Brendan Read
TMC
10 Lessons from Volleyball, Part 2
Part 1 of the 10 Business Lessons from Volleyball can be found here. In volleyball, the only play you control yourself is...
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CloudTC and N-Able Acquired
"Australian-owned IP PBX systems company, Vixtel, has completed the acquisition of Silicon Valley based glass phone developer, CloudTC, for an undisclosed figure,"...
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ProfitBricks: Where InfiniBand Meets Cloud 2.0
In a recent meeting with William Toll and Pete Johnson of ProfitBricks, the pair were ecstatic to explain how their company has...
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Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead
By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent
Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.
When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.
The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.
Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.
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10 Lessons from Volleyball
I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...
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Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week
There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...
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NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability
One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...
Full Story »Google Goes To Space
December 20, 2006
It seems that Google would like to do for space what it has done for maps. Who does a company turn to as a partner when it wants to make all manner of space information available to the general public? NASA, of course.
The Financial Times (and many other media outlets) have reported that, "Nasa’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley on Monday announced a “Space Act Agreement” with Google that would include collaboration on large-scale data management and massively distributed computing as well as focusing on making the most useful of Nasa’s information available over the Internet."
What kind of information would be available? Only the coolest stuff in the world (said she, a life-long science fiction geek).
The Financial Times (and many other media outlets) have reported that, "Nasa’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley on Monday announced a “Space Act Agreement” with Google that would include collaboration on large-scale data management and massively distributed computing as well as focusing on making the most useful of Nasa’s information available over the Internet."
What kind of information would be available? Only the coolest stuff in the world (said she, a life-long science fiction geek).
Accent Reduction
November 28, 2006
IBM is offering technology to help Indian and other foreign agents improve their English skills, reduce their accents and avoid using phrases that may be unfamiliar to English speakers in the U.S. or other primarily English-speaking countries.
According to this article in the Louisville Courier-Journal, "The program evaluates grammar, pronunciation, comprehension and other spoken-language skills, and provides detailed scores for each category. It uses specially adapted speech-recognition software to score the pronunciation of passages and the stressing of syllables for words."
The full article may be accessed here: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061127/BUSINESS/611270334/1003
TES
According to this article in the Louisville Courier-Journal, "The program evaluates grammar, pronunciation, comprehension and other spoken-language skills, and provides detailed scores for each category. It uses specially adapted speech-recognition software to score the pronunciation of passages and the stressing of syllables for words."
The full article may be accessed here: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061127/BUSINESS/611270334/1003
TES
Reverse Telemarketing
November 21, 2006
Here's an interesting article from Bob Sullivan's blog on MSNBC today about a practice loosely termed "reversed telemarketing." Indian telemarketers call stone-cold leads (years-old responses to spam) with the hopes of catching a few "live" ones. They then transfer any live leads to, in this case, mortgage brokers in the U.S., who pay per live, transferred lead.
Read the full blog entry at: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2006/11/spam_never_dies.html#posts
TES
Read the full blog entry at: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2006/11/spam_never_dies.html#posts
TES
Paper Customer Service
November 17, 2006
Here's an interesting response I received to my November "Last Call" column, which can be read here: http://www.tmcnet.com/call-center/1106/cis-last-call-1106.htm.
#1 fan here. You really got wound up on this Nov. issue's Last Call. Whew. I can't disagree with you.
#1 fan here. You really got wound up on this Nov. issue's Last Call. Whew. I can't disagree with you.
One Percent Porn
November 15, 2006
A U.S. government-commissioned study had claimed to have discovered that, based on search engine indexing, the Internet is comprised of one percent porn. As the conventional wisdom is that the Internet is 99 percent junk and one percent useful content (news sites, TMCnet, newspapers, retail Web sites, scholarly research, etc.) what's the other 98 percent of drivel? Teenagers' MySpace pages?
3,000 Miles From Your Burger
November 14, 2006
"Restaurants count on the drive-through business for about two-thirds of all sales. Every second counts in the race to deliver food faster. At the Wendy’s stores that use call centers, drive-through transactions are expected to be completed in under 90 seconds."
So how to keep the orders flowing and make sure you have a regular supply of well-spoken, minimally accented employees to take orders for Wendy's cheeseburgers? Outsource, of course. In this article from Mumbai's Financial Express, the Wendy's agent is across the country. In many other instances we've seen in the news lately, that agent can be located anywhere in the world.
Read the full article here: http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=146131
TES
So how to keep the orders flowing and make sure you have a regular supply of well-spoken, minimally accented employees to take orders for Wendy's cheeseburgers? Outsource, of course. In this article from Mumbai's Financial Express, the Wendy's agent is across the country. In many other instances we've seen in the news lately, that agent can be located anywhere in the world.
Read the full article here: http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=146131
TES
Phishing Is Phlourishing
November 9, 2006MSNBC's Bob Sullivan reports today that phishing is starting to change from a profitable cottage industry into a big business. Perhaps the credit card companies should start putting easy-to-read inserts into consumers' bills explaining what phishing is and how not to fall prey to it?
TES
Jet-lagged Mice
November 7, 2006In a study that conjures up terrific mental images of mice strapped into small airplane seats (I'm sorry...is "small airplane seat" an oxymoron?), scientists have concluded that mice who live on irregular light/dark and sleep/wake schedules die younger than better rested and refreshed mice. The study concludes that the kind of sleep interruption brought on by jet lag may lead frequent flyers to die younger.
So be warned, mice of the world who are logging in seven-figure airmile accounts each year, you may not make it to see your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren graduate from college.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15603297/
TES
Hubble Reprieved
October 31, 2006NASA announced today that it has reversed a previous (and insanely stupid, if I may editorialize on the matter) decision regarding the Hubble Space Telescope. The Telescope, which has thus far given us 16 years of the most breathtaking images of space, is in need of repair. NASA head Michael Griffin has countermanded his predecessor's decision and agreed to send a shuttle mission to repair the telescope to keep it operational until at least 2013, extending its expected life by at least four years. Good news for us space geeks.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/10/31/hubble.ap/index.html
TES
Burger King Parody
October 26, 2006TMCnet contributing editor Johanne Torres pointed me toward this very funny parody clip on YouTube regarding Burger King and its fast-food outsourcing woes. It appears problems like this are becoming so rampant, jokes about them are becoming as universal as flatulence jokes or mother-in-law jokes. Make sure your sound is on.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YR_-aMVQWZI&mode=related&search
TES
