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Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

The Contact Center Solutions Community this week was full of interesting news in terms of new capabilities and customer wins.  And, as usual, there is some insightful advice on how to improve operations and customer experiences along with industry recognition.

A good place to start is with the impressive functionality announced, which included:

• It may see an anomaly that Amazon tops the news with its introduction of the “Mayday Button” on the new Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX for instant access to support.   
• Radish Systems ChoiceView Visual IVR is now available on Avaya Portals including the Avaya Voice and Aura Experience portals. 
• OAISYS, a provider of business call recording and contact center management solutions, recently showcased the latest enhancements to its Talkument and Tracer software solutions, including its speech search functionality.  
• Broadvox is emphasizing its contact center service that complements its hosted voice services to enable contact centers to take full advantage of hosted voice and the productivity power of unified communications. 
• Calabrio unveiled Calabrio ONE Workforce Optimization Suite with a host of enhanced multi-channel analytics features for contact centers.
• Black Bear Design released a new Web solution to support a seamless integration between website contacts and customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. 

Customer deployments and industry partnerships were also new makers this week. Activities included:

• Staples, the world’s second largest online retail site, acquired Runa to strengthen its e-commerce  customer interaction visibility.
• International turnkey systems group Innovaro became a LaunchPad Listen user.
• Telecom testing and assurance company EXFO selected Coveo for Salesforce, a cloud-based service, to enable EXFO to enhance customer experiences with its contact centers.  

We in the community are all aware of the convenience and growing importance of “click-to-call” as a tool for improving contact center responsiveness to customers with pressing issues as they increase the use of their browsers as means for getting help. This week saw the introduction of a website for comparing click-to-call systems that is worth checking out.

Speaking of things to check out in terms of advice and industry insights you should include on your review list for this week three items of interest. The first involves insights from oDesk on how to effectively and securely manage a distributed workforce that includes a lot of third-party contractors. In the second, Easy OnHold, provides several useful tips on how to ensure that a customer on hold does not become and ex-customer.

The third posting is one that should really make you think. UK-based hiring specialists Talent Q, did a survey of hiring practices and found that the volume recruiters that are so often employed by contact centers because of high agent turnover rates do not do a great job of finding the right person for the job and they need to be better vetted if you intend to use their services and rely on their recommendations.  

As mentioned at the top there were also some miscellaneous odds and ends that were of note this past week. They included:

• The Prêmio de Excelência em Contact Center (PECC) awards by Você S/A National Corp Magazine has honored Sitel with the prestigious "Excellence Award in Contact Centre." Sitel has been honored for its exceptional advances in management practices. The award has also recognized Sitel's incessant efforts in nurturing its collaboration with Merck & Co., which has resulted in enhancements in key areas, personnel, processes and technologies.
• Aspect Software promoted David Herzog, senior vice president of Aspect Professional Services, to senior vice president and general manager of its recent acquisition Voxeo.

Finally, recognition of another type made news in South Africa this week when Ocular Technologies Ocular Technologies, a provider of contact center solutions, successfully reclaimed a South African broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) rating of level one. The BBBEE is South Africa's growth strategy that aims to bring the majority of its citizens into the economic mainstream. Independent rating company SERA was involved in delivering an impartial verification of the BBBEE initiatives that Ocular has undertaken.

Weekend reading  

As is custom in this space, I recommend clicking the community home page to access the valuable content you can access. It is constantly being updated, with videos, white papers, access to demos etc.  And for even more information and insights on specific areas of interest, our affiliated channels — Accounts Receivable Management, Business Process Automation, CaaS, Cloud-based Contact Centers and Insurance Technology — are places to visit and bookmark.