AT&T's E-Contact Portfolio Grows With Web-Savvy Offers
- Multimedia Sites Added With Virtual Ease Using AT&T Virtual Contact Center
- Voice-Only Centers Become Web-Enabled With AT&T Web Contact Services
BASKING RIDGE, N.J., Sept. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Strengthening an already strong portfolio of contact technologies, AT&T (NYSE: T) today announced two new offers that integrate web communications with traditional voice call management.
For businesses wanting to open or upgrade a contact center with integrated voice, email and web chat, AT&T Virtual Contact Center provides a solution with minimum capital outlay. For businesses with established call center networks, AT&T Web Contact Services add software to handle most types of online contact. Both offers are managed by AT&T and hosted in AT&T Internet Data Centers.
"An enterprise that wants to be found by its customers needs to have as many open doors as possible," said Barbara Peda, Senior Vice President - Connectivity Services in AT&T Business. "By integrating automatic voice call distribution with the newer options of Internet and email contact, we make sure all doors are open and easy to use. And because AT&T manages these systems, all the enterprise has to do is welcome the customer inside."
AT&T Virtual Contact Center
AT&T VCC offers companies an enhanced contact center solution and an improved customer experience by integrating e-mail, web chat and voice capabilities. These capabilities are made available to one or more distributed agent centers through network-based call distribution, multimedia skills-based routing, unified queuing and computer-telephone integration. Based on an application solution engineered by InfoCast Corporation, AT&T VCC is currently in trial with several customers including AT&T itself.
Managed by AT&T and hosted on secure servers at the AT&T Internet Data Centers, AT&T VCC is accessed by contact agent sites using multimedia PCs and a frame relay connection. As a result, AT&T VCC does not require the large capital investment that may be a barrier to some companies with contact center needs.
AT&T VCC system components include:
-- Web Chat and Collaboration -- real-time interactive text chat, plus the
capability to push canned URLs for agent-led browsing.
-- E-mail -- queuing and routing for incoming e-mail, integrated with
voice routing so all messages go to appropriate and available agents.
-- Interactive Voice Response (IVR) -- supporting industry standard
signals and sound files.
-- Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) -- with skill-based routing, queuing,
real-time screen pops for customer information, supervising
capabilities and extensive reporting.
-- Soft Phone -- onscreen full-function telephony that transforms a PC
equipped with a sound card and headset.
-- Integration of enterprise legacy systems with AT&T VCC system.
-- Cost-efficient voice over IP connectivity between AT&T Data Center and
agents, using AT&T's portfolio of VoIP services for business.
Inquiries that arrive as voice calls are first handled by IVR, and then seamlessly packetized into Voice over IP (VoIP) format and connected with the available agent most suited to handle the inquiry. Inquiries that arrive as email are similarly routed, as are web chat and click-to-dial requests initiated by customers browsing on an enterprise's website. All agents have full onscreen access to product information and back office systems.
The full power of the multimedia platform and IP networking is in the agent's ability to combine multiple services in a single customer contact, such as pushing web pages while talking with the customer on the phone. Supervisors have complete, unified management tools and reporting, along with barge and monitoring capability wherever the agents are located, enabling increased visibility to achieving defined service levels.
"The most attractive benefit to enterprises is the ability to create small, targeted call center sites exactly when and where they are most productive and cost effective," stated William C. Lowe, Chief Executive Officer of InfoCast. "Customer service representatives are the heart of any contact system. With AT&T VCC, those representatives are easy to empower and easy to reach, creating a fully integrated Web-enabled contact center wherever agents have PCs and high speed access."
AT&T VCC is currently installed with several business customers, including an AT&T Technical Support Center. Pricing is structured on a per "seat" per month basis, after installation.
AT&T Web Contact Services
Designed for large enterprises that want to e-enable existing voice-based call centers, AT&T Web Contact Services (WCS) is actually a suite of four components that work separately or can be integrated into a bundle:
-- Email Response Management Service -- Automatically routes email
messages to the right agent, categorizes and prioritizes messages,
suggests relevant response templates, and if desired, sends automated
replies.
-- Web Response Management Service -- Takes chat requests from the
enterprise Web site and establishes a real-time chat session between
customer and agent. Advanced features provide collaborative
consultation and page sharing.
-- Automatic Call Distributor Integration -- Centralizes queuing of
incoming voice and chat requests. Website "Click for Help" button
allows customers to call agents and collaborate online at the same
time.
-- AT&T Resource Manager Integration - Routes voice, chat and email
requests among multiple contact centers.
Powered by the Cisco (R) Customer Interaction Suite, AT&T WCS is offered as a managed service, supported by AT&T's Application Service Center 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Support includes design, implementation, integration, operations management, and maintenance, plus dedicated hosting at an AT&T Internet Data Center.
AT&T WCS is designed for enterprises with existing call centers of 30 or more agents. Pricing includes one-time charges for design and implementation, plus ongoing maintenance.
AT&T's Portfolio of E-Contact Services
AT&T's two new managed services join a strong product line of services designed to manage and distribute incoming calls to contact centers, ranging from the ubiquitous availability of AT&T Toll-Free Services to the sophisticated design of custom-built call centers. For example, AT&T Resource Manager serves large companies with multiple contact centers, allowing managers to set up voice routing and load-balancing algorithms among centers to help maximize agent productivity. AT&T's Interactive Voice Response Services provide a rich application platform for automating responses to callers at all kinds of businesses, from simple to complex.
"In the past it was an accomplishment to route voice calls instantly so they arrived at the right agent complete with the data needed to serve the caller," said Peda. "Now we're doing that plus integrating email messages, chat messages and online interaction. Best of all, we're able to free our business customers from the increased complexity of managing multimedia networking environments with round-the-clock security and support. We do that job, so the enterprise can focus on serving their customers, and making the sale."
For more information on AT&T's portfolio of e-contact services, call 800-ATT-3199. |
