September 2000

We at TMC� Labs recognize the challenges of developing a first-class product that integrates many components into one unified product suite. With the convergence of voice, data and various media types (fax, e-mail and chat) comes increasing complexity that, properly engineered, results in a product we consider to be an engineering feat. Our hats are off to the developers and engineers of the products that have earned a TMC� Labs Innovation Award.

It is our opinion that the 20 products we have selected have made the most impact on the contact center industry in the past 12 months. Although most of the awards are bestowed upon specific products, others are given to vendors for their entire product suite. You may notice that some of the award winners chosen have a similar feature-set; namely, the multimedia customer interaction products that blend several types of interactions -- e-mail, fax, VoIP calls, Web callbacks and Web chat -- into one product suite. TMC� Labs firmly believes that any organization that conducts customer interaction must tightly manage all forms of communication to ensure quality service. Several products integrate a number of these touch points into one unified product suite, making administration easier and customer interactions more seamless and effortless. We believe these multimedia, interactive products will be the heart of any contact center or customer-focused business, which is why this product genre received the most TMC� Labs Innovation Awards.

TMC� Labs Innovation Awards List

Altitude Software
uCI 2000
Phone: 877-367-3279
In the past year, customer interaction software has become increasingly prevalent. Companies are beginning to recognize the need to conduct personalized business with their customers through the Internet or other new media. Altitude Software has followed this trend closely and has continually improved its Easyphone product line to help personalize agent/customer relationships through touch points such as e-mail, voice, Web or mobile channels. Recently, Altitude software released its unified Customer Interaction (uCI) 2000 suite, which has broken new ground in assisting with customer interaction through any communications channel and merges all customer-driven business transactions into a single repository.

Like the Easyphone product before it, the uCI 2000 suite consists of many applications that form one complete solution. It is separated into three components: self-service, assisted service and unified optimization. The self-service component facilitates the customer's experience with Web, IVR or WAP offerings so that customized applications can be developed and easily used. We were especially impressed with the WAP functionality, which is still uncommon to this type of product but will play a large role in the future. The assisted service component includes synchronizing voice and data in contact center environments, increasing productivity for e-mail inquiries and collaborative assistance via Web chat, co-browsing, pushing and pulling Web pages or e-mail. The u-enabled optimization component explores the relationship of the customer, agent and supervisor so a company can manage and organize its system for better overall results. These tools also help determine the correct levels of service and offer a form of skills-based routing.

TMC� Labs recognizes the difficulty in unifying all these technologies in one solution and commends Altitude Software for its clever architecture that will surely influence the customer interaction market as a whole.

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Aspect Communications
Customer Relationship Portal
Phone: 408-325-2200
If you were to compile all of the various definitions of customer relationship management (CRM), you would probably assemble something similar to the following two-part definition. First, this revolutionary concept suggests that customers will remain more loyal if, instead of treating them like members of a faceless mass, you treat them as individuals. Second, to implement such a strategy, companies must eradicate traditional boundaries by unifying resources across marketing, sales and support channels.

Aspect's Customer Relationship Portal can, in some sense, be considered a prime example of this definition. While routing and prioritizing all incoming media ranging from phone to e-mail, it draws upon front- and back-office resources in all departments, making customer information available to whichever human or automated agent is currently serving that customer. Other companies provide variations of these common CRM goals, though Aspect takes some innovative routes in achieving them.

Through the Portal, working with complex processes such as business rules and workflow is simplified via drag-and-drop on a graphical interface. Tactics such as these allow companies to be more responsive, enabling them to make elemental strategy changes on the fly without low-level programming. Graphical interfaces break down the long-standing barrier between the business and technical sides of e-commerce. CRM opened the door for marketing personnel to begin taking a greater interest in new parts of the company. The way an incoming support call was handled, for example, became rightfully seen as a factor that could lead to future sales. GUI-driven applications such as Aspect's eBusiness Architect provide an outlet for this new interest and are only one example of what makes it a company to watch within this market space.

