Enghouse Interactive is Going Back to School!

Enghouse Interactive is Going Back to School!

The Enghouse team recently caught up with another Enghouse Champion. Say hello to Josh Ervin, senior information and technology analyst and find out how Enghouse Interactive solutions have helped transform a university contact center. Josh and his team went with the Enghouse solution in an effort to increase their service level to customers, students, and faculty, in addition, to capitalize on their investment by boosting the service level and customer retention. Since implementing Enghouse, management teams are now able to accurately access agent’s performance resulting in increased coaching opportunities and a better understanding of call handling. With call recording, they are able to access the volume of calls being received and review analytics pertaining to the type of calls coming in.  When Josh was asked to sum up the relationship between the university and Enghouse, he chose the word “valuable.” Not only is Enghouse a valuable solution when it comes for getting the best bang for your buck, Josh points out that his organization is able to gather valuable information that helps benefit their students and faculty by providing a smooth interaction across all channels. While the Enghouse technology helped effectively link callers to agents- the internal processes resulted in both customer and company triumphs. Josh and his team are thankful for the comprehensive suite of products available to fill a few niches in their organization and looks forward to a bright future collaborating with Enghouse.

To watch the full interview with Josh Ervin, click HERE

Customer Success: Keany Case Study

Customer Success: Keany Produce Cultivates Quality Customer Service with CallRex Call Recording Software

Keany Produce implemented call recording software on their Mitel 3300 ICP system to improve customer service and identify key trends.

“CallRex has allowed us to identify trends and correct issues or train agents. Using call recordings, we discovered issues that we hadn’t even thought of,” said Dawn Eastwood, director of IT for Keany Produce.

Read the complete Keany Produce case study to learn how this growing produce wholesaler capitalized on CallRex call recording technology to improve agent effectiveness while improving customer service.

“IP telephones allowed us to stretch our current infrastructure investment and didn’t require us to spend additional budget on running additional telephone wires throughout our facility,” stated Eastwood.

Like Keany Produce, many companies can realize cost savings and immediate benefits from pairing IP telephone systems with CallRex call recording software. Your Telrex account manager can help you demystify call recording technology, and show you how you can unlock key trends within your customer interactions. Contact your Telrex account managertoday to learn more.

Don’t just take our word for it:

“CallRex makes us successful because managers are able to retrieve and listen to calls and quickly identify problems,” – Dawn Eastwood, director of IT for Keany Produce.

>> View the Keany Produce case study today.

Customer Interaction Solution - VCC

Customer Interaction Solution - VCC

Whenever a customer interacts with your organization, be it an account manager a technical specialist, a contact center agent or through an automated self-service application, you need to ensure he has a positive and satisfying experience.

To give agents and office workers the best basis for successful interaction, the business communication system deploy must have powerful capabilities. Not only must it be easy to work with, allowing users to find information and switch application seamlessly, but it should also integrate front and back office processes.

And to ensure maximum Return On Investment (ROI), it must be easy to incorporate into your existing telecommunications system and IT infrastructure. So adopting an open architecture and adding compliance with all the most common IT and telecom standard to your shopping list will be necessary alongside the expected easy- to- maintain option that you know your senior management will expect.

Welcome to our world, a subject area we believe is so full of rich potential that we at Voxtron have made it our mission to help you enjoy the myriad benefits - and in a way that both delights you and exceed your expectations in the process.

Powerfull & Flexible Communications Capabilities That Can Be Fine - Tuned

Multimedia routing and its associated capabilities have failed to deliver real ROI. until now. Voxtron Customer Interaction Solution (CIS) integrated phone. Emai chat, fax, and SMS, both for self-services as well as personal services. So, for example, our universal check concept offers multiple routing options and highly flexible design. it thus facilitates the processing and handling of multiple communication channels. Additionally, the client software is multifunctional and can be used both in front and back office. so, in case you need additional staff to answer the call, you can simply integrate the back office into the contact center routing with a simple mouse click.

Developing and customizing capabilities like these and communication solution, in general, has been Voxtrons forte for the last 15 years; as you would expect we have gained a wealth of knowledge and experience in this domain in the process.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the different modules offered with a Voxtron Solution Make it easy to customize and scale an application that perfectly suits your needs now and, as your organization changes going forward, in the future.

We can even help you contribute to a greener world by enjoying the benefits of our contribution to a greener world by enjoying the benefits of our " One server, One Client" concept. This is where the architecture of Voxtron Customer Interaction solution will replace all the single servers usually needed for fax, mail, routing, messaging, presence, etc.

Click to know more

Download -> Brochure Voxtron Communication Center

Working Out With Enghouse Interactive

Working Out With Enghouse Interactive

With over 20,000 employees, one of the country’s most well-known leaders in the fitness industry is flexing their muscles by recently replacing their existing Interactive Intelligence contact center solution with Enghouse ACD, IVR, and call recording.  While enjoying the benefits provided by integration with the current Unified Communications system, the company is giving a new meaning to “pumping up” their agents.

