The Readerboard

TMC is currently embarking on an exciting new venture: We're collecting the user community's opinions on the software and systems call center/contact centers use in their everyday operations. We want your honest opinions. (Yes, you can be mean if you're so inclined).

Our Best In Class Survey, which is currently underway, will pay you $10 if you fork over your detailed opinion about any of the systems you use every day: CRM, workforce management, on-demand products, call recording, ACDs, headsets, IVRs, speech systems, list management, PBX/IP-PBX, dialers, teleservices,� sales force automation, knowledge management.

Jacada announced this morning a new user: British wireless company Vodafone. The company adopted Jacada's Fusion product.

I like this product. If you haven't seen it in action, this is what it does: It takes the multitude of screens that call center agents need to keep open at all times: CRM, e-mail, SFA, Web chats, WFM, call recording, etc., and merges them into one screen.

There are certain technologies many of us in the industry are guilty sometimes of considering less capable of innovation than other areas of the industry: display technologies and headsets are two industries that sometimes fall prey to these very undeserved prejudices.

Turns out, while many people were considering display technologies commodities -- a sort of necessary purchase but not one to get excited about -- the companies that produce these products and their associated real-time data applications are quietly doing very well.

Why? The contact center industry has become data hungry.