The Contact Center Solutions Community had a not rare but certainly exciting week on several fronts. It included community host Interactive Intelligence continuing a streak of industry recognition as a growth company, great place to work and a company whose DNA is giving back to the community. It also included, a host of new capabilities including the emergence of WebRTC-enabled functionality as a key to increasing contact center productivity and enhancing customer engagements.
Let’s start with the recognition for our hosts. It actually dates back to last week when Interactive Intelligence moved up Software Magazine’s annual rankings of the Top 500 software and services suppliers where thanks to a good year Interactive broke into the top 200 for the first time. It continued with company being honored with a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award as one of America’s outstanding places to work, and its philanthropic organization was given the Indiana Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals 2014 Philanthropy Award for Outstanding Corporation of the year.
In addition to recognition there was also a significant number of new capabilities, many based on the growing industry trend of vendor collaboration that was noteworthy. This included:
The rest of the week’s news was an eclectic mix. Topics covered included competitive wins, industry reports, advice, an example of the fact that the U.S. continues to be a place of growth for contact centers, and an item on why being solely online needs to be tempered with physical presence to assure optimized customer experiences.
The last item is a good place to start a summary of some global items. It concerns a Chinese online travel and leisure company, Tuniu Corporation, and highlights how getting the balance between physical and virtual is not easy but is essential for success. Also representing the truly global nature of the community when it comes to attracting and keeping talent was the item about the Philippines is seeing employee acquisition and retention becoming a highly competitive arena. And, definitely take a read of the item about how a recent study of another Chinese travel company, Ctrip, done by Stanford University demonstrated the value of working from home.
Closing out the week’s areas of interest was advice from Interactive Intelligence on what the mobile customer service experience should be. And, the attraction of the U.S. for contact center expansion remains strong, and like the Philippines obtaining and retaining agents is causing companies like IntelliHARTx to pay a nice wage as it expands its Kingsport, TN contact center operation , and that note about a Tennessee Call Center Offering Big Wages to Employees
Weekend Reading
Our community home page is here as your navigation tool for linking to constantly up-dated industry news, eBooks, whitepapers, videos, insights and interesting demos if you are looking to get caught up on industry trends and news this weekend.
Plus, visit our affiliated channels — Accounts Receivable Management, Business Process Automation, CaaS, Cloud-based Contact Centers and Insurance Technology —which contain news and insights on specific areas of interest.
Finally, why not spend a little time this weekend registering to attend ITEXPO East being held January 27-30, 2014 in Miami Beach. This is a great opportunity to be warm during the coldest part of winter and more to the point, hear, see and discuss contact center issues in person with peers and subject matter experts.