Hosted contact center provider NewVoiceMedia (News - Alert) has announced that it has been granted a UK patent for its Computer-Telephony Integration as a Service.

 

From today, any call center can implement the handling by using an 08XX number and renting the NewVoiceMedia service as on-demand. "There's no new hardware or software integration required, and users can still use their existing switch," NewVoice officials say.

 

Research cited by NewVoice officials shows that "80 percent of UK call centers have not been able to implement CTI (News - Alert) because of the costs involved and the complexity of integration." However, NewVoice officials say CTI offers "major advantages for call centers, as it enables them to route calls according to information on the caller held by a CRM system."

 

CTI is "much more than screen popping data to the agent before the call is put through," the NewVoiceans say. "For example, callers can be routed to the last agent they spoke to, loyal customers can be identified by their recent spending patterns and prioritized in the queue, and callers can be given targeted messages while waiting, making cross-selling much more relevant and effective."

 

According to NewVoiceMedia Chief Architect Richard Pickering, "CTI is now available at a fraction of the cost of before… just as Google (News - Alert) and Amazon virtualized their industries and transformed the business model with Software as a Service, NewVoiceMedia is doing the same for computer telephony."

 

Recently, NewVoiceMedia signed an agreement with Telisma (News - Alert) to deploy 1,700 ports of Telisma's speech recognition technology in the UK. "The deal will propel NewVoiceMedia into the top few providers of network-based speech recognition capability in the UK," NewVoice officials said at the time.

The capacity, which will be spread across five UK telcos and service providers, including THUS, will let NewVoiceMedia "handle mass market levels of media response speech recognition, including telephone voting for TV and radio shows and responses to large advertising campaigns."
  
The deal between the two companies follows an earlier statement in May 2005 in which NewVoiceMedia revealed that it had selected Telisma as a partner for voice recognition.