Call Center Products From: Applix; Aspect; Clarent; GWI;
Nuance; Siemens And Voice Control Systems
Applix, Inc. has announced Applix
Enterprise 7.0, customer interaction software (CIS) for automating all cus-tomercontact
processes. Applix Enterprise is designed to offer a seamless integration of sales,
marketing, service and product quality functions. Applix Enterprise is a thinclient
Windows and Java-enabled CIS solution that supports all major database platforms.
Applix Enterprise contains sales, marketing, service and quality modules. Applix
Enterprise modules are integrated via a common customer information database, allowing all
customer-interaction personnel to be fully informed. Applix Enterprise’s 100 percent
Pure Java architecture allows scalability throughout the enterprise, tying organizations
together across the LAN, Internet or Intranet.
By eliminating the barriers between sales and service with one common customer information
database, Applix Enterprise enables sales/service team selling. The Applix Sales module
gives sales and marketing up-to-theminute customer data anytime, anywhere: The Applix
Enterprise thin-client framework makes it possible to provide critical customer
information to sales and marketing personnel located around the world, at any time. The
sales module provides contact-to-contract management via marketing campaign and lead
management, and fulfillment tracking.
Applix Service is designed to enable more personalized, targeted service through
capabilities that include automated notification of service level agreements, processes
for measuring responsiveness and quality management for tracking resolution of customer
inquiries.
With the integration of service and sales, potential repeat sales opportunities that are
identified by service professionals are immediately communicated to the sales force. All
information on opportunities is located in the centralized database, making it easy for
both sales and service personnel to identify, act upon and generate additional business.
Applix Enterprise enables around-theclock service to customers world-wide due to its
ability to instantly deploy tailored applications to representatives on any desktop, and
to the product’s Web interface for easy customer access to information.
Customer information is immediately entered into the centralized database, making it
simple for critical departments in an organization to access the information. For example,
service representatives enter information on product requests directly into the database,
where product development personnel can access the information and incorporate it into
product planning. For more information, contact Jillian Harvey-Asquith at 508-870-0300 or
see www.applix.com
New Foundation Architecture From Aspect
Aspect Telecommunications has
announced a new foundation architecture designed to simplify the integration necessary to
build and maintain today’s multisystem, multisite, multivendor call center
environments.
Aspect’s five foundation components –– Aspect OpenMedia™ Software,
Aspect OpenMedia Module, Aspect Architect™ software, Aspect Integrated Applications
Module and Prospect CTI (computer-telephony integration) software — allow for the
creation of customized solutions that integrate with existing call center products and
services. Each scalable, open component complies with industry standards, which allows it
to interoperate with other vendors’ standards-based components. Following are
Aspect’s five foundation components.
Aspect OpenMedia Software is a new workflow engine for executing all transactions in the
call center. This software architecture enables customers to apply their workflow models
to serve their customers in accordance with their business objectives. It runs on the
Microsoft Windows NT operating system, ensuring interoperability with Aspect-developed and
most thirdparty applications.
Aspect OpenMedia Module provides the hardware for executing OpenMedia Software
applications. This open platform leverages industrystandard switching architectures such
as MVIP and SCSA. In this first release, it includes industrystandard Natural MicroSystems
voice processing cards to support voice recording and playback.
Aspect Architect software is a graphical workflow creation tool for call center
applications. Users define workflow routing by arranging and linking graphic icons on a
palette. It can be used to design workflows not just for voice calls, but in the future
for fax, e-mail, Web and video. The Aspect Integrated Applications Module (IAM) acts as
the processing platform for all Aspect applications. This industry-standard platform
supports a number of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows NT. Aspect IAMs use
Intel Pentium processors and are available in fully redundant configurations.
Prospect CTI is Aspect’s software foundation for the rapid integration of computer
and telephony applications. Prospect CTI software simplifies and accelerates application
development and supports multivendor platforms and applications such as those from Lucent,
Rockwell and Nortel as well as Aspect.
Aspect has combined these foundation components into two initial products. The first
product, the Aspect ACD System, combines Aspect’s Aspect ACD Software Release 7 with
the Aspect OpenMedia System, Aspect Architect software and Aspect Integrated Applications
Module to offer increased capacity and performance as well as high reliability and
interoperability. The second product is the Prospect CTI System, a software-only
computertelephony integration solution. The Prospect CTI System also provides enterprise
connectivity for future business integration requirements. For more information, contact
Sandra Potter at 408-325-4137 or see www.aspect.com
Internet Telephony Gateway From Clarent
Clarent Corporation has announced
Clarent Gateway 2.0, which adds new features to its existing Internet telephony product.
