The Australians like to refer to their country with the slang “Oz”, a term that alternatively is a contraction and the alteration of “Aus” or a reference to the magical world of Frank Baum’s famous book “The Wizard of Oz.” Either way, there is no denying that contact center solutions market leader, Interactive Intelligence, is busy working hard to make its operations in Australia a more magical experience for its customers down under. Recently, the company appointed seasoned engineer Ray Pipes as senior systems engineer for its Australia-New Zealand operations. ITWire in Australia recently state that Interactive Intelligence has launched a new training center in North Sydney.
As the posting notes, Interactive Intelligence’s managing director Australia, New Zealand and Pacific, Brendan Maree, is delighted about the launch of this facility — architected to run a virtualized infrastructure through a central HP ProLiant server enabling ten students to simultaneously manage four individual virtual machines and establish their own IP telephony system, in a “world-class IP telephony environment.”
In describing the training center, Maree highlighted the fact that it also contains:
Ten classes will be offered to provide hands-on training on a variety of disciplines and solutions. This will be a roles-based curriculum. It is designed to enable students to gain in-depth knowledge and certification in all aspects of usage and configuration of Interactive Intelligence solutions, including contact centre automation, enterprise IP telephony, unified communications, self-service automation and SIP-supported VoIP solutions.
Maree stated, “Training is a critical component for making Interactive Intelligence products work for our customers and as a result we are dedicated to fulfilling our customers’ training and educational needs so that they can maximize productivity and improve the performance of their enterprise and call centre solutions...At the same time, investing in education and simulation facilities such as those which we have now established in North Sydney ensures that business enterprise users and contact centre professionals have the knowledge and insight to build the most effective solutions, maximizing both their return on investment as well as overall productivity.”
It should also be noted that part of the additional magic being introduced, along with the new training facility, is a contact center simulation room allowing resellers and customers to test their proposed deployment in a fully customized, ‘live’ environment.
In its first-quarter earnings call with financial analysts last week, CEO Dr. Donald E. Brown emphasized Interactive Intelligence’s commitment to expand its operations worldwide. This included not just acquiring selected resellers or forging new relationships in strategically important parts of the world, but also building out data centers in support of cloud-based initiatives and fully ramping up all aspects of their operations to maximize the potential of opportunities. Training, as exemplified in the new Australian facility, is a critical component of this strategy for creating customer satisfaction and long-term success.