Convergys Corp. - Call Centers -  Category Directory

513-723-7000

201 East 4th Street

Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.convergys.com

Sales

$2.3 billion

Business Description

Convergys Corporation (the Company or Convergys) is a global leader in call centers, the provision of outsourced customer management, employee care and integrated billing services. The Company was spun off from its former parent company, Cincinnati Bell Inc. (CBI), in 1998. Convergys focuses on developing long-term strategic relationships with clients in employee and customer intensive industries including communications, technology and financial services as well as governmental agencies. The Company has two reporting segments: (i) the Customer Management Group (CMG), which provides call centers, outsourced marketing, customer support services and employee care services; and (ii) the Information Management Group (IMG), which provides outsourced billing and information services and software. The Company has developed a base of recurring revenues by providing value-added billing and customer management and employee care solutions for its clients, generally under multiple year contracts.

Products and Services

Customer Management Group
CMG provides call centers and outsourced customer management and employee care services for its clients utilizing its advanced information systems capabilities, human resource management skills and industry expertise.

Customer Service—CMG handles customer contacts that range from initial product information requests to customer retention initiatives. This involves a variety of activities including gathering and analyzing customer information; describing product features, capabilities and options; activating customer accounts or renewing service; processing a product or service sale; and resolving complaints and billing inquiries.

Technical Support—CMG answers technical support inquiries for consumers and business customers. Technical support ranges from simple product installation or operating assistance for a variety of software and hardware products to highly complex issues such as systems networking configuration or software consultation.

Sales Account Management—CMG is responsible for managing the entire customer relationship including obtaining current orders, increasing purchase levels, introducing new products, implementing product initiatives and handling all inquiries related to products, shipments and billing.

Employee Care—The Company provides its clients with outsourced employee care services that enable its clients to provide their employees with world class service. The Company’s services support human resource activities that span the lifecycle of an employee, including: recruiting, hiring and staffing; annual benefits enrollment and ongoing benefits administration; defined benefit and defined contribution plan administration; payroll administration and payroll processing; learning and training; mergers and acquisition support; and general human resource and administration services.

Convergys’ fully integrated customer management and employee care contact centers provide its clients’ customers and employees with a single point of contact. Phone and Web-based agent-assisted service channels provide for live agent interaction while allowing for the immediacy of interaction and the ability of agents, with the required level of expertise, to react to individual customer and employee needs. CMG delivers these services using a variety of tools including computer telephony integration (CTI), interactive voice response (IVR), advanced speech recognition (ASR), knowledge-based management (KBM) and the Internet through agent-assisted and self-service channels. Self-service channels, including automated telephone-based solutions such as ASR, allow customers to transact business or find their own assistance without the help of a live agent. Additionally, these channels enable employees and managers to access their human resource information and perform various transactions 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

CMG generally receives a fee based on staffing hours, number of contacts or participants handled or a flat monthly fee. Supplemental revenues can sometimes be earned depending on service levels or achievement of certain performance measurement targets. The Company recognizes these supplemental revenues only after it has achieved the required measurement target. Additional fees are charged for service enhancements or system upgrades requested by clients.

Information Management Group
IMG serves clients principally by providing and managing complex billing and information software that addresses all segments of the communications industry, including wireless, wireline, cable, cable telephony, broadband, direct broadcast satellite and the Internet. IMG’s component-based, next-generation framework supports the creation of billing and customer care solutions ranging from a single module to the combination of modules to a complete, end-to-end billing system. Its global billing product portfolio gives its clients a flexible migration path to expand their billing and customer care systems without loss of their initial investment. IMG’s family of products includes:

Infinys™

Infinys software is Convergys’ modular and convergent business support system (BSS) software. Infinys software enables communications companies or operators to accelerate the delivery of new services for a wide range of services including voice, video and data services. Clients have the capability to integrate Infinys software applications and solutions with their in-house or third-party software to implement BSS solutions that support market innovation in their packaging of voice, data, video and content for residential and business customers. Infinys software provides business process functions that can replace a specific part of an operator’s BSS with a convergent software solution or a set of solutions that pre-integrate business critical applications. Once a single application or solution is implemented, additional extensions or applications can be easily configured and work seamlessly with existing Infinys software functionality since Infinys software is configured on a component-based architecture. Infinys software applications and solutions include:

Infinys Solution for Wireline Operators

Convergys’ Infinys solution for wireline operators features comprehensive customer lifecycle management capabilities for optimizing financial performance and customer loyalty. This Infinys software solution responds to the convergent needs of wireline operators by enabling them to automate and integrate their product, customer, fulfillment and revenue management functions across multiple products. With this solution, wireline operators can accelerate the adoption of new services, reduce operating costs and drive operator profitability.

At the core of this Infinys solution is the integration of the Infinys application for customer order management and the Infinys application for rating and billing. Additional functionality is available through optional, pre-integrated applications for customer care and Web self-care, mediation, settlement, provisioning, inventory management and service activation functions.

