An Avaya (News - Alert) study reveals that 40 percent of consumers prefer non-voice methods of contact for customer service such as e-mail, instant messaging or Web chat. Additionally, in the next one to two years, 55 percent of consumers polled in the Avaya study anticipate using e-mail most often when seeking service (up from 15 percent today), while 18 percent said Web chat will be their preferred method (up from 2 percent today).

With this in mind, Avaya has updated the Avaya Aura Contact Center (AACC), a SIP-based multimedia contact center application first introduced last fall. AACC enables multimedia capabilities so that customers and agents can interact via multiple channels: voice, e-mail, Web chat, and instant messaging. AACC can be a standalone deployment or used as an add-on (license-activated) application for the company’s Call Center Elite automatic call distribution (ACD) voice-only solution designed for Avaya Aura Communication Manager. It is also the next upgrade step for former Nortel (News - Alert) customers who have deployed the Communication Server 1000 (CS 1000) system and associated Nortel contact center products.

The latest AACC Release 6.2 functionality adds several new capabilities, increases the agent capacity and consolidates the agent desktop so that voice and multimedia interactions are streamlined in a single view. Read more below about some of the latest improvements.

Improved Customer Experience:

• Social Media integration – Avaya’s Social Media Manager enables agents to automatically scan and respond to Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert) updates by customers. The software delivers relevant social media messages by using key words or phrases defined by the business and ‘scoring’ to avoid an overload of irrelevant messages. The application also suggests responses that agents can use if desired. Additionally, Avaya offers Social Media Consulting Services to help businesses successfully integrate social media channels into their business strategy and into the agent desktop application.
• Simplified expert collaboration – Integration with Avaya Aura Presence Services and Avaya Session Manager allows the agent desktop to display the presence status of appropriate experts. Agents can then consult with an expert using instant messaging to resolve customer inquiries faster.
• More efficient self-service – Avaya enhances its Avaya Voice Portal automated services (IVR) application, renaming it as Avaya Aura Experience Portal and adding new capabilities designed to reduce customer frustration. Now, customer self-service sessions can be seamlessly transferred to a live agent with the customer’s data input intact. The new capabilities are configured by Avaya’s Orchestration Designer and associated development tools. Also, the Aura Experience Portal can be deployed in a virtualized server environment along with other applications, reducing the hardware requirement and saving capital and operational costs.

Increased Scalability: 

When Avaya Aura Session Manager is deployed (Avaya Aura 6.1 - SIP), AACC 6.2 supports up to 90,000 agents in a single virtual network (30 nodes) with 3,000 voice-only or 3,000 multimedia agents per node (multiple servers), a 200% increase over previous capacity of 1,000 agents per node. Agent capacity for Avaya Aura Midsize Enterprise 6.1 – SIP is 500 agents, and Communication Server 1000 formerly from Nortel supports 1,500-3,000 multimedia agents, depending on the version.

Unified Agent Desktop and Reporting: 

With R6.2, the agent desktop application displays all forms of customer interaction, including voice, e-mail, Web chat and instant messaging. Previously, agents were required to have two desktop applications, one for voice and one for multimedia interactions, but Avaya now consolidates this to a single view. Also, for supervisors and administrators, reporting of Call Center Elite voice interactions and AACC multimedia interactions are consolidated when AACC and Elite function together.

Availability/Compatibility: Avaya Aura Contact Center (AACC) 6.2 is available now worldwide for the Avaya Aura Communication Manager (CM) 5.2.1 standalone system, Avaya Aura for Midsize Enterprise CM 5.2.1 or higher systems, Avaya Aura with Session Manager (SM 6.1, CM 6.01, AES 6.1) and Avaya CS 1000 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0 (formerly from Nortel). AACC is also an upgrade step for Avaya Call Center Elite and Avaya Contact Center Express, as well as for former Nortel customers who had deployed the CS 1000 system and associated contact center products, SCCS or Contact Center 6.0, 7.0 or 7.1. Agents and supervisors can use a variety of IP and digital telephones from Avaya and Nortel.

Avaya is a Platinum sponsor of ITEXPO West 2011. To be held Sept. 13-15 in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Chris Goffi, Managing Principal at Avaya, is speaking during “The Contact Center: The Key to Social Media Success.” Don’t wait. Register now. Don’t wait. Register now.   Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO… follow us on Twitter.