Genesys G-Force: Frontier Airlines MIA, replaced by guitar-breaker United Airlines

So G-Force Chicago has ended. Here’s update for April 15 from one of my sources:

“Generate Endless Possibilities” is the theme at this year’s G-Force Chicago. The first full day started like most of G-Forces, with music and dancers and throwing out foam frisbees into the audience. Eric Entzeroth (Sr. VP Genesys) kicked off the event with the company’s welcome message and introduced Paul Segre (President AS Group, Genesys). Paul was his usual Michael Scott (à la The Office) self. He went over the theme of “Generate Endless Possibilities” and how the focus this year was on “innovation in the customer experience.” So, Genesys 8 was officially launched and the big push was to integrate iWD (intelligent Workload Distribution) and moving customers and their contact centers to add email, chat, mobile apps (virtual hold and callback) and social media into the Universal Agent queue. It was pretty cool when they talked about how agents can monitor blogs and chats and be able to “proactively” (buzzword) answer questions before the customer can call in (or email) the company.

The next few speakers also spoke about Genesys 8 and how social and mobile media will be an important to the contact center space in the years to come. The morning sessions ended with Valerie LaBarba (VP of Farmers Insurance) giving a presentation about how they are moving their contact centers into the multimedia space and will soon upgrade to Genesys 8 (I don’t think she’s been around for Genesys 7.0 or Genesys 6.0). It was a nice presentation and they are doing some cool stuff with Genesys.

The breakout sessions were typical. Same ol’, Same ol’!!! The last general session of the day was a presentation from United Airlines. They were last minute fill-in for Frontier Airlines. But, you can tell that the VP of IT really tried, but he had 30 slides and a video all about United and their IT initiative and nothing about Genesys. The last two slides he threw in were token Genesys mentions.

The day ended with a G-Force party at the House of Blues. It was OK, I think too many people for that size venue. It was difficult to walk around and talk with people. The music was loud and people were pushed up next to each other. So, if I were to grade the party I would give it a C+.

But, overall I think Day 1 went very well. I’m very please to see the new enhancements coming in Genesys 8 (with Composer, iWD, and iCFD). Let’s pray that the new enhancements of Genesys 8 was built on the solid 7.6 framework!!!

I’m not so sure why Genesys picked lesser-known Frontier Airlines as a customer keynote. It’s not a top-tier airline and had a history of financial troubles (went through bankruptcy in 2008). Curious also as to why Gerry Coady of Frontier Airlines canceled at the last minute. Also surprised at United Airlines being asked to fill in for Frontier. Both of these airlines have had negative publicity in recent years — and if Genesys’ focus is social media and customer service this year, Frontier and UA were poor choices. The only logical explanation is that Genesys sales dictated the selection for the customer keynote and its sales resources are probably working hard to win some deals in the air travel sector. Unfortunately things didn’t work out as planned…

By the way, I think we’ve found new fans!