|
Three Products To Improve Call Center Processes
BayStone Introduces CIS Solution
Keeping up with all of the latest customer information in an
organization can be a nightmare. Bits of information can be spread out among disparate
databases, causing delays in getting a customer the product or information they need when
they need it, resulting in a lost customer. To aid companies in retaining customers,
BayStone Software has announced the latest release of its customer interaction software
(CIS), BayCenter 3.0. BayCenter 3.0 is an integrated software suite designed to offer
turnkey, comprehensive customer care with a low cost of ownership. BayStone’s Dynamic
Adaptability Engine (DAE) architecture will provide users with quick and easy
implementation, customization and integration of the suite of applications without
programming.
BayCenter 3.0 includes: BayLeads, a contact management system to automate and optimize
telesales and marketing processes; BaySupport, which tracks and manages all stages of the
customer support process; and BayQuality, which tracks product and quality issues and
serves as a link between customer support and product development departments. BayCenter
3.0 capabilities can be extended by two accessories: BayMonitor, a decision support tool
that provides a graphical presentation of real-time and historical business process
metrics; and BayWeb, which permits a company’s customers and business partners to
have self-service support via Internet access to all BayCenter CIS applications.
All of the BayCenter components have been upgraded to use the new DAE architecture. The
suite is designed to leverage Windows and Internet technology, including DDE, OLE and
published APIs to enable seamless integration of third-party solutions, e.g.,
computer-telephony systems, pagers, case-based reasoning knowledge bases, word processors,
spreadsheets and report generators, into the BayCenter environment.
The DAE gives users the ability to implement and customize BayCenter applications or
systems without programming.
Selections of business process models and custom system behavior are made by the
creation of business rules rather than by programming the server or client software. The
DAE is a BayCenter Server extension that implements business process rules directly from
plain English input. An example of a business process rule would be, "If anyone
assigns a ‘critical’ status to a work ticket within three weeks of a scheduled
product release, interrupt them with a warning of consequences, and if they proceed,
e-mail copies of that ticket to the department heads." Rules such as this can be
created individually or as a set of if-then compound rules, all entered into the DAE as
simple English text. As a result, large-scale custom work including modifications to
permissions, notifications, dialog boxes, data fields, appearance and functions can be
performed quickly, centrally and without programming.
BayCenter 3.0 workstation clients receive updated processing objects from the server
each time the system is accessed rather than depending on custom- programmed desktop
applications.
Any rule changes made at the server by the DAE are automatically and immediately put
into use at all workstations.
Because the rules are referenced as live data, changes can be made while the entire
system is online without interrupting the work of any user.
BayCenter 3.0 has a workflow-centric design through integration with the Action Request
System from Remedy Corporation. Rather than requiring a specific brand of database and SQL
programming, the design of BayStone insulates business operations from the underlying
database technology.
BayCenter 3.0 supports SQL databases from Oracle, Sybase and Microsoft.
For more information, contact Jane Dowley at 408-341-2942 or see www.baystone.com.
E-Mail Management From
Distributed Bits
It seems the number of e-mail messages flying across networks on a daily basis is
increasing at an exponential rate. Just yesterday, I was in a one-hour meeting and when I
got back to my desk, I had 58 new messages in my inbox, and these were just internal, as
our Internet server was down. Magnify this by whatever X amount you wish (we are a small
company), and you begin to see the difficulty in keeping up with the great, pent-up volume
of latent communication technology has unleashed upon us. The increase in Web sites has
released challenges that were not even foreseen four or five years ago, which means that
for any viable company, managing the masses of requests or orders constantly coming at
customer service, sales or technical help personnel can become a slough of despair.
Distributed Bits, L.L.C. has developed ResponseNow to facilitate quick, personal and
effective response and management of e-mail messages submitted by customers.
ResponseNow was designed for organizations that receive large volumes of e-mail from
customers and other outside parties. It is a virtual call center that helps a company
control interactions with its Internet customers by automatically routing inbound e-mail
to the correct representatives. The software manages, tracks, analyzes and archives the
entire life cycle of all customer e-mail correspondence.
