 "Transactional Communication To Real-Time Collaboration: The UC Way")
In a one-on-one with Rajeev Soni, general manager-South Asia and Middle East, Aspect Software, Biztech2.0 captures his views on UC, the latest buzz in the contact centre space and Aspect’s future plans.
How does Aspect Software differentiate itself on the innovation front from other players in the space?
We saw a major opportunity for enterprises to capitalise on the promise of Unified Communications within the organisation, while companies, recognising the need to cut costs, saw UC as a strategic investment. Specifically, as known, the contact centre is a very logical starting point for any UC implementation. As the contact centre is expected to handle calls from customers 24/7, UC tools can help determine the best agent or knowledge worker to handle the call, as well as help schedule and determine the availability to support customer interactions using rich presence integrated with calendaring. This helps increase customer satisfaction, increase collections and enhance sales and marketing efforts. These interactions can also be monitored, recorded and reported; thus, enabling measurable metrics that tools present in the contact centre environment can easily track.
Aspect uses Microsoft’s communication server as a backbone for UC implementations. On what fronts do the two companies work together to enhance customer service?
Microsoft and Aspect announced a multi-year strategic alliance in March 2008 to help deliver unified communications (UC) to contact centres around the world. As part of that alliance, Aspect has redesigned its Aspect Unified IP Contact Centre solution to make it interoperable with Microsoft’s platform for software-powered voice and unified communications and is offering it as the leading option to new and existing customers. Microsoft is making an equity investment in Aspect to accelerate the development and adoption of new solutions and services.
What is the latest buzz in the contact centre space? What kind of delivery models do you use to deploy solutions within the customer environment?
The latest buzz in the space is centred on the use of unified communications to deliver seamless customer service and first call resolution. Unified contact centre architecture brings together IP telephony, customer interaction technologies and unified communications capabilities.
By using the contact centre as a starting point for UC implementation, companies can realise what Gartner calls the ‘largest single value of unified communications’ i.e. the ability to reduce human latency in business processes. In the contact centre, ‘human latency’ means simply that customer interactions take too long, which produces a less than satisfactory result for both companies and their customers.
In the future, customer interactions won’t be limited to just getting help from the agent, who answers the phone. With UC, customers will also be able to communicate how they prefer to be reached, speeding up their access to information and people. The industry is moving from transactional communications to real-time collaboration between companies and customers. The convergence of all communication on IP networks and open software platforms has enabled a new UC paradigm and is changing how individuals, groups and organisations communicate and collaborate.