Speech and imaging solutions provider Nuance (News - Alert) Communications has struck a deal with MultiVision Communications to resell MultiVision’s MediaCenter messaging and collaboration software platform to its customers. By offering MultiVision's MediaCenter platform, Nuance will help enterprises to:

-- Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by delivering account specific and meaningful information, such as welcome calls and fraud alerts
-- Reduce inbound call volumes by proactively contacting customers on matters they might otherwise place incoming calls about. Examples include order confirmations and transaction status
-- Generate additional revenue such as by sharing promotional offers and payment reminders

The MediaCenter accomplishes these objectives by enabling proactive automated agentless customer interactions, callbacks to customers caught in a busy inbound queue, and agent assisted preview, power, or predictive dialing. These applications can be easily deployed in a premise-based or hosted environment.

Integrating with any VXML-based IVR environment, MediaCenter provides additional capabilities including:

-- Flexible development environment that eases the process of campaign creation
-- Sophisticated reporting features that provide real-time updates on campaign performance
-- Easy-to-use 'opt-in' capabilities that allow consumers to set preferences on how and when they should be contacted, including SMS, e-mail or voice, quiet times, and alternative contacts

MediaCenter uses Nuance’s speech recognition technologies in applications such as greeting customers by name when they are called by the automated system. Nuance’s recognizer is supported by the MultiVision product to allow customers have been called to interact with the solution such as by saying: ‘Yes, I want to make a payment.’

 

In turn, the deal benefits MultiVision by giving its products access to Nuance’s global reach and enterprise services expertise, and access to the outbound market. MultiVision’s solution can now be more readily deployed for on premise, managed service, and hosted service models. 

"Nuance has historically been a leader in helping companies automate incoming calls with speech-based solutions," said Lynda Kate Smith (News - Alert), vice president and general manager of Nuance’s Care Business Unit. "The addition of the MediaCenter platform to Nuance's portfolio means businesses can now easily leverage Nuance's capabilities for both inbound and outbound interactions with customers. After considerable research, we found MultiVision's MediaCenter solution to be the best designed and engineered proactive customer interactions platform on the market."

Proactive customer interactions remain a relatively untapped opportunity for businesses, says Nuance. Unlike the telemarketing calls of the past, and taking a lesson learned from the Web, the proactive interactions approach is based on delivering content relevant and useful to specific customers. It places the power of choice into the hands of consumers, enabling them to "opt in" to receive communications when and where they want it. This method enables businesses to significantly enhance relationships with their customers, while reducing the cost of outreach such as through lowering inbound call volumes.

Ken Landoline, program manager, Customer-Centric Strategies at Yankee Group (News - Alert) agrees.

“Our research and customer interactions clearly demonstrate the financial benefits of proactive communications,” he points out. “Interactive voice notifications help companies better manage customer transactions -- from collections to sales -- and help consumers avoid lengthy phone interactions.”

Brendan B (News - Alert). Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

 

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