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Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

There was the usual virtual overflow of interesting developments in the Contact Center Solutions Community this past week on many fronts. That said, the best place to start is with a series of items relating to community host Interactive Intelligence that command attention. These included:

• An interesting webinar to be held on April 29 on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) which members of the Accounts Receivable Management (ARM) part of the community are going to wish to participate in. The reason is not just to hear about the issues of complying with TCPA, but also having the opportunity to ask questions of the industry’s leading subject matter experts.
• Giving back to the community has been part of Interactive Intelligence’s DNA since its inception and the company’s Interactive Intelligence Foundation has named the winners of its 2014 grants which include 12 organizations working with at-risk youth. In fact, in many businesses "giving back" has become part of their DNA.
• In a closely related story, Indianapolis Colts Quarterback Andrew Luck will be participating in a special part of the Interactive Intelligence INTERACTIONS 2014 where a raffle will be held to catch a pass from the star and all proceeds will go to the Interactive Intelligence Foundation.  

Now to all of the other developments in the community starting with our an item from our Wheelings & Dealings section that saw USstoragesearch.com agreeing to have OpenTech Alliance serve its contact center customers. 

There were several new capabilities introduced this past week which included:

• SimpleSignal unveiled a new fully responsive web app, the SimpleSignal Cloud Portal.  
• Financial Management Solutions (FMSI) rolled out Branch Staff Efficiency Calculator, a web-based calculator, specifically for banks and credit unions to help them assess both their labor cost savings ability and their staff downtime hours.
• BrightBox Solutions launched a hybrid solution combining its flag-ship product Help Desk Premier software and the option to license the software on an ongoing basis. A new and unique pay-as-you-go pricing model combines the two separate service offerings and provides a license for a customized help desk software product that caters to the customers' needs and price range. The solutions can be purchased separately. 
• Polaris Library Systems unveiled a Live Chat Support Service.
• New patented SaaS sales acceleration technology which helps with flexible pricing is now part of the ConnectAndSell arsenal of capabilities.

There was a lot of interest in the IVR area this week. For example, ContactCenterSolutions Contributor Susan Campbell has a posting that focused on the fact that customers on hold needed to be examined in terms of what you would like to tell them during that critical period. And, IVR Messages found use outside the contact center as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Preventing Chronic Disease looked at how Latinas perceive cancer screening and how they react to interactive voice response (IVR) messages for scheduling screenings. 

One the employment side of things, a new report from Ovum said that the number of outsourced call center agents, working from home, is likely to exceed 100,000 soon, and by 2017, will increase still further to 160,000. Although there will still be others working in traditional contact centers as can be seen in the announcement that Qualfon, a global business process outsourcing (BPO) provider, has announced its intention to inaugurate a new contact center in Harlingen, Texas. 

There was recognition as well this week, with Cars.com saying its Customer Care Team has been certified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal, a contact center research and consulting organization. And, on there was an interesting customer implementation story about how and why Decision Toolbox turned to Masery Communication to better manage its global distributed workforce.

Finally, you also might wish to give a careful read to the article I did about the implications for contact centers on the reports that Apple is beefing up Siri with integrations to third-part services. 

Weekend reading  

Weekends are for catching up on news and insights you did not have time to look at, and our newly re-designed home page is the way to get easy access to the constantly updated new eBooks, whitepapers, videos, demos, etc.  Plus, check out our affiliated channels — Accounts Receivable Management, Business Process Automation, CaaS, Cloud-based Contact Centers and Insurance Technology — for news and insights on specific areas that you wish to explore.   

Finally, I continue to recommend the recent webinar Key 2014 Contact Center Trends and Priorities: How you can be ready, as one for downloading if you were not able to participate.