Call Centers

In 1816, Eliphalet Remington II turned to his father's forge and began working on a better rifle. At that time he wasn't worried about supply chains or customer relationship management. But almost 200 years later, his one-man startup is Remington Arms Company, a US$360 million enterprise selling fir...

At Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI), the numbers told the story: About 180 customer-service reps were using old "green screen" technology. With dumb terminals connected to a claims-processing system, trying to handle a total of 900,000 calls per year. Each call took about 10 minutes, ...

Your broadband connection is down, and you can't get online to download the patches to fix it. Frustrated, you turn to the telephone. Once you find someone who can help, you have to relate the litany about your computer and all of the software you are running. Then, maybe, if you are lucky, you can ...

CRM software revenues are expected to reach $30 billion in the next several years, according to research firm Cahners In-Stat. Even so, CRM implementation projects are often cited for high failure rates. To avoid losing customers, these projects need to succeed in more dimensions than just company m...

SPSS has introduced a new product, PredictiveCallCenter, that it says can transform inbound call hubs from cost centers to profit centers. The application integrates with call-center CRM and call management systems to determine on-the-fly the best way to market to inbound callers, noting whether the...

Customer-service managers are always looking for ways to boost agent productivity by shaving seconds off calls and increasing upsell rates. Indeed, if there were a customer-service crystal ball that could search through all customer interactions and spot future trends, visualizing patterns and notin...

Onyx, a mid-market provider of CRM software, has unveiled upgrades to its Contact Center product that are designed to help it branch deeper into the contact-center and vertical markets. The improvements include call-center scripting and enhanced Web self-service capabilities. As a result of Onyx' mo...

Aspect Communications, a provider of enterprise customer-service solutions, has announced it is postponing its proposed public offering of 12 million shares of common stock. The sale was to include the sale of 9.3 million shares by specific shareholders. According to the company, the sale was not in...