ContactCenterSolutions Contact Center Solutions Week in Review
March 24, 2012
This is a week that had so much activity it’s difficult to know where to start. Featured articles ranged from items dealing with contact centers moving to the cloud, to companies helping clients with challenges, to industry trends. Hence, rather than chronological order, this week’s summaries are by group.
Contact center trends
This was a good week to learn a variety of issues and challenges facing contact center solutions around the world:
- ContactCenterSolutions Contributor Tracey Schelmetic had an interesting article on the fact that while the U.S. has brought contact center jobs back from overseas, other high-paying IT jobs are heading offshore.
- Interaction management solutions provider Enghouse Interactive recently compiled its Enghouse Interactive Customer Interaction Index, a survey of U.S. IT executives on the topics of customer interactions – structured, unstructured and self-service, and the results may come as a bit of a surprise.
- ContactBabel released their U.S. Contact Center Decision-Maker's Guide, an overview of U.S. call centers. It touches on a wide array of topics, including how various centers performed over the past year and what can be done to improve.
- ContactCenterSolutions Contributing Writer Joe Eitel reviewed recent research conducted by Proctor, a division of Imparta Ltd., which focused on the customer contact market. It found that "nudging," or behavioral economics, can effectively boost sales and customer satisfaction. Although the hypothesis that behavioral economics is effective at improving customer experience, it has never been thoroughly researched until now.
- It turns out that while the Philippines is a top outsourcing location for voice-based call centers - the company took India's crown away in that sector, at least from English-speaking Western nations - the nation has had a bigger challenge attracting non-voice business process outsourcing services.
- Has your opinion of a company ever gone down merely because the company asks your opinion far too often? You're not alone. Customers may be experiencing feedback survey fatigue.
“E”verything cloud
We lead off this category with a feature by ContactCenterSolutions Contributor Calvin Azuri, reporting that Descartes Systems Group announced its cloud-based MobileLink solution has been deployed by Ferguson Enterprises, Inc, a wholesale distributor of residential and commercial plumbing goods and services.
- Contributing Writer Kris Holt checked in with a feature on Carsguide.com, a website that facilitates the sale of new and used cars, which has turned to the cloud to help it handle phone inquiries about cars advertised on the site.
- ContactCenterSolutions Contributor Carolyn Dawson highlighted the Call Center Corporation, announcing it will be the official promoter and distributor of Nuxiba Technologies hosted call center software in the United States.
Wins, new capabilities, financials and recognition
Let’s begin with the wins.
- Infor revealed that its Infor10 suite of CRM solutions has been implemented by Mohegan Sun, a Connecticut-based casino and one of the largest in the U.S. At the same time, Benson Group Inc., a tire and auto parts conglomerate, announced a partnership with training firm Sale Away LLC. to provide sales, customer service and professional development training for 2,000 Benson Group employees.
- New and enhanced capabilities took center stage. 3Cinteractive introduced consumer-facing mobile capabilities at the mobile Microsoft Dynamics Convergence event in Houston, TX . The CRM solution handles things like opt-in/out management, real-time chat, order updates, targeted marketing broadcasts and more. In other developments:
- Zingaya , a provider of scalable, web-based VoIP applications for enterprises, developers and customer service call centers, introduced Zingaya Enterprise, a new platform and API enabling VoIP calls from a browser or a mobile app with a single click.
- Measuring ROI was the subject of a webinar sponsored by Empirix which you are invited to review.
- As an indication of growth in the market, ContactCenterSolutions Executive Editor Paula Bernier had a chance to speak with virtual contact center provider, Alpine Access, about its 2011 results. Revenues grew 54 percent over the prior year, with 2011 revenues of more than $100 million. Verint was also named a preferred solutions developer by Cisco.
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: “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.” Don’t overlook the link to Interactive Intelligence’s CaaS QUick Spin either, if you want to take a real-time road test of communications in the cloud.
