Boost Mobile, which works on the no-contract wireless industry side of the street, unveiled its latest campaign, featuring a 20-foot tall giant who, in the words of company officials, “is having a rough time dealing with his stature.”

It’s in the service of promoting Boost Mobile $50 Monthly Unlimited with Shrinkage. The storyline is that while this can't shrink all of the challenges associated with being a giant in a normal sized world, “it can shrink the monthly payments on a no-contract unlimited plan available on the NationwideSprint Network with on-time payments.”

And who better to convey that message than a 20-foot giant?

"Like our Giant, we've all wished we could shrink something, especially cell phone payments," said Caralene Robinson, director-Brand and Marketing communications, Boost Mobile. "With Boost's Shrinkage plan the longer you stay, the less you pay. Our customers, big or small, can watch their monthly payment shrink from $50 to as low as $35/month by simply making 18 on-time payments."

Read more here.

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Nuance Communications announced that their technology now powers the voice search capabilities on the new Price Check IVR app by Amazon, for iPhone.

Using the same core voice technology found in the Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search apps “downloaded by millions of mobile consumers worldwide,” Nuance officials say, “Price Check by Amazon lets users simply speak the name of any product when they are shopping to receive instant prices for that item onAmazon.com.”

Customers can also use the app to scan a barcode, snap a picture or type a product name to return product matches and pricing from Amazon.com and its other online merchants.

"Price Check by Amazon demonstrates the power and efficiency that Nuance's voice technology brings to the mobile shopping experience," said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile, in a press release.

A recent examination of the BPM used for the Carphone Warehouse revealed some interesting findings.

“The Carphone Warehouse has already seen early benefits from its BPM implementations,” say official of Macehiter Ward-Dutton, who conducted the study. “Processes linking CRM and billing functionality are now in place and are able to be changed much more quickly than would have been the case using ‘traditional’ integration methods. In another project, a telecoms service activation process has been implemented centrally and made available to retail operations across Europe, bringing major time-to-market benefits for new products.”

The company’s fast growth, combined with the way it’s grown -- “blending organic growth with a very proactive approach to acquisition of businesses in order to enter new markets and territories” -- means it has a base of complicated applications. This is a big IT challenge, given all the legacy demands.

As a result, Carphone Warehouse decided to implement not just a new billing system, but a new CRM system as well.

San Francisco-based Mansa Systems officials are saying their company is “the only boutique IT consulting services company among Salesforce.com consulting partners that focuses on small, mid and enterprise markets by having onshore, offshore and nearshore centers for North America customers.” The near and off-shore locations are in Costa Rica and China.

Their product is an enterprise application services provider with main focus and proficiency in Software-as-a-Service applications implementation, cloud application development, cloud telephony development, data management, business intelligence and mobile application development. The company provides Salesforce implementation, customization and integration services and force.com application development services.

Mansa was founded in 2006 by Siva Devaki and Arti Devaki, and has focused on systems integration for small to midsized businesses since then. According to Devaki, CEO of Mansa, “It didn’t make sense to butt heads with the Big Five, so we targeted the SMB area where there was less competition."

Today Mansa claims customers globally “from various industries like education, entertainment, professional services, semi-conductor, clean energy, real estate and nonprofit.”

Read more here.

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A company dealing with sensitive information in their call center has received customized workstations, featuring a locking chase system that physically secures customer service representative computers from access by agents.

Interior Concepts, a manufacturer of call center furniture, has announced that as part of a recent contract it was awarded in Michigan, it installed customized workstations featuring a locking chase system that greatly heightens security for the information contained in them.

Company officials said that this makes it difficult for anyone other than IT to access the computers. This may be especially important for call centers with healthcare clients and their HIPAA regulations, or for call centers that deal with especially sensitive information.

The contract, for a Texas-based provider of inbound and outbound customer interaction products, called for a new 37,000 square-foot facility in Michigan.

Schwab Advisor Services used theI MPACT 2010 stage to anoint two vendors for Schwab Intelligent Integration that surprised some people and a third that many expected.”

According to RIABiz, the RIA custodian “picked Microsoft CRM and SalesForce – two brand names not readily associated with financial advisors — in addition to Junxure, a widely used CRM software that is already tied closely to Schwab.”

The industry journal cited executives who said the integrated platform would likely be launched by this time next year.

“It was somewhat surprising … because industry surveys don’t indicate that Microsoft and Salesforce are that high up on people’s list,” RIABiz quoted Joel Bruckenstein, a technology consultant who produces Technology Tools for Today, as saying.

RIABiz speculated that Schwab could be placing its emphasis on “satisfying the biggest, fastest-growing RIAs who need software built foremost for scaleability.”

