There have been a lot of articles about Avaya lately and I, like many others out there it seems, feel positive about the future of Avaya telephony. To get some background on the lastest Avaya news, two posts that I recommend are Jon Arnold’s Avaya ENGAGE – Loud on Cloud and the Bright Side of Chapter 11 and Zeus Kerravala’s Message to Avaya Customers, Channel: Don’t Panic. Both articles discuss how Avaya has strong, core products, a healthy customer base and a solid plan on how to move forward, so there’s reason to be optimistic about Avaya’s long-term outcome.
My perspective is backed up by what we at InGenius are seeing first-hand in the contact center industry. Like Jon Arnold, several colleagues and I attended Avaya ENGAGE in Las Vegas, the annual gathering of Avaya users, partners and executives for training and networking. I spent a lot of time meeting people in the exhibit hall and felt a lot of great energy within the community. We learned a lot, made new, worthwhile connections and had a chance to check in with some of our current customers.
Our list of flagship Avaya customers has grown, most recently with the addition of Goosehead Insurance, one of the largest and fastest growing personal lines insurance agencies in the United States. Based in Texas and founded in 2003, Goosehead Insurance has over 400 offices nationwide and over $450 million in total written premiums. They’re using InGenius with their Avaya Aura Communication Manager phone system to ensure their agents are serving existing and potential customers efficiently.
A trend we’re seeing overall with Avaya customers is the adoption of Salesforce Omni-Channel to achieve blended contact center agents. Not only does this increase call handling capacity across all channels, but it also provides a better experience for customers. Customers are able to use the channel of their choice to contact companies – whether it’s by phone, email or live chat – and when an agent is answering their questions, they have a complete interaction history to reference, all within Salesforce. There’s no need to switch between tools or make customers re-explain their issue.
On the InGenius front, we’ve been making sure our Avaya support is better than ever. We added support for Avaya IP Office last August and renewed our Avaya Compliant rating of InGenius Connector Enterprise for Avaya Aura Communication Manager with the launch of version 5.0 in January.
As with all technology, time will tell, but to us, the future is looking bright!