PHOENIX, Sept. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- ACCE-ANNUAL CALL CENTER EXHIBITION -- Tellme(R), a Microsoft(R) subsidiary, and Aspect Software today announced an agreement to bring together the Aspect leading unified contact center solution and services with Tellme's proven voice services platform to deliver a flexible, cost effective joint contact center solution. The agreement between Tellme and Aspect expands on the strategic, multi-year alliance that Aspect and Microsoft made earlier this year to deliver contact center solutions with deeper unified communications capabilities.

Through the agreement with Tellme, Aspect will enhance speed to market of a hybrid solution leveraging a premise-based and network-based contact center offering, helping businesses realize cost savings benefits. The agreement includes a joint roadmap to deliver Tellme's world-class, on-demand voice services platform to US-based customers along with a tight integration with Aspect(R) Unified IP(TM). Additionally, Aspect(R) Professional Services will provide all consulting services across automatic call distributors (ACDs), predictive dialers and interactive voice response (IVR) systems, inclusive of building the Tellme speech applications. The robust functionality will serve to help companies better manage spikes in volume, ensure business continuity and improve their customer service, collections and sales interactions.

"Enterprises spent $875 million for 'customer care on demand' (CCOD) in 2007," observed Dan Miller, Sr. Analyst at Opus Research. "We forecast double digit growth in this category in the coming years as partnerships like Aspect/Tellme make it simpler to leverage premises-based resources with robust capabilities "in the cloud." This provides enterprises with ways to reduce expenses while maintaining control over the quality of care."

With this partnership, Tellme's caller experience monitoring and reporting capabilities will be integrated into the Aspect Unified IP offering to create the most reliable and seamless solution in the market. The tight integration between Aspect Unified IP and Tellme enables common reporting, routing and administration -- giving users a unified view of their contact center operations.

"With our Tellme partnership, Aspect is uniquely positioned to help customers manage expenses, while meeting consumer demands, by melding premise and on-demand capabilities together to give contact centers the best of both worlds," said Mike Sheridan, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Aspect Software. "This is a great option for organizations that have dynamic requirements, are managing a growing or inconsistent call volume, and need lots of flexibility to deliver a superior customer experience."

"The market is looking for a solution, where a single provider can build, deploy, manage, and monitor their customer experience," said Bob Crissman, General Manager Partner Programs at Tellme. "With this alliance, enterprises now have a one-stop-shop for the traditional contact center scenario as well as new opportunities for voice-driven customer service, such as HR and CRM needs."

Tellme's voice platform is the largest VoiceXML network in the world for phone self-service applications. The platform handles billions of calls every year, providing carrier-grade reliability, best-of-breed speech technologies and flexible capacity for call traffic spikes that make it easier for customers to manage IVR costs.

Aspect Unified IP is a session initiation protocol (SIP)-based Voice over IP (VoIP) unified contact center solution that provides automatic call distribution (ACD), predictive dialing, voice portal capabilities, Internet contact, workflow management, multichannel recording and quality management to help organizations achieve their customer service, collections and sales and telemarketing business process goals.

About Tellme Networks, Inc.

Tellme fundamentally improves how people use the phone to get the information they need everyday. By combining web applications and a voice interface, Tellme's services let businesses deliver robust functionality on the phone to the consumers they serve. People simply say what they want and get it. Some of the services running on Tellme's platform include next generation customer self-service, logistics/supply chain, healthcare services, financial services and ordering for some of the largest companies in the world. Today Tellme powers billions of calls every year and is used by more than 40 million people every month. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., Tellme is a Microsoft subsidiary.

About Aspect Software

Aspect Software Inc. founded the contact center industry and is now the world's largest company solely focused on unified communications for the contact center. Our all-in-one, IT-ready solutions help two-thirds of the FORTUNE Global 100 and a variety of small and medium enterprises to communications-enable their customer service, collections and sales & telemarketing business processes. For more information, visit http://www.aspect.com.

Note: Aspect, Unified IP and Aspect Software are registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks or trade names are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Tellme