OK, you may have noticed that I write about home agents. A lot. You're probably thinking, "Sounds great, but does anyone actually do it, aside from a few high-profile companies?"

I was starting to wonder the same thing myself.

You see, every year, I am responsible for tabulating the Customer Interaction Solutions Top 50 Teleservices Agencies Rankings. On the application, we ask about the number of home agents a company has.

For the past several years, while I was busy extolling the virtues of the home agent model, the number of companies acknowledging home agents was depressingly small.

In doing a little research today for a potential article I'm mulling over, I ran across this piece by Michael Tiemann on the Open Source Initiative's Web site (click here to see entry). The piece points out that many solutions on the market today, many of those in the CRM arena, that claim to be open-source are not, in fact, and that the term "open source" has become an abused buzzword by corporate marketing departments.

True open-source, he points out, should be defined by the open-source community, not by marketers. In fact, true open-source should be approved by the Open Source Initiative, as the organization was the one to initially define the term.

He indicates that Microsoft has been more honest in their approach by using the term "shared source" for some of its solutions.

It's true that the term is increasingly used without question under the enterprise business trade umbrella, and perhaps we all have to take a little more care that we're not using terms without fully understanding what they mean and recognize that this can harm the real thing.

TES

I pay most of my bills online. It's convenient, fast and saves a stamp. I'm pleased that many companies finally started seeing the light in that online bill payment benefits them. Up until very recently, many companies fixed a surcharge on online bill payments/electronic funds transfer (EFT).

According to a new study called Reaching the US Hispanic Market: Consumer Attitudes and Buying Behavior commissioned by the DMA (Direct Marketing Association), the U.S. has the fifth-largest Spanish speaking population in the world.

The report also highlights some interesting facts about this potential market:

• Major cities in the Southern U.S. have seen the most dramatic Hispanic population growth;
• Over one-third of Hispanic households earn over $50,000 per year; and
• Hispanic-American's purchasing power currently exceeds $700 billion and is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2008.

It's starting to become apparent that if you (as a call center) are not catering to your Spanish-speaking customers just as well as you are catering to your English-speaking customers (and keep in mind the two populaces may have different needs and preferences), you are killing a great deal of sales potential for your organization.

You can find out more about the new report at www.the-dma.org/bookstore

TES