October 2004

TMC Labs Innovation Awards Part II (continued)

(previous)

Siemens Information and Communication Networks
HiPath ProCenter Agile
www.siemens.com

HiPath ProCenter Agile is a contact center solution aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, or large enterprises with high-volume call-handling departments. Agile features intelligent call routing, graphical reporting and unique and innovative presence management for increased productivity. For example, using presence, you can graphically see your coworkers' statuses (lunch, on the phone, logged out, etc.), which makes it much easier to know if a particular person is available to take your call. Further, if you are trying to escalate a call to a supervisor, you can see which supervisors you can conference into the call. Once you do conference in a supervisor, billing personnel or some other department employee, that person will see the 'screen pop' of caller contact information.

Agile features a user-friendly Windows interface. Agents can dock and undock toolbars simply by dragging on and off or double-clicking. This allows for easier access to other applications. In addition, the complete Agent desktop can be placed in 'Icon Mode,' which reduces the screen footprint to a system tray icon. A softphone is available, along with a full set of telephony tools for managing calls, including Speed Dial; Directory Look-up; and Contact Log, which tracks all inbound and outbound calls. Also within the user interface are Team Lists, Team Bars and an easy 'one-click collaboration' feature to consult, conference and transfer. Agile also features a powerful, visual, drag-and-drop, workflow-style 'app-gen' design tool to quickly create or revise call flows and queues. Utilizing Agile will help reduce customer hold time, prevent re-queuing, blind/dead transfers or transfers to voice mail and, most important, increase 'first-contact/first-time' resolution by avoiding unnecessary callbacks, all of which will result in improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Symon Communications, Inc.
Symon Enterprise Server (SES), formerly Symon 2000
www.symon.com

Symon Enterprise Server (SES) Release 8.0 is a real-time middleware application for unifying contact center and other business data solutions and displaying real-time data and alerts to many types of devices (devices such as wallboards, plasmas, televisions, PDAs, cell and landline telephones, e-mail and Blackberry). With Symon's recent acquisition of TargetVision, Symon states that SES 8.0 is the only solution with 'shrink-wrapped' real-time data collection capabilities, seamlessly integrating streaming video, news feeds and customizable corporate and employee communications for LED displays, plasmas and television, as well as desktop viewing.

SES is a middleware product that enables a business to modularly build a corporate and employee communication system. Symon has incorporated all of its products into a suite of offerings driven by the SES engine that can be easily added to. For instance, a business may want to start with a wallboard and then move up to real-time data at the desktop. Workforce management is another add-on. For small to large enterprises, there are broadcast capabilities, along with an innovative authoring/editor tool called Symon Design Studio. Broadcast-quality information can be viewed on plasmas and televisions for corporate and employee communication anywhere around the world using standard IP-connected devices.

What SES can do on a single platform would typically require multiple servers to accomplish the same tasks. SES 8.0 is the engine that administers, collects, transforms and distributes real-time broadcast and historical data for use by any application or device. SES brings technology, information and communication together, eliminating data silos and reducing operating costs while increasing productivity and performance. It allows the enterprise to present data to all clients in many formats and in a manner that is meaningful for each individual.

Verio Inc.
NTT/VERIO
PowerPlatform Hosting
www.verio.com

The NTT/VERIO PowerPlatform Hosting Solutions suite is designed for enterprises seeking to outsource the hosting and management of business applications such as back-office systems, Intranet operations, customer-facing Web sites and e-commerce solutions. Let's face it ' a corporate Web site has become the lifeblood of any organization, whether it's a large call center or a small to medium-sized business. Often it is not economical for an organization to have redundant T1 lines or redundant Web servers in case of failure. As such, one of the best ways to ensure 100 percent up-time is to outsource Intranet and Internet infrastructure and applications.

NTT/VERIO PowerPlatform Hosting solutions are specifically designed to enable businesses to build out their enterprise infrastructure on-demand, without making capital investments, while retaining data-center-class security, performance availability, support and wrap-around SLAs. The modular nature of the NTT/VERIO PowerPlatform Hosting Solutions suite means it can be tailored for mid-market and high-end market customers, as well as for entry-level dedicated hosting customers.

PowerPlatform gives customers the ability to build out their infrastructure on-demand by drawing on modular technology, tiered support and enhanced services. Because of its modularity and its modular pricing structure, customers are not required to pay the single 'pigeon-holed' pricing scheme that is usually offered by competitors, which is usually higher.

PowerPlatform consists of many optional hosted applications. Managed Storage Solutions, for example, is a complete portfolio of backup and storage solutions that ensure data delivery. Verio's state-of-the-art data centers can scale several customers' data across all of their hardware, making the best possible use of the storage and saving money for all involved. Verio's customers pay for only the computing power and capacity they require. That is the motto for all of PowerPlatform's offerings: pay for what you use.

Witness Systems
eQuality Vision
www.witness.com

Witness Systems has always been on the sharpest edge of providing quality monitoring solutions. For instance, Witness Systems was first to market with a solution that provided synchronized voice and data recording, holding a patent for the process. The company also claims to have introduced the market's first VoIP recording solution. In addition, Witness Systems was one of the first to offer a customer interaction recording solution that captures and evaluates agent/customer contacts taking place via collaborative chat and e-mail, as well as customer self-service via the Web.

Witness Systems' eQuality performance optimization suite is designed to capture customer intelligence and optimize workforce performance. Its software delivers an integrated system for continuous performance improvement in multimedia call centers, IP telephony and back-office environments to enhance customer experiences.

Witness Systems' performance optimization suite is comprised of its browser-based eQuality software, which encompasses IP telephony, compliance, high-volume and business-driven customer interaction recording solutions, as well as performance analysis and e-learning applications. The closed-loop suite enables companies to capture and retrieve, learn and train, and report and analyze customer interactions to develop staff, generate revenue, reduce costs and achieve greater customer retention and loyalty ' all by sharing captured customer and business intelligence throughout the enterprise.

eQuality Vision, one of the analytics solutions within the eQuality software suite, enables the rapid search and retrieval of recorded customer interactions, including synchronized voice and screen capture. With its powerful data visualization capabilities, management can easily pinpoint and view interesting and unusual contacts. Through its color-coding classification of calls based on nature and outcome and patterns and trends, key areas of interest are easily identifiable. This allows unique visualization that enables users to search through thousands of contact recordings and focus on those of interest.

The eQuality Balance feature can trigger a recording and a capture of specified contact types based on 'business rules' that users pre-define as most critical to their operating performance, such as contacts involving key customers, new marketing campaigns, specific products and select agents.

One of eQuality Vision's notable features is its ability to show users the periods of speech and silence within each call. By looking at a waveform of the call, they can spot and skip over dialing tones, ringing tones, periods of silence and music. Because periods of prolonged silence can indicate wasted time and money, a flexible 'silence threshold' setting enables users to specify what constitutes an unnatural pause. Pauses are then highlighted graphically, allowing users to find problem areas within dozens or hundreds of calls at a time, without having to listen to them all.

Because the eQuality software retains all call characteristics ' from standard holds and transfers, to custom attributes like customer, campaign and product IDs ' users can perform detailed analysis and trending. In fact, users can color-code calls based on particular business conditions, making it easy to spot the interactions that exhibit particular characteristics. Then a supervisor can identify which team members are responsible for a rise in the volume of transfers and, more important, they can understand the reason behind it. A customer service director concerned about first-call resolution might be interested in reviewing repeat calls from the same customers to understand the 'root causes' driving those contacts.


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