Posted by ShoreTel on Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Yesterday was Green Monday - the busiest online shopping day of the year, surpassing Cyber Monday - and many retailers realized a boost in online traffic as shoppers scramble to get good deals and free shipping in time for Christmas. But even though online shopping is supposed to eliminate hassle, it can sometimes be as frustrating for customers as waiting in long lines at the mall. Companies need to prepare for the influx of online holiday shoppers and be sure they're ready to manage technical issues and provide the best possible customer experience.
That's why some businesses are turning to Unified Communications (UC) to help keep customers satisfied, not stressed. With UC, calls can be rerouted to protect against lost sales from a system outage, and customer service reps are able to answer more calls and shorten the length of time customers are on hold, as well as help customers via Live Chat. The popular modern design store Design Within Reach, for example, deployed a ShoreTel UC system that allows it to create unique greetings for each studio to inform customers about sales and promotions. Another customer, McKenzie Sports, is using unified communications to enhance its contact center operations and safeguard against lost phone orders.
It's challenging enough to get consumers to spend money during a recession, so the last thing a retailer wants is to have unhappy customers abandon their shopping carts or hang up the phone because of poor customer service. Unified communications is yet another tool reseller can use to enhance the customer experience.
ShoreTel Named “Best Overall VOIP Provider”
for Fifth Year in a Row
Nemertes Research Says ShoreTel Earned Top Overall VOIP
Rating Based on Customer Experience
SUNNYVALE, Calif. – July 22, 2008 – ShoreTel®, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHOR), a leading provider of Pure IP Unified Communications (UC) solutions, today announced that for the fifth year in a row ShoreTel has been named the Best Overall VOIP Provider in the Nemertes PilotHouse Awards for Unified Communications & Collaboration. The awards rated 24 VOIP vendors based entirely on the views and experiences of 426 customers.
ShoreTel won the Best Overall VOIP Provider award based on earning the highest average rating (4.22 out of 5) across all categories. ShoreTel was tops in:
- Technology - covering underlying software, platforms, intelligence and standards compliance.
- Product Features - focusing on handset and switch capabilities. Customers like the architecture, built-in redundancy and ability to scale by stacking additional switches.
- Customer Service - focusing on response time, account service, RFP process, and warranty issues. Customers like that ShoreTel listens well to suggestions for upgrades and improvements.
- Value – focusing on “bang for the buck” – customers feel they received value for their expenditure. Customers like that the capital, implementation and operational costs are lower than competitors and that ShoreTel includes its Personal Call Manager desktop client with every license.
- Solution Experience – focusing on the ability to understand business requirements and craft solutions that meet customer needs.
- Ease of Installation and Troubleshooting.
- UC Vision – indicating the best plan and outlook for moving customers from VOIP to a full UC deployment.
- ShoreTel was also one of the top three rated vendors for integration capabilities, which tracks how well products integrate with third-party products and applications.
“We’re extremely pleased that Nemertes has provided an independent opportunity for our customers to express satisfaction with their ShoreTel UC systems,” said Steve Timmerman, vice president of marketing, ShoreTel. “We understand the business and communications challenges our customers face, and we will continue to create the systems that meet their most exacting demands for high reliability, ease of deployment and use, and features that provide them with a competitive edge. We are especially proud that we have earned the top spot in Nemertes’ evaluation for the fifth straight year.”
The Nemertes report offered the following insights into ShoreTel and its customers.
Assessing Real Customer Experiences
“One key message from these findings is that biggest does not equate to best. Although Cisco, Avaya and Nortel have the largest market share, when evaluated across all industries and all sizes of companies, they do not score in the top three providers. This indicates market share among all sizes of companies may be more a function of marketing efforts rather than true customer experience. (It is important to note the top scores change when we segment the findings by industry and by segment size. …)”
A True Plug-and-Play Implementation
“ShoreTel’s ease of installation has been a hallmark of its customer satisfaction. In fact, one of ShoreTel’s highest scores (4.56) is for ease of installation and troubleshooting. Year after year, ShoreTel customers praise the product line, describing it as “true plug-and-play” implementation. Many initially had no intention to use ShoreTel, but VARs were able to do quick sales demonstrations in which they established a VOIP system in a matter of a few hours—and that impressed the prospective customers enough to buy the system. ‘ShoreTel has very user-friendly, durable products,’ says the telecom manager for a distribution company with 400 endpoints.”
