March 2009

You are browsing the archive for March 2009.

Needed: Improved Data Management--Forrester

March 25, 2009

To get a full view of your customers to utilize your CRM systems so you can retain and obtain more value for them, especially in this challenging and highly competitive economy you need realtime access to complete quality data on your customers.

Yet for too many organizations this may not be happening. And the reasons lie in both too-complex processing and in the sometimes inaccurate customer information that these systems have to work with i.e. "garbage in..."

One of the biggest barriers to getting value from CRM initiatives is this need for improved customer data management, according to William Band, Vice President and Principal Analyst with Forrester Research.

Posted in Call Center CRM

Tagged: BI, business intelligence, call center, contact center, CRM, data marts, data warehousing, ERP : Related Tags: customer, users, often, systems, customers

Needed: A Contact Center Makeover?

March 20, 2009

Contact centers seemed to have weathered the downturn better than most sectors thanks to the need for firms to retain and attract scarce customers and their wallets with quality service, the unfortunately growing demand for collections, and in a slowdown in and in some cases a reversal of outsourced nearshoring and offshoring.

These are also excellent times for contact centers to expand. Retail closures and layoffs have created plenty of available customer-service-skilled people and modern, well-situated buildings. The financial services industry meltdown has led to similar opportunities, including vacant, well-wired, move-in ready contact centers.

Posted in Call Center CRM

Tagged: call centers, contact center, management, nearshoring, offshoring, site selection, staffing, supervision, telework, turnover : Related Tags: contact centers, contact center, situated buildings, center makeover, contact, centers

Nortel May Be Split, Sold To Avaya, Nokia Siemens, Siemens Enterprise Communications

March 12, 2009

Remember the last time you played Monopoly (TM) when a big player in the game who owned Boardwalk and Park Place went bankrupt, and how you and your friends couldn't wait to buy these nice assets for dimes on the dollars?

That's what may be in the process of occurring to Nortel right now. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that the communications firm, which is under creditor protection, has attracted several possible purchasers of its high-value enterprise and wireless equipment businesses.

According to The Canadian Press, the WSJ's website named Avaya and Siemens Enterprise Communications as potential purchasers of Nortel's enterprise product line according to well-placed sources.

Posted in E-Business

Tagged: Avaya, Cisco, Nokia Siemens, Nortel, Siemens Enterprise Networks : Related Tags: nokia siemens, siemens enterprise, creditor protection, under creditor, enterprise communications, billion

Security Concerns And BPO/Contact Center Locations

March 9, 2009

Research firm Datamonitor recently came out with an intriguing report about Sri Lanka as a potential business process outsourcing (BPO)/offshore contact center hub.

Intriguing in that there may be a strong case for that island nation to become a BPO center despite its small (relative to neighboring India) population of 20 million. � Intriguing is that it has been the media lately on account of an ongoing civil war: which is not exactly the kind of development that assures potential investors and clients.

Datamonitor points out that Sri Lanka shares many of the attributes that has made India such an attractive location for BPO including an affordable and a plentiful pool of educated and English-speaking workers, high literacy levels, and a legal system that is based on a Western model.

Posted in Call Center CRM

Tagged: BPO, call center, contact center, site selection, Sri Lanka : Related Tags: northern ireland, contact center, civil conflicts, content gmail, proposal please, civil

1 Comments

Attention Airlines: To Avoid Calls and Customer Losses, Keep Washrooms Free...

March 4, 2009

One of the more sensible new mantras in the contact center field is call avoidance: namely taking steps to prevent calls from customers from occurring. Call avoidance saves money and bolsters revenue by reducing contact handling costs and by improving customer satisfaction and retention by tackling their issues head on before they become problems.

Outbound messaging and notification, which will be covered in the April issue of Customer Interaction Solutions is one technique.

Another, and much more effective, is discovering and preventing the problems and issues that prompted the calls in the first place.

Posted in Call Center CRM

Tagged: airlines, Amtrak, at-home agents, call avoidance, call center, conferencing, contact center, Ryanair, telework, webcams : Related Tags: customer service, customer, customers, calls, flights, costs

The Readerboard

March 2009

Needed: Improved Data Management--Forrester

Needed: A Contact Center Makeover?

Nortel May Be Split, Sold To Avaya, Nokia Siemens, Siemens Enterprise Communications

Security Concerns And BPO/Contact Center Locations

Attention Airlines: To Avoid Calls and Customer Losses, Keep Washrooms Free...