With the change, managers and supervisors are able to access information and customize reports, something they did not have access to in the past. The Unified Communications technician also noted that the cost to deploy the Enghouse product was less than the solutions they had used previously. He described the deployment package costs as “minimal” which was a major draw to move forward with Enghouse in addition to the ease of integration with Microsoft Lync. Another benefit is the new and enhanced call back feature which has been employed and is producing improved customer feedback. The gym’s customers aren’t the only ones feeling satisfied, the 175 active agents are reporting a better user experience from start to finish.

The read the full Nemertes report please click HERE

Predictions for 2017 – What lies ahead for the contact centre

Predictions for 2017 – What lies ahead for the contact centre

With 2017 just around the corner what lies ahead for the contact centre? In this blog we would like to share some 
of our predictions for 2017.

We will see an ongoing march towards self-service – Back in 2011, analyst Gartner predicted that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human. We have no reason to disbelief this projection. It’s clearly the direction of travel.  Yet, we would estimate that currently about 85% of customer interactions are still run through the contact centre or through traditional communications means. There is a profound shift in approach taking place, which we foresee gathering pace throughout 2017 and is likely to continue accelerating over the next decade or so.

Real Time Speech Analytics will come of age – Today, speech analytics is perhaps most closely associated with voice recognition and its use in verifying ID within the financial services sector. Yet, it’s worth remembering that speech recognition is an enabler for more complex speech analytics solutions across all business sector. Over the next year, we expect to see real time speech analytics, in particular, increasingly used for applications such as the self- training of agents; ensuring compliance through close monitoring of scripted calls and measuring the emotional content of calls to drive customer satisfaction.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be more important – Robotic technology is already driving many contact centre applications from auto agents to text-reading machines and that capability is increasingly freeing human agents to concentrate on complex interactions with high-value customers. AI will be playing an even more important role by the end of 2017. It’s being fuelled by twin drivers: the vast processing power most organisations have at their disposal today; and the corresponding data management and analytics capability the average consumer now has in their pocket in the shape of their smartphone and other mobile gadgets.

Social to become an ever-more powerful driver of customer engagement – With estimates indicating that more than two-thirds of internet users have active social media accounts, no customer-facing business can afford to ignore social. Traditionally businesses have focused on interaction through popular channels like Facebook and Twitter. Through 2017, however, we increasingly expect to see savvy organisations leveraging social forums and empowering customers to support and help other customers. These businesses are tapping into a huge knowledge base, effectively a free resource, capable of providing faster, more accurate support and advice to end-users than anything the business could deliver alone.

To know more click Voxtron

FAQ’s on Cloud Contact Centres

FAQ’s on Cloud Contact Centres

With each day that passes, more and more analysts and experts are recommending that businesses move their contact centres to the cloud, highlighting the many advantages it offers. But while industry insiders extol the virtues of moving to cloud, there are still a lot of questions that customers have about whether transitioning to the cloud is right for them.

Of course, there are many factors to consider, and in some circumstances, it may be the case that cloud is not the way for a business. However, that is rapidly becoming the minority as the numerous benefits of moving to cloud stack up, and are simply too many to ignore.

So if you are asking yourself if moving your contact centre to the cloud is the right move for you, you may be considering one if not all of the most commonly asked questions.

1) Is a cloud contact centre solution the right fit for my business?

How long is a bit of string? All companies have different needs, and there may be reasons to stay with an on-premise solution. These can comprise things of a regulatory nature, like data sovereignty.

But with cloud solutions providing new benefits on seemingly a daily basis, it is becoming hard to ignore the business advantages they offer.

CapEx vs OpEx is the obvious one. Cloud provides the initial budget savings of OpEx. This is a hard one to turn down, due to negating the need for a big budget spend at the front end of the deployment.

But while some might argue about the costs over time for CapEx, people forget that with on-premise there can be a need for big spends down the track, to upgrade legacy infrastructure as it starts to approach end of life. In this day and age, that is starting to come sooner rather than later.

2) How much flexibility do I need with my contact centre?

My answer to this will always be “as much as possible”. Why would that ever not be the preferred option?

Scalability is the main advantage here. Most businesses have their busy periods, whether that’s for consumer products during the holiday period or financial services around the end of the tax year. The ability to easily add seats in the contact centre during those busy periods is a massive business advantage.

One of the key topics for contact centres, and businesses on a whole is the customer experience (CX). Scalability ensures that your busiest times, don’t become your customers’ most unhappy times.