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Blue Pumpkin Software, Inc.
PrimeTime family
Phone: 877-257-6756
A large percentage of the issues that must be addressed in a contact center involve workforce management, which involves the harrowing task of properly coordinating contact center agents' schedules, adding information on where they work and who their supervisors are, and keeping track of the breaks, sick days and personal days of each employee. All these responsibilities must be handled before addressing more important issues such as setting goals and forecasts for each agent. Since employee turnover rates are often extremely high, a complete, user-friendly system must be in place so all of these tasks can become manageable. Blue Pumpkin's PrimeTime family of workforce management software products aids an organization so its contact center can run more efficiently.

TMC� Labs has had several opportunities to examine the features of the PrimeTime family of products. We are familiar with PrimeTime Enterprise, which uses an intuitive interface to meet customer service goals by including forecasting and scheduling analysis with understandable graphs and intelligent reports. The software also supports most popular ACDs, an extensive employee database and a flexible set of work rules. Real-time adherence is an add-on option that helps evaluate how well service goals are being met through the use of real-time data from an ACD. PrimeTime Skills links the skills of the contact center's agents to the ACD queues to allow the call to be routed to the right agent. PrimeTime Insight allows agents to instantly gain access to vital schedule information from remote locations via the Web.

With all of this functionality, and many other capabilities the PrimeTime family offers, Blue Pumpkin has repeatedly produced resourceful workforce management tools with all of its products and keeps abreast of the current needs of contact centers.

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Brightware, Inc.
Brightware 2000
Phone: 800-416-7332
The pledge to build better customer relationships one transaction at a time is what makes Brightware one of the most successful resources for customer assistance software for the Internet. The Brightware 2000 suite of assistance software includes robust applications such as Web Assistance, Email Assistance, Live Assistance and the Brightware Contact Center and offers a healthy integration of online resources, customer support and leading-edge technology.

At the foundation of Brightware's automation technology is its pioneering effort with research and development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). This intelligent technology, coupled with business-specific knowledge, is what keeps its customers coming back. The architecture of the Brightware 2000 suite is designed to provide customers with a consistent and positive support experience, regardless of whether that involves seeking help directly from a customer representative, accessing a Web site or communicating via e-mail. All customer requests and online interactions are automatically directed to the appropriate information resource using existing Web pages or pages that have been dynamically generated. In this way, only the most relevant product information is presented. Additionally, instead of having to deal with the standard tedious forms, the customer need only contend with intelligent and intuitive question-and-answer-style dialogs. This interactive solution makes it easier for customers to make an informed decision about which products are right for them.

Brightware's success is evident in the growing number of loyal customers it attains. The company's devotion to excellence and customer support is what leads it to create products that offer real-time solutions. The quick and complete response given to customers' inquiries leads to a higher level of customer satisfaction and a stronger foundation for long-term customer relationships.

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CELLIT, Inc.
CCPRO
Phone: 888-293-7250
For some time now, CELLIT has offered its CCPRO product as a solution that increases performance on just about every level, including customer satisfaction, agent productivity and service creation. The company's products have also enabled organizations to lower both operating costs and capital expenditures. The primary reason is that its solution is an all-in-one software-based system, which negates the need for a complex and inefficient multivendor environment. CCPRO allows for the integration of multiple PBXs from multiple sites, eliminating the need to buy additional equipment. The result is a complete solution that improves on traditional call centers and includes fax, voice, video, e-mail and customer interaction through the Web.

There are three possible configurations that may be used for CCPRO: broadband, narrowband or a hybrid of both which may be run over ATM or IP. The features that comprise the entire CCPRO solution are Agent Management Platform (AMP), CenterCord, CenterDirector, DataViews, NTSwitch, NTSwitch Configuration Utility and TeleVisor. These components include telephony, queuing, monitoring, rules- and skills-based routing, reporting, a gateway between the public network and CCPRO agents and supervisors, a real-time ACD, the IVR and many other capabilities. While these configurations and features are admirable on their own, we were most impressed with how seamlessly they all worked in conjunction with one another.

