For nearly every business, maintaining seamless communication with customers is the cornerstone of success. The ability to handle and respond to customer questions and concerns in a timely and professional manner can often mean the difference between years of profitability or shuttering the doors. The importance of good customer relations is proven again and again through the acquisition of new customers and retention of existing ones. If customers are not satisfied, the consequences are severe.

That’s why businesses that embrace the value of solid customer relationships rely on Nixxis, a provider of customer interaction solutions and services. And Nixxis in turn, relies on Aculab, a provider of enabling technologies, to ensure that its CRM solutions work across disparate networks and infrastructures on multiple continents.

Based in Luxembourg, Nixxis is highly regarded for both its technology and its ability to understand and satisfy tangible business drivers through a wide scope of IP-based customer relationship management tools and applications. Nixxis’s highly scalable portfolio includes call centre solutions, advanced call recording and reporting features, management tools, and powerful multi-media agent solutions that give staff members the ability to handle incoming queries from a number of sources, including phone, email and web chat. Nixxis can deploy its CRM solutions either on the customer premise or as a hosted service, completely dependent upon the customer’s specific needs and business model.

While its technologies are impressive, Nixxis emphasises its ability to satisfy core business challenges as one of its most important attributes.

"The vast majority of our customers come to us not for technology, but for assistance in solving important business issues," explains Tjardick van der Kraan, a Senior Network Engineer with Nixxis. "They may need to reduce the costs of their existing contact centre operation, increase retention and upsell rates, or just enhance the customer experience. We have the solutions-and just as importantly, the expertise-to help businesses be more responsive and efficient when interacting with customers."

Traversing Disparate Networks
Nixxis has found that serving a global customer base does have its challenges. Working in disparate geographies calls for Nixxis to understand and manage various network infrastructures and protocols, particularly in locations where the customer is using legacy TDM technology as its core infrastructure. Deploying Nixxis’ advanced IP solutions within TDM networks can be a time consuming and cumbersome process.

"Whenever we integrate our solutions into a TDM-based environment, or even into a network that uses a proprietary IP protocol, we must overcome a series of hurdles in order to achieve compatibility," explained van der Kraan. "Without the right resources, protocol translation can be complex and slow. This clearly impacts our business. Our customers expect us to integrate within their infrastructure seamlessly, so it is vitally important that we solve any compatibility issues quickly and completely."

The ApplianX IP Gateway: Efficiently Solving Compatibility Issues
To help address these concerns, Nixxis relies on Aculab’s ApplianX IP Gateway as its lead solution for protocol translation and compatibility issues. A single-purpose gateway that’s easy to configure and support, the ApplianX IP Gateway supports a wide range of both IP and TDM protocols in both enterprise and service provider environments, making it an ideal solution for Nixxis.

Highly regarded for its ease of use and low administrative costs, the ApplianX IP Gateway is a cost-effective device that includes a number of telephony features, such as support for Diversion, Transfer, Message Waiting Indicator, Route Optimisation, three party and hold functions over SIP, Q.SIG and DPNSS protocols, making it the first gateway to deliver these capabilities to both SMB and enterprise customers.

Operational Resilience
The ApplianX IP Gateway also includes a wide range of routing options for both SIP-to-TDM and SIP-to-SIP conversions, as well as load balancing between endpoints on a round-robin basis, ensuring that calls are automatically routed away from unresponsive endpoints. Reliability features are also built into the gateway, with TDM fallback support enabling the ApplianX IP Gateway to complete core inbound and outbound calls even in the event of an IP network failure.

"We designed the ApplianX IP Gateway with customers like Nixxis in mind, who are in all likelihood looking to use the device to solve a specific problem," explained Tim Joint, Commercial Manager for the ApplianX products. "This single purpose philosophy gives Nixxis the appropriate functionality it requires, in a user friendly, plug-and-play format that requires little support."

In addition to comprehensive protocol support, the ApplianX IP Gateway’s operational resilience was also appealing to Nixxis. Features like dynamic routing and load balancing give Nixxis customers a number of options to remain online in the event of a network failure.

"Maintaining reliable communications is a critical element for every business, and nowhere is this more essential than in the contact centre," explains van der Kraan. "Organisations that value their relationships with customers simply cannot afford any downtime in the contact centre. The ApplianX IP Gateway serves a vital role in delivering the reliability and seamless connectivity our customers demand."

Conclusion
With its single purpose capabilities, low operational costs, and feature, Nixxis continues to see Aculab’s ApplianX IP Gateway as an intrinsic part of its end-to-end solution.

"We’ve looked at a number of competitive gateways, and they’ve always paled in comparison to the ApplianX products," concludes van der Kraan. "In terms of reliability, functionality, adaptability, scalability-and certainly operating simplicity-the ApplianX IP Gateway continues to exceed our expectations. "