BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - August 13, 2008) - In a unique, comprehensive research study of
Unified Communications in the Contact Center, Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks
Company (
NYSE:
HHS), examines the business reasons for adoption of unified
communications, the relationship between unified communications and
customer satisfaction, customer retention and year-over-year change in
customer satisfaction, and how Best-in-Class usage of unified
communications have provided business, business process benefits and
operational efficiencies. This report explains how Best-in-Class companies
have implemented policies and procedures designed to manage expert agent
interaction, business process workflow designed to optimize the business
process, presence and other unified communications technologies to support
the business process, and metrics designed to measure the performance,
efficiency and effectiveness of contact center performance.
Data acquired from over 190 enterprises reveal a number of impactful data
points, according to David Boulanger, Research Director, Customer
Management Strategies at Aberdeen, one of the study's authors. Boulanger
states, "Unified communications is as much about the business, finding the
right business process to
UC-enable, and finding the right return on investment for the right
departments. A small number -- 23% -- have some form of unified
communications implemented, but an astounding 50% of customers surveyed are
or will be evaluating unified communications in the next eighteen months."
The report demonstrates a direct correlation between implementation of
unified communications by Best-in-Class customers and the performance in
three critical customer-facing performance measures: customer satisfaction,
customer retention and year-over-year change in customer satisfaction.
End-user customer feedback has indicated that customers have already
invested millions in existing telephony and VoIP technologies to support
the contact center, and intelligent unified communications investment needs
to complement and extend this existing investment. These same customers
also demonstrate the high level of confusion as to exactly what unified
communications is and what each of the software vendors label their
collection of technologies.
And, as anecdotal customer conversation indicates, "Unified communications
for the enterprise is not unified communications in the contact center:
many customers today are confused between messaging or IM, for example, at
a corporate level and specific unified communications technologies
implemented in the contact center."
The required actions for companies seeking to gain the most benefit from
their implementation of unified communications include a commitment to
identify the right business processes to UC-enable, implement policies and
procedures designed to maximize effectiveness and efficiency of these
cross-departmental business processes, establish a contact center unified
communications strategy and approach, and implement metrics to monitor and
measure contact center performance.
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part to
underwriters Aspect Software and Avaya. To obtain a complimentary copy,
visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=5132.
To access all of Aberdeen's complimentary research please visit
http://research.aberdeen.com.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market
intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more
than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely
positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating
demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment
analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets,
corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in
context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's
analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of
Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement -
Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role
Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit
Aberdeen
http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more
about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to
http://www.harte-hanks.com.
© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
451 D Street, Suite 710
Boston, Massachusetts 02210-1928
Telephone: (617) 854-5200
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Peter Ostrow
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
(617) 854-5373
Peter.ostrow@aberdeen.com