The innovations inherent in CCPRO allow contact centers to evolve with new communications advancements and help customize companies' growing e-business needs. We were particularly impressed with CCPRO's scalability, robustness and ability to manage a complete solution.

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Cisco Systems, Inc./
Oracle Corp.
Cisco-Oracle Customer Interaction Solution
Phone: 800-553-NETS; 800-ORACLE1
The need for tighter voice and data integration at the business application level has spawned some interesting partnerships. Of particular interest to us at TMC�  Labs is the recent partnership between industry heavyweights Cisco and Oracle that has produced the Cisco-Oracle Customer Interaction Solution, an IP-based interaction environment which pre-integrates Cisco's Intelligent Call Manager (ICM) enterprise routing and CTI solutions with Oracle's E-Business Suite.

The most innovative aspect of this combined product solution is that it delivers CRM, ERP and other business applications and integrates all types of interactions, such as e-mail, telephony, Web, chat, IVR, telephony and VoIP, across a distributed contact center environment.

Routing calls to multiple contact centers is handled via Cisco's ICM software. Cisco's ICM provides intelligent contact management by integrating telephone carrier networks, ACDs and IVRs, as well as providing intelligent call routing to multiple contact center sites using dialed number (DN), calling line I.D. (CLID), caller-entered digits (CED) and other information. Caller-specific or IVR data collected in the network are used in ICM Scripting to intelligently route calls to a particular ACD site based on current load. The script can then access customer data for routing via a Cisco Application Gateway interface to the Oracle database. When calls are routed to their desktops, agents are presented with screen-pop information as well as a call script, which uses the Oracle Scripting engine.

Intelligent call routing, customer profile screen-pops, agent soft phone, IVR integration, Web callbacks, VoIP, e-mail, chat and inbound and outbound telephony are all part of the feature-set (or soon will be). What is more interesting than this impressive feature-set is what Cisco and Oracle plan to accomplish in the near future. TMC� Labs discovered that Cisco and Oracle plan to package what they term the "100 percent IP infrastructure" of the virtual interaction center for hosted (i.e., application service provider-based) e-business and communications services. With this ASP model, a new contact center can be created anywhere, with remote agents scattered across the world, and the contact center need not install expensive customer premise equipment such as an ACD, PBX, IVR or e-mail server.

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CosmoCom, Inc.
CosmoCall Universe
Phone: 631-940-4200
When researching CosmoCom, we discovered the company controls an impressive 50 percent of the IP-ACD market. Then, we noticed that CosmoCom was recently issued a patent entitled "Multimedia Telecommunication Automatic Call Distribution System" for its product, CosmoCall Universe. This solution enables calls and messages originating on telephone and data networks to be queued and routed to universal contact center agents equipped with only PCs and connected only to an IP data network. Of course, we were already aware of CosmoCom's interaction features, which include Web chat, VoIP and collaborative browsing. For these reasons and the fact that it had built its complete product from the ground up, we decided to examine the company further to discover if they were a candidate for our award.

We tried the CosmoCall live demo from the company's Web site. We just clicked on the demo, entered our information, waited a few moments for an agent to pick up our call, and were in a chat session. We began our chat by typing our inquiries into a nifty notepad setting, and the agent told us all about CosmoCall Universe by pushing us Web pages containing diagrams about the product's architecture at the same time explaining its functionality. We discovered information regarding how the components of CosmoCall Universe work together, that it supports up to 8,000 agents and 50,000 simultaneous calls/messages, and about its ASP program. Although we had to disconnect from the chat session call, we also tested the VoIP functionality and discovered that the quality of this VoIP call was as good as that of a PSTN connection.

