- provides high-quality peer-to-peer management solution, days, increases the able intelligence needed to maxi- and multipoint IP conferencing, and enables contact center number of reachable mize agent performance and to build allows many people to talk simulta- and customer service applications from a world-class contact center team. neously without speech drops or agents to more easily tens to hundreds; With ULTRA IntelliCoach, supervi- breaks. TeamSpirit combines ensure that customers reduces misdirected sors can manage the entire agent SPIRIT’s proprietary speech tech- receive the optimum calls; shortens calls; evaluation, feedback, coaching and nologies for echo- and noise-free full level of service neces- and improves customer development process. From a single duplex conversation (RealDuplex) sary to resolve issues. satisfaction. application, supervisors can do the with the smart speech flow manage- Talisma NetAgent 6.6 is com- following: monitor interactions to ment, based on prosodic speech prised of three applications: Talisma Ulysses Learning evaluate agent performance; identify characteristics analysis (Multi- NetAgent Email; Talisma NetAgent http://www.ulysseslearning.com individual agent needs; leverage PASS). Chat; and Talisma NetAgent Phone. CallMentor Learning and existing content to deliver targeted There are more than 260 enhance- Performance System - 2004 training based on unique require- Stratasoft ments, including enabling agents to The 2004 version of Ulysses ments; create a library of Best http://www.stratasoft.com proactively engage Web site visitors Learning’s CallMentor Learning and Practice Clips based on recorded StrataSIP Web Agent using real-time text messaging. An Performance System features an interactions; and track training StrataSIP Web Agent is a VoIP- improved agent and supervisor inter- expanded learning and performance assignments and activities to ensure enabled softphone that uses SIP for face includes more powerful search improvement system. This includes proper follow-up. It also provides a use on the StrataDial call center capabilities, new real-time outbox Master Coach and Facilitator Supervisor Dashboard that enables software suite. StrataDial includes functionality and enhanced reporting. Certification, as well as an enhanced supervisors to perform many func- full support of remote call center Performance Diagnostic, which has tions. agents for processing both inbound Telephony@Work four unique assessments to fully and outbound (blended) calls. http://www.telephonyatwork.com align CallMentor to organizational Vertical Solutions, Inc. (VSI) Utilizing the latest advancements in CallCenter@nywhere 7.1 goals, priorities, practices and cul- http://www.vertsol.com VoIP and SIP, remote agents can be CallCenter@nywhere is a multime- ture. The CallMentor system is an PowerHelp Enterprise launched from anywhere in the dia IP contact center solution that intelligent blend of performance PowerHelp Enterprise is a complete- world. These remote call center adapts to changing business needs improvement methods that respond ly Web-based solution specifically agents appear as seamless mem- on-demand, empowering companies to contact center executives’ most designed to address both internal bers of the entire call center agent to provide world-class service on the challenging business needs, forming and external CRM needs of large pool and can be monitored, adjusted phone, fax and Internet, with the the foundation of frontline service, and small organizations. VSI offers a and activated exactly like agents ability to adapt any contact center sales and coaching development, or solution that enables users to pene- working in the call center — using technology or business practice in builds upon previous training to trate, retain and manage a multitude only a Windows-based PC, a high- real-time while sharing technology bring about a higher level of sales of growing business customers with speed Internet connection and a across locations on a multitenant and service performance and cus- value-added services. With USB headset. basis. Version 7.1 offers carrier- tomer loyalty. PowerHelp Enterprise, users can grade Web-services interfaces to manage any internal or external Symon Communications, Inc. Telephony@Work’s scalable service UniPress Software request for customer service, service http://www.symon.com provider offering, to enable these http://www.unipress.com desk, field service or sales and mar- Symon Enterprise Server service providers to easily and cost- FootPrints 6.5 keting group. Symon Enterprise Server (SES) is effectively create a unique look and FootPrints 6.5 is a Web-based serv- designed to improve collection, feel for their services and to embed ice desk tool for help desk and cus- Vocomo Corp. transformation and distribution of new technologies into legacy offer- tomer support automation. FootPrints http://www.vocomosoft.com both real-time and historical enter- ings and new devices. Version 7.1 supports Microsoft Windows VocomoVoice Response for prisewide key performance indica- also introduced the Flash client for 2003/2000/NT, Unix and Linux Web VoIP tors (KPIs) and other business intel- multimedia agents, which runs on servers and numerous databases. VocomoVoice Response for VoIP is ligence. Data silos are eliminated, any computer regardless of operat- FootPrints 6.5 is fully integrated with an open-standards VoIP IVR plat- and information is easily consolidat- ing system. a variety of tools for asset manage- form that allows businesses to effi- ed, aggregated, transformed and ment, live e-support, network securi- ciently deploy their customer service ready for use in a variety of presen- Telerx ty, telephony, sales automation and applications in a single IP-centric tation layers, including Web-based http://www.telerx.com more. Included new features: network. Intended for customer self- reporting with drill-down capability, Customer Connections FootPrints Customer eService portal; service and mid-sized call centers, agent scorecards, LED panels, plas- Telerx’s Customer Connections FootPrints Dynamic SQL Database Vocomo has launched a new gener- mas and TVs, workforce manage- helps merchants with locations Link; a full-service level management ation of IVR products that enable a ment tools and Symon’s alerting nationwide to deal with inconsistent module; an automated, customizable significantly lower total cost of own- and messaging solutions. Project in-store service levels using a cen- flashboard; stronger performance to ership. This advanced VoIP IVR management and implementation tralized toll-free number. It records manage large ticket volumes; and software, with support for VoiceXML, services assure that SES installa- calls and then red flags those that individual work schedules and agent SIP, H.323 and RTP, enables devel- tions are completed to customers’ require additional attention because availability matrix. opers to build flexible, scalable and specifications on time and within of their severity. cost-effective IVR applications. With budget. Owners/operators/store managers Unveil Technologies it, organizations can reduce costs, receive notification of escalated con- Syntellect http://www.unveil.com enhance productivity, improve cus- tacts via e-mail, outbound calls, Unveil Conversation Manager tomer service and simplify manage- http://www.syntellect.com wireless devices or store faxes. Unveil Conversation Manager is a ment as they move toward an IP- Store personnel access the cus- Continuum voice application management envi- centric communications model. tomer record via the Internet or an Previously released as Vista 5.0, a ronment that enables enterprise call IVR application using text-to-speech next-generation open-standards centers and outsourcers to rapidly technology to contact the customer VoiceGenie Technologies, Inc. speech and IVR enabled self-service build, deploy and maintain high per- in an attempt to resolve the severe http://www.voicegenie.com platform and simultaneously integrat- formance speech applications. Its issue. A central repository for all NeXusPoint 6.4 ed with the advanced contact center value lies in the relative ease with customer contact information, NeXusPoint is a high-performance solution Interchange, Syntellect’s which customers can author sophis- Customer Connections generates VoiceXML platform that delivers a combined offerings were re- ticated speech systems to increase data for analysis, trending, reporting flexible infrastructure for developing launched as Continuum, offering automation rates, to improve caller and product/process improvement. and deploying DTMF (touch-tone) or speech-enabled and IVR touch-tone satisfaction and to reduce cost of points on the self-service side. speech-enabled applications. With a TuVox ownership. Conversation Manager feature-rich and robust architecture, Continuum also offers intelligently does not require specialized linguis- routed voice, e-mail and Web http://www.tuvox.com it facilitates speech application tic skills to develop speech gram- deployment for any type or size of inquiries with CTI/screen pop on the TuVox Perfect Router mars, and applications authored live-service side, as well as flexible TuVox’s Perfect Router is a natural business. Version 6.4 includes the using Conversation Manager can following new features: broader deployment options. Also offered is language speech-enabled call rout- automate most kinds of customer the ability to immediately pass cap- ing application that lets callers say operating support; enhanced report- transaction. Version 2 includes ing and monitoring features; tured self-service data via what they want and then routes enhancements that further reduce CTI/screen pop to an agent, should them to the right place — automated improved standards support; extend- speech development and tuning, ed ASR/TTS support; and an entirely a self-service inquiry escalate to live or live. Perfect Router replicates the add robust reporting capabilities and assistance. live agent experience, as callers open architecture. Platform perform- extend support for third-party ance offerings: low latency; high interact by simply saying what they VoiceXML platforms. Talisma want. Dynamic routing logic is then scalability; and high density. http://www.talisma.com used to determine the best way to Talisma NetAgent 6.6 handle each call based on a number Verint Systems VoiceLogger, Inc. Talisma NetAgent 6.6, an integrated of factors. The application, imple- http://www.verint.com http://www.voicelogger.com ULTRA IntelliCoach DigiVoiceXE 3.0 52 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope

