OpenMethods
Enabling an Omnichannel Customer Relationship Experience

Today, the relentless need for an effective and versatile customer relationship has paved way for a steady increase in cloud-based CRM solutions. With that, omnichannel customer communication is becoming more vital than ever in order to maintain a better portfolio of customer retention and satisfaction. Many contact centers are adopting Oracle CRM solutions to expand into digital interaction channels and personalized customer interactions. Nevertheless, CIOs face challenges with integrating CRM platforms and their legacy communication platforms. Bridging this gap, OpenMethods provides industry-leading solutions to deeply and bi-directionally integrate traditional communications and CRM platforms to enable a true world-class omnichannel customer experience.

Oracle has aggressively adopted cloud-based techniques and OpenMethods aims at integrating these solutions with premise-based and cloud telephony solutions. Telephony infrastructure is the crux and historic operational backbone of any contact center. The partnership between Oracle and OpenMethods serves a combined clientele of mid-to-large contact centers to address this intersection. “Together with Oracle, we help engineer world-class customer experiences utilizing the strengths of the telephony infrastructure and CRM platform,” says Gerrit Lydecker, CEO of OpenMethods.

“A good percentage of our customers start their engagement with a plugin into Oracle Service Cloud, PopFlow Studio, allowing non-developers to automate complex integration and workflow through a visual developer,” extols Gerrit. Being the next-gen of contact center technology, PopFlow Studio abstracts and makes available all of the customer related data generated in the IVR(Interactive Voice Response), while tapping into the Oracle APIs to allow non-developers to automate screen pops and complex workflows.

As an example of the power of PopFlow Studio, a prominent retailer wanted to develop some basic telephony and CRM use case integrations. For instance, when an ecommerce customer calls into their contact center and navigates the IVR menus, the retailer wanted Oracle Service Cloud to automatically pop-up the customer’s account, name, background, previous orders, and initiate workflow based on customer context.

However, the custom development project to create this integration was quoted at over $100,000 in developer time and substantial internal resources, with more than 3 months development cycle.

Together with Oracle, we help engineer world-class customer experiences utilizing the strengths of the telephony infrastructure and CRM platform

Within a few days after implementing PopFlow Studio, they automated and deployed the integration and saved 30+ seconds on calls, which amounted to millions in annual savings for them.

Furthermore, delivering multimedia controls that fit directly in Oracle RightNow CX cloud service, OpenMethods’ Harmony platform makes the unified agent desktop a reality. The platform includes the Media Bar and Queue Adapters. Harmony Media Bar effectively turns Oracle CRM into a smartphone, integrating all telephony functions like dialing, transfers, conferencing and agent status toggling. This facilitates contact center agents with a unified desktop and drives down the average handling time by 30+ seconds. Additionally, Harmony Queue Adapters enable dataflow from Oracle CRM into an organization’s existing ACD (Automatic Call Distributor). This plug-in adds further value to the existing investment in queuing, workforce management, and reporting.

These elegant, yet complex technology solutions are upshots of the automation and integration of large and disparate technology platforms. “We are continuing our fanatical focus on solving big and fundamental problems for our contact center clients, continuing the partnership with Oracle,” emphasizes Gerrit.

At OpenMethods, there is a constant endeavor to bring out the best in product development and enhancement, so as to continue their delivery of industry-leading technology and intellectual property. CIOs and contact center leaders strive to comprehend the challenges and pragmatic solutions while making omnichannel a reality. “OpenMethods has been investing heavily in marketing and sales to help CIOs understand how they can dramatically accelerate their omnichannel vision,” Gerrit concludes.