Aspect, a leading provider of customer contact and Microsoft solutions, has announced the general availability of Aspect Contact 2011,a solution designed to deliver essential customer contact capabilities for small to mid-sized contact centres and IT, HR, travel or other help desks operating with fewer than 100 seats.
Built to use Microsoft Lync 2010 as its media server, Aspect Contact 2011 enables organisations to achieve an additional level of productivity and a quicker ROI from their Lync deployments.
Aspect Contact 2011 leverages a subset of core functionality from its enterprise-class Aspect Unified IP to provide voice, instant message (IM) and e-mail routing, as well as real-time and historical reporting for enterprises with smaller contact centre or help desk operations. Packaged as an appliance, its powerful out-of-the-box capabilities allow Microsoft-centric businesses to effectively use their unified communications and collaboration deployments within their contact centres or help desks to deliver improved service levels.
Market research firm Ovum reports that small- to mid-size contact centres of 100 seats or less comprise 85% of the global contact centre market. Aspect's expansion into the small- to mid-size contact centre market is a natural progression, given its market leadership and vast expertise in the enterprise contact centre category, its partnership with equity investor, Microsoft Corp, and in-depth experience with Lync. With this roll-out, Aspect is now fully capable to address the needs of any size contact centre.
The broad feature set available in Aspect Contact 2011 helps organisations optimise productivity across all stages of an interaction whether in a help desk or small contact centre environment. Intelligent routing ensures that customers are serviced by best-skilled resources, and a comprehensive agent desktop provides enriched information presentation and streamlined screen pops. Structured workflows and centralised administration and reporting help to identify and address performance issues, enabling faster issue resolution and better agent performance and satisfaction.
The solution is preconfigured with standard options, allowing organisations to deploy and be operational within a few hours using their own IT resources or remote services from Aspect. Aspect Contact 2011 is easy to use and maintain, requires very little training, delivers a fully integrated, robust agent desktop, and its intuitive user interface is designed to be quickly and easily grasped by Lync users.
Features and functionality
Aspect Contact offers:
* Seamless multi-channel routing
* A robust agent desktop
Expert search to identify subject matter experts in the contact centre and enterprise Ask an Expert functionality to enable single-click interaction with experts via IM or phone to address the client inquiry on the first contact.
Centralised administration, reporting support for at-home, remote agents
Aspect Contact is ideal for help desks or contact centres wanting to:
* Better handle/route incoming service requests
* Proactively train end-users in an effort to reduce future support requirements
* Enhance operational efficiency through automated workflows, administration and reporting
* Increase first contact resolutions utilising skilled-based presence, expert search, remote desktop access and conferencing
* Maximise the return on Lync investments
* Deploy quickly without additional IT resources
* Leverage capabilities with little to no training
* Incorporate more sophisticated unified communications and contact centre capabilities at an attractive price point
Availability:
Aspect Contact 2011 is currently being sold directly by Aspect with initial availability in the English language in North America, the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. The solution delivers powerful options for contact handling at a price point aligned with small- to mid-sized operations.
To learn more about Aspect Contact 2011, please visit http://www.aspect.com/Pages/Products/Aspect-Contact-2011.aspx. View a video overview of what the solution provides, a video that demonstrates the user interface and some of the functionality, or download a screenshot.
Quotes on Aspect Contact 2011:
Ian Jacobs, senior analyst, Ovum: “Aspect Contact 2011 aims to create a more level playing field for companies with smaller contact centres or help desk applications that want to automate improvements in the services and user experience they deliver.
“Aspect understands that these smaller organisations need a feature-rich contact centre solution bolstered by the latest unified communications capabilities without being cost prohibitive.”
Kirk Gregersen, senior director, Microsoft Corp: “Aspect Contact 2011 provides many benefits to Microsoft customers with small- to mid-sized contact centres and help desks, providing them with additional capabilities for efficiency and improved customer experience. It allows organisations to maximise their investments in unified communications. As part of our ongoing partnership, Aspect has optimised both Aspect Contact 2011 and the enterprise-level Aspect Unified IP platform for use with Microsoft technologies.”
Mike Ely, vice-president technology, Aspect: “Aspect has filled a void in the internal help desk and small- to mid-sized contact centre market with Aspect Contact 2011 by combining our robust contact centre capabilities with Microsoft's unified communications and collaboration to deliver a powerful, effective, easy-to-deploy, cost-effective solution. As a pioneer in the contact centre industry with decades of product and market leadership, Aspect is uniquely positioned to provide an innovative, unified communications-based solution that enables companies with smaller operations to improve productivity, drive efficiencies and deliver enriched customer experiences that increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention.”
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