Customer Interaction Solutions articles from January 2008

Customer Interaction Solutions archives from January 2008

Looking toward the cutting-edge of call/contact centers and CRM; Call center 2.0: if you're not there, you will be left behind!(Publisher's Outlook)
January 1, 2008... As it is the beginning of a new year, it's time for this magazine, which laid the foundation for the multibillion dollar call/contact center and CRM industries, to focus on what's ahead for the coming year and beyond and share this critical...

IP communications: technology and applications to be key business drivers.(High Priority)(Interview)
January 1, 2008... What would the January issue of this magazine be without a few predictions for the future? In this case, I'd like to offer some insight into what's ahead in the IP communications marketplace. I had some help. Mark Ricca is Partner and Senior...

Aspect debuts Unified Command and Control.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... Aspect Software recently announced the general availability of Unified Command and Control, a new solution designed to enable contact centers to centralize their reporting, routing, administration and workflow management in a single console,...

Telrex issues new release of live monitoring solution.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(CallRex Multi-Media Release 3.7)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... Telrex, provider of the CallRex suite of IP call recording and call center optimization solutions, recently announced CallRex Multi-Media Release 3.7 optimized for formal and informal call centers. CallRex Multi-Media software provides live...

Verint offering analytics-driven workforce optimization solution.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... Verint Systems Inc. recently unveiled an end-to-end solution for analyzing customer service effectiveness and optimizing workforce performance. The company's Impact 360 analytics-driven workforce optimization software and services were designed...

TLC & A to open new contact center.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... Thomas L. Cardella & Associates (TLC & A) has announced that it will launch a new contact center in Keokuk, Iowa, bringing up to 225 jobs and over $4 million dollars of annualized payroll to the city of Keokuk. Anticipated opening date for the...

Convergys names Orr replacement.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... The board of directors of Convergys Corporation recently elected one of its members, Philip A. Odeen, to be non-executive chairman effective December 31, 2007. Odeen replaces James F. Orr who announced on February 20 of last year that he would...

Invervoice offers speaker verification solution to banks.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... Intervoice, Inc. has announced the general availability of its banking application with speaker verification. Government regulations, coupled with the growth of identity fraud, are driving market awareness and the need for enhanced security,...

Avaya tops Alcatel-Lucent in Western Europe.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... Synergy Research Group and Current Analysis recently announced the availability of its Synergy Q3 2007 Enterprise Voice Equipment Market Share reports for the U.S. and Western Europe regions. Enterprise telephony equipment sales in the third...

Teleperformance Chairman to retire.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(Jacques Berrebi)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... Jacques Berrebi, VP of the Supervisory Board of outsourced call center giant Teleperformance S.A. and Chairman of the Teleperformance Group Inc., recently announced his plans to retire. After having consulted the different governing...

Open source CRM's Concursive releases Concourse Suite 5.0.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... Concursive Corporation, formerly Centric CRM, a vendor of open-source customer relationship management, content management, and Enterprise 2.0 technologies, has released a new version of its core software suite. The new application, Concourse...

West at home agents now company employees.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... West Corporation has announced that its work at home agent service has changed from a contractor model to an employee model. The move was triggered by clients' expressed need for strong agent management, including continual coaching, feedback...

OpenSolutions Alliance finds rising interest on open-source CRM, others.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... The Open Solutions Alliance, a nonprofit, vendor-neutral consortium promoting interoperability and adoption of comprehensive open products, recently announced the key findings uncovered during its 2007 Customer Forum Series. The forum found the...

Oracle unveils Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... Oracle has unveiled Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack, a component of Oracle Application Integration Architecture--the open, standards-based platform for business process integration across Oracle, third-party and...

NICE wins large Asian banking contract.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... NICE Systems Inc., a provider of solutions and services that enable insightful and proactive action for improving business and operational performance, has announced its NICE Perform offering has been chosen by a major Asian bank to help...

VIPdesk CEO named to TelCoa's Advisory Board.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
January 1, 2008... VIPdesk, a provider of home-based contact center solutions and concierge services, has announced that founder and CEO Mary Naylor has been named to The Telework Coalition's (TelCoa) Advisory Board. TelCoa is a non-profit organization that...

CallCenterComics.com.(Cartoon)
January 1, 2008... WHY WASN'T I PAID FOR THE OVERTIME I WORKED LAST TUESDAY? WHAT OVERTIME? YOU ONLY WORKED YOUR NORMAL SCHEDULE. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] YES, BUT I HAD ALREADY CALLED OUT SICK. DOESN'T THAT MEAN THAT I GET PAID FOR BEING ILL, AND FOR...

What is a remote agent service provider? And will it help improve my service levels?(Innovative Solutions From The Remote Agent Service Provider Experts: A Special Editorial Series Sponsored By LiveXchange)
January 1, 2008... How to meet mandatory service levels is a problem that dogs even the most efficient contact center operations. More bricks and mortar, or more outsourcing contracts, or more of both, were the traditional routes taken when service levels were...

A shift in what "outsourcing" means to business today.(Innovative Solutions From The Remote Agent Service Provider Experts: A Special Editorial Series Sponsored By LiveXchange)
January 1, 2008... Traditionally, the reason many companies have chosen to move to an outsourced contact center model was that staffing and running a contact center took too much time and effort and distracted the company from its core business. This remains a...

Tough talk: the importance of headset reliability.(Innovative Solutions From The Headset Experts: A Special Editorial Series Sponsored By Plantronics, Inc.)
January 1, 2008... Telephone headsets and amplifiers can represent a significant expense for contact centers. To minimize total cost of ownership, these products need to stand up to the rigors of tough contact center environments and still provide peak...

Testing in the call center: not for the faint of heart.(Innovative Solutions From The Headset Experts: A Special Editorial Series Sponsored By Plantronics, Inc.)
January 1, 2008... The call center can be a jungle. Well, not literally. I've been through too many companies, large and small, to count, and without fail, the call center is always the busiest, most intense, crowded, noisy and high-traffic part of the...

Mission NOT impossible: reduce turnover and absenteesim while improving KPIs.(WORKFORCE OPTIMIZATION)
January 1, 2008... Employee turnover continues to plague the call center industry. Some centers report annual attrition rates as high as 500 percent, and turnover percentages of 200 percent per year are common. At these levels, the costs and effort of recruiting,...

Leveraging speech applications in the contact center, Part Two.(CALL CENTER TECHNOLOGY)
January 1, 2008... Speech recognition and speech analytics are separate yet related technologies, and each is having its own influence on the contact center. As we discussed in part one of this two-part series (see the November 2007 issue of this magazine or...

Standards for the teleservices industry: the time is NOW.(Insider's Report)
January 1, 2008... Years from now, when I gather my grandchildren around me and tell them about how old Grand-dad attended the 2007 American Teleservices Association's national convention, I imagine their eyes will widen with delight and they will ask, "You were...

The 2007 Customer Interaction Solutions product of the Year Awards, Part One.(CALL CENTER TECHNOLOGY)
January 1, 2008... Each year, Customer Interaction Solutions magazine bestows its Product of the Year awards on companies that have demonstrated excellence in technological advancement and application refinements. Listed here are products and services that we've...