Clarent’s firstgeneration product already provides the superior voice quality and
clarity that customers require for their enterprise business operations. With Clarent
Gateway 2.0, customers are offered improved telephony connections, enhanced scalability
and expanded management features. Using Clarent’s new product, corporate customers
can quickly realize longdistance toll savings, while Internet telephony service providers
can benefit from increased revenues and better management of their billing and reporting
infrastructure.
New features offered by Clarent Gateway 2.0 include real-time fax; refined, sophisticated
management capabilities; redundant architecture for fault tolerance; Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP) support; and industry-first support for SS7 (Signaling System
7) for improved carrier connections and greater scalability. Clarent products are based on
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0.
Clarent Gateway has been successfully tested and/or implemented by IECs (Interexchange
Carriers) and major ISPs (Internet Service Providers) worldwide. Clarent’s benchmarks
include voice quality (as defined by customers), the number and types of telephony
interfaces Clarent products support (e.g., SS7, E1, T1, ISDN, analog, PBX, etc.) and the
ability to process touch-tone input for voice mail and other telephony applications.
Based on these standards, Clarent products have been: successfully implemented into
long-distance networks or have successfully passed lab tests in several of the biggest
longdistance companies in the Asia-Pacific region; successfully deployed in networks or
have successfully completed lab tests in telecommunications environments in several major
European PTTs; successfully implemented in networks or have passed lab tests by some of
the largest international IECs and switch manufacturers.
Clarent Gateway 2.0 will offer the following features and benefits: Industry-first SS7
support, which provides improved carrier connections and greater scalability; real-time
fax, which offers immediate delivery and confirmation of faxes over the Internet;
redundant routing and billing architecture, which provides fault tolerance through support
for multiple Clarent Account Manager servers, ensuring uninterrupted availability of the
Clarent network; and SNMP and HP OpenView support, which monitors packet flow and network
availability information to better manage and adjust network resources.
For more information, contact David Keeler at 650-306-7545 or see www.clarent.com
Web Help From GWI
GWI Software has announced the
newest addition to the Help! family of products — Help! for the Web. Help! for the
Web has been designed so that both technicians and customers can use it from Web browser
clients. The application runs on a Lotus Domino server to provide performance,
confidentiality and security, while allowing a company’s customers to gain access to
key information. GWI is integrating Help! For the Web and Help! for Lotus Notes so that
either product can be run as a stand-alone in either the Notes or Web environment, or used
in combination to build a worldwide collaborative customer service organization.
Help! for the Web consists of the following modules: Configuration, which is a central
location to configure Help! for the Web; Caller Profiles, which is a database to manage
all of a company’s customers; Knowledge Base, which is a self-populating database
available to a company’s technicians and customers; Discussion, which allows the user
to define how many discussion databases they wish to have, and who can use them; Incident
Management, which is a complete problemtracking database that allows customers to submit
requests; and Statistics, which tracks vital statistics on how the application is being
used.
The customer interface is designed to be flexible, allowing the user to decide which
features and options to make available to all customers, which to reserve for
"preferred" customers and which ones are not relevant to the user’s
business at all. In all cases, the customer sees a smoothly integrated workspace, with the
options available to them clearly visible.
Depending upon the options the user sets, customers will have the ability to: view
Frequently Asked Questions; search the Knowledge Base; participate in an online
discussion; submit a Customer Service Request; securely view the status of their own
requests; and register themselves from the Internet, and update their own User Profiles.
Technicians at the user’s company will have access to the Incident Manager, Customer
Manager and Knowledge Base databases, integrated into an easy-to-use interface. Using
browser and Java technology, Help! for the Web is designed to allow a robust application
that will manage trouble tickets (this includes creating, routing and closing); assign
Customer Requests; create and search the Knowledge Base; create and search customer
profiles; view reports and incident statistics; and manage administration tasks (if given
access). For more information, contact Stephanie Tuggle at 360-693-6944 or see www.gwisoft.com
Conversational Technology From Nuance
Nuance has announced the release of
Nuance6 for Spanish (the latest of its Nuance6 series of Conversational Transactions
™ technology platforms) for business serving Spanishspeaking customers with
over-thetelephone speech-driven applications. Nuance also announced that Sun Microsystems
will jointly market the new software in Latin America.
Nuance6 for Spanish is designed to allow speakers to conduct business transactions over
the telephone by speaking in a fluid, conversational manner. It incorporates Nuance’s
scalable software for speech recognition and natural language understanding. The
technology is speakerindependent so users do not need to train the system to recognize
their voice. Nuance’s natural language understanding capabilities are designed to
allow for more flexible, natural speech and can extract meanings from a variety of
phrasings. Nuance6 provides a Resource Manager that is designed to optimize performance in
multiserver environments and a multithreaded speech recognition server, allowing it to be
scaled from tens to tens of thousands of busy-hour transactions while delivering rapid end
user response time. Nuance6 also includes additional capabilities in its Developer’s
Toolkit that allow for rapid prototyping of speech solutions. The DialogBuilder™
simplifies the design of the speech dialogs between the end user and the Nuance speech
recognition system. Nuance6 also includes Spoken SQL, which generates ANSI SQL queries
from spoken user queries.
