“We selected Enghouse Interactive products to receive 2011 Product of the Year Awards for their achievement in advancing CRM, contact center and call center technologies. Their range of customer interaction management products have demonstrated excellence as well as provided ROI for the companies that use them. Customer Interaction Solutions magazine has been recognizing innovative companies for 14 years and Enghouse Interactive has earned its place with this distinguished honor.”

- Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC

The following Enghouse Interactive products were honored for software excellence:

• CosmoCall Universe
• Syntellect Customer Interaction Management (CIM)
• CallRex Quality Management Suite
• Intuition Enterprise

“Enghouse Interactive is in the business of producing a full range of software solutions that help our customers (and their customers) optimize the value of their customer interactions across the gamut of structured, unstructured and self-service interactions. Our customers and channel partners recognize the value of what we have to offer, and we’re happy that TMC has recognized a number of our products as well.”

- Alex Black, CTO, Enghouse Interactive

Enghouse Interactive, premier provider of technology and expertise to maximize the value of every customer interaction, is pleased to offer you a complimentary white paper from ContactBabel about the evolution of the multi-channel contact center. In addition, when you download the white paper, “The Evolution of the Multi-Channel Contact Center,” you will automatically be entered to win your ultimate tropical vacation!

Download the white paper today, and begin dreaming about your ultimate vacation!

Enghouse Interactive’s MediaVoice Studios has a talented group of professionals who are ready to help bring life to your company’s persona. When she’s not in the recording studio, one of our Spanish voice talents, Denise, serves as a clown for Atlanta Clown Care. Denise lends her voice and talents to this non-profit organization that delivers the joy and wonder of classical circus directly to the bed sides and clinics of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Atlanta Clown Care

Another one of our voice talents can he “hearrrrrrd” as the voice of Captain Squiddy on the new iPad application “Captain Squiddy’s Jigsaw Quest.” The story-based adventure guides children and adults alike through puzzle solving and exploration for treasures.

Captain Squiddy

Our talented team of experts is available to bring the richness of your brand to life. Learn more about MediaVoice and how we can bring the right voice to your call center applications, training materials, and broadcast media.

During her twenty years in the IVR and phone switch industries, Barbara Hawkins-Scott has been selected as the signature voice of several Fortune 500 companies. A unique background blending directing, production, acting and talent management has served to develop an outstanding group of voice talent and audio engineers for MediaVoice.

At the heart of the conference is “World of Solutions”, an exhibition made up of Cisco’s key partners. This is the hub of the event where customers and partners can come together for one on one discussions’ and share the latest developments in the unified communications arena.

As one of Cisco’s preferred partners for Unified Communications we will be attending this years’ event to showcase our latest release of Arc Premium and Call Connect, our professional call handling solutions, designed exclusively for Cisco Unified Communications. Some of the new features include extending the console directory out to all staff via the web and integration with the Enghouse Interactive CallRex Call Recording solution – ideal for security or monitoring of calls quality purposes.

We are also building up to and promoting a major release of Arc Premium due out later this year. It will include some powerful features for the larger organisations including the option to connect multi clusters through one server – perfect for multi-nationals and hosted solutions.

Now that Arc Solutions are part of Enghouse Interactive this is going to be an exciting event for us. Being part of a global organisation means that we can pool our knowledge to deliver the best range of interaction management solutions for Cisco customers.

If you are thinking about or attending Cisco Live make sure you drop by Stand E103 and find out how we can collaborate together in the future.

Server virtualization technologies continue to be a major trend in enterprise IT and the benefits extend to interaction management and the contact center. The key value propositions for server virtualization are increased utilization of hardware resources, increased availability of applications and services, and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO).

The benefits of virtualization are clear and adoption continues to grow. According to Gartner^*: “As of mid-2011, at least 40% of x86 architecture workloads have been virtualized on servers; furthermore, the installed base is expected to grow five-fold from 2010 through 2015 (as both the number of workloads in the marketplace grow and as penetration grows to more than 75%).”

As Moore’s Law continues to multiply the processing power of servers, most applications only use a portion of the available processing cycles but are not designed to run in the same “server space” with other applications. Server virtualization enables a single physical server to host multiple virtual machines which are able to provide the dedicated operating system, execution space and processor cycles that individual applications need, while managing the sharing of a single set of physical resources to ensure optimum utilization of the resources. This enables more applications to run on fewer servers and maximizes the investments in power, cooling, rack space, networking and related infrastructure.

The ubiquity of connectivity and the myriad devices we use for business or leisure has driven our expectations for availability of applications and services to all-time highs. Here again, server virtualization shines in its ability to maximize the availability of access to data, services, and applications while helping minimize the disruptions associated with hardware or application failures regardless of location. Another benefit is the speed with which new applications and users can be deployed – highly valuable in our “now economy.”

