In today’s highly competitive commercial markets customer relations is one of the most critical factors for the success of a business. All of us know what it’s like to receive a poor service. It’s an experience we rarely forgot and are reluctant to repeat. Altitude’s uCI (Unified Customer Interaction) provides a solution that aims to streamline communication channels and radically improve customer service levels.
Call centres have often relied on multiple systems to handle customer contacts and relationships which result in a collection of disparate products with little or no interaction between them. uCI provides a complete solution that integrates all components into a single modular product that can be customised to suit business requirements.
At its foundation is the Assisted Server which supports Windows Server, Linux and Unix systems and provides centralised management of all uCI components. A key feature of uCI is that every module is already resident within the Assisted Server and can be activated simply by applying licenses. The Assisted Server provides a centralised management platform from where all components and reporting tools can be easily accessed.
The uSupervisor management interface provides a wealth of real time views on call centre activity. Graphs and charts make it easy to see the outcome of calls, the number of calls waiting and operational performance. A smart map view shows the physical location of each agent’s desk whilst icons for each one reveal what their current status is and whether they are actually present at their desk.
uCI handles all contact management and for inbound communications this covers functions such as telephony services, email, web collaboration and SMS. For inbound communications such as phone calls, the Assisted Server identifies callers by their number, performs intelligent routing decisions based on its contact database and relays the caller to the agent best equipped to deal with them. This feature applies equally to inbound emails, SMS and even faxes. The agent is then automatically presented with the most appropriate interface and tools to deal efficiently with that customer.
Altitude’s Scripting Studio is used to create custom interfaces for each component of uCI. In many cases, agents will require multiple interfaces and applications to deal with a request and uCI ensures that these are made available from a single interface when dealing with the customer. For outbound call handling uCI provides its unified dialler software. Agent initiated calls are made directly from their interface but more importantly, the Assisted Server can manage the process of outbound calls based on a range of criteria. For example, if it sees agents are not busy, it can initiate service calls for them to deal with automatically. OFCOM regulations on outbound call handling are now very strict and uCI can ensure full compliance.
The agent interface is customised for each company’s requirements so there’s no limit to what you can present to the user in order to help them do their job more efficiently. For existing CRM solutions such as those from Microsoft, Siebel and Salesforce.com, Altitude provides snap-in modules allowing the agent interface to be integrated into these applications. For IP telephony services, uCI can integrate with existing premises equipment from vendors such as Avaya, Cisco and Nortel or Altitude can provide its own vBox solution which offers a more cost-effective alternative for deploying VoIP within a business.
Altitude’s uCI clearly has the capability to drastically improve customer relations and its modular design allows it to be easily customised to fit into any business model. Its centralised management, reporting and monitoring functions are very impressive and it works particularly well where management, central services and agent locations are all geographically distributed. NC

Product: uCI 7.5
Supplier: Altitude Software
Tel: 01189 838 010
Web site: www.altitude.com