The International Call Center Management Conference & Exposition honored Interactive Intelligence Inc. with its Best of Show award in the category of VoIP Applications at a ceremony last month in Las Vegas.

Interactive Intelligence received the award on behalf of its intelligent multi-site routing software, Interaction Director - a network-based pre- and post-call routing product that uses innovative VoIP technologies, such as session initiation protocol, to help distributed contact centers more effectively meet service level goals, while increasing customer satisfaction, reducing cost and complexity, and improving disaster recovery capabilities.

"The winners in this year's ICCM Best of Show demonstrated ease of integration and implementation, system quality, customer service features, and return on investment in their category," said Kerry Gumas, chief executive officer and president of Questex Media Group Inc.

Interaction Director won the award following rigorous evaluation by a team of independent judges from such prestigious firms as the Call Center Industry Advisory Council, The Call Center School, McGee-Smith Analytics, Real Market, Saddletree Research, Speech Technology Magazine, The Unified-View, and Ventana Research.

Interaction Director, which was first released in 1999, helps organizations more effectively distribute both calls and e-mails between sites by automatically determining the location and agents that are best able to take the interactions based on pre-set criteria, such as number of available agents and agent skill type. Director's unique ability to offer virtual contact center capabilities across distributed sites means that organizations can consolidate agents and more effectively take advantage of lower cost agents by using occupancy rates.

As an add-on product to the company's contact center automation software, Interaction Director makes use of innovative VoIP technologies, such as the emerging SIP standard, which offers an open alternative to proprietary solutions. Interactive Intelligence's contact center automation software reduces the number of systems per site, and with virtual queues using Director, organizations can now transform multiple, disparate contact centers into a unified front, processing customer interactions as if they were a single entity.

The product is targeted at in-house multi-site contact centers and distributed teleservices firms, in particular large organizations with high call volumes.

Interaction Director is offered through Interactive Intelligence's global network of approximately 160 value-added resellers. For more information about Interaction Director, visit http://www.inin.com/Products/Director/director.asp.

The ICCM Conference & Expo Best of Show awards honor exhibitors and products with the best potential to change the future of the contact center industry. The presentations were made during a ceremony held Sept. 27 at ICCM Conference & Expo at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

ICCM is produced by Questex Media Group Inc. (http://www.questex.com), a global, diversified business-to-business integrated media provider headquartered in Newton, MA. For more information about ICCM, visit http://www.iccm.com.