Customer Care

West Interactive won two Market Leader Awards during the 13th Annual SpeechTEK Conference and Exposition held recently in New York.

The company won the awards in the Self Service Suite and Professional Services categories. It is the only company to receive Market Leader Awards in two categories.

The awards, which were held for the first time this year, are given in recognition of a company’s superior leadership and performance. Winners are determined based on their rankings in polls conducted with leading industry analysts and consultants. Companies are ranked in several key areas, including customer satisfaction, depth of functionality, company direction, accuracy, cost and ease of use. Market Leaders are companies which have proven their ability to bring new products and services to the speech technologies marketplace.

"We are very delighted to have received two Market Leader awards at this year's SpeechTEK conference," said Bruce Pollock, vice president of products and services at West Interactive, in a press release. "It's especially rewarding given that West Interactive is always striving to develop the industry's most innovative speech applications and deliver solutions that make it possible for our clients to reduce costs and improve their customer relations."

West Interactive also made news on TMCnet in August when it announced that it was partnering with Genesys (News - Alert) Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., an Alcatel-Lucent company, to offer an end-to-end, on-demand contact center solution.

Specifically, West Interactive will extend its innovative call automation capabilities by deploying Genesys' market leading Customer Interaction Management (CIM) Platform. This platform delivers key functionality for any contact center dealing in complex interactions. In addition to facilitating comprehensive customer interaction support via phone, e-mail, SMS or chat, CIM offers flexible routing options to premise-based, home-based or outsourced agents; compatibility with every major switch and CRM engine; centralized, real-time administration of interaction workflows and operational queues including on-line customer controls; modular, flexible deployment options for full or partial hosting support; and “cradle-to-grave” reporting across self- and assisted-service channels. These are capabilities which enable contact centers to better understand and control their operations, develop proactive customer service, and manage traffic and resources to meet changing business needs.

"Adding Genesys' advanced call routing and CTI capabilities to West's award winning IVR and speech recognition services will provide an integrated, end-to-end hosted contact center solution for our clients," said Pam Mortenson, EVP of West Interactive, in a press release. "West is excited to enhance our service solution to include hosted, on-demand call routing using Genesys' best-in-class tools."

"West Interactive's managed services extend the contact center to enable virtual agents, rich media and multiple interaction channels,” commented David York, VP of North American Service Provider Sales for Genesys. “Further, they have created flexible solutions that allow enterprises to select the pieces they need to quickly add leading-edge call center functionality without capital expense.

York added that West “has a proven track record as a managed service provider and is a key partner in delivering on the Genesys Dynamic Contact Center vision.”

West Interactive has been delivering on-demand voice portal services using Genesys' Voice Genie self-service platform since 2006. The VXML platform is SIP-based and uses carrier-class media gateway technology.

West Interactive is a leading provider of automated customer contact solutions which combine touch-tone and speech recognition technologies. These hosted and managed solutions are delivered via a highly scalable, standards-based infrastructure to help companies more effectively conduct multi-media transactions. The company’s services include custom speech applications, automated notifications, customer surveys, virtual call routing and professional services.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine and Assignment Editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.