The ResponseNow server software automatically retrieves e-mail from an
organization’s multiple company e-mail accounts then categorizes and distributes it
to service representatives according to company-defined rules that analyze content.
ResponseNow features include: automatic routing of e-mail to improve staff productivity
and reduce response time by eliminating the need for manual routing; extensive historical
reporting, so management can examine long-term trends and progress in meeting benchmarks
at the enterprise, group or individual level, such as e-mail volume and response times;
real-time monitoring of response time and quality so supervisors can log in and check the
status of messages, how long they have been in the queue and what the average response
time has been over a given period; reporting functions to allow managers to track various
volume and productivity measures over time; archiving and backup that allows companies to
analyze the messages received over the last few months or verify a customer’s claim
of sending a message months ago, by loading the messages from the archives; and quick
access to answers for frequently asked questions (FAQs) via the FAQ Manager to ensure
faster response.
ResponseNow leverages Java, open Internet standards and an advanced distributed
architecture to enable companies to manage customer e-mail at the enterprise level.
ResponseNow also can be customized to provide integration with a limitless number of
protocols such as bulletin boards, telephone, fax, Internet telephony, Internet video and
proprietary e-mail gateways.
For more information, call 312-207- 1500 or see www.dbits.com.
MarketFirst Marketing
Software
Designing and following through on marketing plans is a labor- and time-intensive
process. Marketing professionals, who are paid for coming up with overall marketing
strategies, creating the mailing pieces, phone campaigns, Web or print advertising pieces
and then analyzing the results, in actuality can end up spending nearly 80 percent of
their time on the operations end of the campaign. MarketFirst Software, Inc. has released
a suite of enterprise applications designed to automate manual marketing processes by
combining process automation with real-time analysis.
Standards-based, MarketFirst 1.0 offers a Java-client interface, supports popular
databases and provides a scalable architecture for easy integration with existing legacy
applications.
This allows marketing professionals to communicate with a well-defined audience through
multiple media, capture response and interaction data in a strategic knowledge base and
respond more quickly and appropriately to customer and business requirements. The
closed-loop approach to marketing process management allows marketing professionals to
instantly evaluate results, identify trends and improve the overall effectiveness of
marketing organizations by integrating real-world information and experience into
marketing programs. MarketFirst also can be used to capture and disseminate best practices
in marketing throughout the organization. For example, support will have access to support
history and can amend customer profiles, backoffice personnel will have up-to-date
customer information for data entry, and sales will have valuable contact information so
they can call on qualified leads.
The MarketFirst solution includes four modules. Program and Campaign Managers are
designed to provide a structured way to automate the definition, design, test, execution
and evaluation of marketing programs. The Program Manager includes workflow support and
provides a framework in which a workgroup can collaborate on complex programs. Marketing
professionals can create interactive documents that can then be deployed using media such
a e-mail, the Web, fax and print.
The product also supports the use of mail attachments, HML content, online surveys and
mail merge. It allows users to schedule events and tasks, and provides both automatic
media selection and real-time data filtering.
Contact Manager is designed to allow marketers to organize marketing data, including
demographic and psychographic profile information.
Information can be analyzed and managed as lists, segments or profiles. The Contact
Manager supports the flexible export and import information, the viewing of survey
results, ad-hoc queries and marketing activity tracking.
Online Analysis and Reporting is designed to provide users with standard reports on
program and media cost-effectiveness, survey response statistics and marketing profiles.
Users can also easily create and run custom reports.
Reports can be scheduled, triggered by events or generated on an ad-hoc basis.
Template Manager is designed to facilitate the management of reusable components and
process structures to increase productivity and efficiency.
Reusable items include: complete marketing programs, interactive documents and document
components such as text blocks, HTML, form fields and survey questions.
For more information, call 888-mkt-first or see www.marketfirst.com.
|
TMCnet LOGIN
Webinars