Cloud also provides the perfect foundation platform for mobility. With flexible working environments on the increase, the ability to work remotely is becoming an essential capability. It can also help during disaster situations, where an office might be out of action.

3) Does my contact centre need to handle different customer interactions like email, webchat or social media monitoring?

Again, this comes back to CX. Customers now use a myriad of channels in their daily communications, and they expect to engage the businesses they deal with via the channel they want. So enabling them to choose the channel is essential for a good customer experience.

Omni-channel capability is important too, so you can engage the customer on their channel of choice, but have the ability to transition them to another if it will enable you to provide a better solution – like moving from voice to video, so you can show the customer what you mean, rather than having to verbally describe it.

And access to various channels can also help staff in the contact centre to manage their day. Some customers are happy to flick an email to a contact centre agent at the beginning of the day which outlines their problem. So then later, when they get home from work, for example, the answer will be waiting for them. The customer does not have to actively wait, and the agent can resolve the issue during quiet times during their day. It’s a win-win situation and ticks the CX box.

4) Is the cloud as reliable as having the solution on-premise?

Cloud offers many risk advantages over on-premise.

If you have an on-premise solution and something goes wrong, you have to rely on you own IT staff to resolve it, or have the vendor’s service team come to you and fix it.

With a cloud solution, the provider will have a large team of IT specialists who are constantly on hand to resolve issues where the solution is hosted, without the need to come to you.

They have staff overseeing the solution 24/7 and look after software and hardware updates on the fly, so your solution is always up to date.

And when it comes to disaster recovery, cloud is king. If you have a location problem (fire, structural), or environmental issue (flooding), you can move to an alternate location, log in remotely, and be up and running again easily. If there is an issue at the provider’s end, they will have disaster recovery ready from an alternate data center, so they simply switch DCs.

5) Do I see my Contact Centre as a separate, siloed, business unit that doesn’t interact with the rest of the business?

And for the last question, we spoke to our partner, Enghouse Interactive, who provide the solutions at the heart of our cloud offering, to get some insights from them. Their regional Managing Director, Dean Hodgson, highlighted the one question he gets a lot is about contact centre integration with the rest of the business, and if it’s needed.

The position of the contact centre has gone from a perceived back room department to one firmly positioned at the front.

For most customers, the contact centre is the main, if not only, the point of contact with your business. Through their engagement with customers, agents in the contact centre know more about your customer’s satisfaction and pain points than any other department.

We all accept that data is a key differentiator and business advantage. The contact centre holds insights that can help every other department in your business, so it is essential to ensure the contact centre is not siloed from the rest of your business.

So, when it comes to cloud, the advantages are many.

Start the conversation today and unleash the benefits of streamlining and consolidating all your business communication for maximum efficiency and cost effectiveness.

To know more click Voxtron

“Weathering the Storm” – How Customer Communications Can Cope in a Crisis

“Weathering the Storm” – How Customer Communications Can Cope in 

a Crisis

Once again weather is making the headlines – and the forecasts make grim reading. Freezing winds, thunder snow, dangerous black ice, are all apparently in the offing. For businesses, disruption is almost inevitable at this time of year as employees struggle to make it in to work, find offices closed when they get there, or simply choose to ‘batten down the hatches’ and stick it out at home.

Keeping customer service up and running is the biggest worry for many businesses – and the pressure is often exacerbated as inbound call volumes rise as customers start to worry about service disruptions. Fortunately, help is at hand in dealing with these kinds of challenges. The best cloud-based contact centres ensure complete business continuity in three main ways.

First, good cloud solutions deliver a high level of disaster recovery integrally, meaning clients should not require significant additional cover. For clients with existing onsite customer premises equipment, cloud solutions can also provide reserve back-up disaster recovery protection.

Second, cloud contact centres enable agents to connect to the technology platform and necessary applications from anywhere that has Internet access. Companies can therefore continue to service the client base – even in an outage – reducing the impact of what could otherwise have been a disastrous situation, resulting in dropped calls, negative customer experiences and lost revenue.

Third, cloud-based solutions are ideally-suited to supporting homeworkers, allowing businesses to benefit from a pool of agents dispersed across a geographic territory or region that can ‘ramp up’ quickly in the event of one or more facilities going down.

Companies can always benefit from switching on an extended contact centre at any times of raised demand – whether that is planned or unplanned. Cloud allows them to do that while only paying for what they use when they use it. If they are launching a new gadget or game onto the market, they will need to scale, particularly if there are issues with distribution or supply. And if there is a sudden customer surge due to a product failure or a serious concern, they will need to be agile enough to deal with it quickly and efficiently.  The latest cloud contact centre solutions allow them to do all of this and more.

