Contact Center Solutions

Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

The Contact Center Solutions community certainly had a variety of news on several different fronts this week regarding new solutions, customer implementations, recognition, etc. However, before getting to the news this week, I actually would like to start by pointing everyone to two articles I authored. [ Read More ]
05/25/2013

Indosoft Boosts Q-Suite ACD's Ability to Retain Calls in the Event of Server Faults

If you run a mission-critical call center and one of your servers goes down, so you risk dropping that very important call? Given the number of serious storms that have battered the U.S. in recent years, more and more call centers might be said to be mission-critical: emergency services call centers, utility customer support, 411 information call centers and insurance companies are just some of the organizations that get busy under high-pressure circumstances. [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

How to Really Improve Customer Experiences, REALLY!

In the last several weeks as a result of the Interactive Intelligence Interactions 13 event, and a variety of industry developments, I have been exposed to not just to the latest and greatest in contact center solutions. It has also been my good fortune to interact with some very knowledgeable people from across the broad spectrum of community stakeholders-customers, resellers, channel partners, industry analysts-literally from all over the world. What they all have in common is an intense focus… [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

iPhonik to Open Sri Lanka Contact Center for Asian Alliance Insurance

iPhonik has signed a deal to open a contact center in Sri Lanka for Asian Alliance Insurance (AAI) which will now employ local Sri Lankan agents. [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

LiveOps selected in AlwaysOn OnDemand Top 100 list

LiveOps, Inc announced it has selected AlwaysOn, a business media brand connecting and informing the entrepreneurial community, in its list of AlwaysOn OnDemand Top 100 Private Companies for the third year in a row. [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

Avaya is Now a Member of Open Visual Communications Consortium

Avaya, a provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, joined the Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC), a non-profit organization of worldwide communications technology companies working together to enable video collaboration across any network, vendor platform and device. [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

Are You Using Key Performance Indicators of the Past in a Next-Gen Contact Center?

As the economy continues to lag (along with consumer confidence), many companies are finding it more important than ever before to retain the customers they have. In a commoditized world, smart companies understand that the best way to differentiate themselves from competitors is by offering top-notch multichannel customer service. [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

Contact Solutions Deploys AnyPresence to Develop Mobile Customer Service Apps

In an effort to create next generation mobile customer service applications (apps), Contact Solutions, a provider of on-demand contact automation solutions and hosted interactive voice response (IVR) in North America, has deployed an enterprise mobile development platform - AnyPresence. [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

SYNETY Announces Integration of CloudCall with GoldMine CRM

Users of GoldMine CRM will now be able to access telephony functions directly from within GoldMine. To provide this capability, Synety has announced integration of its on-demand business telephony application, CloudCall with GoldMine CRM, which will allow GoldMine users to use CloudCall by doing a regular upgrade of the CRM software. [ Read More ]
05/22/2013

SpeechStorm Unveils Personas in Latest Release of IVR

SpeechStorm's most recent version of its Interactive Voice Response or IVR application is now available. Code-named 'Hitchcock', the latest version unveils SpeechStorm Personas, which allows customers to have varied experiences of call centre IVR and self-service, as per their selected profile, behavior, or liking. [ Read More ]
05/22/2013

Noble Systems Integrates Web Services with Customer Contact Programs

Noble Systems Corporation has unveiled the Noble Web Interfacing Service or WISE, offering versatility to multichannel customer contact programs. Noble facilitates data exchange between applications with the help of web services. Apart from enhancing customer experience, the use of Web services accelerates response times to customer contacts. Online sales organizations will also experience enhanced "Speed to Lead". [ Read More ]
05/22/2013

Interactive Intelligence Collaborates With Kuwait-based FutureTech

Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. has further extended its presence in the Middle East market after it entered into a strategic association with FutureTech, a provider of smart IT infrastructure and IT outsourcing offerings located in Kuwait. [ Read More ]
05/22/2013

Ixia Improves Call Center Reliability with New Contact Center Solution

Ixia has added a new solution to its product line called Ixia Chariot Contact Center. The solution is designed to help contact centers offer an increase in network reliability during peak times when they see a spike in demand. Additionally, the solution will also offer higher security capabilities to keep the call center and data safer against a TDoS attack. [ Read More ]
05/22/2013

