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Connections Magazine News
March 2005
CAM-X
Clinics to "Embrace Excellence"
The
Canadian Call Management Association (CAM-X) announced the theme for their
upcoming 2005 Call Centre Coaching Clinic – Embracing Excellence.
The
annual regional seminars will be held in Toronto, ON on April 8-10, 2005 and
in Calgary, AB on
April 29 - May 1, 2005.
The
CAM-X Continuing Education Committee is committed to hosting an inspiring,
thought-provoking, and extraordinary conference.
The conference is broken up into two parts.
The first two days are targeted to managers, supervisors, and team
leaders in the call center/teleservices service environment.
The third day of the clinic is dedicated to sales professionals within
the industry. Attendants can
register for one or both sections.
The
program will offer the opportunity to exchange ideas and learn from other
professionals in the industry. A
partial list of topics includes:
- Methods
to Improve Performance
- Professionalism
and Leadership - Defining your Role
- Coaching
Skills for Success
- Discipline
Strategies
- Improving
Morale
For more information on this year's
CAM-X Call Centre Coaching Clinics, please contact Linda Osip, Executive
Director at 800-896-1054 or at linda@camx.ca.
ATA Plans
Washington
Summit, April
17-20
The
ATA's 2005 Washington Summit is an opportunity for
call center leaders to collaborate and network with a diverse, exclusive
gathering of top executives in the Teleservices industry. Briefings
from regulatory experts, round-table discussions, and high-level networking will
be the focus of this three-day Summit in Washington, DC.
The
sessions on Monday, April 18 will focus on the current industry situation, with
Tuesday's theme being industry self-determination.
The summit concludes on Wednesday with the topic, "On the Hill,"
including a description of positions, congressional appointments, and a lobbying
role-play. An opening reception is
planned for Sunday, April 17.
The
Washington Summit is limited to 300 attendees. Be
one of the elite to shape ATA's 2005 Legislative Agenda and to contribute to
developing industry standards through the Teleservices Self-Regulatory
Organization (SRO). Registration
is limited to only 300, so act quickly to reserve your seat.
For more information, call 317-816-9336.
DMA
and ATA Jointly File FTC Comment
The
Direct Marketing Association (The DMA) and the American Teleservices Association
(ATA) have jointly submitted comments on the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC)
proposed ruling to create an additional call abandonment safe harbor for
telemarketing. In response to the
FTC's request for comments on the proposed rulemaking, they submitted the
following remarks:
·
The FTC should adopt The DMA's
petition to conform with the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC)
position to measure abandoned calls over a 30-day period.
Adoption of the petition will provide equivalent and likely stronger
consumer protections while providing businesses with more flexibility in their
marketing campaigns.
·
The FTC should adopt a safe harbor
for telemarketing using recorded messages to individuals where there exists an
established business relationship and where a toll-free number is provided in
the message that an individual can call to assert a do not call request.
"The
ATA believes that the consumers' right to decide whether to receive commercial
prerecorded messages is effectively preserved by the FCC's rules regarding
prerecorded messages," said Tim Searcy, chief executive officer, ATA.
NAEO
Celebrates 20 Years; Releases Agent Training Program
This
past May, the National Association of Amtelco Equipment Owners (NAEO) celebrated
20 years of service to Amtelco equipment owners.
NAEO traces its beginnings to a meeting in St.
Louis
in May of 1984, attended by
sixteen owners of the new Amtelco EVE system.
The
current mission statement for NAEO states: "We exist to build a network of Amtelco equipment owners
where ideas and technology solutions are shared to improve business practices,
skills, and profitability." Over
the years, the efforts of hundreds of people have made NAEO what it is today as
every year volunteers have carved time out of their busy schedules to support
and add value to the organization. Member-to-member
support has been a cornerstone of NAEO all along, and continues to be so today.
At
their recent conference In San Diego, NAEO introduced their new Web-based
Infinity agent-training program. The
new agent-training program is available at no cost to all NAEO members in good
standing.
