April 2000

TelAthena Systems LLC
96 Morton St. NY, NY 10014
Ph: 888-777-7565; Fx: 212-206-1963
[email protected]
www.telathena.com

Price: $1,500 per user and discount down to $850 per user depending on quantity. Each TelAthena license includes one Informix Unidata license in this price. CTI interfaces are priced separately.

RATINGS (0–5)
Installation: 5
Documentation: 4.5
GUI: 4.5
Features: 5
Overall: A

Installation
Versions of TelAthena are available for UNIX and UNIX cousins like the IBM RS-6000, HP systems, SCO/Intel and Linux/Intel. We tested the Windows NT version. Installing the server software and configuring the Web elements is typically done in conjunction with a VAR; TelAthena Systems also offers Web hosting for their software. The minimum requirements for the Windows NT version are a Pentium II-300, 64 MB RAM, TSAPI, TAPI or Dialogic CT Connect software, an additional 5 MB RAM per seat, and a 4 GB hard disk with a tape backup system. The servers also use PCAnywhere 8.0 for remote dial-in support, as well as the MKS UNIX command line simulator. Client machines have more flexible requirements; some of the choices are terminals like the VT220, WYSE50, ADDS Viewpoint or a Pentium computer running thin client software like Telnet, Citrix Winframe, TinyTerm, etc. (Best of all, these clients can be used interchangeably throughout a call center.) For the Pentium installations, the requirements are 32 MB RAM; for any installation, the necessary hard disk space totals less than 5 MB. All data are stored on the servers.

Documentation
There are numerous supporting documents, release notes, etc., for this system, and very informative feature information is available at the TelAthena Web site. However, the highlights are the three main books, covering Scriptwriter 2.0, Agent 2.0 and the Real-Time Analysis ("RTA") application. These manuals are easy to read and make good use of screen captures with callouts to explain every feature. The TelAthena system uses a lot of proprietary terms and conventions throughout, but the high quality of the documentation minimizes the learning curve. It's a definite improvement from the previous release. The version we tested was lacking in online help, but with a product like this, the most important factor is live agent training.

Features
TelAthena is an extremely thorough application, and like many call center products, it is almost always customized for individual installations. Still, there are plenty of standard features, although it's important to analyze them in terms of a total package. The entire feature set is too numerous to cover here; so we've chosen to write about the features that are probably most relevant to you as a VAR or call center director.

• TelAthena Scriptwriter is the vendor's tool for developing teleservices scripts. It can be used for inbound and outbound scripts, which can be modified while campaigns are in progress. Function keys are also programmable, and the entire feature is configured with a graphical interface. Scripting works with TelAthena's logic engine, which allows the system to make decisions based on call and agent actions. Scripts can also include libraries of questions and question types that access your database to fill in the variables, and identical scripts can be run from any interface (browser, Windows, character-based, dumb terminal, etc.). Developers can interface Scriptwriter to their favorite ACD, predictive dialer, IVR, call recorder, etc., and real-time reporting and monitoring is also available (discussed more below).
• In addition to the powerful scripting available, the system also broaches the realm of sales force automation. Agents and supervisors can search the history of a specific caller or call; they can even search an entire database by a variable. One feature that we especially like is that agents can take a call back any number of steps, so the called party can change an answer or avoid having to wait if the agent makes a mistake. TelAthena also provides supervisor monitoring of calls through a variety of methods, which is an excellent tool for training, quality control and dealing with irate callers. Call records are divisible into multiple categories based on what action(s) needs to be taken, if any, and literature, e-mail and fax fulfillment are all integrated into the system at levels decided by the call center administrator.
• Calling queues, callback handling and quota establishment all have intelligence in the TelAthena applications. Calls are time-stamped and queues can be weighted and grouped, and the system employs the use of time zone data and holiday/special times data to handle calls more appropriately. Quotas are either response-driven or sample-driven, and like most TelAthena functions, the specifics are administrator-defined.
• TelAthena also offers powerful reporting and database management features. Using a real-time analysis function, the reports can provide the number of calls, calls by result, call times, etc., all categorized by agent, group, campaign or summary. Data are stored in standard conventions for exporting to applications like Microsoft Excel. Other reports can be exported with ODBC links to any compatible application; data are also exportable using SQL query languages.

Operational Testing
To test TelAthena, the engineer who helped us configure the product also helped us make some sample campaigns. We were impressed with the speed and flexibility of the development process. We also conducted product tests using TelAthena's default sample, which includes a product tour, a market research/bank survey, a telesales survey and a miniature game of Clue.

We found the TelAthena tour to be the most useful way to appreciate the product's power. The tour begins by demonstrating the various kinds of screen options -- these include basic text, single-choice, multiple-choice, multipriority skip (whereby the answers determine future questions), open-ended, multinumeric (for example, seeking 1-10 scale ratings of something), and fields for entering labels, numbers, dates, telephone numbers, yes/no answers, etc. The tour also illustrates how questions can be manipulated into sets and asked in various orders, depending on definable configurations.

Beyond some of the usual applications like help desks, telemarketing, surveys, etc., we think that some of the most exciting TelAthena applications will use the Web option. Because of the ubiquity of today's browsers -- consider mobile telephones, speech interfaces, shopping malls, kiosks, etc. -- we're looking forward to seeing vendors use technology like TelAthena's for self-service Web pages. With election season coming soon, online voting is one area that could be exciting in the near future with such technology.

From the agent and administrator points of view, TelAthena is easy to learn and to use. We like that they've cut down the number of cryptic error messages, some of which bordered on actually being sarcastic in the previous version. As we mentioned above, the new Windows interface is pleasing -- it is true that you may not want call center agents to have access to the full Windows environment, but with so many other applications relying on it and with today's multitasking agents, you may not have much choice. Overall, because of TelAthena's many options for both agents and administrators, we feel that it deserves the highest marks for operational testing.

Room For Improvement
Despite the many improvements from past versions, no product is perfect. TelAthena can still use some improvement in the agent documentation, but we feel that the most important change that can be made is in the Scriptwriter. In its current state, a creative developer can make some excellent applications, but we'd like to see integration with some of the popular app-gen suites. We'd also like to see more features for monitoring as it relates to alarms and high-usage queue levels. Otherwise, there isn't much to criticize -- TelAthena engineers have done a very good job with this version.

Conclusion
For call centers of almost any size, this version of TelAthena is a great choice. Although it does not get into some of the cutting-edge areas like Web call-through over IP, we are very impressed with the range of platforms the agent applications can run on, and the administration and customization tools are quite powerful and relatively easy to master. The product is also competitively priced and well documented. It is a definite finalist for our Editors' Choice award, even more so than the previous winning version. We highly recommend this product.