DigiVoiceXE 3.0 is the next genera- WebEx MediaTone call characteristics, server-managed contact lists. This is tion of VoiceLogger’s recording solu- Network. offers data visualiza- the first publicly available XCAP tion for contact centers, public safe- tion capabilities and server, and eyeBeam is the first ty, financial services and general has an easy-to-use endpoint to support XCAP. business. Included in the release is interface, enabling patent-pending screen logging, West Corporation users to pinpoint Zeacom, Inc which will offer companies the ability http://www.west.com and view interesting http://www.zeacom.com to log the screen activity of hundreds West at Home/Virtual or unusual contacts to of workstations simultaneously. An perform detailed analysis NEC Q-Master ACD NEC Q-Master is a multichannel additional enhancement includes West at Home is a remote agent and trending. The solution Flex Recording, designed to meet offers the following: a rapid visual contact center routing and reporting solution that removes the barriers solution developed for NEC Unified the performance-driven quality and limitations of traditional call cen- overview of large volumes of con- assurance monitoring needs of any tact recordings; the ability to identify Solutions in the Northern and Latin ter and home agent solutions. By uti- Americas. NEC Q-Master is an inte- contact center. DigiVoiceXE 3.0 also lizing a Virtual ACD (VACD) plat- areas of focus or concern visually includes enhancements to its split- based on user-defined business grated contact center solution that form, West can deliver calls and provides a broad range of functional- screen agent evaluation functionali- data to agents in remote facilities drivers; integration with eQuality ty, expanded system and administra- Balance/ContactStore/ContactStore ity and scalability at a competitive located anywhere in the world, price. NEC Q-Master organizes tive features, and additions to enabling companies to take advan- IP; color-coded interactions; and DigiVoiceXE’s user interface. parameter adjustment. incoming calls and media, on a sin- tage of a higher quality alternative to gle and centralized environment, offshore and to provide customers according to routing preferences WebEx Communications, Inc. with better service at a lower cost. Xten Networks predefined by the individual contact http://www.webex.com The VRU-based technology elimi- http://www.xten.com center. Also, the solution’s sophisti- WebEx SMARTtech nates geographical limitations on LiveEye – XCAP Server cated intelligent routing features WebEx SMARTtech enables IT help agent location. The technology can Based on open standards, LiveEye direct callers to the right agent every desks and technical support organi- be implemented on a managed or delivers server-side storage of IM time. NEC Q-Master is completely zations to remotely support and hosted basis. Benefits include buddy lists and provides an Events modular. manage multiple computers or POS increased call capacity at minimal Engine for centralized presence hardware — without a costly hard- costs; greater scalability, flexibility rules. It also provides a basic If you are interested in purchasing ware or software infrastructure. and reduced implementation times; Presence Agent server module as reprints of this article (in either Access is granted/easily deployed and faster call resolution. part of the eyeBeam 1.1 SDK. print or HTML format), please visit from or over a Web browser, any- Eyebeam introduces the following Reprint Management Services where in the world, regardless of Witness Systems SIP-based technologies: instant online at http://www.reprintbuyer.com most firewall restrictions: a technical http://www.witness.com messaging; contact-list manage- or contact a representative via e- support representative can work on eQuality Vision ment; privacy management; peer-to- mail at reprints@tmcnet. com or the system as if physically next to eQuality Vision helps contact center peer presence; server-based pres- by phone at 800-290-5460. the computer. Support organizations management search through cus- ence; server-managed contact lists; can benefit with reduced support tomer interactions, spotting trends, server-side contact list/privacy list For information and subscriptions, costs and with increased customer patterns and anomalies that can storage using WebDAV or XCAP; visit http://www.TMCnet.com satisfaction. WebEx SMARTtech is provide sales/service directors with server-side privacy management or call 203-852-6800. designed for security from the insight into their operational effec- using XCAP; and automatic updates ground up. It is built upon the tiveness. The solution retains all to contact lists, privacy lists and

Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 53

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope

In day-to-day life, there are many exam- implementations. Those projects consisted ples of how components can be intercon- of tying together independent components nected to create a desired solution. that did not have the interoperability advan- Although Apple Computer (quote - news tages of today’s consumer electronics, or the alert) has now hidden the computer inside still-debated benefits of today’s all-in-one BY Harold Hernandez the monitor, there is still a host of external packages. Getting it right from a KM per- components that will likely come together spective remains a huge challenge. Even get- before a basic desktop configuration is com- ting to the point where you can articulate plete. Along the same exactly what KM opportunity you are tack- lines, a home entertain- ling can be daunting. But even rocket sci- ment center that includes a ence can be explained, so let’s take a look at KNOWLEDGE TV, multimedia receiver, a basic checklist of considerations that go VCR, CD/DVD into a KM decision. player and speakers At the highest level, you have organiza- MANAGEMENT is im-practical and tional considerations and KM components generally not to think about. On the organizational side, available as one you may have to consider one or more of the all-inclusive following: DOESN’T COME unit because the • Strategic plan. What are you doing, and cost would be relatively high and odds are for whom? Are you improving search func- that one or more of the component parts tionality for a specific type of user or are you IN A BOX would not be exactly what you were looking tying together all enterprise KM initiatives for. The key is that with these consumer into a holistic vision? electronics components, interoperability is • Executive commitment. Does the organi- virtually guaranteed. This allows you to zation understand the risks, rewards, choose from a wide range of component requirements and timeline and agree that parts and feel confident that everything will KM must become part of the organization- work well together. al fabric? Is there an executive sponsor driv- With enterprise-class solutions, the chal- ing this initiative? lenge of interoperability is so great at almost • Stakeholder commitment. Are the users, every level, most organizations are willing to contributors and support staff well make substantial concessions in terms of informed and supportive of the respective requirements, business processes, ease of use requirements and proposed changes? Does and every other buying criterion in exchange anyone feel his or her job is threatened or for the assurance that all the component that he or she will be burdened with addi- parts will work together. Organizations tional undesired work as a result of your understand that CRM, ERP and other KM project? enterprise-class implementations will • Type of knowledge required.Will your require compromise, and these companies users be dealing with reasonably predictable are now reasonably prepared to accept that and routine questions that have known and move forward with those types of solu- answers, or are the users typically working tions. Unfortunately there is a knowledge in a more unique research mode? Are they gap when it comes to knowledge manage- engineers or end users? ment processes and solutions, and that has • Knowledge delivery approaches. What are resulted in a string of implementations that, the intended delivery channels (bots, search, at best, have failed to deliver on expectations. push, collaborative browsing, library, portal, The core challenges are that knowledge machine-to-machine, etc.), and what is the management is relatively new and remains a process to properly format the knowledge broadly defined concept. The variables that for the channel and user? should be taken into account when consid- • Required versus available enterprise resources. ering a KM implementation require a level Identify your required resources early in the of understanding, vision and coordination process. Compare required time, budget, that goes back to the early days of ERP subject matter experts, various IT staff, 54 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ManagementMANAGEMENT SCOPE Scope