For more information, please
contact Shannon Pfarr-Thompson at
Shannon@ewald.com or call 800-809-6373.
Amtelco
Launches On-Line Resource Library
Amtelco
announced the launch of an online resource library.
It includes a script library for Infinity and eCreator, plus a seminar
library and training library. This
is a great benefit for Amtelco customers who can reduce script set-up and
training time. It also provides a
forum for script sharing.
Script Library:
The eCreator script library contains scripts for eCreator and IVR (Interactive
Voice Response) applications including credit application, order entry,
databases, and reports. The Infinity
Intelligent Series script library offers scripts to guide agents through the
message taking and dispatching process. General
how-to scripts like time-of-day branching and age checking are also available.
Seminar Library:
The seminar library contains online seminars and PowerPoint®
presentations on a wide variety of applications, system setup and marketing
presentations.
Training Library
– The training library has full-motion video and audio tutorials on infinity
upgrades, infinity supervisor client setup, learning On-Call Supervisor,
Amtelco's Web-based conferencing, and learning the features of Infinity.
New
titles are being added by Amtelco trainers, technical specialists, and Amtelco
system users. Amtelco customers with
service contracts can use their login and password to access the library.
For more information, contact Amtelco at 800-356-9148 or info@amtelco.com.
Professional Teledata Adds Paging Features to PInnacle
Professional
Teledata announced the availability of enhanced digital paging capabilities in
their PInnacle Telemessaging System. Only a single agent keystroke is required
to initiate and complete dispatches including up to 99 retries within 1-99
minute intervals.
Also,
a series of conditions determine whether a dispatch is to be sent, to whom,
and under which circumstances. "This new feature extends PInnacle's
design philosophy of accurate, pre-programmed operations with minimal operator
intervention," said Professional Teledata's President, Allen Kalik.
"Teleservice companies can offer their clients highly customized
notification and data delivery options without incurring the usual training
and error-prone procedures."
The
improved dispatch capabilities are being delivered to all existing users as
part of Professional Teledata's standard support program. Professional
Teledata provides solutions to the teleservices and call center industries
including TBS billing systems, PI-2000 inbound call processing systems, and
FMDS faxing solutions.
For
more information, call Professional Teledata at 800-344-9944.
Telescan
Announces Support for Time Zones
With
more and more telemessaging businesses expanding coast to coast or
internationally, Telescan has introduced support for time zones.
With this new program, all information delivered to a client is stamped
with their time zone. This allows
clients to receive messages stamped with their own time zone, regardless of the
origin of the message.
Patty
Anderson, Director of Sales for Telescan said, "We are finding more and more
of our users have clients in multiple time zones, some even overseas.
With clients in so many different time zones, the significance of a
correct timing stamp becomes more and more crucial.
If messages are stamped with the sender's time zone, it may appear to
be as much as a day off from the client's time.
Our new support for time zones allows information to be delivered and
time stamped in the time zone of the client, making the message more accurate
and improving long distance communications.
This also enhances the call center's ability to solicit business from
anywhere in the world."
To find out more about Telescan's
Support for Time Zones, call Telescan at 800-770-7662.
TeleTech Launches
Over-the-Phone Interpretation Services
TeleTech
Holdings, Inc., a provider of customer management and business process
outsourcing (BPO) solutions, announced the launch of its new
InCulture™
service offering. InCulture
will initially focus on providing real time language translation services, also
known as over the phone interpretation (OPI), for call centers. Studies
have shown when callers are able to converse in their primary language,
customer satisfaction and retention levels increase, enabling call centers to
benefit from previously untapped revenue opportunities. With TeleTech's
InCulture offering, call centers can
now cost effectively provide their callers with 24/7
Interpretation
service.
With
a multicultural population that has reached over 95 million in the United States alone, multicultural markets represent a
significant global revenue opportunity for both TeleTech and its clients.
TeleTech offers more than 150 languages from its presence in 16 countries that
span the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
"Clients
also benefit from TeleTech's global delivery platform to ensure flexibility,
scalability, and timely execution worldwide," said Kenneth Tuchman, chairman
and chief executive officer of TeleTech.
