BURLINGTON, Mass., – June 6, 2011 – Nuance Communications, Inc (NASDAQ: NUAN), the leading developer of speech and customer interaction solutions for businesses and consumers around the world, today announced Nuance Complete Care, an integrated inbound/outbound, multi-channel solution for the customer care call center. Nuance Complete Care increases the value of every customer interaction by integrating inbound interactive voice response (IVR) interactions with multi-channel proactive communications, engaging customers with smarter automated conversations that solve more customer problems with fewer calls.
 
Over the course of a relationship with a business – such as bank, a credit card company, a pharmacy, or a utility – consumers frequently have to contend with disparate experiences and uncoordinated treatment. The inbound and outbound experiences are branded differently, use different terminology, and don’t appear to be aware of the other. For the consumer, this leads to confusion, and more time spent on the phone trying to manage their accounts.
 
Companies have long realized that providing a coherent, intuitive customer experience across service channels is a competitive differentiator, and that poor service experiences are a key driver of customer disloyalty. Nuance Complete Care enables businesses to manage the long-term customer conversation over the multiple touch points that occur throughout the customer lifecycle – whether the interaction is initiated by the company or the consumer.
 
“Historically, many companies have taken a siloed approach to servicing their customers – the customer care department was responsible for inbound calls while marketing might be responsible for proactive notifications, for example – today customers are pushing these same companies to be smarter with how they provide service,” said Drew Kraus, vice president of Gartner. “Consumers are expecting more personalized communications, whether it’s via landline or a mobile phone call, email, SMS or other communications vehicles. With multi-channel communications solutions enterprises are better equipped to provide consistent and personalized interactions across a variety of customer touchpoints.”
 
“While traditionally, businesses have focused on serving their customers well within a single channel such as inbound IVR, with Nuance Complete Care we are taking it a step further by offering a business solution that exploits multiple channels to better manage relationships over the entire customer lifecycle,” said Dan Faulkner, vice president of products and marketing, Nuance Communications. “How does each customer want to interact with us? How can we better serve that individual? When it comes to addressing account questions, should it matter who initiated the conversation? Answering these types of questions has contributed to a solution that we believe will be welcomed by consumers who crave more personalized, flexible customer service.”
 
“A common pain point across an array of vertical markets is how to better service customers across their contact lifecycle,” said Dan Miller, senior analyst, Opus Research. “Consumers want their questions handled quickly, while companies want to remain in good grace with their customers. With its Complete Care solution, Nuance cleverly anticipates what the consumer might need next and as a result, is providing a solution that can quickly and intelligently handle the consumers’ needs through a single transaction. This careful orchestration of inbound and outbound touchpoints makes Nuance Complete Care an ideal solution for companies wanting to set themselves apart.”
 
Unlike traditional customer care solutions that simply notify callers or direct them toward lengthy IVR menus, Nuance Complete Care engages customers by offering them logical choices relevant to their initial interaction. For example, if a customer is calling the inbound IVR for the status of a health insurance claim that is still in process, Nuance Complete Care might suggest and initiate a claims status proactive notification when the claim has been processed; or, after initiating an outbound payment reminder, ask the caller if they’d like to pay now using the checking account on file. This intuitive interaction drives usage of self-service applications, giving companies more use from their existing inbound applications.
 
In addition to leveraging Nuance’s core competencies in inbound and outbound automated interactions and Natural Language Understanding, the Nuance Complete Care solution also leverages the company’s deep understanding of vertical markets and unique insight into the caller experience, as well as data from the more than 11 billion calls Nuance automates each year.
 
To learn more about Nuance Complete Care, click here.
 
About Nuance Communications
 
Nuance is a leading provider of speech and customer interaction solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.