Genesys 7.2 Workforce Management Application Focuses on Optimisation for Dynamic Contact Centre Environments

Intra-day Schedule Re-optimisation, Multi-site Forecasting Enhancements, and Third-Party Application Integration Added   

Wokingham, April 25, 2006 - Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., an Alcatel company (NYSE: ALA, Paris: CGEP.PA), has released a new version of its workforce management (WFM) application as part of the Genesys 7.2 contact centre suite release. The enhanced WFM component of 7.2 gives companies greater insight into their staffing operations.

A major cost factor for most contact centres is “human capital” (the number of employees a company needs to fulfill operations). Genesys WFM assists enterprises by assessing anticipated staffing levels and then helping coordinate agent schedules in real-time to ensure staffing levels within the call centre are optimised.

“Enterprises cannot continue operating in ‘reactive mode’ when determining how many employees are required to maintain their contact centre operations,” said Vijai Shankar, Genesys product marketing manager for the WFM product line. “Genesys WFM puts staffing control and optimisation into the hands of managers who want to operate a dynamic contact centre efficiently in rapidly changing environments.”

New Features of the Genesys 7.2 WFM Application

Intra-day schedule re-optimisation: Typically, contact centre managers schedule employees for work several weeks in advance and are forced to adjust schedules due to factors such as agents calling in sick, taking off time, or the addition of training sessions or meetings. The intra-day re-optimisation feature allows managers to re-align agent schedules throughout the day to ensure workloads are covered. Contact centre managers can notify agents of changes to their schedules through an instant message, or the new Genesys WFM notification feature can automatically deliver an e-mail to the agents who can log-in to Genesys WFM through their Web browser to view the updated schedule.

“Agents will appreciate knowing that they can always access their latest schedule on-line,” said Shankar. “Intra-day re-optimisation combined with e-mail notifications will mitigate the scheduling ‘surprise factor’ and this provides agents with a better work-life balance since they will know when they are needed and not needed at work.”

Multi-site forecasting: builds a forecast of staffing requirements based on multi-site activity levels. Work loads are shared across all contact centre agent sites, including the enterprise or branch offices, back offices, virtual offices or remote offices. This allows managers to route incoming calls to the most appropriate agent, regardless of location, based on experience, level of downtime, type of customer query, etc. Multi-site forecasting was designed for true virtual environments, allowing contact centres to use fewer agents to manage more customer interactions.

Genesys WFM Integration Application Programming Interface (API): partners and customers use these Web services to link workforce management data to third-party applications such as human resources and payroll systems, which eliminates the need for administrative functions relating to manual data entry. When integrated with agent analytics systems, contact centre managers can review reports on agent effectiveness.  

“True call centre optimisation requires the seamless integration of multiple complementary technologies,” stated Jim Davies, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, Inc. “The ability to integrate an organisation’s WFM system with emerging technologies such as performance management or mature systems such as Quality Management, eLearning, and even back office systems such as payroll and human resources provides benefits in terms of time, cost and effort.”

About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.
Genesys, an Alcatel company, is 100 per cent focused on software for contact centres. Leading companies in the Global 2000 and Fortune 1000 use Genesys to deliver interactions that drive better business. With 3,300 customers in 80 countries, Genesys directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day. Genesys allows enterprises to achieve key business objectives by tying together customer interactions, people, and customer information in both traditional telephony and IP environments. Sophisticated routing and reporting across voice, e-mail, documents and Web interactions, coupled with integrated self service, ensure that customers are quickly connected to the right resource - the first time. Genesys solutions stop customer frustration and allow enterprises to deliver superior customer satisfaction and improved business results. For more information visit us at www.genesyslab.com.

About Alcatel
Alcatel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers and enterprises for delivery of voice, data and video applications to their customers or employees. Alcatel brings its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks, applications and services, to help its partners and customers build a user-centric broadband world. With sales of EURO 13.1 billion and 58,000 employees in 2005, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries.  For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com.

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Media Contact:
Lara Booth, Genesys, 0118 974 7024, larab@genesyslab.co.uk


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