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Davox Corp.
Ensemble 2.0
Phone: 800-480-2299
Today's customers demand a complete contact center solution, one that integrates smoothly with existing data structures in a multiapplication environment. Davox has met this demand and is leading the effort by developing technology that is "media-neutral" and works side-by-side with customers' existing configurations, including support for phone, Web and e-mail. This technology promotes continued growth and development of the investment made by customers for a contact center solution. Ensemble 2.0 is a multimedia customer interaction suite that enables companies to provide more effective and consistent service to customers regardless of which communication method is being employed. The Ensemble suite consists of integrated software modules which enable companies to better manage customer contacts and thus make it easier for these organizations to provide valuable information to sales agents as required. Real-time and historical reports can be created, and new features such as e-mail response management, Web callback and multisite call management provide companies with the ability to communicate more effectively with customers. In addition, users can attract and retain more loyal customers and reduce operating costs. Perhaps most important, Ensemble allows companies to get the most value from every customer contact by allowing them to concentrate on the total view of all customer transactions taking place across the enterprise.

With Ensemble 2.0, Davox has created a product that meets the criteria for a successful customer contact system: a solution that enables and manages customer interactions throughout the enterprise and integrates smoothly into a multiapplication environment. Contact center software solutions such as Ensemble 2.0 provide higher productivity levels and help companies build solid customer relationships to meet the ever-changing business and communications challenges.

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Dictaphone, A Lernout & Hauspie Company
Freedom QMS
Phone: 800 447 7749
Call recording and monitoring systems are used to provide training, coaching and monitoring and protect a company against liability. TMC� Labs is familiar with Dictaphone's da Vinci and Symphony CTI products, both of which have received Editors' Choice awards in the past. However, both of these products were designed for the medium to large-sized contact center. Now, Dictaphone is addressing the needs of the small call center with Freedom QMS.

Traditional voice recording platforms required the use of either a proprietary storage medium or an archive storage medium such as DAT or DLT tapes. With Freedom, contact centers can leverage their existing network storage infrastructures to store and retrieve voice recordings. Since the recordings can be stored on any drive on the network (such as a RAID file server, DVDs, Quantum Snap Server, etc.), call center agents and supervisors have instant access to the voice recordings.

Essentially, Freedom uses standard file access methods (i.e., NFS, SMB and FTP) so regardless of what the future has in store in terms of storage media, the Freedom product will not become obsolete with technological advances.

Freedom also features a browser-based, customizable evaluation form system to make scoring a call as easy as filling out an on-screen survey. Both the voice playback interface and the scoring system are viewed from a browser, which allows a supervisor to fast-forward and rewind portions of the call, as well as score the call as it is being played back. The recorded call is saved along with the associated evaluation for easier retrieval at a later date. A user can then run reports that analyze the performance of agents and the entire call center operation.
Freedom has innovative features such as standard .WAV file support, voice file authentication and encryption. Also, with Freedom's encryption software, users can transport sensitive voice files over an open network securely.

One of our TMC� Labs engineers recently visited Dictaphone's facility to learn more about Freedom. He found that the best attributes of this product were that it was easy to implement and simple to use. With a feature-set that rivals more expensive monitoring systems and a price that is much lower, the Freedom QMS product merits distinction.

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eFusion, Inc.
Push to Talk
Phone: 888-4EFUSION
For a short while, it seemed that Internet technology would replace costly and fallible human interaction. Solutions popped up offering ways to automate more and more business processes, from sales to support. However, with the novelty of e-commerce finally wearing off, consumers are realizing they have questions and demands that cannot be answered by a glorified, hypertext version of the traditional brochure. Companies such as eFusion are rising to the occasion, offering ways to leverage the effectiveness of the Web while remaining responsive to customers' needs for human interaction.

eFusion's Push to Talk (PtT) product was designed to reduce site abandonment by offering a customer the opportunity to talk to a live agent via a company's Web site. By placing a "push to talk" button on their sites, companies provide the customer two choices: they can either speak with an agent through a multimedia PC or have an agent call them back on a second phone line.

