Caller Connect for companies with many branchesFor businesses that are looking to leverage their retail branch or office footprint for more lines-of-business, Caller Connect allows you to transform the way your branch uses the telephone everyday to bring significantly more value to your business. Caller Connect will help you to give priority treatment to your most important customers, and route all of your customers to the branch employee with the appropriate skill set. It will allow your branch associates to more efficiently handle incoming calls by streamlining interaction with your CRM solutions to automatically lookup customer information and pre-populate forms. It will give your managers an at-a-glance dashboard to see whether branch-staffing levels are adequate to handle walk-in and phone-in business, enabling them to make decisions that increase branch customer satisfaction, revenue and staff productivity.

Designed For Retail Branch Locations
Caller Connect is designed for businesses with retail branch offices that offer multiple line-of-business products. It provides managers and store personnel with the information they need about their phone-in business to run their operations more effectively. Combined with Cisco’s Unified Communications platform, it provides a robust, feature-rich solution that transforms the branches phone system from merely a few telephones to a complete communications solution that is intelligently integrated into your business process. Caller Connect can be deployed in a distributed or centralized model, and system management can be performed either locally or remotely, as desired.

Makes Branch Employees More Productive
Every minute a branch employee spends finding and transferring a call to someone else who knows the customer or specific product better is a minute they are not spending helping other walk-in or phone-in customers. Moreover, given that some customers generate more branch revenue than others do, over the long term you are not just losing today’s business for that priority customer who could not wait on hold.

With Caller Connect, current customers are automatically transferred to the best individual or group within the branch to help them. Incoming calls from designated priority customers will receive distinctive ring tones and flashing lights, as well as specific customer information on the Cisco IP Phone handset displays, to ensure that the customer gets priority treatment.  The phones are linked to individual terminals in the branch allowing employees to instantly link incoming caller information to the information on their screens to quickly process account transactions or address customer services matters.

Additionally, the Caller Connect management dashboard shows real-time telephone performance data, showing active calls and missed calls with priority color coding, and produces historical call reports, including successful calls, missed calls, wait time, etc. With Caller Connect providing unprecedented access to this information at a local branch level, managers can better understand customer behavior and calling patterns to ensure excellent customer service across product lines. It offers branch managers the tools to drive high performance from their staff and to make adjustments accordingly.

Keeping It Simple
Caller Connect is tightly integrated with Cisco’s Unified Communications product line.   The hardware for individual stores can be as simple and cost-effective as a single Cisco Integrated Services Router (2800/3800 series) or UC500 running Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager Express and Cisco IP Phones.  This offering includes a fully functional IP PBX with optional T1/EI trunk interfaces and integrated unified messaging and automated attendant capability, as well as routing, switching, and security features.

Together with Caller Connect, this unparalleled all-in-one solution will enable your branches to sell and service a wide variety of products.

Key Benefits:

  • Handle calls for multiple line-of-business products in the branch
  • Improve customer service
  • Ensure customer loyalty
  • Better understand customer behavior
  • Differentiate from competition
  • Enhance operational efficiency

Application Features:

  • Calls routed to phone or phone group based on customer record
  • Distinctive ring and flashing buttons based on customer priority
  • Phone display of customer data, such as name, company, priority level, phone number, etc.
  • Management dashboard shows active calls and missed calls in real-time, with priority color coding
  • Management dashboard produces historical call reports, including successful calls, missed calls, wait time, etc.
  • Specialized call treatment by priority level, automated announcements, and music on hold

Hardware Components:

  1. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) or Communications Manager Express on ISR routers/UC500
  2. Caller Connect Application Server. This can be a separate server or Cisco's Application Extension Platform (AXP) combining the ISR router and the application server in a single box
  3. Cisco Unified IP Phones

Software Components:

The following Voice and Application Servers are supported: The following Voice XML Browsers are supported:
  • JBoss   
  • Apache Tomcat
  • WebSphere Application Server 6.1
  • Cisco IOS Voice XML Browser 12.4(3) +
The following Database servers are supported: The following Operating Systems are supported
  • PostgreSQL
  • IBM DB2 9
  • Server: Linux Red Hat Enterprise 3 Update 5
  • Windows Server 2003
  • Solaris 5.8
  • Desktop Client: Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003
The following Web browsers for administration are supported: The following PBX’s are supported
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5,  6.0, 7.0
  • Mozilla Firefox 2 +
  • Cisco Unified Communications Manager 5 +
  • Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express

. IBM Retail Integration Framework

Question: Caller Connect seems like it does many of the things that contact center applications do. Is it as complex and as difficult to operate as a contact center solution?
Answer: No, Caller Connect's overriding design guideline is small size and simplicity. It is designed to be installed in a large number of branches/stores, and operated by in-store/branch personnel.
Question: Can Caller Connect be managed by a centralized IT or telecom group?
Answer: Yes, Caller Connects flexible architecture allows either local or remote management of the system within the branch/store.
Question: Given Caller Connect does many things that contact center software does, is it expensive?
Answer: No, Caller Connect is priced attractively for companies that wish to deploy it in as few as a dozen stores/branches, or as many as thousands of stores/branches.
A large Automotive Parts retailer deploys Retail Connect to capture more business**
How banks benefit through improved phone call handling in the branches**
**Check back soon for availability