Amtelco
Receives NEC Certification for RED Alert
Amtelco
announced that it has received certification for the 1Call Rapid Emergency
Deployment (RED) Alert system with the NEC NEAX 2400 IPX.
Amtelco is a member of the NEC Fusion Strategic Alliance Program.
RED
Alert gives teleservice companies a fast method for notifying and communicating
with the appropriate personnel in disaster and emergency situations, as well as
for routine notification needs. RED
Alert saves times for healthcare staff, reduces errors, and speeds overall
response time.
Notification
plans are entered into RED Alert in advance and can then be quickly activated
for external disasters that affect the community, internal disasters that affect
the healthcare organization, and routine notification needs.
The designated personnel can automatically be notified by pager, wireless
message, fax, or automated callouts with a prerecorded or text-to-speech
message.
Using
Amtelco's Conference Bridge, personnel can be conferenced together with or
without operator assistance. The Conference Bridge allows for multiple simultaneous conference
calls, which can also be recorded for ongoing communications and historical
accuracy.
For
more information, contact Amtelco at 800-356-9148 or info@amtelco.com.
Telescan
Introduces Dispatch Tracker™
The
latest enhancement to Telescan's Spectrum telemessaging system for call
centers is Dispatch Tracker™. This
addition allows each call center agent to view all dispatched calls in the
system, including those being handled by co-workers.
The dispatched calls are sorted by age and are color coded to indicate
priority as well as status in order to ensure accuracy.
"Our
new dispatch tracker will allow call centers to streamline their procedures and
enhance the dispatch process," said Ken Scott, Telescan's Director of
Operations. "Tests prove this
enhancement can improve message accuracy by as much as 20 percent.
It reduces mistakes and allows call centers to provide better service by
ensuring that every message is received quickly and accurately,"
To find out more about Dispatch Tracker
or the Spectrum System, call Telescan at 800-770-7662.
Smart
Telecom Launches ACD Application for Small Centers
Smart Telecom, a developer
of automation tools for contact centers and help desks, launched the market's
first automatic call distributor (ACD) performance reporting solution.
The application was built specifically for smaller contact centers and
help desks of between five and 100 agents. QSD-2005
2.1, the latest version of Smart Telecom's flagship product, allows centers to
access sophisticated real-time and historical performance management reporting.
"So far, automation tools
have been built for bigger centers, and the smaller centers have been
under-served, said Robert Koblovsky, CEO, Smart Telecom.
Most market research
suggests that small contact centers and help desks of fewer than 20 agents are
the fastest growing segment of the contact center industry.
The Incoming Calls Management Institute says smaller centers are, in many
fundamental ways, more challenging to manage than their larger counterparts.
Often, call loads are proportionally more volatile than in larger centers
while managers of smaller centers usually must rely on less sophisticated tools
and technologies than those available in larger environments.
Founded
in 1989, Smart Telecom specializes in automation tools for small and
medium-sized contact centers and help desks.
Amtelco
Receives NEC Certification for Infinity
Amtelco
announced that it has received certification for the Infinity Intelligent
Console system with the NEC NEAX 2400 IPX. Amtelco
is a member of the NEC Fusion Strategic Alliance Program.
The
integration with Infinity and the NEC NEAX uses the Amtelco XDS T1/E1 PRI ISDN
board, which can accommodate either four or eight spans for up to 191 ports on a
single board. This board supports
the Q Signaling Interface Protocol (QSIG), allowing it to integrate with QSIG-compatible
switches such as the NEC NEAX 2400 IPX.
The
Infinity Intelligent Console provides Attendant Console functions, allowing
agents to answer incoming calls with identity, transfer to PBX extensions,
conference incoming calls, and initiate dial outs to internal extensions and
outside trunks. It also allows
agents to initiate dial outs to feature access codes for functions such as
overhead paging and call parking. Infinity
uses ISDN QSIG connections to offer high port volumes, very fast call
processing, and sophisticated features to enhance enterprise-wide communications
with on-call scheduling, directories, physician answering service and messaging,
appointment scheduling, class registration, registry/roster, and call logging
and recording.
