New Avaya Intelligent Customer Service Solutions Enhance Cost-Savings and Customer Experiences.

New Avaya Intelligent Customer Service Solutions Enhance Cost-Savings and Customer Experiences

* End-to-End SIP For the Contact Center Helps Businesses Streamline Customer Service Operations, Boost Agent Productivity and Serve Customers Better

* Updated Proactive Contact, New Video Self-Service Improves Customer Outreach and Interaction

Avaya, a global leader in business communications applications, systems and services, have announced the launch of its new contact center solutions. The solutions are aimed at providing organisations with a more cost-effective, simplified and productive way to deliver customer service - while improving customer experience.

The solutions include powerful new Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) capabilities benefiting all facets of a contact center. SIP is an industry standard that enables businesses to fully leverage open environments and multimedia communications. Avaya's new solutions provide "end-to-end" SIP - running from the service provider trunk to an agent's desktop phone - taking greater advantage of the open nature of SIP. This approach helps businesses cut costs and simplify the implementation of customer service operations. A new, low-cost Avaya SIP contact center phone completes the end-to-end SIP solution. The phone does not require the addition of CTI middleware (i.e. softphone), further streamlining savings and network management.

"Avaya is at the forefront of contact centre technology in the region and we have leading organisations from various verticals relying on our expertise. With this launch, we are offering a broader range of solutions to our customers to choose from based on their requirements," said Neville Perry, converged applications manager, Avaya MENA. "Our new SIP capabilities will drive greater flexibility and productivity for contact center agents, benefiting all facets of a contact center; for IT administrators seeking to streamline contact center operations, customer service agents working anywhere, and customers demanding faster service with a personal touch, he added.

Leading organisations including EFG Hermes, Emirates Bank, American Express, Shuaa Capital, (some more names Dina, please) are benefiting from Avaya's contact centre solutions.

The new SIP contact center phone gives agents essential contact center features such as "work mode display" and "alert tones for skill changes", while providing a foundation for evolving with presence-based capabilities, such as identifying real-time availability of experts. The phone can also be set up in an agent's home via a secure VPN, increasing productivity for home-based agents.

Other critical contact center capabilities are now available via SIP trunks as an alternative to existing ISDN trunks. This includes the ability to pass customer calls and secure information between contact centers, which helps ensure customer data is available to agents assisting their customers.

Customer experiences are improved through a new Avaya video self-service solution that can use SIP to affordably deliver multimedia customer experiences through dynamic video content. Avaya enhances self service - a process which lets callers use menu-based options to interact with a company - by 'pushing' video-based menus and content to customers calling into a company using a 3G mobile device, video kiosk or PC. Customers can see branded visual menus to choose options, or they can view advertisements, presentations or instructional videos while waiting for an agent.

For greater convenience, Avaya's contact center solutions are available in standard and advanced editions which offer bundled, end-to-end contact center solutions for businesses. The Standard Edition includes applications such as inbound/outbound routing, voice self-service and agent instant messaging, while the Advanced Edition adds capabilities such as adaptive predictive routing and SIP voice and video.

[c] 2008 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)