With the maturity of the outsourcing services and increasing complexity of customer demands, it is becoming imperative for the contact centres to have a fail proof infrastructure set up that can ensure maximum uptime. More than ever a customer's relationship with a vendor is depended upon his or her experience with the contact centre.  Which in turn affects the service provider and client relationship.

In this scenario having a strong customer contact centre solution becomes a necessity. Added to that is the stress on contact centres on becoming self-sustained profit centres. To address that growing need amongst the Indian contact centres, Aspect Software has launched its Aspect Unified Solution for the Indian contact centre and BPO companies.

Talking about the key needs of a contact centre, Steve Michaud, Vice President, Asia Pacific and Middle East, Aspect Software says, "The basic requirements of the call centre whether it is in the domestic or international remains the same. To become a successful contact centres, the infrastructure should be in place along with other integrated solutions. But it is a highly complex task. Aspect's pioneering Unified IP contact centre solution delivers a comprehensive, multi channel solution. It provides a complete gamut of integrated solutions combined in one unified format. Thus simplifies the task of setting up a robust infrastructure."

Talking about the key driver towards unified set up, Michaud explains that there is a movement away from integrated solutions towards more unified/centralised systems. "Custom integrated solutions are cost -prohibitive, labour-intensive and potentially very time consuming whereas a unified solution provides increased flexibility to adjust to rapidly changing needs, reduces complexity and cost, thus enhancing a overall better customer experience," he adds.

According to him, this trend for unified contact centre solutions is expected to rise by 25 percent per annum in the domestic market. Giving the sales figures to prove his point, Michaud says, "Even our cross Asia-Pacific earning sales is 85 percent from the unified solutions and 15 per cent from the integrated solutions."

Balancing customer needs and bottomline

Today to have a successful contact centre, the service providers need to ensure that each of customer interaction lifecycle phases have more than satisfactory results. And that is what Aspect's contact centre solutions work at.

Its Unified Product brings new functionality to provide contact centers with greater choice and control. This solution helps in uniting multiple capabilities for contact centres including automatic call distribution (ACD), predictive dialing, voice portal capabilities, Internet contact via email or chat, under single platform. Talking about the USP of the new solution, Michaud says, "Aspect Unified solution is unique in its understanding of what consumers want from contact centre interactions and hence offers the advantage to the customers to not only put in what they need today but also the comfort of what they might need tomorrow."

That's not all if a contact centre already has a robust infrastructure and seeks to enhance just one part of its delivery mechanism then, Aspect offers that option to its clients. "In fact we focus on creating solutions that enable our customers to meet key business objectives," says Michaud.

To enable its contact centre clients meet customer demands and enhance revenues, the solutions are such designed that allows the companies to monitor agent performance, customer satisfaction levels, create single set of business rules, flexibility for the end users to choose mode of service. To better operating costs, the solutions from Aspect also help in driving the customers to most cost effective channels and reduce inbound interaction and adjust service levels depending on the volume of work, seasonal and promotional driven jobs.

According to Michaud, Aspect focuses on providing products and services for customer care, sales, telemarketing and collections etc. "There is no distinction segment wise and hence the product is useful across all industry verticals. The solutions can be customized depending on the specific requirements of the contact center. It delivers a complete solution at lower cost and better functionality. Aspect Unified IP satisfies the varying requirements of the smallest contact centre all the way up to the largest enterprise contact center thus enabling the organizations to unlock and utilize functionality as their business demands," he explains

Complete customer support

To have an impeccable set up means impeccable customer support systems. That is what Aspect offers to its contact centre and BPO clients through its Aspect Global Services. Some of its key services to its customers include Aspect Professional Services, Aspect Technical Services, Aspect Education Services and Aspect Partnership Serve.

"Most of the sales is done indirectly and the after sales support is also provided by the local vendors for it becomes easier for them to assess the problem and trouble shoot accordingly. For them we have the Aspect Partnership Serve that supports our channel partners support their clients", explains Michaud. In fact the company plans to tie up with new partners for the sales of the product in the domestic market. The company also plans to expand in the domestic market by targeting the tier -I and tier -II cities first. Michaud asserted, "We are established in the international market and eight among the top ten Indian Outsourcer make use of the Aspect solutions for their services in the call center. We are investing heavily in the Indian contact centre market for better prospects and sales."

Headquartered in Chelmsford, Mass., Aspect Software has operations across the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Internationally Aspect is in alliance with Citibank, GE, HSBC among others, and in the domestic arena their solutions are used by Zenta, Air Deccan, ICICI to name a few.