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ContactCenterSolutions Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

The Contact Center Solutions Community news this week provided a series of insights that were an interesting mix of good news, not so good and also contained useful advice. 

First the good news. As guest contributor John Meyer, Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Arise Virtual Solutions Inc., pointed out, even in the face of the continuing imbroglio caused by Yahoo’s announcement that it is curtailing much if not all of its remote working, the working from home trend is big and productive business and getting bigger. In fact, it is fueling a $6.1B virtual contact center industry. Adding to this was the announcement from Magellan Solutions, a Philippine-based in-bound contact center provider that it will expand to attract more international businesses that consider the Philippines the right location for their front- and back-office operations. And, as ContactCenterSolutions Contributor Tracey Schelmetic wrote, analysts in the UK are seeing signs of robust growth for UK-based contact centers.

On the not so good side of things, Hermann International research has looked into the art of behavior-based sales and has found that selling and buying are more rooted in thinking, not behavior, thus making behavior-based sales obsolete. In addition, research by BT and Avaya has shown that customers have low confidence in customer support knowledge.

The advice comes from Teleopti who is focused on how workforce management accommodates today's dynamics in contact centers.

In other industry news, there was industry recognition, new solutions introduced, and even some funding and M&A activities.

• Assurant Solutions, a specialty risk management company, announced it has been honored in the seventh annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. 
• In order to provide Web-based intelligent virtual assistants, in a wide number of languages and across many channels, Nuance Communications has implemented enhancements in its Nina customer service app.
• Equilibrium has expanded its capabilities to make contact center updates easier.   
• Contact management startup Contactually raised $1 Million in a seed round.
• Call service company Stream Global purchased LBM Holdings Limited, a U.K.-based company consisting of six call centers, for nearly $44 million. 

Weekend review recommendations

For your weekend review, I recommend the webinar, Key Contact Center Trends and Priorities for the Upcoming Year – How you can be ready, if you have not already downloaded or participated. I also recommend not just all of the community’s white papers, demos, videos, etc.  but also that for more information about areas of your interest, our affiliated channels — Accounts Receivable Management, Business Process Automation, CaaS, Cloud-based Contact Centers and Insurance Technology, are great places to investigate as well.