Nuance6 for Spanish provides coverage for the primary regional dialects of Latin America,
enabling prototyping and development by businesses serving Mexico, Argentina, Chile,
Columbia and other Spanish-speaking countries. Continued from previous page Nuance6 for
Spanish is the first product from a collaboration between Nuance and Sun Microsystems. It
is powered by the Sun Ultra Platform and Solaris operating system and is available on
several existing Sunbased interactive voice response (IVR) platforms such as Periphonics
and Voicetek. For more information, contact Bruce Dougherty at 650-847-0000 or see www.nuance.com
Siemens’ Virtual Group Applications Suite
Siemens Business Communication Systems
has announced R�sum�Routing™ release 2, an enhanced version of its virtual group
callrouting solution. Built on a Microsoft Windows NT� platform, the product features an
expanded suite of applications that enable call center managers and agents to better
evaluate and improve service, efficiency and utilization of their resources.
R�sum�Routing creates a profile of each incoming caller using information from the
telephone network (ANI/DNIS), responses to voice prompts, information in the customer
database, or a predefined profile stored in a server application. The caller profile is
compared to a detailed database of agent profiles and the call is queued to a temporary or
virtual group of agents whose skills and demographic profiles best match that of the
caller. Once the call is routed, the virtual group is disbanded.
Skills-based traffic simulation is provided with the R�sum�Routing Simulator module.
Managers can simulate their call center environments offline with various call volumes,
caller behavior profiles and agent assignment scenarios. This simulator shows the manager
such things as whether or not there are enough agents available to respond to various
caller profiles, the effect of changing an agent assignment or the extent to which a new
or potential employee’s skills would be utilized.
R�sum�Routing release 2 also provides management with comprehensive measurements of call
center performance, with a full set of realtime, near-real-time, historical, call-bycall
and life-of-call reporting. Additionally, the R�sum�Routing reporting environment
supports ODBA (Open Data Base Access) standards, to allow integration of call center
performance information with other business applications.
Release 2 offers an optional client application that brings together all of the resources
needed to efficiently and effectively complete work in the call center. A key feature of
the R�sum�Routing Desktop is the Launchpad toolbar which is designed to use a minimal
amount of screen space while giving users fast access to information and system functions.
These include: Interactive Call Routing & Queue Control, by which supervisors and
allowed agents can view customers waiting in queue and reserve specific calls for specific
agents; Softphone, Siemens Hicom 300E telephone features, including ACD agent features,
appear as screen-based icons and agents can dial using a PC dialpad; Applications
Hotlinks, which create links to other applications key to customer service.
R�sum�Routing release 2 is built on a scalable Windows NT platform. Its object-oriented
software design enables separation of real-time and background applications onto different
servers as needed. For example, routing, reporting and client-traffic management can each
be on separate servers. For more information, contact Ed Rebello at 408-492-6999 or see www.siemenscom.com
Voice Control Systems’ Speech Software
Platform
Voice Control Systems, Inc. has announced
SpeechWave™ Release 1.0, a speech software platform designed to bring more than 20
speech capabilities to market including natural language recognition; type-in vocabulary
creation; medium list vocabulary recognition; and speaker verification in host, embedded
or DSP-based applications. SpeechWave’s design lends itself to the flexibility to be
implemented in applications that may range from the largest speech recognition servers for
telephone networks, embedded recognition for automobile controls and efficient recognizers
for use in interactive multimedia software. SpeechWave offers a common API, a wide
spectrum of hardware support, a full range of application development and support
services, and engineering consulting services.
Under a common API, SpeechWave offers high-density discrete digits, continuous digits,
medium list with typein vocabularies and speaker verification. It incorporates an
extensive set of speech databases for accuracy, noise performance and recognition across
accents and dialects.
SpeechWave Release 1.0 is available as four components. SpeechWave Fundamental is a
solution for building and deploying applications in voice mail and IVR. SpeechWave
Standard allows users who need to use naturally spoken continuous digits to build and
deploy applications that require collection of mission-critical numeric entries such as
credit card or bank account numbers. Its continuous digit recognition is achieved through
whole-word modeling. SpeechWave Premium provides 1,000-word medium list recognition where
the user can change the vocabulary with simple "type-in" capabilities. Typical
users would include travel and entertainment information and reservations, financial
applications and automated attendants. SpeechWave Secure provides enhanced security
features to any application, including cellular, through continuous digit recognition and
speaker identification verification. It uses remote biometric identification methods to
measure the users’ distinct speech characteristics.
For more information, contact Mike Savel at 617-494-0100 or see www.voicecontrol.com |
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