Harte-Hanks is using speech self-service and Internet protocol (IP) telephony solutions from Avaya (News - Alert) Inc.

The client companies of Harte-Hanks demand efficient delivery of quality services and they help their clients optimize relationships with their customers throughout the entire buying cycle - from lead responses to purchases to product support after a sale is made.

“This requires interactions to be handled quickly and in the most cost-efficient way, a goal we're able to achieve by partnering with industry leaders such as Avaya,” said Dave LaGreca, chief information officer, Harte-Hanks Inc in a press release.

Harte-Hanks extends global contact center solutions to many FORTUNE 500 clients. With a network of centers in the United States and worldwide the company provides sales support, lead generation, customer care, technical support and security expertise.

Harte-Hanks turned to a speech self-service solution based on the Avaya Voice Portal when a major client needed a better interactive response system to route technical support calls from customers. The Avaya Voice Portal is a next-generation software platform for speech-enabling Web services across a distributed enterprise.

According to Kris Klein, director of voice services for Harte-Hanks, speech applications can be thoughtfully and efficiently implemented to improve the customer experience.

“When we needed a new natural-language application to enhance customer service for our client, we knew Avaya could do the job. We trust the recommendations and engineering behind Avaya Voice Portal,” he said.

With Avaya, Harte-Hanks now has a solution that prompts customers to request the kind of help they need in natural spoken language. Recognizing their spoken words the system automatically routes calls to the most appropriate agent. Additionally, the solution helped Harte- Hanks reduce average call transfer times for its client.

Viecore Inc., a member of the Avaya DeveloperConnection (News - Alert) program worked with Harte-Hanks. Viecore, a consulting and systems integration firm designed and implemented the speech self-service application using Avaya Dialog Designer, a VoiceXML development tool that speeds the development of speech self-service applications.

An Avaya IP telephony-based contact center solution is also used by Harte-Hanks to serve its clients globally more effectively.

Klein said that IP telephony has enabled them to flatten and consolidate their infrastructure and get rid of duplicate hardware so they can administer multiple contact center sites as one efficient operation.

Harte-Hanks can now use a single, networked platform based on IP for voice self-service, automatic call distribution (ACD) and contact center management. The company has also deployed an Avaya Enterprise Survivable Server. The calls can thus still be routed to agents and specialists even if a server or network connection is lost.

Avaya Global Services, a team of more than 9,000 services experts worldwide maintain and monitor the company’s network around-the-clock.

Avaya Inc. designs, builds and manages communications networks for more than one million businesses worldwide, including over 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500.

Harte-Hanks is a direct marketing giant, which handles customer care for some of the world’s largest companies.

Want to learn more about IP telephony solutions? Then be sure to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users.

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering call centers, CRM and information technology. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.