Further to our recent post describing the development of the first concept Customer Services application on the iPhone we are pleased to continue our exploration of this theme with a video of the application in action.

Anana will be showcasing a version of this application at the premier Call Centre Expo in London next week. Please pop by and ask to see it in action in real-time. We’ll be able to show both Customer Services Representative as well as the Customer Experience from the same place at the show.

For best results make the player below fullscreen and select the HD Mode On format for the video.

Introduction

Today, we are looking at eServices Social Media and Social Engagement Interactions. This operational Customer Services Solution is deployed in the Anana Briefing Centre and is powered completely by Genesys Telecommunications Labs Customer Interaction Management Platform. This post features a detailed video walk through of Genesys 8.1 solution as integrated and demonstrated by Anana for the Facebook channel.

Some key notes about this demonstration

• The recording was filmed in real-time. Therefore latencies and interaction speeds have not been adapted, edited or ammended
• The Genesys Agent Desktop was connected remotely do the Genesys installation via a slow VPN connection; and is not representative of a typical Enterprise deployment
• All features and functions explored are standard and native Genesys 8.1, Out of the Box, without adaptation or change
• The is no narrative to the recording. Guidance is provided in text overlays. Please watch for them carefully
• Please start the video, and then select the fullscreen option for the best experience. Their is a lot of information in the interface, and you won’t see it if it remains thumbnailed. Also 720 HD version has been preselected for you for obvious reasons!
• If you like this video, and would like us to prepare more, then please let us know using the comments option at the bottom of this post
• The ABC Anana (Anana Briefing Centre) is configured to capture Facebook Interactions via the eServices Social Media Server using the default Genesys Routing and Engagement Strategy. It does require that consumers specifically target the Company Facebook Page account which you can find here. This is important because the demonstration clearly indicates that we have configured our solution to LISTEN to what is being said ABOUT US as well as what is said directly TO us.
• For those not yet familiar with the ABC_ANANA (ABC Company); it is a fictitious enterprise that we use in the Anana Briefing Centre as the modelled Contact Centre instance for demonstration and workshop purposes only. It is not a real company, whereas Anana Ltd is! Please do not approach the ABC Company seeking employment or to buy products or services! (You’ll be amazed!)
• The video assumes that the Enterprise has embraced a full Voice and eServices blended cross-channel communications strategy. Perhaps when you watch the video you will see why this makes sense

Now, please sit back, and enjoy the video of Genesys and Anana in action in Social Engagement with Customers via Facebook.

Introduction

In reaction to popular demand we’ve taken a few moments to record a walk-through demonstration that shows the Customer Services Representative and Customer Experience in an interaction conducted via Social Engagement. In this case, it is a Twitter interaction.  This operational Customer Services Solution is deployed in the Anana Briefing Centre and is powered completely by Genesys Telecommunications Labs Customer Interaction Management Platform.

Some key notes about this demonstration

• The recording was filmed in real-time. Therefore latencies and interaction speeds have not been adapted, edited or ammended
• The Genesys Agent Desktop was connected remotely do the Genesys installation via a slow VPN connection; and is not representative of a typical Enterprise deployment
• All features and functions explored are standard and native Genesys 8.1, Out of the Box, without adaptation or change with the exception of Klout Social Influence scoring which is a custom extension to the routing strategy created by Anana
• The is no narrative to the recording. Guidance is provided in text overlays. Please watch for them carefully
• Please start the video, and then select the fullscreen option for the best experience.  Their is a lot of information in the interface, and you won’t see it if it remains thumbnailed. Also 720 HD version has been preselected for you for obvious reasons!
• If you like this video, and would like us to prepare more, then please let us know using the comments option at the bottom of this post
• The ABC Anana (Anana Briefing Centre) is configured to capture Tweets via the eServices Social Media Server using specific search for abc_anana anywhere in a tweet. It does not require that consumers specifically target the Company Twitter account @abc_anana. This is important because the demonstration clearly indicates that we have configured our solution to LISTEN to what is being said ABOUT US as well as what is said directly TO us.
• For those not yet familiar with the ABC_ANANA (ABC Company); it is a fictitious enterprise that we use in the Anana Briefing Centre as the modelled Contact Centre instance for demonstration and workshop purposes only.  It is not a real company, whereas Anana Ltd is! Please do not approach the ABC Company seeking employment or to buy products or services! (You’ll be amazed!)
• The video assumes that the Enterprise has embraced a full Voice and eServices blended cross-channel communications strategy. Perhaps when you watch the video you will see why this makes sense

Now, please sit back, and enjoy the video of Genesys and Anana in action in Social Engagement with Customers via Twitter.

We had the pleasure of hosting a large scale demonstration and briefing of the Genesys 8 Customer Interaction Management Platform to approximately 35 delegates yesterday. A very hectic, busy, noisy and fun day indeed.  The briefing featured a full review of;

• Genesys Inbound Voice on SIP Server with IP endpoints
• Skills Group – Customer Care, Sales, Accounts & Billing and Customer Support CSR skill teams
• Genesys chat – live customer service Chat Interaction Management (Genesys Web Chat)
• Genesys Agent to Agent instant messaging (IM)
• Genesys Email Interaction

We had intended to demonstrate a range of contact centre scenario’s, but by the time we’d described how a call is placed into the call centre with all of the interactions between the SIP Server, Universal Routing Server (URS), Statistics Server (Stat Server) and the new Genesys Media Server (Stream Manager replacement) to do something simple like play an announcment which is time sensitive, e.g. Good Morning, Good Afternoon etc, we found the briefing taking its own direction; driven by active and engaged interaction with our client who immediately bombarded our team with hundreds of questions, immediately trying out what had just been learned and explored.

