| |
|
|
|
Avaya has a broad range of product and service offerings. What is the overall game plan for the company in the next year? With the largest installed base of contact center and messaging customers worldwide, Avaya is committed to providing investment protection and growth options for our customers to expand and acquire new technologies and innovative customer care technologies. We will continue to build upon today’s leadership in contact centers and messaging, expanding our SIP telephony and presence integration, and adding collaboration tools, communications-enabled business applications, and Web Services-based applications.
Contact center consolidation, coupled with enabling technology, is redefining the “physical” call center where agents are designated in common pools. This shift in paradigm allows savvy enterprises to involve employees throughout the enterprise to serve the customer. In this new world, self service applications address customer needs on the front end, and personal agents are able to triage experts from around the globe as needed.
As a result of converging technologies and collaborative software, we see communications converging into a highly productive unified user experience. There has been a significant amount of discussion, promotion, and press about implementing IP in contact centers. What has been the acceptance level? What has been the balance between pure vs. hybrid implementations? A widespread adoption of IP in the contact center is underway. VoIP has moved past the “early adopter” category and into the mainstream. Some companies are making the transition to IP end-to-end, while others want to move there gradually. At Avaya, we believe in offering our customers the flexibility to deploy IP according to the needs of their business. Since Avaya contact center applications are infrastructure agnostic, our customers have these choices. Initially, many of our customers implement a hybrid model in a select area of their business, giving themselves the opportunity to identify and rectify any network or other issues prior to enterprise-wide deployment. Others make the transition to pure IP immediately, to improve savings and business benefits. Avaya provides customizable solutions that enable a gradual migration to an IP Contact Center strategy as a business grows and evolves. Your path, your pace, your choice.
From a user perspective what has been the most significant benefits of these IP implementations? What have been the major impediments to success? The transition to IP is gaining momentum because of significant cost savings, and improvements in workplace productivity and customer service. Companies are using IP to do things they couldn’t afford to do previously. They are consolidating multiple contact centers into one centralized center, and are using IP to cost-effectively extend the contact center throughout the enterprise. Now, the same rich suite of contact center applications is available to small offices, branch offices and mobile or remote workers, enabling companies to present a consistent brand image to their customers. Some of our customers have experienced noteworthy gains in efficiency with this model by using available employees, regardless of location, during peak call volumes. Conversely, contact center agents are able to help out when branch employees are overloaded.
The impediments our customers have experienced are primarily internal. Sometimes there are challenges in merging staff, combining separate voice and data teams into one IT team. A successful migration necessitates conducting a thorough network evaluation, which is not always done at the detailed, meticulous level that is required. It requires having knowledgeable experts doing this evaluation, and making changes as identified to support the stringent requirements of running voice over a converged infrastructure. Avaya can also with this assessment. Speech applications have had slow acceptance over the past years. Has their acceptance accelerated? What role do you see Speech applications playing in the near future? Speech applications play a critical role in providing 24x7, high quality services as part of our overall contact center offering. Historically, costs of the technology and the relative infancy of the technology itself, combined with a lack of available skills, have limited their acceptance.
With the adoption of VoiceXML and a Web-based paradigm, we see the adoption of speech applications rapidly accelerating into not only large enterprises, but into mid-size businesses as well. Speech applications will play an increasingly important role in providing consistent service levels at all hours of the day, going beyond the “low cost” or “edge hours” that call centers don’t wish to staff. Businesses are discovering that as intuitive, user-friendly speech-based interfaces are deployed, customers are beginning to gravitate toward self-service options. As this trend continues, not only will costs be lower, but service levels will be enhanced as well. Avaya has products that are target both large and mid size contact centers. How do your applications differ for these markets?
No matter how big your business, maximizing customer service requires that you respond quickly and serve customers at their convenience by whatever methods they prefer. That means having the ability to communicate seamlessly across all channels. Consistency is the name of the game.
Avaya Customer Interaction Suite solutions are designed to grow along with your business. The unique Avaya approach to multi-channel contact center solutions includes robust computer telephony integration (CTI); customer segmentation and intelligent routing; voice, Web, and e-mail interactions; and virtual enterprise and IP contact center applications, backed by end-to-end global services, that allow organizations of all sizes to cost-efficiently implement business solutions.
Business needs, not necessarily size, should drive the selection of the right solution. Avaya provides a variety of solutions that can be tailored to meet each company’s unique business needs, regardless of size. Avaya plays in some highly competitive markets. Who are your major competitors in the IP contact center arena? How do you differentiate yourselves from them? According to Synergy Research Group, Avaya is the worldwide market share leader in IP Telephony and Gartner names us as the leader in contact center market share in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Our major competitors tend to be Cisco, Nortel, and Aspect (formerly Concerto).
Our innovative communications and contact center solutions have several important differentiators that have helped Avaya achieve this leadership. First of all, Avaya gives you one integrated solution that serves both business communications and contact center needs simultaneously. You gain efficiencies and cost savings, as well as installation, upgrade and services savings, by using a single Avaya communications server. Many other vendors require two or more separate servers, resulting in a higher total cost of ownership.
Additionally, we provide our customers the option of a gradual migration to IP, increasing a company’s flexibility to do what makes sense for them. Finally, our contact center applications include proven patented technology and predictive algorithms that maximize agent utilization. Since 60-70% of the costs of a contact center are attributed to agent salaries, maximizing agent utilization saves you a significant amount of money immediately. What role do you believe hosted applications will play in the future? What are the most significant tradeoffs between onsite and hosted implementations?
Companies are seeking more flexibility in how they meet their ongoing business needs. More companies are assessing whether to own or manage the underlying technology themselves, or whether to take advantage of additional options offered by hosted and managed solutions. As vendors in the contact center and CRM markets continue to consolidate, we fully expect more demand for integrated suites versus best-of-breed standalone solutions. With a hosted approach, an entire integrated suite of applications can be provided in a shrink-wrapped bundle, and can be partially or fully managed by Avaya. By providing multiple options for hosted and managed solutions, Avaya is able to meet varying customer needs and priorities.
Eileen Rudden is vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Communications Applications Division of Avaya. Avaya designs, builds and manages communications networks for more than 1 million businesses worldwide, and is a global leader in secure and reliable Internet Protocol (IP) telephony systems and communications software applications and services.
|
| |
|