Software helps optimize customer service communications.
Press Release Summary:
With capabilities such as streaming video, Customer Interaction Suite allows customers to be served by most capable resources while providing complete view of customer experience. All enterprise resources, from contact center and sales offices to supply chain and billing, can be instantaneously engaged to serve users regardless of location. Scalable solution includes analytics capabilities, real-time monitoring and historical data analysis tools, as well as end-to-end SIP support.
Original Press Release:
Avaya Transforms Customer Service with Intelligent Communications Solutions for Customer Contact
BASKING RIDGE, N.J., Feb. 27 -- Businesses are continuously challenged to adapt to changing customer needs and differentiate their service experience while balancing investments in staff and technology. Avaya (NYSE:AV), the global leader in call centers and a leading provider of communications applications, systems and services, today introduces new Avaya Customer Interaction Suite capabilities that enable businesses to cost- effectively deliver superior customer service by putting the enterprise at the service of the customer.
The new capabilities delivered by Avaya's highly scalable Customer Interaction Suite allow customers to be served by the most capable resources throughout the enterprise using new capabilities such as streaming video while providing a complete view of the customer experience. All enterprise resources from the contact center to sales offices to supply chain to billing to other support functions can be instantaneously engaged to serve customers cost-effectively, regardless of location. Moreover, customers are demanding to be served through a variety of media. Avaya's new capabilities include the integration of live or streaming video, delivering a richer experience for those customers interacting through PCs or smart mobile devices. New analytics capabilities allow enterprises to manage and tailor the customer experience through the use of real-time monitoring and historical data analysis tools.
End-to-end Session Initiation Protocol, or SIP, support is at the core of the new capabilities of the Avaya Customer Interaction Suite. SIP is an emerging Internet standard for communications that enables people, resources, and devices to be intelligently connected over IP networks regardless of their location.
"The confluence of open standards, advanced technologies and evolving IT environments are enabling 'decision-oriented enterprises' where business processes and technology - together - allow the organization to respond to market and customer requirements with reduced decision-making friction," said Mary Wardley, Research vice president, CRM Applications at IDC. "Avaya's announcements focus on addressing this new environment and delivering key enabling functionality and technology."
As a leader in the transformation of the nation's healthcare delivery system, SHPS needed a way to optimize customer care quickly for its health advocacy and health benefit solutions. SHPS implemented the new release of Avaya Call Center to help increase capacity for seasonal customer call traffic and to standardize call flows for its 24-hour nurse line.
"SHPS' contact center increases by more than 200 agents in peak season, and we needed a way to cost-effectively handle the necessary capacity while balancing the load between our four service locations in states across the country," said Mike Johnson, director of Network Services, SHPS. "The Avaya solution enabled us to rapidly integrate sites and expand capacity with enough flexibility to meet our growth projections and accommodate our plans to add new capabilities as customer communications preferences evolve."
The ability to deliver richer customer service demands an equal improvement in reporting and analytics that empower managers with real-time insights into the customer experience and agent performance. Today, Avaya is introducing Avaya IQ, the newest member of the Customer Interaction Suite, a reporting and analytics solution that integrates disparate data inputs and dynamically analyzes and links the data to the company's overall business objectives. Avaya IQ enables businesses to fully assess the complete customer contact experience. It defines both good and bad agent behavior and delivers real-time information allowing companies to rapidly optimize customer care. Avaya IQ enables the delivery of highly differentiated service resulting in improved customer acquisition, retention, and satisfaction.
SITEL, a global contact center services company, is using Avaya IQ to improve management of their contact centers around the world.
"Avaya IQ makes it easy for managers in our centers across the globe to view reports in their own time zone," said Kelly Leister, senior telecom analyst, SITEL. "The depth of analysis we receive simplifies the previously time-consuming process of identifying both problem and exemplary agent behaviors. It's information we can act on quickly to advance our business and deliver excellent service for our clients."
About the New Avaya Contact Center Solutions
The components of the Avaya Customer Interaction Suite are: Call Center, Interaction Center, Voice Portal, and the new reporting and analytics platform, Avaya IQ. Following are a few examples of what customers can accomplish with the latest enhancements:
o Connecting to Enterprise Experts - Rather than referring shoppers to toll-free numbers or less personal Internet content, stores can connect consumers to remote product experts via live video through integrated voice/video kiosks.
o Video/Voice Self-Help - Increase customer satisfaction while reducing live agents costs by streaming video self-help topics related to the customer's inquiry to a browser on a PC or a smart mobile phone such as how to use a satellite TV remote control, record a favorite TV show, or connect a DVD player.
o Real-time Cross-Sell, Up-Sell, Advertising - Reporting and analytics reveal customers who may benefit from a new service. Upon next contact the identified customers can then be routed and matched with agents supporting the best offers for the customer type. The agent can then leverage the customer's preferred communications approach, such as voice, email or streaming video, to introduce the product or service.
"Intelligent Communications enables companies to embed communications in business processes, which logically extends to customer care," said Jim Smith, Avaya vice president and General Manager, Customer Service Applications Division. "For instance, using SIP technology to deliver video services and provide presence to identify available experts, businesses can use enterprise- wide resources to help eliminate wasteful callbacks and extended hold times, and truly deliver extraordinary customer service. Enterprise-wide reporting and analytics completes the picture with a real-time view of the customer experience that can transform management of complex customer care operations from mere efficiency to a potential competitive advantage."
Avaya Customer Interaction Suite capabilities will be on display at VoiceCon 2007 in Orlando, March 5-8, Booth #601, along with other advanced Avaya IP communications solutions for Converged Communications, Unified Communications, and Communications Enabled Business Processes:
o SIP Services for Avaya Interaction Center adds universal routing of voice, video, email, and other media across an end-to-end SIP architecture, minimizing disruption to the customer's existing infrastructure.
o Avaya Voice Portal lowers ownership costs by now allowing direct integration to carrier SIP trunks helping reduce network facilities costs. Expanded support for ccXML, programmable Web Services, and VoiceXML 2.1 further lower the cost of integrating proactive personalized speech applications across the enterprise.
o Avaya Call Center significantly expands scalability to support large, multi-site contact center consolidation efforts while simplifying routing administration that helps contact centers respond more quickly to changing business demands.
o Avaya IQ reporting and analytical capabilities maximize agent productivity with real-time identification of problem behaviors as well as role-model behaviors. Blended inbound and outbound reporting enables managers to make decisions based on a complete view of all call activity. Embedded drill-down analysis facilitates the ability to get to the root cause of an issue.
About Avaya
Avaya Inc. designs, builds and manages communications networks for more than one million businesses worldwide, including over 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500(R). Focused on businesses large to small, Avaya is a world leader in secure and reliable Internet protocol (IP) telephony systems and communications software applications and services.
Driving the convergence of voice and data communications with business applications - and distinguished by comprehensive worldwide services - Avaya helps customers leverage existing and new networks to achieve superior business results. For more information visit the Avaya website: www.avaya.com.
