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Aastra unveils contact centre platform for 'special agents'

Aastra Solidus eCare 7.0 enables next generation of customer interaction for businesses of all sizes.

Johannesburg, 24 Nov 2009

Aastra today launched a new version of its award-winning Solidus eCare, a multimedia contact centre solution that provides end-to-end services to enterprise customers. Version 7.0 introduces InTouch, a user-friendly unified communications client, and a new package, Solidus eCare Lite, that tailors this enterprise-grade solution for businesses with smaller scale contact centre requirements.

Contact centre managers increasingly want to offer personalised and efficient service by easily connecting with the right experts and information sources within their organisation to successfully attract and retain customers. Such requirements were vital to extending the existing skill-based routing of Solidus eCare and enabling contact centre agents to react to customer enquiries effectively across a range of media.

“Customers want more than just contact centre agents. They are looking for 'special agents' - the right people within the business - to answer their queries. This is what we're delivering. Aastra is putting communications at the heart of the business, enabling customers to achieve higher levels of customer service through the use of cutting-edge technology," said Zak Evans, Sales Director of Aastra Telecom South Africa.

As part of these key enhancements delivered in this new version of Solidus eCare, Aastra is introducing InTouch, a new user-friendly unified communications application that can be deployed for contact centre agents and any other staff member. It provides common access to tools such as presence management, corporate directory searches and instant messaging to easily see who is available, get in touch with key individuals through IM or the built-in SIP softphone and ultimately enhance customer service. By bringing unified communications to the contact centre, InTouch enhances productivity by empowering contact centre agents with the right mix of technologies for a faster and more accurate route to key information and resources.

Aastra has also launched Solidus eCare Lite. This innovative package of Aastra's enterprise-grade contact centre solution is specifically tailored for businesses that have a need for smaller scale contact centres with up to 50 agents. Available now on the Aastra MX-ONE Compact, this new option can offer the same high-class functionality with simpler entry-level features for companies looking for a compact, competitive yet highly reliable solution.

“Most companies have contact centres with only a few agents - and their imperatives for quality are just the same as large call centres. We are very excited to bring an industry-leading platform such as Solidus eCare to a wider audience and enable businesses with small contact centres to get advanced tools. Such development has also been very positively received by our channel partners,” said Evans. “As businesses' needs grow, they can simply scale up their contact centre solution and can continue to use the same environment to serve customers.”

True to Aastra's focus on open standards, this new version also offers an enhanced support of the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) standard to facilitate deployments across multiple sites or mixed PBX environments. Other key newly improved features include enhanced reporting, real-time display as well as new report capabilities for management.

Solidus eCare is a fully integrated contact solution that provides all contact centre needs such as multimedia support, IP enabled, mobility for agents, virtual contact centre for distributed sites and also multi-tenanting. It blends voice calls, e-mails, SMS, Internet collaboration, fax and Web chat in a single virtual queue. Solidus eCare's intelligent skills-based routing capability ensures that customers are always routed to the best qualified agent. Solidus eCare can scale for businesses with up to 10 000 agents and handle 400 000 calls per hour.

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Aastra Telecom South Africa

Aastra Telecom South Africa is the sub-Saharan business unit of Aastra Technologies (TSX:“AAH”), a leading company at the forefront of the enterprise communication market. Headquartered in Concord, Ontario, Canada, Aastra develops and delivers innovative communications products and applications for businesses. Aastra's operations are truly global with more than 50 million installed lines around the world and a direct and indirect presence in more than 100 countries. Aastra is entirely dedicated to enterprise communications and offers one of the most complete portfolios of unified communications solutions individually tailored to satisfy its customers' requirements. These range from feature-rich call managers for small and medium businesses and highly scalable ones for large enterprises, integrated mobility, call centre solutions to a wide selection of terminals. With a strong focus on open standards, Aastra enables enterprises to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. For additional information on Aastra, visit our Web site at http://www.aastrasa.co.za.