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Rising STARS [Customer Relationship Management](Customer Relationship Management Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) BUSINESSES that are not meeting customers on their preferred interaction channels or making transactions easier for them are going to find it harder to survive. Whether they create products specifically for mobile platforms or craft solutions for multichannel environments, companies offering innovative answers are clearly the ones to watch. Not surprisingly, our 2013 Rising Star awardees are meeting these customer demands - and more. A nearly 130-year-old company shows it isn't set in its ways by debuting a banking innovation that offers the benefits of a teller with the convenience of an ATM, and giving restaurants immediate access to customer concerns so they can address them more quickly. A firm best known for cloud-based IVR and contact center solutions is "catapult[ing] into mobile customer care," one analyst says, by bringing a virtual personal assistant into the business realm, enabling companies to have conversations with customers in whole new ways. With consumers reaching out via multiple channels, another Rising Star offers customer service departments "a seamless integration" between live chat, social media, online communities, email, and the telephone. Smart acquisitions can be just as important as offering innovative solutions. Our fourth Rising Star boosted its contact center offerings through three acquisitions this year, and introduced a tool to help contact center managers do their jobs more effectively. With on-the-go consumer and business environments becoming more pervasive, companies that can not only keep up with customer needs, but anticipate them, will come out ahead. This year's Rising Stars are prime examples of how to do just that. * BY THE EDITORS OF CRM MAGAZINE A Siri-like Voice for Business ANGEL'S LEXEE VIRTUAL ASSISTANT APPLICATION COULD DO FOR BUSINESSES WHAT SIRI DID FOR THE CONSUMER MARKET IN AN INCREASINGLY dynamic and mobile world, our mobile devices have become extensions of ourselves, providing 24/7 access to information, entertainment, and, of course, one another. For many, a speech- enabled virtual assistant, such as Apple's Siri, offers a quicker, easier, and more fun way to get driving directions, weather reports, flight information, restaurant recommendations, and appointment reminders. While Apple is credited with bringing these apps to the mainstream, its Siri for the iPhone is largely a consumer application. That's where Lexee is different. Launched in August 2012 by Angel - a company best known for cloud-based interactive voice response (IVR) and other contact center solutions - the Lexee personal assistant app goes beyond the usual virtual assistant and empowers businesses to have conversations with their customers in a whole new way. Lexee is a selfservice application for iOS and Android mobile devices that voice-activates any company's mobile applications. And Lexee is backed by Angel's Caller First Analytics, enabling businesses to measure the effectiveness of their mobile apps in real time. The app also comes with the Lexee software development kit, a Web-based point-and-click application that leverages Angel's Site Builder to help companies build conversational, personalized voice solutions and adjust mobile solutions depending on customer needs or market changes. Lexee also offers multichannel support to ensure that any interaction a customer has with it will be reflected on any of the other customer service channels. It can even accommodate voice biometrics to authenticate each user's voiceprint. "Angel is doing groundbreaking work surrounding natural interfaces for phone-based self-service, initially by leveraging its links to MicroStrategy analytics and business intelligence," says Dan Miller, senior analyst at Opus Research. "Lexee is designed to catapult them into mobile customer care, providing tools and a run-time platform for Siri-like personal virtual assistance services originating from the growing population of smartphone users. Lexee gives a high-profile presence to some very interesting initiatives at Angel to leverage Angel's long-standing, cloud-based resources for multichannel customer care." And while Lexee is an entirely new product, it was just one of several innovations to come from Angel in the past year. The company in December introduced Angel Outbound Campaign Manager, a new Web interface that enables businesses to build, manage, and measure proactive outbound customer communications. With the cloud-based interface, powered by Angel's CX Analytics, businesses can create conversations with customers, gain valuable insight into customer preferences, and provide a more personalized customer experience. Also new this year was the