RAC Deploys SSP Select Contact Center to Streamline Motorist Services

The RAC, a motoring association in the U.K., roughly equivalent to the AAA stateside, has announced that it has deployed SSP Select Contact Center. [ Read More ]
05/21/2013

LiveLeadPros.com Offers Comprehensive Call Center Management Services

LiveLeadPros.com has said that it now offers comprehensive call center management services at reasonable prices. The company offers a wide range of services, including real-time reports and regulating the number of call center contacts made per minute. Additional services include assisting in changing scheduled broadcasting hours and more. [ Read More ]
05/21/2013

ACSI Report Says Customer Service is Slowly Getting Better

While we like to bemoan the dismal state of customer service in the U.S., there is evidence that companies are finally getting the message, albeit slowly: bad customer service risks the entire business. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), often cited as the national customer satisfaction benchmark, says things are getting better. [ Read More ]
05/21/2013

Telvista to Handle Virgin America's Unique Customer Services Program

For those of us who fly around the U.S., Virgin America is likely a favorite. Not only do they have a modern fleet with all of the amenities-wide seats, personal video, power adapters, etc., and reasonable prices-but they also happen to provide great customer service. [ Read More ]
05/20/2013

Will Visa Reforms be Catastrophic for Offshore Outsourcing?

It is safe to say that the tech industry in the United States has more than a passing interest the immigration reform bill now working its way through the U.S. congress. While immigration reform has been a hot topic for several years, it has become a priority of both the Obama administration and Congress, driven in no small measure by the presidential election results. [ Read More ]
05/20/2013

Uncovering the Roadblocks to First-Call Resolution

When call centers began pursuing "first-call resolution" in the last decade, it wasn't just a buzzword. The idea of ensuring that all calls into a contact center are resolved on the very first call, eliminating the need for the customer to call back, has a whole host of benefits. [ Read More ]
05/20/2013

Bad Customer Service Costs UK Businesses Billions Each Year

While it's become something of a hobby in the U.S. to complain about the quality of customer service, it has become something of a national pastime in the U.K., where by all reports, customer service is in even more dismal shape than it is on this side of the Atlantic. [ Read More ]
05/20/2013

TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

For those of you who check the home page of the Contact Center Solutions Community on a regular basis, you know that I spent the past week in Indianapolis at Interactive Intelligence's Interactions 13 event. As a result, it is my hope that you read not only the articles that were written during the event, but also will continue to read next week about more interesting information I gleaned from the company, its resellers, customers and industry analysts. [ Read More ]
05/18/2013

Kohl's Moves Platform to Cloud with ININ's CaaS

Kohl's Department Stores just signed a multi-year deal with Interactive Intelligence to move its contact center solutions to the Interactive Intelligence Communications-as-a-Service solution. The deal will allow Kohl's to increase its level of business, meet seasonal demands, and enhance its business practices. [ Read More ]
05/17/2013

Customer Experience Research: ININ Reveals What Enquiring Minds Want to Know

As a prelude to the closing session of the Interactive Intelligence Interactions 13 event, the company's CMO Joe Staples informed me that some "interesting and surprising" research was going to be revealed. Was he ever correct! [ Read More ]
05/17/2013

The Stockade Group and the Call Center Corporation Merge to Dedicate Resources to Customer Service

The Stockade Group, a provider of telephone and Web-based client outreach services, and the Call Center Corporation, a provider of call center software and technology, have merged to combine their resources and focus on delivering quality customer service. In a time when up brands can lose up to 20 percent of revenue due to poor customer experience, this move is crucial in ensuring customer satisfaction and business success. [ Read More ]
05/17/2013

Commissioner Robert M. McDowell to Join Hudson Institute as Visiting Fellow

Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan policy research organization announced on Thursday that Commissioner Robert M. McDowell will serve as a Visiting Fellow at the organization once he leaves the Federal Communications Commission later this week, the Sacramento Bee reports. [ Read More ]
05/16/2013

Experts: 'One Size Does Not Fit All' When it Comes to Social Media and the Contact Center

One of the many great things about being at a multi-faceted gathering such as Interactive Intelligence's Interactions 13 is not only do you get to interact with solutions providers, resellers, channel partners, and customers from all over the world, but you also get to hear the views on top of mind subjects by true industry experts. A featured panel discussion on social media and its impact on contact centers was, to say the least, enlightening. [ Read More ]
05/16/2013

