The Dawn of the Pre from Palm and the launch of all things Apple at the WorldWide Developers Conference (WWDC) obviously aren’t creating enough news for one weekend. Now Genesys has formally launched UC-Connect, a software suite that tightly links Genesys branded Customer Interaction Management (CIM) resources with IBM SameTime, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Siemens OpenScape and parent company Alcatel-Lucent’s MyInstant Communicator.

In addition, IBM immediately became first-among-equals by leveraging their long-standing partnership into a marketing channel for the combination of UC-Connect and the SameTime-based “UC-squared” (unified communications and collaboration) marketing initiative by Big Blue. For IBM, it marks the fruition of long-standing plans to extend contact center utilities to knowledge workers through-out a business enterprise through the SameTime interface. Thus their desktops can display “screen pops” that enable them to preview key information about a call and the caller and, in effect, “bid” on whether to accept or reject it. They will also be able to read or write notes or update customer records without exiting their SameTime-based “portal”.

I’ll be writing more about the capabilities and tools integrated into UC Connect in a forthcoming advisory. It is a suite of software that has evolved to accommodate both the productivity concerns of contact center managers, and the privacy concerns of resident knowledge workers. Agents in more formal contact center workstations are able to view the status and skill set of anonymous experts or branch office workers. They can then click a button to contact the most appropriate person via a pre-selected mode of communications (chat, IM or phone). Rather than displaying available by name, the Genesys CIM platform abstracts these resources’ identities into skill sets and and current status. This prevents agents from becoming overly dependent upon any particular expert.

UC-Connect will be featured at the Genesys G-Force gathering in Barcelona, June 9-11.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Genesys, Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft, Unified Communications, Distributed Contact Center, IBM