Call Centers

I spent part of last week at a user group meeting high in the Rockies, the RightNow Summit. The term "summit" is not only figurative -- it's literal. The company is headquartered in Bozeman, Mont., another high spot on the continent, and it seems to select meeting locations near the tree line to b...

Most people can visualize the classic customer service environment: hundreds of agents sitting side-by-side in a large contact center, all working off the same script, working the same shifts and being monitored in the same manner. The mass media has reinforced this vision of customer service facili...

A new product from eTalk, Qfiniti Assist, provides contact center agents with knowledge management support while they are on the line with a customer. The tool combines speech recognition and enterprise search technology to identify the information the agent needs in order to answer a client's quest...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the on-demand call center, and about how the new technology model is driving business model change. With so much happening in the call center, you might be led to believe that being a call center agent is the best job in the world. Well, maybe not the best job,...

CosmoCom has introduced Version 4.6 of its Universe contact center software platform. New enhancements include improved reporting functionality, IP Centrex integration, and new networking functionality -- namely, the introduction of a new, proprietary NAT Traversal capability. Also, this version co...

CTI Group, a provider of online billing, self-care and communication management applications, has released a hosted call recording product. In general, on-demand contact center applications have been proliferating over the last year. CTI Group's new product, called "SmartRecord IP," differentiates i...

Salesforce.com has unveiled its Winter 07 upgrade, which features first-time support for softphone -- that is, computer telephony integration, or CTI -- connectivity. It also includes new interactive calendar design and task management capabilities, as well as additional integration tools. A new AJA...

Avaya has updated its flagship contact center software application, Interaction Center, with new features that make it easier for developers to build agent portals to their own specifications and needs. This latest iteration of the application, version 7.1, is taking aim at a pain point that many ve...

Companies that seek to automate the customer service process to cut costs often alienate customers instead, as Part 1 of this two-part series reveals. Some companies, though, are finding ways to incorporate informed, personal interactions into their customer service programs, and are treating every...

Friends in the call center software industry are telling me that they've noticed a decided pickup in their business. What's interesting about that tidbit is that these people are also saying that the interest is in on-demand solutions and that opens a lot of topics for discussion. For example, we ...

"Your call is important to us. Please hold." "We've automated our phone system for your convenience." "Our agents are busy helping other customers." As consumers, we are all too familiar with these rote statements that are somehow supposed to make us feel all warm and fuzzy while we cool our hee...

American consumers would rather have to deal with a rude or condescending customer service agent on the phone than one who speaks with a foreign accent, according to a survey released earlier this year. The survey seemed to indicate that the arguments against outsourcing of certain operations -- fro...

Contact centers will dramatically increase the adoption of Voice over Internet Protocol technology over the next few years, the Yankee Group projects. This long-awaited development will be driven in some part by related growth in the number of home agents. The VoIP adoption rate in North American co...

Sprint has entered the hosted contact center space, a submarket that is rapidly expanding, with the introduction of an IP-based offering that is powered by Avaya technology. It is Sprint's first toll-free VoIP product, Barry Tishgart, director of product marketing, told CRM Buyer. "We have always su...

One of the most advanced communication hubs in the world crashed unexpectedly in Seattle on Sunday afternoon, July 30, 2006, due to a string of malfunctions in the facility's electrical power system. The facility, called Fisher Plaza, is billed as one of the most secure data centers and telecommuni...