Contact Center Platform Enhances Customer Interaction

CosmoCom has upgraded its IP-based contact center software platform to version 5.

Called CosmoCall Universe (CCU), the system has been enhanced to address multiple contact center channels in a unified fashion, Steve Kowarsky, executive vice president of CosmoCom, told CRM Buyer. It also improved functionality in several categories ranging from e-mail to reporting.

Video Capabilities

Another area that the company tweaked was its video self service capabilities. This admittedly niche feature will soon become a required function for contact centers, according to Kowarsky.

Currently, CosmoCall offers video services for the hearing impaired. The service provides sign language interpreters to facilitate conversations.

Soon, though, Kowarsky envisions applications for the general population. "Let's say you have a video cell phone from Sprint (NYSE: S) and want to call customer service with a question. The customer is going to expect to be able to see with whom he is dealing," he explained.

The company's current limited deployment is providing valuable experience for when video does become ubiquitous in the call center, Kowarsky said.

For instance, the company found out that most video devices are not mature enough to negotiate the various video protocols. Enhancements to this application allow the user to override this negotiation. "We want to make sure we can communicate with the widest variety of devices. That is particularly important in an automatic IVVR (Interactive Voice and Video Response) application," he noted.

Several Upgrades

All together there were five areas CosmoCall enhanced in this upgrade. Besides video calling, the company also redesigned the e-mail and voice mail interface, and added new call transfer, security features and reporting features.

New distributing and redistributing customer interaction tools allow agents to transfer, conference, or place consultation calls to specific self-service applications, to different queues and to post-call surveys.

Version 5 has also enhanced access to CDR (call detail reports). Two portals -- CDR Portal and IVR Portal -- provide drill down reporting capabilities.

New e-mail features include the following:

• U or Q reply control, which allow agents to specify the "from" address of the reply using a context-sensitive list of possible senders;
• Automatic message history tracking, which provides agents with access to all previous messages in the current thread, even if they are not quoted in the current message;
• Advanced message scripting to support automatic e-mail replies and message routing; and
• One-click callback to e-mail and voice mail messages for an immediate live response.