TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

This has been a great week for insights on how contact center solutions can help improve the customer experience as well as a number of industry developments aimed at broadening the touchpoints of agents and ways to make them more efficient and effective. 

On the first front I highly recommend a paper done by Blair Pleasant, president and principal analyst at COMMfusion LLC, and Tim Passios, senior director of Solutions Marketing at Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert). Entitled, “A Realistic Look at Social Media and the Contact Center,” it covers how and why integration of social media is important for organizations seeking better engagement with their customers.  

Best practices was also the focus of TMCnet Contributor, Tracey Schelmetic in her Editor’s Choice feature, “Is Improperly Used CRM Dragging Your Customer Support Down?“ Tracey also contributed another must read piece on blending and its importance for contact center quality.

A tip of the hat goes to Enghouse Interactive who garnered four awards from TMC's (News - Alert) Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine. 

In industry news CRM, mobile and social media integration grabbed the headlines:

• TMCnet Contributor Mimi Swamy highlighted CRM being transformed by Velaro (News - Alert), a provider of live chat software and GetSatisfaction, an online community platform that helps companies enhance customer relationships, integrating their technologies to provide a new customer support tool.
• Pegasystems (News - Alert) announced enhancements to its CPM solution to help contact centers to optimize customer service processes providing continuity through mobile and social media channels.
• Expansion of how to engage customers is also the objective of Dallas-based Stellar has expanded its customer outreach to include an innovative technology from TelePresence Tech using 3-D video capabilities.
• PBX vendor Mitel (News - Alert) announced with VMware the integration of Mitel’s contact center solution with VMware View. This integration enables contact center managers to better serve customers with centralized administration and better security as well as the ability to reduce costs.  
• VXi Launches UC ProSet for Contact Center Users

Agent comfort and effectiveness were enhanced with the introduction by VXI of its new headphone, the UC ProSet, which incorporates several features for ease and fashion of contact center users.

As it the custom here, I would also like to draw your attention to other resources of community interest that can be accessed through the links on the community home page. This includes the Interactive Intelligence podcast on its “Ditch the Frustration Campaign,” and three new white papers: “Consolidating Infrastructures: IT's New Call to Business, “ “The Value of a Combined Solution for Enterprise IP Telephony and Customer Care,” and “Building Customer Centricity through Expertise-Based Interactions.”