This Week in Telecom: July 21st

This Week in Telecom is a weekly news round-up on VoipReview.org that aims to give our readers a fast and easy way to catch up on the latest news and top stories that are trending in the voice and telecommunications space. Check in each and every Friday to find out more about stories you may have missed in regards to new companies, mergers, trends, and other telecom advancements.

Let’s take a look at some stories you may have missed this week:

West Introduces Visual Voice Solution

West Corporation, a trusted provider of communication and network infrastructure solutions to organizations worldwide, aims to help companies provide a better self-service experience for their customers with the release of its Visual Voice solution. Unlike traditional IVR, West’s Visual Voice offers an easier way for customers to interact by combining IVR, SMS, and mobile web. It lets customers use their smartphones or any mobile device to read text messages, compose responses, and explore intuitive visuals while still in the IVR.

In a release, Dan Gordon, SVP of Strategy & Development for Interactive Services at West, said that Visual Voice lets customers self-serve in a more natural, personalized manner through visual processing. “This improves the end-customers’ comprehension throughout the transaction and perception of their overall experience, as well as business operations, data quality and service results,” said Gordon.

For more information on how West’s Visual Voice solution can help businesses empower customers to accomplish more, visit West’s website.

i-Comm Connect and 1stPoint Communications Team Up

i-Comm Connect, a leading WebRTC Developer and Software as a Service Provider, recently announced its strategic partnership with 1stPoint Communications, a New Jersey-based full-service telecommunications carrier. The latest partnership enables 1stPoint to resell TACTAL, i-Comm's patented cloud-based, real-time communications platform, to its enterprise client base and small-to-medium business customers through its WebSite Source (“WSS”) business unit.

TACTAL is i-Comm Connect’s flagship product that offers a competitive advantage for companies by allowing them to easily and securely embed a call button (using two lines of HTML5 code) on their website or mobile app. Once a customer clicks on the button, they can instantly instantly initiate a VoIP call from their browser to a company--no need to leave the website or mobile app.

Erik Levitt, 1stPoint’s CEO, said in a release that i-Comm’s patented software gives their customers a simpler and easier way to interact with their prospects and clients, which helps create new sources of sales and revenue. Kevin Mahaney, i-Comm’s CEO, also expressed his excitement over their newest partnership saying, “We are very pleased to have 1stPoint join us as a strategic partner and are confident their customers will immediately see the benefits of TACTAL. 1stPoint has a strong reputation for delivering UC solutions to the business community, and now with TACTAL, they are positioned to open up new areas of growth, increase ARPU, and provide greater value to their growing customer base.”

For more information on their latest partnership, please visit i-Comm Connect’s or 1stPoint Communication’s website.

Enghouse Interactive Introduces Communications Center 10.0

Trusted customer contact solutions and services provider Enghouse Interactive recently announced the latest version of their award-winning contact center platform, Communications Center 10.0. Packed with new functionality and enhanced integrations, the updated contact center application helps agents deliver an optimal omni-channel customer experience.

Some of the enhancements users can expect from CC v10 are its tighter portfolio integration through TouchPoint, intelligent SMS routing and integration, task and activity queuing, and support for Office 365 Federated Agents. “CC 10.0 delivers a tighter than ever portfolio integration through TouchPoint, allowing for seamless switching between interaction handling, quality management and workforce scheduling,” said John Cray, Vice President of Product Management at Enghouse Interactive. “Updates to Communications Center reflect our commitment to agent empowerment and providing organizations with the choice and control they need to extract maximum value from contact center operations,” added Cray.

Learn more about Communications Center version 10.0 on Enghouse Interactive’s website.

8x8 Adds New Features to its Virtual Contact Center Solution

With customer experience becoming the new battlefield for brands, contact centers now more than ever need to be equipped with the right knowledge and tools to help improve the overall customer experience. 8x8, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT), the world's first Communications Cloud provider, recognizes such challenge. Thus, they have enhanced the 8x8 Virtual Contact Center® (VCC) solution by adding new, exciting features: Customer Experience Analytics and Post Call Survey.

Announced on Wednesday, the new 8x8 Virtual Contact Center capabilities are ideal for mid-size and enterprise companies who would like to step up their contact center performance and achieve greater productivity, collaboration, and customer engagement. The new features allow contact center agents and supervisors to easily locate specific customer interaction types via advanced search, view graphical depiction of call flows, see detailed IVR metrics, and perform post-call surveys to better understand customer experience and ensure satisfaction.

In addition to these new features, 8x8 also launched the new version of the 8x8 Quality Management™ solution. The new version includes a host of exciting features, such as intuitive collaboration via mentions, scorecards, built-in help menus, and slide-out user interface. Learn more about 8x8’s contact center portfolio by visiting 8x8’s website.