Angel Cloud CTI Adaptor, which sends a screen pop that includes relevant customer information, such as product history, preferences, and past conversations, to an agent's desktop during customer calls. Earlier in 20 12, the company released Angel Caller First Analytics for the iPad and expanded its business intelligence reporting suite with a map dashboard. With it, businesses can access valuable historical and real-time customer call data on the go, see how voice applications are being used, identify application performance issues, and drill down to the individual call recording level to listen to specific customer interactions. All this came after Angel completed 201 1 with 35 percent year- over-year revenue growth. With a focus on innovation through the creation of Angel Labs, expect the company to pioneer many other breakthrough technologies in the future. - Leonard Kite Snapshot ANGEL, A SUBSIDIARY OF MICROSTRATEGY PRESIDENT I David Rennyson FOUNDED | 1999 HEADQUARTERS I Vienna, Va. REVENUE I $27 million EMPLOYEES I 150 CUSTOMER COUNT | 1,600 "Angel is doing groundbreaking work surrounding natural interfaces for phone-based self-service. . . . Lexee is designed to catapult them into mobile customer care." -DAN MILLER, OPUS RESEARCH Building Next-Era Customer Tech NCR LOOKS FOR NEW WAYS TO MEET THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE ON-THE-GO CUSTOMER NCR- A 129-YEAR-OLD COMPANY specializing in self-service solutions for point-of-sale systems and ATM machines - has its eye on the future. Over the past year, the Duluth, Ga.-based company has rolled out several new products that enhance the customer service businesses can provide consumers who increasingly expect 24-hour, personalized service. "They [NCR] are trying to position themselves for what finance and banking will look like to the consumer ten years from now," Nicole Sturgill, research director of retail banking and cards at CEB TowerGroup, says, "and we've seen that in the moves they've made over the last twelve months." In 2011, NCR and uGenius Technology, a maker of video conferencing software for teller machines, began collaborating on building an ATM that lets consumers talk and bank with a live, remote teller. NCR acquired a minority stake in uGenius in January 2012, and announced a year later that it had acquired uGenius. Peter Leav, executive vice president of NCR, has publicly stated that the acquisition will further boost NCR's APTRA Interactive Teller solution, which gives customers the choice of self-service or connecting with a remote teller through a video interaction. "Video banking - or, as we prefer to call it, remote assisted service - will continue to gain momentum in the U.S. and other countries in 2013. Remote assisted service is proving to help financial institutions grow revenues while at the same time reduce their operating and real estate costs," Leav said. "By acquiring uGenius, we are... innovating for our customers and reinventing NCR as a software- driven business, while [enhancing] existing technology platforms and [creating] a new segment of remote assisted service." While organizations that install self-service solutions can improve service, they also risk leaving customers with the impression that the company is withdrawing services. What NCR has done well is identify ways where it can enhance the customer experience, according to Sturgill. She points to installing Interactive Teller in a bank's drive-up window as an example of its usefulness. Doing so lets customers who cannot get to the branch during normal banking hours still have the option of interacting with a live teller. "What it [Interactive Teller] does is add hours and services to locations in a way that wasn't possible before," Sturgill remarks. "That's the right way to go after the market." In addition to the Interactive Teller, NCR also introduced Customer Voice, a Web-based customer loyalty, retention, and referral tool for restaurants. Using the Net Promoter Score's methodology, the software lets restaurant owners ask customers - via email or a survey link on their receipt - how likely they are to recommend the restaurant to their friends or colleagues, based on a scale of 0 to 10. Analytics based on the Net Promoter Score are then used to draw attention to any customer concerns so that operators can quickly address them. Tom & Eddie's, a quick service restaurant in the Chicago metro area, tried out NCR's Customer Voice, and within four months of implementing it, received 2,000 completed surveys with 16 percent of customers referring their friends to the restaurant by sharing incentives through their social networks, according to an NCR case study. "Over twenty percent of these referrals have come into the restaurant, driving new customer traffic and giving us the opportunity to create more brand ambassadors," remarks