Unveil and UpSource Form Joint partnership
CAMBRIDGE, MA - UpSource announced plans to offer hosted speech service to the contact center market. The service is being initially implemented for a leading client of UpSource in the telecom sector.
The offering is being implemented and sold through a partnership with Unveil Technologies. The service introduces an approach to implementing voice self-service capabilities by mixing conversational speech capabilities with live agents throughout a given call. "Speech has always held the promise of dramatically reduced customer service costs. But the technology's complexity, cost and ongoing custom tuning and consulting requirements have discouraged many companies," said Susan Cohen, vice president of sales and marketing of UpSource. "We believe that a sophisticated, conversational speech system offered as a hosted service, uniquely integrated with live agents, as we have developed with Unveil, will entice many organizations to take a second look." The service is based on Unveil Technologies' Conversation Manager™. "Unveil's strategic partnership with UpSource is based on the proposition that mixing self and assisted service channels - traditionally separate resources in the call center - results in greater value, better system performance and improved caller satisfaction," said Ivan Mimica, CEO of Unveil Technologies. "By leveraging UpSource's continuous training investment in live agents, Unveil's software can significantly enhance the caller experience while dynamically learning and improving its performance over time." The service offering will be available to additional clients in North America during the first half of 2004 using UpSource's contact center in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada.