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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.”

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