Centrify Unveils Centrify for NetSuite

Centrify Corporation has unveiled Centrify for NetSuite at NetSuite SuiteWorld 2013. Users of NetSuite are now offered Active Directory-based NetSuite single sign-on, user provisioning and mobile administration for no extra cost with the all-inclusiveCentrify for NetSuite. [ Read More ]
05/16/2013

MDS Announces MDS Accelerate

Offering an improved version of its integrated revenue and customer management platform, MDS has announced the launch of MDS Accelerate. According to the company, this improved version helps service providers bring their products and services markets quickly, saving them time and money. [ Read More ]
05/16/2013

Clarabridge Picked to Strengthen Thomson Reuters' Voice-of-the-Customer Program

Clarabridge, Inc. recently confirmed that it has entered into collaboration with Thomson Reuters in order to upgrade Thomson Reuters' Voice-of-the-Customer (VOC) program that spans across its Intellectual Property and Science business. Thomson Reuters is a global source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, while Clarabridge is a premier provider of intelligent Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions for some of the leading international brands. [ Read More ]
05/16/2013

The Cloud: The Great Equalizer for the Small Contact Center

Good news. This is changing. Market leaders are now offering powerful, simple and cost-effective cloud solutions designed specifically for small contact centers. And not surprisingly, these offerings are inherently more mature and scalable. Small centers no longer have to settle. They now have access to the same cloud platforms as the big boys. The cloud is the great equalizer. [ Read More ]
05/16/2013

Contact Centers Swallowing Up SIP, Ignoring Trunking Critics

Contact centers used to be places where sales and support folks went and used hardwired phones to talk to customers. Both of those elements have changed. The phones no longer have to be traditional landlines thanks to IP telephony and session initiation protocol (SIP). And VoIP frees employees and employers to place contact center workers nearly anywhere. [ Read More ]
05/16/2013

Ixia Enhances Network Reliability for Contact Centers

Ixia debuts a new solution that can validate and strengthen critical infrastructures for enterprise contact centers in order to meet the demands of the social media and an always-on environment. [ Read More ]
05/15/2013

Aspect selects Promero as Authorized Reseller and Services Provider

Promero, a reseller and hosting provider of call center and CRM software, recently announced that Aspect, provider of integrated contact center and workforce optimization solutions, has selected the company as an authorized reseller and professional services provider. Aspect provides solutions to over 1. 5 million agents across 70 countries, handles more than 100 million daily transactions, 77 percemt of the Fortune 100 and 64 percent of the Global Fortune 100. [ Read More ]
05/14/2013

SafeSoft Solutions Helps Pub Club Leads to Triple Revenue and Call Center Staffing

Within a year of rolling out SafeSoft Solution's cloud-based sales and marketing productivity software, Pub Club Leads was able to triple its revenue and ramp up its call center staff. Adam Sthay's Pub Club Leads is compliance based marketing firm that controls the advertising message to the mortgage and loan sector clients from end-to-end and helps them to find high quality leads. Pub Club services the mortgage, student loan, credit repair, debt settlement, and other financial sectors. [ Read More ]
05/14/2013

Smart Solutions from Live Lead Pros for Better Call Center Management

Whether a business has a one-man operation or a call center with hundreds of agents, business leads can help companies to skyrocket sales. Live Lead Pros, a company known for generating leads for businesses with its services, introduced smart solutions for call center management. [ Read More ]
05/13/2013

Evolve IP Completes Acquisition of iPiphany, Semperon UC Customers

Evolve IP, an Inc. 500 company providing organizations with a unified platform for cloud services, has completed the purchase and integrated the customers and employees of two recently acquired companies: iPiphany of Chicago, Ill., and Semperon of West Chester, Pa. [ Read More ]
05/13/2013

Jacada Extends Service Agreement with Telefonica UK

Jacada, Inc., a provider of customer service technology designed to simplify the interaction between businesses and their customers, recently announced that Telefonica UK has extended the service agreement for Jacada's unified desktop, agent scripting and process optimization solutions. [ Read More ]
05/13/2013

OpenSpan Among Finalists for Top 100 North America Award

OpenSpan Inc., a provider of innovative worker optimization, activity management and automation solutions, was recently selected as a finalist for Red Herring's Top 100 North America award, a prestigious list honoring the year's most promising private technology ventures from the North American business region. [ Read More ]
05/13/2013