knowledge base engineers, etc. to the available resources, and identify your gaps. Please note that content management and authoring requirements are routinely underestimat- ed, and this results in substantial content, data and/or knowledge-related challenges. • Business process redesign plan.In the event that you are able to implement a KM solution using all of your current processes, you can skip this step. It is more likely that the full benefit of your proposed solution will only be realized through some changes to the existing processes. New processes should be defined to your best ability early in the design phase and revisited at regular intervals. • Organizational change management plan. How do you implement your proposed KM vision while sustaining current requirements and operations? For an understanding of the KM components needed, you’ll have to look at your owns workflow design and oversight? bots drive the knowledge to the users? Will organizational considerations relative to the • Reporting: What tools will be used to the knowledge be leveraged in a self-help following: report on KM processes and overall per- environment, for live agent support, by • Type of knowledge users you will be formance? What metrics will be applied? machine-to-machine interaction or via some supporting: creative, routine questions, Who will require reports, which reports and other configuration? internal, external, etc. at what frequency? What actions/reactions Now that you’ve answered all these ques- • Data/content sources: single or multi- can be anticipated or required as a result of tions, you are ready to go. Depending on ple sources? Nature of content? Content the report date? your final objectives, you may be able to submission rate? Batch, stream, pull or other • Metadata: Is there already a metadata leverage one of the available KM packages content acquisition process? schema in place? Can the proposed KM that are out there. If you require some com- • Content source formats: What formats solution conform to the existing standard? bination of packages or point solutions, rest will the process be required to accept and Could or should anyone outside the scope assured that both the technology and skills process? of the current KM initiative leverage the are available to ensure a successful imple- • Text mining: Will the source content be proposed metadata? mentation from proof of concept to final manually processed? To what extent? Will • Application administration: What are delivery.Try to avoid shopping for a solution text mining be leveraged in order to sub- the required resources for ongoing applica- until your requirements are well defined, or stantially automate the content manage- tion administration? Will they reside within you will likely end up stuffing your organi- ment requirements? IT or operations? zation into a box. • Knowledge/rules authoring: Can any • Hardware requirements/admin: Does Harold Hernandez is an independent con- content be directly published from the auto- additional hardware need to be purchased sultant with 14 years’ experience in the mated content management process? Who in support of your KM initiative? Who will design, implementation and optimization will the knowledge authors and reviewers own and maintain the hardware? Do the of customer contact operations. His tech- be? What is the project authoring workload? required skills already exist within the nical and operational experience supports Will those be full-time assignments or col- organization? the delivery of cost-effective results across lateral duties? From where do these • Knowledge base development and all areas of a modern call center. He can resources come? maintenance: Is this required for your par- be contacted at [email protected]. • Knowledge utility/management: What ticular KM design? Will it be a one-time or If you are interested in purchasing reprints of is the content review process? Is it manual or ongoing need? Should the resources be this article (in either print or HTML format), please visit Reprint Management Services automated? How will knowledge value be internal or contract? What is the rate of online at http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact measured? change in the key variables within your tar- a representative via e-mail at reprints@tmcnet. • Workflow management: Is workflow get knowledge universe? com or by phone at 800-290-5460. management a module of the proposed KM • Knowledge delivery channels: How will For information and subscriptions, suite or will it be externally imposed? Who knowledge reach the intended users? Will visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800. Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 55

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index IPIP CONTACT Contact CENTERS Centers

It’s no secret that organizations today rely network meant that communication man- on a constant stream of voice and data com- agers could focus their disaster planning munications to maintain contact with cus- budgets in other areas of concern. However, tomers, staff and business partners. It’s also as the migration of voice communications clear that system architects must provide for moves toward server-based facilities and IP BY David Weiss, Dataprobe the highest degree of fault tolerance in networks, planners are beginning to take maintaining critical communications and extra steps to ensure that the expected level interaction. While many companies have of uptime is maintained. In addition, as embraced redundancy in PBXs, call centers, conference bridges and the data center, few have VoIP technologies are built more frequent- REDUNDANCY recognized the need to ly from a combination of hardware and soft- incorporate redundant ware vendors, the likelihood of unscheduled systems into their voice downtime increases. technologies. Failures can occur at any level of the sys- KEY TO HIGH When determining tem. While handsets have typically been the necessary degree of the most reliable part of the phone system, resilience in a voice sys- new technologies have added additional AVAILABILITY tem, communication levels of complexity. IP phones, computer- planners need telephony integration and Bluetooth are all to consider the standards in this new paradigm. Server- importance of based PBXs rely on complex software, VOICE SERVICES maintaining often from multiple vendors, and disc these vital links to customers. Ultimately, arrays and other hardware technologies are customer service becomes the issue as every subject to failures. Network connectivity interaction is measured by the customer. If opens the system to malicious attacks both your goal is 100 percent customer satisfac- internally and externally. Phone lines are tion, then you must deliver optimum results subject to occasional outages due to cable that exceed expectations. breaks and component Current server-based failures at the local and PBXs (define - news - long-distance carrier lev- alert) VoIP (define - news els. - alert) solutions, conference bridges and call cen- Now that the phone sys- Redundancy Solutions For ter systems provide new tem is on the network, it The Line Side capabilities at a fraction of is susceptible to all of Architecting a highly their previous costs. In available solution means deploying these tech- the maladies of the net- looking for ways to elimi- nologies, organizations work world, including nate single points of fail- have come to recognize hacker attacks, viruses ure in all aspects of the that these capabilities are system design. Network mission-critical for opera- and Trojan horses. planners should look at tions. Planning for the both link redundancy and inevitable failure of com- hardware redundancy to plex systems is the only minimize failure options. way to prevent these Carriers can also pro- events from becoming real disasters. vide diversity and avoidance to help mini- Redundancy solutions offer fail-safe mize risks. Diversity refers to redundant options on every level, encompassing services, and avoidance ensures that redun- failover servers, diverse phone lines, media dant services do not share common facili- storage and hot sites. With redundancy ties. This can be done at both the local and becoming the new watchword, downtime is long-distance levels. Additionally, loop no longer an acceptable risk. diversity provides two redundant circuits Historically, the resiliency of the voice from the local point-of-presence (POP) to 56 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com IPIP CONTACT Contact CENTERS Centers

your facility. POP diversity, having local links originate from multiple wire centers, or POPs, is an ideal solution. Interoffice diversity provides the same level of service between wire centers. Check with your carriers for available services. Using multiple carriers and providing multiple building entry points and different in-house routing are essential. These diversity services may or may not include the customer premise equipment necessary to switch between the redundant links. Protection switching for redundant T- 1 or DS-3 circuits is either provided by the carrier or purchased and installed by the to customers. Diversity and avoidance serv- nents, multiple sources and lower costs are customer. This provides automatic detec- ices, along with protection switching, can only a few of the reasons that servers are tion of degraded or interrupted service and provide solutions to help you maintain your now common for phone systems, voice switchover to a spare circuit. Protection voice communication systems. mail, call recorders and other voice tech- switching can either be 1:1, with a standby nologies. circuit for each primary, or 1:N, with one Redundancy Solutions For The Equipment There are, however, trade-offs for all this spare circuit that can be substituted for one Side new power and flexibility. Voice systems of several circuits. The advantages of migrating to an open have become more complex. Not so long Even in VoIP solutions, any gateway to architecture, server-based platform for ago, there was one provider to handle the public switched network involves local telephony services has prompted the wide everything, including line and equipment loops and carrier services. It’s essential that acceptability of un-PBXs and IP-PBXs. servicing. Then came the age of the PBX, companies do not overlook this critical link Flexible architecture, standardized compo- in which one provider solved all equipment needs and problems. Now systems are crafted together from “best of breed” providers for processors, memory, storage, power supplies,telephony boards,operating systems and application software. Deploying all of these technologies to work together is a testament to the collaborative nature of modern computers. It also increases responsibility for the end user or consultant to make sure that all the pieces work together seamlessly. Now that the phone system is on the network, it is susceptible to all of the maladies of the network world, including hacker attacks, viruses and Trojan horses. Unfortunately, it is therefore inevitable that elements of the system will either break down or be compromised. While many manufacturers boast of the high reliability of their systems, the end user should be concerned with a different metric — availability. System availability is the readiness of the system to perform its stated function at any time of the year, month, day, hour or minute. Availability is calculated by using two standard measurements: mean time between failures CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 57 IPIP CONTACT Contact CENTERS Centers

