This week’s focus for the Contact Center Solutions community interestingly was on the demonstrable deliverables being enjoyed by various customers for premises and cloud-based solutions. Thrown into the mix as well was some industry recognition and even a little U.S. politics.
News
I wanted to start with a contribution from our special guest, Richard Alfredeen, founder of Oneforce. As Richard stated, “In uncertain times, best practice companies are focusing cost cutting and productivity improvements on those activities that drive the largest share of their SG&A expenses,” he cautions that proper sales management in essence means that companies need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water when looking at how to decrease costs but do so without decreasing sales and salesperson performance.
As noted, items about solving customer problems took center stage this week. They included a series of items detailing deployments of solutions community host Interactive Intelligence:
There we some interesting industry developments that were also of note. In the United States, according to a new study by Cutting Edge Information in the medical information sector proper headcount and budgeting are the best ways to assure contact centers match patient needs with the right resources. There was also news on two fronts that showed how the U.S. market can be tricky. At the same time that the Alorica call center announced plans to hire 350 more people in Colorado Springs, CO, cable operator Comcast had to walk back previous comments about its closing of its California call centers because the state is too expensive to do business in and under pressure from legislators amended the comments to mean they were just consolidating operations.
And back to growth, Nuspire Networks announced that as its newest client, Volkswagen of America will be deploying its technical support center services. Nuspire will provide Volkswagen with these services from its commerce, MI-based security operations center.
In news from around the world, we noted that European call center outsourcing giant Teleperformance SA has some money, and it's not afraid to spend it. The company's stock is at an all-time high, and chairman, Daniel Julien, said the company was in an "acquisition mood," particularly inside the U.S. call center marketplace. And, research firm Frost & Sullivan found that Vietnam is a growing place for call centers outsourcing operations.
In other news, InsideSales.com demonstrated the newest addition to its PowerSuite sales automation and predictive analytics platform with the introduction of PowerText to the suite that enables users to add text messaging to its mix of communications tools. And, Nemertes Group revealed that Avaya was the winner of its PilotHouse Market Leader Award for IP Contact Centers.
Weekend browsing
As always for your weekend reading pleasure check out all of the valuable resources available to you on the community including videos, whitepapers and podcasts of a variety of subjects. In addition, for more focused information click over to the affiliated channels — Accounts Receivable Management, Business Process Automation, CaaS, Cloud-based Contact Centers and Insurance Technology.
Based on popularity, I also want to recommend the Editor’s Choice article, “The Cloud and You: Interactive Intelligence CaaS Quick Spin Makes Seeing BelievingITEXPO Austin 2012, being held at the Austin, Texas Convention Center and running from October 2 – 5. This is a premier event for the industry. It is a great place to see the latest and best along with gain insights on industry trends and network with colleagues, partners and customers. ,” and hopefully take the cloud out for a spin if you have not done so. I also hope you will be joining us this coming week at
In fact, you might wish to check out what Interactive Intelligence CMO Joe Staples had to say on where we are, where we are headed and the value of attending ITEXPO.