We Blog CRM

Today, more than ever, companies must better understand their client and manage the quality of their customers’ experiences. Lithium Technologies and Genesys are working together to integrate Lithium’s community platform with Genesys’ Customer Service Software. The goal is to extend the social networking capabilities of Genesys and deliver an improved customer experience by incorporating community as an integrated online channel, preserving continuity of service and driving contact center efficiencies.

With Genesys and Lithium Technologies in their respective expertise of customer interaction management and building of customer communities and networks, enterprises can utilize this integration to monitor and address customer issues outside of the traditional contact center and better understand conversations taking place across the customer community.

Lithium can flag community activities that require enterprise attention and the Genesys software suite can then determine the business value and priority and assign that interaction to the ideal resource, be it in the contact center or beyond. For example, if a post from a gold customer has gone unresolved for 24 hours, an alert would automatically escalate it to an agent for immediate attention. The combined solution seamlessly integrates social channels with traditional CRM to provide dynamic customer engagement.

Some key benefits provided from this joint solution by unifying cross-channel conversations and delivering a consistent experience as customers transition from the forum to voice and non-voice channels; reducing support costs over 40 percent by allocating a company’s most valuable resources to higher value business tasks while the community handles lower value postings; driving intelligent analytics and insights into customer behavior; creating a more profitable customer experience and multi-channel choice for customers; and increasing the corporate knowledge base from community interactions and responses.

The integrate solution will be showcased at LiNC – Lithium Technologies’ annual customer conference – May 12-14 in San Francisco. Enterprises can learn more about this solution to harness their resources in the Contact Center and beyond to avoid leaving the “socialsphere” unattended.

New players join Oracle Siebel, Microsoft and Salesforce.com as the market seeks to empower agents and deliver next-generation service. There aren’t a lot of commonalities between the listed vendors in Magic Quadrant except that they have systems to help customers post-sale. To be fair, very few enterprises have cookie-cutter customer service requirements and these vendors try to cater to those unique needs.

The 2010 report includes 15 vendors which meet Gartner Research VP and Distinguished Analyst, Michael Maoz’s criteria for coverage. These vendors all have at least 15 customer references, have had at least five new customers for CSS in the past four quarters in at least two geographic regions and generate at least $7 million in software revenue for core CSS from new clients during the past four quarters. They are also evaluated on their cross-channel customer service efforts and whether the provider is creating or following industry leas as well as the vendor’s relationship with third-party consulting firms and systems integrators and own professional services. Lastly, Maoz’s report also took social integrations capabilities into account.

In his report, Maoz writes that four major initiatives will dominate overall customer service strategies through 2013: tying together service interaction channels; integrating social CRM capabilities, analyzing the customer experience; and apply business rules and knowledge in real time. The current leaders in the 2010 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers rank as so: Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Oracle (Siebel), Pegasystems, RightNow Technologies and Salesforce.com.

Last year, Pegasystems was the sole resident of the Visionary segment because of their idea of matching business rules to specific customer service processes. Maoz lauds Pegasystems for its renewed emphasis on customer service contact centers, a long tail of customer success stories, and a jump in revenue.

RightNow Technologies has focused on the business-to-consumer customer service center where there’s not a need for deepened industry knowledge of expertise, noting that Microsoft and Salesforce.com are more general purpose solutions in this regard as well. However, Maoz points out that RightNow (with its acquisition of HiveLive) and Salesforce.com (for its development of Chatter) are making strong social plays even if they seem to be heavily weighted on the sales side.

The Challengers are Amdocs and SAP. Maoz writes that SAP has yet to tap into the large B2C contact center market but praises their community efforts. Amdocs, on the other hand, is well regarded as a telecommunications contact center provider but does not offer the same resources to other industries.

There are plenty of Niche Players who provide value but “just not to everyone”. They rank: Astute Solutions, Chordiant Software, eGlue, Jacada, Neocase Software, Oracle E-Business Suite, Portrait Software and Sword Ciboodle.

In larger trends, there seems to be more of an interest in improving the agent desktop rather than replacing it. There is a big desire to make things simpler for the service agent – how can they make agents feel smarter and less exposed to the customer? Understanding customer intent and applying the right rule in real time will boost agent confidence and losing the customer’s trust is probably the biggest problem companies are trying to work through.

Siemens has announced an upgrade of its OpenScape Contact Center. The Version 8 (V8) release will be available to the public on May 18^th with virtualization from the server and client directions. The V8 upgrade will also be compatible on any device with a USB port, including netbooks and smartphones.