For more blogs click Voxtron

Digital Transformation Webinar with John Cray Recap

Digital Transformation Webinar with John Cray Recap

If you attended the webinar presented by John Cray, VP of Product Management for Enghouse Interactive you were treated to a wealth of knowledge centered on digital transformation. Not only did John share how digital transformation is the way of the future for contact centers, he shared a few tips and tricks about how Enghouse Interactive is helping improve communication and enhance the customer’s experience by creating a personal interaction.

Read below for a few Q&A’s from John and watch the webinar in its entirety HERE

Q: It seems like there are a lot of things to consider when trying to move customer communications to omnichannel and new forms of text media. What is a good first step? What would you recommend an organization considers doing first?

A: Our best recommendation is to focus on a specific problem you are trying to solve, with a significant and measurable benefit, rather than to just open it up to any form of text media for any purpose to any agent. Key to success would be to focus on a well-defined, complete use case, not on a partial solution. Appointment reminders is a good example of this, where you might have an automatically generated list or trigger to send out the reminder, followed by a well-defined mechanism (e.g., mobile app or website) to cancel or request a change in schedule, with a small group of agents who can handle questions via text as appropriate. Handling a specific set of common field questions from mobile workers (with FAQ and live help available) could be another example. If it’s well-focused, you should immediately see the benefit of higher success rates and reduced calls.

Q: What are the elements of a good customer contact, whether it’s voice or text based? Are there best practices or things we should make sure we do to make every contact productive and satisfying to the customer?

A: Well, we really believe that the first thing you need to do is to automatically identify the customer and make the interaction personal. It’s pretty incredible with all the technologies and ways we have of ID’ing people and providing information and background on them, but many customer-facing groups still don’t do that very effectively. “Who am I speaking to?” is typically quite a bad way to start the conversation. But, “Hello Mr. Smith, I see we spoke to you last week. How’s that replacement part working out for you?” is much, much better. And once you know who they are, there’s nothing wrong with treating your best customers better – minimize their wait times, get them to your best people, and so on.

The other key factors are to increase the first-contact resolution and minimize customer effort, two of the key metrics that customer service are prioritizing for measuring service effectiveness. To do this, you might leverage FAQ knowledge bases, access to experts via collaboration tools, good skills-based routing, and customer context (a history of previous conversations and information provided). Once you empower your good agents with these tools, they get happier at solving problems, and your customers will react in kind.

Q: How does the SMS percentage change when you have a large group of independent contractors in the workplace? 

A: It is much more of a challenge to train people to use a common framework, however, if you look at some of the surveys, they go into the prevalence of e-learning tools. If you’re leveraging independent contractors and look for ways to coach them, e-learning is coming on strong. When you combine e-learning with how to formulate effective text communications/chats/emails, it can be very effective. Using the best conversations you’ve had is a great way to coach agents as well.

To learn more about how you can start to implement digital transformation in your organization contact us today HERE

Click here to watch the Full Webinar

How do I predict my customers’ behaviour?

How do I predict my customers’ behaviour?

Predicting your customers’ behaviour and and using this information to optimise the customer journey can lead to an excellent customer experience. The following article discusses some of the methods you can use to predict behaviour and how it can be utilised within the customer journey.

Make use of business analytics and business activity monitoring (BAM) and customer analytics to better understand patterns of behaviour

You need to track patterns of customers’ different behaviours through business activity monitoring and analytics – and over time build up an understanding of what makes them tick (effectively a picture of their digital DNA) that allows you to predict with a degree of probability what the next interaction is likely to be. If you are a utility provider, for example, and one of your customers has just moved house, it’s likely by looking at the patterns of behaviour of similar customers over a period of time that you will know what the next interaction will be. From phoning you to provide their latest meter reading, or alternatively complaining about the electricity supply, or that they may need to pay their bill.

The likely nature of the call will vary, of course, according to customer demographic or profile. However, monitoring customer behaviour over a prolonged period may tell you more precisely that 80% of the time customers are simply phoning to give you their latest reading.

Use your understanding of the customer to present a range of different service options

Triangulating your BAM and business analytics functions with your customer relationship management (CRM) and customer interaction management (CIM) allows you to present customers with a range of different service options, relevant to their past behaviour and preferences. Your CRM platform will be registering, tracking and logging the last interaction with the customer involved and what the outcome was, giving you a historical perspective.  In the meantime, your analytics engine will tell you what certain types of customers have done in the past and then predict what they are most likely to do in the future.

When the customer contacts you therefore, you can use techniques like caller line identification (CLI) or other mechanisms to first pinpoint who they are, then pull their records in from your CRM to look at their history, and then start the process of deciding where to route them within the organisation. Multiple options can be provided to the customer, typically via interactive voice response (IVR) or mobile/visual IVR. Where the enquiry is routine, self-service options can be presented to improve the efficiency of the customer experience and reduce the service cost incurred by the business.

