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Spanlink Introduces New Quality Management and Question Answering Products

Posted on: Monday, 6 March 2006, 12:00 CST

Spanlink Communications, a leader in customer interaction solutions that leverage VoIP technology, today announced Spanlink(R) Quality Management, a new call recording and evaluation software product that optimizes team performance in virtual customer interaction networks. The new product is part of the Spanlink(R) InteractiveEdge family of products, which are built from the ground up to transform centralized contact center environments into virtual customer interaction networks.

Spanlink today also announced new speech-based and agent-based products in its Spanlink(R) AnswerCenter(TM) family, which automates multi-channel question answering through natural language understanding. Spanlink also announced a significant new release of Spanlink(R) CentralControl(TM) software for virtual IP communications systems management.

"Many enterprises are moving beyond the traditional, centralized contact centers and into virtual teams located anywhere. Still, many of the current solutions were built for TDM-based networks and are not scalable to VoIP-based networks," said Spanlink CEO Brett Shockley. "Spanlink's innovative customer interaction suite of software products provides a feature-rich solution for enterprises seeking to improve customer service and streamline operations in real, virtual customer interaction networks."

Enhancing Customer Service at the "Edge" with Spanlink InteractiveEdge

The Spanlink InteractiveEdge family of products enhances the way contact center teams interact with customers and with each other, regardless of location. Spanlink Quality Management 2.0, a new product today, is a highly-scalable voice and screen recording and evaluation solution that supports agents and supervisors at any physical location. Key features include:

-- Voice and screen recording on the agent desktop - or "at the edge" - which captures, filters, and compresses contacts without dedicated recording servers at every location

-- Supervisor/manager evaluation tools can be integrated within Cisco Supervisor Desktop to streamline management

-- Compliance archival of key information to open systems

-- Speech analytics at the edge, allowing near real-time content detection and alerts without dedicated server farms

-- Independent operation of desktop components, which limits the scope of impact for faults

-- Flexibility for adding new agents through a software push

-- Simple administration allows modifications to the business rules without IT expertise or professional services engagements

"With this new product, Spanlink introduces an important set of features that enable contact centers to measure agent performance against key metrics without restricting how teams are deployed geographically," said Dr. Kathryn Jackson, president and founder of Response Design, a contact center consulting company. "It makes virtualization practical for the customer-service focused business."

Providing Precise, Multi-channel Question Answering with Spanlink AnswerCenter

The Spanlink AnswerCenter family of products provides customers with precise answers to their questions by applying patented natural language understanding technology, which Spanlink acquired as Discern in 2002, to enterprise information that is stored in multiple locations and unstructured formats. Today, Spanlink announced that it has expanded AnswerCenter to a multi-channel family of products, supporting agents, speech self-service and Web self-service. Key features include:

-- Enables agents to come up to speed quickly on existing or new content to increase first call resolution and reduce training time

-- Provides multi-channel support for Web and IVR for "anytime" self-service

-- Allows users to ask questions in their own words

-- Highlights the answer within the document, rather than providing links to documents

-- Integrates with Cisco Agent Desktop to streamline customer interaction

-- Features sophisticated, user-friendly tuning tools that improve answer accuracy rates on existing content existing and future content

Humana Military Health has used Spanlink's natural language understanding product on their Web site for more than a year. The company is now in the process of implementing Spanlink AnswerCenter to increase the number of calls that can be automated through speech self-service to increase service levels.

"Spanlink software has allowed us to respond successfully to more than 200,000 queries to our Web site," said John Jones, director of innovative technologies at Humana Military. "Speech enabling the applications will allow customers to obtain the same precise answers to questions over the phone. We expect that the combination of the two applications will save Humana Military over $1M per year."

"First call resolution remains an elusive goal for most contact centers," said Sheila McGee-Smith, president and principal analyst of McGee-Smith Analytics. "A tool such as Spanlink AnswerCenter can dramatically improve the ability of an enterprise or organization to provide consistent responses to customer queries regardless of the method by which a question is asked. Customers can choose to speak to an agent, use the company's web site, or speech self service, and the contact center will be providing a consistently accurate response."

Managing Virtual IP Communications with Spanlink CentralControl

Spanlink today announced an enhanced version of Spanlink CentralControl, the company's award-winning virtual IP Communications management software. Spanlink CentralControl is designed to dramatically simplify the administration of virtual, multi-cluster IP Communications networks. The software unifies system administration and reporting for Spanlink customer interaction solutions, helping customers enforce best practices and quality control to facilitate growth and change. New features of CentralControl 3.0 include:

-- A simplified user interface and streamlined navigation

-- Dynamic logins with role-based permissions for different types of users, so the right people have the right information to efficiently perform routine administration without visibility or risk to other users

-- Cross-version support for Cisco IPCC, Cisco CallManager, Cisco Unity

-- Terminal or CLI session windows for gateways, routers and switches, which further-simplifies infrastructure administration

"Spanlink has been a key partner in helping Cisco gain share in the contact center market," said Laurent Philonenko, general manager of Cisco's Customer Contact Business Unit. "Spanlink makes several important product announcements today, and we look forward to the impact those products will have in the marketplace."

About Spanlink Communications, Inc.

Spanlink Communications is a leading provider of customer interaction solutions that leverage VoIP technology. With nearly 20 years experience, Spanlink develops and markets customer interaction software and system management software that helps customers exploit the benefits of virtual IP Communications networks for business transformation. Spanlink applies expert planning, migration and support services to tailor each customer's solution and support plan to its business needs for transformational business improvements in productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction. Find news and information at www.spanlink.com.

Source: Business Wire

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