Recently in Call Center/CRM Category

TMCnet's executive editor Bob Liu is in New York City today covering Salesforce.com's CustomForce Day, where the on-demand CRM provider has announced its CustomForce 2.0 customization toolkit. Bob just filed a story from the event in which he revealed that Salesforce.com has announced Merrill Lynch as its newest and largest customer. Bob says this means as many as 5,000 new seats for Salesforce.com.

Here is Bob's story from this afternoon:

Salesforce.com Debuts CustomForce 2.0, Scores Merrill Lynch as Customer

This seems especially significant to me, as Salesforce.com has received some criticism lately by analysts who claim that its on-demand CRM solution is more suited to smaller enterprises and that larger companies could incur significant costs in trying to integrate Salesforce.com. In Bob's May 3 article, "Gartner: Beware of Salesforce.com," he says:

"Gartner said that within three years of an initial Salesforce.com deployment, more than 60 percent of larger organizations will find the cost double due to integration and customization compared with the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a prepackaged software solution."

Looks as if Merrill Lynch is about to discovery whether that's really true!

AB -- 5/24/05

From TMCnet's Speech-World Conference being held this week in Dallas, Texas, comes this new-product announcement:

Rich Tehrani alerted me to this useful and interesting site run by strategic advisory firm Allen Bonde Group (ABG):

SelfServiceScorecard.com

The site features a chart comparing 20 providers of self-service solutions ranked according to four dimensions:

1. Brand (market presence and reputation)
2. Partnerships (for integration and implementation)
3. Technology
4. Delivery

In overall score, RightNow rates highest, with Knova running a close second.

AB -- 5/17/05

This morning TMCnet received this announcement about a new product for training contact center agents:

Siebel Systems today issued a success story crediting the company's healthcare-specific CRM solutions with improvements in customer service achieved by Horizon Healthcare Services of Newark, N.J.

I have to admit when I see a title such as the following, I view it with some skepticism:

TeleVox Software is announcing that NSTAR, a Massachusetts utility company, is adopting TeleVox's HouseCalls automated messaging solution to send out voice and email communications to electric and gas customers in eastern and central Massachusetts. According to a statement today, NSTAR has "nearly 1.4 million residential and business customers in over 100 communities."

Here is TeleVox's release announcing the relationship:

NSTAR to use TeleVox Software Inc.’s HouseCalls for Customer Communication

Describing their application's capabilities, TeleVox says: "Using exclusive message-building technology and recorded human voices, HouseCalls has the ability to deliver personalized messages, in multiple languages, to each customer." Types of communications can include "outage and restoration notifications, service call reminders, disconnect notices and collection calls."

In addition to the HouseCalls product, TeleVox says that it also provides "inbound IVR applications, interactive web site design and hosting, on-hold messaging, secure online communication portals, customer satisfaction delivery systems and database appending services."

AB -- 5/16/05

Altitude Software and KIVA Group are announcing that they have developed a combined CRM solution targeting mid-tier financial institutions. We have the press release on the TMCnet Web site at:

I was interested to see this report from Parature today:

Kansas City Kansas Community College Selects Parature’s Support Solution to Provide Technical Support

Parature provides Web-based on-demand support software. The college had previously been limping along with a system designed in-house -- I sympathize; I've been there and done that, and it's not fun. So it sounds as if it's a dream to have a system that's actually designed with the user's needs in mind.

This is a critical need for more and more higher-education institutions, many of whom have online components to their courses and technology requirements across their campuses for students, faculty and staff alike. So when students and faculty run into trouble with computer issues, it's critical for IT staff to be responsive. A good method for tracking, monitoring, resolving, and documenting issues is essential (and often missing).

Parature's press release quotes Kathryn Barker, Online Education Services Educational Specialist at KCKCC in praising the new solution:

“I love Parature, because it is such an elegant and simple-to-use solution that addresses so many of our challenges. It is accessible to our students, and enables them to get assistance in variety of ways .... We needed a central solution that could track which support representative was resolving which student’s inquiries. What impressed me the most about Parature’s solution is how all the features are integrated into one centralized location. Another important functionality for us is the ability to view the support history of each of our students.”

Do I sense relief in her comments?

AB -- 5/10/05

Last night I received an announcement from PAR3 Communications that Nextel Partners will be using PAR3's automated customer communications solution in its collections efforts. PAR3's press release is available on TMCnet at:

Nextel Partners Selects PAR3 for Automated Customer Communications

Nextel Partners is a separate company from Nextel Communications but closely allied by ownership and licensing arrangements. Nextel Partners offers Nextel digital wireless solutions in a number of mid-sized and rural markets.

Here's how PAR3 describes the solution it is providing for Nextel Partners:

"With PAR3, Nextel Partners delivers fully interactive voice notifications that enable customers to take immediate action on their account. Customers can promise to pay, confirm a prior payment, pay directly from within the notification with a credit card or check, or transfer to a customer service agent for additional information. If a customer chooses to speak to an agent, the PAR3 solution connects the customer to the contact center, complete with a “whisper” message that provides the agent with incoming call details to ensure service levels remain high."

How does this approach to collections go over with customers? I imagine it depends what time of day the robot calls and how easy it is to get it to shut up, but Denis Pombriant, managing director of Beagle Research Group, makes this interesting comment: “Using an automated system to make the initial contact, and in many cases, the entire interaction, can reduce the stigma associated with a collection call. The evidence suggests that consumers are responding well to this approach ...."

AB -- 5/10/05

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued a report to the Canadian Parliament outlining the operation and accomplishments of its National Do Not Call Registry.

The FTC's press release is available on the TMCnet Web site at:

FTC Submits Statement to Canadian Parliament On National Do Not Call Registry

The entire FTC statement to the Canadian Parliament is available in PDF format on the FTC Web site at:

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2005/05/050504dnctest.pdf

The National DNC Registry was launched in June 2003 to be jointly enforced by the FTC and FCC. According to the FTC news release, the agency has brought seven DNC cases and obtained four settlements. FTC has also prosecuted scammers who charge money to place consumers on the DNC list or to provide other protections. The FCC (also charged with DNC enforcement) for its part has issued 16 citations and entered into two consent decrees in connection with DNC violations.

The FTC's statement includes an overview of the commission's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) and Do Not Call Rules, the design and operation of the DNC Registry, fees and costs of the system, and Registry compliance and law enforcement.

The FTC winds up its statement to the Canadian Parliament with an assertion that the program has been successful:

"The Commission believes that the DNC Registry provisions of the TSR benefit American consumers by allowing them to curtail certain unwanted commercial intrusions into the privacy of their homes. Given the millions of consumers who have decided to register, and the significant decreases reported in the receipt of unwanted telemarketing calls, the Commission believes the National Do Not Call Registry has been enormously successful."

AB -- 5/6/05