SpliceCom & Callmedia Target SME Call Centres

12th November 2007 – SpliceCom today launched a new product range developed in conjunction with the UK technology leader in contact centre and CTI software development, Callmedia.

Callmedia 4 maximiser delivers Enterprise level features to SME Call Centres, in a cost-effective manner, for the very first time. Starting out with as few as 5 agents, Callmedia 4 maximiser provides all the intelligent call routing, real time statistics and historical reporting required to support up to 50 in-bound voice call seats.

“We’ve been working closely with Callmedia since our first joint Contact Centre installation for active lifestyle brand Fat Face during 2003,” said SpliceCom’s CEO Sean Harding. “In conjunction with Callmedia and our channel partners, we’ve developed a clear understanding of exactly what’s required by the great majority of Call Centres in the UK today – and how they’ve been failed by their traditional suppliers. In percentage terms, the small to medium sized business with 5 to 50 agents handling inbound telephone calls is the most common profile. In pure Call Centre terms there’s no difference between the requirements of an Enterprise and SME customer. They both need intelligent routing of calls to enable the most suited agent available can handle the next call, allowing them to meet their Service Level Agreements. They both need to have accurate Real Time information that can be viewed by Agents and/or Supervisors to gauge current operational status.  And they both need Historical information to run reports, allowing individual and collective performance to be monitored and adjusted if necessary by business managers. All that’s different is the budget, which invariably means that SMEs needing a Call Centre have either paid over the odds for what they really want, or take the lower cost “Informal” Call Centre option which results in a compromise in at least one of the three critical requirement areas.”

With Callmedia 4 maximiser SpliceCom have taken proven Call Centre technology, and lowered the barrier to entry for SMEs in terms of size and scalability and by supplying the system pre-loaded on a server, the complexity and cost traditionally associated with set-up. For those with an eye to growth, new agents can be added one at a time and should the requirement at any stage exceed 50 agents there is a seamless upgrade path to Callmedia Enterprise - Callmedia 4 maximiser’s “big brother”. This Contact Centre application offers full multimedia blending of in-bound emails, text messages and web-interactions, in addition to telephone calls, for hundreds of agents. To complete the SpliceCom portfolio, Callmedia Advance provides support for outbound Call Centre campaigns and can be used in conjunction with Callmedia Enterprise to provide full blending of inbound and outbound calls.

“maximiser has proven to be an ideal Enterprise IP Telephony platform for us to work with,” says Rufus Grig, Managing Director for Callmedia. “Its open and distributed architecture is well suited to Contact Centres spread across multiple sites and home based agents, while its highly resilient dual processing capability and failover is great for non-stop operation and fault tolerant requirements. However, it’s also a great choice for SME Call Centres with a low-cost of entry, the ability to deploy standard IP or analogue phones in conjunction with Callmedia 4 maximiser and the availability of built-in Call Recording. It’s also been refreshing to work with another UK based manufacturer. We may be living in a global village, but there’s still many benefits to be gained from a development partnership when the other party is just ‘down the road’.”

“Callmedia 4 maximiser’s been packaged to be channel friendly and future proofed in terms of size and capability,’ states Sean Harding. “Having launched it to our UK channel partners during our October Roadshows, where it was very warmly received, we expect Callmedia 4 maximiser to account for around 80% of our Call/Contact Centre sales over the next 12 months. With Callmedia 4 maximiser we’re finally providing SME Call Centre customers with the features and facilities they want at a price they can afford,” concludes Harding.

About SpliceCom

SpliceCom's maximiser “Pure IP” product family combines voice, video, IP TV and web enabled IT applications within a single system, providing tangible business benefits for all types of companies, irrespective of their size. Having commenced shipments in early 2003, maximiser was voted the "Most Innovative Product" at one of the UK's premier communications trade events, Comms Channel Expo 2004, whilst SpliceCom's PCS 50 for Mac OS X IP Softphone/Phone Partner application picked up the award in 2005. Leading market analysts MZA attributed SpliceCom with a 16% share of the UK IP PBX market during Q.2 2007.

About Callmedia

Callmedia is the UK technology leader in contact centre and CTI software development and has relationships with some of the largest organisations in the industry. Part of the Azzurri Communications Group, Callmedia has its HQ in Fareham, Hampshire, offices throughout the UK and customers throughout the globe. The company offers products and services that deal with a range of applications including; predictive dialing, multi-channel contact centres, mission critical conferencing applications, web-based scripting, protocol conversion, host-based routing, simple screen-popping and complex call handling systems.