Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) is planning a major upgrade (due out 3Q2011) to its Customer Interaction Center (CIC) software for contact center and enterprise IP telephony that changes the architecture of the solution. Voice processing will be separated from the CIC applications, resulting in a pure CIC application server that can be located in a central data center (a private cloud deployment) for improved reliability. Agent, IVR and call recording capacities are also increased. A Web portal for executives, managers and Service Providers enables remote monitoring and tracking of overall contact center activity. A new speech analytics application (Interaction Analyzer) detects possible problems in an agent-customer conversation by spotting defined keywords and sending supervisory alerts. Read more below and visit www.telecomtactics.com for more on contact center offers from leading manufacturers.
Interactive Intelligence introduces the next major upgrade of its Customer Interaction Center (CIC) IP communications software for contact center and enterprise IP telephony functionality. The forthcoming CIC 4.0 release (due out in third quarter 2011) will enhance the product with a new architecture that improves reliability and increased scalability to address larger contact centers worldwide. Speech Analytics and several new management tools will provide real-time information that can improve responses to customer requests. Initially, CIC 4.0 will be available in English, Spanish and Canadian French with additional languages to follow.
What’s New with CIC 4.0?
- Architecture and Cloud Deployment - Interactive Intelligence has altered the architecture of the CIC solution so that all call processing takes place on the Interaction Media Server (an appliance introduced with CIC 3.0), while applications run separately on the CIC application server (an industry standard server such as those from Dell, HP or IBM (News - Alert)). This new CIC 4.0 architecture is conducive to hosted environments since the CIC application server can be located at a central data center (a private cloud deployment), and Interaction Media Servers can be located at branch offices for continued call processing even if the link between the CIC server and Interaction Media Server is lost. In addition, the CIC application server can run as a virtualized platform in a data center to take advantage of the benefits of a virtualized environment (e.g. server consolidation for simplified management and reduced energy consumption).
- Increased Scalability - With CIC 4.0 and the new architecture defined above, capacities in several categories will increase due to the offloading the media processing from the CIC server and onto the Interaction Media Server. Generally, the number of ACD-enabled agents will double per single server, simultaneous IVR sessions will increase five-fold and call recording capacity will be seven times more. Interactive Intelligence plans to publish specific capacities later in 2011, following scalability testing; the increases will depend on specific system configuration settings.
- Real-time Speech Analytics - Perhaps the most intriguing of the new functionality is a new speech analytics application called Interaction Analyzer that alerts contact center managers about problems by picking up keywords or phrases in real-time agent-customer voice conversations. Managers can intervene by monitoring, coaching or taking over the conversation and ensuring that the customer is satisfied. For example, when either an agent or the customer uses a defined swear/curse word, Interaction Analyzer can send a pop-up notification to a supervisor or can be configured to flag the call after the first instance, but send a notification after the second instance. [Another application that can detect emotions is on the roadmap.]
- Enhanced Reporting and Quality Monitoring – Reporting is improved with filtering via media type, sharing of alerts among multiple users and improved service level calculations. There is more detailed logging, and report interfaces are simplified to allow better visibility into performance metrics. CIC supervisory and monitoring applications (e.g. Interaction Supervisor, Interaction Optimizer, Interaction Feedback, etc.) are moving from standalone 32-bit Windows applications to a consolidated environment written in .NET (News - Alert), providing single interface access to CIC applications.
- Improved Agent Experience - An updated Web client for agents incorporates more contact center features such as transfer options, support for wrap up codes, account codes and the CIC dial pad. E-mail handling is improved with options for Reply, Reply All and Forward, and service levels can be configured by channel type. For example, the time to answer a Web chat can/should be immediate, while the time to answer a voice call could be in minutes and the time to respond to an e-mail could be hours or the next day. Agent assistance is improved since supervisors can view outstanding agent requests in a single screen for better response; also supervisors can instantly record, listen in, coach or take control of calls. Previously, agent assistance requests would display in different windows and were not queued so supervisors were required to view multiple screens, and no overview was provided to allow supervisors to see if those assistance requests had already been handled.
- New Web Portal - Interaction Web Portal is a new application that targets executives and supervisors who want to monitor, record and track agent and queue activity. Service Providers can use the portal to monitor customer activity and provide customizable real-time and historical reports. Agents can use the portal to monitor their own productivity.
Availability/Compatibility: Interactive Intelligence CIC 4.0 is expected to become available in third quarter 2011 in English-speaking countries (English, Spanish and Canadian French languages supported); localization for other countries in EMEA and APAC will follow. CIC is sold by over 300 resellers worldwide or through Interactive Intelligence’s direct sales force.
Interactive Intelligence is a Platinum sponsor of ITEXPO West 2011. To be held Sept. 13-15 in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Brad Forsythe, technical sales support at Interactive Intelligence is speaking during “The Cloud Evolution in Contact Centers, UC in the Cloud: Understanding the Benefits and Challenges and The Contact Center: The Key to Social Media Success.” Don’t wait. Register now.
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Sandra M. Gustavsen, business VoIP analyst, contributes her Business VoIP column to TMCnet. To read more of Sandra's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell