Desktop Integration
Cicero Inc. announced that it has successfully certified its products with Avaya and expanded its integration capabilities with Citrix. Cicero’s integration framework now supports integrating and enabling Avaya’s IP Agent and Communications Manager allowing companies to quickly integrate Avaya’s products with other applications on the desktop without having to write new code or change those applications. In addition, Cicero can now be used to rapidly integrate applications in a Citrix environment to improve agent productivity and elevate the customer experience. Cicero automates workflow and provides a cost-effective way to organize diverse business applications within a consistent, task-oriented desktop. Using Cicero, organizations can quickly integrate and enable business applications such as CRM, legacy, Web, Windows, and Web Services. http://www.ciceroinc.com
Employment Assessment
Employment Techniques Corporation introduced two new offerings. EASy Simulation® – e.SKILLS™, an interactive simulation for written communication skills, is now available online. e.SKILLS identifies individuals with skills to effectively respond to customers by email, live chat, or other electronic means. This simulation assesses and develops key job skills including email composition, data entry, and typing/keyboarding. e.SKILLS can be used with applicants to identify top performers and can be used with existing employees to target their skill strengths and development needs. Using Simulation on Demand® technology, EASy Simulation® CA$H® eliminates the hassle of onsite testing and lets you prescreen applicants before they ever walk through your door. CA$H is a simulation designed specifically for the collection agent position. This realistic simulation lets applicants demonstrate their ability to interact with customers regarding delinquent accounts, access multiple databases, overcome stall tactics, negotiate payments, and document call results. CA$H accurately predicts each applicant’s potential for success and pinpoints applicants’ skill strengths and development needs. www.easysimulations.com
LIMRA International and LOMA united earlier this year, combining their assessment and development expertise to help clients better meet business needs now and in the future. Their new Assessment Solutions business unit is currently conducting research to create a test that will help contact centers accurately determine which of their current reps have what it takes to succeed as virtual (home-based) agents and to help in hiring potential new virtual agents. This new assessment will be an addition to the current product line, which includes some useful tools for assessing and developing call center representatives. For example, their SellingStyles Questionnaire assesses sales personality, describing how job applicants will behave in each step of the sales process (including analyzing needs and closing sales). Companies can use this information to effectively identify, train, and manage each individual. They also offer Sales Booster, a self-development program that helps reps align their thinking with their sales objectives to increase overall sales. It uncovers tendencies that may unconsciously hold reps back from reaching their full potential in sales, and provides developmental exercises for immediate improvement. www.limra.com
Feedback - Analysis
Metrix Matrix performs satisfaction research for many different types of organizations and functions over many types of populations. Their core business is the collections and reporting of satisfaction levels and their key drivers from customers. Their research methods provide their clients continuous qualitative feedback on the services they are providing. This is essential to reinforce favorable behaviors and processes as they occur as well as preventing poor performance and processes before they become a much bigger problem. www.metrixmatrix.com
Syntellect, Inc., a provider of contact center management solutions, announced the launch of Survey Manager, an integrated survey module for their Syntellect Customer Interaction Management (CIM) solution which allows customers access to the contact center by any method they choose, whether voice, voicemail, e-mail, Web chat or Web forms. Survey Manager extends this flexibility by offering customers the chance to provide their feedback in the manner and time they wish. www.syntellect.com
Furniture – Site Design
Interior Concepts, a leader in proving custom call center furniture, stated there are several new trends in call center furniture, including the return of woodgrains, natural decorative elements, and sustainable color options. Woodgrains have had a strong reemergence over the last few years. The trend started with lighter maple grains and has moved towards darker woodgrains. These range from a walnut pattern to a vertical patterned manufactured grain. Another popular trend is decorative acrylic panels that contain natural elements such as grass, leaves or bamboo. The decorative acrylic adds extra design flair to upper panels, reception, and administrative areas. Even using the decorative acrylic in only a few spaces can really dress up a space. Style must no longer be sacrificed over sustainability when making design based color selections. Sustainable products are now the norm for most furniture manufacturers and are available in the latest color styles and patterns. www.interiorconcepts.com
Performance Management – Analytics
