Products

PRODUCT PROFILE

Genesys One Gives Mid-Market a Second Shot

Genesys is making a play for the middle market with the release of Genesys One. The last time the company targeted the middle market was more than 10 years ago, when it was owned by Alcatel.

Since then, the middle market has changed significantly.

Both customer needs and buying behavior have changed considerably, observed Brian Bischoff, vice president of global offer management for Genesys.

“We have applied what we learned in the field with Genesys One,” he told CRM Buyer.

It is fair for customers to wonder if Genesys can build a strong application for the mid-tier. After all, the company’s focus has been on the biggest of the big banks, insurance companies and financial service providers in the world.

Still, the approach Genesys has taken to target the mid-market works, Bischoff insisted. “We have taken that software code and built best practices around it, and packaged it all in a way that makes it easy and fast and cost-effective for mid-market companies to deploy.”

A Foundational Application

Genesys One is a stripped-down version of Genesys 8 software suite. It offers basic functionality for a call center, including the SIP-based Genesys Customer Interaction Management Platform. Other features that come with the system include routing, agent desktop functionality and reporting.

“What we deliver with Genesys One is a foundation contact center based on inbound calling,” Bischoff said. “Enterprises add the functionality they want as the need arises.”

The application is robust, even without all of the features that would be found in the full-fledged suite. Genesys One can support up to 300 agents on a single server. Additional bells and whistles such as email outreach or real-time chat can be added for a price.

“This is a similar approach to what you see SaaS companies take,” Bischoff said. “There is an entry point price and then the incremental features cost more.”

Packaged Best Practices

Where Genesys One’s mid-market orientation is most obvious is in its implementation strategy and price point. The company has designed it to be installed within a month, at one-third of the cost an enterprise user would pay for the full suite.

Genesys accomplishes this via its Rapid Installer application, which populates customer service routing strategies and reporting through an intuitive application interface and certain templates.

Once the Genesys One system is installed, it provides templates to guide users through certain work processes.

For example, there is a pre-built template for segment-based routing of callers into the enterprise, Bischoff said. There are pre-built templates for real-time and historical reporting.

That was seen as an essential addition to the application, he noted, as mid-market companies are becoming increasingly sophisticated in how they leverage reporting functionality.

Erika Morphy has been writing about technology, finance and business issues for more than 20 years. She lives in Silver Spring, Md.

Leave a Comment

Please sign in to post or reply to a comment. New users create a free account.

CRM Buyer Channels