Read more here.

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According to SMB technology advisor Brent Leary, a new study has found that small businesses “are struggling with marketing and innovation, which is an eye-opener in an age in which "social" marketing and innovation have gained traction.”

According to the June installment of the “Network Solutions /University of Maryland State of Small Business Report,” the overall health of small business “has declined over the past six months. Marketing and innovation -- the second most important category used in measuring overall competitiveness (only behind access to capital) -- appears to be the main culprit, as it experienced the largest drop in performance.”

The reason why they’re struggling might surprise you. According to Leary, “more and more, businesses are are turning to social tools and strategies to communicate more with customers. In fact the study shows three-quarters of businesses surveyed look to social media to raise awareness of their business, compared to only 56 percent just last year.”

Read more here.

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Knowledge management products vendor Consona recently highlighted the importance of making knowledge the center of attention for your customers.

Using the experience of their client VMware as an example, Consona recommends companies have “knowledge champions” that take ownership of the knowledge base and the user experience to maintain standards, ensure accuracy and availability, and generally ensure that the system is providing real value to users – both tech support and end-user customers.

One of the most intriguing aspects of VMware’s customer support structure, Consona officials say, is that their knowledge champions “are actual tech support representatives,” brought into the champion position on six month rotations.

Bandwidth.com, a provider of Internet and VoIP services, outgrew its homegrown CRM system -- but its partners required controlled access to the Bandwidth.com CRM, This meant they needed a system with enough security but still easily accessible over the Internet.

The company’s specialized pricing engine, a component of the sales process, needed “sophisticated, bidirectional integration with the new CRM,” company officials said, adding that because Bandwidth.com is a reseller of communications services providing first-line customer support, “the efficiency of the company's service teams was critical to profitable operations.”

So after looking at their integration, customization, and functional requirements, Bandwidth.com selected Salesforce CRM. Using Salesforce CRM Service, Bandwidth.com officials say, they “coordinate and manage customer service and support across the numerous telecommunications parties involved in delivering service to customers.”

Force.com enabled integration between Bandwidth.com's proprietary pricing engine and Salesforce CRM, according to Bandwidth.com officials, adding that the company used Salesforce.com's customization tools to help track inventory, business initiatives, and referrals.

To meet the needs of four different customer support operations, Bandwidth.com implemented multiple case record types -- “a standard Salesforce CRM capability,” company officials said adding that VoIP integration “boosted call center and inside sales productivity through incoming call screen pops and outbound autodialing.”

Read more here.

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Contact Solutions, a vendor of on-demand contact automation products including IVR, email/text messaging and Web transactions for business and government, has doubled its call volume to 2 billion over the past 18 months.

Company officials say this is “a strong indicator of not only strength during the recession,” but also that the vendor offers “world-class service” that allows its customers to provide superior customer service to the end user.

The company began offering IVR services to companies across the United States in 2002. They reached the 1 billion call mark in 2009 and doubled that amount in less than 18 months, according to Paul Logan, Contact Solutions CEO.

"This achievement is about much more than the number of calls," Logan said. "We have helped all of our customers get through rough economic times by helping them reduce operating costs through increased usage of self-service to automate their customers' inquiries and other activities.”

Read more here.

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The great CRM Click War is back.

The good folks at Soffront ask “How many steps does it take to create an ad hoc report in your CRM software?”

They helpfully supply the answer: “Nine. That’s how many steps it takes to create an ad hoc report in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.” And then they go screen by screen showing in detail that yes, by golly, it really does take nine steps to create an ad hoc report in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

“Is there such a thing as express Ad Hoc reporting?” they ask, and you knew they had an answer, that’s a rhetorical question if you’ve ever heard it: “There is with Soffront CRM software.

inContact, a vendor of hosted contact center software and contact center agent optimization tools, has announced that a provider of positioning technology, such as GPS, optical and laser technologies, has selected the inContact call routing to power their service and support call centers across 16 global offices.

The company noted it will initially move approximately 175 agents onto the inContact platform, according to inContact officials, and over time “plans to scale to more than 250 agents.”

Prior to switching to inContact, this $4 billion company “was using another provider's offering in its call centers, but frequent software outages and the inability to support the customer's distributed global infrastructure dictated the need for change,” inContact officials say, adding that the company “has historically made a number of acquisitions per year, and needed a platform that could quickly and seamlessly provide flexible support for their ever-changing and expanding corporate service infrastructure.”

Evidently inContact's cloud-based platform, 99.99 percent uptime guarantee, and “ability to support multiple international locations effectively addressed the customer's needs,” inContact officials say.

Read more here.

