"Managed services model can help enterprises minimize capex on contact centers"

Genesys comes in with standards-based contact center solutions that give outsourcers more options for organizational integration thus quickly and cost-effectively enabling real-time communication between outsourcer and outsourcing enterprise. This will give Indian outsourcers a critical competitive advantage as the BPO market matures.

Technology and function-wise, which way are the call center solutions moving?

In the face of competition from other low cost countries like the Philippines and China, and Eastern Europe, we are witnessing the maturing of business models where the Indian (outsourced) operations can become more integrated into the overall and virtual contact center fabric of the worldwide enterprise. This is where Genesys comes in with standards-based contact center solutions that give outsourcers more options for organizational integration thus quickly and cost-effectively enabling real-time communication between outsourcer and outsourcing enterprise. This will give Indian outsourcers a critical competitive advantage as the BPO market matures. 

Sanjay Goyal

We are seeing a significant growth in the use of natural language speech recognition for voice self-service interaction with customers. Not just for replacing existing touchtone IVR (interactive voice response) applications, but also to create a gateway or voice portal for all incoming calls to the organization. In future, we will witness more pervasive uses of speech recognition technology, from authentication to mood detection and richer semantic interaction. Combined with the processing power of tomorrow's cell phones or talking devices, this will deliver intriguing possibilities. However, enterprises will continue to rely on agents for more complex customer transactions, and a seamless link between self-service and agent-assisted service is needed.

How is the role of IP shaping up in the call center world? What role is Genesys playing in that?

First let me say, that Genesys does not provide the IP infrastructure. We specialize in customer interaction software that enables sophisticated routing and reporting of interactions across voice, email and web-channels. Increasingly we are seeing a rise in the number of deployments that include IP. The next five years will see a major movement towards the transport of voice traffic over data networks. Genesys believes the promise of IP can best be realized when IP is approached from its business value and the applications that it can support. VoIP makes a tremendous difference to the contact center market because it can quickly and easily cut down on call costs, one of the main operational costs in this industry. In addition, VoIP helps organizations distribute their operations while still maintaining centralized management, ease application integration and allow business continuity implementations to become far easier.

Do you think managed services (call center solution) are going to pick up? What advantages they offer especially for small and medium call centers?

For a long time, implementing an effective customer service strategy has been a daunting task for small and medium contact centers. The advent of managed services business models coupled with internet technology enables these organizations to now have small geographically dispersed locations to service the local needs and yet implement customer service functions nationally allowing them, in many cases, to provide greater service efficiency and the 'corner-store' touch unlike some of the bigger corporations.

By adopting the managed services model, the enterprises are able to minimize their capital expenditure and make better use of this capital into their business and run their customer service functions in line with their cash flow as an operational expenditure. It allows for the rapid scaling and de-scaling of these functions in line with marketing and sales campaigns.

In a country like India where small businesses have always functioned on a cash-in cash-out model, the managed service model demonstrates great cultural affinity and the most sensible mode of operations for these enterprises.

What new technologies and concepts Genesys is working on?

We are working together with Microsoft on a collaboration solution that provides new desktop telephony control capabilities for Microsoft users, allowing them to collaborate with colleagues, access availability and presence information, and seamlessly control phone functionality via the computer. Microsoft deployed the technology across 40,000 desktops at its Redmond campus in early May 2005 and reports that there are already 20,000 active users. In addition, Genesys is strongly working with an ecosystem of partners in providing capability for managing video interactions across broadband wired and wireless networks both for self-service and customer interaction.

What kind of market presence you have in India? 

We have now established a direct presence in India. For the moment, our efforts are geared towards increasing the awareness of our direct presence in India and meeting the needs of our customers and partners with pre and post sales support and training. We are investing heavily with our partners in training, strategic and long-term market development initiatives.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey