As always, it has proven to be a busy week in the dynamic contact center industry. Here we share some bits and pieces of the biggest news from the industry this week.

 

Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions company Soffront has received a 2008 CRM Excellence Award from TMC’s Customer Interaction Solutions magazine. Editors for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine concluded that Suffront’s products and services have substantially improved the processes of client businesses.

 

Foviance and RXP studied the contact center industry to determine how effective companies were in managing multi-channel environments. Many of the problems that were encountered during the Foviance/RXP research were due to people-related issues. Most often, either customer service staff were not trained well enough, not rewarded correctly, or simply not available in sufficient numbers to cope with seasonal peaks in demand.

A new survey commissioned by e-commerce chat company inQ (News - Alert) and conducted by the e-tailing group, assessed how 31 retailers and telcos that offer chat on their respective Web sites use the technology to sell. The results? Chat is underused.

 

The deployment of a powerful web self-service channel, powered by Talisma Knowledgebase, was completed by Easily.co.uk, enabling the company to achieve a 20 percent reduction in inbound support inquiries.

 

Outsourced customer contact solutions provider Synergy Solutions has announced the expansion of their call center facility in Johnson City, New York. Synergy has been operating in the area since 2000. In response to their continued growth in demand for from Synergy’s client base, Synergy has added 80 more workstations to their Johnson City call center, which is expected to provide more job opportunities in the local community.

 

Sybase (News - Alert) 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc., has announced that it identified the contact center industry as a key market for the company’s SMS messaging services. According to the company, as part of its strategic move into this industry, it has partnered with Datasquirt (News - Alert), a New Zealand-based company that specializes in mobile and multi-channel contact management solutions.

 

CallMiner, an advanced speech analytics provider, and the PerformanceEdge Group of Aspect (News - Alert) Software, a company focused on unified communications for the contact center, have been chosen by Daimler Financial Services Americas. This selection was made to monitor the quality, content, context, intention and outcome of contact center conversations.

 

ITA Software, a provider of innovative airline IT and services, has announced that it has been selected by U.S. Airways to automate exchange ticket shopping, reprise and reissue capabilities across the airline’s customer call centers and airport kiosks.

 

And finally, Altitude Software (News - Alert), a global independent contact center solutions vendor, and Consilium Software, which develops Unified Communications software and solutions for enterprises and contact centers,  have entered into a strategic agreement to provide customer interaction management solutions. Given the increasing demand for customer interaction management, this alliance is expected to find significant opportunities in the market.

Those are the highlights from this past week. Be sure to check back with TMCnet next week for all your contact center news.