Interactive Intelligence Gives You the Chance to Interact with Thought Leaders

While the eyes of the basketball world may be on the Indiana Pacers, another Hoosier State-based company is in the spotlight this week as well: Interactive Intelligence. Interaction is right there in the name, of course, and over the next several days, partners, customers and celebrity guests will have a chance to Interact with Interactive Intelligence. [ Read More ]
05/13/2013

TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

It was a big week for Contact Center Communications Community host Interactive Intelligence, and there were several other interesting developments as well. [ Read More ]
05/11/2013

Cisco Grants Master Unified Communications (UC) Specialization to Tympani

Tympani, an IT consulting and engineering firm, attained Cisco' Master Unified Communications (UC) Specialization after satisfying rigorous training requirements and program criteria set by Cisco for selling, deploying and supporting highly sophisticated applications-based Cisco Unified Communications solutions. [ Read More ]
05/09/2013

MetricNet Releases Results of Its 2013 Canada Benchmarks for Customer Service Contact Centers

MetricNet, a provider of IT service and support benchmarking, published its 2013 Canada Benchmarks for Customer Service Contact Center, Service Desk and Desktop Support. The publication is available for purchase and immediate download via the MetricNet website and includes benchmarks for insourced and outsourced Canada based Call Centers, Service Desks, and Desktop Support functions. [ Read More ]
05/09/2013

Latitude Software Releases Major Upgrade to Its Debt Collection Software

Latitude Software released a major upgrade to its software suite, Latitude Center. Some of the new features include a new dashboard tool, an online data center, and access to a service request gateway. [ Read More ]
05/09/2013

An 'Omnichannel' Approach is Critical for Success in the Online Travel Industry

When business sat up and began noticing the potential of the Web on customer service in the 1990s, a new phrase was coined: the multichannel contact center. While it's not a new term, and it's not a new concept, technology keeps reinventing what it means to be multichannel. The latest two channels to be added to the concept of the multichannel contact center are social media, which customers are increasingly relying on to contact companies, and mobile apps, as more and more consumers carry table… [ Read More ]
05/08/2013

Customer Satisfaction Can Bring More Benefits to Businesses

ForeSee, a provider of technology-driven customer experience analytics, recently releases its annual Contact Center benchmark study which revealed that customer satisfaction can pave the way to increased recommendations and likelihood to purchase. [ Read More ]
05/08/2013

Malaysian BPO Sector on the Path toward Upgrade and Modernization

In the face of rising competition from neighboring Asian countries, especially Philippines, the Malaysian BPO industry has identified a need for adopting an improvement-focused strategy. Accordingly, The Customer Relationship Management and Contact Centre Association of Malaysia (CCAM) has brought on COPC Inc, a Texas-based international customer service consulting firm for consultations. The COPC recommendations are expected to equip the country with an improved BPO structure and framework and … [ Read More ]
05/08/2013

In an Ongoing Tsunami of Regulations, a New and Better Way to Improve Compliance

Failure to adhere to rules and regulations can be very expensive; thus, you invest lots of time and money training and refreshing your agents. Whether it's the TCPA, state and local licensing, FDCPA or the new CFPB, call centers and collection departments face an ever-increasing daily compliance challenge as rules and regulations pile up, with no end in sight. [ Read More ]
05/08/2013

Middle East Insurance Providers Can Gain a Competitive Advantage by Deploying Advanced Contact Center Solutions

Shaheen Haque, territory manager for the Middle East and Turkey at Interactive Intelligence, makes a case for the deployment of advanced technology solutions in the contact centers of modern insurance providers. While identifying pain points, he also outlines the business benefits and potential streamlining of operations that result from addressing these through smart technology deployments. [ Read More ]
05/07/2013

Interactive Intelligence Reports Q1 2013: 'Very Nice Quarter'

Interactive Intelligence Group, which in many ways serves as a bellwether for trends in the contact center solutions and unified IP business communications markets, reported its Q1 2013 financial results. Several financial analysts on the earnings call prefaced their questions to founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown, and its CFO, Stephen R. Head with a congratulatory "very nice quarter." The company easily beat guidance and estimates on earnings and several other key measures of its health. It a… [ Read More ]
05/07/2013

nizeX Opens New Contact Center to Support Powersports Dealers

nizeX, Inc. has been producing software products in a number of different industries for over 17 years, and its customer relationship management module, Lizz, has been instrumental in helping businesses accomplish astounding growth. [ Read More ]
05/06/2013

