Microsoft CRM Gets POPular

Would you buy screen pop capabilities for under $5,000? That's what Zeacom, a New Zealand--based provider of call center software for small to medium enterprises, is offering. The nine-year old company yesterday introduced its first CRM Screen Pop module for Microsoft CRM users. With the use of a computer telephony integration (CTI) application, screen pop software immediately identifies the caller to facilitate a customer service call. Once the call is recognized the customer account immediately pops up on the screen to aid the call center agent--all of which is automated instantly. Zeacom's screen pop capabilities can cut as many as 12 seconds from of each call, according to Zeacom CEO Miles Valentine, because agents no longer have to ask customers to spell their names or provide account numbers to be manually entered into the system. If an organization pays its agents $15 an hour and can save 12 seconds on each call for 1,000 calls per day over a 20-day month, companies would save roughly $1,200 a month, or more than $40,000 over three years, according to Valentine. Typically, because of their high price tag, screen pop capabilities have been a luxury reserved for large call centers. "It never ceases to amaze me when we show our solution to smaller companies and they say, 'We can't afford that,'" Valentine says. Yet, Zeacom is bringing that enterprise functionality to smaller call centers with 150 seats or fewer for $4,995, which is for a one-time site license fee to be used by any amount of agents. "There's a soft customer service benefit when agents can merely confirm customers' details rather than questioning them [on their identity]," Valentine says. That soft benefit is still maintained even when a caller gets transferred. Zeacom's CRM Screen Pop can move with a caller from department to department and even in and out of the interactive voice response (IVR) system, according to Valentine. This means agents don't have to keep asking customers to repeat their names or account numbers. The company has eight screen pop modules that integrate with CRM solutions from SAP AG, Siebel Systems, Pivotal, Goldmine, Act!, and others. On the telephony platform side, the Zeacom application integrates with Avaya, Cisco, and NEC platforms. For customers concerned with scalability issues, Zeacom's CRM Screen Pop can also scale up over 150 seats. Valentine says his largest customer is a 340-seat call center.