Salesforce and Cisco Will Create Seamless Integration Between Cisco’s Customer Contact Suite and Sa

Salesforce.com and Cisco, today announced the two companies are working together to create seamless integration between Cisco’s IP Contact Centre technology and the Salesforce Service & Support application. The relationship, announced at Dreamforce ‘05, salesforce.com’s third annual user and developer conference, will deliver a complete, customizable Cisco-driven system for Salesforce Service &

Support that integrates call control, tracking, reporting and other contact centre functions.

The salesforce.com-Cisco solution is well positioned in that no other leading on-demand offering includes pre-built Cisco integration or an open STAPI interface that allows interoperability with leading on-premise and hosted telephony infrastructures. The solution, first demonstrated at Dreamforce ‘05, will be available in Spring 2006.

The pre-tested, pre-packaged on-demand multichannel service and support solution is designed to improve first call resolution rates and ensure customer service and support agents have complete visibility into customer accounts and histories, without needing to ask callers to repeat information or provide anything beyond basic identification information. The result is more satisfied customers and higher retention and loyalty rates. Companies choosing the solution will also benefit from significant competitive advantage over contact centres equipped with more traditional, less customer-friendly systems. The solution also enables existing joint customers to quickly leverage current investments in Cisco IP telephony and salesforce.com.

“Salesforce.com’s highly satisfied customer base and state-of-the-art on-demand service and support technologies made it an ideal partner for Cisco,” said Laurent Philonenko, Vice President and GM of Cisco’s Customer Contact Business. “This relationship brings together the best of the on-demand and IP telephony worlds. Together, salesforce.com and Cisco are creating an effective and compelling IP telephony-based on-demand service and support system. We believe this will be a win-win for customers of both companies.”

“The salesforce.com-Cisco joint solution has the potential to transform service and support customer contact centres into the most customer-focused operations possible,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. “We are delighted to be working with the global leader in IP telephony to create a solution that drives down the time and resources required to identify and solve contact centre issues, while greatly increasing customer satisfaction and first call resolution. Our combined offering will offer companies an impressive new way to rapidly prioritize, identify and solve problems for customers.”