Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., an Alcatel-Lucent company today announced software that significantly improves the customer experience by aligning self- and assisted service, and integrating voice across all customer service environments through open standards. Genesys Voice Platform (GVP) 8, unveiled at SpeechTEK, marks a major new release of Genesys’ market-leading software platform for interactive voice response (IVR).
GVP 8 is significant because it acts as an integrated platform that ends
the standalone nature of voice self service. It is tightly integrated with
both Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the intelligent Customer Front
Door (iCFD) solutions from Genesys and its partners. iCFD is an
industry-wide initiative to transform the experience for customers entering
the “telephone front door” of enterprises and break down self-service as a
silo by leveraging key applications and business rules.
GVP 8 further leverages voice in customer service by tightly integrating
key technologies such as SIP, web integration, and voice security software,
as well as providing a single development environment for contact centres
that use the Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) platform.
“GVP is a very important element of our overall strategy,” said Paul Segre,
President and CEO, Genesys, “because it brings to the forefront the
convergence of all the technologies that touch customer service. Along with
our CIM platform, GVP has led the transformation away from silos and ‘point
solutions’ towards a more holistic approach to customer care.”
“In the present ‘down economy’ we’re not seeing companies abandon customer
service to focus on cost containment. Instead we’re seeing companies invest
in technologies that help to lower costs, but also improve customer service
and personalisation – either in self assistance, live assistance or both,”
said Drew Kraus, Research Vice President, Gartner. “We’re seeing an
increased investment in newer generation software-based IVRs that integrate
much more tightly to both customer data in CRM software packages as well as
to real-time contact queuing and routing engines.”
Several leading industry experts commented on the significance of GVP 8 as
an indicator of important industry trends:
“Genesys has succeeded in combining its scale assets and partnerships to
create and amplify the value of its GVP 8 platform,” said Daniel Hong, Lead
Analyst of Customer Interaction Technologies at Datamonitor. “GVP 8 is an
integrated software layer that leverages the large investment and focus
enterprises have put into CRM, the web and business rules engines over the
past several years. What’s interesting is that Genesys is leading with
innovative applications and partnerships in its release of GVP 8 rather
than the usual vendor messaging around new features and functions.”
“Today’s customer-focused enterprises look for technology platform
providers who work well with partners and support rapid deployment in
multi-vendor environments,” said Dan Miller, sr. analyst at Opus Research.
“Genesys successfully knit together the partner-friendly attributes of two
leading voice platforms, and attracted an “A” List of application
developers and integrators.”
Some of the key features of GVP 8 include:
· Built-in integration for the intelligent Customer Front Door (iCFD)
The iCFD is a transformative solution bundle, focused specifically on
improving the customer experience. By using information from back end
systems, call centre resources and customer preferences, the iCFD
intelligently directs the call to the best service, whether self or
assisted. It extracts these business routing strategies into one central
location which allows the business owners to decide where and how to
deliver the best service.
· GVP 8 supports mature open-standards of voice self-service platform
It supports virtually all key open standards and critical applications
including VXML, CCXML, SIP, VoIP, IP PBXs, gateways and softswitches,
virtual hold technology, video applications, security and voice biometrics,
and open compatibility with virtually any major third-party hardware and
software.
· GVP 8 has built-in SIP support
GVP 8 leverages Genesys integrations and SIP Server to connect to more VoIP
environments than any other platform, including Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel
CS2k, Avaya, Cisco CCM, Siemens 8000, Audiocodes, Paraxip, Cisco Gateways,
Open IN, and others.
· Multi-tenancy for large enterprises and service providers
For software as a service and managed service providers, GVP 8 supports
mutitenancy, where several businesses can share a common platform and
access it from virtually anywhere.
· Integrated Development Environment “Composer”
GVP 8 has a unique development console that streamlines application
development. GVP now provides a single unified development environment for
customer interaction management. Developers and customers can quickly
create routing strategies, and leverage business rules that gather relevant
information such as back-end data or workflow to control the process and
understand the context of a call.
· Common Platform for Both GVP and Voice Genie Customers
Genesys has provided a single common next-generation platform that brings
together its two key voice platform lines – Voice Genesys and GVP onto a
single system.
About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.
Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, is the only company that focuses 100%
on software to manage customer interactions over the phone, web and in
e-mail. The Genesys software suite dynamically connects customers with the
right resources – self-service or assisted-service – to fulfill customer
requests, optimize customer care goals and efficiently use resources.
Genesys software directs more than 100 million customer interactions every
day for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries. These
companies and agencies can leverage their entire organization, from the
contact centre to the back office, to improve the overall customer
experience. As a result, Genesys helps stop customer frustration, drive
efficiency, and accelerate business innovation. For more information, go to
http://www.genesyslab.com or visit the industry blog at
http://www.betterinteractions.com
About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) provides solutions that
enable service providers, enterprise and governments worldwide, to deliver
voice, data and video communication services to end-users. As a leader in
fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies,
applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent offers the end-to-end solutions
that enable compelling communications services for people at home, at work
and on the move. With operations in more than 130 countries, Alcatel-Lucent
is a local partner with global reach. The company has the most experienced
global services team in the industry, and one of the largest research,
technology and innovation organizations in the telecommunications industry.
Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 17.8 billion in 2007 and is
incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more
information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet:
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com.
