Aspect, a unified communications and contact center software and services provider last week released Aspect Unified IP 6.6, scheduled for general availability in December 2008. The update will include an "ask-an-expert" feature using the instant messaging and presence technology provided in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Aspect announced back in March 2008 that it planned to improve unified communications capabilities in the contact center and in a separate announcement, Aspect and Microsoft announced an alliance to incorporate Microsoft OCS into contact centers.

The ask-an-expert feature uses Microsoft OCS 2007 to request real-time presence information on experts supporting the contact center or enterprise to improve first-call resolution. The Aspect platform provides inbound, outbound and blended multichannel contacts by providing unified communications based on session initiation protocol (SIP-)-based VoIP software.

Datapoint, a systems integrator and Aspect customer and partner based in the United Kingdom, has been using the new release to “identify the availability of knowledge workers, route calls to them, and record and monitor the interactions,” according to Aspect. In a prepared statement David du Toit, CTO at Datapoint said: “We’ve had a great experience with Aspect Unified IP 6.6 thus far and have seen positive results almost immediately. These new capabilities help us engage knowledge workers in the customer care process, and training agents on using these tools has been a breeze. We really feel that Aspect Unified IP will help give us a competitive advantage.”

In his statement, Serge Hyppolite, director of interaction product management at Aspect Software claimed: “With this version of Aspect Unified IP, you won’t find a tighter integration to Microsoft Office Communications Server available anywhere else.”

Our observations: While we can’t endorse Aspect’s claims for the product specifically, we do believe bringing in SIP-based unified communications and presence to more efficiently route calls to the right support person is a very effective tool in the contact center -- especially when compared to the “dark ages” approach that used legacy computer telephony integration (CTI). Unified communications will decrease the total cost of ownership and simplify integration with and migration from legacy systems.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.