Zeacom Communications Center 6.2 Delivers Enhanced Contact Center Experience

Zeacom, a provider of multimedia contact center and business process automation software has just announced the release of the version 6.2 of its Zeacom Communications Center (ZCC 6.2). A mature and feature-rich software-only product, ZCC 6.2 continues Zeacom's investment in Microsoft Lync integration while also including a hybrid environment that lets organizations trial Lync while maintaining their existing telephony infrastructure. By leveraging Microsoft's native Unified Communications Managed API (UCMA) to control Lync to hold the call as opposed to a separate SIP PBX, Zeacom enables a seamless integration of its applications, such as rich agent desktop, skills-based and priority routing, and real-time monitoring and reporting into the Lync environment.

The new edition continues to drive the behaviors that make a real difference to customer satisfaction by highlighting key metrics and events in the contact center (CC). In preparation for version 6.2 Zeacom evaluated its metrics against the latest industry standards on CC definitions, as a result the presentation of key CC metrics within the ZCC agent desktop client and records have been enhanced to reflect current best practice.

Other New Features

Enhancements to ZCC Snapshot

Snapshot captures up-to-the-minute data and exception reporting from ZCC and third-party databases like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and displays it on the desktop, iPad, Android tablet or smartphone. Improvements to snapshot include a scrolling (tickertape-like) text feature which allows CC managers on the move to see and act on new and important information.

Microsoft SQL Server Database

With the release of version 6.2, Zeacom will be transitioning the ZCC database to Microsoft SQL Server. Zeacom has chosen to take advantage of SQL server's reputation as a robust, reliable and secure application that is easy to manage. SQL Server paves the way for future supportability improvements as well as future enhancements to redundancy, resiliency, and reporting. The move to SQL Server also benefits Zeacom's customers by offering faster migration and more database management options. Many ZCC customers already have SQL Server deployed in their businesses. All new and existing customer sites implementing ZCC 6.2 will require SQL Standard or Server Express. Zeacom Sales Engineers will recommend the most appropriate version to meet individual site requirements.

Post Call Survey Available on More Platforms

ZCC's Post Call Survey gives customers the option to participate in a survey at the end of their call without the agent's knowledge or involvement so CC managers can get a timely and accurate picture of the total customer experience. Post Call Survey is now also available on Avaya and Cisco telephony platforms.

Cloud Support for Email Services

ZCC's Email Queuing and Unified Messaging solutions are now supported in a Hosted Exchange environment and for Microsoft Office 365, allowing ZCC customers to continue to enjoy the benefits of these ZCC applications in the cloud. Furthermore, Email Queuing has been enhanced to make the process of replying to customer emails faster and easier by allowing embedded images to be added to preconfigured response templates and standard reply forms on the fly.

What This Means to You

To Customers: Zeacom's multimedia contact center is a modular solution. Beginning with the foundation, customers can add functionality as requirements and budget dictate. Additional functionality includes: Voice Interaction, Multimedia Interaction, Outbound Contact and Business Intelligence to understand and optimize contact center performance.

Multimedia interaction, in Zeacom's view, incorporates the feature/functionality to:

• Offer in-bound customers the freedom to communicate however they like - phone, fax, email, SMS, web chat or social media
  
  
• Bring all communications into one place, so that nothing falls through the cracks and agents can give every contact equal attention
  
  
• Interact with customers through social media - agents can listen to online conversations about your brand, talk to customers using web chat, and monitor Facebook and Twitter activity through your contact center
  
  
• Engage CC agents and increase their job satisfaction, multimedia interaction makes their work more interesting.

Zeacom is a certified Gold (ISV and UC) partner of Microsoft. They are the third-largest company in regard to revenue and resources (number of employees) among Lync contact center providers. In addition, the company has partnered with NEC for 17 years, and is a Cisco Premier Partner and a registered member of the Avaya DevConnect program, with partners and offices in North America, Northern Europe and Asia Pacific. Zeacom's UC and CC solutions are targeted at small to medium sized organizations in 25 countries and distributed 100 percent through the channel. Zeacom's applications work on Microsoft, Avaya, Cisco, and NEC telephony platforms.

Blair Pleasant of COMMfusion and UCStrategies said: "While many people think of Zeacom as a contact center vendor, the company is in fact much more than that. In addition to its contact center capabilities, its core strength is in voice communications, mobility, unified messaging, IVR, outdialing and presence, leveraging partners to provide best-of-breed solutions, and Business Process Automation (BPA). ... Similar to UC-Business Process, Business Process Automation as Zeacom defines it looks at where communications or a transaction process can be streamlined. It can involve multiple types of functions, such as rich presence, desktop telephony, mobility, unified contact center, and in Zeacom's case, integration to third-party databases. Zeacom looks at automating and streamlining both transactional processes and operational processes."

Of course Zeacom is not alone is not alone in offering a CC solution supporting multimedia interaction. Competitors such as: Avaya, Cisco, Genesys, Interactive Intelligence and Nice Systems offer competing solutions. As such, we recommend that customers assess the various competitive solutions in terms of the risk-adjusted benefits and costs of ownership with ample consideration of feature/function availability and development roadmap alignment with your business requirements now and in the future.

To Partners: Contact centers that optimize their communications using Business Process Automation / Communications Enabled Business Processes can expect to achieve a lower cost per call, increased efficiency and higher customer satisfaction. Zeacom's continued focus in this area will certainly support the customer value proposition channel partners need to sell to the customer. Partners can also expect more business related to social media professional services for deployment and application development.