January 21, 2008

Avaya Launches New Contact Center Solutions to Improve Customer Experiences

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Avaya (News - Alert) has announced today new contact center solutions that are designed to provide businesses with a more cost-effective, simplified and productive way to deliver customers service, while also improving experiences for customers.

The solutions include powerful new Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) capabilities benefiting all facets of a contact center – for IT administrators seeking to streamline contact center operations, customer service agents working anywhere, and customers demanding faster service with a personal touch.

SIP is an industry standard that enables businesses to fully leverage open environments and multimedia communications. The new solutions from Avaya provide “end-to-end” SIP-running from the service provider trunk to an agent’s desktop phone – taking greater advantage of the open nature of SIP.

Such an approach allows businesses to cut costs and simplify the implementation of customer service operations. A new, low-cost Avaya SIP contact center phone is also part of the end-to-end SIP solution. The phone does not require the addition of CTI middleware, further streamlining savings and network management.

These new SIP capabilities are also designed to drive greater flexibility and productivity for contact center agents. The SIP contact center phone can provide agents with essential contact center features, while also providing a foundation for evolving with presence-based capabilities, such as identifying real-time availability of experts.

The phone can also be used in an agent’s home with a secure VPN, increasing the productivity for home-based agents.

Other critical contact center capabilities are now available via SIP trunks as an alternative to existing ISDN trunks. This includes the ability to pass customer calls and secure information between contact centers, which helps to ensure customer data is available to agents assisting customers.

Avaya’s video self-service solution is positioned as improving the customer experience as the solution uses SIP to affordably deliver multimedia customer experiences through dynamic video content. The solution enhances self-service as Avaya can push the video-based menus and content to customers calling in a company using a 3G mobile device, video kiosk or PC.

"SIP is a phenomenal money-saver that lets us operate in a less hardware- intensive environment," said Ruben Maury, Ryla vice president of Information Technology, in a Monday statement.

"Speed and flexibility are essential to customer service, and Avaya's SIP capabilities let us quickly scale up in volume, as client needs dictate."

Ryla also uses the new version of Avaya Proactive Contact to provide outbound communications campaigns for their clients. The solution helps them to deliver customer outreach more efficiently, while serving the highly-sensitive needs of their clients' brand image and customer communication.

According to Ruben Maury, the solution also helps Ryla streamline functions such as billing and forecasting through the integration of Proactive Contact's outbound calling with inbound, helping to ensure an agent's time is used in the most efficient way.

Avaya is well versed in the needs of the contact center, especially in what needs to be in place in order to use an agent’s time more efficiently and to increase the quality of the experience for the customer. A company that partners with Avaya will not be lacking in solutions that will propel the customer experience forward and help sustain that customer for life.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.

Want to learn more about contact centers? Then be sure to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. The papers are authored by industry leaders, who, in turn, receive qualified sales leads from interested parties. Check here for the latest in CRM information.

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)	X
SIP is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP. SIP is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification (emergency calling) and instant messaging. SIP...more

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)	X
CTI or computer telephony integration is the linking of computing systems with telephone systems. The caller is connected via telephone companies to a customer ACD-PBX. The ACD-PBX passes the teleph...more

Internet Protocol (IP)	X
IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data in packets over the Internet. I...more

Virtual Private Network (VPN)	X
Virtual Private Network is through the use of tunnels (encryption) creating secure IP networks. In this TECHtionary tutorial, we will review: - Four Compelling Market Conditions Drive VPNs - Three ...more

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)	X
ISDN BRI is digital transmission using 2B+D or two B channels of 64,000 BPS for voice, data and video services and one D channel of 16,000 BPS for signaling over one-pair of twisted-pair telephone lin...more

(source: http://internetcommunications.tmcnet.com/topics/broadband-mobile/articles/18859-avaya-launches-new-contact-center-solutions-improve-customer.htm)