For
more information, contact Amtelco at 800-356-9148 or info@amtelco.com.
Dictaphone
Recognized By Gartner
Dictaphone
Corporation announced that it has been recognized in Gartner, Inc's, MarketScope:
Contact Center Quality Management 2004 Update, an annual report on call
recording and quality management products for contact centers.
Gartner is one of the nation's leading providers of research and
analysis in the global information technology industry.
Gartner's
2004 MarketScope evaluates the current position of key vendors using five
important criteria including: financial viability and market commitment; product
and market innovation; marketing momentum; overall project costs; and benefits
and references.
"Through
our expanded suite of contact center offerings, Dictaphone continues to gain
momentum and build client loyalty which will have a positive impact on our
market share moving forward," said John Kaiser, Vice President of Global
Marketing for Dictaphone's CRS group.
Dictaphone
has received several industry awards and recognition in 2004 for its
ContactPoint WRM and Freedom® solutions. This
comes after a banner year in 2003, where Dictaphone sold and installed over
8,000 seats of contact center recording and quality solutions.
For more
information, call 800-886-4908.
Left Bank
Solutions
Aims Monet at Large Contact Centers
Left Bank Solutions
announced the release of its newest version of Monet Workforce Management System
with the addition of multi-site and multi-time zone features in order to cater
to the needs of large contact centers. "While
the Monet Workforce Management System was originally targeted for small and
mid-sized contact centers, we have been receiving more and more interest from
larger sites," said Charles Ciarlo, President and CEO of Left Bank Solutions.
"Accordingly, we have tailored Monet to be the best of both worlds –
it is easy to implement and extremely cost effective for small centers while
being able to operate across multiple sites and time zones in large
operations."
The Monet site set up and
maintenance screen offers unlimited sites. Some
functions are particularly important with the advent of more distributed
IP-based call centers and home-based agents.
Monet enables the efficient scheduling and monitoring of home agents
based on location and time zone, and relative to the centralized time zone of
any ACD server.
For
more information about Left Bank
Solutions and its products, call 310-207-6800.
Pipkins' Adds Pop-Up Message Tools To Help Maintain Service
Levels
Pipkins
Inc. has added new pop-up alert capabilities to its Vantage Point workforce
management software to assist call center supervisors in ensuring that agents
adhere to their assigned work schedules. The
system's agent notification module can now be used to send pop-up messages to
agents' computer screens when they are out of compliance for a certain period
of time, as determined by the supervisor. This
feature can be used to notify agents when they are logged into the wrong queue,
not logged on at all, and in other situations that can affect overall
operations. This expands the pop-up
alerts previously available in this module to issue schedule changes, overtime
requests, and general business messages without any interruption to call
handling.
Messages
can be sent without supervisor intervention.
Plus there is an option to notify the agent's supervisor or another
individual about the non-adhering activity.
Interactive
Intelligence and Vonexus Achieve ISO 9001:2000 Certification
Interactive
Intelligence Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Vonexus Inc., achieved
certification last month to the ISO 9001:2000 quality management standard.
The company's management system at its world headquarters in Indianapolis was certified for delivering innovative design
and development of interaction management software, as well as support,
implementation, and educational services for business communications, contact
center automation, enterprise IP telephony and IP PBX, and VoIP.
The
certificate of registration ensures that organizations can consistently deliver
products and services that meet customers' quality and regulatory requirements,
while enhancing customer satisfaction and sustaining performance improvements in
pursuit of these objectives.
"This
ISO 9001:2000 certification demonstrates our commitment to quality," said Dr.
Donald E. Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer for Interactive
Intelligence. "This certification
signifies a critical step in the maturation of our company."
The
ISO 9001:2000 standard is an international reference for quality management
requirements and continuous improvement in business-to-business dealings.
Companies' compliance to ISO standards are certified by third-party
audit and registration organizations.
