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Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

The news in the Contact Center Solutions Community this week featured two things that were the topics of serious interest at community host Interactive Intelligence’s INTERACTIONS 2014 global conference.  

First there was the much anticipated announcement of the Interactive Intelligence PureCloud Contact Center Suite.  The new suite of cloud-based application services is based on new distributed cloud architecture built atop Amazon Web Services. It was designed to provide rapid deployment, maximum reliability, and unlimited scalability, while connecting customers and employees in new, more efficient ways. In addition, as is the case at this annual event, the company released findings from its latest research. As usual there is a lot to consider but the big takeaway is what everyone in the contact center solutions community knows, i.e., customer expectations are high and they want solutions. In fact, what the research found was that customers want fast, accurate and understandable contact center interactions. In short, they interact with intent, and they expect that in this day and age contact centers should be as responsive as possible as quickly as possible.

The continued good health of the industry in terms of companies expanding their customer support capabilities by building new contact centers and hiring more people was on display in the following items:

• Major health solutions services (insurance) provider Cigna will be hiring 100 customer service personnel for its Pittsburgh contact center.
• Outsourcer First Call Resolution is expanding once again its operations in Grants Pass, Oregon.
• Thirteen years and four million phone calls (not counting the emails and chats)- is obviously something to write home about. Home Properties Inc.'s contact center, open seven days a week, 365 days a year, reached this significant milestone.
• Home medical equipment vendor CareTouch expanded its customer care team.

I like to ensure that the community has weekly insights and advice, and this week as usual there is plenty of food for thought to consider. It included the following:

• A new report from Evolve IP and the Contact Center & Customer Care Industry Professional Network (CCNG) found that despite the still large installed base of premise contact centers, over 70 of respondents to the survey on which the report is based say they will be moving some or all of their contact centers to the cloud.
• ContactCenterSolutions Contributor Tracey Schelmetic had an interesting item on developing strategies for having mobile customer care engagements that are compelling.
• Sound Telecom released a useful article on the value of virtual receptionist services, e.g., what they are and how they work.

In other industry news, AudioCodes Session Border Controller (SBC) were certified by SAP Labs Finland to work with SAP® Contact Center Software, and Presence Technology touted its inclusion in the Gartner Magic Quadrant of the Contact Center Infrastructure.   

Weekend Reading

If you have time this weekend, our newly re-designed home page is your gateway to constantly updated content which includes:  new eBooks, whitepapers, videos, demos, etc.  And, 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 of interest.  And, if you missed it, given the topicality of compliance, the recent The Pitfalls of TCPA and Its Impact on Your Business: Up-Selling, Telemarketing & Collections webinar is worth a watch and listen.