Customer Interaction Cloud from Cisco and Salesforce

On October 5, Cisco and Salesforce.com jointly announced Customer Interaction Cloud, a combined Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) "solution" that enables customer service organizations to implement their contact centers entirely "in the cloud." An organization can deploy its entire contact center in the cloud on Force.com, Salesforce.com's cloud computing platform. This includes case management and knowledge management customer service applications, call routing, call queuing, agent management, and CTI telephony applications, and the integrations between them are deployed entirely.

This is a very big, maybe market-changing announcement.

Think about it. Cisco and salesforce.com are providing an approach to contact center implementation that requires no computer system hardware or software and no telephony hardware or software—no hw/sw purchase, implementation, or management and support. A little provisioning and configuration, perhaps a little customization and, whammo, you've got a fully functional contact center. Train your CSRs, give them the URL to access the apps' home page through the Web browsers on their desktops and their IP phones, and turn them loose. (Yes, Customer Interaction Cloud assumes you're using VoIP.)

We cover several customer service suppliers with offerings that have SaaS deployments—Astute Solutions, Attensity Group, IntelliResponse, nGenera, and RightNow in addition to Salesforce.com. In addition, we know of several telephony suppliers that have CaaS (Communications as a Service) deployments of their applications—Mobivox, OnState, SipGate, and Voxeo, for example. But, we believe that Cisco is the first telephony supplier to offer SaaS deployment and, together, Cisco and Salesforce.com are the first to offer a complete and integrated SaaS contact center offering that combines customer service and telephony applications.

Service Cloud 2 is Salesforce.com's offering that provides the case management and knowledge manage applications in Customer Interaction Cloud. Service Cloud was introduced in January 2009. Version 2 was introduced in September, 2009. Salesforce.com claims that 8,000 customer organizations have deployed it. Service Cloud supports Web self-service as well as Web and telephone assisted-service. Facebook and Twitter are supported innovatively as assisted-service channels.

Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (CCE) provides the telephony applications in Customer Interaction Cloud. Cisco has offered a hosted implementation of CCE for some time. Now, CCE is implemented in the cloud.

The integration between Service Cloud and CCE supports provisioning and configuration for Customer Interaction Cloud deployment and management as well as for the CTI screen pops, outbound dialing, and call logging functions at runtime. Note that administrators perform initial provisioning and configuration tasks and ongoing management tasks through a salesforce.com portal and toolset. There's no direct interface with CCE. So, Customer Interaction Cloud looks and feels like a salesforce.com app. That's a very good approach. Salesforce.com's apps are easy to learn and easy to use.

At its introduction, Customer Interaction Cloud is targeted at organizations with from 30 to 300 contact center agents/CSRs. This limitation is appears to be a market testing and demand control mechanism to let Cisco and salesforce.com manage the number of customers and their scale of deployments. Both organizations have demonstrated the capability to support larger deployments. The offering is priced at $250 per agent per month. Availability is planned for 1Q2010.

Customer Interaction Cloud will let small and mid-sized organizations deploy real contact centers and improve the customer service that they deliver immeasurably. We know of many small organizations that today simply cannot afford either the customer service apps or the telephony apps required. For telephony, they typically, have a few customer service extensions off their main number and their telephone attendant does call routing, call queuing (really call holding), and agent management manually, typically without any hint of process. For customer service, their processes are manual and rely on the experience and expertise (and memory) of individual agents/CSRs (whose turnover is very high). The improvements that Customer Interaction Cloud can bring will be huge. Its costs are not insignificant but, at $3,000 a year, should be pretty easily justified.

In time, we anticipate that Customer Interaction Cloud will let larger organizations deploy contact centers more quickly and more cost effectively.

Props to Cisco and salesforce.com. Customer Interaction Cloud demonstrates true innovation and great collaboration and addresses significant market requirements. It will help companies make it easier for their customers to do business with them, improving the customer experience and driving satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability.

Service Cloud 2 is Salesforce.com's offering that provides the case management and knowledge manage applications in Customer Interaction Cloud. Service Cloud was introduced in January 2009. Version 2 was introduced in September, 2009. Salesforce.com claims that 8,000 customer organizations have deployed it. Service Cloud supports Web self-service as well as Web and telephone assisted-service. Facebook and Twitter are supported innovatively as assisted-service channels.

Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (CCE) provides the telephony applications in Customer Interaction Cloud. Cisco has offered a hosted implementation of CCE for some time. Now, CCE is implemented in the cloud.

The integration between Service Cloud and CCE supports provisioning and configuration for Customer Interaction Cloud deployment and management as well as for the CTI screen pops, outbound dialing, and call logging functions at runtime. Note that administrators perform initial provisioning and configuration tasks and ongoing management tasks through a salesforce.com portal and toolset. There's no direct interface with CCE. So, Customer Interaction Cloud looks and feels like a salesforce.com app. That's a very good approach. Salesforce.com's apps are easy to learn and easy to use.

At its introduction, Customer Interaction Cloud is targeted at organizations with from 30 to 300 contact center agents/CSRs. This limitation is appears to be a market testing and demand control mechanism to let Cisco and salesforce.com manage the number of customers and their scale of deployments. Both organizations have demonstrated the capability to support larger deployments. The offering is priced at $250 per agent per month. Availability is planned for 1Q2010.

Customer Interaction Cloud will let small and mid-sized organizations deploy real contact centers and improve the customer service that they deliver immeasurably. We know of many small organizations that today simply cannot afford either the customer service apps or the telephony apps required. For telephony, they typically, have a few customer service extensions off their main number and their telephone attendant does call routing, call queuing (really call holding), and agent management manually, typically without any hint of process. For customer service, their processes are manual and rely on the experience and expertise (and memory) of individual agents/CSRs (whose turnover is very high). The improvements that Customer Interaction Cloud can bring will be huge. Its costs are not insignificant but, at $3,000 a year, should be pretty easily justified.

In time, we anticipate that Customer Interaction Cloud will let larger organizations deploy contact centers more quickly and more cost effectively.

Props to Cisco and salesforce.com. Customer Interaction Cloud demonstrates true innovation and great collaboration and addresses significant market requirements. It will help companies make it easier for their customers to do business with them, improving the customer experience and driving satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability.

Comments

[VoIP software]

Actually in most cases, I use VoIP to make long distance calls, it helps save a lot of money.