Featured Partner News Archive

Posted April 14, 2009

Aspect Blog

Social Media Shaping a New Contact Center Paradigm

– April 8th, 2009, 07:56:29 AM

Author:  Mike Sheridan, SVP of Strategy at Aspect

Since social media’s  birth, public relations and marketing professionals have been using it to gauge and help shape public perception of their companies. These days that’s just not enough.  Consumers are crying out for companies to use social media for much more.  In fact, according to a study conducted by Cone, a strategy and communications agency, 43 percent of consumers think that companies should use social media to solve their problems, while another 41 percent say that companies should embrace social media as a way to solicit feedback on products and services.

Whether you like it or not, social media is helping to shape a new paradigm  for the contact center.  It’s about even more real-time, anytime, anywhere customer service than we’ve seen evolving over the past few years. Sure. This paradigm includes more traditional methods of communications, like phone and email. But, it also incorporates social monitoring and media – reactively and proactively responding to blogs and “tweets”.

Customer service organizations that haven’t begun planning or implementing their social media strategies should definitely get started.  There are companies out there that have already allocated people to the social media cause, and are seeing it pay off. I recently read a blog about a consumer who “tweeted” a Dell contact regarding an ongoing computer problem.  The Dell contact immediately responded to the consumer’s request, resolved the customer’s problem and probably earned his continued loyalty through social media.

Some companies are extremely proactive, using social media to “take the bull by the horns” so to speak, and turn bad situations around. If a consumer posts or “tweets” about a negative experience with your company or products, why not use your customer service department to mitigate the damage or change the outcome by reaching out online? Likewise, when a customer posts a negative comment about your competitor, what’s stopping you from swooping in, turning them on to your company as a viable alternative, and changing a bad experience with your competitor into a revenue generating opportunity for your company? Southwest Airlines for instance, has a whole social media team that responds in a personal way when someone posts an online complaint.

Forward-thinking companies like Dell, Southwest Airlines and Comcast provide great case studies for how to use social media to wow customers and improve their experiences. This is just the beginning. Moving forward, many more companies will integrate this function into their customer service organizations. 

How is your company incorporating social media into your overall customer experience strategy?


Press Release

Aspect Marks One-Year Anniversary of Global Strategic Alliance and Equity Investment With Microsoft

New Product Offering, UC Services Development, Microsoft Certifications, and Customer Wins Among Accomplishments; Company Builds Momentum for Year Two

CHELMSFORD, Mass., 30 March 2009 – Aspect, a unified communications(UC) solutions provider, today announced that it has marked the one-year anniversary of its global strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp. Since launching the strategic alliance in March 2008, Aspect has achieved many significant milestones, including delivering new product offerings, launching a UC Services practice, garnering extensive Microsoft certifications, managing a leading-edge rollout of Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 across Aspect, and winning new UC customers.  Together, the two companies have been focused on their shared vision of software-powered UC to help organizations address their communications needs across the enterprise and in the contact center.

“The Microsoft-Aspect alliance, and Microsoft’s equity investment in Aspect, is a strong, joint commitment to UC, and to connecting the enterprise and the contact center,” said Melanie Turek, industry principal, Frost & Sullivan. “Such alliances are critical for customers and companies that want to quickly leverage a UC strategy to streamline their business processes with communications. With Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 and the Aspect® Unified IP™ Microsoft .NET-based platform product, companies can seamlessly bring UC to the enterprise and to the contact center.”

Working closely with Microsoft, Aspect met a number of key milestones throughout the year, including:

• Aspect launched a UC Services practice and secured an early customer win with Quicken Loans Inc. Aspect’s UC Services practice helps organizations identify the right opportunities for UC across the enterprise to improve business and communications processes and navigate implementation obstacles. The UC Services practice completed its first deployment of a UC RapidStart voice pilot at Quicken Loans Inc. The Aspect UC Services team worked closely with the Quicken Loans IT teams to install and configure Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and integrate its voice capabilities into the PBX system in less than one week.
  
  
• Aspect introduced Aspect Unified IP 6.6 with the new Ask an Expert feature that utilizes the instant messaging and presence technology available in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. With this feature, agents can identify available experts in the enterprise based on specific skill sets to address customer inquiries, therefore streamlining business processes and improving first-call resolution.  This is the first of several Aspect product releases on the roadmap as part of the Aspect-Microsoft strategic alliance that will provide tight platform-level integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.
  
