TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

Along with the usual customer implementations, new capabilities and even legislative efforts in the State of New Jersey regarding companies that offshore their contact center, there was a lot of advice and market insights to look at this week regarding contact center solutions.

First, I’d like to finish my observations from the recently concluded Interactions 2012 event. I got to test drive CaaS capabilities with Interactive Intelligence’s CaaS Quick Spin demo, and highly recommend it for anyone thinking about moving some or all of you contact center capabilities to the cloud. This is a case where you can actually get the look and feel of a solution so you can make truly educated decisions as what is best for your organization going forward.

Advice and insights

As noted this week provided a significant amount of food for thought.   

• TMCnet Contributor Tracey Schelmetic had an interesting feature on the proper management of the growing importance of using self-service to improve customer experiences. 
• Gartner (News - Alert) Research is predicting that with 75 percent of call centers will incorporate cloud technology into their operations by 2013, this will give rise to another trend. This will enable enterprises to better manage call queues by scheduling in advance customer service appointments and callbacks.
• Research from social media analytics firm, Socialbakers highlights the potential companies have with social media and the challenges that need to be overcome.
• Do you know what the “Nine Customer Service Hells” are? You should, and interesting Casinos, who you would think would be very sensitive to such things given their intense focus on customer intimacy, would know better than what they typically do.
• The importance of Web standards and speech technology to the transformation of contact centers were the highlights of an interview TMCnet Executive Editor had with Voxeo (News - Alert) director of marketing Kim Martin as part of the 30th anniversary of TMC’s coverage of customer interactions.

News

The news spanned virtually all areas of community interest as can be seen from the variety below. 

• Indosoft's Q-Suite, an Asterisk-based contact center software package, added network call recording from Orecx (News - Alert) to Q-Suite 5.7. Both premises-based and hosted contact centers will be able to use Orecx while minimizing Asterisk processing requirements. 
• OneReach was named by Voxeo as a Connect Certified Partner for Applications.
• Semafone's DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency) technology just won a U.K. patent to help eliminate contact center fraud.
• Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) honored outsourced customer experience management services provider, Teleperformance with the 2012 Asia Pacific Contact Center Outsourcing Service Provider of the Year Award .
• Aegis is looking to leverage the growing Spanish voice services market in Peru.  

The continuing challenge of how to deal with U.S. companies “offshoring” their contact center operations was front and center as New Jersey's Senate Economic Growth Committee discussed a bill that would penalize companies that send call center business offshore. Should the bill pass, companies that send jobs overseas will be ineligible for state grants, loans and tax benefits for three years. 

While aimed primarily at Verizon whose call canter employment has dropped over the years in New Jersey to the dismay of labor union the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the repercussions would be felt for other employers in the state and could influence other states to take similar action as federal legislation on the subject is likely to go nowhere.

Community update

Finally, in case you have not noticed we have added a new community feature, “Video Showcase.” Along with all of the other valuable resources accessible from the community home page (our glossary, featured demo, eBook, and a variety of other resources ranging from podcasts to whitepapers) the variety of subjects covered in the videos makes it hard to choose where to start, but I can say that the customer testimonials are compelling.   And, if you have not already done so, sign up for a free Contact Center Solutions eNewsletter. 

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. 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. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.

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