NEC Unified Solutions Inc., a provider of enterprise business communications solutions, and Tellme, a Microsoft subsidiary, have announced today an agreement to offer on-demand, customizable enterprise-class voice services.

This agreement provides that NEC (News - Alert) will leverage its own expertise in enterprise voice, contact centers and communications integration to bring to market innovative voice application services running on the Tellme (News - Alert) platform.

"As mission-critical as they are, customer contact centers pose an expensive and complex challenge for large enterprises," said Bob Crissman, General Manager of Partner Programs at Tellme, in a Tuesday statement.

"With this alliance, businesses have a single resource to help them plan, design, implement and support world-class customer care solutions that can improve customer experience and positively impact the bottom line."

The partnership enables Tellme to build upon NEC’s 30-year relationship with Microsoft (News - Alert) and develop the partnership so that Tellme can provide end-to-end services from network planning and design through testing, tuning and ongoing customer support.

In order to develop intuitive voice applications that optimize live agent call handling in contact centers, NEC’s Advanced Applications Services group combines extensive knowledge of interactive voice response (IVR), speech technologies and systems integration.

The company’s deep knowledge in various vertical industries, including healthcare, hospitality, higher education and government, are also considered key factors to success in building this relationship.

"NEC and Tellme share the philosophy that communications should serve customer needs through applications and services that are simple and intuitive based on the role of the end user. NEC calls this the UNIVERGE360 approach to unifying business communications," said Paul Lopez, General Manager, Professional Services Development, NEC Unified Solutions, in the Tuesday statement.