Qire, Xumii's IPhone App, Xiocom and RoamAD, Tata Comm, Aspire Second Gen, Spacenet

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

Qire, Xumii's IPhone App, Xiocom and RoamAD, Tata Comm, Aspire Second Gen, Spacenet

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the Rolling Stones' 1973 album Goat's Head Soup. I know this is going to come across the wrong way, it's certainly not intended as any sort of criticism, but this is the one Stones album that works best as background music:


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.

 Steve Erdman, Xiocom's senior vice president, Global Business Development, said the acquisition would help Xiocom "enhances the way we serve our partners and customers around the globe," as well as "accelerate our ability to deliver in underserved communities."
RoamAD was founded in 2001 and, prior to its acquisition by Xiocom, supplied metro Wi-Fi, highway Wi-Fi and campus Wi-Fi networks as well as public safety networks for CCTV and video surveillance. Its wireless nodes are WiMAX backhaul agnostic with upcoming support for 802.11n MIMO.
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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.

The product is billed as allowing users to "see everyone's status in one place and chat and share photos with friends across and between different networks." They can also update their own status once for all their communities.
"We wanted to make it really easy to keep up with your online social life when you're out and about," said Jennifer Zanich, CEO of Xumii. "Until now, there was no easy way to stay connected with friends scattered across different social and IM networks from a mobile phone. You had to launch multiple applications -- one at a time -- or go to multiple mobile  Web sites. And of course, there was no way to communicate or share across services."
Xumii "changes all of that," Zanich says, "and lets people just connect with each other regardless of what service or network they are using." Xumii is available as an iPhone app, and also works with hundreds of mobile handsets from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry, LG, Sanyo and others.
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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.

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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.
 The integration, which is compatible with Outlook 97, 98, 2000, XP, 2003, and 2007, lets QuoteWerks pull Outlook contact information into the quote and populate the contact information in the quote by pulling the contact information from the contact currently open in Outlook.

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.

The product also creates linked documents in Outlook. "Upon saving a quote, QuoteWerks can automatically create a linked document record in Outlook under the Activities tab as a Journal Entry," company officials say, adding that this feature lets users recall the quote by selecting the appropriate link, which will automatically open the quote within QuoteWerks: "Users can also search for quotes from the Journal pane in Outlook by entering a portion of the quote number or name in the search box."

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Spacenet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Gilat Satellite Networks and a vendor of satellite networking products, has announced the availability of its new Enhanced Support Program, described by company officials as "a comprehensive family of customer support and network management services."
Saying they're responding to "market demand and changing conditions," Spacenet now offers different levels of customized support programs. The revised plans include options for customers who may not require the pricier "high touch" service and enhanced versions. The new program uses Spacenet's SmartCare enterprise-grade network management services as well as its customer support SLAs and US-based customer call center for customers to monitor, manage and maintain their networks.
Spacenet's suite of network support services includes its Standard Network Support Program and two levels of its Enhanced Support Program - Silver and Gold. Noting correctly that organizations in demanding and remote environments, including energy and utility customers, require a higher level of reliability and support, the Spacenetters say the Enhanced Program provides "an added layer of assurance" that helps organizations like these with their networks and responses.


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.



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