If you're looking for a good percentage to increase your efficiency by, how does 100 percent sound?
That's the number given by voice CRM vendor Qire in announcing that the results of research carried out this past December and January, which shows that "UK outbound call centers could be over 100 percent more efficient than they are today," through better use of systems and contact validation.
Qire officials say the research, covering a sample of over 100,000 calls made in the period, concluded that the use of outbound voice contact validation can increase the number of actual customers spoken to by agents -- a.k.a. "Right Party Contacts" -- by over 50 percent on a daily basis.
Just validating user telephone numbers alone, before they're passed to the call center, can reduce call attempts by nearly 30 percent, according to the Qirians, "by removing calls to out-of service numbers."
Over half the calls made were unproductive because they were routed to an answering machine. And even where an automated dialer was in use, the study found, "many of these calls would be passed to an agent, reducing call center productivity."
Guy Cooper, chief executive officer of Qire, said that while "there are still a number of organizations looking to move their outbound call centers out of the UK" such a move can be not only expensive but ill-conceived: "It can also have an adverse affect on customer service and quality. "
Cooper contends that by simply implementing new technologies and simple validation procedures, call centers "can make enormous savings, in fact in some instances well over 100 percent."
Qire's interactive voice messaging products, company officials say, pass the call to a live agent only when the contact is confirmed: "This increases internal call center efficiency, the number of productive calls handled by agents and the gains flow through to the business.
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Always like to report on the hometown news, so since First Coffee lives in New Zealand we're reporting that Atlanta-based Xiocom Wireless has acquired New Zealand's RoamAD , including its brand, trademarks, intellectual property and patents.
"The global market for wireless broadband continues to grow as the need for connected businesses and communities increases in the developing markets," said Jeff Spence, CEO of Xiocom. Company officials added that the acquisition of the RoamAD platform brings to Xiocom a router and network management technology for wireless broadband networks.
Xumii, a mobile social address book, has released a free application for the Apple iPhone combining iPhone contacts with friends from Facebook, MySpace, imeem, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, MSN and Flickr.
Tata Communications has announced its plan to launch of Tier -3 data centre, that would provide a state-of -art environment for supporting mission critical infrastructures, with advanced cooling, power, redundancy and sustainability features to ensure that its client's critical systems and applications are readily available while optimizing energy efficiency.
The 21,400-square foot London 2 data center would be ready for service during second quarter of 2009.
Aspire Technologies, which sells sales quoting software aimed primarily at the global small and mid-markets, has released its second generation integration with Microsoft Outlook. The QuoteWerks product expanded CRM functionality into the integration, providing users with new tools to increase their efficiency in preparing and managing their sales quotes.
Using the DataLink feature, QuoteWerks can pull other information from Outlook into the quote as well, such as customer terms, customer sales tax rate, and customer profiles which can be used to determine the appropriate pricing a particular customer should receive. The DataLink feature saves this additional data to the quote file within QuoteWerks.
QuoteWerks can also search the user's Outlook database for a contact by company, last name, or phone number and pull the contact information into the quote. It can search Exchange Public Folders, letting users and their colleagues search for and use shared contact data. Both business and home address entries are supported.
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Key features include dedicated network engineering support, turnaround of changes to customer networks, extended equipment warranties, delivery of spare equipment and access to network reports and analysis.