Genesys (News - Alert) Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company, has announced software that significantly improves the customer experience through the alignment of self- and assisted-service and integrating voice across all customer service environments through open standards.

The Genesys Voice Platform (GVP) 8 is considered by the company as marking a major new release of Genesys’ software platform for interactive voice response (IVR).

 

VP 8 is considered to be significant as it acts as an integrated platform that ends the standalone nature of voice self-service. It offers tight integration with both Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) and the intelligent Customer Front Door (iCFD) solutions from Genesys and its partners.

The iCFD offers an industry-wide initiative designed to transform the experience for customers entering the “telephone front door” of enterprises and break down self-service as a silo by leveraging key applications and business rules. 

GVP 8 is designed to further leverage voice in customer service through the tight integration with key technologies such as SIP, Web integration, and voice security software. It also provides a single development environment for contact centers that use the Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) platform.

"GVP is a very important element of our overall strategy because it brings to the forefront the convergence of all the technologies that touch customer service,” said Paul Segre (News - Alert), president and CEO, Genesys.

“Along with our CIM platform, GVP has led the transformation away from silos and 'point solutions' towards a more holistic approach to customer care,” added Segre.

"In the present 'down economy' we're not seeing companies abandon customer service to focus on cost containment. Instead we're seeing companies invest in technologies that help to lower costs, but also improve customer service and personalization -- either in self assistance, live assistance or both," said Drew Kraus, research vice president, Gartner.

"We're seeing an increased investment in newer generation software-based IVRs that integrate much more tightly to both customer data in CRM software packages as well as to real-time contact queuing and routing engines,” explained Kraus.

Several leading industry experts commented on the significance of GVP 8 as an indicator of important industry trends:

"Genesys has succeeded in combining its scale assets and partnerships to create and amplify the value of its GVP 8 platform," said Daniel Hong, lead analyst of customer interaction technologies, Datamonitor.

"GVP 8 is an integrated software layer that leverages the large investment and focus enterprises have put into CRM, the web and business rules engines over the past several years. What's interesting is that Genesys is leading with innovative applications and partnerships in its release of GVP 8 rather than the usual vendor messaging around new features and functions,” Hong stated.

"Today's customer-focused enterprises look for technology platform providers who work well with partners and support rapid deployment in multi-vendor environments," added Dan Miller (News - Alert), senior analyst, Opus Research. "Genesys successfully knit together the partner-friendly attributes of two leading voice platforms, and attracted an 'A' list of application developers and integrators."

Some of the key features of GVP 8 include: a built-in integration for the intelligent Customer Front Door; support of mature open standards of a voice self-service platform; built-in SIP support; multi-tenancy for large enterprises and service providers; Integrated Development Environment “Composer”; and a common platform for both GVP and Voice Genie customers.

Genesys has built a strong reputation by understanding the customer/company interaction from the inside out. The company understands the challenges that the organization faces in trying to deliver a better experience for the customer while also managing increasing call volumes and tightening of budgets.

 

Genesys also understands the customer and what it takes to ensure that his or her perception of a company is strong. By building on this knowledge and its telecommunications expertise, the company has once again developed a solution that meets a tremendous need and therefore will see a significant demand.