IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer Award

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, Mar 2005

As anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the past several years knows, Internet protocol (IP) has acted as a "super fertilizer" for the garden that is enterprise business communications. Perhaps one of the hottest growth areas for IP is the contact center. Contact center applications, with the aid of IP, have enabled anytime, anywhere, any way, always-on functionalities that allow companies to do things about which they could only dream a short few years ago.

The call center market, analysts remind us, is mature. The best way to electrify an industry with slow and steady growth rates is to introduce a technology so necessary for competition that everyone in the market place ultimately "has to have it." Not long ago, it was computer-telephony integration (CTI), which allowed breathtaking improvements in cost efficiency and labor usage. Later came CRM, a nebulous acronym that may be fading in terminology, though not in its basic necessity. Up and coming are speech and self-service, two intertwined concepts whose potential for the customer service arena knows no foreseeable boundaries.

Customer Interactions Solutions realizes that technology is the key to the success of any call center, as we have been editorially covering call center technology over two decades. We also realize that with new products and new categories of products in the call center space, it can be strenuous and difficult for our readers to knowledgably keep up with the latest, greatest products and services. This is why we are offering this award program for the first time, so we may judge the "best of the best" in IP contact center technology, or companies' products that offer stand-out features, functions or capabilities - setting them apart from others in the space and then offer our findings to our readers.

Each company that wished to participate was required to submit an answered questionnaire regarding its target market, its product's unique or distinctive features, its competitors, and, of course, a list of customer references of organizations that have deployed the solution.

The following is the list of recipients of the IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer Award. Additionally, we have provided brief answers to the questions asked of them. They have been edited down for space, and some dialog has been edited so that the significant information may be offered to our readers.

To all of the recipients, congratulations.

Amcat

www.amcat.com

Contact Center Suite '05, IP & Softphone

Q: Would you please briefly describe your product or service?

A: All communications (voice, e-mail, fax, SMS, Web chat) are routed and handled in a uniform fashion. Amcat Contact Center Suite 2005 is a platform that delivers converged communication in any customer care setting.

For distributed call centers and remote agents, the Amcat IP Call Center solution brings true cost savings and efficiencies. At the remote location, the agent's voice goes through a head set plugged directly into the PC to take advantage of VoIP and Amcat's SIP softphone implementation. IP implementation and the softphone eliminate the need to have a PBX on site to distribute the calls and eliminates the need to have a phone set on the agent's desk. Further dramatic cost savings are realized through not having to pay long-distance charges from the location of the Amcat software engine where calls are being placed or received and the remote location. Only the cost of the properly sized IP link is required for this operation along with routers on either end.

Aspect Communications

www.aspect.com

Uniphi Connect

Q: Would you please briefly describe your product or service?

A: Aspect's Uniphi Connect enables businesses to operate a hybrid IP/PSTN call center without the need for third-party IP gateway hardware. Uniphi Connect eliminates the need for a separate IP gateway by including an IP card within the ACD platform. In addition to the IP card, Uniphi Connect includes an agent desktop that allows agents to be located anywhere there is an IP connection, providing centralized management, administration and reporting for all PSTN- and IP-based agents. With Aspect Uniphi Connect, voice and routing requests can travel over less expensive IP networks. Uniphi Connect also works in conjunction with another Aspect application, Aspect IP Network InterQueue. This combination of products allows businesses to set up one virtual contact center operation regardless of where the physical sites are located. IP Network InterQueue greatly reduces the expense of routing calls across multiple networked Aspect Call Center systems by eliminating the need for Tl/El lines to link dispersed contact center sites.

aveComm

www.avecomm.com

aveComm

Q: Would you please briefly describe your product or service?

A: aveComm is a communication and collaborative software suite designed to enable innovative ways for individuals to communicate via the Internet. aveComm is truly flexible, as it can be licensed in a variety of different packages tailored to suit the needs of every business, from small home offices to Global 1000 corporations. aveComm delivers a myriad of functionality, highlighted with an integrated and advanced audio conference bridge, allowing users to host an unlimited number of simultaneous audio conferences with an unlimited number of participants. aveComm is the only product of our type to: be fully installable behind the corporate firewall; be able to scale to thousands of users in a single conference or multiple concurrent conferences; offer voice and visual in a single interface from the same vendor completely. It is device- and environment-independent. aveComm can bridge telephone and PC-based users in conference and can seamlessly integrate with any application.