COSMOCOM AT ICCM 2004

Joint Effort with Level 3 Highlighted with Adjacent Booths

Join CosmoCom at ICCM 2004 from August 11 – 12 at the Navy Pier in Chicago. See CosmoCall Universe at work, and talk with CosmoCom and our next-booth neighbor Level 3 to learn how our joint VoIP offering maximizes the benefits of IP in the call center and optimizes the overall cost structure of the operation.

In addition to exhibiting, CosmoCom will also participate in the ICCM Application Showcase Theatre. Our presentation will explain how virtualization and other benefits of IP can achieve the seemingly contradictory goals of improving customer service and reducing costs. The presentation will include a real example of the IP value proposition, and TCO and ROI calculations that make a very compelling business case.

We hope to see you there!

COSMOCOM ANNOUNCES COSMOCALL UNIVERSE VERSION 4.4

Highlights Include Thin Client, N-Way Conferencing and Enhanced Tenant Management

On July 13, 2004, CosmoCom announced CosmoCall Universe 4.4, the latest version of its all-IP, unified contact center suite. Version 4.4 features easy integration with thin client applications, robust n-way conferencing and enhanced tenant management capabilities, as well as a broad range of usability and performance enhancements.

“Version 4.4 is based almost entirely on customer feedback,” said Erik Laurence, vice president of product management and business development for CosmoCom. “Our customers guide the evolution of CosmoCall Universe by requesting features that address their contact center needs and meet their business goals. Our success with on-demand service providers, OEMs and the telecom customer care vertical results in many such requests, and we wouldn’t want it any other way,” Laurence continued.

Major features of CosmoCall Universe version 4.4 are highlighted below:

Easy Integration with Thin Client Applications
CosmoCall Universe now features Thin Client Web Services, an API that facilitates integration of the CosmoCall Universe Agent into any thin client application. “Our customers needed much more than just a standalone thin client,” Laurence explained. “With this feature they can easily create their own thin client and make it a part of their existing thin client applications.” Like all of CosmoCom’s APIs, the Thin Client API is built on open, standards-based interfaces, which are easy to use and well understood by many programmers. This makes integrations faster to implement and less costly to maintain.

Robust N-Way Conferencing Including Recording
Agents can now conference not just three, but multiple parties up to a configurable limit on an ad hoc basis. Now, there’s no need to plan and pay for an external conference bridge if a multi-party conversation is needed. In addition, supervisors can monitor all legs of the conference, and multi-party conferences are recorded by CosmoCorder™ just as two-party calls are.

Streamlined Tenant Management
The new tenant provisioning module simplifies tenant creation, reducing setup time to less than one minute, and further streamlines a number of management tasks such as DNIS assignment, and creation of default IVR and call handling scripts. It also allows service providers to market and deploy services through channel partners (sub-landlords), each of whom can provision and manage its own group of tenants.

For more information about the latest version of CosmoCall Universe, visit http://www.cosmocom.com/pressreleases/PressReleases2004/pr07132004.htm

WEB-BASED TRAINING FOR VERSION 4.4 PLANNED

September marks the beginning of CosmoCom’s web-based Upgrade Certification Training Program, designed to refresh our customers’ CosmoCall Universe product training quickly and conveniently. Planned for September 14, CosmoCall Universe v.4.4 Upgrade Training will be the first in this series.

A one-hour overview session on CosmoCall Universe v.4.4 will be presented on September 14 immediately before the Upgrade Training. All who are taking the Upgrade Training must also attend this session. However, the overview is designed for a wider audience, and is ideal for those who want a high-level view without the technical details of the full training. The presentation will cover the features and benefits of the new functionality in v.4.4 and is free of charge.

For more information on both sessions, visit www.cosmocom.com/special/CCU44Training.asp

LEVEL 3 AND COSMOCOM RELATIONSHIP IS HEATING UP
TO DELIVER BIG VoIP SAVINGS TO CALL CENTERS

As you know from a previous edition of CosmoChronicle, CosmoCom and Level 3 Communications have teamed up to address the call center market with the goal to deliver big VoIP savings. While many organizations are already benefiting from VoIP equipment and from VoIP services, only the marriage of CosmoCom’s VoIP contact center technology and Level 3’s IP telephony services fully optimizes the overall cost structure, enabling customers to eliminate the hardware, maintenance and IT personnel costs associated with premise-based gateways, and also to lower the connectivity and per minute costs of their telephone service.