A Company That Listens
“ShoreTel customers of all sizes say the vendor is responsive to concerns or problems, and that it listens well to suggestions for upgrades and improvements. ‘With ShoreTel, you don’t get the run-around. They do what they say, when they say they will,’ says the IT director for a non-profit agency with 200 endpoints.”
System Value
“ShoreTel’s customers also feel they get good value with ShoreTel’s product line. The capital, implementation and operational costs are lower than most competitors.”
The Nemertes Research press release is available at:
http://www.nemertes.com/press_releases/nemertes_press_release_nemertes_distinguishes_top_voip_providers_pilothouse_awards.
About ShoreTel, Inc.
ShoreTel, Inc., (NASDAQ: SHOR) is a leading provider of Pure IP Unified Communications solutions. ShoreTel enables companies of any size to seamlessly integrate all communications - voice, video, messaging and data - with their business processes. Independent of device or location, ShoreTel's distributed software architecture eliminates the traditional costs, complexity and reliability issues typically associated with other solutions. ShoreTel continues to deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction, ease of use and manageability while driving down the overall total cost of ownership. ShoreTel is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and has regional offices in the United Kingdom, Sydney, Australia and Munich, Germany. For more information, visit www.shoretel.com or call 1-877-80SHORE.
7-15-08 Avaya Leads Worldwide Contact Center Market in Both Revenues and Shipments |
Leading Industry Analyst Firm Issues Annual Research Report on Contact Center Markets, Showing Avaya is #1 in $2.4 Billion Global Market
|
For Immediate Release: 15-Jul-2008
BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – Avaya Inc. is leading the worldwide contact center market, according to Gartner's new report on this key market driving customer service for companies around the globe. The report, which measured 2007 global contact center market share, states that Avaya is #1 in contact center revenue and shipments across all measured regions and categories, including the market for Internet protocol (IP)-based contact centers.
According to Gartner, Avaya represents 38 percent of the global market for contact center revenue and 40 percent of the global market for contact center shipments - figures that are in both cases about 25 points ahead of the nearest competitor.
In the North American contact center market, including the U.S. and Canada, Avaya leads with 43 percent of the total market for contact center revenue. In other regions, Avaya delivers similar strength in contact center revenue, leading the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa) with 32 percent and Asia Pacific with 35 percent. In the Latin America region, Avaya grew more than 100 percent, representing half of the region's share for contact center revenue – about three times its next competitor.
According to Gartner, the market for contact center revenue is nearly $2.4 billion. Gartner defines contact centers as computer-based systems that provide call and contact routing and prioritization for high-volume telephony and multimedia transactions. They support critical customer service functions around the world through specialist answering agents and use sophisticated real-time contact management and reporting systems.
Gartner's report also showed the rapid growth of IP-based contact centers, with shipments growing 37 percent year-over-year to now represent 49 percent of the worldwide contact center market (comprised of both TDM and IP technologies). Next year, Gartner expects the migration to IP contact centers to accelerate, as more businesses turn to IP for its more functional multi-site and virtual customer service capabilities. According to Gartner's report, Avaya led the IP contact center category with 36 percent, 16 points ahead of its nearest competitor.
Avaya's portfolio of contact center solutions incorporates a broad range of capabilities and applications that meet the needs of a full-scale customer service operation. They include software for contact management, intelligent routing, self service, outbound calling, home-based IP agents and more. For more information on Avaya contact center solutions, visit: http://www.avaya.com/gcm/master-usa/en-us/pillars/contactcenters/index.htm
About Avaya
Avaya delivers Intelligent Communications solutions that help companies transform their businesses to achieve marketplace advantage. More than 1 million businesses worldwide, including more than 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500®, use Avaya solutions for IP Telephony, Unified Communications, Contact Centers and Communications-Enabled Business Processes. Avaya Global Services provides comprehensive service and support for companies, small to large. For more information visit the Avaya Web site: http://www.avaya.com. |
