Let’s face it, answering the phone for customers asking if you carry bicycle tire pumps or baking pans is not the most glamorous job in the store. It is no wonder that many store employees who work this duty are less than responsive to demanding customer requests. The fact is most of these employees would be more productive if they were out on the store floor, ringing up sales or helping customer. That is why Retail Direct was created, to offload mundane tasks from store employees so they can generate more store revenue.

Designed For Retail Store Locations
Retail Direct is designed for retailers with many different departments within their stores.  Combined with Cisco’s Unified Communications platform, it provides a robust, feature-rich solution that transforms your phone system from merely a few telephones to an automated communications solution that is intelligently integrated into your business process.  Retail Direct can be deployed in distributed or centralized models, but provides localized functionality to the individual stores, such as store hours and directions.  And system management can be performed either locally or remotely, as desired.

Makes Sales Associates More Productive
Every minute a customer waits on hold, or is transferred around the store risks that they will hang up and take their business to a different company. Moreover, the walk-in business in your store needs all of the employees you can spare to help them find what they are looking for, and efficiently ring up their purchases. Freeing up the store operators and getting customer calls routed to the correct department quickly will produce more revenue with the same or fewer employees.

With Retail Direct, incoming callers hear the store greeting, followed by the questions “how may I help you?” The caller can respond with a question such as “What are the store hours?” or “who can help me with microwaves?” or statements like “I want the mobile phone department”. The application quickly responds with “please hold while I connect you with the electronics department”. The caller immediately hears the electronics department phone ringing, and is just a few rings away from getting the help they asked for.  

Additionally, the Retail Direct management dashboard produces historical call reports, including successful calls, missed calls, wait time, etc. With Retail Direct providing unprecedented access to this information at a local store or branch office level, managers can better understand customer behavior and calling patterns to ensure high performance from their staff and to make adjustments accordingly.

Keeping It Simple
Retail Direct is tightly integrated with Cisco’s Unified Communications product line. The hardware for individual stores can be as simple and cost-effective as a Cisco Integrated Services Router (2800/3800 series) running Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager Express and some 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 Retail Direct, it’s an unparalleled all-in-one solution that will help you to give your stores the unfair advantage you’ve been looking for...

Key Benefits:

• Increase sales
• Improve customer service
• Ensure customer loyalty
• Better understand customer behavior
• Differentiate from competition
• Enhance operational efficiency

Application Features:

• The system recognizes naturally spoken sentences, discerns the department that has what the caller is looking for, and routes the call
• Management dashboard produces historical call reports, including successful calls, missed calls, wait time, etc.
• Callers can always ask for the operator to be routed
• Integrates with full range of Cisco Unified Communications IP Telephony offerings
• Flexible architecture supports both distributed and centralized deployment models

Hardware Components:

• Retail Direct Application Server (does not require proprietary server)
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) or Communications Manager Express on ISR routers
• Cisco Unified IP Phones

Software Components:

The following Voice and Application Servers are supported:	The following Voice XML Browsers are supported:
IBM WebSphere Voice and Application Server (included) IBM WebSphere Voice Server (included)	Cisco IOS Voice XML Browser 12.4(3) +
The following Database servers are supported:	The following Operating Systems are supported
IBM Informix (included)	Server: Linux Red Hat Enterprise 3 Update 5 Windows 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 Most other PBX's

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Question: Retail Direct seems like it does many of the things that contact center IVR applications do. Is it as complex and as difficult to operate as a contact center solution?

Answer: No, Retail Direct'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 Retail Direct be managed by a centralized IT or telecom group?

Answer: Yes, Retail Direct flexible architecture allows either local or remote management of the system within the branch/store.

Question: Given Retail Direct does many things that contact center IVR software does, is it expensive?

Answer: No, Retail Direct is priced to be attractive for companies that wish to deploy it in as few as a dozen stores/branches, or as many as thousands of stores/branches.