  
• Aspect initiates global company deploymentof Office Communications Server 2007 R2. To date, Aspect has completed deployment of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 at the company’s headquarters in Chelmsford, Mass. and an office site in San Jose, Calif. The sites have completely migrated to Office Communications Server 2007 R2 for all voice and voicemail services, audio and Web conferencing, instant messaging (IM) and presence. Aspect also retired its PBX in these locations for all employee peer-to-peer and corporate calling services. The company will see aggressive ROI numbers, including reduced conference calling costs of $75,000 per month and additional cost savings resulting from the company’s use of session initiation protocol (SIP) Trunking.
• Aspect is recognized as one of the first voice specialized partners for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Microsoft has certified Aspect as a Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 Voice specialization partner for the Microsoft Unified Communications Solutions competency.  Aspect received this certification following the successful completion of the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP) internal pilot for Office Communication Server 2007 R2 Voice specialization. To date, approximately 100 Aspect employees have been certified.
  
  
• New companies choose Aspect contact center solution with Microsoft UC.  Global Crossing recently purchased Aspect Unified IP 6.6 and is deploying it across its contact center operations to help improve customer communication and satisfaction.  Global Crossing chose Aspect Unified IP largely based on Microsoft and Aspect’s shared vision of UC and how the contact center fits into Global Crossing’s enterprise-wide UC initiatives.  Global Crossing is using Aspect Unified IP for advanced call routing capabilities to intelligently transfer callers to the proper agents based on their skill sets and customer data gathered by back-end applications. The agents use the call blending capabilities to respond to incoming calls and customer questions on subscriptions while also using the outbound capabilities to increase sales.
  
  
• Three customer briefing centers showcase UC capabilities. Aspect opened three customer briefing centers in London, Boston and Singapore. These offices now have the capabilities to demonstrate all Aspect unified communication applications so customers and prospects can experience first-hand the benefits of Microsoft UC and the Aspect UC applications for the contact center. The customer briefing centers also offer remote demonstration capabilities for access through the Internet and around the globe.

“The Aspect-Microsoft strategic alliance is an excellent way for companies to take the unified communications journey. Aspect has not just delivered on its promise of unified communications capabilities for the contact center and the enterprise, but has also proved its commitment to giving customers tangible solutions that deliver real results,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president, Unified Communications Group at Microsoft Corp. “Joint customer wins with industry leaders such as Quicken Loans, Inc. and Global Crossing are a testament to this. Through our alliance, Microsoft and Aspect are making a statement — that Aspect’s powerful software and services capabilities coupled with Microsoft unified communications technologies supply the tools a company needs to see real business results from deploying unified communications.”

As the alliance moves into its second year, the companies will continue to build momentum in product development and customer implementations. Aspect and Microsoft will be focused on: 

• Developing additional product offerings to power UC capabilities. Aspect will introduce two new Aspect Unified IP releases with additional UC functionality as well as two PerformanceEdge™ releases offering tighter integration to Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
• Expanding Microsoft UC expertise. Aspect will have 200 fully trained and Microsoft UC certified employees by June 2009, including individuals in Aspect® Professional Services, Aspect® Technical Services, Aspect® Education Services, sales and IT.
• Completing the global Aspect rollout of Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Aspect will complete its global rollout of Microsoft Office Communications Server to approximately 1,800 workers, including its contact center representatives, this year. This will enable Aspect agents to identify appropriate experts in the enterprise based on skill set, and hence properly and efficiently address customer inquiries. 

“Microsoft and Aspect have successfully achieved a remarkable number of accomplishments in the first year of the alliance, but we know this is just the beginning of achieving our shared UC vision,” said Jim Foy, chief executive officer, Aspect. “We’re seeing tremendous interest from both customers and prospects in our new UC applications powered by Aspect Unified IP and PerformanceEdge, as well as our comprehensive UC Services offerings. We’re confident that as more businesses look for ways to lower costs and streamline business processes, they’ll turn to Microsoft and Aspect to leverage UC and truly transform the way they communicate.”

About Aspect Unified IP
Aspect Unified IP is an IT-ready Microsoft .NET Web services platform product that unites customer contact capabilities to help organizations execute on their unified communications strategies.

About PerformanceEdge
PerformanceEdge is an IT-ready Microsoft .NET Web services platform product that synchronizes workforce optimization capabilities to help organizations execute on their unified communications strategies.

