TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

There was certainly no shortage of news this week in the contact center solutions area, but as a change of pace I’d like to start with a focus on a few pieces of food for thought. 

First, as those of you who frequent this space know, I have been running as my Editor’s Choice for the past several weeks, the story I happened to have written about Clayton Christensen’s keynote address at our community sponsors’ Interactions 2012 event. To be honest, I was going to take it down, but the response has been so overwhelming that I will leave it up as my pick for one more week. 

Second, if you have not done so already, by all means do not delay any longer and test drive CaaS capabilities with Interactive Intelligence’s (News - Alert) CaaS Quick Spin demo. This falls into the “must do” category for anyone thinking about moving some or all of you contact center capabilities to the cloud. 

Third, it is hard to believe, but TMC (News - Alert) this year celebrates 30 years of covering customer interactions. As part of our celebration we have rebranded our customer experience effort to better reflect the changes and pace of the sector, and Executive Editor Paula Bernier (News - Alert) did a series of interviews with several industry luminaries. This week we highlight Paula’s discussion with:

• Josh Ross, co-founder and managing partner of AxiaTP
• Serge Hyppolite, vice president of product management at Aspect
• Jim Ball, co-founder at Alpine Access

News

There were three research items of interest that game out this week of note. 

The Ovum research report, "Contact Center Analytics Vendors in North America: Three to Watch, " highlights that a majority of contact centers lack the appropriate set of tools to measure all aspects of agent performance. Knoa Software, Upstream Works and Clarabridge (News - Alert), are three vendors mentioned in the research report. 

Genesys sponsored research was revealed that identified the differences between medium and large contact centers. What they found out may surprise you.

PsychTests.com, a company that specializes in making online psychological assessments, published the results of its latest research on the type of traits that can be an asset for people who are keen on being employed as a customer service executive.  

In other industry news we covered the following:

• The Knowlagent call center management solutions updated its ACD library Interactive Intelligence’s Customer Interaction Center (CIC) ACD. With this new upgrade, call center agents will see a boost in productivity through trading in idle time between calls for a range of training, IT and data-entry tasks. 
• Finnish operator DNA selected Ericsson to offer a customer experience management (CEM) solution based on user data consolidation (UDC) for real-time data consolidation and exposure.
• Virtual Hold Technology, specializing in enterprise conversation strategies to enhance customer experience, announced that Videlica, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland will become a member of its vendor-partner network. 
• TMCnet Contributing Writer Nick Ruble took a look at how DSNR Media Group (DMG) aims to revolutionize the way users are directed to websites through advertisements with its recently launched self-service Traffiliate program.  
• Melrose Jewelers, an online retailer of Rolex watches for both men and women in and around the nation, has announced that the company will offer seven-day customer care. 
• Northwest Master Listing Service (MLS) chose Customer Interaction Center (CIC), Interactive's IP communications software suite, as its communications solution.

There was also big news coming out of Oracle (News - Alert) who announced the bundling of seven distinct capabilities into what they are calling the Oracle Customer Experience.  Geared toward customer engagement across a variety of different sales channels it is geared to work alongside both Oracle Siebel, an on-premises CRM--Customer Relationship Management--tool, and Oracle Fusion, its cloud-based equivalent.

Community update

Hopefully you have noticed a new community feature, “Video Showcase.” Along with all of the other valuable resources on the community —our glossary of terms, featured demo, eBook, podcasts, whitepapers —the variety of the videos is a terrific addition to your knowledge base.  And, if you have not already done so, sign up for a free Contact Center Solutions eNewsletter.