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The University of Bristol has future proofed its communication infrastructure with the purchase of C3’s multichannel communication platform, Apcentia.
The Apcentia platform will initially connect via DPNSS, but is SIP ready ensuring that any technology investment is protected, regardless of changes to core infrastructure supplier, when the institution moves to IP voice.
Initially, the Bristol system will launch running C3 voicemail and its scripting tool (Fusion). Integrating to Google Mail, the platform is fully enabled to provide advanced messaging functionality and call recording.
The Apcentia platform is also fully extensible so that the team can scale the system; adding other multichannel functionality to suit evolving user requirements, whilst keeping control over associated costs.
The phrase ‘multi-channel communications is so ubiquitous that no one really pays attention to it any more. It’s become one of those overused techy phrases that can, if used without due care and attention, induce a semi-coma state.
Well, WAKE UP! The phrase is used a good few times here – but it’s for your own good!
For many organisations “multi-channel communications” has been endlessly discussed; with plans made, heads scratched, Facebook pages opened etc.
However, very few companies have – and bear with me here – an integrated multichannel communication strategy; that is to say one which integrates multiple channels, and uses sophisticated tools in contact routing and handling. For example most organisations have no means of tracking and reporting on their non-voice communication channels.
Instead, the majority of organisations handle each channel independently of each other, on an informal basis. This approach might work where enquiries come in small volumes and employees can make up for bad processes. But it’s not scalable, or even sustainable in the long term.
Research published by ContactBabel in 2012 revealed that over 17% of interactions handled by UK contact centres were through email, web chat and social media.
In the last few years there has been a sharp rise in non-voice communication, led by email (which has risen from 10% to 15% of interactions) but also supported by jumps in web chat and social media.
Customers expect consistent treatment and quality of service across all these channels. But without a comprehensive system to track enquiries from every media, making this happen in reality is hard work.
With many traditional voice platforms reaching end-of-life, now is a good time to seriously consider a multi-channel communication platform that can provide routing, reporting and performance tracking across all your communication channels.
In this competitive environment service is a genuine differentiator. So, although the technology may not be new, the impetus to actually do something with it is.
Fusion Contact is C3’s multichannel contact centre platform. It is a browser-based solution that simplifies the management of interactions across all communication channels (voice, email, web chat and social networks) with universal routing rules.
Fusion Contact enables your customers to make contact with you using their preferred method, always receiving a consistent, well-informed service no matter which channel they use. The system facilitates the rapid deployment of new applications; helps you improve customer service across your distributed operations, and also supports the flexible working requirements of your staff who are able to login to the system remotely.
We offer a range of hosted solutions, which remove the constraints of capital expenditure and provide operational flexibility and agility.
As telecommunications become increasingly versatile and more web-centric, the development environments used to create different types of telephony applications are changing also. Some are becoming more accessible, less complicated and increasingly visual, comprising web-based templates and graphical functionality.
The current economic climate is putting financial constraints on many organisations, making it harder for them to justify the funds needed to pay advanced programmers to develop and schedule, or make changes to applications that are perceived to be straightforward.
To reflect these changes we would like to inform customers of Fusion, our new IVR software which utilises an intuitive visual editor and drag and drop deployment. Customers can build and deploy IVR services by creating a flow chart diagram of “nodes”, properties and links via an intuitive GUI. Running on any Windows PC, via an Internet connection and supporting all existing IVR functionality.
Accommodating new and existing installations of Apcentia, everyone can use Fusion to develop interactive services themselves, or will be able to work in partnership with our support team to develop more complex, bespoke applications.
Fusion is also available to our Voicemail client base. Call handling scripts take moments to put together and because they are represented diagrammatically they’re easy to comprehend. Fusion offers all the functionality of our popular Narrator product and a lot more. For more information please contact us, we’d love to show how quickly services can be built with Fusion.
Hosted telecommunications specialist Sundial Telecom is planning the re-launch of Call Manager, one of its flagship call handling products.
The company, based in Cambridge, plans to add additional functionality to the call answering service, which gives small businesses a single telephone number and reliable call forwarding/ auto attendant.
The decision to relaunch the platform is a direct result of the recent improvements Sundial Telecom has made to development time. With the help of C3’s Fusion IVR software, the company announced last month that it had halved time-to-market and would be considering a range of new projects as a result.
“Now we have Fusion in place we are able to drive forward the development of Call Manager and make changes to the platform that we may not have considered before,” explains Shane Carter, owner of Sundial Telecom.
“We want to make Call Manager more flexible and improve the configuration options available to our customers. With Fusion, we have the ability to make improvements, or develop entirely new call handling services, very quickly and effectively.”
Sundial Telecom has been using Fusion IVR for three months and has already reported a 50% reduction in development time. The team expects to improve that time as they become more accustomed with the program.