Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Welcome to this weeks recap of all things contact center-related.

 

This week, AltiGen, Sitel, LiveOps and Arise Virtual Solutions topped the headlines.

 

BPO provider Sitel announced they were named "Best Performing Contact Center" by Global Services for their annual 100 survey.

 

"Sitel is dedicated to providing exceptional contact center outsourcing services consistently across all of its 155+ facilities worldwide," said Julie Casteel, executive vice president, global sales and marketing at Sitel.

 

 

Also this week, AltiGen and VoSKY announced a partnership to bring Skype to VoIP call centers.

As per the partnership, VoSKY Exchange VoIP application gateway will be added to AltiGen's VoIP Phone Systems line.

 

This will provide call centers with the ability to use Skype for Web Click2Call, VoIP trunking, a remote agent and DID functionality.

 

"This partnership adds a series of industry-first features to our VoIP call center platform that will give our customers useful new call handling abilities as well as further lower their telecom costs," said Jeremiah Fleming, AltiGen president and COO.

 

"The ability of VoSKY Exchange to route Skype calls through our VoIP business phone system marks yet another milestone in our efforts to deliver innovative new business solutions for the VoIP era."

 

Virtual call center company LiveOps also made headlines this week with the availability of Spring 08 LiveOps On-Demand Call Center Platform, offering call centers a host of significantly enhanced capabilities including enhanced outbound dialing, an improved call routing interface, integration with major call routing systems, and other benefits.

“We are excited to be at the forefront of developing leading edge technology that is fundamentally changing how call centers are managed. With quarterly enhancements of the LiveOps On-Demand Call Center Platform, we continue to bring innovation that delivers breakthrough results to our customers,” said Maynard Webb, CEO of LiveOps.

 

Also, Arise Virtual Solutions, a home-based agent service provider announced they are seeking bilingual customer interaction professionals with French and German language skills for their multilingual customer requests. READ MORE HERE.

 

Findings from the latest Frost & Sullivan report show strong growth ahead for the hosted contact center market.

 

"Frost & Sullivan reports that the market earned revenues of $277.9 million in 2007 and estimates that this will reach $1.45 billion in 2014. The firm also found that the biggest factor driving the growth in the hosted contact center space is the shift from capital to operational expenditure." CLICK HERE for more.

 

To further highlight the benefits of hosted contact center software an article this week, "Hosted Contact Center Software Experiencing Growth Despite Common Myths," notes "There are many myths in the contact center industry. Some of these myths center around the hosted contact center solution. Unfortunately, these myths have caused some organizations to shy away from the hosted contact center model, despite the benefits that such a platform can deliver." Find out the truth HERE.

 

In more research-related news, Opinion Research Corporation found from its "Ouch Point" study that customer service is suffering in some contact centers for reasons related to hard to understand representatives with thick accents and long hold times.

 

"Customer service representatives are the "face" of any service organization, and therefore need to be understood by their customers. Issues such as the time it takes to reach a representative, a lack of familiarity with the company's products ands services, and being transferred to the wrong person or department, when not identified and remedied, can cause significant damage to a company's reputation and future business," Linda G. Shea, Senior Vice President and Global Managing Director of Customer Strategies at Opinion Research Corporation said. READ MORE HERE.

That’s all for this week folks. Be sure to check back with ContactCenterSolutions throughout the week for all the latest in contact center-related news as it happens!