PerformanceEdge from Aspect Software Offers Enhanced eLearning Capabilities

The PerformanceEdge Group of Aspect Software, the world’s largest company solely focused on Unified Communications for the Contact Center™, today announced that it will be offering PerformanceEdge™ eLearning and PerformanceEdge Job Match, which enables contact centers to improve agent recruitment, retention, and training processes along with overall contact center productivity. With these new eLearning and hiring capabilities, PerformanceEdge provides customers the most complete depth and breadth of contact center performance optimization capabilities on the market. The capability is provided through a partnership with Knowlagent, the leading provider of on-demand call center agent performance improvement tools.

PerformanceEdge eLearning is designed to improve training and coaching by delivering the right content at the right time to agents and supervisors. PerformanceEdge Job Match is a Web-based job screening application specifically designed for the call center that helps companies assess candidates against the critical job requirements and provides them with the opportunity to assess their own fit. The result is fewer “false starts“, therefore reducing attrition and improving overall performance.

“Agent attrition is one of the most prevalent problems that contact centers face today. Hiring and training new agents is a costly and time-consuming process,” said Robert Kelly, vice president of the PerformanceEdge Group. “With PerformanceEdge Job Match and PerformanceEdge eLearning, contact center managers now have sophisticated hiring and training options to better address these challenges. These capabilities will help our customers overcome the difficult task of lowering hiring costs and improving agent retention and skills, ultimately enabling their contact centers to deliver improved customer service, collections and sales.”
 
PerformanceEdge eLearning and PerformanceEdge Job Match capabilities will be delivered via the Web as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering from Aspect Software beginning August 2008. This simplifies distribution, reduces costs and implementation time, lowers professional services fees, and eliminates annual software maintenance fees and hardware costs. This is the first time Aspect is directly providing hosted services to customers via the Internet.
 
“Aspect is clearly reinforcing its commitment to agent training and contact center optimization with the PerformanceEdge eLearning and Job Match offering,” said Paul Stockford, president and chief analyst at Saddletree Research. “The eLearning market will continue to grow in the near future as companies look for ways to streamline the process of hiring and training knowledgeable contact center agents. By delivering the application via SaaS, Aspect is making eLearning capabilities easily accessible to its customers and speeding the adoption process of this essential performance optimization application.”

Finding the Time for Agent Training Through eLearning

PerformanceEdge eLearning integrates with automatic call distribution (ACD) and workforce management systems to deliver learning sessions without impacting ACD service levels. It monitors the levels of required ACD metrics, and can prevent or interrupt learning sessions in real-time as well as update the PerformanceEdge workforce management application, Aspect® eWorkforce Management™, indicating whether training was delivered. In addition, PerformanceEdge eLearning offers customized pre-packaged courses to meet specific training needs, aid deployment and speed ROI. Specialized content learning bundles include Agent Productivity Improvements, Sales Optimization, and an upcoming Collections Skills course. The benefits of PerformanceEdge eLearning include:

• Improved agent performance management through delivery of targeted eLearning sessions.
• Reduced training time and costs.
• Certification and compliance with key business initiatives.

PerformanceEdge eLearning will offer product integrations to Aspect® eWorkforce Management™, Aspect® CallCenter® ACD and Aspect® Spectrum® ACD. Integrations with Aspect® Unified IP™ will be delivered in a subsequent release.

Transforming the Hiring Process with Job Match

PerformanceEdge Job Match provides applicant screening capabilities that improve the agent selection and hiring process by identifying candidates with the best aptitudes and skills to increase recruiting efficiency, reduce attrition and improve new hire productivity. With its complete process and tool set, PerformanceEdge Job Match automates key steps of the selection process to eliminate wasted time screening and interviewing unqualified candidates, so you can hire the right agents from the start.

PerformanceEdge Job Match creates models that reflect unique job activities and business needs and provides applicants with a realistic overview of the position and its associated tasks. Skills, personality and voice fit are assessed to determine if candidates are capable of performing job-specific behaviors. Benefits to users include:

• Increased agent retention and productivity.
• Decreased new hire attrition and hiring costs incurred by screening and interviewing unqualified candidates.
• Streamlined and automated hiring process.
• Improved time to proficiency.

About PerformanceEdge
PerformanceEdge combines workforce management, recording and quality management, performance management, campaign management, and coaching and eLearning to enable organizations to holistically respond to changing business conditions. The PerformanceEdge applications dynamically interoperate to contact center managers consider everything and act immediately, ultimately making it easier for inbound, outbound and blended contact centers to control costs, enhance service levels and align performance with strategic goals. For more information, visit www.performanceedgesuite.com.

About Aspect Software 
Aspect Software Inc. founded the contact center industry and is now the world’s largest company solely focused on unified communications for the contact center. Our all-in-one, IT-ready solutions communications-enable customer service, collections and sales & telemarketing business processes for small and medium enterprises as well as for two-thirds of the FORTUNE Global 100. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.