D ATA SH E E T
Aspect® Unified Communication and Collaboration Empower the enterprise with the technology for communications-enabled business processes, breaking through the silos to enable everyone, within the contact center and throughout the enterprise, to easily engage in customer interactions.
Unified communications describes the convergence between enterprise information technology applications and communications solutions, which includes unified messaging, collaboration and interaction systems. For you, tight integration of Aspect Unified IP with Microsoft Lync empowers your agents to reach out across the enterprise, find the most qualified available expert to help with a specific customer need, and connect with that person in real time. Through unified communications, agents can take advantage of rich presence to identify experts inside the contact center and throughout the enterprise that are best qualified to add value to a customer interaction, connect with them via voice or IM, and collaborate by sharing their desktops or files. Customer inquiries and issues are addressed more efficiently and effectively, supporting increased first contact resolution and an improved customer experience.
Key Differentiators Seamless Delivery
Informed and empowered interactions supported by unifying communications are the result of bringing the expertise from the enterprise into the contact center and into the customer interaction
Enhance Productivity
With unified communications, workers can save time by accessing information and people faster with more flexibility, more options and more information upfront
Integrate Technology Beyond the Contact Center
Breaks down the communication barriers that imped service to the customer
Direct Impact on Bottom Line
Business processes supported by unified communications streamline the order process, enable the back office to fulfill the front office’s promise for service and enhance the customer experience
Engage Enterprise Workers
An organization engaged in cross-functional collaboration, supported by improved communication processes, delivers superior customer experiences
Extend Collaboration and Access Expertise An organization engaged in cross-functional collaboration, supported by improved communication processes, delivers superior customer experiences
Unified Architecture
Leverage unified communications and collaboration technologies across the enterprise
Unified Implementation
Simpler deployment, reduces stress on your IT resources and is faster to implement
Key Components The entire enterprise is challenged to do more with less and to maximize every resource. Using unified communication and collaboration technology provides for faster, less time consuming, and more flexible communications-enabled business processes for great individual and group productivity. This is supported by an increasing body of evidence that the technologies of unified communications, applied with the goal of communications-enabling businesses processes, can have a direct impact on the value a company can deliver to its employees, to its customers, and ultimately to its shareholders. Improving productivity and streamlining processes can make it easier for a customer company to deliver the ideal customer experience by which success is measured. Contact centers have been communications-enabling their customer service, collections and sales business processes for years. Contact centers already have the experience that the enterprise can leverage and all can build on this success. Applying advanced communications technology to the customer experience processes in the contact center is where the most direct impact to the company results will be seen. This technology will enable the customer experience to be collaboration between the contact center and the rest of the enterprise. Unified communications is a way of approaching how communications capabilities can help streamline processes to achieve business goals. The concept relies on bridges being built among many types of enterprise applications and communications capabilities.
D ATA SH E E T
Agent Empowerment In the contact center, unified communications empower the agent. Powered by Microsoft Lync, the Aspect Unified IP unified agent desktop allows agents to collaborate in real time – with all customer experience contributors inside and outside the contact center – through presence, IM, desktop sharing and file sharing. Presence capabilities reduce search time for qualified help during collaboration on customer inquiries and create a streamlined pathway for escalations, coaching tips and other communications. Contacts are grouped and can be searched by name, skill set, or even association with resources published in the customer’s online repositories such as Microsoft SharePoint® 2010.
can be used to focus more effectively on customers and their needs, and innovate ways to improve the ability of the business to provide the highest level of service possible.
Key features of internal team collaboration include:
• Use instant message capabilities to contact other agents or supervisors within the contact center
• Consultation
• Conference
• IM Sharing
• Transfers
Contact center managers maintain control over all agent IM communications, which support text, file sharing and screen sharing. Aspect Unified IP enables agents and supervisors to connect through IM using the agent desktop, and when agents interact with a customer, their IM communications with experts are configurable based on their roles and responsibilities. The unified agent desktop improves efficiency and ease of use with workflow scripting and a rich, intuitive interface that combines the Aspect Unified IP contact center platform with unified communications (UC). Together these technologies support multiple case handling, direct access to preferred agents for repeat callers, as well as agent scripting and a built-in knowledgebase.
Additional UC-enabled functionality empowers agents to: • Handle non-contact center calls from Microsoft Lync within the same unified agent desktop • Locate resources within the enterprise using Expert Search with Microsoft SharePoint® 2010 • Search the organization’s SharePoint archive for reference material and available experts to further speed contact resolution
• Engage experts within the enterprise to help satisfy requests and settle issues with customers on a real-time basis. Special licensing enables instant message (IM) and direct dial capabilities from agents to experts. A built-in keyword search seamlessly integrates with the Expert Search workflow provided by the unified agent desktop, allowing agents fast access to enterprise library resources that reference the customer’s established business processes. Unified Communications functionality of the Unified Agent Desktop helps agents feel even more empowered to quickly resolve customer inquiries. • Agents can access IM, presence, and collaboration (desktop/file sharing) capabilities in addition to contact center functions
Key customer interaction benefits of the unified agent desktop include:
• Agent can handle non-contact center calls from Microsoft Lync 2010 within the same Unified Agent Desktop
• Unified Communications Infrastructure and Collaboration Software Breaks down communication silos in the contact center and across the enterprise
Ask an Expert
• Blended Contact Channels Includes voice, email, web chat and IM, allowing agents to deliver a consistent customer-centric experience across a complete set of channels
Detailed Reporting Unified communications technology also provides the ability to track the interaction between the customer, agent and expert. Information about that exchange provides valuable insight into why the contact escalated beyond the contact center. On a collective basis this actionable intelligence
This feature allows Aspect Unified IP to integration to Microsoft Lync and to specifically request presence information on experts. The presence information is used in order to provide agents with real time availability of an expert that may be able to help with a customer interaction. The administrator is able to pre-define skill requirements for different Unified IP service/call types and use those skill requirements as search criteria to match resources outside of the contact center to specific customer requests which ultimately helps the agent satisfy the customer’s inquiry the first time. Additional expert search capabilities enable agent to find resources within the enterprise using Expert Search with Microsoft SharePoint 2010.