Monet Software officials recently posted a blog entry noting that in a recent survey and study by ICMI, one of the top challenges mentioned by call center managers was "consistent adherence to schedule."

Nobody who's worked as a call center manager is in the least surprised by this, of course.
 

The blog mentions that in another study by DMG, over 30 percent of call center managers indicated that agent adherence is a key challenge. Again, no surprise at all to anybody in the business.

 

In fact, Monet officials say, "In December 2009, we did a workforce management survey and asked call centers (non customers) about their practices regarding forecasting and scheduling. One question was related to schedule adherence. We were surprised that 50 percent did not monitor schedule adherence. Lack of schedule adherence causes inefficiencies such as increased shrinkage and declining service levels."

 

Of course, there might be several reasons for this based on call center specifics, the blog notes, "but one statement is probably true for all: You can only manage agent adherence if you have a way to measure it. Many call centers still have no reliable way to track and monitor adherence."

 

Read more here.

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Okay, so the first question is, just what is Mobiglobe? The name itself should give you a hint.

According to company officials, Mobiglobe is "a thin chip which adheres to the mobile phone SIM card. It then allows users to call via IP telephony channels."

 

Here's how it works: Let's say you dial international phone number from the mobile phone. The Mobiglobe chip recognizes and automatically routes the call to the VoIP provider's access number. Your call is routed via IP telephony, the obvious advantage of which is that it "essentially reduces the expenses," according to company officials.

 

Read more here.

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In case you missed the announcement a little while ago, VoipSwitch has released new version of their Vippie for Android softphone. The version number is 3.0.

Vippie for Android is a SIP softphone that works on mobile phones based on Android system. The softphone supports following Codecs: G729, G711, GSM and G722.

 

The softphone supports VoIP tunnel technology and can work from blocked areas or from behind firewalls for both incoming and outgoing calls. It can connect to Internet using WIFI, GPRS, EDGE or UMTS.

 

The main changes, according to company officials, include improved support for Android OS 2.1 and 2.2, multiline support which means a user can make or receive multiple calls at the same time and switch between them, and conference with multiple participants. This last function means a user can bridge multiple active calls into one conference.

 

Also, features of the product include making and receiving SIP calls, a built-in tunnel for passing through VoIP blockades, a contacts feature (what you might be calling a phone book), a loudspeaker for those times you just have to share, balance information, destination, rate, time and call status logs along with a last calls log and redial.

 

There's also the capability for sending and receiving SMS over SIP protocol where the communication with the server can be either over SIP messages or through HTTP, optionally built-in callback client for VoipSwitch (triggering conference with two numbers), multiple active calls support, conferencing for up to four participants and blind and attended transfer.

 

Read more here.

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Euronet was facing problems with remote data replication and network performance. And with the potential of doubling its annual spend on costly telecommunications lines in order to overcome the network performance challenges and meet customer demand, the provider of electronic payment and transaction processing products chose Expand Networks' Accelerators for WAN optimization as a service technology.

Euronet Services India Pvt. Ltd. is a fully owned subsidiary of Euronet Worldwide. It was set-up in June 2002 to offer Electronic Financial transaction and switching services to various Banks in India.

 

The accelerators are seeing 65 percent increase in network performance at Euronet, company officials say, "successfully assuring service availability and optimum network performance. Furthermore, the deployment has proven cost effective, set to provide Euronet cost-savings of over $100,000."

 

Euronet Worldwide sells electronic payment and transaction processing solutions for financial institutions, retailers, service providers and individual consumers. In 2009, the company processed approximately 1.5 billion transactions and posted annual revenues of more than $1 billion.

 

Read more here.