The methods of delivery and support of the product are worthy of note. eFusion uses an ASP model, which by definition reduces installation and maintenance costs. Additionally, a service-level agreement with backbone providers is designed to reduce some of the roughness still associated with voice over IP communications. These points are worth mentioning, for while other companies offer a broader range of media for customer interaction, many have not paid attention to the more mundane aspects of CRM strategy that emphasize cost and quality of service over slick functionality.

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eGain Communications Corp.
eGain Commerce suite
Phone: 888-603-4246
There is an "80/20" analogy floating through the CRM world, one which suggests that only 20 percent of customers truly require live assistance. eGain's product appears to cover both slices in the pie chart by including products addressing the need for both human interaction and intelligently automated resources. The company's live chat and voice over IP systems (with VoIP technology provided by another of our award winners, Lipstream) are impressive enough, but what stood out most in terms of raw innovation were self-service applications such as eGain Assistant and multipurpose consumer/CSR tools such as eGain's Knowledge Gateways.

eGain Assistant simulates text chat through a host of surprisingly life-like responses and prompts. It can be configured to give Web tours, answer questions and escalate customers to live help according to predetermined cues. Additionally, since its textual responses are created by the end user, the Assistant can reflect any desired "tone" (i.e., friendly, corporate or casual). "Eve," the sample assistant presiding over eGain's site, can even becomes sarcastic at times if you get too clever with "her." In general, possible customer queries or responses are so cleverly anticipated it's easy to forget that Eve is not a real person.

eGain's Knowledge Gateways expand information available to both self-servicing customers and agents to include "unstructured" information. Accessible through conversational text queries, unstructured knowledge can include MS SQL Server databases, Office documents and Exchange folders -- as well as several other types of sources. The result is both customers and the agents who serve them can transcend the usual Web resources or support documents to find the information that can make or break a sale. Though there are too many eGain products to mention here, it is safe to state that the company's most impressive innovation lies in sheer breadth of available solutions, each of which address a key point in the possible range of customer interactions.

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Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.
Genesys T-Server framework
version 5.1
Phone: 415-437-1100
Anyone familiar with the CTI industry knows that Genesys, an independent, wholly owned subsidiary of Alcatel, played an important role within the field of computer-telephony integration (CTI). Genesys was best known for providing the architecture by which multiple call centers could be connected together to seamlessly appear as one. Using Genesys' network routing solution, users can make routing decisions on a per-call basis while the call is still in the carrier network. By routing directly from the carrier network, the need to route calls from premise to premise is eliminated. Routing decisions can be made based upon information collected with the call or a database lookup and calls can also be routed to agents based on their individual skills.

Genesys has extended its T-Server framework to encompass multiple interaction types: e-mail, Web-based chat and collaboration and voice over IP (VoIP), as well as traditional voice and CTI-based routing. We'd also like to mention that Genesys' flexible architecture has allowed it to integrate with third-party solutions such as Mercom System's Audiolog multimedia recording product.

The Genesys solution, which includes the T-Server Framework, tracks and records the country of origin of the customer's call, e-mail, fax or letter, and consults a database to determine where the client is located. The Genesys Enterprise Routing solution also accesses client information from a central database and directs the call, message or letter to the appropriate contact center agent. Even better, Genesys created a WAP application that allows customers to queue callbacks from a Genesys-enabled call center to the customer's mobile phone.

Genesys' innovative solution allows for contact center load balancing, central administration of all media types from a consistent interface, workforce management features, routing calls based on skills, "call blend" inbound/ outbound multimedia interactions and the seamless integration of multiple contact centers with multiple resources into one software package.

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GoldMine Software Corp.
FrontOffice 2000
Phone: 800-776-7889
GoldMine is best known for its sales automation software; however, it has entered the contact center market with its FrontOffice 2000 product. FrontOffice 2000 combines GoldMine Sales and Marketing, GoldMine Service and Support and GoldMine Management Intelligence to deliver a customer relationship management solution targeted to small to medium-sized businesses.

