Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

ContactCenterSolutions Contact Center Week In Review

December 07, 2007

This week in contact center related news, CosmoCall, TuVox, Telrex, Altitude and Sorenson Communications all made headlines.

 
On Monday, Call Center Consolidation 2.0 company, CosmoCom, announced its CosmoCall Universe platform was selected by KPN to enable a new Contact Center Online service.
 
The all IP platform will make it possible to staff the contact center with premise-based agents as well as virtual and home-based agents while also eliminating the need for large capital expenditure.
 
Marcel Otto, Managing Director of KPN Newtel Essence commented, "Successful organizations need access to the best available communication technology, and that’s what Contact Center Online provides. CosmoCom’s technology enabled us to create what we are confident will be a winning offering: an affordable service with significant capabilities, flexible deployment options, and usage-based pricing with little or no up-front investment."
 
Also helping contact centers to save on costs is the virtual contact center. This week's article, "The Virtual Contact Center: Helping Organizations Go Green," highlights the costs savings and environmental benefits that can be achieved with a virtual contact center.
 
The virtual contact center can allow organizations to extend their service hours and offer improved customer service levels while agents, who are home, are not commuting and releasing more carbon emissions or using electricity, fuel or other costly elements of a brick and mortar establishment.
 
More changes taking place in the contact center space are being brought about by the changing demands of consumers as well. This Contact Center Research article notes that the biggest of these changes is the interactions that occur. "According to the Internet World Stats and Wireless Intelligence, there are more than 1.6 billion Internet users and 2.7 billion mobile phone subscriptions throughout the world. Add to that the1.3 million new mobile phone subscriptions that are being added per day, worldwide."

This change has not come without consumers also becoming less tolerant when it comes to customer service.
 
"This decline is not as a result of an abrupt decrease in service deliverables, but rather an increase in the knowledge of available technology and the expectation that the contact center should be able to meet each and every request with the click of a mouse."

To solve this, it becomes necessary to better address customer needs, "Whether through surveys or other means of gathering customer perception, the center can gain significant advantage in the market if they have a clear understanding of the consumers’ expectations.
 
Sorenson Communications has also announced the opening of a new SIPRelay Call Center in Price, Utah. The company offers video relay services for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals who use American sign language.
           
Pat Nola, president and CEO of Sorenson Communications commented, “The SIPRelay Call Center in Price and the Communications Assistants who work there will provide much-needed services to deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals across the country. The demographics of Carbon and Emery Counties, which include students who need part-time and flexible work and residents seeking full-time employment—as well as the area’s strong sense of community and work ethic, made Price a natural choice. We look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with the citizens of Carbon and Emery Counties.”
 
On an opposite note, Home Depot announced this week they will close three of their call centers that handle orders for home installation.
 
The closings will result in a loss of 950 Jobs, as work from those centers will be shifted to its stores in a move the company believes will help to improve customers service.
 
Also this week, contact center self-service solutions provider TuVox, announced they received $20 million in venture capital to, "expand it core business and invest in new areas of growth."
 
Larry Miller, TuVox president and CEO commented, "This is an exciting period for TuVox, as our core business continues to grow rapidly, providing further opportunity to pursue new areas of expansion for the company. Having achieved positive cash flow, this new financing will take us to the next level as we continue to explore and capitalize on opportunities to expand our market presence globally and broaden our on demand offerings with products that will absolutely change the way companies do business with their customers.”

Call recording provider Telrex also made headlines this week with the release of   CallRex Multi-Media version 3.7.
 
The call center recording solution offers formal and informal call centers live monitoring of employees’ computer screens, records screenshots, logs web activity, tracks e-mails sent and received, and provides comprehensive reporting on individuals and groups.
 
For more on call center monitoring and recording solutions, check out this article: 3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Improves Call Center Business.

Speaking of multi-channel communications in the contact center, this week, an article titled, "Contact Centers Contribute to Business Intelligence System Success," offers insight into a study conducted by market research firm Dynamic Markets.
 
The research uncovered that as important as business intelligence is perceived to be, systems in place to provide it are failing to improve operational performance or even impact decision making within US and UK businesses.
 
Also this week, Altitude Software announced that Gartner placed the company in the “Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, EMEA, 2007."
 
Miguel Lopes, Vice President, Marketing and Product Management commented, "In 2007 alone, Altitude Software made significant investments in its operations in North America and Central Europe, while establishing a direct presence and building delivery capabilities in crucial markets in India, Philippines and the wider Pacific Region."
 
That completes the run down of all contact center related news for this past week. Be sure to check back with ContactCenterSolutions for all the latest in contact center news as it happens.
 
 
Also, don’t forget to register for these upcoming TMC Webinars:
 
 
 
 
 
Stefania Viscusi is an established writer and avid reader. To see more of her articles, please visit Stefania Viscusi’s columnist page.
 



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