Leverage the latest soft evaluators to anticipate issues with compliance, streamline difficult conversations and optimise individual interactions

The ability to harness a real time speech analytics capability can be a real differentiator for customer-facing businesses, enabling them to keep abreast, in real time, of what is being said by agents in the contact centre and how it is being said.  The latest available soft evaluator functionality goes beyond this, helping to encourage agent empathy and gauge the emotional state and stress levels of both customers and agents by evaluating their voices, and improving conversations in real time.

Businesses can use the capability to start to coach agents to calm down and defuse difficult conversations while information can be delivered in the background to help make decisions on the next best action for the customer – and ultimately resolve the problem there and then. In effect, it’s about predicting not only what the customer might want but also what’s going to get them what they want with the least amount of effort in the fastest possible time – and cost your business the least amount of money to provide.

Anticipate when customers are about to leave and offer promotions or discounts to keep them on side

Businesses are starting to make use of the latest predictive capability to work out when customers or prospects are about to leave their website – typically when their cursor starts to move from the middle of the screen towards the navigation bar. Systems can then be configured in such a way that a move to leave the site and start typing in a new URL in the navigation bar at the top of the page is then met with a real-time special offer, with a code to type in to qualify for a discounted voucher, for example, or some other kind of promotion or concession. In the same way soft evaluators that measure the emotional state of a customer during an interaction can be used to determine when they are becoming stressed and guide the agent down a pre-determined route to control the outcome. Ultimately then, it’s a clear demonstration of how the ability to be able to predict what the customer is thinking and what they are likely to do next can be key in controlling the final outcome to benefit both your business and your customer.

Visit our website for more Voxtron

The Case for Proactive Outbound Notifications in Healthcare Contact Centers

The Case for Proactive Outbound Notifications in Healthcare Contact Centers

This post originally appeared at Healthcare Facilities Today

As technology advances, contact centers need to keep evolving, especially in terms of being more customer-centric. In every sector, customers seek a more personalized experience, and most contact centers struggle to keep up with rising expectations for service. This is perhaps most evident in the healthcare sector, where the stakes are higher on both sides of the coin than with everyday consumer products.

In this market, the “customer” is usually a patient – or a caregiver or family member – dealing with a health issue, so agents cannot afford to be misinformed. On the provider side, healthcare facilities are highly complex and costly to run, and contact centers have an increasingly important role to play in improving operations by virtue of providing not only great but proactive service.

There are many ways to do that, with the most common being inbound communications where agents respond to inquiries as they come into the contact center. While this is where most resources are focused, there is another mode of engagement that healthcare providers are seeing as having increasing value. Inbound inquiries remain the norm, but are reactive, relying on the patient to initiate the communication. This only addresses one segment of the broader cycle of patient care.

For a variety of reasons, the healthcare sector is moving to a more holistic, patient-centric model where prevention and active management are just as important as providing treatment. One way to support this model is the use of proactive outbound notifications. Rather than respond to any manner of inquiries ranging from urgent to mundane, these notifications are purposeful, with specific outcomes in mind.

Being notifications, they provide a different form of service; rather than solving problems in a reactive manner, they communicate information that’s both timely and relevant to the recipient. Since they are provided on an opt-in basis, the notifications are expected, and when acted upon, will help prevent problems or make the patient’s situation more manageable. This is what makes these notifications a proactive form of customer service. Based on the healthcare provider’s existing knowledge of a patient’s condition, outbound notifications can be a very effective form of service, and ultimately patient care.

This approach to customer service is well aligned with today’s healthcare realities, as it helps patients self-manage their health, along with streamlining the process of providing care. In this regard, both sides of the healthcare equation benefit. Patients and caregivers are kept on schedule for appointments, taking medication, alerted to the need to refill a prescription or come in for follow up tests or consultations, as well as being updated on other important information or events. While this is just one slice of the customer service pie, every notification has a specific purpose, and they all help improve patient care, which should in time translate into higher levels of patient (customer) satisfaction.

For healthcare providers, there are two types of benefits. First is the use of proactive engagement to help patients get the best outcomes possible. Aside from keeping patients healthier, this helps optimize the use of resources that support the healthcare system. When patients adhere to their proscribed care regime, less time is wasted with missed appointments, fewer consultations are needed, and there is less need for patients to visit hospitals.

The second form of benefit comes from making the contact center more strategic. These notifications are largely automated, so they don’t add to the workload of your agents or require adding more agents. Outbound notifications can also be used to connect the patient to preventative care nurses. With “right party connect” campaigns an outbound notification call creates an automated dialog with the contact, verifies that the “right party”, the patient has been reached and then connects them to staff in the contact center who can speak with them about their care. In this case the nurse as an inbound contact center agent need only handle the call when the right party has been reached. When these notifications lead to better patient outcomes, the cost of providing care falls, and a case can be made that this type of customer service improves the overall ROI for the contact center.