circumstances. Although redundancy servers are optimal solutions, when considering their deployment, several issues still need to be addressed. As either server may be needed at any time, it is important their databases be synchronized so all configurations, secu- rities and call logs are the same on both systems. Licensing is also a factor. If redundant systems share the same licenses, they need to have dongles switched or need an add-on module to support automatic redundancy switchover. By considering your needs for availability and redundancy solutions, each system can achieve the level of fault tolerance (MTBF), which is the likelihood that the sidered. In this scenario, two complete, required to meet organizational objec- component will experience a failure; and identical systems are installed. One system tives. Voice technology remains a critical mean time to repair (MTTR), which is the provides hot standby with automatic component to customer service and cor- average length of time it takes to identify, failover for the other system. The standby porate communications. Thus, deploying diagnose, remove and repair or replace a server, SNMP manager or other manage- line solutions, from diversity and avoid- failed component. If a component takes ment facility is continuously monitoring ance services to protection switching, several hours to service and begin func- the health of the system in use. Upon detec- should be extremely important for net- tioning again, the availability is severely tion of a failure of the primary system, the work planners. Furthermore, phone sys- compromised. The standard formula for hot standby is switched into service. tems have increased in complexity and calculating availability is as follows: Physical layer switching is used to move the networkability, leading to possible compo- phone lines or operator stations from the nent failures and malware (malicious soft- Availability = MTBF/(MTBF + MTTR) failed primary server to the newly activated ware) attacks. Standby systems and standby. redundancy switches keep inevitable This calculation is referred to as “inherent Hot standby systems allow for scheduled problems from becoming true disasters. availability,” which does not take into maintenance to be performed with the account scheduled maintenance downtime. absolute minimum of interruption, as one David Weiss has over 19 years’ experi- When lost time for maintenance is added, server is upgraded while the other is in serv- ence in product management, business you can arrive at the true operational avail- ice. This solution also allows for an immedi- development, sales and marketing, and ability. ate, graceful fallback in the event that a he is an expert in the remote site management technology industry. He serves System engineers must look at maximiz- planned upgrade goes awry or that a new as the president of Dataprobe, where he is ing reliability and minimizing both sched- software installation has unintentional and directly responsible for developing new uled and unscheduled downtime to achieve unplanned consequences. market business strategies and for estab- the best availability possible: the opera- Redundancy switches operate on the lishing key partnership opportunities and tional availability. Redundancy is the key to physical layer, moving the actual wires strategic alliances. Dataprobe is a manu- providing both the maximum reliability from the phone lines and operator instru- facturer of technology solutions for and the minimum repair time. At the comments to the telephony boards in the sys- today’s demanding remote site manage- ponent level, redundancy is commonplace tem. In IP phone systems, switching is ment and networking needs. Since 1969, for the components that are most likely to only required for the phone line side. In Dataprobe has been providing communication managers, OEM developers and fail. Mechanical items like disk drives and essence, redundancy switches perform the direct consumers with remote technology power supplies are often the first compo- same function as a patch panel, but do so products. nents that come to mind. Additionally, automatically and simultaneously for all If you are interested in purchasing reprints of most systems for telephony services come circuits. As the central component of a this article (in either print or HTML format), standard with redundant arrays of inexpen- fault tolerant solution, the redundancy please visit Reprint Management Services sive discs (RAID) and redundant power switch itself cannot represent a single online at http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a representative via e-mail at reprints@tmcnet. supplies. point of failure. These switches use com or by phone at 800-290-5460. More demanding applications require mechanical latching relays to provide a that redundancy at the system level be con- continuous mechanical connection in all For information and subscriptions, visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800. 58 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Miracle Worker?

Capturing and evaluating interactions with customers has become essential. And yet the business case for investing in today’s quality management technology goes far beyond the old concept of catching the rogue call center rep misleading customers or behaving unprofessionally. Today’s technology allows for an Contact Center Managers impact that is far more today need to…. reaching than the one- dimensional “QA 9 Earn customer loyalty Checklists” of the past. 9 Upsell/cross-sell successfully Email 9 Increase revenue and yields from an often finite customer [email protected] today for your free copy of base (while lowering costs) the white paper 9 Manage risk and meet compliance standards Establishing a Return: Business Motivators for 9 Reduce staff turnover and ignite brand evangelism! Recording and Quality Evaluation in Contact Centers to learn more about the business case for today’s quality management and how Mercom’s Interaction Performance Suite can help you do the impossible.

Mercom’s Interaction Performance Suite Capture. Measure. Refine. Surpass.

Mercom Systems, Inc Lyndhurst, NJ USA 888-MERCOM1 www.mercom.com Edify Achieves VoiceXML 2.0 Certification Edify Corporation,a supplier ofvoice and speech solutions, recently announced that the Edify Voice Interaction Platform (EVIP) 9.0 has achieved VoiceXML 2.0 certification through the VoiceXML Forum’s Platform Certification Program. VoiceXML 2.0 certification verifies that an application can be deployed in a way that is compatible with the VoiceXML standard, eliminating the need for proprietary Apptera Rolls Out New Packaged markups. Edify customers also have the Definition Du Jour Speech Applications For benefit of operating both VoiceXML com- Financial Services Multimodal Speech Synthesis pliant solutions and native Edify voice Apptera, a provider of configurable Multimodal speech synthesis is artificial solutions on the same platform. EVIP 9.0 speech accompanied by the image of a is a comprehensive voice system that packaged speech applications, has human face that replicates emotions: announced the availability of new pack- enables enterprises to build, execute and smiles, frowns, winking, head shaking, manage voice applications across the enter- aged speech applications for the company’s etc. The progress of artificial speech has Financial Services Suite. Apptera Account been rapid, but in many cases, synthe- prise. EVIP 9.0 integrates automation Enrollment, Account Payment and sized speech still cannot communicate software with a new distributed architec- Mortgage Quote automate a range of cus- the nuances of human speech, which ture that supports emerging standards and tomer service requests, including establish- relies on tones, emotions and gestures to technologies such as VoiceXML 2.0. The communicate such nuance. ing new customer accounts, making credit Edify Voice Browser, a primary component card or loan payments and receiving quotes of EVIP 9.0, allows the Edify platform to for refinancing and new mortgages. Nuance Voice Platform Honored execute VoiceXML 2.0-compliant code as Apptera’s Financial Services Suite, intro- By Forrester Research stand-alone VoiceXML applications or in duced in 2004, enables banks and credit Nuance recently announced that its conjunction with any Edify application unions to more efficiently and affordably Nuance Voice Platform, the company’s builder code. By allowing application offer personalized service to customers and open, standards-based platform optimized developers to use VoiceXML whenever help them generate revenue around the for speech, was named a “Top Market they see fit, Edify also offers the ability to clock. The new applications were offered to Leader” by analyst firm Forrester Research leverage Edify’s data access and multichan- extend Apptera’s presence in configurable in its December 8, 2004 Forrester Wave nel capabilities where more powerful tools speech applications, enabling enterprises to report,“Evaluating Speech Self-Service are required all on a single, integrated plat- deploy higher quality, robust voice solu- Platforms”. The Nuance Voice Platform form. The VoiceXML Forum’s rigorous tions more cost-effectively and quicker received top honors, according to Forrester, Platform Certification Program certifies than custom-developed systems. Apptera because of its strength and scalability, that implementation platforms execute Account Enrollment leads callers through Nuance’s strategy, proven track record and VoiceXML 2.0 capabilities embodied by the process of applying for a loan or market presence, and the company’s stan- the Forum’s VoiceXML Conformance Test enrolling in a new account — asking the dards compliance and financial momentum. Suite. The test suite is based on the World same questions as live agents, but complet- Elizabeth Herrell, vice president of Forrester Wide Web Consortium (W3C) ing the enrollment process in half the time. Research, stated “Nuance’s experience in VoiceXML 2.0 recommendation and the Apptera Account Payment helps cus- developing and deploying speech technology W3C VoiceXML 2.0 implementation tomers make a credit card or loan pay- results in a robust platform that allows it to report test suite. The certification process ment, at their convenience, from any deliver advanced capabilities as soon as they consists of a test suite, a test harness and phone. The speech application is designed become available, while maintaining high an independent testing program. The certi- to eliminate hold times and to lower agent system performance…Nuance Voice fication program is managed and devel- costs by voice-automating the entire Platform is a quality choice for companies oped by VoiceXML Forum members and account payment process. Finally, Apptera demanding all-around excellence in speech provides impartiality through the use of Mortgage Quote helps banks and credit platforms and applications.” independent third-party test laboratories. unions deliver differentiated service to cus- http://www.nuance.com http://www.edify.com tomers and provide automated rate quotes around the clock without the need for mortgage specialists. Our speech has its weaknesses and its http://www.apptera.com defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical. — Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), French essayist

60 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January“ 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com Go To Table of Contents ”| Go To Ad Index Verint_CIS_Verdana 11/10/04 11:49 AM Page 1

What Can Actionable Intelligence Do For YOUR Workforce?

