Avaya Delivers Customer Interaction Express - a Complete Contact Center Suite for Midsize Businesses

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., April 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Avaya Inc. , a global leader in business communications applications, systems and services, today announced global availability of Avaya Customer Interaction Express, a full-featured contact center software suite built expressly for midsize businesses. Designed using common industry standards, Customer Interaction Express works with virtually any communications system, including Avaya Communication Manager, to help simplify integration and implementation. The solution handles all incoming and outgoing customer transactions across multiple media channels, including phone, e-mail, fax and text messaging for mobile devices. With sophisticated call routing and reporting capabilities, Avaya Customer Interaction Express enables corporations with up to 150 contact centers agents at multiple locations to use Intelligent Communications to deliver consistent, personalized service to customers.

"Customer service plays a key role in gaining competitive advantage, and companies of all sizes recognize the benefits of enhancing customer care operations," said Mona Sultan, analyst at Datamonitor. "Market trends toward advanced service technologies, including self-service and multimedia, can be expected to continue across industries and business market segments."

Avaya Customer Interaction Express, along with Avaya Meeting Exchange Express conferencing solution, also announced today, are sophisticated software applications that extend the capabilities of Avaya's portfolio for midsize businesses, which currently includes Avaya IP Office, Avaya MultiVantage Express and other Avaya Communication Manager-based offerings.

Customer Interaction Express delivers the following capabilities in an integrated, all-in-one software suite:

-- Advanced Routing: Managing inbound communications effectively helps increase sales and customer satisfaction while reducing costs. Incoming communications are routed to the agent with the best skills to meet each customer request, regardless of the contact method or agent location in a contact center, headquarters or branch office. -- Automated Self Service: Access to important information and transaction capabilities 24 hours a day, from any phone, makes it easier for customers to do business with a company. Interactive voice response capabilities, speech recognition and text-to-speech give mid-sized enterprises affordable and integrated solutions for customer self- service. -- Outbound Campaign Management: Companies can proactively contact customers with order updates, status reports and other information that helps increase satisfaction and accelerate revenue generation. Outgoing marketing and customer retention campaigns can be automated and reported on from the application. -- Reporting Capabilities: Comprehensive reporting enables businesses to understand opportunities to improve service, optimize sales and enhance operations through more effective use of resources. Powerful but simple-to-use reporting tools give real-time and historical insight into customer interactions. Regardless of contact channel, all reporting can be smoothly deployed inside a single system, with the option of additional database integration. -- Flexible and Scalable Upgrades: Incremental licensing allows companies to add capabilities and software licenses as needs arise. Begin with a single contact communications channel, for example, and integrate reporting and other functionality across multiple media channels and additional agents as the business grows.

While developing the product, Avaya worked closely with midsize customers in Europe, including Schoenherr Bindesysteme, Seevetal, Germany and SMS Schleinig Marketing Service GmbH in Frankfurt, Germany, to deploy and test the solution in real-world environments. "As a specialized mail order company for professional presenting and effective organizing, absolute top-class customer service is critical to our business success. Our order and service center is the core of that," says Reiner Kreutzmann, managing director of http://www.schoenherr.de/. "Avaya's Customer Interaction Express is a very good choice, because it's an excellent product solution to best meet our high standards, even in peak times."

"Avaya Customer Interaction Express combines all important inbound and outbound functionality that we require in our contact center on a single, software-based platform," adds Swen Berbett, technical director at SMS Schleinig Marketing Service GmbH. "This compact but comprehensive solution can be centrally administered and monitored, enables maximum flexibility for our staff work environments, and increases customer service levels and customer retention."

Customer Interaction Express also presents a new opportunity for Avaya channel partners, creating an avenue for increasing offerings and revenue via the small and midsize enterprise market. Built on standard platforms, with straight-forward pricing, repeatable deployments, and functionality for a wide range of customer needs, Customer Interaction Express is an ideal packaged solution for an Avaya channel partners, such as a member of the Avaya Authorized BusinessPartner program, that wishes to provide a single sales source for enterprises with extensive telephony requirements.

"Customer Interaction Express demonstrates Avaya's commitment to help midsized business achieve the benefits of Intelligent Communications by offering a full-fledged multimedia contact center solution that rivals the capabilities of larger companies," said Jim Smith, Avaya vice president and general manager, Customer Service Applications Division. "Unlike many offerings for the midmarket, which are often watered-down versions of products designed for large enterprises, Customer Interaction Express offers customers comprehensive functionality in an easy-to-integrate software solution."

Availability

Customer Interaction Express is available globally, with a range of capabilities to meet the needs of small and mid-sized enterprises with unique requirements. More information is available at http://www.avaya.com/, or ask an Avaya BusinessPartner for additional details about Customer Interaction Express.

About Avaya

Avaya delivers Intelligent Communications solutions that help companies transform their businesses to achieve marketplace advantage. More than 1 million businesses worldwide, including more than 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500(R), use Avaya solutions for IP Telephony, Unified Communications, Contact Centers and Communications-Enabled Business Processes. Avaya Global Services provides comprehensive service and support for companies, small to large. For more information visit the Avaya Web site, http://www.avaya.com/.