Avaya Upgrades Tools for Contact Center Agents with Interaction Center 7.1

By Susan J. Campbell

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Avaya has introduced the new version of its Internet Protocol (IP)-based multimedia contact center software featuring expanded capabilities that are expected to help customer service agents to more effectively manage customer interactions.

 

The company said that its Interaction Center 7.1 enables organizations to fully customize agent screens and ensure that even the most complex customer transactions—whether phone, e-mail or Web chat—can be more simply managed through a single portal. The solution is positioned as driving new efficiencies and greater productivity across a company’s entire customer service operation.

 

Integrated with Avaya (News - Alert) Interaction Center is a new software development kit designed to help simplify the design and development of agent desktops. Organizations are provided with virtually unlimited options for designing screens that provide agents with consolidated access to all of their business applications.

 

Viecore, Inc., a contact center consulting and systems integration firm, and a member of Avaya’s BusinessPartner program, works to help many of the world’s largest businesses deliver fast and efficient customer service, improved customer relations and a quick return on their investment. Viecore has been able to have a first-hand look at how Avaya Interaction Center 7.1 can transform contact center operations.

The company’s investigations revealed the overabundance of databases, systems and applications that agents must typically access in order to respond to customer inquiries and complete transactions. This is a leading issue impacting contact center productivity.

According to Tom Chisholm, CEO and president of Viecore, today’s businesses are looking for more efficient ways for their contact center agents to pull information from disparate backend systems and applications—from mainframes and data warehouse to CRM applications and third-party platforms.

 

The new version of Avaya Interaction Center and its software development kit allows the design of a single screen to integrate all of these resources, reducing the time the agents spends looking for information and improving contact center efficiency and customer service.

Avaya Interaction Center provides advancement that allows administrators to customize tools that agents rely on to do their jobs. Things such as context-based toolbars, communication controls, contact history and other informational displays are embedded within existing enterprise applications, like CRM and customer database applications.

 

The solution easily integrates with existing Web Services-based applications so the need for new code development is minimal.

Based on industry-standard Microsoft (News - Alert) and JAVA tools, the software development kit for Interaction Center further simplifies the development and maintenance of contact center applications.

Eileen Rudden, vice president and general manager, communications applications division for Avaya, contributed that by making its easier to incorporate Web services and customize context-sensitive screen designs, Avaya helps companies to provide agents with more intelligent access to the information and applications they need to be able to do their job and so that they can deliver the best possible customer service.

Along with customization options, Interaction Center 7.1 can also be used out of the box without customization with the Avaya Agent desktop. Avaya offers pre-built, pre-tested adapters for incorporation the solution’s functionality into CRM applications from vendors such as Siebel, PeopleSoft and now SAP (News - Alert).

As more and more contact centers come to realize the importance of their agents and how essential it is that their job functions are not only easy to do but also efficient, the demand for solutions such as the Avaya Interaction Center 7.1 has grown.

 

We have consistently identified customer service as the key critical element in the contact center that can effectively differentiate one center from another. As organizations continue to focus on gathering business intelligence information on customers, this information must be easily accessible for the agent or the information is worth very little.

 

Excellent customer service and happy, contented agents can be achieved through the proper management of information. This proper management can also lead to better use of resources as productivity and processes efficiencies can also be improved.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.