Feature Articles

Who owns social media has significant impact on who owns the customer experience with important implications for contact centers.

What do you do if you have a complaint or an unresolved issue about a company? Ten years ago, you might have picked up the phone. Maybe sent an e-mail. Today, if you're a tech savvy person, however, it's likely that you seek out the company's Facebook page or send a Tweet. After all, there's no complaint more effective than a public complaint, right?

ShoreTel, a provider of closed source VoIP solutions, announced an enhancement to its contact center solutions with the introduction of its brand new Contact Center 8.

Whiteboards are no longer just the tools of teachers, nor are they regular big white boards. Interactive whiteboards have been becoming more popular in business environments, providing a way to keep everyone in the meeting involved and information delivered clearly.

The Historic Plains Hotel of Wyoming is known for its proximity to the who's who of business, entertainment and politics. The hotel recently selected Travel Outlook, a provider of Premium Reservations service, as its customer service partner. Thanks to the partnership, booking a guest room in this historic property is lot easier for its loyal customers.

While not very long ago, the term contact center referred to a physical place, today, it's more of a concept. Many companies are finding business benefits, cost savings and overall value by using smaller, distributed call centers spread out all over the country or even the world. It leads to the ability to offer follow-the-sun service through time zones, multilingual support and disaster recovery in case of power outages or storms. Unified IP communications, of course, is what has enabled this distributed call center concept.

In virtually any regulated industry, compliance is at once a legal requirement, a risk management strategy, and an ethical imperative. Healthcare, insurance, finance, and especially accounts receivable management, compliance is a full-time concern. Or at least it should be. If you are a third-party collector for a creditor, for example, chances are good that, at some point, you'll be audited for recovery performance as well as compliance practices. Moreover, in this era of consumer lawsuits, no company that deals with consumers on a regular basis can be effective if it isn't fully cognizant of compliance issues.

Despite being largely considered one of the big mobile phone providers in the United States, T-Mobile has been struggling enough that they are looking to merge with another cellular provider in Metro PCS. While the company says that this merger will only help its bottom line in the long run, there are some employees who wonder whether they might be lost in the shuffle. In particular, employees at a contact center in Chattanooga, Tennessee are worried that the merge could make that contact center obsolete.