Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

July 06, 2009

Aspect Announces New Unified Communications Capabilities for Contact Center

By Anshu Shrivastava


Aspect, a unified communications solutions provider, announced that new enhancements to its UC applications for the contact center are available.
 
The enhancements include new instant-messaging capabilities, expanded presence functionality within the contact center, and increased integration with the Tellme (News - Alert) on-demand voice portal.
 
The new features are available through the Aspect (News - Alert) Unified IP 6.6.1 platform product. Company officials said that these features augment the UC capabilities available via the UC applications' core queuing, routing, and reporting functionality.
 
IT-ready Microsoft (News - Alert) Net Web services platform product, Aspect Unified IP, unites customer contact capabilities to help organizations execute on their UC strategies.
 
The new features include improved instant-messaging routing for enhanced customer. This feature will enable customers to interact with contact center agents via various methods like Microsoft Office Communicator and over the Web with click-to-IM, official said.
 
Additionally, with the power of Microsoft Office Communications Server and Aspect UC capabilities, customers can view the presence of the customer service queues and their estimated wait time within the IM client.
 
What’s more, IM routing also offers an auto attendant capability, or interactive messaging response, officials said. The capability enables the contact center to fully automate and script a response to an incoming instant message and/or intelligently route the customer to an IM-based agent.
 
Additional features include extended presence and IM communications within the contact center that help agents to instant message with other agents and supervisors for escalations, coaching tips, and hybrid integration with Tellme's on-demand voice portal platform.
 
Officials said that the Aspect On-Demand Voice Portal is powered by Tellme, and helps companies leverage a number of network-based services, such as proactive customer contact, post-call surveys, automated appointment reminders, notifications, and business continuity with on-demand self service.
 
“Thanks to our global strategic alliance with Microsoft and our partnership with Tellme, Aspect is best equipped to bring these capabilities to the market and demonstrate the value of unified communications in the contact center and the enterprise,” said Serge Hyppolite, director of interaction product management at Aspect, in a statement.
 
Officials said that the new functionality in this latest release adds “significant value” to the company's UC applications for the contact center, specifically Seamless Customer Service, Streamlined Collections, and Blended Interaction.
 
As TMCnet reported, Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) highlighted Aspect's predictive outbound modes and the company's enterprise market across a wide range of industries in a recent report.

Anshu Shrivastava is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anshu’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Amy Tierney


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