Infinys Solution for Partner Relationship Management (PRM)

This Infinys solution is a pre-integrated solution that combines the partner management, rating and billing and the optional mediation management capabilities. The result is a unique solution for supporting automated settlement of partner-enabled electronic and mobile commerce and content delivery. This Infinys solution can also deliver automated settlement support for global roaming and selected interconnection partnerships.

Infinys Application for Rating and Billing (Geneva™)

This Infinys application delivers a customer-focused approach that repositions billing at the very heart of businesses’ operations and strategies. Convergent by design and highly flexible, the Infinys application for rating and billing reduces time to market and achieves cost efficiencies through highly configurable applications rather than time-consuming or costly customizations. It is being used in a wide variety of industry sectors including wireline, wireless and cable.

Infinys Application for Customer Order Management (Cygent®)

By managing the complex relationships among orders, customer accounts and products, this Infinys application enables operators to streamline these operations and align business processes around the customer. Operators have better capabilities to enable the timely and accurate ordering of communications services, standardize product definition, integrate order management and provisioning and accelerate the deployment of convergent services.

Infinys Cygent Customer Order Management has enabled Convergys clients to implement enterprise-wide customer care, order and service management and/or product solutions via software components that integrate customer-facing operations with back-office operational support systems (OSS).

Infinys Application for Mediation Management

This Infinys application manages the collection, normalization, filtering and distribution of event records generated by network elements, service applications and business partners. This flexible application for mediation management supports multiple market segments and technologies simultaneously, which enables operators to have one convergent mediation platform to support multiple business needs. It also provides enhanced revenue assurance capabilities that enable tracking, reporting and auditing of Convergys clients’ revenue stream in real time.

Infinys Application for Activation Management

This Infinys application helps to simplify and accelerate the activation process for convergent wireless, wireline, cable and broadband operators by providing an isolation layer between the operator’s billing system and the complex network infrastructure. This buffer separates an operator’s billing functions from network complexities, thereby accelerating activation. It should also provide the operator with reduced costs, increased revenue and greater customer satisfaction.

Infinys Application for Partner Management

This Infinys application module includes a powerful, integrated client interface that leverages the advanced Infinys platform components and permits the operator to proactively manage each phase of the partner lifecycle. As operators enter into an increasing number of complex partnerships to enable new content/commerce revenue, this Infinys application for partner management provides an easy-to-use tool for the set-up and management of the business relationship. Partner agreements and settlement compensation parameters can be quickly activated and modified as needed through an application interface. This Infinys application represents an important evolution supporting the automation of partner business processes within an enterprise.

Atlys®

Atlys is a comprehensive, end-to-end billing and customer care solution that supports the needs of wireless network operators competing in a global wireless voice and data market. Atlys possesses many key advantages that enable operators to realize fast time to market for new services and a greater return on their overall investment. Some of Atlys’ key advantages are the following:

• Atlys supports both voice and data services, while still supporting the specific business rules unique to wireless.

• The architecture supports open interface capabilities through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), giving operators added flexibility.

• Atlys supports real-time processing through the entire customer care business process—from mediation to activation and to rating and billing.

• Atlys provides operators the flexibility of supporting pre- and post-paid subscribers on a single database.

ICOMS

The Integrated Communications Operations Management System (ICOMS) solution is designed specifically for the broadband convergent video, high-speed data and telephony markets. It incorporates the power and flexibility of Convergys’ cable television subscriber management system with the integrated support of high-speed data and wireline telephony. The net result is a convergent solution uniquely designed to meet cable and broadband operators’ subscriber, billing and operations management requirements. The ICOMS solution provides broadband operators with control and flexibility to sharpen their competitive edge, expand market penetration, increase revenues, decrease costs and differentiate themselves from their competition. Because ICOMS is designed specifically for the cable television, high-speed data and cable telephony markets, broadband operators can serve all three of these markets with a single billing solution. The operator gains efficiencies and decreases costs by eliminating redundant processing and the required maintenance of multiple systems. With a single billing system, the operator can maintain all of its customer data in a single database. This provides the operator with a unified view of its customer, thus enhancing marketing opportunities, reducing errors and streamlining customer service processes.

WIZARD

The WIZARD solution is designed to serve multimedia operators including direct broadcast satellite, direct-to-home, cable and cable telephony providers, by allowing them to extend their offerings to support the new convergent era that includes voice, video and data services. To address this rapidly evolving industry, WIZARD combines a comprehensive customer service system component and advanced billing and rating capabilities.

IMG provides its software products in one of three delivery modes: outsourced, licensed or build-operate-transfer (BOT). In the outsourced delivery mode, IMG provides the billing services by running its software in one of its data centers. In the licensed delivery mode, the software is licensed to clients who perform billing internally. Finally, the BOT delivery mode entails IMG implementing and initially running its software in the client’s data center with the option of transferring the operation of the center to the client at a future date.

In addition to the products described above, the Company also provides outsourced billing services using legacy applications (i.e., Macrocell, Cellware, Cablemaster®) that have been customized to meet specific client needs.

Ticker: CVG