The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bob Geldof's rather overlooked 1995 Vegetarians of Love. Not a great album, not even as good, maybe, as his unfortunately forgotten Boomtown Rats material, but a sturdy album, pleasant melodies and fun lyrics, a nice change of pace for a work morning:

"Hanging out" for teens today isn't what you and First Coffee remembered it as, where you actually, you know, saw people. Live people. Where you, like, talked and punched each other's shoulders. Today Facebook, instant messaging and texting qualifies as "hanging out."

 

Hey it's not all bad -- you don't have to wonder if they're out smashing up your car.

 

But they do tend to share personal information that makes them vulnerable for identity theft. "Scam artists are relying on teens to be impulsive and naive," say officials of National Protect Your Identity Week, who evidently have teens of their own.

 

To that end officials of N.P.Y.I.W. -- October 17-24 -- offers some safety tips for teenagers when online, to "protect their identity and their financial future when it's time to apply for that first credit card or buy that first car."

 

And to keep you from having to co-sign the loan:

First, don't give out your numbers. Social security number, driver's license number, debit card, phone card, insurance card, library card, medical ID card, or credit card, none. There's no good reason a friend needs to have this information transmitted online.

Don't post your personal information online. "Nearly 50 percent of Facebook users put enough personal information--including full name, full date of birth, address, phone number, or school--to enable thieves to fill out credit card applications," Week officials say.

Don't participate in e-mail or social networking quizzes. "These seemingly fun personality quizzes can access your personal profile information -- your religion, political affiliation, wall posts--that could be used against you," they warn. So just for the record, so you don't have to take them, you were Robespierre in a previous life, your ideal pet is a Golden Retriever, you're "Beat It" and if you were a cast member on Seinfeld you'd have been Kramer.

Don't be specific about where you are or where you are going. "Naming your school, sports team, clubs, or where you work could leave a trail for an identity thief," Week officials say.


 

Other Facebook tips: "Set your profile to 'private.' Be in control of who can view your content. Only add people you know to your Friends list. A friend of a friend might not be someone you know."

Week officials also recommend using a different, isolated e-mail just for social networking instead of the "trusted" e-mail you use to communicate directly with people you know you can trust.

They also recommend against accessing social networking sites or e-mail from public Internet connections or public computers.

 

And in a particularly wise piece of advice, they urge teens to "be selective about what pictures you text or post on your page. Is it a photo you would want your parents to see? Treat your Internet activity like a digital tattoo. Once you post something, it cannot be taken back. Even if you erase the posting, there are cached versions and backups on servers across the country."

 

Just imagine your Senate confirmation hearings. Would you want that picture to come up there?

...

CRM and ERP vendor Consona Corporation has announced the general availability of Consona Knowledge Management Version 7.3, described by company officials as "a KCS Verified v4 product featuring analytics powered by QlikView business intelligence software."

Most knowledge management tools are sold as modules, Consona officials note, saying "we built our product around that concept that knowledge shouldn't happen in isolation, or be an afterthought."

 
"In the past, Web transaction logs, especially from busy self-service sites, have made it virtually impossible to look at knowledge trends," Consona officials say, adding that knowledge management initiatives are "long-term programs -- you may achieve a fast return on investment, but they also grow, evolve, and even decline relatively slowly."

 

Tim Hines, vice president of product management for Consona's CRM products, says QlikView was developed "to make long-term analytics practical reality, even for the highest-volume customer support sites."

 

The result, Hines says, is "simplicity itself: visibility into data that gives program managers the ability to see the long-term trends with the ability to change their view in real time."

The tool can also analyze support cases and knowledge together, Consona officials say, explaining that v7.3 "combines customer self-service behavioral data, traditional knowledge management, and uses case tracking to answer questions.

QlikTech is a business intelligence vendor offering a BI offering that can be deployed on premise, in the cloud, or on a laptop or mobile device.


 

Consona is jointly owned by Battery Ventures VI and Thoma Bravo.

...

 

United Marketing Group has opened a new Customer Service Operations Center in Itasca, Illinois described by group officials as a "secure, 63,000 square foot, 200 seat facility housing a secure PCI Level 1 Gateway" for payment card processing.

The call center was a joint investment by UMG and its sister company, Teleformix. It was designed from inception to be flexible and expandable, UMG officials say, adding that the facility was formerly occupied by GE Money, a retail finance program provider. 

The Customer Service Operations Center operates 24x7 and includes customer support, operations and network or physical security personnel. A call center application built by Teleformix records both the agent's voice and computer screen to capture the transaction for validation, evaluation, quality assurance and compliance: "Advanced call tracking provides agents with access to a complete customer transaction history" as well.