To further illustrate, here are some common examples of how healthcare providers can use proactive outbound notifications:

• Sending appointment reminders so patients don’t forget and the provider doesn’t have lost bookings that others in need could be using

• Reminders for patients to take medications so they can stay healthy or get better, which helps reduce the need for going to a healthcare facility later on

• Notices for prescription refills or pickups to keep patients on program and streamline pharmacy operations

• Updates on insurance claims so patients are kept current on their status, and by extension to help maintain continuity in treatment – otherwise, if lapses occur due to financial constraints, their health may deteriorate, triggering more critical and costly forms of care

• Announcements for events or activities that promote overall health, such as seasonal flu shots, blood donor clinics, programs for nutrition, exercise, wellness, etc.

• Reaching out to the patient and connecting them to a nurse or other health care specialist when the notification system verifies the right party, the patient, is available to speak with the nurse.

While the benefits of proactive outbound notifications are clear, most healthcare contact centers lack the capabilities to deliver them effectively. Legacy-based systems have limited integration with patient databases to access the right data in a timely manner, and IT often lacks the expertise and/or resources to manage this. Furthermore, legacy systems can support multichannel communication to some degree, but not enough to meet the preferences of today’s consumer.

Omnichannel represents the next generation of contact center solutions, and proactive outbound notifications serve as just one example where this path brings new capabilities along with business value. The sheer volume of patients and associated notifications that could improve healthcare as well as keep agents in the contact center the most productive is best managed from the cloud, as it provides the scalability, flexibility needed often in the most cost effective way .

The flexibility of the cloud lets the healthcare contact center support all the modes used by patients to communicate, namely email, text/messaging and voice (including automated notifications). For many consumers, being able to use their preferred mode is central to the customer service experience, and their decision to opt-in for these notifications will largely be based on this capability.

Read more about Proactive Outbound Communications in our datasheet.

TouchPoint Attendant Unveiled at Enterprise Connect

   TouchPoint Attendant Unveiled at Enterprise Connect

Today from Enterprise Connect 2017, Enghouse Interactive announces its TouchPoint Attendant for Microsoft Skype for Business Online is generally available. TouchPoint Attendant is an operator console solution that natively integrates into Microsoft’s Skype for Business. This is one of the first consoles to market with support for Skype for Business Online and Office 365.

WATCH VIDEO

TouchPoint Attendant for Microsoft Skype for Business Online:

TouchPoint Attendant is an operator console solution that natively integrates into Microsoft’s Skype for Business. This is one of the first consoles to market with support for Skype for Business Online and Office 365.

Receptionists are the front line of any business and first impressions are critical. TouchPoint Attendant allows receptionists to be more productive and engaged with a gamification-style visual interface. Incoming calls appear animated as they travel dynamically and change color based on the caller’s wait time. TouchPoint Attendant empowers receptionists by leveraging the collaboration features of Office 365, including directories, email, IM, and presence.

“We’ve listened to our customers and partners, who wanted something easy and effortless,” said John Cray, Enghouse’s Vice President of Product Management. “Simply download the application from our website and TouchPoint Attendant will have you routing calls more efficiently in a matter of minutes. There’s no learning curve and additional servers are not required. TouchPoint Attendant just starts working, whether you’re using an on-premise deployment of Skype for Business Server or Skype for Business Online.”

“Enghouse understands communications and what it means to optimize people’s time,” said James Skay, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Skype for Business Developer Platform, Microsoft Corp, “TouchPoint Attendant greatly enhances the voice experience for those critical frontline people in a business. We are excited to share Enghouse’s innovative breakthrough with both Enterprise Connect attendees and the thousands of enterprises worldwide for which Skype for Business is the preferred collaboration solution.”

TouchPoint Attendant Console takes minutes to download and install, and the company is offering a free 30-day trial. (Regular subscription pricing is as low as $54/month.)

In addition, Enghouse has over 400 customers using the company’s contact center products deployed in Skype for Business, totaling more than 10,000 active seats.

Click here to register for the touchPoint Attendant Free 30-day Trial

For more blogs click Voxtron

Communications Center version 10! ARRIVED!

Communications Center Version 10.0 has Arrived!