An article in the May 2004 issue of CRM Magazine reinforces the advantages of VoIP. Entitled “VoIP Driving Benefits for Customer Care Providers” and contributed by Kevin Dundon, Level 3’s senior vice president for wholesale VoIP services, it discusses why VoIP is attractive not only for its cost savings, but also because it enables valuable new applications. For example, VoIP is location independent, allowing the creation of a virtual call center to support remote agents and other off-site resources, which provides a company with operational flexibility as well as recruitment benefits.

The tremendous savings opportunity of VoIP has generated a lot of attention, and the Level 3 and CosmoCom sales teams are mobilizing to address the interest. CosmoCom has been invited to present the CosmoCall Universe solution at Level 3’s Sales Meeting, which takes place during ICCM. The two companies are also planning joint webinars and have begun leveraging each other’s sales pipelines and customer bases to develop mutual business opportunities. Of particular interest is a Home Agent solution, which aids in recruitment by increasing the agent pool and requires minimal adjustment to the contact center.

CosmoCom’s VoIP contact center technology and Level 3’s IP telephony services have indeed proven to be a great match. The interoperability between the two is awesome, and one Level 3 associate even stated that CosmoCom “is so far ahead of all of the other call center solutions that it will take them years to catch up.”

Given their keen mutual interest in VoIP, and their combined sales and marketing efforts, CosmoCom and Level 3 are positioned for great success. We will keep you posted on our progress.

ENHANCING SERVICE, REDUCING COSTS IN 
THE TELECOM CUSTOMER CARE CENTER

CosmoCom Shows How in a New White Paper

Today’s telecom customer care manager faces the daunting task of providing better and more consistent service, and reducing operating costs at the same time, all while managing complex day-to-day operations. So how do you achieve these seemingly contradictory goals? That’s the subject of CosmoCom’s new white paper entitled “Challenges of the Telecom Customer Care Center: Enhancing Service and Reducing Costs with CosmoCall Universe.” The paper identifies the following winning strategies to achieve these goals:

• Move offshore as much as possible.
• Transform multiple standalone operations, including offshore operations, into a single virtual call center for maximum efficiency, consistency and control.
• Reduce the application integration backlog that slows down agents and makes them less productive.
• Provide unified, universal customer access via telephone, email and Internet channels to open less costly or more convenient interaction channels while preserving quality and consistency across all channels.
• Develop and enable a systematic process to make rapid adjustments to service delivery in order to ensure customer excellence.

The challenges of each strategy, as well as the solutions that CosmoCall Universe provides, are discussed in detail, and the effectiveness of CosmoCall Universe is demonstrated by a case study of a major wireless communications provider.

The white paper concludes by demonstrating how to build a business case for the acquisition of CosmoCall Universe v. a traditional circuit-switched alternative that provides, as much as possible, similar functionality and benefits. It will guide you through the process of quantifying hard dollar and soft dollar savings, and calculating the total cost of ownership for each solution, the combination of which will determine each solution’s ROI. 

So, if you’re feeling the pressure to increase customer service and reduce costs at the same time, CosmoCom’s new white paper is indispensable. Check it out at www.cosmocom.com/WhitePapers/whitepaper-TeleCustomerCare.htm

A FLURRY OF COSMOCOM MEDIA COVERAGE

CosmoCom has experienced a nice flurry of media coverage in the past couple of weeks. Five different articles have appeared.

CustomerThink Forum, CRMGuru.com
This article highlights the new features of CosmoCall Universe, confirms the upward trend in IP and lauds the overall CosmoCall Universe platform. Check out the quote below.

Donna Fluss, CRMGuru contact center specialist, has noted the trend in IP. "It's taken a long time, but IP Contact Centers are now viable and are worth the attention of organizations considering the purchase of new infrastructure," she said.

