Genesys PureConnect (discontinued) vs. Pendula

CIC is best suited for business models that rely on heavily leverage Data Integration especially one like ours that require real-time and high-speed data access for billing and customer integration. CIC is not well suited for small organizations < 50 where they are only answering phones in the course of doing business VS. the business is the phone.

We used Pendula as part of our re-engagement program. This was valuable, as we were able to connect with 40,000 or more names. Knowing that either a significant telesales team effort--too expensive and not enough people--would be implausible. We designed an interactive SMS journey that allowed us to begin the process of taking the 40.000 and discovering those who were willing to shop with us again automatically. We also found that promotions and blasts worked really well, were very easy to set up and run, and then the automation on the back to create the Salesforce opportunity. We have also engaged with custom objects and were able to trigger events on internal activities and sales status, such as shipping notifications.

• Purely Software Based System: On Microsoft OS. It is an all software-based system making it easy to manage, integrate and interface with other systems
• One Vendor: All modules, IVR, ACD, Dialer, WFM are from one vendor. So, no compatibility and latency issues at all.
• Superb Notifier Service: You don't have to restart any process or service for a change to take effect.

Incentivized

• EOFY campaigns that drove limited time, limited release offers. We could segment our targets and engage those most likely to respond well.
• Limited release wine offers, again targeting the right buyers, and then designing a series of interactions with them. This enabled sales reps to speak to those most warm.
• Customer re-engagement. We have very many historical customers. We were able to reach 30,000 or so people and then lead them through several steps towards re-engagement.
• Targeting smaller customer segments was made easy due to the deep integration with Salesforce. We could create campaigns to account owners of contacts that met criteria--which provided a deeply personal experience.

• Licensing can be challenging and very expensive.
• Client templates are hard to administer and are built very different than the rest of the functionality.
• Web desktop has been slow to come along and include all the features.
• Optimizer is very sub-par product.

Incentivized

• Navigating a variety of journeys can get tricky. They have been steadily improving the interface here.
• Managing launch times and turning campaigns on and off can be cumbersome.
• Naming, tagging, and cross-journey reporting would be great.

We are so embedded on Pure Connect that we like to progress with it. For instance, we are looking into ways to provide different solutions to our customers, help our business to succeed, and work in a better CX.

One of the biggest advantages is that all is in one platform.

Incentivized

The interface is only semi user-friendly on almost every front. Agent experience is lacking and we have found many limitations within the system. Workforce forecasting is not as robust as expected. Quality continues to be a struggle. Interaction searches are not robust.

Incentivized

The application itself uses a hub and spoke model that can help isolate errors in one section of the application from the rest, creating a much more stable overall program. Of all of the outages that we've had with our contact center platform, I can count on one hand how often it was truly a Genesys issue rather than a network issue, server issue or issue with a platform relied upon for an integration (web services, db calls).

Incentivized

Some of the client applications take a bit of time on initial load, but with the move towards web based applications that issue is alleviated. You can tell that effort really isn't putting into the desktop apps any longer and that the client development effort is being put into bringing Interaction Connect closer to feature parity with the desktop (and bringing wholly new features to Connect). As far as IVR operations, web service calls, database operations: they all operate reasonably.

Incentivized

Some cases are resolved quickly others are taking longer and the reseller sometimes has to chase support several times and explain the issue seen several times. While being a direct customer before, I recognise this and it seems that when a case moves to another engineer they don’t read the previous case notes or don’t understand what has been done. This, from a customers perspective, slows down resolution times.

Incentivized

I liked the setup of the whole class. The instructor knew the topic well enough to answer questions from entry level to a more advanced one.

Instructor encouraged participation of the whole class and was able to engage every one. Also provided "real live" examples so everyone can relate to it.

Incentivized

The online training itself is good. You are provided resources and can self study to a certain point, but the pacing always felt off. Either snails pace or like trying to drink from a fire hose. I think this easily could have had to do with course material and my personal preparations, though. I would say my main gripe is that since the acquisition the team responsible for actually booking training is very unresponsive and often not knowledgeable about the courses they offer. Booking my last training was a real chore.

Incentivized

Don't try to go the perfect solution as a first target. Work on answer the more needs with a simple solution. Then analyse and try again to answer the most needs with adding a bit if complexity only if require. No needs to customise straight from the beginning or deployment takes too long.

Call Manager, you had to buy all the components that are out of the box for PureConnect. The licensing model is more expensive on the Cisco side vs the Genesys PureConnect side. Lastly was on the Cisco side since you have to connect/integrate all the components on the cisco side you have to have so many vendors to install those parts. This drives the cost up even more so it was not worth going that route for our organization.

We found the user interface, the customer service, and the feature sets worked very well for us. Pricing was also affordable.

Genesys PureConnect's core and adjunct model allows for fairly easy growth in satellite locations via off site session managers, remote located media servers, remote content servers, etc to allow you to spread the infrastructure out while not pushing as much network traffic to your core data centers.

Incentivized

• We're improving our CX by optimizing our call centers, using additional attributes and keys to identify the best rep for the job.
• We are also streamlining the journey of each individual customer by using PureConnect as the central interface for omnichannel interactions, allowing us to pick up the conversation where we left off.
• Using additional attributes that start with the contact center interaction, we're able to track a student journey and proactively step in - increasing our individualized support to focus on the student outcome.

• We were able to activate a large number of old customers
• We generated significant revenues and fast sales
• We have been able to run multichannel campaigns to great effect