Traditional Voice Channels and Open Source

TechnologyLee McCabe Director of Sales

Braxtel Contact QJanuary 2009

lmccabe@braxtel.com410-952-1000

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.

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.

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

Trend 3 - OffshoreUse 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

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

Trend 5 - Self ServiceThe 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

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

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

The Modern Contact Center Geography

Relative unit costs of processing transactions by

channel

0102030405060708090100

Branch Telephone PC Internet

Source: Booz-Allen Hamilton

Center Cost Breakdown

67%

7%

8%

18%

PersonnelFacilityEquipmentNetwork

Personnel costs are by far the most significant cost component in Delivering Customer Service.

Call Center Call Recording Marketing Sector

Financial services28%

Manufacturing and Distribution

22%

Telecoms10%

Utilities6%

Technology5%

Public sector8%

Entertainment5%

Remote shopping6%

Travel & tourism10%

Source: Data monitor

Modern Contact Center Technology

Network Management

IP/TDM PBX IP/TDM PBX

Digital TrunksDigital TrunksDigital TrunksDigital Trunks

ComplianceComplianceBest PracticeBest Practice

Corporate LANCorporate LANVoice NetworkVoice Network

ApplicationApplicationServersServers

IntegratedIntegrated Contact SolutionContact Solution

Call RecordingCall Recording Staff MonitoringStaff Monitoring

CRM/DatabaseCRM/DatabaseE-Mail/FaxE-Mail/Fax

Internet/Website Internet/Website strategystrategy

Communications Reseller Meeting the Challenge

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

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

Related Questions

• 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?

Questions from the Audience

Any Questions from the Floor

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

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

Lee McCabe Director of SalesBraxtel ContactQ

January 2009

lmccabe@braxtel.com410-952-1000

ContactQQuality Contact Solutions Since 1997

sales@contactq.com • www.contactq.comUSA Corporate Headquarters:

1.877.563.8085 European Headquarters: +44 115 962 8910