TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

First, here is to a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year to everyone. Based on developments that ended 2011 and what is already in the hopper for 2012, it is clear that contact center solutions (pardon the play on words) are going to be front and center as enterprises around the world continue to focus on them as much, much more than places to interact with customers with questions and issues.

The criticality of contact centers was highlighted in an item by TMCnet Contributor Tracey Schelmetic on what call centers did to personalize the holiday e-commerce customer experience. 

Art Rosenberg (News - Alert), asked and answered an interesting question in his posting, 2012: Will 'Mobile Apps' Drive the 'UC Contact Center?'

On the contracts and new capabilities front there was significant news from around the world:

• On the outbound side of things, TMCnet Contributor, Mandira Srivastava, featured BestFit Mobile picking Xactly (News - Alert) Express to improve sales visibility.
• TMCnet, Contributor, Shamila Janakiraman, detailed how Drishti's Ameyo is automating customer interactions for e-commerce website Delyver which is an e-commerce business providing home delivery of consumer goods via a dial-n-deliver mode in Bangalore, India.
• The importance of mobility to the future of contact center evolution was pointed out in a story about LogMeIn (News - Alert) unveiling its free mobile app that offers remote desktop capabilities to iPads, iPhones opening another avenue for remote workers to interact with key enterprise resources.
• Tracey Schelmetic also highlighted UK-based NewAVoiceMedia being granted a patent for technology that pulls social media data into contact centers. As the article details, social media reveals important data about customer relationships with company’s and competitors and being able to capture and properly analyze this information is going to be a key to success going forward. 
• Adapt Telephony services was honored with three awards from Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert).

In other news, it is worth noting a sign of the changing times that crossed the wires in the form of  VirtuOz saying its virtual agents processed a record 166 million conversations in 2011.  

It is also worth a mention that The Chicago Tribune started the new year unfortunately highlighting how far contact center agents still need to go in satisfying customers who have web problems and turn to a live agent for help.  

While the web is filling up with YouTube videos of dissatisfied and increasingly disloyal customers as a result of bad customer service, and companies are evaluating the costs and benefits of off-shoring contact centers that chiefly interact with U.S. consumers, there is a silver lining in this for contact center solutions providers. There is a terrific opportunity, using new tools along with better training support, across the board but especially with the SMB market. 

As stated at the top, one of the big trends globally this coming year is going to be intensified focus on improving “the customer experience.” This is a broad umbrella term that involves a lot of moving parts — contact center and business process automation software, agent training and incentives, leveraging things like speech analytics, capturing social media and using the results to boost sales as well as in-bound customer interactions etc. In short, the market is looking for solutions. This portends a good year for those in the community who are at the top of their game. 

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology including contact center solutions? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities.

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