Contact Center Customer Satisfaction Leads to Better Customization

A new study by ForeSee shows that customer satisfaction rates that are higher than the industry norm allow companies to determine how they are going to use those contact centers in the future. ForeSee was able to come up with this data by putting together more than 50,000 surveys in which customers voiced their opinion of contact center interactions. [ Read More ]
05/06/2013

TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

The Contact Center Solutions Community had a lot of interesting advice and observations this past week. In fact, the advice I found to be particularly interesting was the contribution by community host Interactive Intelligence whose consulting folks contributed a piece, "Value from Skills-Based Routing: A Guide to Implementing Skills-Based Routing Effectively," that you can find in our "Ask the Experts" section. [ Read More ]
05/04/2013

Twilio Adds Contact Center-Focused Capabilities to Communications API Platform

Earlier this week, Twilio, a cloud communications company that is redefining telecom by merging cloud computing, web services and telecommunications, extended its footprint into the market with an upgraded communications API platform, complete with an array of contact center-focused capabilities. [ Read More ]
05/03/2013

SoundBite Communications Expands Compliance Suite with New Contact Controls

SoundBite Communications, a customer experience management company, has launched Contact Controls. The solution is touted as helping contact centers lower compliance risks and improve the customer experience overall. [ Read More ]
05/02/2013

Panviva Supports Call Center Growth at Health First Health Plans

Panviva, which has developed a business process guidance system that assists businesses with navigating through complex processes and systems in real-time, has revealed that Health First Health Plans has selected the Panviva SupportPoint Business Process Guidance system to scale its call center for growth. [ Read More ]
05/02/2013

That One Time I Wanted to be On Hold a Little Longer

It's not Friday yet so I feel slightly less guilty about sharing a tragic statistic with you: Over the course of a lifespan, the average person will spend 1.2 years on hold waiting for a call. Depressed yet? Don't worry: It's almost the weekend, the summer gods are starting to answer our prayers and there are only 26 more days until Memorial Day weekend-but who's counting? [ Read More ]
05/02/2013

SoTel Systems to Distribute Samsung Telecommunication Products through Agreement with TeleSwitch

Missouri-based business communications provider SoTel Systems forged an agreement with TeleSwitch, a Florida-based telecommunications services company. The agreement allows SoTel to distribute Samsung telecommunication products to TeleSwitch's Samsung dealership clients. SoTel will officially start distribution May 1. [ Read More ]
05/01/2013

Zealous Sees High Agent Productivity and Reduced Downtime with AMEYO

Drishti offers communications solutions that empower enterprises and contact centers while its flagship product AMEYO adds value to the businesses and paves the way for structured growth. That's why Zealous call center services Pvt. Ltd chose AMEYO to get a complete CIM solution. [ Read More ]
05/01/2013

Managing Multichannel Media in the Contact Center

So you've built a multichannel contact center. Good for you. Customers want options today, and they want to be able to contact you via their channel of choice, depending on their moods and needs. When they call (or e-mail, or fill in a Web form, or use a mobile app, or post on your Facebook page), they want to know that you know who they are, regardless of the channel they choose, and that you can access their entire customer history, regardless of which channel they chose last time they contact… [ Read More ]
05/01/2013

Building a Mobile Strategy for the Contact Center

Many top-notch contact centers today are in the process of building mobile elements into their customer service. Just as m-commerce - shopping and purchasing on mobile devices - are revolutionizing the services and retail industries, mobile customer service naturally follows. [ Read More ]
05/01/2013

New Product from Contact Solutions Leverages Behavioral Analytics to Improve the Customer Experience

Contact Solutions, a provider of customer self-service solutions, has unveiled a new solution that is designed to improve the performance of interactive voice response (IVR) platforms in contact centers. [ Read More ]
04/30/2013

Call Centers that Forgo Customer Surveying Skip Opportunities to Improve Operations

The cloud has revolutionized a lot of processes in the contact center, but one of the most critical is the ability to conduct customer surveys. Once upon a time, customer feedback was gathered by expensive third-party service providers, and because it was an onerous task, it was done only a few times each year. What this yielded was historical information, but seldom did it provide real-time or near real-time feedback that could be used to make improvements to existing campaigns. [ Read More ]
04/30/2013

