Anametrix (www.anametrix.com) has released Anametrix InstaVista 3.0, which provides interactive visualizations of online and offline information. These include web analytics, point of sale, social media, search engine marketing (SEM), video and audio, e-mail campaigns, market research surveys, CRM applications and loyalty programs. The release also features real-time uploads from Microsoft Excel data, along with download to Excel options for every data source. The solution enables correlations and amortizations across an entire user base.
BatchBlue (www.batchblue.com) has upgraded its CRM software’s social media integrations. Batchbook users can now view the last five Facebook wall posts for their contacts and Likes and/or comments right from the application. Users can also view education history if available, as well as Likes. Twitter Batchbook users can now follow, retweet, list as favorites and/or reply to Twitter posts right from it. They can also save individual tweets as Communications or To-Dos. For LinkedIn (News - Alert), Batchbook now displays the last status, work history, bio, specialties and recommenders as listed in LinkedIn, though similar privacy rules apply as with Facebook. Users will see publicly available information or details of contacts to whom they are connected.
CosmoCom (News - Alert) (www.cosmocom.com) has come out with social media support for its CosmoCall Universe contact center suite through a deep integration with Buzzient’s social media monitoring technology. The combination permits finding and analyzing relevant social conversations using business rules to identify and route only those interactions requiring attention. CosmoCall Universe selects the best customer service specialists to handle calls, present the interaction information, and report on it in a similar manner to other communications channels.
CTI Group (www.ctigroup.com) has launched the SmartInteraction Suite for contact centers. The new solution builds on its SmartRecord solution with several new features:
* The SmartListen audio mining allows organizations to utilize speech analytics to index recordings phonetically for easy retrieval and reporting. This feature also enables users to automatically categorize or tag calls based on the information found in the calls
* SmartEvaluate, an advanced form of call handler evaluation, utilizes audio mining and analytics enabled by Aurix to isolate calls by certain criteria to perform several functions including compliance, procedure, call handling and customer service
* SmartCapture is screen recording that links the voice recording with the corresponding visual recording of the keystroke activity
* Centralized cloud-based storage.
Drishti-Soft (www.drishti-soft.com ) has tightly integrated its Ameyo contact center software with Skype, permitting its users to have a voice calls, send instant messages or have a video calls with contact center agents. All Skype customer interactions can be logged and treated like other calls, complete with reporting and call analysis for each mode.
Echopass (www.echopass.com) has untethered contact center supervisors and managers by enabling them to monitor and manage their operations from the cloud, and respond to issues in realtime. It has linked its Echopass InSite real-time cloud based management tools with mobile devices such as the Apple iPad and iPhone, and other vendors’ smartphones.
Nimble (www.nimble.com) has launched a public beta version of its Nimble Contact, a new cloud-deployed social CRM platform that combines relationship management and social engagement. Nimble Contact integrates LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google (News 
- Alert), e-mail contacts and conversations into one seamless and intuitive environment.
Parature (www.parature.com) has boosted social channel/social media support in Parature Spring '11. Among the new features is an expansion of its Direct Social Engagement Model from Facebook to Twitter and Lithium. It now permits ready management of multiple brands and Facebook Fan Pages from one dashboard while providing a complete view of social customer interactions. It allows instantaneous removal of inappropriate content like obscenities and spam from clients’ Facebook pages. And there is now support for 33 languages across all social channels, including double-byte languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Parature Spring ’11 has a host of other functionalities. It offers “EasyAnswer” Auto-suggest and Improved Search; with this feature customers automatically receive auto-suggested answers from the knowledgebase while submitting tickets. A Customer Experience Analysis of Search Terms and Feedback feature permits viewing, analysis and reporting on the service experience, captures search terms, determines the most popular searches by category and reports on incident feedback by channel. It also measures the self-service effectiveness.
Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com) has unveiled Service Cloud 3, which lets organizations engage with customers on any social community, including Facebook, Twitter and other social networks via Radian6. With it, companies can scale their operations quickly and easily to manage a high volume of service issues, including the millions of conversations that are happening every day on social media sites. Leveraging built-in social analytics, agents will be able to prioritize interactions across any channel and tailor support strategies to meet changing sentiments on social media sites.
Sage North America (www.sagenorthamerica.com ) now enables Sage SalesLogix v.7.5.3 customers and users to take CRM mobile for free on a wide range of devices, including iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry Torch, as well as HTML5/CSS3-compliant browsers such as Safari, Google Chrome, Opera and Firefox. This functionality is courtesy of the new browser-based Sage SalesLogix Mobile solution that works with Sage SalesLogix on-premises and Sage SalesLogix Cloud systems and interacts with each device’s navigation, mapping, dialing and e-mail functions. Sage SalesLogix Mobile operates online and offline, is centrally managed and customized and it updates automatically over the air.
SAP (www.sap.com) will be coming out this year with SAP Sales OnDemand, which offers social collaboration to permit sales staff easy and effective ways to work with teams on opportunities, manage customer information and communicate effectively with people in their networks. It is the first solution to be built on the hosted SAP Business ByDesign platform, which enables preconfigured process best practices and provides support for mobile devices.
Transera (News - Alert) Communications (www.transerainc.com) announced the general availability of its Scorecard Routing software. Scorecard Routing, which matches valued customers with a contact center's best-performing agents, had previously been offered to several of the firm’s key customers. The firm’s CEO, Prem Uppaluru (News - Alert), reports they experienced a seven percent to 10 percent increase in sales conversion rates and 50 percent to 70 percent decrease in call abandon rates. Scorecard Routing can easily be integrated into any call center environment and integrates seamlessly with existing on-premises ACD systems owned in-house or provided by outsourced vendors.
WorkFlex Solutions (www.workflexsolutions.com) has come out with WorkFlex Alert, a new tool that applies real-time decisioning and flexible communications methodologies to monitor key utilization and performance indicators, among them average handle time, customer satisfaction, occupancy and service levels. The product also automatically alerts agents and/or supervisors as to issues and to corrective actions.
Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell
