LISBON, PORTUGAL (06/21/2000) - Altitude Software, whose customer relationship management products are found mainly in European call centers, is making a push into Web-based CRM with an eye toward wooing U.S e-commerce customers.
Altitude this week introduced a new product suite called Unified Customer Interaction 2000 that lets service representatives interact with their customers via e-mail, Web collaboration, self-service FAQs, traditional call-center voice or using handheld devices supporting the new Wireless Application Protocol.
Altitude's suite, which would typically cost US$250,000 for 50 to 100 seats, consists of a so-called "collaboration server" that has a "universal queue" for lining up e-mail, Web callback requests and PBX switched calls so that service representatives can handle them successively.
"It's an intelligent routing engine," says Paulo Rosado, vice president of global marketing. Service representatives require a PC and a Web browser to make use of all its capabilities.
The Unified Customer Interaction Suite 2000 also comes with tools to manage content on the server and write portions of the application to link to back-end systems, including databases or enterprise resource planning systems.
"We have Oracle and Microsoft databases with it now, and later we'll also add Informix," Rosado says. Developers would have to write the links to ERP systems on their own.
Privately-held Altitude Software now has about 300 customers in 34 countries.
One of its biggest product installations is phone company Telefonica of Spain with 5,000 CRM seats, according to Altitude executives.