Another big week of contact center solutions news and items of interest makes it hard to prioritize. Working backwards from the breaking news seems like a logical way to proceed, and it starts on the legislative/regulatory front.
As reported by ContactCenterSolutions Contributor, Tracey Schelmetic, the “Save New Jersey Call Center Jobs Act (A- 2651)”, passed the full New Jersey Assembly by a vote of 56 to 23. The bill will require companies like Verizon, whom the Communications Workers of America (CWA) says has seen it call center membership drop from 3,000 a few years ago to 725 today because of outsourcing, to meet strict public disclosure requirements and be barred from receiving tax breaks.
It now goes to the New Jersey Senate and CWA and its supporters on to the Governor for signing into law. This legislation is similar in intent to the “U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act,” introduced in December with bi-partisan support in the U.S. House of Representatives, but which is stalled because of election year politics.
There was a tremendous amount of attention given to social media in relation to contact centers, and in a variety of ways, this week. Check out:
The posting by ContactCenterSolutions Contributor, Anamika Singh concerning Attensity’s new Insurance Industry Solution that builds on the company's flagship text analytics application. It lets insurance carriers and related businesses analyze customer conversations in social media to find fraudulent claims, identify customer problems and improve procedures.
Medallia launched its Medallia Promote, a solution designed to let companies enhance their social media ranking.
ContactCenterSolutions Contributor, Tracey Schelmetic, highlighted a recent blog by NTRglobal on why contact centers should not be afraid of incorporating chat into their multi-channel customer interactions. ventures to every possible media. Chat is one of those avoided media for a number of reasons.
ContactCenterSolutions Web Editor, Chris Freeburn reported on an interview at ITEXPO East 2012 with Aspect who has turned their focus to social media as a critical for engaging customers in the future.
One of the nice things about writing the week in review is that the opportunity arises to look at what has come in for the week in terms of the business of business. Contract wins and partnerships along with industry recognition for performance make for great headlines and represent good news for everyone in the community. This week there is a lot to report:
There was a great story about WorkSpace Contact Center’s new program designed to provide work for wounded and returning veterans of the US Armed Forces, enabling them to work from home.
Vocalcom enters UK market. The French call center solutions provider Vocalcom, maker of the Hermes.net solution, announced it will be introducing its Web-based unified contact center solution to the UK market.
Cisco announced a number of new customer wins for its contact center solutions product line including, the American Automobile Association (AAA), healthcare solutions company CareCore National, and Skowhegan Savings Bank, an independent mutual savings bank based in Maine.
Australian emergency travel services company Dynamiq chose IPscape’s contact center solution to assure 99.999 percent uptime.
On the industry recognition side, our community sponsor Interactive Intelligence received the CRM Magazine “Service Leader 2012” award.
In other industry news cost saving was the subject for an insightful article by Juliana Kenny, ContactCenterSolutions Managing Editor, as she detailed Empirix’s advice to customers on how best to integrate contact center assurance to generate cost savings while maintaining positive customer impact.
And, the impact of mobility as increasingly becoming the communications device of choice for interacting with contact centers was the focus of a posting by ContactCenterSolutions Contributor, Beecher Tuttle, which delved into the WhitePages creation of a new division, WhitePages PRO, which provides companies real-time access to consumer records for both landlines and mobile phones.
Finally, don’t forget to take advantage of all of the community’s resources. This includes the free Contact Center Solutions eNewsletter, videos and podcasts along with links to valuable white papers such as the three ones: “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.”