Aspect Telecommunications has announced the availability of the largest and most robust enhancement of its Aspect CallCenter. Release 6 is designed to provide a single-switch solution for inbound and outbound call operations, new computer-telephony integration (CTI) capabilities, expanded interoperability and enhanced remote monitoring and management.

Release 6 integrates the Aspect CallCenter's comprehensive inbound call-handling capabilities with outbound predictive dialing applications. The resulting single-switch solution increases the operational efficiency of a call center and reduces costs by eliminating redundancy in inbound and outbound operations. A key component of Aspect's solution is its answer-detect capability, which screens out unsuccessful call attempts (such as fax and answering machine responses) and recognizes country-specific telephone protocols to support multinational call campaigns.

Whether call centers manage separate inbound and outbound operations or blend their inbound and outbound call activities, Aspect's architecture eliminates the need for a dedicated outbound switching platform and decreases the amount of trunking equipment required.

By merging inbound and outbound capabilities in a single Aspect CallCenter, customers can fully utilize their agent workforce, address changing priorities, combine inbound and outbound call strategies and consolidate reporting. Furthermore, companies can assign staff to place proactive service calls during periods of low inbound call activity.

Release 6 also provides CTI link redundancy to deliver mission-critical backup connectivity between an organization's Aspect CallCenter and its computer system. In addition, two new CTI options are available for greater call center computer-telephony integration: Resource Bridge™ and Event Bridge™.

Resource Bridge is designed to provide CTI software for the dynamic and real-time reassignment of agent resources. This open interface allows third-party applications to change an agent's group, team or class of service in order to respond to multiple, changing call center priorities in real-time. Customers can use this capability to move agents among inbound agent groups - for example, to reallocate agents across groups handling calls, faxes and e-mail inquiries - or to blend agents between inbound and outbound call- handling activities.

Event Bridge is designed to provide the ability to notify external data systems of call state changes and agent state changes as they occur. With Event Bridge CTI software, Aspect's detailed event-tracking information is available for creating sophisticated and responsive applications that react instantaneously to changes in call activity and agent availability. Call centers can use Event Bridge to manage agent blending and route calls more efficiently among networked call centers. Since Event Bridge can track individual calls as well as agents, call centers now have the ability to map patterns of call behavior - such as how long certain classes of callers typically remain in queue - and use this information to tailor how the call is handled.

Release 6 also offers several new connectivity advances. Temporary Signaling Connections (TSCs) for Network InterQueue™ allow call centers to be networked via the public switched telephone network to replace or supplement leased T1 lines. This option not only can reduce hardware and transmission costs, but also makes it possible to add bandwidth for overflow situations when all T1 lines are occupied. Aspect AMIS Analog Networking allows Aspect CallCenters to exchange voice messages with other Aspect CallCenters and with other corporate voice mail systems that support the AMIS-A standard. With Non-Facility Associated Signaling (NFAS), Aspect CallCenters can use a single data channel to support up to eight ISDN PRI connections. A backup data channel provides redundancy. In addition, QSIG, a digital international telecommunications protocol, is now supported on Aspect CallCenters.

With Release 6, call center supervisors can now remotely monitor agent calls and trunk lines and update announcements from any touch-tone phone. In addition, service agencies can authorize clients to monitor their applications over any touch-tone telephone. Another new feature, agent reason codes, allows supervisors to manage agent resources more effectively by furnishing virtually unlimited (up to 999) codes for agents to designate why they are unavailable to handle calls.

Aspect also announced integration agreements with five leading outbound automation software companies - Davox Corp., Digital Systems International, Inc., EIS International, Inc., Evolving Systems and Executone - the first in a growing family of application partners intended to enable Aspect customers to select the best-of-class outbound call management systems.

For more information, contact Michael Broyles at 408-325-2381.