This article originally appeared in the October 2010 issue of Customer Inter@ction Solutions
Two-thousand and ten marks the 11th anniversary for the prestigious TMC Labs Innovation Awards, where TMC Labs reviews dozens of applicants and chooses the most unique and innovative products and services.
Reflecting the high level of innovation we are seeing, we have nearly doubled the number of winners to a total of 19 in 2010 from 10 in 2009. The awards are broken into two parts to fit the highlighted write-ups. The first part (September issue) started with Amdocs and ended with Interior Concepts. The second half (this issue) will start with Knoa and end with VanillaSoft. Here are the highlights of our Part II winners:
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Knoa Software |
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NICE Systems |
NICE SmartCenter |
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OAISYS |
OAISYS Tracer |
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Pegasystems |
Customer Process Manager (CPM) |
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Presence Technology |
Presence Social Media |
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Primas |
Evolution FCR |
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vDesk |
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salesforce.com |
Salesforce Chatter |
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ShoreTel |
ShoreTel 11 |
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VanillaSoft |
VanillaSoft |
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Knoa Software
Knoa Global End-User Monitor (GEM)
Knoa Global End-User Monitor (GEM) enables organizations to monitor end-user experience and interaction for all desktop and web-based applications running on users’ desktops, which makes it innovative. The product collects comprehensive, global metrics on software utilization, application health, application responsiveness, user behavior, user experience and desktop performance. Knoa GEM is unique because of its ability to collect a broad range of metrics across all applications that a company runs without any configuration, instrumentation, scripting or templates. Knoa GEM provides out-of-box monitoring coverage of end-user behavior and experience for more than 25 enterprise applications including SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Siebel CRM, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft Enterprise Suite, Amdocs, as well as other business applications.
NICE Systems
NICE SmartCenter
NICE SmartCenter has unique capabilities for capturing customer and business intent, analyzing interactions and transactions for insight, and generating impact on the interaction and the business. It offers advanced cross-channel analytics to enable organizations to identify and analyze customer behavior patterns across a broad variety of available contact channels, from chat and e-mail to voice and social media.
NICE SmartCenter includes pre-packaged business solutions that address specific business issues, including call recording, quality management, workforce management, cross-channel interaction analytics, including speech analytics, real-time guidance, and performance management. These solutions can be deployed on premise, in a hosted model, or via a managed service, and can be implemented stand-alone or fully integrated with customer relationship management and business intelligence solutions.
OAISYS
Tracer
Tracer is a call recording and interaction management software solution that utilizes OAISYS Portable Voice Document (PVD) technology to capture telephone-based interactions as digital call recordings, or voice documents, that are available to store, organize, play back, annotate and share with others as needed. This core PVD functionality is paired with Tracer’s advanced contact center management features, including employee performance evaluations, the ability to live and auto monitor calls, integrated instant messaging for coaching purposes, quality and resource utilization reporting and synchronized desktop video recording capabilities.
One unique feature of Tracer is that select portions of a call can be exclusively shared and access to the encrypted file can be granted via a secure link. Security concerns are addressed since the file itself never leaves the central repository on which it is stored, and access permissions can be set to expire after an identified time period. Permissions are granted or restricted to determine whether recipients can further annotate or share the access.
Pegasystems
Customer Process Manager (CPM)
Pegasystems’ Customer Process Manager (CPM) is designed to help contact center agents resolve the most service requests at the first point of customer contact, optimizing their work and eliminating the need for further contact in the back-office. The CPM integrates with centers’ policy administration and technology systems, allowing companies to leverage existing investments and simplify complex interactions that formerly required access to multiple systems.
Pegasystems’ CPM enables call centers to establish best practices for interacting with customers and various issues that arise with different customers and have all agents follow the best practices. Based on customers’ profile and reason for calling, intent-driven processing prompts call center agents with suggested processes. A simple layout provides scripting, service options, and a consolidated view of customers.
Presence Technology
Presence Social Media
Presence Social Media enables the contact center to tweet, post messages, answer messages and even to manage messaging in real time with the traditional channels in Presence Suite. Presence Social Media integrates--via a single interface--a variety of tasks, such as blending, automation, sorting, management, interactions, back-office task control and reporting, as well as any communication through social networks.
