January 1999
A Quartet Of Productivity Enhancing
Products
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ProAmerica Releases Customer Information Management
Solution |
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ProAmerica has released Connect-Care Version 6, an enterprisewide sales,
marketing, support and customer information management solution. The Connect-Care release
also marks a new name for the application, which was formerly known as SCM. Connect-Care
Version 6 is designed to allow companies to provide quality support and analysis
throughout the entire customer life cycle, from pre-sales events and individual marketing
activities such as direct mail campaigns. The software also tracks campaign responses,
leads generated and campaign effectiveness.
Connect-Care also has the ability to monitor the progression of a sales opportunity
from a qualified lead to a completed sale. Post-sale support and customer relationship
management is achieved through Connect-Care's tracking, support and reporting functions.
The core Connect-Care module gives organizations the flexibility to organize key
customer information at as many levels as necessary. In addition, there are five optional
modules that can be used to further extend Connect-Care's capabilities and tailor the
system to an organization's particular requirements:
Sales-Connect helps sales professionals identify, forecast and manage each component of
a sales opportunity including competition, confidence factor and revenue potential. To
measure marketing campaign effectiveness, information can be analyzed against win/loss
data and correlated back to the campaign that generated the lead.
Support-Connect gives customer service agents the ability to proactively support
customers before, during and after the call through features that track products, problems
and contracts. Additionally, the full-featured knowledge base enables support agents to
access enterprise information and find answers to customer questions quickly.
Quality-Connect allows organizations to manage the quality process by recording product
quality issues, tracking progress toward resolution, communicating workarounds and
publishing estimated completion dates.
Survey-Connect lets companies measure customer satisfaction levels. Utilizing a simple
four-step process, organizations can generate and implement surveys, analyze responses,
and improve business processes to meet customer expectations.
Web-Connect promotes communication by allowing sales, support, engineering, marketing
and other designated groups to access the Connect-Care knowledge base via the Internet.
Customers can also log on to find answers to questions without the aid of a support agent.
The product supports Window NT, Windows 95 and Windows 98 clients and many leading
relational database servers and engines.
No. 400, www.ccsmag.com/freeinfo
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Virtual Hold ACD From Virtual Hold |
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When placing a call into a call center, we have all experienced long
on-hold times that may or may not include an update as to how long the hold queue is.
These long hold times are frustrating and can often lead to a potential customer hanging
up. To address this problem, Virtual Hold Technology has designed the Virtual Hold ACD
(automatic call distributor), an ACD enhancement that monitors a call center's incoming
call queues and gives customers the option of requesting a callback instead of remaining
on hold for the next available agent. Virtual Hold works by monitoring the incoming
call queue, predicting the amount of hold time for each caller and guaranteeing a callback
within a set amount of time. The system maintains the caller's position in line without
requiring them to physically hold on the line. Virtual Hold guarantees first-in-first-out
service to callers; callbacks are made in the same order as they were placed on hold.
The Virtual Hold system automatically intercepts calls during peak periods and delivers
a message to each caller. Callers can choose to wait on hold or receive an automated
callback in a designated amount of time. If the designated callback is inconvenient,
additional scheduling options are offered. Utilizing full IVR capabilities during both
incoming and outgoing calls, Virtual Hold software can play user-recordable prompts to the
caller, capture the caller's telephone number (touch-tone or ANI) and record the caller's
name.
When callers opt for the Virtual Hold callback, they hang up and thereby eliminate the
charges the call center would have incurred if they had stayed on hold on the toll-free
line. Furthermore, call abandonment due to lengthy hold time is reduced and call blocks
are eliminated due to increased facility efficiency.
With Virtual Hold, callbacks are fully automated and transparent to the agent. Agents
do not waste any time initiating callbacks and staff training is not required. Answered
callbacks are transferred only when the correct party is already on the line and are
presented to the agent as if they were an original inbound call. This optimizes the use of
the call center agents.
The Virtual Hold system dials all calls from its own ports. Callbacks are routed
through PBX extensions automatically, eliminating the need for IVR prompting for
extensions. Outbound ports enable calls to be automatically re-queued if the callback
attempt results in a busy signal, no answer or answering machine pickup.
By providing callers with flexible options other than waiting in queue, Virtual Hold
increases customer satisfaction. During both the initial inbound call and also when
Virtual Hold makes the return call, callers hear several convenient options. Virtual Hold
features a stand-alone design and offers seamless integration with all automatic call
distribution systems. All major switch (ACD) vendors, including Siemens, Lucent, Nortel
and Aspect, are compatible with the Virtual Hold software. It also offers full interface
with IBM's CallPath software and other computer-telephony integration (CTI) applications.
No. 401, www.ccsmag.com/freeinfo
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Computer Telephony Development Platform From N-Soft |
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N-Soft has released Etrog, a computer telephony development platform
designed to allow client/server developers to integrate and control telephone
communications from PC-based client applications. Etrog uses advanced and open
technologies such as ActiveX, CT-Connect, TAPI, TCP/IP and other industry standards to
provide a computer telephony development environment to integrate such software as
OutLook97, Notes, Versatility and other popular call center management products. Etrog
facilitates the development and integration of call center products such as call routing,
skills-based routing, intelligent call/data blending, agent desktop management and call
center statistics. Etrog is also suited to CT-enable IVR applications for call control
integration with media and unified messaging products. Etrog provides a standard platform
for development and integration, freeing developers from having to support multiple CT
interfaces for different products and PBXs.
