September 2000
New Products For Voice,
Recording And E-Commerce
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Servicesoft
2001: An E-Service Odyssey |
Servicesoft, Inc. believes that a proactive
approach to e-service is very much like the level of service and ease of
conducting business that customers expect from traditional
brick-and-mortar businesses. It feels that self-service and personalized
Web pages empower customers to help themselves (and increase their
satisfaction levels) and enable customer service agents to handle priority
and complex issues. Consistent with that approach, Servicesoft fashions
its solutions with the expectation of helping to maximize an
organization's call center and e-commerce investments by integrating with
the existing technology, including automatic call distributors (ACD),
customer relationship management (CRM) systems, databases and e-commerce
applications.
The company recently announced the release of Servicesoft 2001, an
intelligent e-service solution intended to enable businesses to provide
proactive customer service over the Internet. Servicesoft 2001 is designed
to enable online businesses to provide preemptive and rapid resolution to
issues and present a "single face" to customers, and includes
features aimed at servicing and retaining online customers more
effectively. Based on an intelligent, multichannel knowledge platform, the
Servicesoft 2001 suite offers features including: an eService Portal,
customized to provide the information, history and knowledge that
customers need for purchase decisions, account management or customer
service and support; outbound campaign support with enhanced modules for
automated, measurable and customizable e-mail campaign management,
enabling non-technical users to generate campaigns; support for wireless
devices, using the industry-standard WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)
to deliver all Web-based content over wireless devices; single-threaded
conversation that tracks customer interactions across multiple channels,
enabling a continuous, personalized dialog over time and across multiple
touchpoints; and a global platform, designed to enable companies to
streamline and enhance their global support by allowing them to deploy one
system worldwide.
Servicesoft 2001 supports numerous languages within a single knowledge
base, providing multilingual authoring capabilities and language detection
functionality. This feature also routes messages to language-specific
agents for personalized response. Translation is facilitated through XML
text import and export. The browser-based user interface within
Servicesoft 2001 supports changing infrastructure environments and remote
locations. Administrators can change system rules, and add and change
registered users from any location. Additionally, its agent interface is
represented as a Java applet within a standard Web browser. Since all
information resides on the server, this feature affords both a lower cost
of ownership and minimal maintenance to the agent desktop while enabling
options for a remote CSR workforce.
No. 526, www.ccsmag.com/freeinfo
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PeopleSoft 8:
Web-Based Applications Armada |
PeopleSoft, Inc. recently launched PeopleSoft 8, a suite
of Internet-based e-business applications offering browser-based access.
The suite may be more accurately described as a hotel, since PeopleSoft
has both re-engineered its existing 108 applications to Internet
architecture and introduced 59 more. The company said it perceives three
industry indicators that it feels are transforming the enterprise software
industry: a generational architecture change from client/server to the
Internet, increased market opportunities resulting from that shift and the
trend of enterprises extending applications to all of their customers,
employees and suppliers. The new collaborative applications extend over
the company's major product lines, which include supply chain management,
CRM, human resources management and financials solutions, and leverage
PeopleSoft's e-business analytics applications. All of the applications
are accessible from any Web-based device, have the look and ease-of-use of
popular Web sites and are designed to integrate quickly and
cost-effectively with third-party software. The architecture, based on
HTML and XML, is intended to eliminate the need for any software/code on
the computing device other than a standard Internet browser. PeopleSoft
supports Unicode, a global language standard, which allows customers to
centrally manage implementations of PeopleSoft 8 in one database and in
almost any language. Another result of employing Unicode is that the
company has embedded multilanguage search engine technology in the suite.
The synthesis of PeopleSoft's newly introduced products is
based upon offering "enterprise applications:" effectively
linking customers, suppliers and employees. The applications are intended
to enable the seamless exchange of ideas, information, products and
services using PeopleSoft's Internet-based architecture. Twenty-six of the
new products are CRM-focused. They are "point-to-point"
solutions in that each is a sub-set addressing a specific e-business need
from customer relationship through employee self-service to supply chain
applications. New business analytic products have been built into the core
of all applications as well. PeopleSoft eCenter is the company's ASP model
for delivery of PeopleSoft 8. The company has also partnered with a dozen
ASPs to host the application, with the aim of providing rapid, low-risk
installations and seamless upgrade paths.
Recognizing that businesses may desire modifications to
suit their business needs and processes, PeopleSoft offers customization
support and management, industry-specific, scalable customizations and
on-call development and consultation. PeopleSoft Consulting provides
comprehensive implementation services, including rapid implementations,
collaboration with customer teams to speed knowledge transfers and
assistance in integrating third-party solutions. Implementations and
upgrades include training programs for functional and technical project
team members as well as end users.
No. 527, www.ccsmag.com/freeinfo
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synTelate
Your Customer Interactions
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synTelate Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Intuitive
Software Ltd., focuses on providing cost-effective and flexible call flow
products. synTelate recently opened its headquarters in Herndon, Virginia
and marked the event by announcing the availability of synTelate 1.0, the
latest version of its call flow scripting product. The company said that
the product is especially geared for small- to medium-sized companies, a
substantial market segment that has been neglected due to the enterprise
focus of many large solutions providers. It believes that smaller
organizations need an affordable, uncomplicated solution that can be
quickly developed, deployed and modified. synTelate 1.0 is intended as a
software tool that allows contact center managers to reduce training costs
and ensure effective and professional interaction between customer service
representatives (CSRs) and customers. Equipped with an easy-to-use
drag-and-drop tool set, synTelate 1.0 is de-signed to facilitate campaign
creation (including workflow, scripts and decision points) by users with
little or no technical expertise. synTelate 1.0 is based on two major
components, synTelate Builder and synTelate Agent.
synTelate Builder is a drag-and-drop, icon-based tool set
that allows CSR scripts to be created without the need for specialized
computer programming. synTelate has an intuitive graphical user interface
that is meant to save time and minimize costs associated in developing and
modifying campaigns. Contact centers can use their non-IT staff to quickly
develop or alter campaigns as required. Once a campaign is developed, the
application is run on the synTelate server with no need for compiling or
additional custom programming.
synTelate Agent is a Windows- or browser-based user
interface that provides the script(s) and associated data screens that
CSRs use when the campaign application is run. The campaign is delivered
to the CSR in the form of scripts and dialog boxes that prompt the agent
through the call based on the campaign application, the customer's
responses during the course of the call and information accessed from the
database or entered by the CSR. The Agent enables consistent responses to
customer requests or actions and helps to improve effectiveness by
providing the CSR with a dynamic script that adapts to each customer's
specific situation.
No. 528, www.ccsmag.com/freeinfo
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