Altocloud Comes Calling On Cisco Contact CentersAltocloud Comes Calling On Cisco Contact Centers

The predictive communications pioneer, a Gartner "Cool Vendor" for 2015, embarks on a campaign to bring features and flexibility to Cisco contact center clients.

A contact center agent is working his way through a queue of calls. With each conversation, the prospect or customer needs to describe or repeat his or her needs, interests, and journey so far. Meanwhile, the situation repeats itself over and over on other channels and with other prospects and customers, many of whom will simply leave rather than telling their stories or making their requests yet one more time. Thanks to Altocloud and its predictive communications software, the consumer and agent experiences are enhanced to provide each the full spectrum of information the other offers, in real time, to accelerate communications, conversions, and conclusions.

Discerning the visitor persona

"We're essentially breaking down the walls between contact channels so visitors and agents can see each other and connect faster," said Dan Arra, Altocloud's vice president of customer success. "But that's not all -- we then equip agents with actions most likely to convert the visitor, based on real-time analysis of visitor behavior, demographics, and historical analysis of outcomes."

Personas, Journeys, and More
Altocloud says it delivers four tangible, actionable components of predictive communications. They are:

Altocloud visualizes the customer journey

Calling on Cisco Clients
Altocloud CEO Barry O'Sullivan has a strong track record and network from his days at the helm of Cisco's UC business, so it's no small wonder that the company has focused on integration with Cisco platforms.

Altocloud's predictive communications suite integrates with Cisco's Unified Contact Center Enterprise and other UC products, enabling agents to engage with website visitors while they're still online. The Altocloud toolkit, integrated into Cisco's Finesse Desktop Agent client, provides agents with information on the needs and product interests of visitors, resulting in a streamlined experience and faster resolution -- a win-win situation.

Altocloud also was first to integrate with the recently announced Cisco Context Service for Call Centers, a publish-and-subscribe cloud service that securely shares contact center meta data. The Context Service provides Altocloud with internal contact center data such as call durations and outcomes, trouble ticket status, and agent specialties, all of which it can then analyze in conjunction with consumer data. Altocloud's machine learning algorithms crank through the data looking for predictive patterns that enlighten recommended actions.

Not only do Cisco clients get the power of predictive communications before the call comes in, but also the benefit of the seamless exchange of tools and data between Cisco and Altocloud.

What's next for Altocloud? Could the company's integration with marketing automation -- including Hubspot and Marketo -- signal the next frontier, bringing richer upstream information about prospects and customers into the predictive communications picture? Stay tuned.