FrontOffice 2000 integrates sales force automation, account management and marketing automation with contact center software to provide call center agents, salespeople and marketing with a single, complete view of an organization's customers. With a single, unified source of information, this functionality allows multiple departments to share account information. Managers will enjoy having a cohesive view of the business, which will allow them to more easily track problems and trends, monitor interdepartment activities and communications, as well as create powerful business rules that can control sales, marketing and support.

With an optional module (GoldMine Everywhere Server), GoldMine FrontOffice 2000 can access customers, calendars and key sales, service and marketing information in real-time, from any remote location, and even includes support for the Palm VII as well as a thin client that will extend support to other wireless devices.

This product does not offer all the bells and whistles of larger enterprise products such as Siebel's, but it was not intended to. What GoldMine does bring to the table is a very affordable, virtually "out-of-the-box" turnkey solution for the small to medium-sized call center.

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Interactive Intelligence, Inc.
Enterprise Interaction Center
Phone: 317-872-3000
TMC� Labs reviewed Interactive Intelligence's Enterprise Interaction Center (EIC) in January 1999, so we were already quite familiar with the product. We knew that this PC-PBX system, which runs on Windows NT, was one of the most complete solutions available due to its integration of ACD, IVR, voice mail and fax features all in one system. In that review, we raved about the system. We found it has only improved since then. Newer versions have shown continuous innovations from Interactive Intelligence, a company that keeps pace with communications and e-business needs.

EIC v1.3 is the version currently on the market. In addition to those features already mentioned, the product boasts Web-based interactions including text chat, e-mail, Web callback requests and VoIP calls. We perused the company's Web site and tried a text chat and Web callback request. When we tried the text chat, an agent took our request very quickly and was helpful in answering our questions. When we tried a Web callback request, an e-mail notification was sent to us, followed a little later by the call. Both features worked impressively well.

Additionally, EIC v1.3 offers call recording, predictive dialing, advanced self-service functionality in the form of FAQs, and much more. It is a unified messaging system that can integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes or Novell Groupwise, as well as customer relationship applications from companies such as Siebel Systems and GoldMine.

In a continued effort to offer one the most innovative products in the field, Interactive Intelligence will soon release EIC v2.0, which will offer improved functionality. We anticipate that version 2.0 will include features such as the ability to handle at least 256 call center agents and 512 business users on a single server, the ability to use commercial servers from Dell, IBM and others, an improved multimedia queuing manager and improved collaborative browsing features.

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Lipstream Networks, Inc.
Live Voice
Phone: 408-861-8200
Now that the contact center and e-commerce environments have recognized that customers want human interaction when they need it, companies are racing to see who can build the most "personalized" Web site. A common manifestation of this trend is the click-to-talk button, which initiates conversation with a live agent or salesperson. Providing one of these buttons is easy -- getting consumers to use it is the challenging part. Most browsing customers assume that any extra feature worth using on a Web site first requires the downloading of some kind of "player" or "reader" from another company's site. With voice over IP technology being where it is, a customer might go through the trouble only to experience a choppy, robotic-sounding conversation full of irritating delays.

While many companies offer a variety of media for customer interaction, Lipstream's strategy has been to remain focused on voice communication. As a result, it has eliminated the need for consumers to install NetMeeting or another third-party product in order to use its Live Voice technology. Download and installation of its proprietary client application occur automatically the first time a customer tries to use it, and these procedures require no configuration. Lipstream claims this process should take no more than a minute on a 28.8 modem; it took only a few seconds through our T1 connection.

While Live Voice offers interesting features like full duplex capability -- which allows callers to interrupt one another over IP -- what is most impressive about the product is its clarity and lack of delay. The company highlights the network architecture over Live Voice's features as its primary competitive advantage. Lipstream is currently seeking a patent for its servers, which for redundancy's sake are located in several U.S. locations. Multiple sources of bandwidth include Qwest's fiber optic backbone. Live Voice serves as a reminder that innovation does not necessarily show itself in a vast range of features: sometimes it is invisibly applied behind the scenes, so customers can enjoy better quality and reliability.