Frost & Sullivan 2012 EMEA Inbound Contact Center Routing Systems Market Share Leadership Award for Avaya

Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration systems and services, has earned Frost & Sullivan 2012 EMEA Inbound Contact Centre Routing Systems Market Share Leadership Award. [ Read More ]
04/29/2013

RE/MAX Regional Services use Vizibility's Mobile Business Card as Marketing Tool

For decades, companies have turned to business cards to promote their services. Now, that task has become comprehensive for real estate brokers and agents at RE/MAX Regional Services with Mobile Business Card from the first enterprise-class identity management and engagement platform, Vizibility. [ Read More ]
04/29/2013

Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

In a bit of a break from the customary concentration on new products and services, this week's news in the Contact Center Solutions Community had several items involving recognition of achievement that were noteworthy. In fact, community host Interactive Intelligence's CEO Don Brown was honored by TechPoint, Indiana's technology growth initiative, when he received on behalf of the company its prestigious Mira Award. [ Read More ]
04/27/2013

RE/MAX Regional Services use Vizibility's Mobile Business Card as Marketing Tool

For decades, companies have turned to business cards to promote their services. Now, that task has become comprehensive for real estate brokers and agents at RE/MAX Regional Services with Mobile Business Card from the first enterprise-class identity management and engagement platform, Vizibility. [ Read More ]
04/26/2013

Interactive Intelligence Wins Mira Award, Recognized as Tech Company of the Year

TechPoint, an initiative for technology in Indiana that rewards entrepreneurship and encourages its growth, just finished its 14th Mira Awards last weekend by giving an award ("trailblazer in technology") to Interactive Intelligence Inc.'s own CEO, Don Brown, in front of an audience of approximately a thousand people. The awards ceremony took place at the JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis. [ Read More ]
04/26/2013

CGS Opens Shop in Chile to Keep Pace with Growth

Ranked as one of the top providers in the contact center market, CGS has been delivering contact center solutions for nearly 30 years with the focus on the healthcare and financial services industries. Its keen interest in Latin America, especially Chile, where it saw substantial growth in 2012, was the center of activity on April 23, as CGS celebrated the opening of a new office in Santiago. [ Read More ]
04/25/2013

Statera Implements Salesforce.com for Client Recruiting Firm

Statera, a provider of IT staffing, consulting, IT project management, outsourcing and cloud service brokerage, has implemented Salesforce.com for a recruiting firm in order to enhance its account, contact and campaign management. [ Read More ]
04/25/2013

OBT Anywhere Deploys AltiGen MaxACD Contact Center for Lync Solution

OBT Anywhere, a provider of hosted Lync services, has deployed AltiGen Communications MaxACD contact center for Lync to enable a hosted cloud-based call center service to deliver communications services to contact centers in North America, Asia and Australia. [ Read More ]
04/25/2013

Key Tech Trends in the Call Center Industry: An Interactive Intelligence Infographic

This is no longer the case. Cloud-based contact center solutions have achieved critical mass across the industry. In fact, contact center agent positions in the cloud are expected to grow 18.7 percent in 2013 while premises-based agent positions are expected to grow by only 2.0 percent, according to analyst group Ovum and its report entitled, "Global In-House Contact Center Market Forecast: 2011-2016." [ Read More ]
04/25/2013

Steve Hewitt Joins TeleSpeak Board of Directors

TeleConsultants Network, DBA "TeleSpeak," a provider of suite of IP based communications services, including cloud based hosted VoIP PBX, collaboration, contact center and fixed Mobile convergence systems, has appointed Steve Hewitt to the company's Board of Directors. Steve will be the seventh person to join company's board of directors. [ Read More ]
04/24/2013

How a Call Center Translation Service Went Mainstream

Virtually everything in our lives has gotten more expensive over the years such as housing, cars, postage stamps, food and energy and yet telecommunications and broadband service costs continue to plummet. This state of affairs is in-part due to Moore's Law and a side benefit of the lowering connectivity costs has been bringing the world closer together. In the nineties, you could bankrupt yourself quite easily if you direct-dialed from one country to another. Today, IP communications has lowere… [ Read More ]
04/24/2013

Interactive Intelligence and Founder Dr. Don Brown Honored with Awards for Indiana Tech Innovation

