Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

There's a new book for call center leaders out now, titled Call Center Leadership: Mastering the Big 5, written by call center veterans Tom Calvert and Dawn Willging.

 

"We wrote these books for the supervisors, managers, and site directors of the nearly 200,000 call centers worldwide," says Calvert. "Mastering the big 5 goes beyond books written on the subject of customer relationship management (CRM) to concentrate on the role that each of these leadership positions play in a call center operation."

 

Calvert says "strong leadership and a simple, yet dynamic, system of success" can "transform teams and call centers into an energizing asset that engages customers, increases sales, and lifts quality performance, all while reducing absenteeism and attrition."

 

One book is specifically designed for call center supervisors and retails for $17.99, and the second book includes the supervisor book plus two additional sections specifically for managers and site directors, and retails for $27.99.

 

Last November BenchmarkPortal, a national research firm specializing in contact center best practices, published a report based on survey results showing lower total cost of ownership for "all-in-one" versus "multi-point" contact center communications products.

 

The BenchmarkPortal survey was sponsored by global business communications products provider, Interactive Intelligence.

 

The report, titled "A Cost Comparison of All-in-One versus Multi-Point Solutions in the Contact Center Sector," shows that the total annualized cost per agent for all-in-one products averages less than half that of multi-point products.

 

The BenchmarkPortal report also shows that "the total cost of installation and integration for all-in-one products is 15 percent lower compared to multi-point products," company officials say: "In addition, the average annualized system administration cost per agent for all-in-one products is 60 percent lower compared to multi-point products."

 

"Our study shows that, when taking into account contact center costs associated with selecting, installing, integrating, administering and upgrading communications technology, all-in-one products are measurably less expensive than multi-point products," said Dr. Jon Anton, one of the report authors and adjunct professor at Purdue University.