BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - March 30, 2009) -
Avaya
today announced a new
contact center solution that uses
advanced
Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP) technology to help businesses enhance customer experiences while
improving efficiencies and cost savings in their contact center operations.
The solution, Avaya Intelligent Customer Routing, delivers customers and
their essential information to the correct agent or expert through the
quickest and most efficient route possible. Customers can use speech
self-service to provide key information -- such as account number,
transaction history and primary needs -- and get connected to the best
available resource in any location of the business. Higher levels of
customer satisfaction, cost savings and organizational agility are achieved
with this solution by using SIP, an open standards-based protocol that sets
up multimedia communications sessions.
Intelligent Customer Routing will be the first solution enabled by Avaya's
new multi-vendor SIP communications platform -- Avaya Aura™, also
announced today separately. With SIP, businesses can more easily route
communications to global locations using multi-vendor systems. This allows
customer service organizations to maximize all of their agents and experts,
regardless of which vendor's equipment they use or where they are located.
As a result, customer calls can travel farther, faster and with key
information intact.
This results in many customer benefits, including improved "wait
treatments," which is the time a customer spends waiting for the correct
agent. Intelligent Customer Routing not only gets customers to the most
suitable agent anywhere but also enables a more reliable transfer of
customer information to an agent. These advancements help erase common
customer frustrations by reducing the time it takes to reach an agent,
helping eliminate repetition of information upon reaching the agent and
even offering to call back customers if a hold time is deemed excessive.
Additionally, the solution can deliver messages while the customer is
waiting that are personalized for a customer's profile. For instance, if a
caller is identified as a user of frequent-flier miles, he or she can get
information based on prior travel or upcoming trips.
These self-service capabilities can be delivered visually through the use
of video-based menus and content -- accessible via a 3G mobile device,
kiosk or computer -- which enables customers to see their options. This
includes the ability for calling customers to view instructional videos or
advertisements tailored to their profile while they wait for an agent. For
example, cable TV customers can view coming attractions, entertainment news
or "how to" videos that match recent purchases. These video self-service
capabilities are made possible by the new version of Avaya Voice Portal,
also being announced today (further details below).
"Companies want to get the benefit of enhancing customer service, while
improving their return on investments," said Mary Wardley, program vice
president, CRM and enterprise applications, IDC. "Avaya's new architecture
and contact center solution achieves this by tapping the potential of SIP
and Web applications in a way that continues to prioritize cost-efficiency
and reliability."
Using SIP to Deliver a More Cost-Efficient Customer Service Operation
Intelligent Customer Routing also uses SIP to help contact center and
information technology (IT) administrators reduce the costs and complexity
of customer service. With Avaya's multi-vendor SIP architecture,
enterprises can deploy a global contact center operation using their
existing multi-vendor systems, which improves cost savings and simplifies
management. SIP also enables a more direct path from a customer's call to
an agent -- regardless of the agent's global location -- a process that
reduces the amount of off-network communications used and drives costs down
further.
"Customers today have very sophisticated demands, having grown comfortable
with instant information, social networks and other avenues of intelligent
communications," said Bob Lyons, general manager and vice president of
Avaya's contact center division. "Avaya Intelligent Customer Routing is
designed for this new generation of savvy customers, giving businesses the
tools they need to deliver faster, more flexible and dynamic customer
service, while reducing the total cost to serve in the process."
Intelligent Customer Routing is composed of capabilities from Avaya's
enterprise communications software, Avaya Communication Manager, and by the
company's speech self-service software, Avaya Voice Portal. The solution is
powered by the new Avaya Aura platform and is further enabled by Avaya's
new consulting framework -- Avaya Strategic Communications Consulting --
which helps businesses evolve communications using the most advanced
expertise, tools and capabilities. This new consulting practice solves
business issues by maximizing technologies, such as unified SIP-based
architectures.
Avaya Voice Portal 5.0: The speech self-service engine for Intelligent
Customer Routing
All of the self-service capabilities of Intelligent Customer Routing are
made possible by the new version of Avaya's speech automated self-service
software, Avaya Voice Portal 5.0, which enables customers to use verbal
commands to provide information, navigate options and complete
transactions. Avaya is a leader in the expanding self-service market.
Avaya Voice Portal's new capabilities meet the high expectations of a new
generation of customers, and they are also available within the Intelligent
Customer Routing solution. They include:
-- Integrated Video and Voice Support: Voice Portal now embeds dynamic
video self-service capabilities and is one of the first self-service
solutions to support the standards-based Synchronized Multimedia
Integration Language (SMIL). This language provides open-standards support
for system integrators and companies, so they can implement advanced
customer experiences using dynamic video content.
-- Increased Scale Capacity: The product can support up to 5,000
concurrent sessions, or voice calls per Voice Portal system, increased from
2,000 sessions. Further, the solution can cluster self-service systems for
tens of thousands of sessions.
-- New Measurement Tools: Businesses can provide designated people or
divisions with exactly the data they need to determine the effectiveness of
a self-service program. This eliminates the "all or nothing" approach to
sharing information, allowing IT supervisors to provide tailored views for
specific business users, while helping IT maintain control and
confidentiality over information.
About Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company
provides unified communications, contact centers and related
services directly and through its channel
partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world.
Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art
communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and
competitiveness. For more information, please visit
www.avaya.com.
Avaya Strategic Communications Consulting Backgrounder
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Contact Information: Media Inquiries:
Jonathan Varman
908-953-6432
jvarman@avaya.com