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PipeLive.com LLC
PipeLive 4.0
Phone: 800-768-0072
With the surge of companies doing business on the Internet, the need for satisfactory customer service is escalating to new levels. As we have all experienced, good customer service is often the first thing dot-com companies let slip through the cracks (if they ever had it to begin with). The lack of ability to contact a knowledgeable human can cause customers to leave a Web site in frustration, never to return. In our search for a company that recognizes this fact, we found PipeLive.com, an innovative leader in the Web-based communication arena. PipeLive caters to companies that offer sales and support services over the Internet. We believe that PipeLive's product, PipeLive 4.0, is an effective solution to meeting the changing support needs of today's customers.

PipeLive 4.0 offers an integrated solution to online customers visiting a company's Web site. It focuses on customer satisfaction and support and offers valuable resources from which instant information and assistance can be obtained. Specifically, it was designed to help companies combine all of their current contact methods, including Internet, e-mail and telephone-based resources, into a single customer-contact environment. This would provide visitors to a company's Web site with one centralized source for information. If this still does not meet the needs of the customer, then he or she can request live assistance from a representative via the Internet. With features such as multiple session live chat, callback request, form-sharing, Web page delivery and VoIP, customers have multiple resources at their fingertips.

Live support over the Internet is the wave of the future and we feel that PipeLive.com is poised to assume leadership in this area. PipeLive.com recognized both the need and the potential for a Web-based communication system and has successfully harnessed this potential into a real-world solution. In doing so, it has successfully bridged the gap between companies and their Web-based customers.

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Siebel Systems, Inc.
eBusiness 2000
Phone: 800-647-4300
At a time when new e-business products emerge on a daily basis, Siebel Systems is a firmly established player in the market. The company recently released its sixth major version of its e-business system, eBusiness 2000, and has enhanced the product's functionality over the previous version. As a result, eBusiness 2000 is one of the most complete solutions available for managing sales, marketing and customer service through any communications channel.

In an effort to tailor to each individual customer, Siebel Systems has personalized its system so that detailed customer profiles can be provided for agents through any touch point, whether it is via the Web, call center or other medium, so agents can handle inquiries faster and more easily and customers' needs can be better met.

While TMC� Labs was impressed by all of eBusiness 2000's features, there are four that stood out in particular. First, we liked the Web-based training portal that creates many levels of training, including a course catalog, curriculum planning and a real-time interactive training and certification system. Second, we admired the level of integration with technologies such as CORBA, SAP and especially XML. Third, the ability of voice recognition to facilitate phone access to customer information impressed us. Finally, we were intrigued by the advanced support for wireless communications using the WAP standard. In this way, remote users can access time-critical data via any mobile phone.

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Siemens Information and Communications Networks, Inc.
HiPath ProCenter
Phone: 408-492-2000
Web: Many companies are espousing the benefits of integrating multiple types of interactions (chat, VoIP and Web callback) into a single product suite for easier management, reporting and tracking of the customer experience as well as improved customer service. Several PBX vendors have either developed their own products to address multimedia interactions or have partnered with third-party vendors. The problem is that many of these PBX manufacturers address only certain interaction types and not others, or they require several disparate systems bundled together.

HiPath ProCenter consists of several components that allow it to perform nearly every possible interaction, including skills-based routing, Web callback, Web chat, predictive dialing and more -- all in a single product suite. Additionally, HiPath ProCenter can be pre-integrated with popular third-party solutions including Blue Pumpkin, Davox, Interalia, Kana, Remedy, Siebel and GoldMine. It also integrates with Genesys' solution to connect multiple call center sites.

Siemens has also provided a migration path from the circuit-switched world to a packet-based world. Siemens HiPath ProCenter allows users to use their existing circuit-switched equipment, while providing an architecture that will allow them to migrate to either a partial or full VoIP environment. In addition, Siemens has developed its own IP-based phone and includes support for Microsoft NetMeeting. Customers who dial into the HiPath ProCenter via NetMeeting can be handled by the same routing engine that handles regular PSTN calls.