TechPoint is Indiana's technology growth initiative, and its Mira Awards are a celebration and a prime opportunity to raise the visibility for new innovations and to help grow Indiana companies, said the organization. To determine the winner of the award, TechPoint convenes an independent panel of subject matter experts. This year, the panel chose Interactive Intelligence for the Tech Company of the Year Award based on its innovative technologies and services, which help businesses lower costs, … [ Read More ]
04/24/2013

Edgewater Chooses FAST to Help Modernize Insurance Solution

Edgewater Technology, Inc has developed a partnership with Flexible Architecture, Simplified Technology (FAST) to help deploy mobile technology for the insurance industry. The new partnership will combine Edgewater's consulting data with FAST's next-generation technology. [ Read More ]
04/23/2013

Frost & Sullivan Honors Cegedim Relationship Management

Frost & Sullivan has honored Cegedim Relationship Management with the prestigious Customer Value Enhancement Award in Mobile Sales Force Automation or SFA for 2013. Every year, organizations showcasing superiority in deploying value-generating strategies and accomplishing ROI enhancements for customers are honored by this award. [ Read More ]
04/23/2013

Plantronics Receives 2013 Visionary Innovation Leadership Award from Frost & Sullivan

Market research firm Frost & Sullivan recently honored Plantronics, a global leader in audio communications for businesses and consumers, with a Visionary Innovation Award in recognition of its accomplishments in the areas of unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and customer care. In order to win a Visionary Innovation Award, a company must demonstrate its ability to "identify key mega-trends and proactively address unmet needs with disruptive solutions that can greatly improve busines… [ Read More ]
04/23/2013

Norwegian Cruise Selects NICE Interaction Management as Part of Cisco Contact Center Solution

In addition to NICE's Interaction Management, Norwegian Cruise Line also selected analytics-based Quality Optimization and customer feedback survey solutions to deliver an enhanced customer experience. [ Read More ]
04/23/2013

Contact Center Solutions: Border Control in Serbia

On Sunday, at a crossing along the Djerdap border that forms the boundary between Romania and Serbia, State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior of Serbia Vladimir Bozovic convened with the State Secretary of the Romanian Ministry of the Interior Anghel Andreescu. The two politicians discussed the necessity of police cooperation between the two countries, and determined that the need for patrol was at an all-time high as turbulence along the border escalates. [ Read More ]
04/23/2013

Edgewater Chooses FAST to Help Modernize Insurance Solution

Edgewater Technology, Inc. has forged a partnership with Flexible Architecture, Simplified Technology (FAST) to help deploy mobile technology for the insurance industry. The new partnership will combine Edgewater's consulting data with FAST's next generation technology. [ Read More ]
04/22/2013

Telephones Still Great For Taking Complaints

A recent research study published by ContactBabel indicates that 140 characters simply doesn't provide enough wiggle room for customer service representatives to work their magic, and that telephony is still the most efficient way to deal with complaints and address concerns that meet the best satisfaction standards. [ Read More ]
04/22/2013

TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

While there were quite a few industry developments this week in the Contact Center Solutions Community, studies and advice are places where attention over the weekend would be worth a read. [ Read More ]
04/20/2013

Sales Personnel Apathy May Be Driving Away Retailers' Customers

What's the cost of bad customer service? Most companies would assume that a price can't be put on it. (And most companies would assume that they never provide bad customer service, though their customers would beg to differ.) A recent study by American Express has done just that. In the past year, according to the results of the global survey, 55 percent of consumers who intended to make a purchase changed their minds and abandoned the buy because of poor customer service. [ Read More ]
04/19/2013

AT&T Working with Customers to Become More Sustainable

AT&T reportedly reaffirmed its commitment to be more eco-friendly by launching two new sustainability campaigns that should empower customers via everyday changes. [ Read More ]
04/18/2013

Cloud Contact Center Solutions: CIO Checklist to Reap Maximum Benefit

The growing popularity of social and mobile channels is driving a paradigm shift in customer communications. Companies are now faced with an imminent contact center revolution and support professionals are gearing up to engage with customers though social media, blogs, community forums and mobile apps. [ Read More ]
04/18/2013

PwC US says Disruption in Software Sales Models Creates Urgency for Software Vendors to Retool Customer Experience

