Epiphany unveils telecom CRM offering, signs Bell Canada

Epiphany, a long-time provider of customer relationship management solutions for consumer-oriented business in several industries, has unveiled a new CRM product family targeted at the communications industry. The vendor also said Bell Canada is among the first carriers using the new package.

The Epiphany Advisor for Communications product family includes industry-specific versions of the company’s Insight Advisor, Interaction Advisor and Lead Advisor designed to improve CRM interactions between customer service representatives and customers.

Epiphany believes the package of solutions can help carriers as they face new pressure on customer retention and revenue growth, while also facing the reality of multiple, distributed CRM systems covering different service businesses.

"Carriers already have all of this investment in CRM systems, but they don't have a single view of all of the services a customer has, or that they could sell to that customer," said Jon Miller, senior director of marketing and analytic applications at Epiphany. "One of their key needs is to effectively bundle across all services."

Ken Cox, senior director of customer insight at Bell Canada, said the carrier is using Epiphany Interaction Advisor because "we felt we could get a lift from our marketing effort if we added some richness to the dialogue between the rep and the customer. It helps us make the right offers to the right customers at the right times."

Epiphany worked with integrator Bearing Point to install the system at Bell Canada, and Cox said the installation was viewed favorably by reps and the carrier’s IT staff alike for its simplicity. "I've seen all kinds of CRM installations, and this is an example of one that went right instead of wrong," he said.

Epiphany Advisor for Communications creates a window within other CRM system views to give a customer service rep better information to work with, and suggestions for next steps when dealing with a specific customer. Along with its new package for the communications industry, Epiphany is releasing service packs that allow Advisor elements to work in tandem with competitive CRM systems from Siebel and PeopleSoft. Miller said Epiphany is considering building service packs to work with systems from other vendors, including Amdocs.

Epiphany Advisor for Communications consists of three key elements, which can be used separately depending on carrier need, though Epiphany urges that all three be used together for maximum leverage. Insight Advisor gives customer-facing employees a context-sensitive snapshot of the customer relationship without requiring companies to replicate data or replace the existing CRM system. Interaction Advisor creates more intelligent interactions between reps and customers by quickly delivering the most appropriate message for the rep to convey based on the customer and situation at hand. Lead Advisor creates a consistent way to capture and close revenue-generating sales leads by communicating the information across business units to the right reps.

"Telcos are probably where the financial services industry was about five years ago in understanding the value of having a whole view of the customer," Cox said. "We're all starting to understand that billing and service order functions don't belong at the center of the process. The customer does."