CosmoCom Introduces Fifth Generation of its Call Center Software for Unified Customer Communications.

CosmoCall Universe 5 is Platform of Choice for Unified Approach to Customer Service Across Entire Enterprise

MELVILLE, N.Y. -- CosmoCom, the global leader in Unified Customer Communications, today announced Version 5, a major upgrade to CosmoCom's CosmoCall Universe (CCU), the leading IP-based contact center software platform. CosmoCom has dubbed the new version the Unified Customer Communications (UCC) release, because the platform has been enhanced to support key elements of UCC. Among the significant enhancements in CCU 5 are a completely redesigned email/voicemail environment, rich call transfer capabilities, a highly customizable rich security model, new reporting features, and further enhancements to its industry-leading video call center and video self-service capabilities.

Fifth Generation Platform

Today's announcement represents the fifth generation of IP-based contact center technology first patented and introduced by CosmoCom in 1995 and now in use at many of the world's leading telecommunication companies and enterprises. CCU was designed to leverage emerging IP-based convergence to unify customer communications across all channels, including voice, video, email and web sessions, across all locations, and across all knowledge workers in the enterprise.

CosmoCall Universe 5 expands on its innovative roots, introducing a number of new tools that simplify contact center operations and provide significant enhancements to messaging infrastructure, call flow, reporting, and security. "CosmoCom helps organizations succeed in Unified Customer Communication by constantly improving the capabilities of our rich media platform as it reaches every part of the organization," said Ari Sonesh, CosmoCom CEO and Chairman.

"Customer contact management is becoming more virtual and unified, expanding beyond the domain of traditional telephone call centers," said Art Rosenberg, veteran industry observer and principal analyst for The Unified View. "In shaping its new release to help enterprises meet the challenge of dynamically matching customer contact resources with quickly changing customer demand, CosmoCom shows keen awareness of this trend and raises the bar for the industry."

Platform Enhancements

Redesigned email/voicemail Environment

The email component of Unified Customer Communication is increasingly prominent, and the CosmoCom platform's unified support of voicemail is one of its unique and most widely-used features. To support these usage trends, version 5 provides a complete redesign and a major expansion of its message management tools, including tighter integration of the familiar Microsoft Outlook Web interface. Among the new email tools are:

* U or Q reply control, enabling agents replying via email to specify the "from" address of the reply using a context-sensitive list of possible senders - the individual agent, or any of the email queues to which the agent is connected.

* Automatic message history tracking providing agents with immediate access to all previous messages in the current thread, even if they are not quoted in the current message.

* Unlimited message deferral with unlimited simultaneous message interactions, giving agents the freedom and flexibility to manage their own workload while maintaining needed management information, control, and automatic time-based escalation to ensure prompt responses to every issue.

* Push-or-Pull message distribution options that allow great flexibility in defining the message workflow for different agents and agent groups.

* Advanced message scripting to support intelligent automatic email replies and intelligent message routing.

* One-click callback to email and voicemail messages when only an immediate live response will do - a great example of Unified Customer Communication at work.

Rich Call Transfer

Supporting the UCC trend of expanding automatic routing throughout the enterprise, Version 5 provides powerful new tools for distributing and redistributing customer interactions, enabling agents to easily and automatically transfer, conference, or place consultation calls to specific self service applications, to different queues with different skills and priorities, to post-call surveys, and to experts or supervisors by name or by skill. The customer never has to redial, and the agent can stay on the line for a consultation, create a conference, or release the call at any time as a transfer.

Rich Security Model

As UCC contact centers grow larger and more complex, and touch different parts of the organization, a new security model is needed, one vastly enriched in granularity and customizability. With version 5, call center managers can create unlimited access profiles for call center functions, information, and reports, based on geography, business unit, management level, call type, and any other criteria, and assign those profiles to any agent or agent group. The model works in any conceivable organizational structure, ensuring that every person associated with a contact center can see and do exactly what he or she is supposed to see and do - no more, and no less. In addition, the new security model leverages an enterprise's existing Active Directory information, creating another level of unity between the contact center and the enterprise as a whole.

New Report Portals

As contact centers grow and involve more people within an organization through UCC, the ability to locate and review the right call detail report (CDR) is increasingly important. Version 5 provides streamlined access to CDR data on-demand. IVR information and live call information are fully unified in the CDR and available through two unique portals--the CDR Portal and IVR Portal. These portals provide a quick way to drill down and find the details of any call or definable set of calls based on whatever is known about them, without taking the time to create a complete CDR report, and without the hassle of searching through it.

Video Enhancements

With the rapid proliferation of video devices, the video channel has become more important as an element of Unified Customer Communications. Version 5 provides enhanced compatibility with a wide variety of video devices, and allows video self-service designers to create device-specific applications. For example, the appropriate self-service application for a small-screen device might be very different from one for a large-screen device.

"CosmoCom first coined the phrase unified customer communications in 2000 to describe how our vision of voice and data convergence over IP would ultimately improve the customer experience," explained Sonesh. "It's a terrific term to summarize exactly what CosmoCom has been doing all along. Now, in CCU version 5, we have delivered more tools to make that vision a reality."

About CosmoCom

CosmoCom, the global leader in Unified Customer Communications, is revolutionizing the whole range of business/customer interactions, not just in formal call centers, but for all information workers. Its technology improves customer service and increases revenue while reducing cost by supporting many independent virtual contact centers on one all-IP platform that integrates easily with other VoIP network components and with the Information Technology environment. Organizations can obtain the full benefits of this technology by deploying it themselves or by working with a network service provider that hosts it on a dedicated or shared-platform basis. CosmoCom is the most-selected provider of hosted contact center platforms to top-tier telcos worldwide. Its multi-tenant platform, CosmoCall Universe, is a Contact Center On-Demand (CCOD) system designed to unify all communication channels and all major contact center functions. CosmoCom customers include service providers such as BT, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telefonica, NTT, VSNL, PLDT, Verizon Business, and many others, as well as Fortune-class enterprises throughout the world. For more information, please visit www.cosmocom.com.