May 1996

• Tandem/Genesys Labs Announce Electronic Commerce Solutions For Small Call Centers To Large Internet Global Networks
• Edify Releases Direct Connection To The Internet For Call Centers
• Scopus Introduces Web-Enabled Customer Interaction System
• Spanlink Joins Internet And Call Centers With WebCall

Tandem/Genesys Labs Announce Electronic Commerce Solutions For Small Call Centers To Large Internet Global Networks

Tandem Computers Incorporated and Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. have announced the formation of a technology alliance and unveiled a hardware/software solution for true global electronic commerce on the Internet.

This new approach enables interactive customer service on the global Internet and delivers unlimited voice, data and multimedia capabilities to a new generation of scaleable, intelligent call centers. The Tandem/Genesys solution is designed for applications requiring the enhanced handling of customer calls in critical service environments, such as finance and telecommunications, whether single or multisite. The Tandem/Genesys solutions combine Genesys Labs' suite of intelligent software featuring T- Server and net.Vectoring and Tandem's ServerNet technology - a "smart network router in a server." Genesys Labs' T-Server software is designed to integrate computing power, telephony processing and human potential. Functioning as a call center "traffic cop," it can intelligently route the caller to interactive voice response systems or to live customer service agents as appropriate, adding new speed and functionality. netVectoring ties together the Internet, Genesys Labs' existing advanced telephony software, and two-way real-time videoconferencing capabilities, resulting in a Web page "talk button" to connect a user via voice and video with an appropriately skilled customer representative to answer questions, take orders or solve technical problems.

Tandem's ServerNet technology allows huge amounts of digitized data to flow through a computer server in seconds rather than minutes, hours or days. This new system-independent core technology helps businesses manage fast delivery of mixed media, enabling the next generation of data-driven services on and off the Internet, such as teleconferencing, interactive television, video-on-demand, home banking and multimedia kiosks. Tandem's new, powerful fault-tolerant UNIX servers, the first to use ServerNet technology, are designed to offer flexibility, unprecedented high-speed performance and scalable bandwidth.

For more information, call Tandem Computers Incorporated at 800-482-6336 or Richard Pickering, Genesys Labs, at 415-388-5149.

Edify Releases Direct Connection To The Internet For Call Centers

Edify Corporation has announced the availability of Page Call, an application of its Electronic Workforce software. Page Call is designed to allow World Wide Web users to easily initiate a direct telephone link to customer service representatives in a call center at the touch of a button. Page Call allows companies to extend their service offerings by making traditional call center service easily accessible to Web site users.

Page Call includes three service capabilities. The Call Me button appears on the Web user's computer screen and Page Pop and Page Shadow interact to help the customer service representative assist the user over the phone.

The Call Me button appears on one or more of the company's Web pages and is activated by Web users desiring telephone assistance from a customer service representative. Activation of the Call Me button automatically arranges for a callback from an available customer service representative. Page Pop is the technology that instantly "pops" the current page being viewed by the Web user as well as other available customer information retrieved from either back-office information systems or through the Web server. This allows the CSR to more intelligently respond to the Web user's requests. Page Shadow allows the customer service representative to track and view the Web user's movements from page to page within an interactive Web session. This enhances the customer service representative's ability to more effectively communicate and resolve problems with the customer. Edify also announced that its Electronic Workforce product will support Microsoft's new Internet Information Server (IIS). Edify will enable the Electronic Workforce to communicate with Microsoft's Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI), extending the power of the Electronic Workforce to deploy interactive service applications to organizations running on IIS.

For more information, contact Brenda Hansen at 408-982-4114.

Scopus Introduces Web-Enabled Customer Interaction System

Scopus Technology, Inc. has announced the release of WebTEAM, which is designed to allow seamless integration of client/server customer interaction applications with the World Wide Web to give businesses the opportunity to extend customer service, support and marketing applications by allowing direct customer access via the Web.

When used with Scopus' Tele-TEAM for computer-telephony integration, WebTEAM is designed to allow new call center applications. For example, a customer at the Web site, who is either known to the company or who has answered pertinent questions, could be presented with a "Call Me Now" button that routes the request for a callback to the next available agent with the correct skills. The agent would see the customer information materialize in a "screen pop" as the number is dialed automatically. Because of Scopus' metadata-driven application architecture, users who have already deployed customized Scopus applications can use WebTEAM to generate the HTML (hypertext markup language) and CGI (common gateway interface) scripts needed for Web deployment. New users can deploy Scopus applications for the Web out-of-the-box, or after customizing with the ScopusWorks development tool. Because Scopus developers use the same language and toolset for client/server and for Web deployment, they maintain a single codeline, need fewer resources and deploy faster.

Customers, vendors, partners and even remote or local employees who log on to a Scopus application through the Web (after appropriate security checks) can then: enter data directly into SupportTEAM, Sales-TEAM or other Scopus applications; check status or update data submitted previously; take advantage of built-in escalation procedures, business rules or workflows; and use case-based reasoning tools to search knowledge- bases for answers.

Any authorized user with a standard Web browser and an Internet (or Intranet) connection becomes part of the extended enterprise without delay, without training, and without concern for platform, protocol or version compatibility.

For more information, contact Jane Turton at 510-597-5800.

Spanlink Joins Internet And Call Centers With WebCall

Spanlink Communications has announced the introduction of WebCall, a software application that is designed to allow a customer who is browsing a company's World Wide Web site to talk to a live customer service representative on the telephone with the click of a button.

WebCall links an organization's home page or Internet presence to a new or existing call center system or customer service center. Because WebCall is a packaged application, Spanlink customers can buy and install the product quickly, linking it to existing Web sites and accessing it with any browser software. WebCall uses "intelligent software agents," called ExtraAgents, to connect Internet users to live customer service representatives.

When potential customers access a Web site that's equipped with WebCall, they can request an immediate callback from a live customer service representative or designate a specific time to receive a phone call. Customers also can ask for more information via fax or e-mail.

If a customer selects the "Talk to a Real Person" option, WebCall asks for their telephone number, displays a message indicating the expected wait time until a customer service representative will call them and transfers the request from the Web site to the telephone system. An ExtraAgent waits in queue on behalf of the customer until a representative becomes available, and the customer receives a call within seconds.

Sensitive financial information, such as credit card numbers, can be collected using the system's advanced speech recognition software or by a live customer service representative. WebCall operates with most major telephone systems, and WebCall applications can be loaded co- resident on AT&T's INTUITY Interactive Multimedia Response System.

Spanlink also announced that AT&T and Inacom have been selected as authorized WebCall dealers. In addition, Spanlink is a member of Netscape's Developers Partners program and is working with Netscape's server and browser technology as part of its ongoing developments in the WebCall product line.

For more information, contact Kristen Jacobsen at 612-362-8000.