2004 Product of the Year: Symon Enterprise Server

2004 brought a lot to celebrate. After years of companies hawking the latest and greatest (and often most expensive) features that technology has to offer, 2004 has brought the focus back to one of the most important assets of every call center: the agents.

More and more executives and managers are realizing how important it is to arm agents with the proper skills and tools they need to solve problems, satisfy customers and, in some cases, generate revenue.

The market is finally putting its money where its mouth is, as some of the top products of 2004 are all about empowering agents to take control of customer relationships. These are real tools that let agents develop career-worthy skills and put their knowledge to best use. After all, what good is the best technology if you don't have the best people with the proper knowledge to use it?

Some of these technologies enhance training, add coaching and measure skills like The Call Center School's computer-based training software, Employment Technologies' software for evaluating agents' written bilingual skills, and quality assurance software from Verint. Other products, such as software from Instranet, KnowledgeBase Solutions, TigerPaw Software and Symon, focus on organizing information and helping agents manage and maneuver through the vast knowledge of your company. There's even an innovative speech rec product from TuVox that's helping to bridge the gap between live and automated customer service.

Server Pipeline is featuring the Symon Enterprise Server information. But for all of Call Center Magazine's Circle of Winners, go to www.commweb.com/18600215.Symon Enterprise Server (SES)

Readerboards are among the most reliable systems for communicating with groups of agents or an entire center. When there's something agents must know about right away, readerboards are the perfect tools to help convey it using a palette of colors, fonts, graphics and even sounds.

Yet for the past few years, vendors have mostly emphasized new software that works with or complements their readerboards. Over time, this software has begun to morph into a new kind of middleware. One of the first examples of this is Symon Enterprise Server (SES) from Symon (Plano, TX).

The software comes in three variants. Series I, true to its readerboard roots, lets you project information from a single data source, such as an ACD, onto an unlimited number of physical electronic displays from Symon. SES Series I also allows you to send information to unlimited instances of DeskView, Symon's real-time reporting and messaging software for agents.

With Series II, SES enables you to define rules that entail more complexity beyond the thresholds you normally set up with data you present on readerboards. If your call center determines where to direct calls based on information customers enter from your IVR system, SES Series II can act as a repository for that information as it traverses your network.But the versatility of SES is most apparent with Series III. In addition to accommodating multiple data sources, the software serves as the underlying information clearinghouse for Vista, Symon's real-time reporting software for managers, and Contact Center Community, Symon's workforce management system.

Series III also consolidates data for practically any type of historical or real-time report. And whether your company has one call center, or a network of centers, you can use SES Series III as middleware with your routing software.

Subsequent versions of SES will enable you to replicate the software on multiple servers to ensure SES keeps running even if one of your servers doesn't. 972-578-8484, www.symon.com