Primas
Evolution FCR
Evolution FCR identifies repeat callers by constantly polling the IVR for repeat ANIs and then automatically provides a different experience when these repeat customers are identified in the IVR. When a repeat ANI is discovered, it eliminates the IVR menus from the repeat caller’s initial experience i.e. user definable and transfers them directly to either the agent or the department they selected on the first, or last time they called. Basic customer data can be collected via the IVR system each time a customer calls in, plus more detailed customer data can be extracted from the CRM system or other database. This can also include the last agent contacted and the nature of that contact. Therefore each time a customer calls in, agents are better prepared to deliver fast customer service and resolve customers’ issues quickly.
RingCube Technologies
RingCube vDesk
RingCube offers vDesk, an innovative desktop virtualization solution. Its unique Virtual Workspace technology separates the user’s desktop environment including applications, data and settings from the operating system and encapsulates it into a secure container while automatically backing up every virtual desktop to a centralized server. Users can run their vDesk workspace at the office or on unmanaged PCs – at home, or at disaster recovery site. When users start their vDesk workspace, it transforms any Windows PC into their own familiar corporate workspace where users can access their files, applications, settings and entire desktop, just as if they were on their own business PC whether online or offline from the network.
vDesk supports virtual networking, called vDeskNet, which allows the virtual workspace to separate and isolate network traffic from the host PC including VPN clients running within the virtual workspace. Additionally, it supports virtual user management to allow the virtual workspace to have a unique set of user accounts separate from the host PC. It also has the Virtual Security Store, which provides a separate protected storage area within the virtual workspace where items like certificates are kept isolated from the host PC.
Salesforce Chatter
www.salesforce.com
Salesforce Chatter is a cloud-based enterprise social collaboration application and platform that employees can use for powerful social media-based collaboration. It uses social features popularized by consumer social networking sites, like profiles, status updates and real-time feeds. Employees can follow people, business processes and application data. With Chatter, employees and teams get immediate insight into their company’s programs, projects, people, customers, cases, documents and business data that is pushed to them, delivering new levels of social intelligence. Chatter offers Profiles that enable employees to get to know their colleagues and share their expertise. Another component is Groups, which are specific collections of Chatter employees that help teams get organized, share information, collaborate on documents and work more productively. Employees can also set up private groups to work privately on sensitive projects with specific colleagues. Chatter also features real-time feeds.
ShoreTel
ShoreTel 11
www.shoretel.com
ShoreTel 11 is a comprehensive unified communications solution, consisting of IP based telephony switches, telephones, as well as powerful desktop and mobile applications. ShoreTel is the first solution in the UC industry that leverages virtualization with VMware ESX, but without the complexity found in other UC systems. All primary server resources are fully enabled, including unified messaging, administration, call center, reporting and management.
ShoreTel 11 sports some powerful mobility features. As of the v11 release, the ShoreTel Communicator client is now available for the Web and for the iPhone, allowing users to manage communications from Macintosh computers and iPhones, along with BlackBerry (News - Alert) and other popular devices. It has many UC features, one notable example of which is the easy-to-use interface called ShoreTel Converged Conferencing which unifies Web conferencing, audio conferencing, desktop/application sharing, instant messaging (IM), virtual meeting rooms, online presentations, and multimedia recording.
VanillaSoft
VanillaSoft (SaaS offering)
VanillaSoft’s is lead management software focused on outbound-based inside sales teams. The platform supports multiple users and multiple campaigns each with a unique set up including but not limited to; scripting, unlimited custom fields, integrated e-mail, blast e-mail, auto import of web or trigger leads with a 2.6 second delivery time, live dashboard and powerful web based reporting. VanillaSoft has engineered its platform to dial over the chosen PBX (News - Alert) or VoIP of its customers so they can keep what they have and not spend on additional telecom costs.
One key feature is what VanillaSoft calls “Next Best Lead Routing”. This allows management the unique ability to deploy the company’s best practices and lead routing based on results or preferences. Instead of having agents pick through leads, VanillaSoft uses predefined logic and pushes the next best lead or call to the rep, dials the phone and tracks the lead and agent from cradle to grave. It can also record all calls and stream them to their data center for retrieval and play.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
