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 »Letter: SIP has long been oversold
June 26, 2009
We welcome and encourage reader response to stories and commentary in our magazines and on our sites. Here is a letter received from Paul E. Jones Chair, H.323 and H.325 Experts' Groups, regarding a recent article on SIP
Editor, Customer Interaction Solutions
I felt compelled to comment on the second page of your most recent article: S(L)Ipping IP Into The Contact Center (May 2009) http://flq.us/uZ
"[SIP] is gradually displacing H.323, which is an older protocol used to deliver voice over an IP network.
* They are the same age
* H.323 was designed for videoconferencing and multimedia, not "voice"
"SIP has several advantages over H.323, including scalability, ease of integration, and ease of management."
* Scalability is debatable, as we can build a massively scalable H.323 network, and we have
* "Ease of integration"...with what? Perhaps it might be easier to integrate a half-baked SIP solution with another half-baked solution?
Tougher Actions To Save Telemarketing
June 16, 2009Here we go again...another gang of skels abusing telemarketing and robocalling i.e. automated dialers calling to connive money out of consumers including those with cell numbers and who have gone to the trouble to place their numbers on Do Not Call lists (DNC).
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As reported June 12 on TMCnet The Better Business Bureau reports that American and Canadian consumers have been sounding off to the organization in both countries and on the U.S. side to U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) about incessant automated telemarketing calls promising to lower interest rates on their credit cards.
Ending Charity Fraud, Misrepresentation, and Bad Practices
May 22, 2009As Americans set out for the Memorial Day weekend I wonder how many realize that this is in a reality a somber holiday, originally started to honor the Union soldiers who died in the Civil War that greatest of American tragedies, whose political aftershocks continue to this present day, and expanded (rightfully) to all fallen American service personnel. When I was a Cub Scout I took part in the local Memorial Day parade, marching to my town's largest cemetery where an honor guard fired a 21-gun salute with their rifles, and racing with the other boys to pick up the shell casings.
Unfortunately as with all human endeavors there are the vermin who seek to exploit and abuse the respect that we have for those who fight for our freedom by seeking funds for bogus veterans' organizations via telemarketing. The Federal Trade Commission has caught a few in its traps.
Sage Advice to SMBs on Data Management and Business Software
May 15, 2009If staying afloat in rough economic waters were not enough, small-midsized businesses (SMBs) are experiencing frustration and inefficiency when it comes to integrating data management and business software (i.e. ERP, CRM) that have been intended to help them manage costs and grow revenues. With the hefty chunk of change those solutions command, at a time where every dollar spent must have the maximum value extracted, these need to start pulling their weight.
A new white paper sponsored by Sage and published on TMCnet reveals that customizing applications for particular needs ranks the top--63 percent--of common software problems.
Oh Canada: eBay Closes B.C. Contact Center
May 7, 2009In what cynics say is another death knell for nearshore contact centers in Canada, and one more piece of evidence that beneath globalization is headquarters nationalism, online auction giant eBay is closing its Canadian contact center, which is located in Burnaby, British Columbia; Burnaby is part of the Metro Vancouver area.
Yet this move is one more illustration why traditional bricks-and-mortar centers are obsolete...
The Canadian Press reports that 700 agents will lose their jobs by the end of September as eBay pulls its work back across the border: to its Salt Lake City offices plus to other offices worldwide.
"While it is a difficult decision to close our Vancouver facility, we believe that consolidating our North America customer service operations will help accelerate our efforts to continually exceed buyer and seller expectations," the wire service quoted Chad O'Meara, vice-president of customer service for eBay Marketplaces.
A College Education for Contact Center Work???
April 29, 2009The other day I came across a contact center expansion story where the employer, whose name will not be revealed to save them from the embarrassment of being singled out, preferred to have applicants for its contact center agent positions to have college degrees.
My jaw dropped. A two-or four-year degree just to answer and make calls and handle chats and e-mails in a contact center? Is this overkill or what?
Handling The Next Telemarketing Regulations
April 27, 2009Telemarketing is rarely in the news these days, and that's a good thing. The advent and acceptance of Do Not Call (DNC) and predictive dialer abandonment regulations in the U.S. and Canada appear to have had the intended effects. That is they have lowered--but not eliminated--annoying calls that had turned off more customers and had prompted them to spend their money elsewhere that they had attracted and revenue generated.
The Missed Lesson Of Outsourcing to India, and Ireland
April 23, 2009One more company, this time Primus Telecommunications Canada is repatriating its customer care from an unnamed outsourcer in India back home.
The company announced Tuesday that it will no longer have any of their customer service or technical support calls handled by offshore agents. This is in addition to the exclusive Canadian-based customer care that Primus' Wireless and TalkBroadband VoIP customers have received for some time.
In turn and to handle these calls Primus is expanding its Edmundston, New Brunswick contact center creating 113 new jobs, adding to over 200 employees currently in place.
Three Must Attend/Participate Webinars
April 13, 2009One of the highest 'time/ROI' communications products TMC has is our Webinars. I've moderated quite a few of them over the past year.
From my behind the scenes seat, preparing and giving the intros, working with the presenters and equally if not more importantly fielding the questions from the attendees/participants I've found every one worth while.
The topics and discussions have led to more than one article and have enriched many others.
Rx For Organizations and the Economy: Axe The Incompetent Managers
April 3, 2009Whenever there is a downturn either within the economy and/or within an enterprise the first people to be let go, hours reduced, and/or wages/salaries hacked are almost invariably those who produce the goods and services that enable the firm, and the economy to be in business.
Only when enough of that blood--and usually too much of that for the organization's and the economy's own good-- has been allowed to gush out only then are the supervisors and managers led to the chopping block. These are the ones who don't generate directly the goods and services.
The first supervisors/management to go are usually the ones that know what they are doing.