Aspect® Professional Services delivers unified communications (UC) capabilities in the contact center and throughout the enterprise. Aspect consultants help organizations identify the right opportunities, navigate implementation obstacles and get the right results from UC with services that span conception through completion. From improving individual productivity and heightening collaboration to communications-enabling business processes and transforming enterprise communications, Aspect provides experienced guidance at every step of an organization’s UC journey.

About Aspect
Aspect provides softwareand consulting services that turn the potential of unified communications into real business results across the enterprise and in the contact center.  Applying 35 years of insight and experience, Aspect helps more than two-thirds of the FORTUNE Global 100, as well as small and medium enterprises, power their business processes with communications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.

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Aspect, Unified IP, PerformanceEdge, and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

In the News
Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Gaining Steam- Voice & Data Online
There has been an increasing deployment of unified communications in the outsourcing industry. A lesser known but important aspect of deploying UC in business process outsourcing is that it is the key to substantially increase the incidence of first call resolution, and, subsequently, leads to increased customer satisfaction.

Unified communications is basically a solution set aimed at collaboration. With the ever-increasing modes of communication coming up everyday, employees find it increasingly difficult to find the right personnel. While earlier the same agent needed to enter an additional instance of call back to the customer, now with the deployment of UC, the availability and communication with subject matter expert (SME) is almost instant. This, in turn, ensures reduced telecom costs while giving superior customer service. Agents now have real time information of SMEs addressing the relevant query.

“We have seen tremendous improvement in our productivity after the deployment of UC. We have been able to increase our sales by at least 30 to 40%. Since we are mostly in inbound sales, when we make a sale it has to be verified by the third party. And if an agent is busy with a third party, it is very difficult to get the customer again. With UC, it is easier to get through to the right person and make the sale efficiently,” says Shankar Lingam, CTO, Amtex Systems. Amtex recently implemented unified communications to increase customer satisfaction. The company has developed the UC system in-house to track the presence and availability of an agent.

“Features in UC not only provide instant information of the status of the SME and other features like click-no-to-call and click-to-chat, they also provide the ability to reach out to the SME almost instantly,” says Ketan Shah, head, contact center business, Avaya Global Connect.

Increasing customer satisfaction is more important now than ever before in view of the current slowdown-when client retention is important, and it is critical to offer the best possible services. The current bearish environment is further likely to fuel the adoption of unified communications in the industry.

UC can substantially enhance agent performance which will lead to more first call resolutions, and increasing the productivity of the agent. Instant Messaging (IM) functionality can be a better way to get assistance while on a call with a customer. This is now possible with the deployment of UC. Achieving the first call resolution may just need a quick response from a supervisor or a support person in the center. Frequently, the contact center agent doesn't even need to transfer the call once s/he has the relevant information.

“If the agent is not able to respond to a query with UC he can route the call and find the agent in a relevant facility or in another facility of the same organization, and then transfer the call. This helps increase the first call resolution for a BPO, which ultimately leads to a better customer satisfaction,” says Dhananjay Ganjoo, vice president, enterprise, Nortel Asia.

Nortel's Xpert Anywhere solution includes SIP-based Contact Center 6.0, Multimedia Communication Server 5100, Nortel IP phones and clients and secure VPN gateways. This helps in transferring the call from one facility to another, and the company claims that about 20% of its contact center clients have deployed this for better customer satisfaction.

“There is a definite advantage with unified communications for first call resolution. The technology can help in increasing first call resolution and in decreasing the amount of time customers spend on hold, which greatly impacts customer satisfaction. The more satisfied customers are, the more follow-on business they will conduct, and the more often they will refer that company to their friends, family and colleagues,” says Rajeev Soni, general manager, South Asia and Middle East, Aspect Software.

According to a recent research from Aspect Software, on 10.3% of calls handled, agents are already reaching outside of the contact center to leverage the help of subject matter experts elsewhere in the organization.

The main advantage is that agents no longer have to search for knowledge workers to explain the customer's situation, to call back the customer, and to introduce the customer before they can finally transfer the call. Rather, they could potentially transfer detailed notes about the issue-at-hand to the knowledge worker along with the call, shortening the transfer process and preventing anyone from having to repeat information.

Organizations that consider their contact center as part of their overall unified communications strategy can drastically increase their agents efficiency, thus reducing the amount of time spent with contact knowledge workers to answers customer inquiries. These calls, typically, take a little more than two minutes to handle, thus decreasing the number of interactions that customers need to have their inquiries resolved, which generally requires more than two interactions on an average.

