Alcatel-Lucent’s Genesys Telecommunications Labs is making some very interesting announcements today at G-Force, its annual customer forum. The overall announcement is centered a key initiative called Cross Channel Conversations (CCC). It is a customer care solution which treats email, voice, Instant Messaging and SMS text as part of a single conversation.

Lisa Abbott, senior manager-product marketing at Genesys explained that “Genesys is taking what they have done for iCFD [intelligent Customer Front Door] on the phone and parlaying it to our eServices solutions for the web.” The goal, in her words is to deliver “a consistent customer experience through one conversation over time across phone, web and mobile channels.”

To take this approach, Genesys is announcing a partnership with Knowledge Management specialist InQuira, whose technology makes it possible to isolate and identify what is deemed to be each customer’s “true intent” for contacting the company, regardless of the medium he or she employs. To accomplish this, InQuira leverages profile data, customer searches and other information maintained in Genesys-based resources to deliver even more targeted and personalized answers.

The InQuira relationship makes it possible for the CCC solution to fulfill on the ultimate objective of the iCFD: tightly linking a good customer experience to overall business objectives. Quoting Abbott again, “Through this singular conversation, enterprises will more effectively engage their customers to meet growth and customer satisfaction objectives.”

The third stage of the trifecta is an announcement of several deployments that comprise proof points for both the iCFD and CCC. These include a 3G wireless service provider which combines video, voice and SMS with its IVR-based customer care fabric; a Latin American telecommunications provider that integrated SMS text as a complement to live customer service; a Western European Bank using Genesys infrastructure to route calls, emails or text messages to its 6,000 employees; and a South African premium TV entertainment service that uses the solution to gauge the “intent” of each contact to support quick and effective service.

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Tags: iCFD, InQuira, Genesys, Alcatel-Lucent, eServices, speech processing