Etrog Agent is an ActiveX that controls telephony at an Agent's desktop. With Etrog
Agent, programs that provide "screen pops" with call information can be easily
integrated with "best-in-class" software.
Etrog Server is an ActiveX that controls centralized information in a call center. With
the information gathered by Etrog Server, applications can be written that: interface with
interactive voice response systems; call center help desks; call center administration
screens; and host-based routing scenarios. Etrog ActiveX modules simplify development for
Dialogic's CT-Connect CTI server. The ActiveX also simplify programming of CT applications
while providing an industry standard development platform allowing the most advanced type
of integration with the most popular software packages such as Office97, Outlook and
Notes. The platform of ActiveX allows for open integration with Windows NT based
programming such as MAPI, ISAPI and ODBC. Integration is possible using any language or
development environment that supports ActiveX including Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, Java
(J++), and C++. The Etrog ActiveX platform provides modules for development in 3 key areas
of call center development: call routing, desktop CT and call center statistics.
Call routing enables application integration with the CT-Connect so that all incoming
calls can be routed to a particular destination based on application criteria such as
database information. The Etrog Call Routing ActiveX allows applications to configure
various types of routing scenarios such as Route Points (an ACD queue without agents used
to intercept all incoming calls), and IVR queues. Applications can also define agent
groups that will be monitored by the Etrog Module. Applications can then query the Etrog
Module as to the availability of an agent group and/or an individual agent within the
group. Integration with route points is available so that a call can be assessed and
assigned a destination by an application while the call is still ringing. Call Routing
allows for integration with IVR/ACD systems that may need to identify the caller,
determine a destination, and query the availability of the destination before transferring
the call.
The Etrog Agent ActiveX allows for integration between desktop applications and PBX
functionality so that developers can create "screen pops" and provide an agent
with as much or as little control over the call as needed. The Etrog Agent provides a
desktop application with the essential information needed to tie its data together with
the CT link.
The Etrog ActiveX for call center statistics, Etrog Observer, provides both historical
and real time information that can be used by a desktop application, an application
connected to the Etrog Server routing ActiveX, or a standalone monitor application. Etrog
Observer gathers information from active Etrog Agent sessions, and from monitors it
creates itself to provide a define picture of the call center.
No. 402, www.ccsmag.com/freeinfo
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Customer Interaction Solution From royalblue |
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royalblue technologies has released royalblue FrontOffice, a suite of
integrated customer interaction applications designed to manage the entire customer
relationship lifecycle. Through its HelpDesk, SupportCenter and ChangeManager modules, the
FrontOffice suite provides a unified process for companies to provide incident management,
problem management and change and configuration management. The HelpDesk module is
designed to provide fast access to vital information. The graphical Call Tree provides an
up-to-the-minute picture of what has happened to a call. When a call comes in, caller line
identification (CLI) through computer-telephony integration (CTI) automatically fills in
such key information on the caller such as the caller's department, location and e-mail
address. royalblue HelpDesk also provides ActionTracks that enable users to split a call
into the different actions required to resolve the call. The royalblue HelpDesk also
allows users to access information that may reside in disparate databases through the use
of its 32-bit MTC (Multi-Tier Component) architecture. Calls can be automatically logged
from external sources such as IVR systems and SNMP messages and data can be passed easily
to and from legacy and third-party systems. The royalblue HelpDesk also provides a
KnowledgeBase of know problems and solutions gathered from any number of different
knowledge sources. The InfoMine data mining tool continuously and automatically learns as
the HelpDesk is used, assuring that all support analysts have access to all of the help
desk's most up-to-date knowledge.
The SupportCenter module is designed to provide both current and long-term statistics
to help determine how the support operation is functioning. Real-time management
information is continually and automatically updated and a suite of standard reports are
provided that can be run as stand-alone reports, amended with the FrontOffice ReportWriter
or used as the basis of new reports. SupportCenter also incorporates the tools to provide
the proactive management of call handling, such as contracts, service levels, alerts,
assignments and escalations. Each call logged can have a service level assigned to it.
SupportCenter provides this automatically depending on who calls, their support contract,
the product or service they are using and the type of inquiry. SupportCenter also provides
automatic escalations and color-coded workload lists that are automatically updated as
calls progress through the system to highlight calls that need action most urgently.
The ChangeManager is designed to provide a platform for ordered control by monitoring
and recording changes to track the history of the changes and their impact. ChangeManager
allows the creation of configuration item types such as PC, business process or design
document and individual configuration items that are specific instances of these
configuration types. Using the specified information, ChangeManager assesses which
configuration items will be affected by a particular change. Configuration items can be
given a severity level according to their impact upon the operation of the business. For
every item that is affected, ChangeManager identifies the maximum severity level and lists
the analysis results.
No. 403, www.ccsmag.com/freeinfo |
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