Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Contact Center Solutions Week in Review: Aspect, Elision Technolab, Selectra

June 24, 2017

Artificial intelligence, omnichannel customer care, and cloud-based and on-premises contact centers all made headlines this week in Contact Center Solutions.

We wrote about Aspect Software’s new Aspect Via 17 software-as-a-service offering.


Aspect Via 17, which runs on Amazon Web Services, features

  • an enhanced evaluation forms builder, quality trends, and evaluation details reporting;
  • integration with Microsoft Dynamics (as well as continued integration with Salesforce.com); and
  • live agent short message service support.

“Omni-channel service also means giving your customer the option to choose a channel that works best for them, whether it’s voice, email, web chat, SMS, social messaging, or a mobile app,” explains Chris O’Brien of Aspect Software in a June 13 blog. “The common thread involves keeping the customer on a journey that is as effortless as possible, A consistent and seamless cross-channel experience helps turn routine interactions into strong customer connections.”

Successful omni-channel interactions help companies retain about 89 percent of their customers, as opposed to a 33 percent retention rate found among companies with weak omni-channel strategies, she adds, referencing an Aberdeen study.

With the release of Via 17, Avaya also makes this SaaS solution available in Europe.

In other recent news from the company, it has introduced the Aspect Via Referral Program. This is a commission-based program that allows individuals and organizations to refer companies to Aspect they believe would benefit from Aspect Via. As a result, the person or organization providing the referral can earn a commission.

People can use the Aspect program portal to join the program. An Aspect representative will be in touch within 24 to 48 hours. And the company will provide updates as the lead progresses.

In separate news, PMC Bank of India has tapped Elision Technolab to provide it with a turnkey contact center solution.

Prior to moving to the Elision solution, PMC Bank outsourced its call center. But with Elision, PMC Bank has been able to significantly lower its costs and get access to some nice call center features.

Now it’s inbound and outbound calling costs are about equal to what it used to pay for inbound only. It also now has call recording, email integration, hot marketing APIs for Card Block functions, interactive voice response system, and SMS. The solution leverages Sangoma hardware.

Also this week, we wrote about how Selectra is using the ContactWorld for Service Platform from NewVoiceMedia.

This is a cloud-based contact center solution that can route calls to the best agent, improve efficiency by reducing response time, and personalize each interaction. Selectra has replaced its Talkdesk solution with the NewVoiceMedia one. And it was able to integrate ContactWorld with Zoho in less than a month using the API on the NewVoiceMedia platform.

“We’re delighted to be working with Selectra and further accelerating our business throughout Europe,” said Scott Sampson, chief revenue officer of NewVoiceMedia. “ContactWorld’s seamless CRM integration, scalability, and flexibility will help the company deliver a completely unique and personalized customer experience to thousands of customers across Europe, while also improving advisor performance and satisfaction.”

Speaking of improving performance, many companies now believe that implementing artificial intelligence can help do that in the contact center. 

That explains why we’re hearing forecasts from research firms like Gartner saying that 85 percent of customer interactions will not be managed by humans by 2020.

That said, we are also regularly reminded of the ongoing importance of the human element in customer service. The perfect customer service scenario, many sources say, involves humans paired with AI.





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