She added, "CosmoCom's IP contact center, CosmoCall Universe, is a functionally rich, all-in-of offering. It's been thoroughly tested in dozens of implementations by British Telecom and network service providers around the world. Though not yet a major player in the North American contact center market, CosmoCom is poised for significant growth in the U.S. and abroad."

CRM Magazine
http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=4273
Published after an interview with Steve Kowarsky, CosmoCom’s executive vice president, and sparked by the CosmoCall Universe version 4.4 product release, this article describes the new features and benefits of version 4.4, and highlights the extremely customer-driven nature of our new product development efforts. While it is unusual to obtain such detailed attention from a journalist to a product announcement, it reinforces that our customer focus and product direction are on target.

Call Center Magazine
http://www.callcentermagazine.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=J5ZOP3OI22ATCQSNDBGCKHY?articleID=22103922
This comprehensive article surveys the entire IP Call Center field and mentions a good many key players such as Cisco, Nortel, Mitel and T@W. However, CosmoCom rated a full four paragraphs, inspired by the joint press conference with Eagle. This is the second article that reporter Joe Fleischer has written that was inspired by the Eagle event.

Customer Interaction Solutions
http://www.tmcnet.com/cis/0704/ipcontact.htm
Contributed by Steve Kaish, CosmoCom’s vice president of sales, Americas and Japan, this article discusses how call centers can enhance service and reduce costs by implementing a solution that enables a virtual call center, facilitates application integration and supports multi-channel contacts in a unified fashion.

Long Island Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/business/local/newyork/ny-bzcarter053881228jul05,0,4924548.column
This article highlights CosmoCom’s art history / technology history theme of our Melville headquarters. Featured in the business section of Long Island Newsday, a top 20 US daily newspaper with circulation of more than 600,000, this is a great awareness piece that further enhances our image in the community.

CosmoCom is constantly making efforts designed to generate this kind of coverage. Sometimes when it rains, it pours!

LEADING CHINESE MEDIA GROUP, DA ZHONG, EMBRACES COSMOCALL UNIVERSE

CosmoCom’s Erik Laurence visits Da Zhong’s state-of the-art contact center.

CosmoCom’s Erik Laurence, vice president of business development and product management, Rayman Wong, regional director of Asia, and William Ma, sales manager,  recently paid a visit to CosmoCall Universe customer, Da Zhong, a large media organization that owns and operates several newspapers, as well as other media in China. Located in Shandong province, which boasts a population of 90 million (more than any European country), Da Zhong’s newspapers are among the top three in circulation in China, and the top 40 worldwide.

Da Zhong utilizes CosmoCall Universe to not only service customers and sell subscriptions, but also to deliver free information via its agents about subjects of interest. To communicate the availability of this service, the company runs newspaper announcements that describe the information that can be obtained and the corresponding phone numbers. The service has been well received by the community.

Da Zhong’s contact center operation is as progressive as its services. In addition to deploying CosmoCall Universe, the company has outfitted its contact center with -state of the art- agent PC equipment. They also host various employee activities, such as talent shows, to make the work environment as pleasant as possible for their agents.

Da Zhong, which is financed by China Netcom, is also launching Contact Center On-Demand™ services in China. To prepare Da Zhong for this effort, CosmoCom presented CosmoVantage™, a market success program that is designed to guide service providers through the often complex maze of deploying a successful Contact Center On-Demand service. More than 60 people attended the seminar, which presented information about establishing a business case, how to market to customers and more.

COSMOCOM WINS 2004 INTERNET TELEPHONY INNOVATION AWARD

CosmoCom adds the 2004 Internet Telephony Innovation Award to its CosmoCall Universe trophy mantle! According to the awards announcement in the July 2004 issue of Internet Telephony, "If you want to see ‘universal convergence’ of voice, data, fax, and other communications methods, then you need look no further than the aptly named CosmoCall Universe, which is a complete, unified contact center suite that includes ACD, IVR, CTI, predictive dialing, and multimedia recording..."

“CosmoCom is very proud to have received this award, especially since it is granted based solely on how unique or innovative a particular product or solution is,” said Ari Sonesh, CosmoCom’s CEO. “We appreciate the recognition, and we share it with our customers, whose valuable feedback has significantly influenced the direction of our product development.”

