Brendan Read
TMC
Effectively Telling Your Product's Story
One of the most interesting aspects of my career is watching the thousands of companies I have met over the years make...
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Dialogic and Cisco Round Out Day's NFV News
It’s been a busy week regarding NFV and the software telco (R)evolution. First off Dialogic had some solid thoughts on six of...
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The Big Deal about Big Data Analytics
By Greg Owens, Senior Director Customer Experience Solutions Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent
The rise of big data is causing service providers to ask some big questions: How should we store our data? How long should we keep it? What parts of it are relevant to our business? Most importantly, how do we get value from it? To turn big data into a big deal, service providers need to extract insights that can help them make smart business decisions and improve the customer experience.
The value of big data is all in what useful and actionable information it can provide. I find it exciting to see how service providers use big data analytics to gain new insights and solve complex problems. With this post, I’ll look at some new research by industry analysts and three key opportunities that big data analytics presents to service providers.
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WebRTC: The Revolution Won't Occur Without a Media Server
Next Thursday at the WebRTC Conference and Expo, I’ll present a conference keynote that might not be exactly what attendees expect...
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Software Telcos Based on NFV Want Less Equipment Provider M&A
Mergers are nothing new but about a decade ago in the telecom market they reached a fever pitch when SBC purchased AT&T...
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Linux Foundation Embedded Solutions Director's Case for Open Source and Connected Car
The car of 2013 is different from the one I learned to drive, a 1974 Ford Maverick with rear federal bumpers, aluminum...
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Business Video and Queen Lead Guitarist Brian May
"A good video can make all the difference," says Brian May (Ph.D. Astro-Physics and Queen lead guitarist). Such is true for business!Even...
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November 11, 2009Take a moment today, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, to think about and honor those who sacrificed, and who are willing to sacrifice their lives for our freedoms, for our nations.
The most moving words that have written about those who fought and died in war, and who continue to do so is arguably the poem 'In Flanders Fields'. It was written, reports Wikipedia by a Canadian military physician, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae on May 3, 1915 during the infamous 'War to End All Wars' i.e. the First World War, after he had watched his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, only 22 years old, die in battle the day before in Belgium.
Automation Dooming Indian Outsourced Contact Center Jobs?
November 9, 2009
About a dozen years ago I heard a comment ascribed to a longtime CEO of a leading global teleservices firm who reputedly said: "I don't care where in the world you go, self-service will always be cheaper."
Well thanks to technologies such as electronic order entry, improved IVR, speech recognition but more importantly web self-service and more recently outbound notifications there is a growing realization that automation could doom many jobs, such as in contact centers, even in India, long the land of low-cost offshore outsourcing.
A blog entry that appeared in the New York Times last week by Vikas Bajaj says that India too is worried about where the jobs will come from in future (thanks Rich for the tip)
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Why Treat Contact Center (and Other Service) Employees Well In Tough Times
November 3, 2009Ask anyone who works in the service sector: contact centers, hospitality, retail, and transportation especially, the one thing besides lousy supervisors and managers that drives them up the wall and that is wild scheduling--days, times, even locations worked changed on a moment's notice--resulting in fewer hours and less income.
Too often employees apply for and are hired for jobs that employers tell them will pay X for a given number of hours: 20-30-40/week. What happens though is that many of these 'hours' become 'on call' i.e. they have to be 'Janey or Jimmy on the spot' but they don't get paid.
Do We Need Contact Centers?
October 28, 2009
Are contact center agents, which are still known as 'operators' in the answering service world going the way of elevator operators? For every contact center opening and expansion heralded there have been the understandably less trumpeted closures and cutbacks thanks to automation.
The automated trend is logical and seemingly inevitable. It costs less than $1 for a Web or IVR/speech-rec-handle transaction or outbound notification call versus $5 or more for that taken care or made by a live agent.
The Environment, Climate Change, and Contact Centers
October 23, 2009
How do environment and climate change issues impact business functions like contact centers? Easily and painfully. For if harmful substances are pumped and dumped into the environment: air, on the ground, and in the water your health and finances, that of your family, your employees and their families, and your customers will suffer.
These impacts also includes higher healthcare costs that shift spending away from other items (like yours), decreased productivity via absenteeism hikes and resulting increased staffing/training expenses, growing disaster risks, and losses.
'Cowardly Callers' in U.S., Canada?
October 21, 2009I came across this excellent, insightful study of what I term 'cowardly callers' conducted by solutions firm Corizon and YouGov of abusive U.K. callers--the press release says " Contact Centre Rage: Corizon Survey Finds Scots, Men and the under-30s to Be the Worst Offenders" and it got me to thinking: has there been /can there be a similar study in the U.S. and Canada?
The closest that comes to mind was a great New York Times story 10 years ago 'When New York Is On The Line' that reports on how time-pressed/stressed out/cut-the-b.s.
Another Social Networking Landmine: 'Kind' Reviews
October 14, 2009My black journalist's heart loves contrarian stuff. And what is darker and more contrarian than this quite correct observation/report from Christopher Null's The Working Guy blog 'Why user reviews are worthless'.
This is one more IED in the social networking field that could blow customer service/marketing/ strategies up in enterprises' faces. It joins firms using social networking (including reviews) to plump their products and diss their competitors.
Mr. Null points out that consumer ratings on websites are next to useless (which doesn't help companies who rely on them to help gauge customer satisfaction), because people are kinder when they put their words to the world.
Save Lives, Reduce Injuries, Cut Health Costs, Don't Drive and 'Telecommunicate'
October 7, 2009When I was growing up we had a family friend who when she drove had the nerve-wracking habit of turning to you when she spoke. Fortunately this dear individual lived to early 90s.
I also grew up in an era where drunken driving was frowned upon but it was still not uncommon to get behind the wheel bombed out of your skull. My father once weaved 45 miles from an office party to our home.
Creating the Ultimate Tablet PC
September 30, 2009Image via Wikipedia
So Apple is going to re-invent the Newton to create the ultimate tablet with the return of Michael Tchao? That's the big rumor...I hope so. None of the current devices really cut it for serious to use the rock band Tubes song title: "keyboard kids." Take it from this longtime (yeah 20+ years) heavy duty portable computing device user: Apple should borrow/swipe/steal as much as it could from Kyocera i.e.
Avaya 's Act To Keep The Nortel Deal?
September 25, 2009Sticking your head into the mouth of a lion is usually not recommended unless you've conjured a way to make it appear that your life is really in danger...like putting easily-removed false teeth into the feline or other such tricks.
Why else would Avaya--a very smart company--ask Canada's minority Conservative government to have its $915 million purchase of Nortel reviewed, as reported by TMCnet, unless it is very confident of the outcome?
Here is the wording from yesterday's announcement:
OTTAWA, Ontario, September 24, 2009 -- Today, the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, issued the following statement regarding the acquisition of Nortel Networks Corporation's Enterprise Solutions Division by Avaya Inc.:
"Avaya filed an application for review under the Investment Canada Act (ICA) of its proposed acquisition of Nortel's Enterprise Solutions Division...."
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Here's another strange dimension to this deal: no release of the enterprise division's book value compared with the $149 million for the wireless units. Why hasn't this figure made the light of day?
