MORRISTOWN, NJ -- Telcordia Technologies, Inc., together with CosmoCom, Inc., e-talk Corporation, ISC, Inc. and Primary Matters, Inc., today announced the Next Generation Contact Center Solution, an IP-based, end-to-end customer service center solution that provides real-time interactions with customers from virtually any device via virtually any network. Providing value-added applications and acting as a systems integrator, Telcordia integrates best-of-breed customer service support and management products to offer the Next Generation Contact Center Solution, the most comprehensive and innovative customer support solution on the market.
The Next Generation Contact Center Solution is designed to support e-business with a personal touch. It provides integrated customer support services, handling customer interactions via the Web, e-mail and telephone through wireline and wireless, PSTN, IP and converged networks. Modeled on a unified, IP-based architecture, the Next Generation Contact Center Solution offers numerous multi-channel and multi-media features, and can be tailored to meet the needs of any enterprise or service provider. For example, the multi-tenancy capability allows service providers to offer competitive differentiating, value-added, hosted contact center services to their business customers. The solution can also interoperate with existing legacy contact center systems.
"The Internet has forever changed the way customers and businesses, and businesses and businesses communicate with each other," said Peter Green, vice president and general manager of Customer Care & Billing, Telcordia Technologies. "In addition to supporting traditional voice services, companies are looking to add Web-based and e-mail solutions as the most efficient way to support customer service."
Telcordia has unsurpassed expertise of the linkages between a customer's contact center and back office systems to provide superior customer relationship management functionalities. The Next Generation Contact Center Solution integrates business, market, technical, service and operational data that not only can reduce operational costs, but also increase revenues, thus transforming a call center as a cost center into a contact center as a profit center.
Utilizing its vast repertoire of knowledge on both the network side and the operations side, Telcordia is ideally suited to integrate various products into a more comprehensive solution. Along with Telcordia, the Next Generation Contact Center Solution includes:
CosmoCom CosmoCall Universe™ -- an IP-enabled platform that supports human interaction - both real-time and message-based - throughout the business transaction cycle. The core platform of the Next Generation Contact Center Solution, CosmoCall Universe, supports features from Internet telephony, real-time text chat and video, Web-page co-browsing and pushing, virtual and remote agents, to integrated e-mail, voice messaging and fax messaging.
ISC Irene® -- enables contact center managers to accurately forecast customer contacts and optimally schedule agents so they can achieve superior service levels and dramatically reduce payroll costs, which account for 65-75 percent of call center costs. Irene enables companies to effectively meet the needs of their business while accommodating the scheduling preferences of agents, giving managers the tools to attract and retain the high-caliber agents needed in today's customer-focused world.
e-talk Performance System™ -- the components in this monitoring and quality analysis system include e-talk Recorder, e-talk Advisor, e-talk Survey, and e-talk Recruiter. The system can help contact centers transform raw service data into valuable intelligence to improve employee performance and productivity to enhance overall customer satisfaction levels.
Primary Matters Contact Center Guide™ -- an activity-based decision support tool that enables users to evaluate an existing or proposed contact center and plan for future growth and change, covering all aspects of the people, processes and technology. Assumptions and proposed initiatives can be tested before the actual outlay of time, talent or money - directing users toward projects that yield the highest payback for their investments. The Contact Center Guide ensures that strategic goals and operational plans are synchronized for success.
"The Contact Center Guide will complement nicely the Telcordia Next Generation Contact Center Solution by providing a simple but sophisticated quantitative tool that can address the important business and market issues related to an evolution of a call/contact center," said, Greg Borton, chief executive officer, Primary Matters.
"We are excited to have our award-winning forecasting and scheduling product integrated with these best-of-breed technologies to create a contact center solution where people - our most valuable and expensive resource - can be effectively managed to improve service levels, reduce payroll costs, improve employee morale and reduce turnover," said Irene Mungiu, president, ISC.
"The proven expertise of Telcordia, coupled with e-talk Corporation's suite of performance management products will provide customers with an industry-leading screening and measurement system that will optimize their contact center workforces," said Larry Deering, vice president of sales, e-talk Corporation.
Ari Sonesh, president and chief executive officer of CosmoCom, added, "As a well established leader in telecommunications technology, Telcordia is ideally positioned to bring this new generation call center, based on our CosmoCall Universe platform, to the marketplace. The outstanding system integration skills of Telcordia are evident in the array of complementary products brought together in this offering, and the unsurpassed knowledge and experience of its professional consultants will maximize the success of its customers in this area."
Telcordia Technologies, Inc. (www.telcordia.com), an SAIC company, is one of the world's largest providers of operations support systems, network software and consulting and engineering services to the telecommunications industry. A leader in the development of Next Generation Network technologies, Telcordia employs more than 7,000 professionals, and has revenues of more than $1.5 billion. Telcordia (www.telcordia.com) is headquartered in Morristown, NJ with offices throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Central and South America and Asia Pacific.
ISC Consultants, Inc. (www.isc.com) is a leading provider of contact center workforce management software and consulting services. The New York City-based company was founded in 1973 to provide call center training services. In 1999, ISC introduced Irene, an advanced, scaleable contact center workforce management solution. Irene Online, an easy-to-use ASP service available over the Internet for an affordable monthly fee, provides contact centers great schedules with zero risk and fast deployment. Irene Enterprise, which is deployed on the customer's premises, provides state-of-the-art forecasts and schedules for the most demanding multi-site, multi-service, multi-media contact centers. ISC's management includes senior executives from leading technology businesses. Irene is winner of the Call Center News Service HOTPICK 2000 Award. For more information, please visit www.isc.com or call 212-477-8800.
CosmoCom, Inc. (www.cosmocom.com), is the leading provider of new generation call center platforms. Its unified, all-IP product, CosmoCall Universe is a carrier-class system for Service Providers and large scale corporate users that supports multimedia customer interactions via all channels - telephone and internet, live and message-based, fixed and wireless - in one high capacity, high availability, multi-tenant platform. The company's mission is to maintain its technology and market leadership in the growing new generation call center market, with a focus on the increasing number of service providers offering call centers as a network-based, hosted application. Headquartered in Melville, NY, with offices and distribution partners throughout the world, CosmoCom has received an array of industry awards. Market analysts Frost and Sullivan recently reported that CosmoCom's large and growing installed base represents a 50 percent share of the US IP-ACD market. For more information about CosmoCom, please visit www.cosmocom.com.
e-talk Corporation (www.e-talk.com) provides comprehensive recording and analysis software that enables companies to improve customer transactions across multiple communications media - phone, fax, email, Web chat and "e-talking" Voice over IP. The software helps companies optimize their customer relationship management and enhance performance from the individual customer service representative to the enterprise level. Formed in 1983 as Teknekron Infoswitch, e-talk has extensive experience in helping customer contact centers achieve additional revenue opportunities, improve profitability, enhance customer retention and achieve greater customer intimacy through state-of-the-art monitoring and performance management technology. e-talk is headquartered in Irving, Texas, and employs more than 200 people.
Primary Matters, Inc. (www.primarymatters.com) is a software development company focused exclusively on the customer contact center discipline. Established in 1997, Primary Matters' mission is to create products and services that enable users to assess contact center performance, evaluate forward-looking operational and technology initiatives, and make sound business decisions. Primary Matters customers span the Fortune 500 to start-up businesses who recognize the key role customer support will play in their success. Primary Matters, Inc. is headquarted in Tiburon, Calif., with regional offices in La Jolla, CA and Atlanta, GA.