| Summertime, and perhaps the
living is easy for some, but the contact center industry has seen a buzz
of activity on many fronts as summer starts to heat up, as the business of
communicating with customers remains a 24/7/365 job.
Alcatel Acquires Telera
Although mergers and acquisitions have slowed down considerably over the
past year, Alcatel (www.alcatel.com)
has signaled it thinks it is safe to go back in the water and has
announced it will acquire Telera (www.telera.com),
which for the last four years has been striving to bring voice to the Web
through its Voice Web application platform. The acquisition will be made
for $136 million in Alcatel stock.
Teleras Voice Web application platform uses VoiceXML, SIP and other
open standards that allow service provider and enterprise developers to
implement applications that provide telephone access to data that were
previously available only through the Web, giving customers more
opportunity to take advantage of self-service options. Telera will become
part of Alcatels Genesys (www.genesyslabs.com)
contact center software business. Ad Nederlof, CEO of Genesys, said the
acquisition of Telera will allow Genesys to add voice-enabled self-service
applications to its portfolio. Companies can now provide access to
additional corporate data without adding additional contact center
infrastructure. According to Prem Uppaluru, CEO and co-founder of Telera,
the demand for voice applications is huge. Uppaluru said there are three
business drivers for this market: 1) the convergence of data and voice on
the network; 2) the growing mobility of users; and 3) the improvement of
the underlying technologies, such as speech recognition, voice
verification, signaling, etc., that drive the applications. Genesys will
now be able to offer an integrated solution for both live customer
assistance and voice-enabled self-service. This will help advance the
business case for converged voice and data networks Alcatel promotes as
the borderless enterprise, which provides secure access of
internal networks to the external world.
SBC To Provide Lucent IP Centrex Solutions
Carriers have taken a hit over the last year and are scrambling to come up
with new services to offer their customers. Lucent Technologies (www.lucent.com)
has recently teamed with SBC Communications (www.sbc.com)
to provide SBC with an IP Centrex solution that SBC will use to offer its
customers advanced central-office-based services. The Lucent IP Centrex
solution incorporates the Lucent iMerge Centrex Feature Gateway (CFG),
developed by Lucent subsidiary AG Communications Systems (www.agcs.com),
and the SpringTide 7000 IP Service Switch. The iMerge CFG works with any
Class 5 switch and serves as a bridge between circuit-switched networks
and IP network infrastructures, delivering the features and functionality
of that Class 5 switch on the packet network. The SpringTide 7000 provides
virtual routing and advanced IP services for enterprise security and
address management. According to James Matney, communications director at
Lucent subsidiary AG Communications Systems, one of the prime drivers in
the past for PBXs versus Centrex has been one of control. With the new
offering, IP Centrex service users can now perform their own adds, moves
and changes in-house. Also, smaller businesses will be able to purchase
services bundled with DSL and other offerings that have not been available
to small companies in the past. Other advantages of IP Centrex include the
ease of setting up multiple locations, increased levels of physical and
network security and the ability to add in teleworkers, as well as the
role the service can play in disaster recovery in that users can move to
an alternate location and plug into a dial tone.
Cruisin
When the cicadas are out and the temperature starts rising in summer, a
favorite activity of Americans everywhere is cruising down the road with
the top down and the tunes cranked up. Summertime is also the time for
Firecracker Fourth of July sales, and many of those sales will be taking
place in automobile dealerships. A company with a 75-year history in the
automobile retailing industry, Reynolds and Reynolds (www.reyrey.com)
recently released its Generation Series CRM package for the automotive
industry, which is built on an open architecture platform that utilizes
Microsoft .NET technology. Modules will cover all aspects of automotive
retailers operations, from strategic planning to Web brand management,
customer contact management, finance and insurance, service and parts
operations management and business and employee management. Automobile
retailers will be able to add new modules as they become available; the
first two modules are Web services and contact management solutions. Auto
dealers certainly need to improve their contact management systems, as
more than 56,000,000 customer interactions and inquiries are received in
one year by Americas automobile dealerships. Generation will take
advantage of .NET Passport technology to move customer information back
and forth. According to Gregory Collins, senior vice president for
Reynolds Transformation Solutions, Generation will provide a holistic
approach to managing customer information. Collins also pointed out that
one of the largest problems facing auto dealers is turnover, and Reynolds
Generation will provide faster, easier training for new employees.
