T and Stream Energy Take Top Honours In Customer Service As Genesys Announces North American Customer Innovations Awards Winners

AT&T and Stream Energy Take Top Honours In Customer Service As Genesys Announces North American Customer Innovations Awards Winners

  • Finalists Transform Customer Service with Dynamic Contact Centres
Wokingham, May 1, 2008 - The two most innovative North American companies in customer service, as selected by a group of 25 global industry analysts, were announced yesterday at G-Force San Antonio by Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU). The Customer Innovations Awards program recognises companies delivering outstanding and innovative customer service in highly dynamic environments through the use of technology.

AT&T and Stream Energy, both with Texas-based operations, are this year's winners for North America. Using technology innovatively to streamline and optimise customer service, the companies were honoured for transforming their customer contact centres, increasing customer satisfaction, and improving the contact centre's alignment with company business goals. In sponsoring the awards Genesys enlisted the world's top experts in customer service to judge the entrants. Companies such as Datamonitor, Forrester Research, Frost & Sullivan, IDC and Yankee Group participated. Genesys created the Genesys Customer Innovation Awards to recognise those companies that made the greatest strides towards creating next-generation "Dynamic Contact Centres".

Finalists presented their stories to panels of independent industry analysts at the Genesys Analyst Conference held in San Francisco in January 2008 and at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Forum held in Paris in February 2008. Presentations were judged and scored to obtain the rankings. The three overall criteria that determined the award level were innovation, optimisation and improving the customer experience.

The most universal common thread among all of the innovators was their ability to link business issues to customer service, achieve optimisation, and treat the contact centre as a strategic opportunity. The organisations also consistently scored high in the "strategic alignment between contact centre and customer service goals" category.

Eight finalists scored either a "Three-Star" or "Four-Star" ranking, indicating how analysts felt companies performed based on the stages of the Genesys contact center capability maturity model. Those stages are: establishment, consolidating, performing and optimising. A Four-star ranking, the highest honour possible, indicates the company contact centre is operating at the optimising stage of the contact centre capability maturity model. A Three-star award is also regarded as an exceptional achievement. The international Three- and Four-star finalists will be announced at G-Force Berlin, May 19-21, 2008.

North America-based Three- and Four-star finalists include: 
  • Stream Energy, a Four-star winner, is one of the largest privately held participants in the Texas deregulated electricity market, with roughly 300,000 residential customers: www.streamenergy.net. Stream Energy was best noted by the judges for its strategic use of customer service, which cut across self-service and assisted service to create a seamless customer experience. Stream also created a strategic environment to bring together a wide range of multimedia, live and assisted service.
  • AT&T, a Three-star winner, is a publicly-traded, San Antonio-based telecommunications company: www.att.com. AT&T scored extremely well in optimising the customer experience and using IP to enable virtualisation. AT&T's use of technology not only allowed it to extend the boundaries of the contact centre, but also created consistent business processes and was considered by the judges to be the most highly scaled environment.
"The goal of the Genesys Customer Innovation Awards program is to recognise the world's most dynamic contact centre environments," said Paul Segre, President and CEO, Genesys. "The winners in North America have strategically leveraged contact centre solutions to achieve an optimal balance of customer traffic, internal resources and business outcomes. The most universal common thread among all of the innovators is the ability to link business issues to customer service, achieve optimisation and treat the contact centre as a strategic opportunity."

Finalists were recognised at G-Force San Antonio yesterday. For more information, including previous finalists, please visit: http://www.genesyslab.com/community/customerawards.

About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.
Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, is the only company that focuses 100 per cent on software to manage customer interactions over the phone, web and in e-mail. The Genesys software suite dynamically connects customers with the right resources - self-service or assisted-service - to fulfill customer requests, optimise customer care goals and efficiently use resources. Genesys software directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries. These companies and agencies can leverage their entire organisation, from the contact centre to the back office, to improve the overall customer experience. As a result, Genesys helps stop customer frustration, drive efficiency, and accelerate business innovation. For more information, go to http://www.genesyslab.com or visit the industry blog at http://www.betterinteractions.com  
 
About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) provides solutions that enable service providers, enterprise and governments worldwide, to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. As a leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent offers the end-to-end solutions that enable compelling communications services for people at home, at work and on the move. With operations in more than 130 countries, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach. The company has the most experienced global services team in the industry, and one of the largest research, technology and innovation organisations in the telecommunications industry. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 17.8 billion in 2007 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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Media Contact:
Duncan Burford, PR for Genesys, 01780 721 433, dburford@iba-europe.com


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