EXCERPT:

While some investors frown at the thought of no longer working with an individual banker or broker, some people in the financial-services industry say a call center isn’t necessarily an inferior solution. Having someone on the phone to entertain account queries could be better than being neglected by a personal broker.

“If well executed, clients can receive better services through call centers,” says Bing Waldert, a consultant at Boston research and consulting firm Cerulli Associates.

Still, call-center operations have had some hiccups. Brendan Intindola, a spokesman at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, says complaints of poor service have come up during periods of high market volatility and volume or when a firm experiences technical issues.

LINK:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123549387374860649.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

EXCERPT:

Economic-development agencies are beginning to realize they need to focus on contact centers to get people employed rapidly. As opposed to manufacturing, any office building with sufficient broadband can serve as a contact center location. In addition, you can get a call center up and running in a matter of months — not one-plus years.

Throughout past recessions, call centers picked up the slack and hired what amounted to millions of Americans to make and take calls. From 1990 onward, economic development agencies worldwide began to court contact centers to help them solve their job loss problems. Typically they recruited outsourcers from the TMC Top 50 Teleservices list as well as smaller, faster-growing companies

LINK: http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=002000002RYG

EXCERPT:

Managing contact center performance has never been more challenging. Not only are operations facing even more pressure to cut costs amidst a difficult economy, but are often also being asked to maintain service levels and to cross sell/upsell to retain customers and grow revenues. Many of the solutions to these needs lie in the data contact centers collect. It can be used to identify problems from customer information such as spikes in calls, find out what is going on, then report issues to prevent or limit rising costs and customer churn. It can also help improve sales and collections. The insights that can be gleaned from them can help justify existing [budgets] and possibly budget increases and investments in new solutions.

The sources of this data are in the vast amounts of reports: from ACDs to call recording, CRM , CTI, predictive and progress dialers, and workforce management (WFM) that contact centers receive. Yet these sources are too often rarely if ever consolidated to give that clear picture.

“You can’t understand what is going on if you’ve got 25 reports sitting on your desk,” explains Jim Davies, a research director with Gartner. “You need to have that single view so that you can then start to dig into data and look for trends, patterns, and correlations between the different applications and data streams.”

LINK: http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=00200076GWHW&page=1

EXCERPT:

SpeechCycle and Jingle Networks have announced a new partnership to help contact centers embed contextually relevant sponsored messaging within the caller experience. The companies said that this will monetize contact center interactions while also improving customer loyalty. As per this latest agreement, Jingle Networks (News – Alert) and SpeechCycle will provide interoperability between SpeechCycle’s RPA OnDemand platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and the JingleConnect audio advertising network.

LINK: http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/analysis/articles/51459-speechcycle-jingle-networks-team-empower-contact-centers.htm

EXCERPT:

The route to customer loyalty, professionals and suppliers say, is through improving first contact resolution (FCR) via investing in agent training, analytics and in CRM , EFM (enterprise feedback management) solutions, performance management tools, and presence/ unified communications . The more satisfying the customers’ experiences are when they reach out to firms such as via their contact centers the greater their loyalty to them is the operating theory.

Yet is this formula: better customer service=customer loyalty=sales valid? Are contact centers and their parent or client organizations perhaps spending too much time and limited resources in trying to make this solution work?

LINK: http://business.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=00200088KN7I&page=1

SalesForce.com has launched a new product called ‘Service Cloud’. It compiles customer service information about a company from different sources from all over the Internet which can then be used in the contact center environment. 

Link: http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009/01/14/salesforcecom-launches-the-service-cloud-a-customer-service-saas-application/

Link: http://www.crunchbase.com/product/service-cloud

Link: http://blog.nicasiodesign.com/2008/12/26/customer-reviews-and-your-e-commerce-website/

Link: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=29050

Link: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=29056

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiYi3iEBJNM]

Dear innovative call centers of 2009, read the article below  about Nortel’s new 3-D virtual world product “web.alive” if you  want to stay ahead of your competition. Lets just say forget phone, chat & email support, think 3-D worlds, collaboration, live product demonstrations, and avatars… 

http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?id=94346&issue=01092009

From the Nortel website:

• Shoppers can create personalized avatars to walk around the 3D virtual store and browse through products while interacting with other shoppers and sales staff from around the globe.
• Shoppers can also attend product demonstrations or tutorials given by the virtual store staff.
• People can build social/virtual shopping communities/groups and host online shopping get-togethers with their network of friends, family and associates – a concept defined as assisted e-commerce or social shopping.
• Customer service online is taken to an entirely new level as customers do not need to email, click to call or deal with hundreds of pages of forum based questions and answers. If a customer has a question, they can simply log on and walk up to a customer service representative or ask another customer with a high feedback rating.
• Businesses can use their online stores to test out new store designs/ideas – in a virtual setting.

LEARN MORE about web.alive at the Nortel Project page code named “Project Chainsaw”: http://www.projectchainsaw.com/

FINALLY to see the new Lenovo eLounge, visit www.lenovo.com/elounge