LOS ANGELES, Calif., April 5, 2000 - Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced at Spring Internet World 2000 (Booth # 5210) that its award-winning Cisco Customer Interaction Suite has been chosen by leading companies to increase the retention and value of their customer relationships. Representing a broad range of industries, some of these new Cisco Customer Interaction Suite customers include AFFINA - The Customer Relationship Company, eBeauty, InsWeb, InsureZone, LiveInsurance.com, Logowire Inc., SafeHarbor.com, and West TeleServices Corporation.
Additionally, Witness Systems, Inc. has embraced Cisco software by integrating its software solutions with the Cisco Customer Interaction Suite to support businesses as they strive to perfect management of multimedia customer interactions.
According to Jupiter Communications, customer satisfaction with online shopping has been steadily dropping, from a high of 88% in July 1998 to just 62% one year later. This is due to the fact that as the Internet population grows, online consumers are on average becoming more mainstream and therefore less tolerant of site problems, order and fulfillment errors, poor site navigation and unresponsive customer service. To meet the needs of this new breed of customers, commerce players must tie sales representatives into online commerce initiatives to develop more loyal customers and must encourage account and sales representatives to use the Web to increase productivity.
To this end, Cisco customers recognize that they must deploy multi-channel customer service solutions that enable their end users in turn to receive answers to questions in a prompt and effective manner, regardless of whether the request for interaction is initiated via email, phone, or the Web. Blending the personal touch of human capital with the rich information value of the Web enables businesses to fully utilize all of their assets in an integrated way to best serve the customer.
Technology providers are also using Cisco software to strengthen customer reach and intimacy. Witness Systems, Inc., a leading provider of recording and analysis software that enables companies to enhance customer interactions across multiple communications media, has integrated its eQuality suite with the Cisco Collaboration Server to record and manage Web chat communications, capturing the entire agent-customer experience as it occurs. Its eQuality Interactive application records customer interactions, allowing businesses to analyze the effectiveness of collaborative chat sessions.
The Witness solution integrates with Cisco Collaboration Server for sharing Web pages, scripts, text chat and more. By recording the quality of Web chat communications, management teams can help coach agents to improve performance, direct customer inquiries to the most skilled agents, and refine Web-based sales and service processes for enhanced delivery.
"Successful online commerce requires that companies focus on customer acquisition and retention," said Dan Keshian, vice president and general manager, Customer Contact Business Unit, Cisco's Applications Technology Group. "Cisco's customers and technology providers represent the top performers in Web-based customer service and understand that implementing Web collaboration and email management capabilities cultivate customer relationships and build loyalty into the buying process."
The Cisco Customer Interaction Suite includes a complete family of products that enable companies to integrate their Internet commerce, service and telephony infrastructures to combine the personal value of human interaction with the information value of the Web. These products include Cisco eMail Manager - an enterprise and service provider class solution for managing high volumes of customer inquiries submitted to company mail boxes or to a Web site; Cisco Collaboration Server - its breadth and depth of robust, comprehensive functionality has made it the leader for Web-centric, visual collaboration; Cisco Media Blender - a platform for integrating multiple media types, including PSTN calls, interactive Web sessions, email, text chat and voice-over-IP calls, and media-independent services within the customer contact center; and Cisco Media Manager - enabling businesses or departments that do not have access to an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) to connect their Web customers to highly-skilled sales and service representatives.
