Cisco Unveils New Contact Center Solutions...with FinesseCisco Unveils New Contact Center Solutions...with Finesse

A social media engine for the contact center; a new widget-based agent desktop; and a media capture platform.

Today Cisco announced three new additions to their contact center--or as they put it, Customer Collaboration—portfolio: A social media engine for the contact center, SocialMiner; a new widget-based agent desktop, Cisco Finesse; and a media capture platform. There are a few marketing moves here that I applaud.

* First, I like the name Finesse. I'm a bigger fan of branded names, like Cisco Finesse or Avaya's Flare Experience, than of the plain-speak naming that was very popular for a while (Brand X Agent Desktop, Brand Y Contact Center), or of numbering (the Brand Z 8770 is an expanded version of the Brand Z 4770), often favored by European firms.

* Next, knowing the announcement was scheduled for today, but not knowing what time zone it would be pegged to, I began checking Google News early this morning. The first link to the press release I saw, however, came via Twitter. When you’re announcing a social media engine, using the tools makes perfect sense but could also easily have been forgotten by the less marketing-astute.

* I have seen early iterations of Cisco's new agent desktop in briefings since January 2010. Searching for a high-resolution picture to see what the finally launched solution looked like, I was disappointed in the detail in the screenshot on Cisco’s website. Once again, social media to the rescue! The two screen shots reproduced here are courtesy of my CiscoCC FaceBook friend status--proud as new parents, CiscoCC posted these pictures on their Wall early this morning.

* I love the fact that these announcements have been made in in advance of Cisco’s annual Collaboration Summit--for a couple of reasons. In the past two years, Cisco has proudly proclaimed that they are announcing "83 new products and releases." With so many new solutions and release updates, the 2-3 days of Summit become a kind of blur. The fact that today's announcemed products revolve around contact center (my first love) is icing on the cake.

One minor marketing hiccup I see? No name for the Cisco media capture platform. Director of Cisco Collaboration Marketing Ross Daniels tells me a name is being finalized. Cisco they felt that announcing all three of the contact center solutions together was important, so they chose to go with a description for now, brand to follow. So there'll be some new contact center news to look forward to during Collaboration Summit in Phoenix later this month.