Jacada is not a newcomer to the customer service arena. The 23-year-old company has a long history as a provider of Web, mobile, and self-service solutions, agent desktops, and contact center process optimization technology. However, Jacada has made a name for itself in the past year as a pioneer in the development and advancement of visual IVR technology. 

First introduced at the close of 2012, Jacada Mobile Agent is a self-service product for smartphones and other mobile devices that visually maps out the steps of the customer service interaction. The company’s visual IVR also supports data entry and can proactively mine knowledge bases for information and retrieve or update customer information in real time. For calls that require agent assistance, Jacada Mobile Agent provides a seamless transition to the voice channel. Once the call is connected to the agent, all of the steps already taken by the customer, as well as any data entered, are visible to the agent. 

In April, Jacada followed this release with Visual IVR Plus. Designed to use a company’s existing IVR scripts, Visual IVR Plus presents users with a graphical, menu-driven interface that enables them to simply touch their way through the IVR. 
“Navigating a traditional IVR is tedious and cumbersome, waiting to hear all of the options to make sure that you select the right one. Just as pushing buttons replaced the rotary dial, touching selections on a screen is replacing the push button,” said Guy Yair, co-CEO of Jacada, in a statement at the time. “Your IVR should keep up with how your customers are using their communication devices, and Visual IVR Plus enables that to happen by allowing them to communicate with customer service in a modern, less frustrating fashion.”

Paul Greenberg, president of The 56 Group, agrees. “Jacada has done something smart here,” he says, calling the Visual IVR solution “a brilliant way of dealing with one of the most frustrating service problems that a company has—‘kludgy’ audio menus.”

The app, Greenberg adds, recognizes that “contemporary customers are increasingly mobile,” and that “human beings respond more effectively to visual cues than audio ones.”

Traction is already building for Jacada’s visual IVR technology. In September, the company partnered with Vocantas, which is offering the visual IVR capabilities to its healthcare, higher education, and utility customers.

“Continuing to offer the best in IVR technology is a job we take seriously at Vocantas, and visual IVR is the best new offering available today,” Gary Hannah, Vocantas’ president and CEO, said in a statement.

The first Vocantas product to incorporate Jacada’s visual IVR technology is the Vocantas Utilities OnCall solution, which became available in October. With it, utility customers can pay bills, record meter readings, and check account balances. They can even include photos of their meter readings or send the utility their GPS coordinates when reporting an outage or service interruption.

Jacada has also partnered with Cognizant Technology Solutions, which in September began to incorporate Jacada’s customer service solutions, including the visual IVR offering, into its global delivery network. Hari Raja, head of Cognizant’s CRM practice in the Americas, at the time called Jacada’s visual IVR product a “path-breaking solution,” adding that it “will fit into Cognizant’s customer solutions strategy of advising and delivering next-generation customer experience solutions to our customers.”

Also in October, Jacada’s Visual IVR Plus product was certified compliant with Avaya’s Aura Experience Portal 6.0, a unified voice and self-service offering. Jacada’s Visual IVR Plus, as well as its Workplace Agent Desktop and Agent Scripting solutions, are now available through the Avaya Dev-Connect Select Product Program.  —Leonard Klie