The Solidus eCare Multimedia Contact Center is built to support three fundamental groups of users: customer service representatives, or agents; the management and administrators of contact centers; and end users, through self-service applications.

Jason Andersson, area driver for multimedia contact centers for Ericsson, says: "All in all, Solidus eCare helps organizations to minimize total cost of ownership while maximizing service availability and building customer relationships."

Solidus eCare also offers enhanced queue-handling integrated with interactive voice response (IVR). IVR can be used while customers are waiting on line, helping them through the process of purchasing or achieving whatever the purpose of their call is.

"Such a system reduces costs while providing a high level of customer satisfaction by providing 24-hour customer access to business services. It also reduces the cost per customer interaction by providing more self-service options, which increases business efficiency," Andersson says.

The system offers a range of traditional IVR services, such as bank-balance retrieval, pre-paid account balances, flight status or order status, all based on a customer's PIN code and database information.

An enhanced version of the product, due for release early next year, will offer more-powerful information-management tools, among other features. "It will provide a graphical representation of traffic flow across the entire network," Andersson says. "The graphical representation will show as many as 400,000 calls per hour. This is a good system for internal IT administration and for companies' multiple customer contact channels."

Another advantage is that Solidus eCare can accommodate different call centers or different users on the same system. The whole system can be hosted by an operator or service provider.