Presented By: Hollie Moran, Product Marketing Manager, Aspect Communications

As today’s businesses continue to expand their operations, the role of the contact center continues to change. Beginning as a voice-only solution for handling customer calls, the contact center has evolved to encompass sophisticated skills-based routing, multi-channel contacts spanning voice, e-mail and the Web, to solutions that leverage the cost savings and flexibility offered by VoIP. Increasingly organizations are looking to extend the contact center to all parts of the enterprise so that customer needs can be efficiently addressed at any time, in any place and through any channel. But keeping costs in check is just as important advancing capabilities. What’s the best approach to leveraging investments already in place, while also driving greater efficiencies that will prepare your organization for the future? Come to this session to find out.

Presented By: Rob Winder, Vice President of Business Development, Genesys

As businesses become increasingly global, they are turning to open architecture-based IP networks to efficiently manage multimedia customer service across multiple sites and technologies. IP media applications, which extend multimedia interaction capabilities to converged voice/data networks, allow businesses to replace proprietary circuit switches with an open software alternative. These IP “media switch” connections provide seamless channel integration for the contact center and can help businesses lower system integration costs by eliminating the need for implementing proprietary hardware and or managing third-party ACDs and CTI links. The presenter will discuss how to leverage an open standards-based IP framework model in the contact center to lower integration costs and achieve ROI through increased operational efficiency.

Presented By: Kevin McPartlan, Vice President of Business Development, Nuasis Corporation

Companies are increasingly moving to the IP contact center, taking advantage of the IP network and VoIP to reduce operating costs, to improve customer service, and realize infrastructure cost savings. When migrating to an IP contact center system, companies must formulate a plan over a period of time that maps to the operational needs of the contact centers. The plan must take into account the age of existing systems and assess which sites or functional groups will benefit most by moving to an IP solution. In this session, attendees will learn the business reasons for moving to an IP contact center system, the distinctions between a Pure IP contact center system versus an IP-enabled system, and how to formulate a migration plan that best matches the particular needs of the company.

Presented By: Wendell Black, Vice President of Sales, Telephony@Work

One of the primary obstacles that companies face as they migrate to IP-based technology and centralize their IT resources, is the political objection that local autonomy will be sacrificed. Depending on the solution architecture, this objection can be effectively eliminated with technology that can not only preserve but greatly enhance local autonomy in an IP-based world. This session will focus on how companies can centralize technology and rationalize costs across locations without sacrificing local autonomy over site-specific business processes.

Presented By: Oscar Alban, Principal Global Market Consultant, Witness Systems
Ross Daniels, Product Manager, Cisco Systems

Come hear several industry leaders debate and discuss the relative merits of their IP Contact Center solutions and the overall state of the IP Contact Center industry. Loosely based on Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO’s successful long-running IP PBX Shootout, this double session promises to be a lively, engaging look at what the industry leaders have to say about their products and their competition. This unique opportunity enables interested parties to get live information directly from the “horses’ mouths” as attendees will be given an opportunity to ask the panel their own insightful questions.

Presented By: Jim Puchbauer, Director of Marketing, AltiGen Communications, Inc.

Call Center managers are faced with many challenges: not only are they tasked with improving the overall efficiency of the call center, but they also must look for tools to improve agent productivity. The ROI from integrating the contact center phone system with the CRM application can yield tremendous benefits in the customer interaction. The results are better customer service, increased customer loyalty and implementation that can pay for itself. This session will outline how a business can turbo charge their call center with CRM integration. In particular attendees will learn how CRM integration and telephony integration with your contact center can take customer interactions to the next level and how to apply technology to solve problems.

Presented By: Joel Riciputi, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Nuance Communications

The expense of providing appropriate service delivery in the call center is a well-known problem within all enterprises, and has created the demand for cost-reducing self-service solutions to offset live-service inquiries. Today, speech technology is being used increasingly by enterprises to handle routine customer service inquiries without the involvement of a large and costly call center workforce. Speech has moved from “proof of concept” and pilot phases inside enterprises to production deployment requiring mission critical reliability. This session will focus on identifying and understanding how to best utilize self-service technologies to complement live-assistance and enhance overall customer service performance, to meet your customer’s expectations and most importantly, to cultivate a stronger long-term relationship with your customer.

Presented By: Brian Chamberlain, CRM Consultant, Teleformix LLC

Reacting to FTC mandates of compliance and responsibility, financial institutions are increasingly turning to strategies of proactive management protocols in an effort to restore shareholder faith. In conjunction with compliance mandates of Basel II for the financial industry, the FTC and FCC are focused on the Teleservices industry. Direct marketers are challenged with maneuvering through the complexities of an ever-receding population of viable contact points for garnering new clientele. As Do Not Call infraction judgments begin to penetrate marketing budgets, CFOs are reacting by assessing technologies that identify and flag non-compliance prior to FTC involvement. Determining exactly which applications best suit a given financial institution’s unique needs is arduous and the added burden of Basel II compliancy is increasingly pushing Financial Services Firms into uncharted waters.

Presented By: Kevin McPartlan, Vice President of Business Development, Nuasis Corporation
Ron Haigh, Senior Director of Engineering, Virtela Communications, Inc.
Ross Daniels, Product Manager, Cisco Systems

VoIP enables workers to be distributed anywhere in the world, in effect enabling outsourcing. VoIP is also a technology that lowers costs, making it possible to keep contact centers here in the States. So which is it? Is IP going to save the contact center industry or will it hasten its demise? Many companies who choose to offshore call centers to control costs may end up spending more to manage offshore installations while failing to win customer satisfaction. Attendees will explore the answers to the questions above and learn that if controlling costs is the goal, then not every company needs to offshore their call centers. Deploying IP may in fact be more cost effective than offshoring for some. For others, IP offers the opportunity to implement offshoring as part of a global customer service strategy, not just an opportunity to save money by shipping jobs overseas.