Enghouse Interactive’s products are ready to support your company’s existing or future server virtualization initiatives. We have incorporated server virtualization into our core software development processes and environments. Microsoft and VMware are two of the leading vendors of server virtualization technologies with Microsoft Hyper-V and the VMware vSphere family of products. Enghouse Interactive solutions from Arc Solutions, CosmoCom, Datapulse, Syntellect, Telrex, and Trio support server virtualization. Contact your Enghouse Interactive representative for complete details.

Most recently, Enghouse Interactive achieved “VMware Ready” status with Syntellect CIM and Syntellect Communications Portal (SCP). The VMware Ready program ensures our customers that our products will fit into the long term growth of their virtualization investment, gives them confidence that our products will take full advantage of availability, scalability and security services offered by the VMware virtualization platform and certainty that Enghouse Interactive will fully support our products running on any standard operating system and hardware platform tested and certified by Enghouse Interactive and VMware.

For additional information about Syntellect CIM, SCP or any other Enghouse Interactive application’s support for server virtualization, please contact your Enghouse Interactive representative.

^* Gartner Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure, 30 June 2011

It’s a hot topic at the moment with analysts including Frost & Sullivan, Ovum and Gartner all predicting significant, double-digit growth in the number of cloud-based contact centre seats over the next few years.

So what is all the noise about with Cloud-based contact centre solutions? There are many forms of cloud offering, including Private Cloud,  but the true cloud deploy is Public Cloud where you rent contact centre services from a third party service provider. The advantages include a pay as you go service, a scalable solution for your business, shorter term contracts and also the ability to protect the company from rapid change or seasonal fluctuations.

The public cloud brings advanced contact centre technology within the reach of small and medium-sized businesses for the first time and provides a cost-effective and flexible alternative to on-premise solutions, for large enterprises across the world as well. If you have unpredictable services where you need to add and remove agents continuously across multiple locations then cloud environment would probably be an ideal fit.

By using a service provider it can remove the pain of managing technology and resources – providing you with on-demand access to the latest applications and technologies. With access to external IT specialists it removes the need to recruit in-house IT personnel and takes away the pain of future proofing and continuously upgrading internal software.

Also, with a flexible pricing model on offer where you only pay for what you use, it means that you are in-synch with your real usage. Unlike other rental services you are still in control with tenant self-administration so you have business agility for your operations without technology stopping you – enabling you to trial new strategies such as a new location or  channel at a lower cost and risk.

However every organisation is different. There is rarely a technology model that fits all needs.  That’s especially true in the customer contact world as customers’ needs change regularly. So when you make decisions about your contact centres it is worth looking at all deployments including on-premise and private cloud. On premise has its advantages especially in a large organisation where agent numbers are fairly static and customers are consistent…whereas a private cloud based in-house is probably best suited to a multi-site environment.

Enghouse Interactive announced today the release of a new CallRex Workforce Management solution. A ground-up product build, CallRex Workforce Management software is designed to address the specific needs of small- to medium-sized businesses. CallRex Workforce Management version 4.0 is the perfect solution to enable organizations to graduate from inefficient methods used for forecasting and scheduling their work forces.

“There is a tremendous amount of operational waste that takes place in call centers of all sizes due to poor scheduling. The cost impacts of over staffing and/or overtime can be as much as 20% of a company’s operating budget. Additionally, there are other factors that can be more efficiently managed with a workforce solution like CallRex, that can improve agent schedule adherence, productivity, management time efficiency, turnover rates, and staff morale.”

- Bruce Sherman, product manager for Enghouse Interactive

Key features are included in CallRex Workforce Management that are essential to businesses of all sizes:

• Powerful and reliable forecasting modeling options
• Real-time adherence and schedule views
• Multi-channel, multi-location forecasting
• Multi-skill grouping and scheduling
• Customizable KPI and adherence guidelines
• Intraday management
• Reporting and dashboards
• Performance alerting

The early adopters of the phenomenon we call texting were high school aged cell users. Teens now use text as their primary channel for communication. If you have customers under the age of 20, you should consider SMS as your next customer interaction channel. While still a little slow to adopt, text message usage has spread to the boomers and beyond. On the whole, 74% of all mobile subscribers, or 2.4 billion people are using SMS. These numbers are hard to ignore, and like just social media, customers are starting to use SMS to contact the enterprise.

SMS can be a perfect way to increase customer satisfaction within your service or sales department. We all know of the apprehension that comes when picking up the phone to resolve an issue with a product. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could send a text with our question and get a short answer in return or a callback for a more complex issue? In some countries, SMS messaging rates are so much lower than cell phone minute usage that people prefer conducting entire service or sales related transactions via text.

SMS becomes even more compelling when thinking about outbound communication. Consider the impact of proactively delivering post-order confirmation numbers, tracking numbers, instruction lists, or appointment confirmations via SMS so the customer doesn’t have to scramble to find pen and paper.

