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With a stable market to work with, software vendors have introduced a number of call center products and upgrades to aid e-commerce efforts in insurance.
Companies that have released major upgrades to core call center and call center CRM software suites in recent months include eAssist Global Solutions Inc., San Diego, and competitors such as Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc., Daly City, Calif.; PeopleSoft Inc., Pleasanton, Calif.; and Siebel Systems Inc., San Mateo, Calif.
EAssist has added eAssist Release 3.0, which comes with improved feedback reporting, scripting capabilities and network resiliency features, and PeopleSoft has introduced PeopleSoft CRM for Insurance, a version of its CRM software designed especially for insurers.
Genesys has negotiated an agreement to have the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Chicago, endorse its latest release, the Genesys Suite 6 contact center system. A lead competitor, Siebel, has come out with Siebel 7.5.
NaviSys Inc., Edison, N.J., a company that focuses on the life insurance industry, will be releasing a new version of its NaviSys Front Office software sometime around April. The new version will come with better tools for making information available to the call center agent and more templates agents can use to send letters addressing callers concerns, the company says.
Aspect Communications Corp., San Jose, Calif., another developer of heavy-duty call center applications, is finishing work on a tool called Scheduled Callback.
The tool tackles the problem of persuading callers who are holding to hang up without taking their business elsewhere, or, worse, hanging up, redialing and forcing the insurer to pay for another "toll free" telephone call.
