Traditional Voice Channels and Open Source Technology

1
(No Transcript)
2
Traditional Voice Channels and Open Source
Technology

• Lee McCabe Director of Sales
• Braxtel Contact Q
• January 2009
• lmccabe_at_braxtel.com
• 410-952-1000

3
Basis for Discussion

• Business Consultancy Contact Babel interviewed
  over 500 US companies of differing sizes in the
  past 12 months to learn more about their use of
  technology and future investment plans.
• They also talked to 70 technology companies
  active in the US and over 75 of these gave
  face-to-face and/or telephone interviews on their
  views of the industry today and in the future.

4
Trend 1 Strategic Paradox

• The increased drive to improve customer
  satisfaction is constantly sited as the companies
  first strategic aim.
• However lowering costs was the consistent reply
  from budget-holders and Board directors.

5
Trend 2 Is Size Everything

• The small-medium end of the market (10-250
  Employees) has a large number of operations which
  are technologically unsophisticated and have been
  poorly served by most vendors in the past.
• Solutions should be modular, scalable and be
  priced imaginatively.
• The ASP model, despite the gains in
  functionality, will remain harder to sell than
  CPE.
• Subscription Models for technology delivery
  are already bridging this gap

6
Trend 3 - Offshore

• Use of offshore Service centres has impacted the
  finance, utilities and telecom sectors the most
• Currently, a significant amount of outbound work
  is done from offshore, cold calling into the US
  market.
• However, there is an increasing amount of
  inbound focused service work being passed to
  offshore locations, usually but not always of a
  low-value transactional nature.
• There has been a kick back on this strategy with
  the general perception of poor service and many
  organizations are now relocating back into the US
• As human resource costs increase with this
  strategy the need for imaginative technology and
  aggressive pricing is more important then ever

7
Trend 4 Service Level Consistency

• Providing a consistent response to all customers
  regardless of their chosen method of contact,
  Voice,Voicemail, E-Mail, Fax or Web form and chat
  
• Technologies offering management of the
  differing types of customer contact had a false
  dawn in the late 1990s.
• However, we will see a steady increase in the
  number and proportion of non-telephony contacts,
  driven by positive customer experience,the
  increased use of broadband ,remote access devices
  and of course cellular technology.
• Although multimedia functionality will be used
  much less than voice for the foreseeable future,
  businesses will want to reassure themselves that
  vendors solutions allow them to incorporate
  multimedia in future

8
Trend 5 - Self Service

• The internet and emergence of Mobile technology
  has severely impacted on the consumers
  expectation on service delivery
• Self-service has proven to be the killer
  application in recent years.
• All businesses will look to invest in varied
  methods of delivering self service to their
  customers
• Integrating technologies such as voice with Web
  services will provide low cost service solutions
  to flourish
• Speech recognition IVR will easily become one
  of the most widely-used and successful
  applications around.
• Speech-driven applications have the potential to
  mount a much more serious threat to US employment
  than off shoring. However it will also appeal
  massively to Company owners and budget holders

9
Trend 6 - Mobility

• There is a strong market desire to deliver true
  consistency in customer service and productivity
  management from all locations
• Allow smaller companies to utilize all existing
  human resource
• Tap into disenfranchised work groups
• Social inclusion
• However there is still a cultural challenge as
  some businesses maintain traditional management
  practices
• More companies are now keen to run pilot schemes
  to enhance mobility options

10
Trend Conclusions

• IP enablement has become mainstream within most
  Service environments. This will have the effect
  of levelling the playing field for smaller
  operations, reducing the need for complex and
  expensive integration. The increasing trend
  towards virtual Service centres (both domestic
  and offshore) will be supported by IP
• There will be a trend towards packaged complete
  solutions, especially at the lower end of the
  industry .This will include Self-service,
  outbound, basic CTI application functionality and
  simple workforce management, Call recording and
  multimedia. Such packages will need to be
  affordable, simple to run, modular and highly
  scalable
• Hosted solutions will also become more viable.
  However, despite some very rich and robust
  functionality, businesses will continue to be
  very wary about this route to market. Solutions
  have to be as good as premises-based solutions,
  yet offer a significant price saving that more
  than offsets the perceived risk that the business
  is taking

11
The Modern Contact Center Geography
12
Relative unit costs of processing transactions by
channel
Source Booz-Allen Hamilton
13
Center Cost Breakdown
Personnel costs are by far the most significant
cost component in Delivering Customer Service.
14
Call Center Call Recording Marketing Sector
Source Data monitor
15
Modern Contact Center Technology
16
Communications Reseller Meeting the Challenge
17
The Challenges Facing Communications Resellers

• Understanding the Disparate technologies within
  the Contact center/Software environment
• Investing in these technologies to allow REAL
  market penetration and customer persuasion
• Financial commitment's to allow ownership of
  multiple applications and deliverable support
• Acquisition of integration capabilities to allow
  modern Contact solutions to be implemented
• Conflict of needing Application sales and
  technical skills but not threatening Core
  competencies

18
Vendor Support

• Firstly ensure that software products are channel
  Friendly, easy to access, install and support
• Vendors must ensure that the Knowledge transfer
  process is customised to each reseller
• Initial training for Sales personnel of the
  reseller
• Also ensuring business opportunities can be
  serviced and delivered elegantly by utilizing the
  Vendors own personnel
• Vendors will provide Pre sales calls and
  discovery, Product Demonstrations, Detailed
  proposals
• Full Statement of works process with customer and
  partner sign off, Comprehensive installation
  process with Integration into customers
  environment
• Customized support packages allowing partners to
  pass all support calls through to Vendor and then
  take levels of support themselves as soon as they
  have sufficient sites to make it profitable

19
Related Questions
20

• Tell us about the Braxtel global channel
• What lessons have been learned in the 12 years of
  channel product delivery?
• Tell us briefly about the Braxtel Products
• Why Open Source?
• What's different about the Braxtel channel
  program?

21
Questions from the Audience

• Any Questions from the Floor

22
Fluency Functionality

• True interactive Voice Response Speech Rec,TTS
  Options for self service applications
• Comprehensive ACD/Skills based routing with
  traditional Product in Fluency and now Open
  Source offering in Contact Q
• Preview, Progressive and Predictive Dialler with
  campaign manager and Customized filters
• Enterprise Call recording with Quality Monitoring
• Deliverable and attractive Professional services
  with High value CTI Capabilities
• Modern Voicemail

23
The Fluency Solution

• Distributed by key channel partners
• Full professional services offered
• Braxtel main sales and development offices in
  Boston Mass and Nottingham in the UK
• Owned by Homisco, located in Boston USA
• Selected by Electrolux for Global Contact centers
  
• (secured excellence award in 2006)
• Secured most innovative product ward 2008
• Alliances with Avaya,Cisco,Nortel,Panasonic and
  Digium Asterisk
• Also partnerships with many Database CRM
  providers

24
Lee McCabe Director of SalesBraxtel
ContactQJanuary 2009lmccabe_at_braxtel.com410-952
-1000
ContactQ Quality Contact Solutions Since 1997
sales_at_contactq.com www.contactq.com USA
Corporate Headquarters 1.877.563.8085 European
Headquarters 44 115 962 8910