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TMC Labs Innovation Awards Part II
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(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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