Xtreme Locator, Amdocs and Claro, Outsourcing Budgets, Turkcell, GOSO and Facebook, NCH on iPhone

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

Xtreme Locator, Amdocs and Claro, Outsourcing Budgets, Turkcell, GOSO and Facebook, NCH on iPhone

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is :

IQServices.com has announced the release of its Xtreme Locator IVR Dealer Locator application, for "companies that are unable to keep up with calls from customers trying to find out where to buy their products," according to company officials.
 
William Tremaine, Director of Sales, says Xtreme Locator IVR technology "allows companies to automate telephone requests for store locations with packages starting as low as $50 per month."

The Xtreme Locator IVR is a companion to the Xtreme Web Locator, a vendor of locator products since 2000, and is engineered to handle "hundreds of concurrent phone calls," company officials say: "Callers enter their zip code using their telephone keypad and our text-to-speech engine delivers the location information in a realistic human voice."

The locator, Tremaine says, is designed to "save human CSR time by automating the process of sending callers into your stores. Since we have the capability to handle nearly an unlimited number of concurrent calls, customers will never have to wait and information will always be up to date and accurate."
 
The company also offers an option for callers to "Patch Through" to speak directly to the nearest location when they need more information.
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Customer experience systems vendor Amdocs has announced that Claro Brazil, a mobile service provider, will deploy Amdocs to support customer ordering, sales force automation, e-commerce and Web self-service.
The Amdocs products will support all Claro Brazil's current sales channels, including call centers, dealerships and kiosks, and "will also improve a new channel -- the Internet." Claro Brazil officials say they will introduce e-commerce as a new service

Ricardo Santoro, chief information officer of Claro Brazil, called the Brazilian market "heavily-penetrated," adding that the Amdocs products should give Claro customers "improved convenience and control through the new e-commerce and Web self-service offerings."

Claro Brazil officials say the company will deploy products from Amdocs' CES product portfolio to "modernize and standardize customer ordering, customer management, e-commerce, and product catalog management." They add the company will "benefit from the efficiencies gained by having one centralized system to manage and update, which reduces errors and operational costs."

Claro already has billing and partner relationship management products from Amdocs in production. Claro is a wholly-owned subsidiary of America Movil, S.A.B. de C.V. and its subsidiaries provide wireless and fixed communications services in Latin America.
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According to Ovum, moving into 2010, contact center outsourcing providers need to take into account that in-house CRM budgets will remain very tight, says industry observer Avinder Batra.
This is based, Batra says, on a recent Ovum contact center manager survey finding that "across North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, only one out of five believed that their budgets would grow, with approximately 80 percent stating that theirs would contract or remain flat." 

Batra says from the perspective of the contact center outsourcer, "this means new contract opportunities with firms looking to maintain or improve customer service levels, but that can only work within limited means." 

There is a marked trend for enterprises to want to use their contact centers for the purposes of developing more revenue opportunities and end-user loyalty.
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It's a given by now that social media is changing the world of customer service as we know it. And Seth Wadley Ford, of Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, is a dealership that gets it.
The dealership is using tools, including the Web and social media marketing services of GOSO, to connect with their community, according to Zach Butler, Internet Manager at Seth Wadley Ford.

There you go -- how many auto dealerships have an "Internet Manager" at all?
 
"We realized early on that social media shouldn't be ignored. That's where our customer's are, so it seems pretty clear that we should be there too," Butler said.

Seth Wadley Ford began working in social media over a year ago, setting up a Facebook account first and then Twitter, Flickr and finally YouTube. They do just what everyone else does, company officials say, "post things they find interesting."
 
As well as send Farmville lambs, mai-tai cocktails and take polls on whether or not they think Tiger Woods should get divorced or not, presumably.

"I just wanted to connect with our customers. I wanted to know what they think about this or that. If I am able to make a connection, then hopefully we can work together on getting them a new truck, or maintenance service. If not, then we've made a friend. So no matter the outcome we benefit," Butler said.

Seth Wadley claims to be the first Ford dealer to use the GOSO Facebook Application, launched last week. "Once we mapped it out, I realized the capabilities of sites like Facebook and Twitter," said Butler. 

 
On Seth Wadley Ford's social networks, Butler talks about industry and dealership news, reviews, and Oklahoma events. The dealership also pays attention to awards, reviews, testimonials and giveaways. Butler's networks "thrive on content that is outside the box and interesting to followers and fans," he says.

"Social media is about providing a new outlet for customer service and opening dialogue with your community," said Butler. "Our goal is always customer connection and service. The customer is the consistent part of all our marketing and branding ideas. Without the customer, we're just a big parking lot with a bunch of trucks."

GOSO is a subsidiary of BOALT, an interactive agency based in Washington, D.C.
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Istanbul-based Global Bilgi A.S., a 100 percent subsidiary of Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri (NYSE: TKC), has announced that it has developed and is launching a program called Customer Check-Up.
The program "aims to address potential customer issues before they become complaints," company officials say, "to establish an infrastructure that provides proactive solutions by analyzing specific issues and customer concerns, so preventing the repetition of any issues."

Turkcell is the first operator in Turkey to offer its customers such a program. Impressive -- they have 45 percent market share and were ranked as the world's third best call center in the autumn of 2009, they're still innovating.

The Customer Check-Up program is intended to ensure that each call made to Turkcell Global Bilgi's call centers will be monitored and assessed according to specific criteria, including the duration of call, whether the issue was solved the first time the customer called and the number of calls that the customer placed regarding the same issue.
 
Customers who may not be fully satisfied will receive follow-up calls from an expert in the call center to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty, Global Bilgi officials say, adding that in addition, "the history of the customer will be recorded to ensure answers are suitably tailored to their questions and that the customer is satisfied with the way the issue was addressed."

Turkcell has interests in international Mobile operations in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Northern Cyprus and Ukraine and together with Turkey had approximately 61.9 million subscribers as of September 30, 2009. It's the only NYSE listed company in Turkey.
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Denver-based NCH Software, a vendor of audio, video, business, VoIP tools and utilities, has announced that its Express Dictate digital dictation software is now available as a free iPhone app.

Express Dictate, called "Pocket Dictate" at Apple's app store, allows you to record and send dictation directly from your PC, Mac, PocketPC, Palm, SmartPhone, and now iPhone. The software is a professional dictation voice recorder that works like a traditional Dictaphone with HIPAA compliant for secure encryption.

Accounting firms, medical practices, and law firms in particular are going to be targeted: "A lawyer can dictate while at the courthouse, hit send and have the audio file e-mailed to their transcriptionist instantly," company officials say.

It will also use any microphone and speaker combination. Company officials are pushing it as something that can "cut out the secretarial services traditionally needed for dictation."


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