Envision Telephony, Inc., a leading global provider of software solutions for the contact center and the enterprise, today announced the immediate availability of Envision Centricity™, a Web-based product platform that unifies Envision’s core workforce optimization (WFO) solutions for the contact center. Envision Centricity provides management with powerful analytics and a consolidated dashboard to gather and aggregate information for proactive, predictive and preventive contact center and enterprise decision-making. With Envision Centricity, customers can easily align contact center key performance indicators with those of the organization with flexible, personalized and analytics-driven dashboards that “right-size” the amount and types of customer interaction data being captured and displayed. By utilizing Envision Centricity, data becomes not only meaningful but also transferable knowledge that allows decision-makers to identify and immediately react to trends that affect the contact center or other parts of the business. www.envisioninc.com
T-Metrics provides Call Center ACD products that use existing wiring, phones and switches to provide a quick and efficient method to obtain the agent who is most qualified to handle callers’ needs. Features include skills-based routing, Web-based reports, call recording, supervisor monitoring, remote agents and real-time changes by organization’s personnel. The Company has a great deal of experience worldwide with state and local governments, hospitals, universities, banks, small and large corporations and the military. Because the Company provides turn-key solutions from design to installation and ongoing support, its customers have one source from which they can receive immediate solutions to all their Call Center needs. www.temetrics.com
Verint Systems Inc. announced its new Impact 360 Coaching solution. The software helps organizations enhance the customer experience by initiating, delivering and following up on personalized coaching sessions between employees and supervisors. Verint® Witness Actionable Solutions™ offers Impact 360 Coaching as the latest addition to the company’s analytics-driven workforce optimization (WFO) suite. The software is a synergistic contact center and enterprise learning solution that supports staff development, ongoing training and agent career pathing, along with such organizational focuses as employee retention, and the drive toward sales and service excellence.
Impact 360 Coaching, and its patent-pending features, is designed to help organizations enhance employee performance and proficiencies through personalized coaching sessions triggered by the software’s native business integrations with key elements of WFO. By tying coaching together with scorecards, key performance indicators (KPIs), quality evaluations, training and other benchmark metrics, Impact 360 Coaching introduces a more formalized one-on-one learning process, helping employees develop and enhance the skills they need to be successful. http://www.verint.com
VPI now offers a cost effective, easy to acquire and use standardized, "plug and play" real-time performance management package for Cisco users that covers the majority of contact center operational improvement needs out-of-the-box, without the need for professional services. The package integrates ACD telephony and VPI's Quality Management (QM) data into powerful analytics with 18 drill-through reports, over 50 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), 3 scorecards, and 3 ticker-like desktop dashboard displays are standard. The package empowers contact centers with relevant, real-time intelligence to rapidly optimize operational performance, service quality and risk management. VPI's plug and play performance management software dramatically shortens implementation timelines (substantially below the industry's standard), and provides for faster ROI for customers as a direct consequence. www.voiceprintonline.com
Testing - Data/Performance Analysis
IQ Services, a premier provider of voice testing services for contact center and communication solutions, has launched three new offerings, which allow customers to integrate valuable voice and fax data into HP Performance Center. The three new offerings -- Voice StressTest™ Monitor, Voice HeartBeat™ Monitor and FaxStress™ Monitor -- offer HP Performance Center users a more complete view of their communication and contact center solution performance. With the evolving partnership and merger of telephony and IT departments, it is inevitable that businesses will need to extend their traditional IT governance and monitoring tools to include the testing and monitoring of voice channel data. IQ Services' new offerings for HP Performance Center make this integration a reality. www.iq-services.com
Unified Solutions
The OpenSpan Platform integrates applications and service-enable legacy systems. Their solution helps to automate business processes, extend functionality and build new composite applications in order to realize immediate value on their IT investments. OpenSpan interfaces directly with the objects within applications, in very much the same way these objects interface with the operating system which lets you integrate applications within days instead of months. The platform can integrate virtually any application including host/mainframe, Windows, Java, PowerBuilder, DOS and web applications as well as web services. The OpenSpan Platform enables contact center organizations to derive more business value from their software applications by simplifying integration with other applications, automating workflows across applications, adding or restricting functionality to support changing business needs and optimizing user interfaces for agents. www.openspan.com
There was a new face at ACCE this year, SAP, a leader in enterprise software. SAP demonstrated their recently acquired contact center solution, Business Communications Management (BCM). SAP claims that their solution is unique in that it is a comprehensive, all-in-one contact center solution as well as back office and mobility solution that comes integrated with SAP CRM out of the box.
Through live demonstrations, SAP was to show how their solution addresses today’s mobile society and how combining on-site agents, remote or home agents and mobile experts into one global virtual Contact Center allows enterprises to turn the challenges into a competitive advantage. www.sap.com/bcm.