Call Centers

Calabrio has upgraded its workforce optimization products, which go to market through several channel partners, including as an OEM to Cisco's Unified Contact Center product line. The company upgraded Workforce Management to version 8.1 and Quality Management to version 2.4. The latter in particular...

Analytics software solutions provider Verint is leveraging the workforce optimization capabilities it developed for the call center space so that it can move into other areas. The company, having digested its acquisition of Witness Systems earlier this year, tailored its scheduling, monitoring and p...

During Dreamforce there was a panel discussion for media and the financial and industry analysts. Some of Salesforce.com's senior executives were there for a panel discussion, which included Chief Financial Officer Steve Cakebread, cofounder and Executive Vice President Parker Harris and Vice Presi...

Aspect Software has introduced a series of software modules under one suite aimed at optimization performance in the contact center. The modules are for workforce management, recording and quality management, performance management, campaign management and coaching and e-learning. Called "Performanc...

Avaya has made a significant upgrade in three self-service offerings that it introduced at the beginning of last year. Introduced at SpeechTEK 2007 in New York City, the three products are Avaya Voice Portal 4.0, its flagship self-service software; Interactive Response 3.0, a self-service platform; ...

Companies are increasingly faced with the challenge of how to leverage the large amounts of data available in the contact center. The data is accumulated through customer management systems -- CRM, SFA, ERP and order fulfillment -- and interactions with the customer. Even though providing consistent...

Determining the right combination of people, processes and technologies is critical to the effectiveness of the virtual call center -- a call center that functions in every respect as a single logical entity with agents that are physically distributed across multiple locations. An integral piece to ...

Epicor has released its first major overhaul of its CRM application since the company shifted its product line to the .NET platform. At that time, in 2002, Epicor introduced new CRM functionality that played upon the benefits of moving away from a client-server environment. This release focuses more...

Interactive Intelligence has released its second-generation session initiation protocol Interaction Gateway, an appliance that enables connections between traditional T1 and E1 trunk lines and Voice over Internet Protocol networks. The new version includes support for global protocols, fax support ...

FrontRange Solutions has made available version 5.1 of FrontRange Voice, an IP telephony software application that can be installed on the desktop without the need for other equipment. It targets small and medium-sized businesses and offers upgrades in functionality and integration over previous ve...

ATG has introduced a service center application for its e-commerce suite, ATG Commerce, that builds on some of the company's previous acquisitions. The Commerce Service Center contact center application integrates e-commerce functionality with back-end order administration, sales support and custome...

Oracle has released Contact Center Anywhere 8.1, an application that builds on its acquisition of Telephony@Work, an on-demand provider of IP-based software infrastructure for hosted contact center services, made exactly a year ago. Oracle Contact Center Anywhere 8.1, is a multimedia IP-based contac...

Next year, when taxpayers call the IRS for help answering questions as they fill out a return, they will know how many minutes they will have to wait on hold before they can speak with an agent. Earlier this year, constituents may not have known how long they would be holding, but some may have noti...

Nuance Communications, the lead vendor in the growing speech-recognition software category, plans to acquire Time Warner's Tegic Communications for $265 million. The acquisition will add $45 million to $48 million in net revenue in fiscal 2008, the company reported. The addition of Tegic, which dev...

In an effort to gain a competitive edge in the market, companies are implementing customer self-service solutions to address two distinctly separate business challenges -- improving the customer experience and cost reduction. While the cost-related benefits of self-service are widely understood, and...