To read more about CosmoCom’s 2004 Internet Telephony Innovation Award, visit http://www.tmcnet.com/it/0704/TMCLabs.htm

COSMOCOM FEATURED SPEAKER AT TMC UNIVERSITY IP SESSION

Erik Laurence, CosmoCom’s vice president of business development and product management, was a featured speaker at TMC University’s IP Contact Center 101 session. Erik’s topic was “Advanced IP Contact Center Apps,” and his presentation discussed how managers can meet the conflicting goals of enhancing service and reducing costs at the same time. Other featured speakers included representatives from Lucent and Nortel.

A two-day session that concluded with a certification exam, TMC University’s IP Contact Center 101 session instructed attendees on a range of subjects, from basic IP contact center applications to cost justifications for the IP contact center. TMC University is affiliated with TMC™, which has established itself over the last 30 years as a leading full-service media company specializing in the communications and high-technology marketplace.

NEW MEMBERS OF THE COSMOCOM FAMILY

CosmoCom Extends a Warm Welcome to Our New Employees Worldwide

Headquarters

Marty Bodelson, Sales Director, Americas
Marty Bodelson comes to CosmoCom with more than 20 years successful sales and sales management experience in the call center industry. Marty will strengthen CosmoCom’s US presence, working out of his virtual office in Atlanta.

Evgeny Keselman, Senior Developer
Evgeny Keselman brings his extensive software engineering experience to CosmoCom from ClearForest Ltd., where he was responsible for the design and implementation of server side applications. Evgeny received his B.S. in computer science from Bara-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel.

Lynn Schnatterly, Staff Accountant
Lynn Schnatterly received her B.S. degree in accounting from SUNY at Old Westbury, and has a strong history of accounting staff positions with major Long Island companies.

Israel

Avishay Luxemburg, QA Engineer
Avishay Luxemburg comes to CosmoCom from his QA position with Gteko Technologies, a leading provider of support automation software solutions that enhance and expand automated and remote technical support capabilities.

United Kingdom

Steve Frankton, Sales Director, Northern Region, and Director, Channel Development
Steve Frankton joins CosmoCom with a wealth of experience, knowledge and industry contacts acquired during his successful career in the call center industry. Trained as an engineer, Steve has held senior sales and management positions in top UK companies both large and small.

TRADESHOW NEWS: COMING ATTRACTIONS

	ICCM Chicago August 11 – 12, 2004 Navy Pier  Chicago, IL  USA Visit our booth #1122 next to Level 3 Communications Speaker: Steve Kaish, VP Sales, Americas and Japan  Topic: Virtualization to Enhance Customer Service AND Reduce Costs When: Thursday, August 12, 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. Where: ICCM Application Showcase Theatre, Show Floor
	SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT Internet Telephony Conference & Expo October 4 - 7, 2004  Millenium Biltmore Hotel  Los Angeles, CA USA http://www.tmcnet.com/itexpo/  Speaker: Erik Laurence, VP  Business Development & Product Management Topic: The ROI Case for Hosted Contact Center Services as an Alternative to Premise-Based Systems When: Thursday, June 7, 3:30 - 4:15 p.m.
	Broadsoft Connections 2004 Executive Users Conference - Invitation Only October 10 – 13, 2004 Scottsdale, AZ USA
	RECORDED TELECOM CUSTOMER CARE WEBINAR Meeting the Telecom Customer Care Challenge  Reducing Costs and Enhancing Service with the  IP-Based Virtual Call Center  Took place June 17, 2004 Find out more and view recording
	RECORDED WEBINAR WITH DATAMONITOR Why Contact Center On-Demand? The Bright Future of a New Service Delivery Model  Took Place April 14, 2004 Find out more and view recording

CosmoCom, Inc.
121 Broad Hollow Rd.
Melville, NY 11747
+1 631 940-4200
http://www.cosmocom.com

    
Editor-in-Chief: Vanessa King
Production: Meda Bittermann
Graphics and Design: Kevin Simms