"Giving our customer service representatives this kind of information is the first and the best opportunity to make a good impression," says Alan Portelli, CEO & President of United Marketing Group.

A 2009 study by CFI found quick issue resolution is "paramount" to the success of the contact center. "Strong processes and highly skilled agents lead to resolved issues -- which makes for happier, more loyal customers," say UMG officials commenting on the study. 

"Many of our CSRs have been with the company for more than five years. All our customer service representatives are KPI managed using technologies that eliminate opinion and bias to maintain customer service," says Portelli.

...

Teradata has introduced a business product called Teradata Contact Center Intelligence for Telecommunications based on Microsoft's business intelligence technologies.

 

It's designed to bring together "the Microsoft family of business intelligence products" with direct connectivity to the Teradata enterprise data warehouse system, Teradata officials say, to provide "access to customer experience information and query response."

 

This new product lets contact center managers and business analysts examine company data from all service channels, outside vendors and other enterprise data sources to "understand both current operations and trends over time," according to company officials, who say it's designed to run on the Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse, Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance, Teradata Extreme Data Appliance or the Teradata Data Mart Appliance.

"As customers continue to use more communications channels, carriers need help in integrating service information across those channels in order improve the customer experience. Of course, they have to reduce contact center costs at the same time," notes Sheryl Kingstone, senior analyst, Yankee Group. 

The cost of operating a telecommunications contact center environment can be significant, ranging from $100,000 to a more than a billion dollars annually. This being the case, company officials say, "even small performance improvements can have a multi-million dollar impact, resulting in a rapid payback on a carrier's investment."

"Contact center reporting has traditionally been provided by the operational systems in the call center. However, traditional methods of analysis are becoming obsolete as customers may try three or more channels before reaching an agent," says David Grant, vice president of industry solutions for communications, media, entertainment and utilities, Teradata Corporation.

...

Every once in a while along comes a company news headline that demands to be included in First Coffee. Today we saw another one: "Humans Replacing Computers."

Steve Levenson, founder of Global Telecom Testing, says that the idea for the company came when he heard that a global teleconferencing company was losing clients because the international numbers assigned to its customers were flawed.

 

He contends that most telecom companies rely on the local telephone companies in cities abroad to confirm numbers are operational, which is, he says, a bad idea: "More often than not, even though the overseas' local telephone company confirms a number is operational, the number doesn't work."

"GTT was founded specifically to address the lack of worldwide live in-country telephone number testing on behalf of telecom companies, before they release international numbers to their clients," Levenson said. "Only humans -- not computers -- can perform these tests by placing live, in-country,outbound originating calls to and from the exact numbers that the telco's clients will be calling."

The company's employees, located in 80 countries, test numbers before they are released to clients "to ensure they are operational," Levenson says, adding that they also "listen to the message participants will hear, note if instructions are in the appropriate language, and test the access codes and the quality of the audio."

 

What usually happens, Levenson says, is that if a telecom client needs international numbers in Singapore, a computer at a U.S. telecom company office tests the numbers from a switch in the U.S. to a switch somewhere close to Singapore. Then "if the switch-to-switch trial works, the numbers are released to the client. However, this rudimentary testing is inaccurate and not indicative of working numbers in Singapore."

The only way to 100 percent verify that international telephone numbers are functioning in any city is to perform live, in-country tests in those cities and locations, Levenson says.

Prospective customers get a free trial with live testing in two or three countries. "We're so confident in our services that we offer potential clients a two-day trial test to demonstrate the effectiveness of our comprehensive process."

...

Sorrento Networks, a vendor of metro optical access products, is releasing an 8Gbit/second Fibre Channel card for its GigaMux 1600/3200, an optical transport system supporting a variety of wavelength division multiplexing architectures.

 

The new card enables high-bandwidth connectivity of storage area networks between data centers and meets new bandwidth demands driven by cloud computing applications like storage virtualization.

"We're seeing an insatiable demand for I/O availability between data centers that only 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel and 10 Gigabit Ethernet can satisfy," said Jim Nevelle, CEO of Sorrento Networks, adding that the product is a way for their customers to "double their SAN connectivity horsepower without a major overhaul to their data centers."

By deploying 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel, IT managers can free up server interfaces that would otherwise be allocated for multiple 4Gbit/s or 2Gbit/s connections, Sorrento officials say, thereby "collapsing the number of servers needed to deliver the same processing power and connectivity. Fewer servers mean reductions in data center operations costs such as rental space and utilities."

The product also offers complete wavelength availability for XFP-based version, client-side interfaces based on SFP+ form factor for maximum SAN switch compatibility, full reshaping, regeneration and retiming capability for reliable transport of services. The card is fully supported in all GigaMux 3234, 3217, and 1608 chassis.