Enghouse Interactive is proud to introduce Communications Center version 10! Always evolving and well connected, our Touchpoint software provides the tools for contact center supervisors and employees to have added control and a choice.  Our popular supervisor and agent tool, TouchPoint, with its clean, simple user interface have been extended to further support the Enghouse Interactive portfolio. This enables agents to easily switch from interaction handling and SMS handling through to quality management tasks. As the TouchPoint ‘look and feel’ is adopted across our portfolio, the user experience becomes more consistent and improves efficiencies. Supervisors using our workforce scheduling solution can also benefit from the familiar TouchPoint design. Our goal is to improve the lives of contact center employees so we’ve designed version 10 to do exactly that. Key new enhancements include:

• Technology that works with SMS messaging, allows agents to receive queries that have been automatically detected as ‘queries’ or ‘negative responses’ such as ‘can I change my appointment time?’ or simply answering no to an outbound campaign that requires a positive response. By re-routing these SMS messages to agents, for that ‘human touch’, customers are better serviced and agents only need to become involved when necessary.
• For Enghouse Interactive NEC OAI users, we are pleased to offer enterprise level presence visibility to widen the productivity view of staff than ever before.
• For our Avaya IP Office customers, multi-node support opens up geographical distribution of contact center operations.

Our cloud story gives an organization choice around whether to work a CAPEX model with on premise hardware or alternatively move to an OPEX model, allowing trusted partners to host the solution so as to remove the headache of IT issues and repairs and in turn letting staff focus on what they do best, taking care of customers.

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For more information about Communications Center version 10, contact Enghouse Voxtron HERE

Meet Dane Smith, Education Manager at Enghouse Interactive

Meet Dane Smith, Education Manager at Enghouse Interactive

Tell us about your history with Enghouse Interactive?

I was hired in 2008 as the sole installation and support engineer for a Nortel based operator console. During that time I also developed training/promotional videos and eLearning for various product suites.

After a few years, I moved from the engineering side of things into a strictly training focused role where I’ve been delivering on-site and remote training, producing online e-learning/video and developing new training curriculum for multiple products suites.

I’ve been very fortunate to work with and learn from amazing colleagues, especially our amazing Professional Services team and the former Education Manager, who have all been an intricate part of my development. It’s been a fantastic journey thus far and I look forward to being a part of taking the Enghouse Interactive Education department to the next level this year.

What is your favorite part of your job?

As cliché as it may sound, I’d have to say my favorite part of the job is meeting new people and traveling to interesting (and sometimes not so interesting) places that I would’ve never seen had it not been for Enghouse. I’ve been very fortunate to visit some pretty neat places including Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where I discovered my love of boiled quail eggs (weird, I know), Quito, the capital of Ecuador where I visited the equator and ate guinea pig (that didn’t end well), and Kingston, Jamaica where I worked with the Jamaican Customs and Border Protection just to name a few.

In the US, I’ve been to a major Beverly Hills talent agency where there were Hollywood stars coming and going like it was nothing, I worked with (and stayed at) the Waldorf Astoria hotel in NYC. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do go to some places that wouldn’t seem very exciting on TravelAdvisor.com review however those places have been where I’ve met and becomes friends with people I still stay in touch with today. Travel really is what you make of it. If you don’t take a chance and meet new people, you miss out on other people’s perspectives and lifestyles that you may not have even been aware of.

What is the most gratifying part of your job?

Oh, that’s an easy one! For me, the most gratifying part of my job is getting to see those “a-ha” moments for people when something finally clicks in their brain and they “get it”. Typically I see this the most in our 3 and 4 day CC Administration courses where we have the time to really delve into advanced topics that may have been a bit confusing before we met. It really is a great feeling!

What’s on the horizon in the world of training?

Additionally, I’m very excited about the new Partner Portal that the Marketing team is building and will be working closely with them to integrate our eLearning courses.

There’s also a bit of geek excitement buzzing around about our new training environment that is currently being redesigned and rebuilt with some pretty awesome technology. Although behind the scenes, it will allow our training teams across the globe access to a centralized training environment for classroom training and content collaboration.

Moving forward, you can expect the continuation of our free monthly webinars as we roll out new training online for Communications Center v.10 which will include TouchPoint v.10 and QMS v.7 integration. Information on our webinars and classroom courses can be found at http://www.enghouseinteractive.com/services/training/customer-training/

This will be an exciting year for Enghouse Interactive education!

How have you seen the Enghouse training programs evolve since you’ve been part of the team?

I think the biggest evolution within our Enghouse training programs has been our collaboration across regions. As a global organization, Enghouse places a focus on bringing a consistent message to the marketplace globally and now we aim to do the same within Enghouse Interactive training. By bringing the teams together when designing training curriculum we are able to draw from a wealth of knowledge and hands on experience from the different Training departments across the globe.

Tell us 3 fun facts about you!