Contact center agents can make or break customer satisfaction. But, many lack the skills to quickly address problems and target new sales opportunities.

Verint’s ULTRA™ Intelligent Recording solution delivers actionable intelligence for building a Actionable smarter, more motivated workforce. ULTRA provides real-time monitoring and evaluation to help you Intelligence can identify skill gaps, and intelligent coaching and development that can improve performance by arm your agents giving targeted training and assistance, to each agent, when they need it. for success! ULTRA enhances staff productivity and effectiveness, and helps empower you to build a world-class contact center team. You'll be better positioned to improve service and increase customer satisfaction, while minimizing agent turnover and costs. Find out how Verint can help. Request our FREE white paper, “Actionable Intelligence for a Smarter Workforce”.

Visit our website at www.verint.com/smarterworkforce or contact us at 1-800-4-VERINT. . © 2004 Verint Systems Inc. All rights reserved. GoldMine 6.5/6.7 is well known for its almost “plug and play” installation. FrontRange In fact, unlike many CRM software solu- Solutions Inc. tions, you can find it on retail store shelves. 6701 Koll Center Parkway We should mention, however, that Ste. 250 Pleasanton, CA 94566 GoldMine also has a strong partner chan- Ph: 800-776-7889 nel comprised of individuals who will come Web: http://www.frontrange.com in and help install and customize Price: $495 per concurrent user GoldMine to suit your needs. At TMC Labs, we actually got our hands on GoldMine 6.5 (not GoldMine 6.7), but the GoldMine 6.7 is the latest version of one versions are nearly identical except for a few of the most popular contact managers on new features that we will list later. the market specifically targeting the small to One of the key features of any good CRM solution is record typing: the ability to display different details and views for

TM different users (customer service, sales, accounting). Based on the record type, TMC Labs Review users can specify what information to capture and what rules are applied. GoldMine 6.7 does an excellent job of this. The ability to customize views in GoldMine is comple- medium-sized business, though with its mented by its ability to customize and inte- Microsoft SQL Server support it can scale grate with any third-party database using to larger installations as well. GoldMine is a GoldMine’s GM+View tab (see Figure 1). full-featured, enterprisewide contact man- The GoldMine GM+View tab is essential- ager that allows the sharing of data ly a Web browser so users can integrate to between multiple GoldMine users. any third-party database. GM+View is Featuring an integrated e-mail client, shared very powerful: companies can use any of calendars, group scheduling, mass fax/mail the GoldMine fields to query a third-party merging, PDA links, data synchronization, database or even a Web site. For instance, Internet e-mail, sales forecasting and cus- you can pull up a record and then go to tomizable fields, GoldMine is an extremely GM+View to view the MapQuest direc- versatile CRM software program. GoldMine tions from your office to the address of the current record displayed. GoldMine comes with a screen designer for easy integration into other databases or for displaying customized data on a Web page. Installing GoldMine was a breeze. Pop the CD in, go though your typical install wizard and, in a couple of minutes, you have a full-featured CRM system that can rival any of the high-end CRM packages (e.g., Siebel) that require professional services to install. We should point out, however, that GoldMine has a vast VAR channel and professional installers who will install and customize GoldMine to suit your needs. The default sample database was in the dbase file format, and we wanted to see how easy it was to migrate to SQL Server. GoldMine has a wizard to migrate your existing GoldMine database from dbase to SQL Server; the wizard Figure 1. GM+View tab for integrating with Web sites and databases automatically creates the SQL tables.

62 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Overall, the procedure was relatively pain- less.

Sales Forecasting And Reporting Important to any good CRM solution are metrics such as sales forecasting and reports. GoldMine includes specific metrics that allow sales and marketing professionals to view forecasted sales against marketing programs, as well as closed sales as a result. The software also enables users to track and analyze customer responses to identify effective campaigns. The canned reports in GoldMine (see Figure 2) are quite extensive, and you can design your own reports as well. One optional add-on feature we liked, Figure 2. GoldMine’s built-in reports and which has been available since version 6.0 came out, is the GoldMine Outlook be routed according to pre-defined criteria, result, we feel that there should be a check Link. This add-on feature lets you use the such as agent skills or the customer’s last box in the Search window called “search popular Outlook e-mail client instead of the interaction with the organization.” only within activated group” that is on by GoldMine e-mail client, while still retaining We like GoldMine’s “Group” feature, default (or remembers the last setting). the integration with the GoldMine data- which lets users create groups defined by fil- base. In other words, you can send and ters (wizard-driven criteria, such as Search Using A Dynamic Filter receive e-mail within Outlook and the e- State=“CT” and City not equal to We should mention that you can activate mail will still be stored in the History tab in “Hartford”), by SQL queries or simply by a “dynamic” filter within GoldMine instead GoldMine for future reference, attached to manually tagging records. Once you have a of using a group. For example, you can cre- that specific contact. In addition, from with- group defined, you can perform a mail- ate a filter to display only records with in Outlook you can add special GoldMine merge to this group and then print a letter to State=“NY”, allowing a sales person to columns with GoldMine data fields, such as these recipients. You can also perform fax- work his or her way through the NY company name, and a “linked” checkbox merging and e-mail blasting to recipients. records one at a time, by simply clicking the field tells you whether the e-mail is linked in Finally, the new features of GoldMine “next record” button. We should mention the GoldMine History tab. Speaking of 6.7 that differ from GoldMine 6.5 include that each time you scroll to a new record, it add-ons, GoldMine claims that an impres- advanced Palm PDA integration, record has to re-query the database using that fil- sive 235 third-party products are certified to typing enhancements, Query By Example ter. Because the state field is indexed, the work with GoldMine. tools, enhanced API/integration tools, performance was very good. However, if you SMS/text messaging and softphone sup- use a more complex filter as opposed to a GoldMine And VoIP port. simple filter, merely scrolling to the next Another very interesting add-on (actual- record could take several minutes. This is ly, it’s a separate product) is FrontRange’s IP Search Within A Static Group why GoldMine’s “static” group feature is so Contact Center, which VoIP-enables both We would like to be able to create specif- important: it doesn’t have this performance FrontRange’s GoldMine and HEAT prod- ic groups for each sales rep (by territory) so limitation, as the records are queried once ucts. The product delivers real-time and the sales reps can activate their group and and then saved into a group. historical reporting, queuing, automated work solely within their group, not bothered call distribution (ACD), integrated voice by other records they don’t care about. Conclusion response (IVR) and screen-pop capabilities While you can create sales groups within GoldMine informed us that a “query by and is based on SIP. “We designed IP the entire database, the problem is that example” feature should be available in the Contact Center to enable companies to when group members bring up the search 6.7 release, which is perfect for non-techies deliver superior customer service and drive window to look for a company, the Search who are not SQL query experts. GoldMine revenue by streamlining customer commu- window searches within the entire database has quite a loyal following, plus a strong nications,” said Kevin J. Smith, FrontRange and not within the activated group. For developer base that often does some nifty vice president of products. “The key to example, if users search on Wal-Mart, integration or designs some creative add- productivity gain is the ability to integrate they’ll see Wal-Mart stores from all over the ons. This is handy, because if GoldMine the voice and data platform, enabling calls to country, not just their own territory. As a doesn’t come with a particular feature you

Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 63

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index may be seeking, you can often find a third- GoldMine’s near plug-and-play installation RATINGS (0–5) party product that will enable that feature. and extensive customization capabilities Installation: 4.5 Overall, GoldMine does a superb job of (often a contradictory combination in Documentation: 4.5 blending contact management, document other products) are unique in the CRM Features: 4.75 management, sales automation/forecast- GUI: 4.75 software space.GoldMine is one ofthe Overall: A ing/reporting, day and time planning, finest CRM software solutions on the mar- group calendaring and e-mail messaging to ket today, and we would not hesitate to rec- track and manage all of your information. ommend it. For information and subscriptions, visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800.