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NetSuite, a provider of cloud-based ERP software offerings, has launched a cloud-based ERP suite for the Philippine market, OneWorld PH.

The new OneWorld PH, NetSuite officials say, is “a localized version of OneWorld, an on-demand system to deliver real-time global business management and financial consolidation to mid-sized companies with multinational and multi-subsidiary operations.”

The company said that the new OneWorld PH has been localized for the accounting rules, usage conventions, statutory and regulatory requirements of the Philippine market, “including tax reporting requirements mandated by the Bureau of Internal Revenue.”

The OneWorld PH, according to a description by NetSuite officials, “facilitates Philippine businesses to manage their domestic and global businesses in the cloud, whether they are locally headquartered or a division of a larger, multi-national enterprise.”

Read more here.

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Large business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations are “shifting the focus of their call centers to become revenue generators rather than simply answering customer queries or executing transaction requests,” according to researchf indings from Portrait Software, a provider of customer interaction optimization software and now a part of Pitney Bowes Business Insight.

"Organizations are realizing that traditional, outbound marketing, particularly via the telephone, offers diminishing returns for the business," says Luke McKeever, CEO, Portrait Software. "As such, the future of the customer relationship resides in sustained, informed and tailored customer service and the call center is a critical factor in this process.

Conducted by Loudhouse Research, the study surveyed strategic decision-makers at UK and US in-house call centers and found that “69 percent of large B2C organizations view their call centers as business-critical revenue generators.”

To meet this demand for call centers to deliver revenues, study officials say, 60 percent of respondents cited “the need for better integration of inter-departmental customer data” as a key focus for the next 12 months. In particular, “the need to integrate call center data with online customer service” was seen as a primary focus for the next 12 months, with 54 percent of decision makers citing this as a key challenge for the year ahead.

Read more here.

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Sitel, a global business process outsourcing provider, and SATMAP, which sells technology for matching customers to call center agents, have announced a partnership to offer clients “optimal call center routing based on customer and agent characteristics,” according to Sitel officials.

This collaboration is a part of Sitel’s investment in new call center technologies, “building on the company’s call center products to drive a better customer experience at a lower cost,” company officials say.

SATMAP gains intelligence by continually analyzing outcomes and updating agent information and performance after each unique customer interaction.

Working with neural networks and artificial intelligence technology used by the CIA and NSA, Sitel officials say, SATMAP pairs call center agents with customers through a list of more than 100 demographic, psychographic and geographic variables -- “Everything from gender and age to location and education are analyzed in billions of combinations to optimally connect calls with specific agents who are most likely to succeed with a specific customer.”

Read more here.
 

The overall number of channel partners -- VARs, SIs, ISVs, what have you -- offering cloud services to U.S. small and medium businesses has grown enormously since 2008, according to AMI-Partners' 2010 US SMB Channel Partner Report, fueled in part by the prevailing economic conditions and new cloud solutions and technologies.

With strong adoption by these SMBs, Remote Managed IT Services are “growing rapidly and becoming more structured in the U.S.,” according to the report’s officials, who add that according to new research by New York-based AMI-Partners, “there are more products available for U.S. SMBs and more methods for delivering these tools in an efficient manner for channel partners.”

The research finds that overall, “current conditions are very promising for partners to embrace the cloud, cautioning that however, “the channel partners are hampered in their transition to cloud-based services by their small scale and accompanying legacy cost structures and business models,” according to Avinash Arun, Channel Partner Research Manager at AMI. These factors have resulted in somewhat higher costs for end-users.

Read more here.

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According to Benjamin Stone, a lawyer of the Seattle office of law firm Cozen O'Connor, who handles Telephone Consumer Protection Act class actions nationwide, Simon & Schuster recently agreed to pay up to $10 million to settle a putative class action by consumers who allegedly received text messages promoting a new Stephen King novel.

“Thus, if your company uses any type of dialing hardware or software, or uses vendors that do,” Stone writes, “you should be aware of the provisions of the TCPA and strategies to prevent litigation.”

Stone provides a good summary of the key points of TCPA you should be aware of if you’re using this technology.

Mobile carriers are currently developing next generation of networks to handle the huge increase in mobile traffic. Long Term Evolution, which you might have heard referred to as 4G, will most likely be the next-generation technology for both voice and data wireless transmission.

With the exception of the air interface, LTE is an all-IP network – taking advantage of and converging with IP network technology. The reason for the optimism is that LTE has some impressive capabilities:

It has support for multiple-input, multiple-output antenna technology, including 2x2 and 4x4 configurations. It also features 300 Mbps downlink and 150 Mbps uplink bandwidth when using 4x4 MIMO, with latencies of less than 5 ms.