Call Centers

The movement to Internet protocol-based phone systems and contact centers is in full swing. This is great news for smaller businesses, since standards-based IP networks offer far more flexibility and capabilities for much lower costs than their TDM predecessors. As a bonus, the protocol that runs th...

It's not an easy task to summarize the makeup of today's customer in a singularly defined formula. Not only do customers' individual needs vary on a case-by-case basis, but as an aggregate whole, customers' needs are maturing and have become much more complex and demanding than prior generations. Re...

For years, vendors have argued the merits of click-to-call versus click-to-chat, but most analysts now agree that both solutions are an effective means of reaching out to Web site visitors to engage them in conversation. There is little doubt that nearly any company with a Web presence can see posit...

Internet search leader Google unveiled its latest set of online business tools Thursday, aiming to snare a bigger piece of the enterprise market dominated by Microsoft. Google already has at least one player onboard: IP telephony firm Avaya. Avaya, a top provider of Internet phone switchboards for b...

Genesys has introduced a major upgrade to its contact center product line, the Genesys 7.5 Customer Interaction Management Platform, and also released VoiceGenie 7.1, which offers built-in support for video contact centers. The contact center application builds upon several earlier developments Gene...

RightNow Technologies has added new capabilities to its voice application, which it first introduced in June 2005 when it acquired Convergent Voice, a voice automation vendor. In this major upgrade, the firm has enhanced the application's inbound functions and has begun developing outbound features,...

Autonomy has introduced a new contact center application, the Intelligent Contact Center, which provides a range of higher-end capabilities, including the ability to detect anger or emotion in a call, multichannel analysis at the point of interaction and real-time agent support. The rollout, Autonom...

Service centers get a lot more calls with complaints and criticisms than they get showers of praise. All telecom companies experience churn rates way above those of many other industries -- it isn't unheard of for 30 percent of an average telecom company's customers to switch providers in the course...

CosmoCom has upgraded its IP-based contact center software platform to version 5. Called CosmoCall Universe, the system has been enhanced to address multiple contact center channels in a unified fashion, according to Steve Kowarsky, executive vice president of CosmoCom. It also improved functionalit...

Witness Systems announced Monday that it has acquired Amae Software, which will add customer feedback capabilities to Witness' contact center offering. The Amae application is a Web-based system that can survey across any communications channel or customer contact. It can link survey results and cus...

You have to take your hat off to Salesforce.com, I think. Last week's earnings call was a thing of beauty. It was the kind of thing that I bet every entrepreneur must dream of doing someday -- reporting to the investors on a great quarter for their newly public company. It wasn't so long ago that...

Avaya on Thursday made two related announcements: the acquisition of enterprise mobility software maker Traverse Networks; and a new product strategy centered around unified communications. Avaya's unified communications solutions give corporate users easy access to all of their communications appli...

In call centers across America, companies measure employee attrition. They often seek to understand why employees are leaving. However, they probably should be measuring why employees are staying. Instead of studying the dissatisfaction, it might be better to look at the problem from a new direct...

In considering whether or how to reorganize customer service and back-office functions offshore, the option to open a captive subsidiary service center may not receive full consideration in comparison to outsourcing options. Here we look at the case for Western companies to establish their own dedi...

ATG has announced that it will acquire e-commerce best-of-breed vendor eStara in a US$48.3 million cash-and-stock transaction that will increase ATG's market share and bring new niche functionality under its umbrella. eStara specializes in click-to-call technology -- an online e-commerce tool that l...