WebPosition Gold 3 Platinum ices, if your page does not appear in the top 3. Monitor your rankings with Reporter. listings, you are losing revenue. 4. Optimize your pages, using the built-in WebPosition Enter WebPosition Gold 3 Platinum, a expertise available in Page Critic. (owned by NetIQ) Windows-based application and one of the 5. Analyze your results through to con- 851 SW 6th Ave., Ste. 700 premier SEO utilities on the market today. version, using WebTrends Analytics (a sep- Portland, OR 97204 Using WebPosition Gold 3 Platinum, even arate product). Ph: 800-962-4855 Web: http://www.webposition.com the most novice HTML coder and even the Let’s examine each of these steps in detail. Price: WebPosition Gold 3 Standard, $149; greenest “search engine optimizer” will WebPosition Gold 3 Professional, $349; become an SEO expert in no time. Research Your Target Keywords Platinum Upgrade, $99 extra; Page Critic Basically, WebPosition Gold 3 Platinum Every company knows at least a few key- (subscription service), $99 for 12 months. breaks down SEO into five simple steps: words that, when searched upon via a search 1. Research your target keywords with engine, they want in order to draw those Marketing and sales are inexorably the integration of Wordtracker, a popular searchers to their Web site. What they don’t linked. Without the proper marketing — keyword research tool. know is that there are many related key- and even with the greatest sales team — 2. Design and submit HTML pages with words they may not have considered. With sales revenue is still doomed to failure. In Page Builder, Upload Manager and Wordtracker integrated into WebPosition the past, marketing mainly consisted of Submitter. Gold 3 Platinum, you will not only know print advertising, radio & TV ads, tradeshows and marketing mailings; but this arsenal at marketing managers’ disposal is incomplete without proper Web-based marketing. Unfortunately, marketing managers are not HTML experts, and they are even less experienced at performing search engine optimization (SEO) on the company’s Web site to ensure a high ranking on the popular search engines. This inexperi- ence has often resulted in Webmasters and Web developers being responsible for performing SEO duties. This introduces problems in of itself, as Webmasters are not marketing experts. They don’t know which marketing campaigns are most important at any particular moment and, as a result, they can’t target specific keywords for the best search engine optimization. Further, research confirms that over 80 percent of Web visitors use search engines to find the information they’re seeking. When a potential customer conducts a search for key- Figure 1. Add keywords to track ¯ can import from Wordtracker words related to your site’s products or serv-

64 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index the related keywords, you will also know and analysis in an HTML report (See ing all the pages of a Web site and keeping how many times per month that keyword is Figure 3). Because WebPosition uses a them indexed, which is why manual sub- searched. Knowing the popularity of a par- built-in browser (Internet Explorer), it mission is important. In addition to the ticular keyword is key to drawing Web traf- makes extensive use of clickable hyperlinks array of submission options already includ- fic to your Web site. Webtracker is very for getting definitions and explanations of ed in past versions of WebPosition, version popular among SEO experts, and when key terms — terms such as “keyword 3 can automatically submit any page still we tested Wordtracker integrated into prominence” or “keyword frequency” — not found in the search engine after a rea- WebPosition Gold 3 Platinum we could not which is useful for SEO novices or is a sonable indexing time has elapsed.You sim- have been more pleased. refresher to those who already know. Web ply schedule Reporter’s URL Verification site links are all clickable: for instance, sup- feature to track your most important pages. Design And Submit HTML pose a competing site ranks highly; you can Any URLs not found, those that you previ- Pages quickly go to that Web page and look at the ously had to manually paste into the sub- WebPosition Gold 3 Platinum will help source code. Back and Forward buttons are mitter for resubmission, can now be auto- you design the necessary HTML tags and both available, with the Back button espe- matically submitted. keyword placement to ensure optimal cially useful for toggling between a view of a The Platinum Upgrade provides addi- SEO via the PageBuilder wizard. Using WebPosition report and a Web site. We tional features beyond those that this utility was very straightforward. For should point out that all of WebPosition’s WebPosition Gold Standard and instance, you can simply import keywords reports let you choose whether or not to WebPosition Professional Edition offer. created via Wordtracker (See Figure 1), include “sponsored listings” (paid ads) in the These features include Meta Manager, to type keywords manually, or import key- reports. This allows you to view your manage your HTML Meta and title tags; words from Meta tags from an existing crawler-based rankings, sponsored rankings, Link Defender, to check for any broken Web page. You can choose which SE even your combined rankings, on a single, links within your site; Code Defender, to (search engine) to optimize and then enter easy-to-read report. remove white space from your HTML the main body text, choose your template, After optimizing your pages, the next code, thus improving performance, making and then click Build Page. It will auto-cre- step is, of course, getting the search engines it harder for the competition to copy your ate the important Meta tags (title, Meta to list your Web pages. WebPosition’s pages; and, finally, an additional 25 search keywords, Meta description, etc.) and per- Submitter automates submission of specif- engines. form other SEO tricks targeting your key- ic URLs to the top search engines; and it words. has a built-in feature to throttle how many Features Overview times you submit URLs to the search • Optimal keyword research from Word- Monitor Your Rankings engines so as to not spam them and to fol- tracker, the industry leader, and with up to Tracking your rankings on the major low each search engine’s submission guide- 25 keywords free search engines could be a full-time job if lines. We should point out that the search • Fully customizable report templates doing so manually. How do you know if a engines are notoriously fickle about index- • Support for over 200 global and region- particular change to a Web page resulted in a “bump” in the search engine rankings? Fortunately, WebPosition makes tracking your SE rankings simple. Using WebPosition Reporter, you can enter in the domain you want to check for specific keyword rankings, as well as enter your competitors’ domains to see how you compare. Check out Figure 2, which shows the Competitive Analysis tab within Reporter comparing two TMC Web sites for several keywords using a few search engines. Optimize Your Pages The Page Critic is one of the most powerful features of WebPosition. Using the built-in expertise of this feature, you can examine an individual Web page and determine if it has been search engine optimized. Page Critic will “crawl” the search engines you specified, searching for the keywords Figure 2. Competitive analysis report you specified and then returning statistics

Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 65

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index al search engines, including the new shopping engine, Froogle • Enhanced reporting on both your organic and pay-per-click search listings • Export of data for use in Microsoft Excel and other applications • Expanded expert advice from Page Critic for improved competitive compar- isons • Platinum package, including Meta Manager, Link Defender and Code Defender modules • Integration with WebTrends, an industry leader in Web analytics, for tracking your results through to conversion • Reporter checking your site rankings in the top search engines • Page Critic supplying expert, custom- tailored advice for how to optimize each of your new or existing Web pages • Page Generator creating optimized Figure 3. Page Critic report, with multiple tabs containing analysis Web pages based on keywords and details you enter about your business • Scheduler activating the Reporter daily, Room For Improvement • Upload Manager remembering all opti- weekly or monthly to automatically check Our only suggestion is in regard to the mized Web pages you create, change or add your Web site’s rankings tracking of the previous rankings in Reporter. Currently, it only tracks the previous ranking for a particular keyword to compare with the current ranking. We’d like it to keep the history of rankings for the past 10 times we ran the Reporter mission. Even better, we’d like to see it keep an infinite number of iterations, and then we’d like to see WebPosition provide a graph with a timeline (day, week or month) on the X axis and the SE ranking on the Y axis. Seeing a graph of a keyword’s rankings across a timeline (similar to what Alexa does) would be a valuable tool. Conclusion TMC Labs was very pleased with the features of WebPosition Platinum, as well as its ease of use, which surely and fortunately will not intimidate marketing managers new to the SEO game. WebPosition Gold 3 Platinum is, without a doubt, the premiere search engine optimization software utility on the planet, and we enthusiastically give it two thumbs up!

RATINGS (0–5) Installation: 4 Documentation: 4.5 Features: 4.75 GUI: 5 Overall: A

For information and subscriptions, visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800. 66 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index

Caller ID++ Know your caller before you answer.

With databases of 250 million consumers and 14 million businesses you know more information on a caller than just a name and phone number. That means you can begin a real database marketing program.

1 Enable call centers to display key information on agents’ screens before the call is answered. 2 Shorten data collection time by an average of 30 seconds per call or a savings of $.45 per call. 3 Increase accuracy and eliminate data entry errors. 4 Allow agents to spend more time serving customers and closing sales. 5 Make it simple to implement, with no equipment to buy or hardware to set up.

