For the second year, ICMI Call Center Demo was held in Miami Florida. Following are technologies that were highlighted at the show.
» CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
SoundBite has partnered with Mindshare to offer businesses an outbound survey application that can be delivered to customers immediately following any interaction to gauge their experience. The solution provides businesses with immediate feedback on customer experiences which results in higher customer response rates. Using automated voice messages in a hosted environment allows businesses to reach customers faster without the need for live agents or on-premise hardware and software. As a result, businesses now have a cost-effective survey solution that can be applied to virtually any type of customer service initiative that is supported by a call center. http://www.soundbite.com
» CUSTOMER SATISFACTION MEASUREMENT
CFI Group introduced CallSat, a call center measurement solution from the creators of the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Now call center managers can use the “gold-standard” of satisfaction metrics to assess the customer experience, identify profitable improvements, and justify resource allocation decisions. CallSat includes proven survey design, hassle-free deployment, patented analysis, and a flexible online reporting tool to monitor results in real-time. http://www.cfigroup.com
» DESKTOP PRODUCTIVITY
Cicero Inc. announced that it has successfully certified its products to meet the Certified for Windows Vista standard. In addition to being certified for Windows 2000 and XP, Cicero’s proven integration framework now supports integrating and enabling applications in a Vista environment allowing companies 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
» PHONE NUMBER APPENDING
Learn how to improve call center productivity with TransUnion Contact. With daily updated phone information, your organization can minimize wasted telemarketing effort with increased right-party contact information. Append missing phone numbers to increase connect rates and decrease operational costs. TransUnion provides solutions for telemarketing organizations requiring up-to-date and accurate phone numbers sourced directly from telephone companies. Use custom match analytics to meet your specific business needs to reduce overall data and call center costs. http://www.transunion.com
» QUALITY MONITORING
CallCopy has opened 2008 with several new initiatives. First, they announced the hiring of Eric Kinsey as their new Director of Channel Sales. Eric brings many years of experience in channel management to the table, including an extended tenure in the call recording / quality monitoring market. Second, CallCopy released a new product in Q1 2008, their cc: Survey application. cc: Survey can support both IVR-based surveys and web-based surveys. Survey results and detailed reports are available via web browser, while full permission to ensure access to critical business data is granted or restricted according to individual user needs. cc: Survey is available as a stand-alone application, or customers can choose to integrate the surveys into their cc: Discover quality monitoring system. http://www.callcopy.com
Envision continues to enhance the functionality and customer value of its core coaching and recording solutions, including expansions into the areas of security (Envision Identity Protection™) and quality assurance. Most recently, Envision released Envision Analytics™ for aggregating audio and application-based data to provide performance management results both inside the call center and throughout other key functional and customer-facing areas of the enterprise. Envision Analytics is a Web-based dashboard that consolidates, analyzes and shares market, customer, contact center and enterprise data, providing a contextual view of enterprise performance. Analytics allow contact center managers and executives to capture, listen to and make informed adjustments and improvements as needed based on the voice of the customer. By compiling, analyzing and then proactively acting on the knowledge attainable through Envision Analytics, enterprises are able to measurably increase revenues, as well as customer satisfaction/retention. http://www.envisioninc.com
Teleformix’s ECHO is a browser-based, digital recording, quality monitoring platform which includes SOA architecture. ECHO delivers an open infrastructure integrating with Avaya and Cisco voice solutions seamlessly, and the system can grow with your business. ECHO also has an optional e-Training module which lets you train your agents at their workstations. http://www.teleformix.com
ZOOM International is a provider of multimedia recording and quality monitoring solutions. Their solutions seamlessly integrate with other unifed communcations environments for worldwide clients.http:/www.zoomint.com
» TESTING SERVICES
IQ Services has joined in partnership with Clarus Systems to provide a more comprehensive offering for IP Call Centers. The addition of active, automated IP telephony testing that allows customers to know that every phone in their infrastructure is installed, working and properly configured for class of service and other critical parameters, is another key step to being confident that customers will have the optimum end user experience. Understanding the risk areas associated with today’s call centers and having flexible approaches for planning and implementing testing make projects more successful. Providing cost effective testing services that help project managers plan for and manage the risks associated with deploying and maintaining today’s complex call center systems is critical to meeting call center customer satisfaction and ROI objectives. http://www.iq-services.com
» WORKFORCE OPTIMIZATION
BBN Technologies’ AVOKE Call Browser system captures and analyzes the caller's cradle-to-grave experience following calls thru transfers and across IVRs, sites, and partners. And, it does so without requiring any hardware or software in any center. BBN's customers route calls through the AVOKE system, which uses recognition to extract data about the call. The result is data and audio for the entire call without having to build a complex data warehouse. In addition, BBN has added weekly trending reports, support for more custom and flexible categorization, and the ability to see how a call was terminated and who hung-up first. Call centers have long known that true end-to-end reporting is the key to optimizing cost and satisfaction with both automation and agents. http://www.bbn.com
Calabrio showed how contact centers can better align with corporate business objectives by automating best practices and workforce. They also showed how to effectively incorporate and present information so the right people have the right information in order to make the right decisions. Calabrio Workforce Optimization software helps supervisors and other managers align contact center performance and business objectives by integrating workforce optimization within the team’s daily workflow. It combines both the agent and supervisor desktop tools in a composite application along with workforce optimization software. This unifies the entire customer interaction process.
The Calabrio suite of products unifies the entire customer interaction process for agents and supervisors. The suite helps supervisors and managers take immediate action or make planned evaluations and adjustments in order to optimize team performance in a “Customer-Centric” network. http://www.calabrio.com
Autonomy etalk introduced Qfiniti Web Access, a secure thin-client interface for connecting users to voice and screen recordings and agent performance evaluations through a web-enabled browser. This tool enables the business to extend compliance and quality management to globally distributed offices and external business partners, regardless of location or language spoken. Qfiniti Web Access employs enhanced security such as https, data encryption, and client-side certificates to ensure the protection of critical contact center data. http://www.etalk.com
Merced Systems announced that 2007 was another record year in licenses sold and seats deployed for performance management applications. Through accelerated customer acquisitions, a strong and growing presence internationally, and a series of product launches, Merced Systems’ 2007 profitability strengthens the company for continued rapid growth in the customer operations performance management category. Major highlights in 2007 include: a 100% increase in total customers, including the largest publicly traded commercial health benefits company in the U.S. and one of the biggest international wireless and communications providers; a 100% increase in total software licenses sold with 5 deals over $1M; and the release of Merced Performance Suite v3.0, Merced Performance Suite Global Edition and Merced PowerCoach. http://www.mercedsystems.com
Prosodie Interactive voice technologies enable organizations to achieve success by applying inbound IVR and outbound telephony solutions which reinforce extraordinary customer service, and implement best practice methodologies. http://www.prosodieinteractive.com
Following the launch of its next-generation Impact 360® Workforce Optimization suite, Verint® Witness Actionable Solutions™ showcased its solution spotlighting the analytics-driven workforce optimization software and services. Verint helps organizations that are striving to analyze and extract critical information from customer interactions, by optimizing workforce performance, improving the overall effectiveness of their customer service operations, and enhancing their customer’s experience.
As a unified, analytics-driven workforce optimization offering, Impact 360 helps organizations improve the entire customer service delivery network – from contact centers to branch stores and remote offices to back-office operations. The next-generation Impact 360 suite includes a multitude of new functionality across quality monitoring and call recording, speech and data analytics, workforce management, customer feedback, eLearning and performance management to help improve the customer experience across virtually every customer touch point across an organization. http://www.verint.com