Convergys? New Intelligent Self-Service Solution Reduces Costs and Delivers Personalized, Relevant Multichannel Interactions

Cincinnati and New York — At the SpeechTEK 2009 Conference and Exhibition this week in New York, Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG), a global leader in relationship management, announced the immediate availability of its new Intelligent Self-Service solution. The inclusion of intelligent automation with self-service empowers companies to take full advantage of every customer interaction and leverage that valuable data to drive down operating costs, increase revenue opportunities, and maximize customer satisfaction and loyalty. Convergys’ experience has shown that clients who implement intelligent solutions can realize rapid ROI – often within six to twelve months.

By combining two innovative technologies – Convergys Dynamic Decisioning Solution (DDS) and Intervoice [R] Voice Portal (IVP) – Intelligent Self-Service delivers the next step in the evolution of the IVR. This game-changing solution gives contact centers the power to deliver personalized, relevant, multichannel, customer interactions and can provide tangible business results, such as up to 25% reduction in cost-to-serve, by

• Enabling centralized policy creation and management, supported by closed-loop learning, to ensure a consistent customer experience across all channels

• Personalizing the customer experience to increase loyalty and retention while reducing call handle times by up to 20%
• Accelerating self-service adoption rates to reduce costs and increase call containment rates by up to 20%
• Leveraging cross-sell and upsell opportunities to increase revenue
• Integrating with current business systems to take advantage of existing customer information
• Eliminating the risk and expense of a “forklift” technology upgrade

“Any company that has contact centers that need to increase their revenue opportunities and decrease operational costs can benefit from intelligent automation,” commented Nancy Jamison, president and principle analyst, Jamison Consulting. “Convergys is the first company to crack the code on the value of bundling intelligent automation with an IVR.”

The new Intelligent Self-Service solution reinforces Convergys’ reputation as an industry leader in relationship management by leveraging policies – business behaviors that affect the customer relationship – to personalize each interaction to the customer’s unique needs. Unlike other solutions that use intelligence to simply route the customer to the appropriate agent, the intelligence within Convergys Intelligent Self-Service follows customers through their entire interaction experience – from the time they initially make contact to the time their issue is resolved.

Intelligence in the IVR – and Beyond
A leading national financial services company deployed the Intelligent Self-Service solution as a pilot program. Using Intelligent Self-Service improved call containment in the company’s IVR to almost 93 percent of the pilot group — an increase of almost four percentage points above historical rates. With such a high level of containment, the company expects to see a savings of almost $500,000 annually, based on a cost of $3 per agent-handled call. Based on this success, the company is now using the solution to stimulate revenue by automating customers’ IRA and CD renewal processes. Companies that implement Intelligent Self-Service to address call containment issues often expand the solution beyond the IVR, as in this example, using it to increase revenue and solve other business problems.

The Intelligent Self-Service solution quickly provides a tighter integration with current business systems, including CRM, billing, and legacy systems. With this solution, investments in collecting and maintaining historical information can achieve greater value than ever before. The information on customers’ interactions personalizes typical automation capabilities that can provide increased IVR containment, more cross-sell/upsell opportunities, and proactive communications. The solution can also improve the ability to identify the caller and capture profile information. The caller’s intent is determined based on their menu selections and historical behavior, and profile-driven prompts and menus adjust and become more personalized as the customer continues to use self-service.

Introducing the Developer Zone
In conjunction with its Intelligent Self-Service solution launch, Convergys is also introducing a new Developer Zone website designed to help developers learn more about Convergys’ application development tools, including its Eclipse-based Interaction Composer (IC). Using this site, developers can download IC, install it on their workstations, and immediately begin building intelligent voice and multimodal applications, giving them the opportunity to “test drive” the capabilities of the Intelligent Self-Service solution. The Developer Zone includes an Interaction Composer Cookbook and a user guide to help developers learn about the tool, as well as an online forum monitored by Convergys’ technical staff, where developers can share tips and techniques and recommend enhancements.

“With the Developer Zone, we are providing the ability to quickly and easily build innovative self-service applications that add value to every customer interaction, without the cost and expense usually associated with trying new technologies,” said Mike Betzer, Convergys President, Relationship Technology Management.

Interaction Composer’s capabilities will be further enhanced with the release of Intervoice Voice Portal 6.5 later this year.

Flexible Deployment Options
Convergys helps companies strengthen their customer relationships through innovative and intelligent relationship management solutions and services that power millions of interactions every day. In response to the economic challenges facing businesses today, Convergys offers its clients flexible financing options and hosted services.

Availability and No-Risk Incentives
The Convergys Intelligent Self-Service solution is available immediately through Convergys’ direct sales force. For a limited time, qualified prospects and clients can license DDS at no cost and take advantage of the Convergys Performance Assurance Challenge to try Convergys’ intelligent solutions risk-free. For more information, call +1 800 344 3000 or visit www.convergys.com.

About Convergys:
Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG) is a global leader in relationship management. We provide solutions that drive more value from the relationships our clients have with their customers and employees. Convergys turns these everyday interactions into a source of profit and strategic advantage for our clients.

For more than 30 years, our unique combination of domain expertise, operational excellence, and innovative technologies has delivered process improvement and actionable business insight to clients that now span more than 70 countries and 35 languages.

Convergys is a member of the S&P 500 and has been voted a Fortune Most Admired Company for nine consecutive years. We have approximately 70,000 employees in 83 customer contact centers and other facilities in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and our global headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information, visit www.convergys.com