Avaya Aura Contact Center 6.2 Goes Social

By Barry Levine http://www.newsfactor.com

In an effort to provide better customer sales and service experiences in a multimedia world, Avaya has released Aura Contact Center 6.2. The new Avaya Aura Contact Center suite includes capabilities for collaboration with experts, an expanded integration of social media, and an improved scalability. Experts say the socialization of CRM is inevitable.


Customer relationship management is going social. Avaya is helping to reinvent customer Relevant Products/Services relationship management in its newly released Aura Contact Center 6.2, with tools to improve customer service using social media and other new channels.

The new Avaya Aura Contact Center suite includes capabilities for collaboration with experts, an expanded integration Relevant Products/Services of social media, and an improved scalability.

Evolution into 'Transmedia'

Onkar Birk, general manager of the Avaya contact center Relevant Products/Services division, says "today's consumers use many more modes of communication -- e-mail, text, video Relevant Products/Services and social media." Birk said that these media will evolve into a "transmedia," where there is a seamless transfer of information across channels of communication, and "companies must effectively integrate all of these modes for consistency."

Avaya pointed out that 40 percent of consumers prefer alternative methods of contact for customer service, such as e-mail, chat or text.

To address this need, Avaya's new Aura Contact Center provides customer account history to "the right agent" in a real-time collaboration session. The company noted that this arrangement "reduces a customer's need to repeat information and increases first contact resolution," which can improve customer satisfaction, help to create a differentiated service, and increase revenue.

When a customer is engaged in the new Avaya environment, an agent's portal shows relevant experts who can assist or handle the inquiry, and the experts' availability. Managers can then create groups of experts, or access them one by one, to solve a problem. Agents can also communicate with customers through relevant Twitter tweets and Facebook updates, using the Avaya Social Media Manager.

'Socialization of CRM Relevant Products/Services Apps'

The Social Media Manager allows for automated scanning of social media content and analysis of the content for relevance. There is also "sentiment tracking," which assigns a score to such social media communications as tweets, allowing trends to be identified in real time. The Manager can supply suggested responses, while taking the topic and customer history into consideration.

The Aura Experience Portal leverages the automated services features in the platform, so that, for instance, customer self-service sessions can be seamlessly handed off to live or automated agents, avoiding the need for the customer to repeat the query.

Additionally, the Experience Portal can be deployed via multiple virtual Relevant Products/Services servers, and an Orchestration Designer component enables faster application development of media self-service apps using web technology.

Brad Shimmin, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said that "socialization of CRM apps can solve problems before you can think of them." He added that this is because of the increased efficiency in detecting issues, trends and hidden problems.

E-mail and voice Relevant Products/Services mail communications from the customer, Shimmin noted, put the burden of explanation on the customer, who may walk away if they are not successful in describing their problem. But real-time conversations can help lessen that burden.

Shimmin said the integration of social media into contact center technology is part of the larger trend of using such tools throughout the enterprise Relevant Products/Services. In fact, he said, at some point they will likely "become so ubiquitous, people won't even refer" to social media tools as separate features.