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Convergys' Dynamic Decisioning Solution

Another week, another opportunity to rub elbows (as well as occasionally bend an elbow) with end users of communications solutions, this time at the Convergys Interactions 2009 meeting in Orlando, Florida. Though there were fewer users than might have participated in a less financially challenging year, those that attended enjoyed a great mix of executive presentations, customer testimonials and Convergys and partner demos.One of the key focuses was highlighting a solution from the Convergys portfolio, Dynamic Decisioning Solution (DDS), which is enjoying new prominence paired with the Intervoice portfolio. As seen in the diagram, the goal of DDS is to allow an enterprise to apply consistent policies across multiple channels of customer interaction.

Some might argue that a single contact center multi-channel routing solution could do the same thing, but in practice that is rarely the case. Web interactions are typically handled separately from voice. Live agent routing and IVR routing, while they can be combined, are in many cases still in siloed applications. And in-person interactions can also be run through DDS, something few systems today can include.

One of the keys to DDS' success with Convergys customers is that no one is attempting to "boil the ocean." Instead, specific enterprise problems are identified and then a solution created. Over time, additional problems can be solved, resulting in increased savings from the same solution. An example can illustrate. If a bank is trying to move customers from one kind of account to another, a powerful tool is to present the customer with an offer when they happen to be interacting with the bank on other business. While some agents may remember to present the offer during a call, or some associates may remember when a customer comes into the bank, DDS can make sure that the offer is made to the target audience consistently, with every appropriate opportunity.

Perhaps most interesting in Convergys' discussion of DDS was a glossing over of the technical details. They kept users' attention not by showing how one box could take data from another and make decisions, but by explaining how solving just one problem could lead to very short term results. The final speaker, Ryan Pellet, had some compelling examples of how DDS can be "self-funding," leading to "in-quarter or near-quarter" results. I saw lots of users writing down these economy-sensitive sentiments.