Tellme Shouts Out a New Aspect to Contact Center Offerings

Contact centers wishing to deploy either on-premises or hosted solutions to deliver quality customer service have major benefits in mind -- and concerns to address. Bearing in mind the conversations revolving around upfront cost, control, security, and speed, Chelmsford, Mass.–based contact center solution provider Aspect Software and Mountain View, Calif.–based Tellme, a voice services provider and Microsoft subsidiary, are announcing today what they hope to be an end to those concerns with a new strategic partnership.

According to executives from both Aspect and Tellme, the two companies will be combining their solutions in order to provide what they say is a flexible, cost-effective contact center offering. Aspect will be integrating Tellme’s on-demand voice services platform into its Unified IP, according to executives from both vendors. Barry Russell, director of Tellme’s Partner Group, explains this will allow customer service hubs to take the best of both worlds. “Enterprise customers can leverage assets they have on-premises versus services they may not be able to access in the cloud,” he explains.

Mike Sheridan, senior vice president of strategy for Aspect Software, says integrating Unified IP with Tellme’s voice portal is a natural progression for his company's ongoing unified communications (UC) strategy announced with Microsoft in March -- and he admits that the March agreement kick-started talks about going to market with an integrated offering. “Tellme’s [offerings and capabilities]...are a natural bridge for UC and contact centers,” he says.

Aspect will also be reselling Tellme’s voice services platform to United States–based customers. However, Sheridan is quick to point out that this latest announcement comprises much more than a mere go-to-market strategy. “We’re adding Aspect professional services, [consulting] end-to-end,...automatic call distributors (ACDs), predictive dialers, Aspect Unified IP, hosted [interactive voice response] capabilities, and scripting,” he explains.

And Sheridan says that he believes this also opens the path to bring something new and fresh to the contact center solution space. “It’s a great opportunity to differentiate and provide the marketplace something [it] can’t get today -- either [on-]premise or hosted -- and in an integrated and unified way with underlying ACD and predictive dialer,” he adds.

Sheila McGee-Smith, president and principal analyst of McGee-Smith Analytics, says this move makes sense for Aspect. “It’s a great proof point for those very large, significant customers still sitting on legacy Aspect [offerings],” she explains. “One of [this company’s] strategies is to move [organizations] to its current technology. The Microsoft partnership and Tellme piece are great for helping them to get that done and to have them less vulnerable to [competitors] like Avaya and Genesys [Telecommunication Laboratories].”

While this integrated hybrid contact center offering will only be available to customers in the United States at the start, Tellme’s Russell says the companies intend to move abroad with the combined solution in the next couple of years. “We continue to build out international plans, our minds looking to [the] future to launch worldwide with Aspect on the Tellme platform,” he says. “We anticipate something would happen like that in mid-fiscal year 2010...certainly by 2011.”

Before taking the combined solution worldwide, McGee-Smith points out that Tellme’s success is also correlated to that of Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007. “To me, the success of [this company] hinges on the success of Microsoft OCS 2007,” she says. “That isn’t to say Tellme isn’t successful today, but if in fact OCS goes on to claim a significant share of the [private-branch exchange] and contact center market, then Tellme becomes part of the solution and [the] reason why it goes forward.”

For Aspect’s Sheridan, though, the immediate focus to follow through on this announcement is just that: following through. “The biggest challenge is making sure we execute on the plans that are in front of us,” he stresses. “This is pretty ambitious -- with both a [two-and-a-half year] roadmap and go-to-market approach we’re taking with the Tellme, Microsoft, and Aspect sales forces...we’re already seeing synergies today.”

News relevant to the customer relationship management industry is posted several times a day on destinationCRM.com, in addition to the news section Insight that appears every month in the pages of CRM magazine. You may leave a public comment regarding this article by clicking on "Comments" at the top; to contact the editors, please email editor@destinationCRM.com.

Related Articles

Aspect Software Beefs Up Quality Monitoring

Pundits say the company's latest release tightens competition in the QM space.

UC Takes a Village, Says Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications

Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications '09: New research finds no single vendor can adequately address a company's UC needs with one solution.

VoIP Penetration Steadily Increases

Pent-up demand for integrated telephony and business applications will drive adoption through 2013, according to new research findings.

Tellme Delivers Voice in the Cloud

Nearing the two-year anniversary of its acquisition by Microsoft, Tellme's new features look to slash costs for enterprise customer service.

Aspect Unveils 6 New UC Applications

New unified communication offerings are geared to help companies cut costs while improving customer service.

Aspect Takes AIM at Bolstering PerformanceEdge

In yet another move to expand its workforce optimization offerings, Aspect Software acquires AIM Technologies.

Are Contact Centers Finally on the Verge of an IP Telephony Revolution?

Penetration for Internet Protocol telephony went from 14 percent in 2007 to 20 percent—but 43 percent of respondents plan to take the plunge in the next two years.

The True Definition of UC

New research shows confusion among users over what unified communications really means.

Internet Protocol Contact Centers May Not Connect in ‘09

New research says IP had a ringing 2008, rising 37 percent, but that growth is likely to flatline this year.

Aspect Wants You to Ask an Expert

The company's Unified IP 6.6 release features a tighter integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server in its push for UC.

Gift-Wrapped Unified Communications

Spanlink's prepackaged solution targets small and midsize businesses that think UC is too complex or costly to implement.

Siemens Delivers Unified Communications to the Contact Center

While other vendors are still just announcing plans to deliver UC capabilities, Siemens Communications announces two UC-enabled contact center packages and a voice-portal solution for its SIP-based OpenScape UC Server.

Tellme About Microsoft's Acquisition

The company expands its long-promoted speech recognition portfolio as it looks to build new voice-enabled customer service software and add speech to its Live Search engine.

Bringing the Customer Aboard the Unified Communications Bandwagon

Contact center solutions vendor Aspect Software has a new UC strategy -- and the company says it starts with the customer.

Avaya, Microsoft Ask If You See the Future in UC

VoiceCon 2008: In a pair of keynotes at this year's conference, Avaya and Microsoft executives lay out the future of unified communications.

Aspect Offers More Localization and Capabilities for '08

The latest version of Aspect Unified IP 6.5.1 expands language capabilities, and adds unified command and real-time reporting.

Unified Communication: Connected Anywhere, Anytime

In an increasingly global economy, unified communications should be on the top of the to-do list for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), according to a new report.