Tammy Cicora, chief hospitality officer of Tom & Eddie's. Last year, NCR also launched Express Key, a hotel check-in kiosk that lets guests who have checked in on a mobile device collect their room key, and NCR SelfServ Checkout Convertible, which switches between self- and assisted-service checkout modes, based on a retailer's operating model and customer traffic. Keeping pace with the innovations of smaller and more nimble start-ups is "a challenge for larger companies," observes David Albertazzi, a senior analyst with Aite Group. "Whether it's from the hardware or software side, NCR is constantly looking for ways to expand...and as businesses evolve, they will be in the right spot." - Judith Aquino Snapshot NCR CEO I William Nuti FOUNDED | 1884 HEADQUARTERS I Duluth. Ga. REVENUE $5.3 billion (2011) EMPLOYEES | 24,000 CUSTOMER COUNT | Undisclosed "They [NCR] are trying to position themselves for what finance and banking will look like to the consumer ten years from now, and we've seen that in the moves they've made over the last twelve months." -NICOLE STURGILL, CEB TOWERGROUP Adding Service Through Acquisitions AN EXPANSION AT NOBLE SYSTEMS BRINGS THE PROVIDER OF UNIFIED CONTACT CENTER AND OUTBOUND DIALING SOLUTIONS TO NEW MARKETS AND VERTICALS NOBLE SYSTEMS has been providing unified contact center and outbound dialing solutions since 1989, but 2012 was one of its busiest years yet. The company made three key acquisitions, expanded its operations in Europe and Asia-Pacific, enhanced most of its core products, and created an entirely new browser-agnostic contact center reporting tool accessible from anywhere. It also created a dedicated healthcare solutions group offering industry-specific expertise and solution sets focused on precare and post-discharge patient contact, revenue cycle management, and more. Through its acquisitions of TelStar Hosted Services and Stratasoft in the fall, the company added cloud and premisesbased solutions that include predictive dialing, contact center database management, contact center campaign scripting, predictive dialing algorithms, and contact center management systems. And when it acquired ALI Solutions, it gained the Vincio and OnQ analytics-based decisioning platforms and the CallTech call optimization and best-time-to-call engine. The company "has taken advantage of the downturn in the contact center market to acquire companies and products that are complementary to its product portfolio and strategy," observes Donna Fluss, president and founder of DMG Consulting. The string of acquisitions follows the company's release of Noble Web Reports, a contact center management tool that is designed to free managers from their desks and get them back on the floor where they are able to manage more effectively. The company also made several significant enhancements to its existing Maestro management portal, Composer unified agent desktop solution, and Harmony browser access tool for remote and mobile contact center management. And working with Nexidia, with which it has had a partnership since 2007, enabled the company to make notable enhancements to Noble Speech Analytics as well. The solution is able to tell companies at a glance how well their overall contact center operations and individual agents are meeting organizational expectations. Fluss, meanwhile, notes that Noble Systems "is the thirdplace vendor in the outbound dialing market, and they continue to make investments to enhance their products and offerings." The company, she adds, "is relatively quiet about what they do, but they clearly want to be a major player in the sectors in which they compete." One of those sectors is the healthcare industry, where the company has recently refocused some of its energies. In October 2012, it announced the formation of a dedicated healthcare solutions group offering specific expertise and solution sets for integrated healthcare delivery networks, hospitals, regional health systems, physician practice groups, and other providers. Noble Systems' healthcare solutions, which are available for deployments on-premises or in the cloud, are designed to address the full spectrum of patient contact needs, including patient scheduling, insurance verification, satisfaction surveys, accounts recovery, and related activities. Other areas where the company is channeling its efforts include remote and mobile access to contact center information, which company president and CEO James Noble Jr. sees as "a necessity" going forward. "The entire industry has moved beyond desk phones and workstations, expecting real-time access to information from handheld devices, laptops, home computers, and more," he states. - Leonard Klie Snapshot NOBLE SYSTEMS CEO I James Noble Jr. FOUNDED | 1989 HEADQUARTERS | Atlanta REVENUE | Undisclosed EMPLOYEES | 350 CUSTOMER COUNT | 4,000 The company "has taken advantage of the downturn in the contact center market to acquire companies and products that are complementary to its product portfolio and strategy " -DONNA FLUSS. DMG CONSULTING Supporting the Supporters ZENDESK TURNS MULTICHANNEL CUSTOMER SUPPORT CASES INTO TICKETS WITH MOBILE AND CRM COMPATIBILITY IF FACEBOOK'S popularity is what every consumer software company secretly hopes to emulate, Zendesk may well be its enterprise equivalent. Twenty-five thousand customers, ranging from Disney to Dropbox, use Zendesk's help desk and customer support ticket software, which promises unified access to customer information. But big-name clients are not the only believers in Zendesk's cloud-based appeal. This September, Redpoint Ventures led a $45 million round of equity financing in the company, along with a $15 million credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank Satish Dharmaraj, a general partner with Redpoint Ventures, called Zendesk "disruptive" with "stellar performance in the customer service sector." With that funding came an overhaul of Zendesk's customer service platform. The company introduced an application framework, Zendesk Apps, which lets a company extend Zendesk functionality to third-party business applications. The updated customer help desk platform also brought what the company called "a seamless integration" to a business's live chat, social media, online community, email, and telephone customer support cases within a single interface. The crux of the Zendesk platform is its ability to translate multichannel customer communications into support tickets for agent resolution. However, the company also offers selfservice options for customers who prefer the online community atmosphere or who prefer to search a knowledge base. Zendesk"fits into that core provider category where they may be considerably less expensive to deploy. . .with multichannel integrations sorted and solved at a deep level," says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president at Nucleus Research. Zendesk introduced its mobile customer portal this August with single sign- on access for Google and Facebook. Brendan Read, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, says people are increasingly turning to the Web as the first stop in their retail purchase and customer service journeys. "The. . .growing popularity of smartphones and tablets, and the development of mobile apps, will strengthen this predilection," he notes. Zendesk also teamed up with eBay's open source e-commerce platform provider Magento in November to offer new ways for commerce companies to solve customer issues. Debuting a two-way integration between the two platforms, frontline customer support teams gained access to transaction data like shipping status and order ID information. On the flip side, a sales agent using Magento could escalate a Zendesk support ticket or file a ticket without leaving the e-commerce system. The company also rounded out analytics for customers with the introduction of Search Analytics for companies with a higher ratio of self-service to agent interactions. Search Analytics helps companies determine what customers are searching for, and suggests or alters content and results based on customer entries. A new reporting dashboard combines advanced reporting from partner GoodData with benchmark data and online forum, voice, search, and ticket statistics. This year, Zendesk became the first help desk software to be compatible with Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, offering all of the same support capabilities available to customers on the desktop application. This past year also marked Zendesk's entry into the Google Apps Marketplace, which gave Google Apps users access to Zendesk using their Google OpenID for simple signon. As for CRM partnerships, the company updated its Salesforce.com integration to bring complete ticket information into sales and support workflows in Salesforce.com. With Zendesk customer companies such as Pinterest and online point-of-sale software company Vend improving their first-response times by as much as 300 percent, it's safe to say that the company gets the rapidly changing environment for customer support and self-service. And rumor has it, Zendesk is eyeing an IPO in 2013. Its success would make CEO Mikkel Svane's goal for Zendesk to be "the new face of customer service (and) a globally recognized brand" a reality. - Kelly Liyakasa Snapshot ZENDESK CEO | Mikkel Svane FOUNDED | 2007 HEADQUARTERS | San Francisco, Calif. REVENUE | Undisclosed EMPLOYEES | 300 CUSTOMER COUNT | 25,000 Zendesk "fits into that core provider category where they may be considerably less expensive to deploy. . . with multichannel integrations sorted and solved at a deep level. " -REBECCA WEWEMANN, NUCLEUS RESEARCH (c) 2013 Information Today, Inc. |