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inContact Extends Award-Winning Cloud Platform

By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor

inContact, a provider of cloud contact center software and contact center agent optimization tools, today unveiled the availability of the first of three solution enhancements for the year. The inContact platform has expanded to meet the increasing demand for cloud solutions from contact centers around the world.

“With our latest innovative release, inContact again leads the market by harmonizing the contact center, breaking down traditional silos and creating powerful workflow for improved agent effectiveness and customer satisfaction,” said Paul Jarman, inContact CEO, in a statement.

The latest inContact solution changes include enhanced agent scripting, Web connect, CRM plug-in agent, expanded blended dialer, studio chat, and enhanced reporting.

“Our business is about helping our contact centers manage their workflow and providing a good experience. By helping the agent navigate easier, it creates a better experience for the agent. It saves money and it produces a better customer experience,” Madelyn Gengelbach, sr. product marketing manager at inContact told TMCnet.

One of inContact‘s enhancements is agent scripting, which enables contact center management to help agents navigate new programs by providing guided prompts or scripts. The agent scripts ensure faster response to customer inquiries, more confident agents, and higher quality customer interactions. The scripts can be assigned to a skill group to arm new agents with additional support while they are training, or can create a decision tree that can guide the agent through a series of responses based on feedback received from customer. 

“Agent scripting has been a very high requested item from our customers and from the market in general,” Andy Bird, director of product management at inContact told TMCnet.

Another inContact enhancement, Web Connect, enables customers to receive a seamless flow of service from a website into a contact center. Web Connect’s “Click to Call” feature allows a customer to leave a call back number on a Web application, which is automatically routed to the contact center queue to initiate a call back by an appropriate agent. inContact’s Commitment Manager solution also allows customers to specify the date and time when they would like someone to call them and it automatically adds the customer into the queue.

“This expands our platform that we can manage work directly from the Web. It enables us to collect information from a Web page, as well as take that information and route that to the appropriate people to address that request or concern. And do it in a way that’s seamless,” said Gengelbach.

The inContact CRM Plug-in Agent has a unique “always there, never in the way” ribbon interface that delivers the call and caller information on a single, unified screen on the agent’s CRM desktop. The CRM Plug-in Agent embeds the inContact cloud application directly in agent applications like Salesforce.com (News - Alert), RightNow Technologies, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, uncluttering the desktop, speeding up outbound dialing, and automating call documentation. The CRM Plug-in Agent also gives agents the freedom to control the way their desktop looks and choose settings. 

“It’s going to show calls in queue and basic vital statistics that agents need to do their work, and at the same time it’s not taking up their desktop. They can see other information that will only slide out when they need it. It’s always been a challenge to find enough space to show all of that stuff easily. One of the customer requests that we had was ‘how can you help us solve that problem?’” Gengelach added.

The inContact blended dialer enhancement enables contact center management to more effectively oversee agent activity. The inContact blended dialer maximizes agent efficiencies by enabling agents to move from inbound to outbound contacts based on call volume and demands. Supervisors can manage agent activity based on pre-determined SLA thresholds. Agent disposition data is available as a report to supervisors and inContact users can more manage Do Not Call lists in the system.

“Blending is the new thing where most customers are driving to because they want to maximize their agents time as well as be able to take the inbound contacts from those outbound calls and sometimes to those same agents,” said Bird.

Studio, inContact’s visual scripting engine, allows managers to personalize the experience of interacting with their contact center. For instance, inContact enables custom chat profiles that extend a brand to ensure a unified multi-channel experience for customers. Users can launch a targeted URL or survey upon completion of a chat session, directing the customer to the best action to address their needs.

“Part of the power of our Studio is that it helps shape that customer experience from the very beginning all the way to the end,” said Gengelbach.

Reporting capabilities have also been expanded at inContact to provide contact centers with the visibility and actionable intelligence to improve people, processes, and operations. The latest inContact release includes enhanced interval reports and customized dashboards for contact centers to be more efficient in their business. 

 “We’re constantly innovating in two areas: scalability and usability,” said Gengelbach. “There was a lot of efficiency added on the front end as well as the back end to deliver those reports for longer terms and quicker than we previously could.”

inContact helps contact centers create profitable customer experiences through its powerful portfolio of cloud-based contact center software solutions. The company's services enable contact centers to operate more efficiently, optimize the cost and quality of every customer interaction, and ensure ongoing customer-centric business improvement.

inContact releases major solutions enhancements three times a year. This solutions enhancement announcement is the first one of 2012 and there will be two more coming this year.