It was powerfully effectve to show and explore how Genesys CCPulse, Stat-Server, Infomart and Genesys Advisor alongside statistics and performance tools inherent to the Genesys Agent Desktop (GAD) and Interaction Workspace all worked together to provide a total and complete view of operational performance.  Especially impressive was making changes to routing, skills and queues (applications) in real-time and observing the impact immediately on how the call centre performed.

I think the client especially enjoyed seeing the ultimate change in the modern call centre.  They are, after all, typically associated with the engaged and deliberate management of inbound telephone calls and outbound telephone calls.  What is newer, is embracing any media or any inbound channel with the vehemence and rigour of telephones; but now applied to instant messaging, email, web-chat and voice, not as conversations, but as interactions!  It suddenly became clear to most why Genesys calls this the “Customer Interaction Management Platform” because it is all about managing Interactions; not just telephone conversations!

We also had a breakout discovering Alcatel-Lucent Unified Communications Suite, MyTeamwork and the brand new IC Phone!  Very cool stuff!

Anana and Alcatel-Lucent Team for “Applications Enablement” and the “High Leverage Network”

For the last year or so Anana has been actively exploring the theme of “Applications Enablement” within our partnership with Alcatel-Lucent.  We have been very busy already in creating new applications and capabilities by mixing technologies across the Alcatel-Lucent portfolio with Anana innovation; creating new products and solutions on the way.  For example;

Social-Media enabled Voice Messaging – its4u
A marriage of the Alcatel-Lucent Converged Messaging System (CMS), the 5100, Messaging Applications Broker (MAB), the 5150, Genesys Voice Platform (Alcatel-Lucent Enteprise) and Anana Speech Applications Framework.  The result; a cool new voice-user experience for voice-messaging and voice-mail! (See here for more details)

Generic Voice Messaging Applications Solutions
In the process of exploring Voice User Interfaces and Graphical User Interfaces for Unified Communications in voice messaging we also received many invitations to team with Alcatel-Lucent and its Carrier Teams to enhance existing Voice Messaging experiences in many markets around the world.  Some of the other mashup’s we’ve conducted here include the linking of the Anana Speech Application Framework, with Web Services and the Alcatel-Lucent Subscriber Data Manager (SDM), the 8650 and the Data Grid Suite (8660 and 8661).  This unifies the management and exposure of messaging applications, subscribers, profiles, OSS, and Unified Comms through Subscriber Data Manager.  Why is this so cool?  Well, for a start, it provides the Carrier with the most flexible and innovative voice mail solution; whilst at the same time making the application, features and capabilities available to any 3rd party application developer! This is “Applications Enablement” in Action!

4G-LTE HD VideoIVR and VisualIVR
Anana worked with Alcatel-Lucent to marry the capabilities of the Genesys Voice Platform (the worlds best IVR platform, don’t believe me, believe Garnter, who cite it recently for the 7th year running as the best IVR platform in the world!) with 4G-LTE. Anana created a high definition VideoIVR application which Alcatel-Lucent 4G teams use in “Innovations Days”, demonstrations, and Trials.  An example of one of these applications is available on our main website here if you’d like to see it!!

Alcatel-Lucent IMS Applications Enablement
Anana has been exploring “Applications Enablement” with a broad-exploration of themes to express Anana Applications Framework alongside the Alcatel-Lucent Converged Telephony Server (CTS – 5420) and its range of SDK’s and API’s.  These SDK’s and API’s have proven themselves extremely interesting in allowing a huge range of fantastic “Applications” and “Capabilities” on the IP Multimedia Subsystem network.  Anana worked for several weeks with Alcatel-Lucents IMS Ecosystem team to whittle down 24 applications innovation idea’s into a range of 7 ENHANCED SERVICES applications that really light-up the IMS core under the theme of “Unified Communications” ; all applications idea’s we created together bring together the capability set of Alcatel-Lucents IMS in a BOX capability with a rich Voice User Experience, a very broad Graphical User Experience whilst totally unified to the “Telephony User Interface”.  In other words; GUI+VUI+TUI=Killer Apps!

Back to the theme of this post!  As a result of these activities Anana just received a formal invitation to support Alcatel-Lucent at an IMS Customer Roundtable at the IMS World Forum, Barcelona in April.  Anana is one of of a small select group of Applications Enablement Partners that have been invited by the ALU IMS Ecosystem team to assist in stimulating discussion and debate on the “role for IMS beyond initial fixed broadband voice deployments”.  I bet you are dying to know what the 7 key application templates are that Anana is working with Alcatel-Lucent on!  I’ll tell you later on when the entire momentum of our IMS activities become less “sensitive”!!  A hint of an example is;  Unifying Enterprise Collaboration Software such as Microsoft Exchange/Outlook/Collaboration with the IMS core and Speech Recognition for application capabilities like “Click to Call from a contact in a local address book – click on the contact in the email or the contacts and your phone will start ringing, when you answer the network has dialled the target number for you with other cool features like ‘instant easy conferencing with or without video” …… [Thats just one of the minor features of the Anana Application Framework and I'm not going to tell you anymore at the moment!!]

Summary
Applications Enablement and the High Leverage Network are real!  I spent a couple of years whilst working at Alcatel-Lucent across the Applications Software Group (ASG) and the Enterprise Division (with Genesys and Motive) on marrying together idea’s, concepts and capabilities with Alcatel-Lucents rich portfolio of solutions. I really enjoyed doing that!  I’m having even more fun now doing it on the Partner side of the equation.  Stop talking about what can be done; and just GO DO IT!!