NICE Adds Real-Time Analytics to its NICE SmartCenter Suite, Further Powering Customer Dynamics Optimization

RA'ANANA, Israel, March 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE), a leading global provider of advanced solutions that enable enterprises and security organizations to extract Insight from Interactions, transactions and surveillance to drive business performance, reduce risk and ensure safety, today announced the availability of real-time analytics with its NICE SmartCenter suite of business solutions, adding to recently announced cross-channel analytics capabilities. The new NICE Real-time Guidance, available with the latest release of NICE SmartCenter, provides "next best action" recommendations to the agent in real time during a phone or chat interaction with a customer, helping to enhance the customer experience, maximize sales, reduce churn and ensure compliance with policies and regulations.  In a related announcement yesterday, NICE unveiled a new systematic approach for optimizing Customer Dynamics to generate maximum business value from customer interactions.

Real-time Guidance, which leverages NICE's cross-channel analytics capabilities, strengthens the NICE SmartCenter suite as an industry-leading offering enabling companies to optimize Customer Dynamics, the complex, ongoing interchange between companies and customers. Optimizing Customer Dynamics allows enterprises in all industries to build customer loyalty, as well as maximize profitability and ensure regulatory compliance.

"Being able to conduct real-time analysis of interaction-related data and deliver real-time guidance to contact center agents is an important consideration when trying to optimize customer interactions," said Jim Davies, Research Director, at analyst and advisory firm Gartner.  "This capability impacts efforts to improve the customer experience as well as improving operational efficiency and sales results."

NICE Real-time Guidance is a key enabler of NICE's closed-loop systematic approach to harness Customer Dynamics, which captures customer intent, applies cross-channel analytics to uncover insights and turns insights into impact. Insights garnered through contact center processes and solutions such as quality monitoring, cross-channel interaction analytics, and performance management, as well as those gathered in real time during the interaction, via desktop applications, can now be applied to impact customer interactions as they occur, and ultimately, a company's business performance.  

This is accomplished by triggering and presenting to the agent, in real time, context-sensitive recommendations and information that may be required according to business rules, empowering agents to take the right actions at the right time during an interaction with a customer. The result is tangible business value in the areas of compliance, operational efficiency, customer experience, and revenue generation.

NICE's Real-time Guidance leverages customizable business rules to deliver information directly to the agent's screen. It is an integral part of the NICE SmartCenter suite's packaged business solutions, including:

• Customer Experience: By leveraging insights from cross-channel analytics, agents receive a holistic view of the customer's prior interactions with the organization, coupled with the relevant and appropriate instructions as to the next steps to be taken. As a result of receiving these real-time instructions, agents can enhance the quality of service provided to customers, as well as their own quality scores.
• Sales Effectiveness: Real-time Guidance provides information to the agent regarding which offering is best suited to the customer's needs and preferences, as well as guidance for handling customer objections. This information is driven by both the agent's and customer's profiles (based on evaluations and CRM data, respectively), as well as information gathered during the interaction.  Presenting customers with the right offers at the right time helps to increase sales conversion rates and reduces churn.
• Compliance: After offline analytics uncover whether or not agents are providing a clear explanation of liabilities to customers, and after identifying which agents require support, Real-time Guidance delivers a dynamic script directly to the agent's desktop, with instructions that are based on the specific profiles of the agent and customer as well as the context of the call, thereby improving compliance and decreasing liability risk.
• Operational Efficiency: Delivering personalized, real-time instructions to agents that are directly related to the context of the specific interaction enables them to resolve issues more efficiently – improving First Contact Resolution (FCR) and Average Handle Time (AHT), among other performance indicators.

"NICE continues to push the envelope when it comes to technology leadership," said Udi Ziv, president, Enterprise Group, NICE.  "More and more companies around the world are leveraging our analytics-based offering as they move away from siloed to enterprise-wide deployments to extract business value from interactions.  This introduction of the all-important real-time capability, positions the NICE suite as far-and-away the industry-leading solution to help companies optimize Customer Dynamics. Real-time Guidance is unique in enabling organizations to create a positive impact during the moment of contact with the customer, when it matters most. By closing the loop on key business improvement processes, we are further advancing our strategy to help our customers harness their Customer Dynamics, to differentiate themselves, and expand their business with top-line and bottom-line improvements."  

About NICE SmartCenter

NICE SmartCenter is the premier tool for helping companies optimize Customer Dynamics, with unique capabilities for capturing, analyzing and impacting customer interactions across multiple channels.  NICE SmartCenter is a suite of pre-packaged business solutions that address specific business issues, powered by best-in-class functional components spanning call recording, quality management, cross-channel interaction analytics, workforce management and  performance management. The business solutions capture, analyze and impact customer interactions across a variety of channels, from audio, email and chat to social media and text messaging.  The solutions include nine packaged offerings: Customer Churn Reduction, Sales Effectiveness, Customer Experience, Marketing Effectiveness, Collections Optimization, Quality Optimization, First Contact Resolution Optimization, Average Handle Time Optimization, and Compliance Management.  These solutions can be deployed on premise, in a hosted model, or via a managed service, and can be implemented stand-alone or fully integrated with customer relationship management and business intelligence solutions.

About NICE Systems

NICE Systems (Nasdaq: NICE) is the leading provider of Insight from Interactions solutions and value-added services, powered by the convergence of advanced analytics of unstructured multimedia content and transactional data – from telephony, web, email, radio, video, and other data sources. NICE's solutions address the needs of the enterprise and security markets, enabling organizations to operate in an insightful and proactive manner, and take immediate action to improve business and operational performance and ensure safety and security. NICE has over 24,000 customers in more than 150 countries, including over 85 of the Fortune 100 companies. More information is available at www.nice.com.

Trademark Note: 360° View, Alpha, ACTIMIZE, Actimize logo, Customer Feedback, Dispatcher Assessment, Encorder, eNiceLink, Executive Connect, Executive Insight, FAST, FAST alpha Blue, FAST alpha Silver, FAST Video Security, Freedom, Freedom Connect, IEX, Interaction Capture Unit, Insight from Interactions, Investigator, Last Message Replay, Mirra, My Universe, NICE, NICE logo, NICE Analyzer, NiceCall, NiceCall Focus, NiceCLS, NICE Inform, NICE Learning, NiceLog, NICE Perform, NiceScreen, NICE SmartCenter, NICE Storage Center, NiceTrack, NiceUniverse, NiceUniverse Compact, NiceVision, NiceVision Alto, NiceVision Analytics, NiceVision ControlCenter, NiceVision Digital, NiceVision Harmony, NiceVision Mobile, NiceVision Net, NiceVision NVSAT, NiceVision Pro, Performix, Playback Organizer, Renaissance, Scenario Replay, ScreenSense, Tienna, TotalNet, TotalView, Universe, Wordnet are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NICE Systems Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on the current expectations of the management of NICE Systems Ltd. (the Company) only, and are subject to a number of risk factors and uncertainties, including but not limited to changes in technology and market requirements, decline in demand for the Company's products, inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies, products and applications, difficulties or delays in absorbing and integrating acquired operations, products, technologies and personnel, loss of market share, pressure on pricing resulting from competition, and inability to maintain certain marketing and distribution arrangements, which could cause the actual results or performance of the Company to differ materially from those described therein. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. For a more detailed description of the risk factors and uncertainties affecting the company, refer to the Company's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE NICE Systems Ltd.