I was able to escape the blizzard-like conditions of New England winter for three sunny days in Las Vegas to attend the Avaya International User Group.
Despite the recent restructuring announcement by Avaya, more than 2500 people registered to attend and hear about the latest and greatest that Avaya has to offer. Some highlights of the event included:
- A standing-room-only presentation of the new Avaya Breeze and Oceana offering, a more open and simplified process for developing customer experience applications
- Avaya’s re-engagement and focus on the customer experience
- Sizing, architecture and deployment best practices
When talking to some Avaya users, there was slight hesitation from IVR developers, who felt that not just anyone can create a quality user experience in a voice user interface. Those users shouldn’t hesitate to adopt the change that is coming. Vendors are always going to make their products easier to use; experts will always be valued for their efforts to help drive and deliver strategy and best practices, and IVR developers should embrace this new role.
Of course, if you are an architect presenting a much more streamlined, open and user friendly environment for omni-channel application creation, to a wider audience of users, some of the more critical sessions delivered this week included:
• Cyber security fundamentals
• Encryption for Avaya endpoints
• Developing Avaya Breeze Snap-ins
It’s critical that architects attend these sessions because there is a delicate balance between allowing business teams to assist in the design and construction of the customer experience journey in the contact center, and managing the risks associated with deploying customer-facing applications that collect, transmit, and record sensitive customer data. This is where the architects will become vital to implementing the deployment strategy for applications built by a wider audience.
So, while all the session buzz was around Oceana and Breeze, many of the customers that I spoke with were concerned about testing their disaster recovery, failover, and encrypted communications environments, as well as dealing with the increasing frequency of requests from the business team for change.
Fortunately, Empirix solutions, based on the Hammer Platform, are well equipped to handle those challenges. By implementing a robust contact center assurance solution, organizations can adopt and deploy new technologies to improve their business and profitability, and remain confident that they have the tools to help mitigate risk and reduce the negative impacts of a poor deployment. This enables them to protect the customer experience and, ultimately, their bottom line.
We work with a range of clients providing them with IVR Testing solutions tailored to meet their needs. Empirix has also written a whitepaper that explores The future of IVR Customer Service Assurance.