Interactive Intelligence's Interactions 2013: Customer StoriesInteractive Intelligence's Interactions 2013: Customer Stories

Interactive's emphasis was not "this is the stuff we have" but "this is what you can do for your customers with our stuff."

This week Interactive Intelligence had its first global event, gathering around 1,800 users, partners, consultants, financial and industry analysts for four days in their hometown, Indianapolis. It was global indeed, with attendees from 30 different countries and simultaneous translation offered in Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese. The theme was, "Deliver the Experience," emphasizing not "this is the stuff we have" but "this is what you can do for your customers with our stuff."

Interactive Intelligence understands that their customers can tell their story more convincingly than they can, and the company's customers are more than happy to oblige. During the Day One keynotes, customer Angie Hicks, founder of Angie's List, spoke about providing a great customer experience. Day Two brought the story of Con Edison of New York. They have made the decision to replace an 800-seat Rockwell Spectrum ACD using add-on applications from Aspect, Cisco, Avaya, Verint, and Virtual Hold with Interactive Intelligence. (Note: while the Rockwell ACD and Aspect workforce management solutions are now owned by the same company, they were purchased and deployed separately by Con Edison.)

With a slide titled, "Why Interactive Intelligence," Con Edison's Sebastian Cacciatore said, "An all-in-one solution is very attractive to us. We're excited about moving away from all these peripheral systems." Interesting was Cacciatore's repeated praise of his Interactive Intelligence reseller, Altivon. He made it clear that the choice was not just among various solution vendors but among the partners who would be supporting him in this complex migration. Cacciatore said that while an Avaya or Cisco reseller reaction to a shift in possible direction was "hold on, we need to re-assess everything," Altivon's was, 'OK, we can make that work.'

Analysts and press were treated to additional customer stories, in the form of a panel over lunch. Two outsourcers, DialAmeria and EMS, joined an insurance company and local government agency to form a panel that freely answered our questions about their Interactive Intelligence experiences. The companies ran the gamut in terms of CPE vs. CaaS (communications as a service). The local government is operating a hybrid model (Interactive Intelligence IVR on site and agents supported via CaaS); EMS moved to Interactive Intelligence CaaS from another cloud provider; and DialAmerica and the insurance company are CPE customers.

Three of the customers have already moved beyond a pure inbound voice operation. Asked what communications channel is up next for consideration, the insurance company and one outsourcer mentioned mobile and the other outsourcers said social media--primarily being driven by requests from their customers. The state government agency is looking toward email and chat, proceeding cautiously for regulatory reasons.

A final customer story was the winner of this year's Innovator Award. At the awards dinner, the audience was shown videos about three different customers, selected by Interactive Intelligence from amongst a number of submissions. The attendees were then given text codes to vote for our favorite, Idol-style. The winner was Veterans United Home Loans of Columbia, MO. They are in the process of decommissioning 16 PBXs and ACDs nationwide and moving 1,800 business and contact center users to CaaS--at the rate of one site every 18 days. They got my vote.

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