Page 4 - Avaya Extra Q3 2014

4 Telecom Reseller: Extra Report on Avaya
Third Quarter 2014

BOYLE invest in a cloud-based PBX the opportunity to
continued from page 1
upgrade and extend the life of their on-premise
IP-PBX system. SIP trunking also lets them
continually seek to do more on slim IT budgets. retire old T1 and PRI carrier connections and
However only those service providers
the cost of additional legacy phones, yielding
who can right-size capacity of a network and savings to boot.
prioritize voice traffic over a private network SIP trunking based IP-PBX systems often
ensure the quality of service that can give truly include a full suite of IP phone and data
give SMBs an edge: no more missed, dropped, solutions and services needed to do business
jittery or blocked calls leads to more productive efficiently: remote worker connectivity, a
employees, happy customers and increased seamless professional business identity, the list
revenue. Not to mention a reputation for a good goes on.
customer experience which can make a huge On some systems users can even get up to 200
difference in today’s competitive marketplace.
IT managers also now look to those service DID (Direct Inward Dials) and one Personal Call Assistant subscription along with built-in
providers to offer more than voice and data business-grade analog ports for fax machines,
access solutions: they also need access to hosted analog modem credit card readers and other
unified communications applications, hosted devices which would otherwise require
exchange email services, and hosted application expensive analog gateways.
services including data backup, desktop security, There’s no time like the present to take a
fax to email, and Web hosting too.
closer look at squeezing more out of your IP-
SIP trunking affords those SMBs not able to
PBX. TR

Losing
OWEN
continued from page 1
Losing Customers to Hold Time?
A lot can happen in three years so we did another
interview/podcast to get an update.
This article is a summary of that interview.
Avaya has been working a few major themes
to change the way support is done for their CALL-BACK SOLUTIONS FOR THE CALL CENTER
customers. According to Runda, some of them
have proven beneficial to both their customers and employees.
One is the use of Knowledge Management.
Currently about 90% of their staff are working on
new problems only. The types of problems that
come in to them are typically more difficult issues
that have never been solved before. As problems
surface and are resolved technical agents
publish answers to solutions immediately. That Why Fonolo?
information is available directly to customers and
business partners, allowing them to quickly find
the answers for many of their issues more rapidly • Cloud-based solution
via the Avaya website. Runda estimated that
about a third of customers now find the solutions • Connects via SIP and PSTN
they need on the website.
Next he spoke of video. They have now • Captures and passes CTI
implemented video in all of their major centers
across the globe. Thus they are able to have live • Works with any call center
video conversations with partners and customers.
This ability is setting record satisfaction scores with both their customers and employees.
The third area Runda discussed was their use of
automation. When Avaya’s redesigned support
website (support.avaya.com) launched in April
2012, an early version of Web Chat was among the
many new features implemented to deliver faster
support to clients. Almost a full year later the Ava Why Call-Backs?
concierge was introduced. Ava provides a menu
of the most used web features, tools and content. • Eliminate hold time
Today about 50% of their customer initiated
contact come through this chat interface.
• Reduce abandon rates
We also spoke of how closely the changes
Runda is making to Avaya Client Services parallel • Lower cost-per-call
the trends seen in the industry and their recently
published “The Top 7 Communication Trends of
2014 (Mid-Year Scorecard).” You can read it at • Improve experience
tinyurl.com/q3njdca.
Finally we spoke of future changes that Runda
is working on. These include supporting and interfacing with more device types (e.g. support
for BYOD) and going mobile with video;
improving their emergency response time (two
years ago 85% of customer outages were being
resolved within 4 hours now 85% are resolved
within 2 hours); new software tools are being
given to the customer base. These are the same
tools used by Avaya’s technical support staff,
thus allowing customers to often resolve issues
themselves.
Looking back at our initial conversation in
2011, it’s clear to me that Runda is fulfilling the
promises he made and continuing to improve Learn more at fonolo.com or call 1.855.366.2500
Avaya’s customer service.
Obviously this summation can’t cover all the
nuances or details of the full podcast. Go to
tinyurl.com/opjmp8f to hear it all. TR

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