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Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

April 26, 2014

This week in the Contact Center Solutions Community started out with a bang and certainly is not closing with a whimper.

The bang was created by community host Interactive Intelligence who announced the signing of a letter of intent to acquire OrgSpan, a cloud-based enterprise social communications company whose solutions ensure that customers connect with the right people in a company to solve their problems by allowing the customer to have a say in the selection. 


The week ended with two interesting items about contact center business process outsourcing (BPO). In the first, there is a new report out that India is losing BPO jobs to other countries, particularly the Philippines where English is spoken, and there needs to be both some sense of urgency along with a longer-term view on how to stem the tide. This includes using lower cost small cities as areas to grow a non-English speaking BPO industry.   However, all is not perfect in the Philippines as a best haven for new BPOs because of a spate of labor mistreatment complaints, and Philippine regulators and the BPO industry trade group have worked together on a two-year plan aimed at improving the workplace environment..

Here in the U.S. in-sourcing was the order of the week with major Cable TV operator Charter Communications opened a new customer care center in Bridgeton, Missouri.  And, Frontier Communications opened a customer service center in Provo, Utah to support its Frontier Secure business unit.  

In addition, and in a bit of a twist on the two previous BPO items, the State of Wisconsin will be giving Philippines-based outsourcing company SPI Global  more than half a million dollars to expand its Madison, WI contact center.  In exchange for incentives that will total $575,000 the company has said it will add as many as 286 jobs over the next three years. 

This week a heavy and promising dose of new capabilities brought to market. These included:

  • Enghouse Interactive released Contact Center: Enterprise Version 9.0.
  • Stratus Video’s interpreting solution helps healthcare providers overcome language barriers in critical care situations.
  • Gubagoo has optimized its chat platform for car dealer mobile-based customer interactions.
  • How RealPage, a property management software company, is leveraging instant call reply as part of its contact center leasing suite
  • Behavior analytics-based chat supplier Gubagoo is enabling dealers to track and target customers that visit their website through a smartphone or a tablet.
  • UK-based Intelecom Group AS, a provider of contact center solutions announced it has added new features to its Connect  multi-channel cloud-based solutions, including enabling supervisors to monitor, manage and control the contact center online and from within a single interface. 

Other industry news was a bit harder to categorize but certainly was interesting.  In fact, you should take a look at the winners of BenchmarkPortal’s 2014 Top 100 Call Centers Contest Winners.  The item on how Florida Heart & Vascular Associates enhanced employee timekeeping with the Lathem PayClock Online cloud-based time and attendance solution is more than worth a read. 

There were two items on Latin America as well. This is a hot emerging contact center solutions market and business for community host Interactive Intelligence in the region is certainly indicative of this. Plus, Brazil's Istmo Solutions has teamed up with worker optimization expert OpenSpan in order to provide contact center services throughout Brazil.

 I have saved an important item for last since it involves the featured presentation by contact center solutions subject matter expert Sheila McGee-Smith on the criticality proactive customer care that will be part of TMC’s CX HOTTRENDS Symposium. This unique gathering featuring many of the contact center industry’s most recognized experts is being held June 2-4 in Indianapolis. It is sponsored by Interactive Intelligence, Zendesk and OrgSpan, and is co-located with the Interactive Intelligence’s INTERACTIONS 2104 global conference.  

Weekend Reading

Make part of your weekend regimen catching up on contact center news and insights by using our newly re-designed home page as your gateway to the constantly updated new eBooks, whitepapers, videos, demos, etc.  And, check out our affiliated channels — Accounts Receivable Management, Business Process Automation, CaaS, Cloud-based Contact Centers and Insurance Technology — for news and insights on specific areas that you wish to explore.   

And if you have not already, time is running out to register for the webinar, Pitfalls of TCPA, April 29 at 11:30 AM, and also note that April 30th is the last day you will be able to sign up for the Interactive Intelligence Customer Experience Makeover Contest.  





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