The new virtualized servers allow data centers to use a software-based contact center solution. The new solution will help to optimize server load and reduce the cost of disaster recovering planning. Using hypervisors, the CRM solution allows for multiple operating systems and application software to run on the same physical server.

The open CRM solution enables easy deployment, simplified management and cost savings through server consolidation. Through a partnership with VMware, the software and server virtualization company, Siemens is able to run different operating systems on the same physical machine. This will allow data centers to deploy software in a way that will balance workloads instead of segregating software per operating system. “If you think about a server in a conventional way, you would have one application on a server running Linux and another running on a Windows server” explains Ross Sedgewick senior director at Siemens. “Virtualization allows you to spread those applications evenly over multiple servers.”

Virtualization will also allow companies to load their contact center software onto data center machines, instead of having to add onto proprietary hardware at each location. The physical barrier between the contact center and the data center will be eliminated.

The V8 update also offers a web-based agent interface. Users can still used the windows-based client, but have the option of deploying the contact center solution through a browser as well. The web-based agent interface will allow contact center agents to view real-time availability of enterprise workers. Through the agent interface, companies can promote team-wide collaboration to optimize customer service.

OpenScape Contact Center V8 also has Interactive Voice Response (IVR) capabilities. The capabilities are only available on the software and entirely SIP-based. The company boasts that IVR functionality will lower costs instead of using more expensive proprietary hardware. “With this latest version of OpenScape Contact Center, not only do we provide Web-based desktops and an integrated IVR to bolster the classic contact center goals of productivity and customer service, we provide IT with the flexibility to meet business goals quickly and cost effectively,” said VP and GM at Siemens Enterprise Communcations, Scott McDonald. “Since it is optimized for virtualized environments, it gives IT managers increased deployment flexibility and easier management, all while saving money.”

For more info visit: www.siemens-enterprise.com

Last week, Salesforce.com announced it will partner with Cisco to deliver “the new face of customer service” by building a new contact center in the cloud. Combining Salesforce’s Service Cloud 2 with Cisco Unified Communications, the new solution uses gives SMBs the ability to run customer service entirely in the cloud. Both Cisco and Salesforce share a faith in cloud computing, and both encourage leveraging social networking sites for customer service.

Service Cloud 2 and Cisco’s Unified Contact Center—which helps companies smoothly integrate inbound and outbound voice call with Internet applications—are integrated by a connector, allowing customers to use Salesforce CRM as their primary agent desktop while having access to Contact Center’s capabilities. The solution is for companies with 30 to 300 customer service representatives, and features the Customer Interaction Cloud, a tool providing more efficient communications.

Salesforce and Cisco consider this new integration the answer to growing demands for cloud-based customer service solutions within the SMB market, as well as a new model for customer service. The cloud model allows companies to deliver “the expertise of the community” to their customers, and Salesforce reports that some 8,000 customers have already turned to Service Cloud 2 (launched earlier this fall) for their customer service needs.

Call center software provider inContact announced this week it would be releasing an integration to cloud-based CRM. An undisclosed provider of performance solutions for the casualty claims industry will be using inContact’s product with Salesforce.com for several call centers that deal with about 200 insurance agencies total. Over the past couple of years, the solutions company used Salesforce.com for CRM and inContact for call center operations, and by integrating the former product into the latter, the company will expand the Salesforce presence throughout their business.

Aside from eliminating the hassle of switching between the two platforms, the integration will merge routing, call resolution, and reporting, thereby improving the general call-center cycle. Agents and managers will use the same UI to answer calls and create reports.

Being that both inContact and Salesforce are cloud-based platforms, the integration will provide the typical benefits of a SaaS model—fast deployments, measurable ROI, and a lower cost. The economy has recently made SaaS solutions of all breeds popular, so this is surely not the last cloud-based call center integration we’ll be seeing. Another coup for inContact this week: a report by DMG Consulting showed their on-demand solutions were the most implemented hosted contact center products of 2008.

According to a new research commissioned by Oracle, customers in the UK face the brunt of inadequate services from call centers. The exhaustive study carried out across Europe surveyed 1500 customers and 250 contact centers. The results showed that there was a substantial disconnect between contact center performance and customer expectations. The discontent of British customers was the most telling in Europe where more than 50% of the customers are unhappy with the service levels.

