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Best of Show ITEXPO West 2007
September 21, 2007
Congratulations to the best of show winners at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo last week in Los Angeles, CA. A list follows below and here is the detailed press release.
Best Service Provider Solution
- Comverse (www.comverse.com)
- CTI Labs (www.ctigroup.com)
- Simple Signal (www.simplesignal.com)
Best Large Enterprise Solution
- BlueNote Networks (www.bluenotenetworks.com)
- Instant InfoSystems (www.instantinfo.com)
Best SMB Solution
- Intuitive Voice (www.intuitivevoice.com)
- Vocalocity (www.vocalocity.com)
- Zeacom (www.zeacom.com)
Best Consumer Offering
- 8x8 (www.8x8.com)
- T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com)
Best Development Tool
- Aculab (www.aculab.com)
- Sangoma (www.sangoma.com)
Most Innovative Product
- Sysmaster (www.sysmaster.com)
- Telkonet (www.telkonet.com)
Best Booth
- Communicado (www.communicado-inc.com)
- Fonality (www.fonality.com)
Best Newcomer
- 3CX (www.3cx.com)
- Ixia (www.ixiacom.com)
Best of Call Center 2.0
- Contactual (www.contactual.com)
- Oaisys (www.oaisys.com)
- CosmoCom (www.cosmocom.com)
Editors’ Choice
- FacetCorp (www.facetcorp.com)
- Kentrox (www.kentrox.com)
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Call Center Quality
September 21, 2007
recently had a conversation with executives at TeleDirect International about how measuring call center quality is an important part of managing a successful call center operation. This is an important issue as IP communications has allowed contact centers to become truly distributed and subsequently more difficult to manage.
The first step in this move was distributed call centers and soon thereafter home agents allowed a more finely-tuned distribution of contact center resources. According to the company, implementing a proper quality monitoring solution can increase revenue by up to 15%. For this reason I invited the company to write an article on this topic to help educate those call center decision makers looking to make their contact centers more productive and ultimately successful.
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“An Integrated Application: Helping Your Contact Center Maximize its Investments”
Written by, Rachel Sauerbrey, Marketing Manager at TeleDirect International
Businesses that have invested in contact centers have two fundamental areas they need to optimize- their sales and their people. Hopefully your organization’s sales and service business models are reinforced by an investment in a sales and service application suite and your agents are continually undergoing training to further develop their skills. World class contact centers have seen the benefit of bringing both initiatives together in a real-time platform. If your company has invested in technology to improve your sales and develop your agents, then you’re off to a great start. However, the key question is, are you getting the most out of your investments, especially your quality assurance (QA)/recording investments? If not, how can you get better results?
How can you get better results with your QA/recording investments?
As many of you know, most typical workforce optimization (WFO) products review and score interactions after they have occurred. This delay in time causes leaks in revenues, quality, and service - 3 critical areas for your company to manage. Imagine having the ability to listen to a recording within minutes of an interaction and provide your agents with immediate feedback! Furthermore, imagine providing your agents with a scorecard, following each customer interaction, which compares their performance to the job expectations. World class contact centers are doing this every hour! And they are using their sales and service applications to visually remind agents how they are being measured and how they stack up against their peers.
You can capitalize on your recording investments by creating a real-time coaching initiative and using your recording investments to set the proper expectations throughout your contact center. Furthermore you can reinforce those expectations with voice and screen recording and traditional quality management programs. Voice and screen recording are essential components of a coaching initiative, as they provide full-access to each agent-customer interaction - allowing you to not only hear what your agents are saying, but also see how they are interacting with customers and your supporting systems.
To really “turbo-charge” your QA/recording investments, consider linking it with your sales and service application. By linking these two investments you will be able to move agents in and out of sales and service workflow campaigns to optimize performance and you will have direct access to customer experiences, resulting in a real-time feedback system that allows you to make immediate decisions involving changing scripts, supporting systems, and agent development programs.
Imagine that your contact center has been transformed into a movie set. There is an unbelievable script and well-seasoned actors with many varying skills, but what if the audience does not care for the storyline? Does the director rewrite the script or replace an actor? Like the movie business, if your company doesn’t have a system in place to quickly re-shoot a scene or revise a script, you are going to flop!
World class contact centers allow their “directors” to make real-time changes. With screen and voice recordings that director can see if an actor is reading the “right lines” and can hear if they are capturing their audience’s attention. With an integrated sales and service application the director can make the script more accepting to the target audience and more effective for the actor to read his lines.
What are the results?
Per industry averages, you can expect to achieve a full return on investment (ROI) within 2 to 4 months after linking your sales and service application and WFO technologies. In addition, your company can expect a 20% to 25% reduction in your total cost of ownership and a 10% to 15% increase in revenues. Furthermore, a recording and quality management investment will help to cost effectively optimize staff performance, increasing return per agent by 15% to 25%, while decreasing agent attrition. A sales and service application will improve up-sell and cross-sell rates by 10% to 20% and will increase supervisor productivity and agent commissions across the board.
While these results are impressive, they mean nothing if your agents do not have the right support systems to effectively help their customers. An integrated suite ensures that you optimize every interaction and align your organization’s efficiency, effectiveness, and feedback systems.
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iPhones to Fail in Europe?
September 21, 2007
I have heard a number of analysts explain how the iPhone will face a tough sell in Europe and whenever I hear this news I wonder what substance the analysts may be ingesting to come up with such ludicrous ideas. If you haven’t encountered an iPhone yet, you will be blown away by it when you are.At ITEXPO last week, IMS Forum President Michael Khalilian had his iPhone on a round table and everyone at the table wanted to see it and use it. This was at a communications show – I’ll grant you that. But I have seen this behavior duplicated at airports and train stations as well.
I have said before the lack of a real keyboard is a deal breaker for me personally. But for the vast majority of users the device is more than good enough and allows real web browsing in the palm of your hand. I was one of the people to bug Mike to borrow his device and I found that with enough practice, the typing interface really isn’t that bad.
Nick Wingfield at and Daniel Thomas and Dionne Searcey at the Wall Street Journal mention the iPhone will be a tough sell in Europe because of the slow network and the fact that providers in Europe already have competitive plans with unlimited music downloads included in a single low price.
In addition they say the lack of 3G support is a major downside to the recently released Apple mobile device phenomenon. While these are concerns worth noting, the phones will evolve to support 3G and iTunes is an absolute breakthrough success.
I am not even an active iTunes user but somehow Apple has gotten this software not only to install on my computer but upgrade what seems like every week.
I think the points the WSJ makes are valid but will be a hiccup at most to the world domination Apple is successfully embarking upon. Not only is Apple a consumer electronics juggernaut, their PC business is getting a boost as a result of massive consumer complaints regarding Microsoft Vista. Basically this means from every angle – music to computers and phones Apple has a breakaway product. Regardless of which Apple product you try first, you will likely be happy and want more and more.
Disclosure: The author owns shares in Apple.
Disclosure: The author owns shares in Apple.
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