Industry Response
The outsourcing industry is positive about UC, and there has been an increase in the deployment of unified communications in the industry.

“Unified communication has not taken up as it should have, but looking broadly into the space it is a good vision. It will help our agents to attend calls faster and more efficiently. UC will come across as the most effective technology to track clients while at the same time being a low-cost technology,” says Sanjiv Dalal, CTO, Firstsource.

However, there are a number of challenges associated with the deployment of UC as well. “Since we developed our own in-house UC solution, technology co-ordination with the client was difficult. We had to convince the client that the system would be beneficial to them. First getting client's approval and then technology co-ordination with their system was the biggest challenge,” says Shankar Lingam of Amtex Systems.

Mostly, BPOs are first deploying IP networks as the foundation technology and then deploying UC applications to provide a multimedia collaboration experience. Many companies are running pilots for this.

According to some reports, unified communications in collaboration with other UC technologies help in increasing as much as twenty minutes of productivity per day per employee.

However, there are some discerning voices as well. “UC is actually not directly associated with first call resolution. A dialer can help in skill-based routing that can route the call from one agent to another. However, since UC is IP-based, one can have the whole infrastructure at one place and agent in another. For instance, a call can be transferred from Delhi to Mumbai. Another advantage is that one need not invest in another dialer for another facility,” says Rajendra Sawant, CTO, Adventity. Adventity has installed Cisco's UC.

Emerging Trends
In the same vein, UC helps in customers getting in touch with the agent not only through voice but through other mediums as well like SMS, email or even video. Video is in fact the biggest emerging trend in UC and there would be more and more deployment of video in UC. Multi-modal contact center is the future where UC is concerned.

“Video is going to be the most important functionality of UC going forward. This is especially useful for helpdesk type BPO where the agent has to explain the technical aspect of the product or the caller has to visualize the product. For instance, if the agent has to explain how to install GPRS in your phone...video can help in explaining it to the customer and can increase instances of first call resolutions. These kinds of problems typically take more than one call right now,” says Ilango Periathambi, director, pre-sales at Bay Talkitec. The company is a provider of communication technology platform and business enabling solutions. The company claims to be among the early companies in India to have developed a technology platform for unified communications.

Though video is likely to emerge as an important trend, it is not likely to happen for some time since video demands more bandwidth and this is likely to happen with the arrival of 3G which is away by at least six months to a year. Though most vendors are ready with their video products or applications for UC, it is not likely to hit the market any time soon.

Nortel is coming up with Agile Communications Environment (ACE) where the agent will pop up on the screen, and it will be a combination of voice-video data. “It will allow UC to flow seamlessly without deploying any new hardware. This also works through multi-vendor environment,” says Ganjoo of Nortel.

Another upcoming and interesting application which would in the future give flexibility to the customer to reach the agent through a different environment is instant messaging. It is an important tool to reach the agent, and will be pro-actively used by the BPOs and contact centers. However, there is a problem in this since a Yahoo! user cannot get in touch with a Hotmail user, and the like. “In the future, through federated environment, we will be able to connect different islands of people. These kinds of applications will go a long way in increasing customer service effectiveness,” Ganjoo adds.

Avaya is also concentrating on mobility applications. “We feel mobile is a far more preferred mode of communication. We have integrated some of our products to provide mobile unified communications across Wi-Fi and cellular networks. It is basically a dual-mode solution for mobile employees to move seamlessly between campus-based wireless networks and cellular networks,” says Shah of Avaya.

“The tangible benefit of deploying UC differs from process to process and depends a lot on the vertical that you are addressing. Add to that staffing related parameters which will ultimately play a vital role in the first call resolution. However, on an average, if one was to look at the financial industry, Avaya has deployed solutions on the trading floor that have increased first call resolution by as much as 40%,” he adds.

The UC solution has generally been lapped up by the industry. However, adoption also depends on the type of processes that are outsourced to BPOs. As the quality of the outsourcing contract becomes more and more sophisticated the adoption of the UC solution set by the industry is only likely to improve.

Gagandeep Kaur
gagandeepk@cybermedia.co.in

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Unified Communications: The Contact Center as a Starting Point- SDA Asia
The contact center is the logical base for the implementation of Unified Communications (UC) as it comes equipped with the metric tools...

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