TelCentris, Altitude Partner on Hosted Call Center Solution
Together, the companies are offering a hosted contact center solution via TelCentris cloud-based VoIP/UC platform.
Altitude Software and TelCentris Inc. yesterday announced a partnership to offer Altitudes contact center solution as a hosted service via TelCentris Unified Communications Service Delivery Platform. The new offering is designed to provide customers with a complete, integrated solution for both inbound and outbound contact centers.
TelCentris, perhaps best known for its VoxOx software, is comprised of three separate divisionsconsumer (primarily focused on VoxOx); business, offering hosted IP PBX and the new contact center solution; and wholesale.
Perry King, TelCentris senior product manager of business services, says the flexibility of the companys Service Delivery Platform was key to enabling the new partnership with Altitude. "It allowed us to quickly and easily bolt this contact center application onto our hosted platform to provide a fully hosted solution," he says.
TelCentris CTO and co-founder Kevin Hertz says his company evaluated a variety of contact center software providers before settling on Altitude. "Altitude was the one that we found we interoperated with most easily and also provided the widest breadth of featureseverything from outbound predictive dialing to very advanced inbound ACD/IVR menus and even things like advanced reporting," he says.
The result, King says, is a more user-friendly experience for customers. "Weve taken the Altitude on-site, on-premise application and integrated it into our hosted IP PBX product, so were able to provide this single solution for contact centers, while you typically would have to go out and purchase multiple components in order to get this type of solution," he says.
One of the key benefits of a fully hosted solution, King says, is the fact that the service can scale to meet the needs of just about any business. "It could be a small, five-person customer service departmentwe can provide that type of basic ACD functionalityall the way up to an enterprise-class contact center in different geographical locations, all tied together through our hosted environment," he says.
And nothings set in stone. "[Instead of] buying the licensing fees for 500 agents in order to ramp up for Christmas, for example, when during the rest of the year you dont need to have 500 agents with our licensing and our structure, we can actually make the adjustment based upon seasonal activity," King says. "Thats a big advantage for call centers."
Whats more, Hertz notes, any needed adjustments to the service can be handled instantly. "Because our system is completely cloud-based, it allows us to make changes rapidly without deploying any additional hardware to a customers site," he says. "So for example, if a customer wanted to go from 5 to 500 agents, thats something that we could do remotely, and it could happen with the flip of a switch."
The service can work with desk phones or softphones (or both), and can support inbound agents, outbound agents, and blended agents simultaneously. "If you have somebody that needs to make outbound predictive dialing types of calls as well as receiving inbound calls, you have that type of flexibility with our platform," King says.
Pricing for the call center solution varies depending on a variety of factors, King says, including the need for desk phones versus softphones, as well as the choice of various supervisory modules and reporting options. "Were going to be aggressive on pricing in order to expand our market share and clearly introduce this product and our fully hosted solution to the market," he says.
Ultimately, King says, the key differentiator for the solution is the fact that TelCentris is now able to serve as a one-stop shop for all of a customers needs. "You can get your call center application, your IP PBX platform, even broadband services so you can meet with the TelCentris reps and walk away feeling very comfortable that you have everything thats needed," he says.
And while the new solution is available immediately, King says the company has more integration, more functionality and additional branding of the offering planned for early 2010the announcement this week, he says, was just the first step. "But we do have multiple customers running it in call centers, and in some geographically dispersed call centers so it is active and available now," he says.