Customer Interaction Solutions articles from November 2007

Customer Interaction Solutions archives from November 2007

The best regulation is self-regulation.(Publisher's Outlook)
November 1, 2007... As the industry's first and pioneering magazine since 1982, which laid the foundation for today's trillion-dollar call/contact and CRM center industries, it has always been our paramount responsibility to provide not only outstanding quality...

Interactive Intelligence unveils new release of IP communications and contact center software.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
November 1, 2007... Interactive Intelligence recently announced a major upgrade to its enterprise VoIP and contact center automation software platforms. Customer Interaction Center 3.0 (CIC) and Vonexus Enterprise Interaction Center 3.0 (EIC) have been updated...

Autonomy's etalk recognized by Frost & Sullivan.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Autonomy and its etalk solution have been recognized by Frost & Sullivan. Workforce optimization solution etalk is the recipient of the 2007 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Innovation in the North American agent performance...

Customer service "view from the top".(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
November 1, 2007... Customer satisfaction and loyalty consultants Omega Management Group, Inc. recently announced the View from Top (VFT) Research Panel 500 program. The new program--open only to VP-level executives in customer-facing positions--is devoted to the...

Spanlink Communications spins off Calabrio Software.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
November 1, 2007... Seeking to focus purely on unified communications for the enterprise and SMB markets, Cisco partner Spanlink Communications is spinning off its Calabrio Software division, which has a focus on workforce optimization software for the contact...

Aspect and OpenSpan partner for integration.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Aspect Software, Inc. and OpenSpan, an application integration company, have announced the general availability of the OpenSpan integration with Aspect's PerformanceEdge quality management application. The integration with OpenSpan allows...

InfoCision's Steve Brubaker honored by ATA.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(American Teleservices Association )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Steve Brubaker, senior vice president of corporate affairs for InfoCision Management Corp., has been awarded the highest honor in the teleservices industry. Steve was presented with the 2007 Fulcrum Award, presented by the American Teleservices...

Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies, inducted into CRM Hall of Fame.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(Company overview)
November 1, 2007... RightNow Technologies' CEO, Greg Gianforte, was recently inducted into the CRM Hall of Fame. Named "The Lone Wolf," the tribute noted that Gianforte has spent the last decade "in Bozeman, Montana, far from the glare of Silicon Valley and the...

Research shows Contact Center service impacts business.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
November 1, 2007... According to the Aspect Contact Center Satisfaction Index Europe 2007 study, produced by both Aspect and Leo J. Shapiro and Associates, 33 percent of European consumers who were satisfied with their last interaction would conduct more business...

NICE recognized by Gartner and Frost & Sullivan.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(NICE Systems to be awarded 2007 Market Award for Excellence)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... NICE Systems has announced that it is the recipient of the prestigious 2007 Market Leadership Award for Excellence in North American contact center quality management solutions from Frost & Sullivan. The analyst firm cited NICE as number one in...

Plantronics' new Wideband USB optimized for MS Office Communicator 2007.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
November 1, 2007... Plantronics has announced that its new SupraPlus Wideband USB professional headset is optimized for Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. The headset provides Office Communicator 2007 users with enhanced wideband audio, reliability and hands-free...

SAP and Business Objects join in friendly merger.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
November 1, 2007... SAP and Business Objects, two leaders in the information technology industry, recently announced they are joining forces. The Business Objects board of directors has approved the agreement and plans to recommend the offer to its shareholders....

SAS placed in Visionaries Quadrant for data integration tools magic Quadrant.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... SAS, a provider of business intelligence, has been placed by Gartner, Inc. in the Visionaries Quadrant of the "Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools, 2007" report. SAS supplies data integration, helping customers through a full range of...

Cbeyond and Avaya team for SIP trunking services.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
November 1, 2007... Cbeyond recently announced that its BeyondVoice with SIPconnect service, an integrated package of local and long-distance voice, broadband Internet and mobile services, is interoperable with Avaya's IP Office solution, a converged voice and...

Verint named to Annual Software 500.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)
November 1, 2007... Contact center solutions provider Verint Systems Inc. has announced that it has been named to Software Magazine's Annual Software 500. Now in its 25th year, the program ranks the world's largest software and service providers. Verint, included...

Aspect enhances eWorkforce Management.(Customer Inter@ction NEWS)(Adspect Software Engineering)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... The PerformanceEdge Group of Aspect Software has announced new and enhanced workforce management functionality for PerformanceEdge. Aspect eWorkforce Management 7.1 now provides contact centers with expanded agent scheduling capabilities to...

CallCenterComics.com.
November 1, 2007... OURCEO WANTS US TO CONDENSE OUR 6 WEEK NEW HIRE TRAINING INTO A MORE COST EFFECTIVE CYCLE. HOW SHORT CAN YOU MAKE IT? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT WILL BY VERY DIFFICULT, BUT I MAY BE ABLE TO SHRINK THE TRAINING DOWN TO 5 WEEKS. ...

A Practical Guide to seasonal Call Center Staffing.(Practical Pointers for Call Center Management)
November 1, 2007... As we enter the holiday season, many centers are faced with the same problem: how to effectively hire and train employees for what may be a very short length of hire. There are five basic options available to address the challenges of seasonal...

Turning customers into their own call center agents.(CONTACT CENTER TECHNOLOGY)(Cover story)
November 1, 2007... I Ideally, call centers would be available to offer round-the-clock support and provide superior assistance to meet every customer's unique needs. Doing so, however, can exhaust both human and technical resources. Some companies are turning...

A heads-up on selecting the right headset solution: how to choose between direct connect and amplified headset solutions.(Innovative Solutions From The Headset Experts)
November 1, 2007... It's hard to imagine walking into a contact center and not seeing employees wearing headsets. But while most headsets look pretty much the same on the ear, there's a big difference at the end of the cord. When it comes to connecting to a phone...

Update on the home agent model: successful and expanding.(MANAGEMENT SCOPE)
November 1, 2007... The home-agent model for call centers has been attracting a great deal of attention as of late. Often, new trends such as these are more hype than reality: once the mainstream news media pick up such stories (and they have been picking up the...

Improving patient care and customer service for the healthcare industry.(CASE STUDY)
November 1, 2007... Who: Valley Radiologists, a large, full-service medical imaging center in Arizona. It has 10 locations and 45 radiologists, performs about 250,000 studies annually and plans to add locations and grow each year. Before: The multiple...

Seeking flexibility and efficiency in the insurance industry.(CASE STUDY)(Company overview)
November 1, 2007... Who: With the concept of promoting public education, Kyobo Life Insurance was established in 1958, creating the first education insurance in the world. More recently, Kyobo Life has focused on quality management to maximize business value based...

Raising the bar on CRM standards: driving toward a customer-centric call center and CRM financial strategy.(CRM)(Company overview)
November 1, 2007... You've been on hold for 20 minutes. It's not the first time you've called this company's contact center. You've keyed in your account number via a maze of IVR menus, none of which sounded like what you needed. You tried to use the speech...

Leveraging speech applications in the contact center, Part One.(SPEECH TECH)
November 1, 2007... Betsy, an inbound contact center agent, handles about 100 calls a day. She is always polite and courteous, except for perhaps late in the day when she gets tired of reading the same script repeatedly. She gets two weeks' paid vacation, 10 paid...

There are two kinds of businesses in the world.(Last Call)
November 1, 2007... Those that get online marketing, and those that very clearly don't. In his October editorial for Customer Interaction Solutions, Rich Tehrani wrote about companies that answer customer e-mail promptly and that he, and millions of others,...

Integration for a business communications solution.(Ask The Expert: A Special Editorial Series Sponsored By Interactive Intelligence)
November 1, 2007... Q: We've short-listed a few vendors to talk to about a communications system for our contact center, and integration is definitely a concern. Any insights you can share would be appreciated to help in our selection process. A: Even without...