SMS can be a low-cost alternative to voice interactions, a tool to help you provide better customer service, a way to proactively notify your customers of important information, or a possible answer to your specific business needs. At Enghouse Interactive, our goal is to provide you with the best solution to any of your customer contact needs. If you would like to explore the use of SMS as part of your contact center strategy, please contact your Enghouse Interactive account representative or channel partner.

Ricky Stewart is a member of the Enghouse Interactive product management team based in Phoenix, AZ. Outside of the office, Ricky enjoys keeping in touch with friends via text message and dominating every trail that he can find on his mountain bike or snowboard (depending upon the conditions).

Features included in version 4.2 are focused on bringing enterprise-ready quality management solutions to companies using Microsoft Lync as their unified communications solution. CallRex Call Recording software includes expanded integration options for Lync environments to include both active conference-based and passive call recording methods. In addition, CallRex Call Recording now works with the benefits of support for Microsoft Corp.’s native audio codec, Real Time (RT) Audio.

“Microsoft is pleased that Enghouse Interactive is continuing to enhance their CallRex Call Recording offer for Lync customers. With the addition of RT Audio support, CallRex can now extend its flexible and affordable quality management solution to cover employees working outside the corporate network without the call issues associated with the use of traditional telephony codecs.”

- BJ Haberkorn, Lync group product manager at Microsoft

Updates available in the 4.2 release include:

• Addition of conference-based active call recording
• Added support for the RT Audio codec
• Enhanced integration guide for Lync deployments
• Improved installation process with more automation and fewer steps

Photo credit: BazaarBizarreSF, on Flickr

The New Year often inspires us to start fresh, reassess, refocus, or reboot. Lists of resolutions abound! As it usually trends, many businesses use the new calendar (or fiscal) year to build a resolution list of their own. The common denominators on these lists often include worthwhile objectives to be more efficient, provide higher levels of service, and build stronger business relationships. If you think that sounds cliché, it is no more so than the same promise we all make to ourselves every year to lose weight! I digress…

The good news is that a great number of companies in several industries may be closer to achieving their goals than they realize. Some companies have the solution already in-house! Recent years have seen a surge in adoption of call recording technology across all business types. This was driven strongly by another wave of regulatory pressures but also in part inspired by the maturity of the technology, more affordable options, and the broad acceptance of call recording as a way to protect a business.

Whether the decision to adopt a call recording solution was driven by regulation, the desire to have audit trails for your business transactions, or for oversight into the levels of service you provide, you are now in possession of a very powerful business enablement solution. The ability to capture, monitor, and review telephone transactions in your business provides you a way to drive business to be more efficient and focus more closely on quality of service. First time adopters of call recording solutions are only a few steps away from taking stronger control of their business.

As a first step towards greater business insight, I recommend taking advantage of the ability to live monitor calls. With the ability to  monitor phone calls as they are taking place, a manager or business owner can have real-time insight into how smoothly business is being transacted (of course it’s not necessary to do this “live,” recorded calls can always be reviewed after the fact). In those situations where there are deficiencies identified or examples of exemplary service being provided, managers can mark these calls for review later. In the CallRex Call Recording solution, this is referred to as flagging. Flagged calls can easily be retrieved later for review and used for staff training.

The next step beyond live call monitoring is cross referencing call interactions with viewing the synchronized capture of the agent’s desktop; either in real-time as the call is taking place, or at a later time. With the addition of desktop screen capture along with the call audio, a manager now can more clearly associate how the agents’ interactions with customers may be impacted by their interaction with the software system they use, such as a CRM or other data entry interface. The combination will more clearly identify if there is a training issue that needs to be addressed or a data input work flow problem that may be hindering efficiency.

The last step for quality management adoption would be the use of a structured staff evaluation solution. As with the CallRex Agent Evaluation solution, a manager can create an objective evaluation method that leverages the data in the captured call transactions to define, evaluate, and improve on staff performance. A business manager can build a scoring mechanism based on their own specific performance criteria. Using customized score cards, managers can have a guided one-on-one session with staff members to review their performance on as many topics as needed and use actual call recordings in conjunction with the score card to identify those performance areas that require attention.

For those not familiar with the technology being identified in these steps, it may sound like quite an undertaking and an even greater investment. This is a myth! If you are already capturing call recordings today, you are already more than half way into the time and financial investment needed to bring full quality management to your business. For an incremental investment, a business can add the ability to capture desktop recordings and adopt a simple agent evaluation solution.

Choosing the right solution for your business needs is your next step. Find a solution that satisfies your business needs and is easy to deploy and use. Overly complicated products can dramatically hamper the process and all too often cause enough barriers to stop your progress dead. However you decide to approach it, you will be quite surprised at how much more insight you can gain into your business activities and how to use that knowledge to grow.

To learn more about how Enghouse Interactive can help you improve your business with call recording and quality management solutions, contact your preferred reseller or Enghouse Interactive account manager today.