As noted in many previous articles concerning the customer experience, we live in "The Age of Acceleration," where the only constants are change and the speed at which it is intensifying. It seems that the accommodation of change, especially when it comes to keeping up with increasingly fickle customers, is creating calls for action across broad swaths of various verticals that companies need to quickly rethink their strategies and tactics for remaining relevant with their customers. [ Read More ]
04/18/2013

Interactive Intelligence to Discuss First Quarter 2013 Financial Results

Interactive Intelligence Group will be broadcasting its first quarter financial results for the period ending on March 31, 2013 on Monday, May 6, 2013 after the close of the market. [ Read More ]
04/18/2013

KANA Debuts Omni-Channel Customer Service Suite

Customer expectations are more demanding than ever. Keeping up with their expectations should be the utmost objective of any organization in order to offer a great customer experience and retain them. [ Read More ]
04/17/2013

Inktel is Now MonkeyMedia's MMS Catering Institute Industry Affiliation Program Certified

Florida-based Inktel Contact Center Solutions, a provider of outsourced contact center solutions, will become the first partner to become the recipient of MonkeyMedia Software's MMS Catering Institute Industry Affiliation Program. [ Read More ]
04/17/2013

CallCopy Launches Subscription Service for cc: Discover

To enable contact centers optimize operational efficiencies and make most from their technology investment, CallCopy, a provider of call recording and contact center solutions, recently announced a monthly subscription service to access its full-featured cc: Discover workforce optimization (WFO) suite. [ Read More ]
04/17/2013

University of Sciences Deploys the Avaya Network

The Philadelphia-based University of the Sciences has adopted a next-generation Avaya network to meet the growing needs of its 4,000 students, faculty members and administrators. [ Read More ]
04/17/2013

Lincoln Financial Group Wins BenchmarkPortal Call Center Certification

BenchmarkPortal, the pioneer behind call center certification and benchmarking, has been providing training, consulting and research for the customer contact center industry. BenchmarkPortal owns the world's largest database of contact center metrics. [ Read More ]
04/17/2013

KANA Brings It All Together with New Release of KANA Enterprise

KANA today debuts the next generation of KANA Enterprise, which the company says is the biggest launch in its history. [ Read More ]
04/16/2013

Interactive Intelligence to Host 'Making the Business Case for Moving Your Contact Center to the Cloud'

There has been a lot of interest and discussion about if, when, how, and why your enterprise should be looking at moving your contact center to the cloud. However, if you have not made the move yet, or if you are in consideration mode, you probably have lots of questions. [ Read More ]
04/16/2013

Improperly Stored Call Recordings are a Huge Security Risk for Contact Centers

While most call centers record calls between agents and customers, the industry has a bit of a dirty secret: not a whole lot of call centers actually use these recordings effectively, or, in some cases, at all. "This call may be monitored for training purposes" is an oft-heard phrase. [ Read More ]
04/16/2013

Globe Telecom Launches Lithium Social Customer Experience Platforms

Globe Telecom launched two Lithium social customer experience platforms in the Philippines, Lithium Communities and Lithium Social Web, in order to enhance social customer experience. [ Read More ]
04/16/2013

66 Percent of Consumers Say They'd Pay More for Better Customer Service

Businesses that want to grow would do well to pay attention to what customers are saying about the need for good customer service. [ Read More ]
04/15/2013

Boosting the Customer Experience with a Social and Mobile Community

Once upon a time, "engaging" the customer was a pretty straightforward process. You hoped that marketing led to customers buying a product or service, and when they called your call center with questions, problems or comments, you had them "engaged," so to speak. You could try and up sell or cross-sell them, but that's about as far as it went. [ Read More ]
04/15/2013

Study Estimates UK Businesses Lose Big Due to Poor Online Service

The YouGov survey of 2,000 U.K. consumers found that 65 percent of them have experienced poor customer service online - either a matter of little effort on the part of the vendor or even downright rudeness -- with nearly as many of those (64 percent) stating they would not return to shop with a company that offered poor service. [ Read More ]
04/15/2013

TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

This week, the Contact Center Solutions Community continued to demonstrate its global span, as well as some new capabilities and the health of the entire industry. Before getting into the industry news, there was a really interesting study that was commissioned by Accenture and done from them by HfS Research, which for the first time ever, looked at the challenges facing outsourcers and their customers in terms of keeping up with changing needs. [ Read More ]
04/13/2013