Interactive Intelligence's updated CIC integrates and diets.

Interactive Intelligence recently enhanced its Customer Interaction Center (CIC) software suite, already with meritorious built-in components and pre-integrated add-on applications, to offer significant integration and .NET thin client inclusion, as if the bundled communications application software suite wasn't already efficient and easy enough.

The CIC product is proffered with resolve to be, according to the creator company, particularly advantageous for contact centers that hold 25 to 400 agents, as well as for multisite contact centers with thousands of agents (and VoIP initiatives). Also, customer-driven enterprises and teleservices outsourcers, with rapidly changing service requirements, were taken into account so that confusion, inaccuracies or senescence don't stir ineffectuality. The suite was specifically designed to meet the performance requirements of which each aforementioned target strategically demands.

A Bit More

More than a product simply for routing calls and reporting agent productivity, contact centers are provided with a pre-integrated application suite in Customer Interaction Center. As well, a flexible automatic call distribution (ACD) capability is provided, with skills-based routing and multimedia queuing and routing, to manage multiple media of business communications--phone calls, e-mail and Web interactions--from one platform. Also to consider, though: the inherent PBX/IP-PBX call processing, voice mail, fax server and unified messaging of CIC allow these communications to reach throughout the enterprise; this is an allowance that empowers the enterprise's agents, supervisors and business users to be more fructuous in performance, not to mention to elevate the quality of customer service. This conflation to an all-in-one multimedia contact center platform, essentially, can reduce the number of required systems--leverage for complexity-reducing targets.

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Microsoft Integrations

Interactive Intelligence's latest version of CIC (shipping mid-May, as of this writ) offers some significant integration enhancements, including new client integrations for various Microsoft applications (Outlook; CRM; Great Plains); out-of-the-box screen-pops and IVR integration for MS Great Plains and MS CRM; and MS Live Communications Server integration. Essentially, these new client integrations enable users to perform most standard call-handling functions directly from whichever Microsoft application of the users' choosing--eliminating the need to switch between applications--along with the ability to receive screen-pops that contain caller data critical to, and simultaneous with, each call.

Weight Loss

Further, a telling feature enhancement is the addition of a new .NET thin client. Like TRIMSPA, CIC's new .NET thin client curtails the excess heaviness (TRIMSPA offers products to make thin its clients; CIC offers products that are thin clients); it reduces bandwidth requirements and eliminates the need to install software at each desktop, ushering in minimal-effort deployment. This thin client enables customers to more quickly and easily deploy the software, especially for large numbers of distributed users. The thin client includes "rich but lightweight" client functionality designed for more flexible and efficient communications, including the following:

* The ability to configure information views for quicker look-ups;

* Enhanced alerts for easier identification of incoming calls;

* The ability to configure personal rules for customized call handling; and

* A personal rules wizard for easier customization (e.g., building rules for handling interactions and alerts).

e-FAQ Effect

Also, with its latest addendums, Interactive Intelligence's Web self-service and e-mail response management system, e-FAQ, is a considerable fit when pre-integrated with CIC. The Web-based authoring interface and linguistic analysis and artificial intelligence techniques of e-FAQ were designed to abbreviate e-mail and Web-based response time; to nurture response accuracy; to enhance operational efficiencies; to polish customer service; and, finally, to reduce costs associated with multiple-channel interactions. Offering automated responses to e-mail and Web inquiries, the functionality consequently enables customers to convalesce costs by speeding self-service resolution in response to contact center inquiries.

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The latest betterments to e-FAQ include the following: an auto-detect search option, for increasing response accuracy rates; enhancements to Boolean searches, for making search options more flexible; a Rich Text Editor, for simplified knowledge base content authoring; and extended multilingual capabilities, most ideal for multinational companies, according to the company.

IT Staff Thanks You

Even more, because it is a standards-based solution (including SIP with architecture), the CIC software requires no multiple-box hardware or customization, easing implementation and maintenance by the IT staff. Administration is centralized in a single interface, and the software attempts to countervail the complexity often associated with CTI. Dissimilar to hardware-centric proprietary solutions, the IP-ready CIC architecture allows organizations a clear and direct path for adopting VoIP at any time, which makes it so no "bolt-on" VoIP products are required, according to a company representative.

And Then ...

Finally, CIC includes the following highlighted features: traditional TDM and IP-based switching with SIP support; interactive voice response (IVR) with optional speech recognition; an all-software IP-based version using Intel's HMP software; a desktop soft phone with full call control and presence management; call monitoring and recording; unified messaging; Web chat and callback; screen-pop; fax services; and more.

Interactive Intelligence proposes a single, pre-integrated user interface, a thin-client strategy and a tool for knowledge management simplification in its Customer Interaction Center suite; these in order to increase satisfaction, speed and efficiency of both the client and the customer.

For information and subscriptions, visit www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800.

By David R. Butcher, Assistant Editor, Customer Inter@ction Solutions