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 »Saving Customers
October 25, 2006Here's an interesting article from Forbes.com on the art and science of saving customers who would otherwise churn to a competitor.
The article points out that many companies make the mistake of putting their best inbound agents on the "save desk." Inbound agents are used to following a script, not necessarily listening to the customer. What makes a skilled "save" agent is the ability to listen closely and carefully to determine what real solutions can be cost-effectively offered to keep that customer.
TES
TES
Mobile CRM
October 12, 2006What's mobile CRM? Basically, any high-quality customer management you can perform while not nailed to your chair. The American workforce is increasingly mobile (and we have the devices to prove it!) If both your customers and your employees are mobile, your CRM had better be light on its feet, as well.
Join me next Tuesday (October 17th) at 2:00 pm EST for a Webinar entitled, "Increase Sales Productivity and Revenue with Mobile CRM." The event is sponsored by Sage Software.
RightNow Names President Of Field Operations
October 9, 2006
RightNow Technologies announced today that Jay C. Rising has joined the company as President of Field Operations. Rising was most recently President of Automatic Data Processing's National Accounts Division. He is to replace Peter Dunning, who will remain with the company to assist with the transition as he pursues a CEO opportunity. TES
Calling All Teleservices Providers
October 6, 2006Outsourced call center providers are invited to submit their information to be included in Customer Interaction Solution's magazine's November issue: Who's Who In Teleservices.
We'd like to know who you are, where you are and what kinds of services you provide. To be included in the listing, visit http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2006/09/01/1853448.htm.
TES
Outsourcer Owes Back Pay
October 4, 2006An article that appeared today on the Fort Collins, Colorado-area news site The Coloradoan reports that Center Partners, Inc., a teleservices outsourcer based in Fort Collins, was ordered by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division to pay 1,390 employees who worked overtime a total of $229,905.
The full article may be viewed here: http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061003/NEWS01/61003009.
TES
Witness Systems' blog
September 29, 2006Workforce optimization provider Witness Systems recently announced that principal global market consultants Oscar Alban and Bill Durr have begun authoring a blog about the global call center market. Oscar and Bill have recently returned from a tour of the Asia-Pacific region, and have outlined their experiences and observations on the blog, which can be viewed at www.improveeverything.com
Take a look to learn about what's happening in this region of the world that is becoming increasingly strategic to the call center market.
TES
Yahoo! Slump
September 19, 2006Investors waiting for good news are going to have to wait a little longer, the company revealed today in a press conference. Instead of a boost, says the company, 3Q results are going to look like more of a slump: http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06091923.htm
Between coups and riots in foreign countries, I think the general weather forecast for the next few days, market-wise, is going to be mostly cloudy with a chance of rain.
TES
East Europe BPO
September 19, 2006Many North American companies have found success and value outsourcing their customer care needs to India and the Philippines. Traditionally, though, Southeast Asia has not been an ideal choice for Western European countries, since European language skills outside of English are scarce in Southeast Asia (with the exception of Spanish in the Philippines).
As a result, Eastern Europe is really heating up: Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary, for starters. We've even seen large Indian outsourcers actually subcontracting their business to Eastern Europe (see this article the Czech Business Weekly), a region that is still inexpensive compared toNorth America or Western Europe in terms of outsourcing, but has the language skills Western European countries need.
TES
Create A Buyer's Guide Listing
September 18, 2006If you haven't done it recently, now's the time to either create your free listing for the Customer Interaction Solutions annual Buyer's Guide, which is our December issue, or update your existing listing.
You can create or edit your listing via the link below. All current entries will appear as a basic listing in the printed Buyer's Guide in December. If appropriate for your business, you can also create your INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine Buyer's Guide listing via this link.
http://www.tmcnet.com/scripts/bg/bgform.asp
TES
Hail, Eris!
September 14, 2006It seems that the planetoid body far on the reaches of our solar system that was responsible for Pluto's demotion from actual planethood to dwarf planet status has a new name that proves that astronomers do, in fact, have a sense of humor.
The newly classified dwarf planet (which was temporarily called Xena) has been named, fittingly, after Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and discord.
California Intstitute of Technology astronomer and discoverer of the planetoid body, Michael Brown, has stated that the choice for the planetoid's "too perfect to resist". Quite.
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