1. My father worked for IBM and we moved around a lot while growing up. I’ve lived in Seattle, WA, Spokane, WA, Richland, WA, Atlanta, GA, Boca Raton, FL, Boston, MA, NY, NY and now Raleigh, NC. When living in NYC, my apartment was in Times Square with a balcony looked out over 42^nd Who needed TV when I had Times Square out my window?
2. I was a child (stage) actor. In my early teens, I toured worldwide with a Czechoslovakian black light theatre troupe. During my travels, I learned mime at age 12 from Marcel Marceau while backstage in Singapore and learned to juggle from The Flying Karamazov  Brothers while performing in Montreal.  That all feels like a lifetime ago but I can still juggle.
3. I have a collection of around 150 or so bonsai trees, ranging from gnarly old Japanese pines to crazy flowering imported dwarf azaleas to junipers to maples, that live outdoors year round on benches and stands throughout my backyard. Each tree has different requirements in watering, so I wake up at the break of dawn every morning to water each tree individually based on its specific needs. Every year I study with a few different Japanese bonsai masters who come to the states to do private training sessions. I kind of geek out over tiny trees.

To learn more about Dane’s free monthly training webinars please contact Dane at Dane.smith@enghouse.com

Watch Dane’s recent training session  WATCH VIDEO

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Find out where you can get your first look at TouchPoint Agent by visiting the Enghouse blog here:

Get Your First Look of TouchPoint Agent 

at Microsoft Ignite 2017

Ignite is only a few weeks away and Enghouse Interactive will be represented in full force! We caught up with Sandra Crawford, Director of Strategic Alliances and Anna Riley, Product Manager to get their take on what to expect at Ignite.  The first highlight will be at the Enghouse booth  (#1007) where attendees will get their first look at TouchPoint Agent. TouchPoint Agent for Skype for Business online is a modern server-less platform that is easy to implement empowering agents to work efficiently, focusing on effective collaboration, and productivity. What makes TouchPoint Agent unique is the fact it is light weight, has a small foot print, and delivers a powerful impact despite being server-less.

The low price point and ease of installation make it a great choice for those looking for a simple contact center solution such as help desks. The technology behind TouchPoint Agent uses Skype for Business online for the routing and an award winning graphical UI for the agent so users can focus on the information needed to create successful interactions. At Ignite 2017, Enghouse Interactive will also be demonstrating the full Communication Center with Federation showing how the technology can integrate with skype online if requested.  Make sure to stop by the booth to visit Enghouse Interactive and see a demo of these exciting new products!

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Enghouse offering local resellers new hosting opportunity

Enghouse Interactive is on the hunt for local partners to host a new self-service contact centre solution launching here in April.

Communications Portal, or CP, is a self-service engine designed to help improve the quality and efficiency of customer communications. The offering’s integrated application development and management components enable organisations to deploy voice, video messaging, SMS, mobile IVR navigator and email communications via a single platform.Rather than being a cloud offering, CP is a hosted offering, with Enghouse on the hunt for local partners to manage the hosting.

John Cray, Enghouse Interactive vice president of product management, says the offering will be available to be sold for on-premise use for larger customers or run as a managed service, enabling smaller customers to harness the benefits of an Opex model, monthly subscription costs and access to the full features of the self-service engine.“Some of our partners will be offering this as a managed service,” Cray says.

“The concept here is to have the partner stand it up or host it as basically a cloud self-service engine they’ll offer to customers who wouldn’t necessarily want to dedicate IT staff to putting this on premise.”Cray says a number of key markets across Australia and New Zealand – including financial services, regional and local government and utilities – are ripe for ‘highly efficient self-service’.The hosted offering is expected to have broad appeal for small businesses across a range of verticals.“It’s smaller businesses who wouldn’t have a lot of IT staff, and that could be anybody who has customer service but is not necessarily a large scale IT organisation who wants to manage the application themselves.”The offering has been available in the United States and Western Europe for a while and Cray has been on a roadshow to introduce CP to local partners, with a formal launch to the market, via a webinar, due in a couple of weeks.

“It is very much a partner model and we’re preparing our partners to take it to market with marketing and sales materials and our ability in the region to implement and support it.”

Cray says the IVR market is ‘stable’ with Enghouse seeing no decline, albeit no dramatic increases either.“We’re seeing  the level of automation customers want increasing and with the movement to other kinds of media and the emergence of mobile device usage, we’re seeing a lot of opportunities.”One area of CP expected to pique particular interest is the Mobile IVR Navigator feature which enables users on any device to participate in a self-service session through a mobile app.Cray says a growth in proactive service, with organisations reaching out to customers before they engage with the company, is also being seen.“Your doctor's office sends you a text message to remind you of an appointment and if you can’t make the appointment you click a link in the text message and go to a form on your mobile and it lets you change your appointment time.”

That facility was introduced to CP last year and will be available in the ANZ roll out.“Using CP Studio visual scripting you can construct the ability to send out notifications or send messages out to a campaign.“There are so many applications for this – in financial services if your account is overdrawn, or your loan has been approved; in utilities, if there’s an outage in your area; in retail to say your item has been shipped, expect it this day, click here for more information. There are so many occasions now to send out notifications based on things happening in a business and CP supports that.”