AXTEL Transforms Customer Service with Genesys Dynamic Contact Center

Today at G-Force San Diego, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., an Alcatel-Lucent company (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), announced that AXTEL, Mexico’s second-largest fixed line telecommunications company, has been selected from more than 240 applicants as a finalist for the second annual 2007 Genesys Customer Innovation Awards. AXTEL attained perfect scores in several of the 17 scoring categories, achieving top-level ratings for improved financial performance and the integration of automated and human service.

Using technology innovatively to streamline and optimize customer service, AXTEL partnered with Genesys to transform its customer contact center into a Dynamic Contact Center (DCC), increasing customer satisfaction as well as improving the contact center’s alignment with company business goals. Finalists strive to provide excellent customer service through the innovative use of technology in highly dynamic environments. Furthermore, the DCC showcases how customer service can be elevated to a strategic business asset designed to increase overall customer loyalty and business value. A DCC stops customer frustration, drives contact center efficiencies and accelerates business innovation.

“The goal of the awards program is to recognize the world’s most dynamic contact center environments,” said Wes Hayden, president and CEO, Genesys. “AXTEL has strategically leveraged the Genesys suite of contact center solutions to achieve an optimal balance of customer traffic, internal resources and business outcomes. The most universal common thread among all of the innovators is the ability to link business issues to customer service, achieve optimization and treat the contact center as a strategic opportunity.”

AXTEL began working with Genesys in 1999, implementing a software PBX in an effort to maintain flexibility for future growth. The strategy worked - both contact center managers and agents at the 50-seat contact center saw immediate improvements. Today, AXTEL has more than 700 agents in one location. With AXTEL’s recent acquisition of AVANTEL, the company now operates a second contact center which will be kept physically separate in order to develop an integrated virtual contact center in the two locations to complement AXTEL’s Disaster Recovery Plan strategies.

To meet these new growth challenges, AXTEL wanted to add new functionalities to take advantage of Open IP. The company was using the Genesys 7 real-time interaction suite with the Genesys Customer Interaction Management platform. To add functionality, AXTEL decided to integrate the Genesys Voice Platform for use over IP (GVP IP) with its existing Genesys system. GVP allows agents to focus on complex interactions that require human involvement, rather than spend time answering basic, repetitive questions that can be handled via self-service. GVP also helps the contact center dynamically change to support changing levels of interaction.

“The Genesys suite provides us with improved customer interaction and intelligent routing,” said Marco Caceres, IT manager at AXTEL. “We receive more than 37,000 inbound calls per day, so we were looking for ways to make better use of our agents’ time and expertise.”

AXTEL anticipates that all growth within its new and existing contact centers will leverage VoIP by late 2007. With Genesys, AXTEL can manage the multiple centers from one data center. Because the company doesn’t need to invest in new technology, AXTEL can focus more resources on investing in its people.

In defining its DCC vision, Genesys looked at the global customer service leaders among the 4,000 companies currently using its software. Genesys recognized that customers have started to deploy elements of the DCC vision today, based on key capabilities. Genesys created the Genesys Customer Innovation Awards to recognize those customers who are already making strides toward creating DCCs. The program also enables sharing of experiences among the Genesys customer community.

AXTEL presented to a panel of analyst judges during the semi-finals at the Genesys Analyst Conference, held in San Francisco in January 2007. AXTEL will receive recognition at G-Force San Diego, Genesys’ annual user conference, today in San Diego, Calif. For more information on the event, visit: http://www.genesysgforce.com.