personal touch: Caring for your customers and CSRs, The

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, Apr 2001

A key feature is an advanced routing engine designed to provide a range of applications, including Internet support, online chat, automatic Web callback, Web collaboration, e-mail and auto e-mail responses. Solidus eCare uses skills and profile-based routing to forward incoming contacts to the agent best qualified for a specific query. Voice capabilities of the solution include interactive voice response and speech recognition. Other features include agent scripting, agent recording and outbound campaign dialing and mobile communications technologies to free agents from their desks. The solution also offers a flexible clientserver architecture so service providers can deliver eCare to their clients in an application service provider (ASP) environment. Solidus eCare operates on the Open Application Server platform: a multimedia services platform that extends call control capabilities and enables advanced telephony functionality.

www.ericsson.se

The Brand Connection: Good Listeners 2001 Make Better Marketers

2001

CUSTOMER INTER@CTION SOLUTIONS(TM)

EDITORS CHOICE

Recipio's motto, "Listen. Learn. Lead," effectively sums up its raison d'etre and is the philosophy behind the company's e-business platform, the Brand Connection. Rather than blind or permission-based marketing via the Web, Recipio believes that Web-based, two-way interactive media can forge higher-quality relationships with customers. Brand Connection consists of software and proprietary service methodologies that allow businesses to engage customers in "conversations" in an informal, personal way and deliver real-time analysis of customer ideas, opinions and preferences. In a sense, it empowers customers to become part of the product team. Using adaptive sampling and patented algorithms, Brand Connection filters this unstructured information, generates consensus information that is indicative of the attitudinal direction of the group and provides the most relevant data for analysis and action. The platform allows corporations to understand customers responses across multiple products and campaigns with statistically significant, real-time results. It simplifies creation of a marketing tool that incorporates e-commerce, customer service, marketing and marketing research. An obvious benefit is the potential for reducing marketing research costs and time by embedding this technology into existing marketing and branding Web sites. This should also reduce the time required to launch new products or campaigns in the market.

Allied with the Brand Connection are two additional products, Recipio's Interaction Session applications (what the company terms "directed conversations" on specific issues) and its Desktop Reporting System. Currently, Recipio offers 12 standard Interaction Session applications, covering topics such as brand equity, customer satisfaction, advertising development, Web site optimization, promotion development and retail experience. Clients have the ability to customize part or all of a session to suit their needs. The Desktop Reporting System provides access to online, real-time reports: Executive Dashboard (key ideas and issues emerging from a specific interaction session application); standard Participation reports (metrics on a particular engagement); and customizable Segmentation reports that allow managers and decision makers to segment information on any demographic or reported behavioral range using drop-down menus.