We love this headset manufacturer’s slogan: “It pays in the end to buy the best in the beginning.” Indeed.

That’s courtesy of the Freemate headset brand, solely imported by Phonatics to South Africa. Phonatics officials said, “we sell and support this brand in the South African market. This is definitely the best alternative headset brand in South Africa, if you compare pricing and quality to other well known brands.”

The headset will be available in January 2011.

Phonatics, a South African supplier of call center equipment and headsets, launched its first 2.4MHZ wireless headset, the Freemate DW770 series headset. Company officials described it as a dual-function wireless headset “for both VOIP and traditional telephony, providing all the benefits of hands-free mobility in a lightweight, ergonomic and future-proof design.”

Read more here.

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The results of a recent study of Contact Center Satisfaction Index provided by the CFI Group might surprise you, but we’re betting they probably won’t.

Quick -- guess what the study’s authors found to be the biggest frustration for customers? Yep, you got it -- the so-called “customer service process.” Improvements here, the study concludes, “will have a significant impact on customer loyalty, satisfaction.”

Here are some ways the study’s authors recommend improvements can be made to your customer service process:

Convenience of service hours. Customers were most frustrated by the lack of flexibility in contact center hours of operation. For a contact center it is a fine balance between maintaining center costs and maintaining the flexibility to employ after hour agents. A ready solution for this is to employ geographically dispersed agents to cover different time zones. Unfortunately with a lot of on premise systems it gets difficult to employ across geographical time zones. Employing remote agents from different time zones with a virtual call center is a huge step towards improving the customer service process.

Read more here.

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How many calls it requires to resolve a customer issue is a key metric for customer satisfaction and loyalty. The most recent Call Center Satisfaction Index found that sixty-five percent of customers say that their issue was resolved on the first call.

Is that good or bad? Put it this way: This means that 35 percent of customers had to call multiple times to get their question answered. If the customer has to call back, it hurts a company in two ways, the study’s authors found – the cost of fielding the subsequent calls and the revenue lost because the customer is less loyal and less likely to spend more with your company.

The study found that customers whose issues were resolved on the first call reported a customer satisfaction index score of 85 percent. If they were required to make a second call, that went down to 72 percent. Three or more calls? It dropped further to 60 percent.

And for the “My inquiry still has not been resolved” category, as you might expect, it’s somewhere around the temperature that water freezes. As do any chances for the company gaining customer loyalty.

Read more here.

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If you’re an Internet service provider, call center or wireline/wireless companies, or businesses with local customers dialing their 800 number, you need to have the tools to properly design a network.

Having a comprehensive source for such information is invaluable -- certainly you wouldn’t attempt such a project without one. The developer of one of the very first Local Calling Data products, i2Gemini has developed the Local Call Analyzer, which company officials say offers “the most accurate, reliable and innovative products of its kind.”

One of the reasons this is so important is that companies need to know when and where there is a cost-per-minute associated with a "local" call, so they can plan their strategies accordingly In such a situation, LCA provides the answers: “LCA not only supports all types of local calling plans found in the residential and business tariffs, but it displays the rate tables for any given NPA and NXX combination,” company officials say.

Read more here.