Financial services scored high for customer satisfaction and telecom companies fared poorly as far as call center performance was concerned. The most common grievances were the usual ones such as long call queues, having to interact with multiple staff members, and inconsistent communication from the call center employees. This, when call center managers profess to having customer satisfaction as their number one concern. Apparently there is a disconnect between the thoughts and actions of the call center executives.

The call center customer service was rated just average or outright ineffective by most of the respondents. The call centers on their part stated that the staff was poorly equipped in terms of training and tools. Top factors that call centers said they would like to work on included better information for the staff, better training procedures, distributed decision making capabilities, and keeping the caller interested while on hold.

The report goes on to mention that call centers are surprisingly loath to explore the internet as an option for extending customer service inspite of customers expressing a strong inclination for the internet as a medium for communicating with businesses. Hardly any of the call centers reviewed had any plans of introducing self-service customer portals online to reduce the workload of their contact center employees.

Virtual call centers depend heavily on home agents and with good reason. A distributed workforce offers several benefits such as around the clock service covering different time zones, tapping into an experienced workforce that may for some reason be unable to travel, reducing the number of shifts of the on-site call center, reduced overhead costs and saving of real estate expenses, etc.

By giving the agents the flexibility to choose their timings call centers promote productivity, the virtual employee only needs an internet connection, a computer, and a phone to get started. Contact center solutions aimed at virtual contact centers and intuitive graphical user interfaces make it easy for an agent to breeze through the learning process. You do not need to purchase and set up expensive hardware to set up a virtual call center. Instead you can direct your resources elsewhere.

Managing a distributed workforce is also not an issue because of solutions that offer real-time call center metrics same as those available in a bricks-and-mortar environment.

High street British optician Specsavers, which has around 600 stores in the UK, has decided to deploy Infor CRM Epiphany. The CRM system is expected to help the company achieve that most desired position – one where it has a single view of its customer. Specsavers intends to use the Sales and Service modules of Epiphany to boost its call center program with a view to support its client retention efforts. Epiphany is a big leap forward from the spreadsheets and notepads which the company used to process customer data. Infor CRM should enable the company call center to react more swiftly and with greater certainty to customer queries and resolve issues faster.

In-depth, real-time customer information will surely enhance the staff working experience as well as the customer experience fostering loyalty amongst both for Specsavers. Another advantage is that with accurate customer information, the company can personalize its services to suit the needs of the customer. 

Looks like a likely partnership between two companies with catchy names. SugarCRM, which is one of the premier open source CRM developers out there has helped Geeks on the Way offer improved call center services. Geeks on the way, by the way, is a technology support firm based in Western Canada.

The self-proclaimed geeks provide technical support to residences and small offices and have had around 45,000 calls handled till date. When we consider that its 45,000 calls with 20,000 unique customers serviced then we know that these geeks are running a well-co-ordinated unit.

SugarCRM has helped the geeks to manage increasing call volumes more effectively by providing an integrated voice and CRM system. The open source technologies has made it easier for the geeks to integrate the call center environment with other technologies such as mapping technologies and the result is superior service and timely attendance to calls. Call handling time has been reduced drastically from 2-3 minutes to around 20 seconds. The open source SugarCRM
architecture also fits in nicely with the Geeks expansion and growth plans.

Clearly, Sugar has won over the geeks at Geeks on the Way and the company now plans to extend SugarCRM to other departments; it has already integrated Sugar with its accounting and e-commerce systems.

Sage Software today announced ACT! by Sage for Financial Professionals 9.0, a contact and customer management solution that provides data management, activity tracking, reporting and sales productivity tools for financial advisors, brokerage firms and teams of financial services professionals.

Users can synchronize contact, calendar and to-do information with their Palm OS or pocket PC devices. The standard purchase of ACT! for Financial Professionals also includes one year of maintenance and support.

Two versions of the solution are available: ACT! for Financial Professionals is for individuals or up to ten networked users, and ACT! Premium for Financial Professionals 9.0 is designed for larger workgroups.

ACT! for Financial Professionals is available for $519.99 and $349.95 for customers upgrading from ACT! + Fact for Financial Professionals. ACT! Premium for Financial Professionals is available for $739.99 and $469.95 for customers upgrading.

ACT! was first introduced in 1987 and for that span, Sage has prided itself on ACT!’s status as the number-one selling contact and customer management solution. Today, 2.7 million registered users and more than 38,000 additional corporate customers use ACT!