PEOPLE PROFILE BUSINESS PROFILE (925) 960-2368 (402) 571-1535 David T. Slater Artisan Woods Number of Employees: 1-4 635 Glade Fork Road 3377 N 88th Plaza Type of Business: CABINETS- Crab Orchard, KY 40419-9738 Omaha, NE 68134-4751 MANUFACTURERS Home Value: $145,000 Sales Volume: Less Than 500,000 Credit Rating Score: 92 (A) Excellent

USES & APPLICATIONS • Customer Relationship Management: Your CRM system will be vastly improved through prospect profiling and improved customer relationships. • Call Routing: Direct the call to where it can best be served. • Sales Order Entry: Reduce data collection time, freeing up your staff for better service and quicker order processing. • Marketing Enhancements: Add the enriched demographics to adjust your current campaign and create future ones. • Customer Profiling: Benefit your existing portfolio with more targeted marketing and personalized service.

To get started, call Amit Khanna at 888-316-0237 or email: [email protected] for a brief presentation on the service.

Website: www.license.infoUSA.com 5711 S. 86th Circle Omaha,NE 68127

ID-CIS Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Reducing Staff May Cost You Money

By Penny Reynolds, The Call Center School

Many businesses have felt the effect of Unfortunately, service isn’t the only increased our telephone bill by $93.80 for a slowed economy over the past few years. thing that suffers. With 33 staff members that hour! And this doesn’t even take All departments, including the call center, in place to handle the call workload, agent into account the likelihood that calls have been asked to tighten their belts and occupancy (the measure of how busy under these circumstances will more make the most of resources. staff are during the period of time they’re often fail to reach expected service levels. Because about 75 percent of call center’s logged in and available) is in an accept- The cost implications are even more operating costs are related to staffing, that able range at 88 percent. Taking one body dangerous in a revenue-producing center. is generally the first place the call center away raises occupancy levels to 91 per- If the value of a contact is $50, and agent manager might look to reduce costs. It is cent; taking two away results in 94 per- salaries are $20 per hour, it is easy to see all too common to think of layoffs and cent occupancy; and taking three staff that putting another agent on the phone reduction in staff as a way to respond to members away means staff would be busy will pay for itself even if the agent the call from senior management to tight- 97 percent of the time during the hour. In answers only one call per hour that would en belts. But before you write up the other words, there would be a total of otherwise have abandoned from the pink slips, make sure you understand the only 3 percent of the hour (108 seconds) queue. Even if the value of the call is only implications of staff reductions. of “breathing room” between calls. Such a $5, there is clearly a trade-off in deter- Let’s assume that you’re a fairly small high level of occupancy can’t be main- mining the staffing level that will produce call center with fewer than 50 agent seats. tained for long. The likely result will be the highest net bottom line. The return (If you’re a larger center, you can view longer handle times, longer periods spent on appropriate staffing must be argued these numbers as representative of a spe- in after-call work to “catch their breath,” against budget constraints. cialized agent group within the bigger call burnout and, inevitably, turnover. So, from three different perspectives: center structure.) Most days, you’re meet- There’s another downside to consider that of the customer (service delays), the ing your service goal of 30 seconds. The from a cost perspective. The idea was to agent (higher occupancy), and senior snapshot below indicates the staffing pic- save money by eliminating staff. management (higher telephone costs and ture with varying numbers of staff during Assuming a wage rate of $20 per hour, abandoned calls), it’s easy to see that a an hour in which you’re getting 350 calls. then eliminating three staff members, simple staff reduction may not save you would result in a savings of $60 for that any money. In fact, it may cost you much Number Avg Delay Staff hour. more in terms of poor service, productivi- of Staff (ASA) Occupancy However, if your center is paying the ty, morale and just the opposite direction 30 298 sec. 97% phone bill by providing a toll-free service on your bottom line than what you 31 107 sec. 94% for callers, the reduction in staff might be intended. 32 54 sec. 91% outweighed by the increased telephone 33 30 sec. 88% costs associated with the longer delay Penny Reynolds is a Founding Partner 34 18 sec. 86% times. In this example, with 33 staff of The Call Center School, a Nashville, 35 11 sec. 83% members in place, the average delay is 30 Tennessee-based consulting and educa- seconds per call. Multiply that by 350 tion company. She is the author of sev- Staffing with 33 “bodies in chairs” calls per hour and that’s 10,500 seconds eral call center management books, would enable you to meet the service goal (or 175 minutes) of delay. If we apply a including Call Center Staffing— The fairly consistently. A strategy of decreas- fully loaded telephone cost per minute to Complete, Practical Guide to Workforce ing staff numbers to reduce costs would that usage of $.06 per minute, that’s Management. Contact her at penny. impact service directly. The loss of one $10.50 for the queue time. [email protected] or person would worsen delays from 30 sec- If we reduce the numbers to 30 staff, call 615-812-8410. onds to 54 seconds. Eliminating another remember our average delay increases to If you are interested in purchasing reprints of person would double the wait 107 sec- 298 seconds of delay per call. Multiply this article (in either print or HTML format), onds, and reducing staffing levels by three that by 350 calls and that’s 1,738 minutes please visit Reprint Management Services online at http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact agents would result in an average delay of of delay, priced at $.06 for a total of a representative via e-mail at reprints@tmcnet. 298 seconds. Those callers accustomed to $104.30 for the queue time that hour. In com or by phone at 800-290-5460. waiting for only half a minute in queue other words, by eliminating three staff For information and subscriptions, would now be waiting nearly five minutes! members to save money, we’ve just visit http://www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800. 68 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index ADC_cropcircle_ad.qxd 9/8/04 8:35 AM Page 1

The Sign of Intelligent CRM

Compliance issues can crop up overnight. But they’re not alien to us. Outsource your call center activities to the intelligent choice – Advanced Data-Comm.

Do-Not-Call? We’ve all heard the horror stories. Just one illegal call could cost you $10,000 or more. But the secret to avoiding these exorbitant fines and complying with federal and state laws isn’t a mystery – simply outsource to Advanced Data-Comm. Get FREE advice on Do-Not-Worry! your most troublesome Advanced Data-Comm has a thorough understanding of compliance issues. federal and state calling laws – and we’re ready to step Log on now at: in and make sure you don’t inadvertently break them. www.advanced-data.com/complyguy

Get Results! Get back to the business of running your business – without worries of accidentally ™ violating calling laws. Peace Of Mind Customer Care Advanced Data-Comm will prevent compliance problems from “cropping-up” – so you can relax again! 800-582-9501 or (563) 582-9501 301 Data Court, Dubuque, Iowa 52003 © 2004 Advanced Data-Comm, Dubuque, Iowa Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index DATABASE EXECUTIVE RECRUITING

Know Thy Customer! Professional Telesales/Customer Service 220 Million Consumers - Identify age, income, home value, Management Searches buying behavior, geography, and more. • Search consultants to most of the top ten service agencies in the U.S. 14 Million Businesses - Identify geography, sales volume, and over 50 of the Fortune 500 companies. Small companies, too. business type, contact name, credit rating, and more. • All custom searches using a 25,000 resume file plus extensive proactive calling. Customer Analyzer & Prospect Builder - Analyze your current • Dedicated telesales/customer service searches since 1981… the first customers & find prospects that match. and the best! R.L. Bencin & Associates Call Mark Schwartz: 8553 Timber Trail Resumes welcomed! (402) 596-8933 Brecksville, OH 44141 E-mail: [email protected] 440-526-6726 Web site: www.rlbencin.com

DIGITAL RECORDING LISTS

TELESERVICES AGENCIES — OUTSOURCING

Why Buy A Call Logger When You Can Pay By The Call? • Record the whole call or just the sales transaction • Instant on-line retrieval with no special equipment

#1 IN THIRD PARTY • Quality monitoring and review available VERIFICATION • Pay only for what you use AND NOW – # 1 IN CALL RECORDING SERVICES • Set up in as little as 24 hours TRAINING

www.voicelog.com • 301.230.2129 • [email protected]

To receive free information from our premium advertisers, please visit freeinfo.tmcnet.com THE INTEGRATED MARKETPLACE THE INTEGRATED

