Kirkland, WA — May 19, 2003 — Customer service solutions provider Talisma today announced at its global customer conference in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., the fifth generation of its customer service management (CSM) suite. The company said its WebCenter 5.0 features the only fully integrated platform for managing cross-channel customer interactions including real-time chat, collaboration and instant messaging.
Dan Vetras, CEO, Talisma Corp., said companies are looking for ways to manage the rising demand for comprehensive customer support solutions and services. "Our vision is to transition customer service into a strategic advantage for an organization with integrated multi-channel communications while reducing the overall costs of delivering superior service."
According to Talisma, the upgraded suite is the first customer service solution to turn enterprises' service centers into profit centers by integrating pre- and post-sales customer information, knowledge management and reporting. The changes to the suite are expected to shift users' approach to customer service by enabling them to transition from high-cost telephony-only interactions to web-driven collaborative customer service.
"Companies today are driving toward technology-enabled strategies to support their evolving customer service strategies," declared Esteban Kolosky, principal analyst, Gartner Inc. "Enterprises worldwide will begin planning for the next step in customer service and support, which is the creation of an integrated customer interaction framework, or hub, that provides a real-time view of the customer across channels to all relevant customer-facing employees."
Talisma said WebCenter enables multi-contact queuing, routing, management and threaded interactions that provide agents with a view of all customer communications within a single Outlook-style window. In addition, the foundation offers automated logging per single point of entry.
"There are many significant functional enhancements in WebCenter 5.0. We are most excited about the ability to access enterprise-wide customer and prospect data from multiple data sources into a "Custom Workspace", said Tarun Pandey, manager applications, Aviva Life Insurance Co. India Pvt. Ltd. "This allows us to create a 360-degree view of customers and prospects while greatly enhancing our sales team's productivity. The module integration and system integrity features ensure data accuracy and validity so we can conduct compelling up-sell and cross-sell marketing campaigns."
According to IDC Research, businesses will spend over $76 billion on e-customer service by 2005. The Gartner Group expects 70 percent of all call centers to have Internet integration by 2007 and Jupiter Media Metrix expects 67 million people to use chat for service in 2005.
Talisma WebCenter 5.0 is available immediately, according to the provider.