All the product's modules are impressive; we have space to discuss only a few. We liked the ProCenter MX Email system, which enables call centers to efficiently route, track and report customers' e-mail communication. MX Email will "read" incoming e-mail, look for keywords and then intelligently route the messages to the most appropriate agent. The engine driving the integration of all these customer interactions is the R�sum� Routing module, which allows customer interactions to be handled with the same efficiency and reliability typical of voice-only solutions. Agent skill-sets determine which agents possess the necessary skills to handle various media types.

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Telephony@Work
CallCenter@nywhere
Phone: 858-410-1600
Telephony@Work has developed a unique approach to solving contact centers' technology and communication needs. Its CallCenter@nywhere product allows ASPs to set up virtual e-commerce and virtual contact center applications for enterprises. Similar to Genesys', Telephony@Work's architecture can perform pre-call routing before the call is transferred to an appropriate agent.

As its name implies, CallCenter@nywhere can route interactions from interaction point (phone, fax, Web chat or VoIP) to agents residing anywhere -- in a centralized call center, branch office, home office or all of the above. Also, it allows ASPs to partition, or share, the common hardware components and software that handle all of the e-mail, phone calls, chat sessions and VoIP calls for call center agents. This granularity allows for multiple customers to be hosted on a single server, each running on a separate partition. CallCenter@nywhere was designed to eliminate the need for programmers and for months of systems integration to get the call center up and running. In fact, programmers are not required for any aspect of system configuration or administration, including IVR scripts, skills-based call routing and multimedia queuing. While its ASP model is one of the most innovative aspects of this product, it also has a very unique pricing model. There is no per-seat licensing, which is unusual in the call center industry.

The product has several unique aspects, but the extensive feature-set is what initially commanded our attention. Use of this product can eliminate the need for customer-premise PBXs, ACDs, chat servers/client software, Web callback servers, VoIP gateways, predictive dialers, IVRs, fax servers, unified messaging servers, CTI gateways, call scripting utilities, help desk servers, call recording and monitoring systems, supervisor monitoring and coaching equipment, speech recognition servers and more. CallCenter@nywhere is capable of performing all of this functionality. A final important note is that this product supports a traditional model, whereby it will integrate with a call center's existing PBX, or the company can switch to a wholly IP-based architecture for a "virtual softswitch" model, which uses H.323 and Tundo's DOT Server.

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Teloquent Communications Corp.
Web ContactServer 2.1
Phone: 800-468-6434
While the way companies market their products and services has changed over time, customers' long-standing expectations of personalized service have not waned, but instead have increased. Many customers judge a company solely by the level of support the company provides. Most companies today see the benefit of using the Internet to conduct business, but only the most successful companies recognize the importance of customer support and continue to make it a top priority. This type of service stands out with customers and earns our recognition, as well.

Teloquent's Web ContactServer 2.1 uses the capabilities of Web technology to expand the options available to customers. A Web and phone-based teleph-ony solution, it was designed to allow users to integrate Web, voice and data and help companies improve the efficiency of their call centers and the productivity of their agents. With the added functionality of the Web and PBX equipment, customers can create a complete interaction center online and still take advantage of the benefits of its centralized administration and support. Features such as Web callback, Web chat and page push allow instant response and timely problem resolution. Web ContactServer is a user-friendly approach to customer management and provides consistent responses regardless of contact media.

The range of options this technology offers companies is especially outstanding. Customers surfing a company's Web site can choose to contact a technical representative directly or use the Web callback or Web chat feature to obtain more information. Another choice is the page push option, which provides representatives and customers with the ability to browse together. Regardless of whether a user chooses the page push or Web callback option to pose a query, he or she can be put in direct contact with the appropriate agent within minutes.

Web ContactServer goes well beyond the standards for interactive customer support applications. Teloquent has been successful in marrying advanced technologies with traditional expectations to provide a total integrated solution to its customers.

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