What really caught my eye, gadgeteer that I am, was a new Reynolds and
Reynolds telematics offering (in cooperation with Hewlett-Packard and
Networkcar, Inc.), the Vehicle Lifecycle Management Solution (VLM). The
initial offering, to be sold by automotive retailers, will feature an
on-board telematics appliance, Networkcars CAReader, which continuously
monitors and wirelessly transmits a vehicles electrical, mechanical and
emissions systems data, as well as the vehicles location. Consumers
will have a direct Web link with their automotive service providers that
can provide proactive notification regarding engine performance, service
opportunities, appointment scheduling and other services. Car companies
will be able to monitor diagnostic trouble codes, identify trends and
address supplier defects or improve their design processes.
eGain Enhances Knowledge
Always looking to improve its self-service and agent-assisted service
solutions, knowledge management solutions provider eGain Communications (www.egain.com)
has updated its eGain Knowledge product with the release of version 5.3,
which will allow its users to more easily implement changes in the
knowledge base so that customers and agents can get the answers they are
looking for, no matter if it is in a companys structured or
unstructured data.
Using the Workflow Authoring tool, companies can set permissions to
allow users to suggest and design new contributions to the case base, yet
still retain the review and approval process before the suggestions are
added to the searchable data. The authoring team is notified of and can
see the suggestions and data wake so they know from where the suggestion
came.
eGain Knowledge 5.3 now also provides 19 standard reports, including
Content, Acceptance, Usage, Session, Case Base Verification, Agent
Contribution and Agent Reports. Users can access the reports through a Web
browser after logging in through the security set for access, so they dont
have to install reporting software on the local machine. Reports can be
viewed multiple times without having to reenter the same report parameters
each time, which means that standard reports can be created for repeated
viewings.
In response to customer suggestions, especially in the financial
services industry, eGain has enhanced the security features in 5.3 to
allow for the enabling and disabling of the security option; the
enforcement of password policy; the enforcement of an inactivity policy;
providing a user password expiration policy; maintaining a password
history; and providing security lockouts.
As far as providing access to more information, Knowledge 5.3 can now
access unstructured information and allow access to multiple information
sources through a single interface through its support of Verity K2 and
Microsoft SharePoint in addition to the previously supported Microsoft
SiteServer and Lotus Notes. Knowledge 5.3 also now supports traditional
and simplified Chinese and Korean, adding to the 13 languages it
previously supported, extending its reach to 86 percent of all potential
self-service users in the world.
Michael Lehane, director of product management for the Knowledge
product, said that as proof of the effectiveness of the Knowledge product,
Deutsche Telecom improved its first-time resolution rate to 90 percent and
reduced call time as well. Lehane also reported that DaimlerChrysler
receives about 1,000 suggestions a month, of which it ends up adding about
100 to the knowledge base.
Movement In SME Installations
While at TMCs recent Communications Solutions Expo in Boston, I had the
chance to speak with Mike Carpenter, CEO of CTSource (www.ctsource.com),
which specializes in building non-stop networks that support data,
telephony and Web-based Intranet and Internet services, Virtual Private
Networks and server-based FAX systems. CTSource is a reseller of the
TeleVantage PC-PBX from Artisoft (www.artisoft.com).
According to Carpenter, people are beginning to see the value in PC-PBX
solutions like TeleVantange, as they allow the integration of call center
products. Carpenter reported that customers are starting to use
TeleVantage as development platforms for custom applications. As a
reseller, Carpenter said about 90 percent of his business is in
convergence, but right now most of the requests he has seen for VoIP have
been for intra-office communications.
While the typical installation for CTSource is around 80 seats,
Carpenter told me about the case of Winston Flowers of Boston, which has
nine store locations and 225 employees and was looking for a technology to
handle more calls, provide full reporting capabilities, could handle
complex routing, and was flexible and easy to deploy. CTSource provided
them with a TeleVantage system that gives the 20 Winston associates who
take calls the identity of the caller on-screen, allows them to route the
calls to the appropriate person, and also allows Winston to monitor,
record or track the calls in real-time. Winston also uses the recording
for training to improve customer service. The PC-PBX system works well, as
Winston reported a 25 percent increase in sales over the previous year.
Its good to see that more advanced telecommunications technologies
are now within the reach of SMEs, and that companies such as Alcatel,
Lucent, Reynolds and Reynolds, and eGain continue to bring innovations for
enterprises of all sizes. So, while summertime may be a slow time for many
(with most of Europe on holiday or in the local pub watching the World
Cup), the contact center industry is heating up again.
Sincerely,
Rich Tehrani
Group Publisher,
Group Editor-in-Chief
rtehrani@tmcnet.com
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