IBM And Genesys Develop Call Center Solution For China

IBM and Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, have been developing, marketing and deploying call center solutions together for eight years and have more than 300 joint customers around the world, including in China, said Brig Serman, IBM vice president of strategic alliances. But the new Contact Center in a Box solution is designed to expand both companies' presence in China, Serman said.

Contact center application sales in China grew 15.5 percent in 2006 and are expected to grow more than 18 percent this year and 20 percent in 2008, according to a May 2007 report from market researcher Frost & Sullivan. "Customer service and customer satisfaction are becoming increasingly important in that market," Serman said.

IBM has been increasing its sales efforts in emerging markets such as China, India and Russia in recent years. The new contact center solution, which can be deployed in as little as 90 days, is targeted at both SMBs and large companies and organizations in China in banking, insurance, telecommunications and government.

The Call Center in a Box combines Genesys' suite of customer interaction management applications that provide call routing, computer telephony integration and customer self-service capabilities with Oracle's Siebel sales and after-sales support applications. The applications are pre-configured with IBM BladeCenter servers and IBM's DB2, WebSphere and Tivoli software.

IBM and Genesys jointly sell and service the Call Center in a Box solution. In China IBM will provide consultants and technical experts on Genesys software for localized customer support, according to the companies.

IBM and Genesys may configure the call center solution for other markets and could work with other channel partners to sell and service it in other countries, said Bruce Acheson, Genesys senior director of channel sales.