Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

ContactCenterSolutions Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

There is a good word to sum up activities of interest to the contact center solutions community, WOW! 

The best place to start is with the report published by the Communications of America (CWA) union’s eye-opening research report. As ContactCenterSolutions Contributor Tracey Schelmetic detailed, the outsourcing of not just contact centers but now putting Cloud-based mission critical information in off-shore data centers has huge consequences that enterprises of all sizes need to consider. 

The report, called, “Why Shipping Call Center Jobs Overseas Hurts Us Back Home,” details that not only does shipping call center jobs offshore threaten the livelihood of U.S. workers and their communities, but it also opens companies and their customers to risks of fraud committed with proprietary company and customer information.

Tracey was also busy reporting on our Editors Choice feature on California-based Otay Water District’s decision to upgrade its ability to better engage its customers by deploying Interactive Intelligence’s Customer Interaction Center (CIC) solution to replace and NEC PBX. 

Interested in golf? Even if not, check out the feature about Golfbreaks.com, one of Europe's leading golf tour operators, broadening of its multichannel capabilities in its call center based on Aspect technology. 

In other featured items:

• Jebsen and Jessen Communications announced that it has extended its geographic reach to Asia with a focus on business solutions consulting services.
• IIT products and services provider En Pointe Technologies launched En Pointe Collaboration Solution (ECS), a hosted, subscription-based service that integrates voice, mobility, audio, Web- and video-conferencing, presence technology and call center functionality.
• ContactCenterSolutions Contributor Calvin Azuri, highlighted X2Engine’s announcement of its X2CRM open source social sales management application.
• Customer interaction management company, Varolii Corporation, announced a new integrated solution, Varolii 360, designed to offer inbound communications capabilities to call centers, creating a complete customer experience across both guided inbound and proactive outbound interactions.
• Amtel Communications won the Best Support Partner category at Interactive Intelligence's Asia-Pacific channel awards.

Globally there were two interesting news items. First, ContactCenterSolutions Contributor Anuradha Shukla covered ProtoCall One’s unveiling of its new headquarters facility in Buckinghamshire England. The new center will be used to demonstrate how G-Cloud Genesys Software as a Service (SaaS) can help contact centers improve customer experiences. Second, Chinese Telecom DYNnet reported record contract center outsourcing growth which increased an impressive 70 percent in the past year. 

I would be remiss in not pointing out the article by Erin Harrison, Executive Editor, Cloud Computing magazine entitled, “Interactive Intelligence Helps Contact Centers Navigate Their Way Into the Cloud.” It appeared in the January issue of the magazine and is now available on our Communications as a Service (CaaS) channel. Based on an interview with Interactive Intelligence chief marketing officer (CMO) Joe Staples, it is full of valuable insights. 

As is my custom, I urge you to browse the community resources. This includes signing up for you free Contact Center Solutions eNewsletter if you have not already done so; the podcasts, “Seeing Strong Demand for its CaaS Offerings,” and “Interaction Process Automation Launches”; and the three new white papers: “Consolidating Infrastructures: IT's New Call to Business,” “The Value of a Combined Solution for Enterprise IP Telephony and Customer Care,” and “Building Customer Centricity through Expertise-Based Interactions.”