Spanlink Introduces Concentric Solutions; Changes the FastCall Brand Name to Represent the Product Line's Broader Approach to Enhancing the Customer's Contact Center Experience.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 24, 2002

Spanlink Communications, Inc., an expert provider of rapidly-deployable, results-oriented contact center solutions, announced today that they have changed the name of their FastCall product suite to Concentric Solutions. A mainstay product of the CTI world, FastCall has been installed on more than 50,000 desktops worldwide and has received multiple industry awards for its practical applications and ease-of-use. Spanlink believes that the name change better represents the expanded scope of the current product, which boosts productivity and enhances quality before, during and after a contact to deliver the best possible experience for the customer.

The Concentric Solutions product provides multiple modules and myriad features that help contact centers improve efficiency and enhance overall quality. It provides tools for the agent, the supervisor, the IVR system and the customer to improve each stage of the contact, from initial call routing, to call handling and coaching, to after call work.

"This is a case of a product outgrowing its name," said Spanlink Vice President of Marketing, Kevin Avery. "The original FastCall was an agent-only application, notably the first desktop solution for screen pop and basic soft phone that was truly easy to deploy and manage. We feel the name Concentric Solutions better characterizes the product suite's capabilities and our vision for the future - multiple products that share a common center or goal, which is improving the customer experience."

Concentric Solutions gives contact centers a robust feature set that delivers strong returns, without making them endure a costly and complex process to achieve them. Concentric Solutions enhances various elements of an inbound or outbound contact, including routing, IVR utilization, agent workflow functions, supervisor monitoring and coaching, and after call work activities. Despite its wide-ranging capabilities, Concentric Solutions requires minimal resources to implement and support. The product can be installed in a matter of days and managed by contact center personnel themselves, rather than IT staff.

"Concentric Solutions places fewer demands on customers, streamlines and offloads more tasks from agents, and integrates supervisor coaching capabilities with the real-time contact to dramatically improve customer satisfaction and deliver cost savings that are truly compelling," said Avery.

Modules

Concentric Solutions comprises several component modules that work in concert to help contact centers achieve their business objectives. These off-the-shelf packages are highly configurable to meet common nuances of each contact center.

Concentric Connections - Concentric Connections helps contact centers improve customer satisfaction by improving the speed and care with which customers are routed to agents. Concentric Connections operates in a Windows, client/server architecture, supporting fast and flexible access to a variety of information sources for powerful evaluation and call handling. Concentric Connections can check multiple databases and make conditional queries based on information retrieved from a primary query - for example, check a support database for open trouble tickets after finding the customer is under maintenance. Customers can extend the logic by adding their own Visual Basic code to define call routing. Concentric Connections minimizes transfers and mishandled calls by automatically routing callers based on their profile, and ensures that each caller receives the fastest, most appropriate service based on their own profile, as well as current call center conditions.

Concentric Agent - Concentric Agent improves agent productivity at the desktop, speeds call processing, minimizes mundane tasks, and reduces training requirements by automating the complete agent workflow before, during and after the call. Examples include soft phone capabilities, including automated dialing from a phone book, screen pop, CRM updates, and after call work functions. In addition, Concentric Agent provides a real-time report of agent and group statistics. This helps agents to monitor themselves individually and as a group in order to gauge productivity and adjust their activities accordingly. The product's call/chat capabilities allow agents to confer with other agents or with their supervisors without leaving their desks or putting a caller on hold, which promotes teamwork and increases agent effectiveness and first-call resolution.

Spanlink offers an enhanced version of Concentric Agent. Enhanced Agent incorporates Enterprise Data within the Concentric Agent environment. Enterprise Data can include external customer data associated with the call, the reason for the call and call history (i.e. the amount of time a caller spent in the queue, IVR-entered data and activity, etc.), which Concentric Agent utilizes in a screen pop. This information serves to increase hit rates, better-prepare agents when accepting calls, and shorten overall call durations.

Concentric Supervisor - Concentric Supervisor improves teamwork and call quality by enabling real-time interaction between supervisors and agents. Supervisors can observe, message, chat and coach agents in real time - without leaving their desks. Concentric Supervisor features a suite of real time reports, presenting supervisors with information about the agents and skills/queues for the teams that they manage.

Easy to Implement and Maintain

Concentric Solutions is easy for contact centers to deploy, configure and manage. Spanlink designed Concentric Solutions to be administered by contact center personnel, not programmers, so it can be installed in a matter of days. Likewise, Concentric Solutions is easy for contact centers to manage on a daily basis without reliance on the IT staff or a solution integrator. Contact center personnel themselves can make modifications to accommodate changes in workflow. For this reason, the solution bears a low life cycle cost versus custom solutions that will generally take months to deploy and require added professional service costs to maintain.

Integration

Concentric Solutions provides several methods to integrate telephony information with customers' enterprise business applications, be they home grown "green screen" or off-the-shelf CRM solutions. Concentric Solutions provides tools for recording keystroke macros, as well as writing COM-based applications.

Concentric Solutions integrates with PBX/ACDs from Avaya (DEFINITY), Nortel (M1 and Symposium), and Siemens (Hicom). Concentric Solutions scales cost-effectively and offers an easy migration path from TDM to IP.

About Spanlink Communications, Inc.

Spanlink Communications is a leading provider of contact center solutions utilizing IP telephony, web and email technologies, computer telephony (CT) and interactive voice response (IVR). Spanlink provides specialized services for deploying complex technologies and several award-winning products that facilitate the integration of multi-media communications solutions. Find news and information at www.spanlink.com.