70 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Objective And To Advertise in Customer In-Depth. Inter@ction Solutions ® Please Contact Your Account Representative Today at 203-852-6800, ext. 139 or [email protected] How CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® magazine (ISSN: 1533-3078) is published monthly by Technology Marketing Corporation, One Refreshing! Technology Plaza, Norwalk, CT 06854 U.S.A. and is mailed approximately the 1st of each month. Periodicals postage paid at Norwalk, Connecticut and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to: CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions®, Technology Marketing Corporation, P.O. Box 21642, St. Paul, MN 55121 U.S.A. To subscribe, call toll-free: 800-243-6002. If busy, call 203-852- 6800 or write to the circulation director at [email protected]. Subscription rates (published monthly): Free for qualified subscribers We Test The Products in the U.S.A. only. For non-qualified U.S.A. subscribers, $49. All So You Don’t Have To. Canadian subscribers, $49. All Foreign (air mail), $85. All orders are http://www.tmclabs.com payable in advance in U.S. dollars drawn against a U.S. bank. Connecticut residents add applicable sales tax. ADVERTISING Advertiser/ Page Advertiser/ Page Advertiser/ Page Web Address Number Web Address Number Web Address Number

Advanced Data-Comm ...... 69 INTERNET TELEPHONY SER Solutions, Inc...... 37 http://www.advanced-data.com Conference & Expo...... 30, 31 http://www.ser.com http://www.itexpo.com

Amae Software ...... 53 Spectrum Corp...... 25 http://www.amaesoftware.com http://www.specorp.com IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer Award ...... 50 http://www.tmcnet.com Barbados Investment & Speech-World Conference & Expo . . . . . 47 Development Corp. (BIDC) ...... 21 http://www.speech-world.com http://www.bidc.com Jacada...... 41 http://www.jacada.com SPIRIT ...... 36 Five9, Inc...... 7 http://www.spiritdsp.com http://www.five9.com Left Bank Solutions Inc...... 11, 23 http://www.leftbanksolutions.com Stratasoft ...... 45 FrontRange Solutions ...... 9 http://www.stratasoft.com http://www.frontrange.com

Mercom ...... 59 http://www.mercom.com Telephony@Work ...... cover 4 GN Netcom, Inc...... 3 http://www.telephonyatwork.com http://www.gnnetcom.com

Plantronics, Inc...... 17 Verint Systems, Inc...... 61 IEX Corp...... 13 http://www.plantronics.com http://www.verint.com http://www.iex.com INDEX infoUSA...... 33, 67 Precision Response Corp...... cover 3 West Corp...... cover 2, 1 http://www.license.infousa.com http://www.prcnet.com http://www.west.com

InfoCision Management Corp...... 19 Sennheiser Communications ...... 29 http://www.infocision.com http://www.sennheiser.com

Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 71 Last Call you spell that? I said “Thank You” politely, and hung up, resolved to call another company. By Tracey E. Now, maybe I’m expecting too much, but Schelmetic, when I informed the first person who Editorial Director, answered my call that I was, essentially, Customer both a potential new customer and an indi- Inter@ction vidual who has the power to take away one Solutions® of their existing service accounts, shouldn’t that have thrown up a red flag that my call should be prioritized, or that I should, at the very least, be properly directed to someone who could help me? Welcome to a new era of Secondly, the tone of the experience bothered me. When I shop for books or customer contact. DVDs, I want my experience to be slick, high-tech, automated and fast. When I shop for an oil company, I’d like to feel that I bet you’ve heard that before, huh? Despite the preponderance of diet aids, “small town mom-and-pop” attitude that Probably from many editors and analysts, we’re a chubbier nation than ever before. means if my oil burner cashes out on a dark including me. It’s become the contact cen- Why? Probably because all the things that and stormy Sunday night, I’ll find someone ter’s version of “Have A Nice Day.” It’s often make it “easier” for us to lose weight have who actually cares (other than me, of uttered, but we seldom notice it anymore, and just made it easier to forget that the only course) and that I’m not dealing with a we’re not even completely sure what it means. way to lose weight is to eat properly and to franchise of a branch of a branch of a com- We’ve entered an era in which we can buy get more exercise. The rest simply gets in pany located a thousand miles away. The the sexiest technologies known to telecom- the way. I’m not advocating you chuck your last thing I want to be faced with is a Kevlar munications for our call centers. We can beloved Atkins diet book or toss out your IVR with its “zero out” option dismantled. Web-enable, speech-enable and IP-enable tofu; we really only need to remember these That tells me that this is a company that our contact centers. We can make IVRs so things are merely minor aids in accomplish- wants to hide from me. smart they sound like people. We can up our ing the task. Here’s the most shocking part of all these processing power, lower our agent turnover, In the same way, customer-facing organi- long-lingering inefficiencies: they can’t be expand our self-service and contract our zations need to remember that the tech- automated away. They can’t be Web- average handle time. We can serve up data nologies don’t make the experience. They enabled, or speech-enabled. They can’t be shaken not stirred, turn employee gossip and don’t improve anything if they’re not used networked, software developed or open chat into company capital, monitor the voice properly.All they do is alienate customers in source-coded. They require human brain stress in our agents, automatically pre-screen a more high-tech way than before. Proper power and common sense. Remember that? our employees, and automate our schedul- use involves understanding what your cus- It’s been rapidly disappearing from the ing, recording and training. We can translate tomer is looking for from you, and applying human race for some time. At the risk of our Web chat into Brazilian Portuguese, common sense to your business practices. sounding like Grandpa in one of his more offer video conferencing to our best cus- An example: I’ve recently purchased a crotchety moods, what happened to critical tomers and monitor our shoppers’ behavior house, and have been busy getting all my thinking? Do the top executives of compa- online. After all that, we can order up utility companies, old and new, in a row. I nies with large customer service entities reports so sleek they should be on a Milan called the company that maintained the oil actually call their own contact centers catwalk wearing Manolo Blahnik shoes. burner for the previous owners. I was sud- sometimes? Do they try and navigate their So the eternal question remains: Why do denly dropped into a very involved, very own IVRs? Do they try and engage their so many companies still have such rotten expensive IVR system. Problem was, my agents in a chat session? Do they know customer service? question didn’t fall into any of the menus on their outsourcers? Do they talk to their own Ask yourself this question: Nowadays, we their menu tree. I pressed zero.“We’re sorry, agents and call center managers? Do they have Atkins diets, South Beach diets, Zone that’s not a valid option.” I waited through know how much they pay their agents and diets, low-fat diets, cross-trainers, e-dieting, the menu once again, and chose a button at what the relationship between pay scale and personal trainers, Pilates, yoga, yogurt, exer- random, then explaining to the woman who the quality of the employee is? Do they try cise DVDs, tai chi, power walking, spin- answered that I had purchased a home for- and look at their companies through their ning, soy, green tea, sugar substitutes and merly serviced by their company and need- customers’ eyes? more vegetables in the supermarket than I ed some background information on the Do they even know who their customers ever realized actually grew on the planet. account. “I’m sorry, that’s not my depart- are? (I’m still not convinced that some of them ment,” I was informed. I was transferred. I For now, I’ll say welcome to another actually do.) waited. I huffed. I was ultimately told they chapter in the never-ending saga of the Do we all have bodies like the people in couldn’t find the address, and did I know quest for perfect customer service. I look Bowflex ads? Not a chance. the name of the previous owners? How do forward to navigating 2005 with you.

72 CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions® January 2005 Subscribe FREE online at www.cismag.com

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index 058715040006_0005.qxd 6/1/04 6:52 AM Page 1

When it comes to customer service your reputation is on the line.

Every time. All the time.

Can you outsource and still provide quality customer service? Yes, with Precision Response Corporation— a leading provider of outsourced customer care services with over 20 years of experience.

If you want your company to be ahead of the pack, PRC is the right partner for all of your customer service needs, providing inbound/outbound teleservices, email management, fulfillment, and web customer support to some of America’s leading brands including many top Fortune 500 companies.

Reputation is paramount. Call us. 1- 888 - CALL- PRC or visit us at www.prcnet.com

©Precision Response Corporation, 2004. PRC is an operating business of IAC/InterActiveCorp. Document1 12/20/2004 2:12 PM Page 1

Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index