Interactive
Intelligence can be reached at 317-872-3000 or info@inin.com.
Nickerson
Releases
Call
Center
Book: "Not By the Seat of My
Pants"
Nationally recognized Call
Center
authority, Anne Nickerson, shares
her years of experience and lessons learned with her recently released book, Not
by the Seat of My Pants. The
book was specifically written for supervisors and managers in the call center
industry. Ms. Nickerson provides
call center leaders, managers, and new supervisors an inside look at the
interplay of roles, goals, and changing expectations that can thwart the effort
of even the most qualified of candidates. Through tips, techniques, tools,
and practical examples, Ms. Nickerson's book helps the reader identify what it
really takes to be successful in this high pressure, high stress, high turnover
job, and how to create the environment for enthusiastic, productive, satisfied
employees.
"This creative book is enjoyable to read, easy to digest, and
loaded with wisdom and insight for supervisors, new and old. Bravo!"
commented Brad Cleveland, President and CEO of Incoming Calls Management
Institute (ICMI).
For more information or an
interview with the author, please contact Susan Douglas, Solomark Associates, at
847-895-2634 or
sm_douglas@solomark.com.
Bronco
Communications Launches McDonald's Drive-Thru
Call
Center
All
of us, at one time or another, have been served at McDonald's by ordering food
at their Drive-Thru window. What you
may not realize is that for the last three months in Santa Maria, the person you ordered from was not in the
McDonald's restaurant, but instead was in the Bronco Communications Call Center a few miles away.
This
new business is the brainchild of the company's three founders, namely Ted
Maddux, Doug King, and Dr. Jon Anton. Maddux
is the owner of 10 McDonald's restaurants in the Santa Maria area and Bronco's first customer.
King is the President and CEO of Bronco as well as the communications
designer who makes it possible for your voice at the Drive-Thru window to be
transmitted through the Internet to the Bronco Call Center.
The
Bronco Call Center is a 50 seat Voice over the Internet (VoIP) call
center. On December 31st,
the Bronco Call Center took its 150,000th order.
For more information, contact Doug King,
President of Bronco Communications at 805-925-6899.
Optivon Continues Expansion
Optivon, a provider of telephony services, continues to expand its
North American operations with the announcement that Ron Garraffa has joined the
company as Vice President for Service Provider Channel Sales. He
will be responsible for recruiting carriers and service providers to join
Optivon's Partner Program.
Garraffa has 20 years of successful telecommunications industry
sales and management experience to carriers. Most recently, he was Carrier
Business Development Manager at Xspedius Communications. Previously, he
was senior carrier account manager of the broadband carrier division at EPIK
Communications.
Garraffa's experience includes managing sales of voice and data
communications, operation support systems, microwave radio products, fiber
optics equipment, Internet-working, data-centric products, and professional
services for carriers and service providers.
"Ron's substantial knowledge of telecommunications markets will
add immeasurably to our management team," said Optivon CEO Luis Romero. "I'm
delighted he chose to join us and look forward to working with him as we
introduce carriers and service providers to the advantages of outsourcing
VoIP-enabled services with Optivon."
Garraffa can be reached at 727-773-1393,
866-503-2626 or rgarraffa@optivon.com.
AnswerNet
Helps UNICEF Raise $9.9 million
UNICEF
raised $9.9 million to help children victims of the devastating tsunami, with
the assistance of The AnswerNet Network, a nationwide contact center outsourcer.
AnswerNet employees and celebrity volunteers answered the phones for
UNICEF during Tsunami Relief, a live news and fundraiser broadcast by NBC
from New York City. The
network filmed the phone-in at an AnswerNet Network contact center in Manhattan.
AnswerNet's
center supplemented UNICEF's Ohio contact center.
UNICEF had a portion of the calls routed to the AnswerNet site, manned by
celebrities such as Tony Danza, Julia Stiles, Carolyn Kennedy Schlossberg,
Ashford and Simpson, Jo Jo, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
UNICEF
reports there are an estimated 1.5 million affected children in South Asia, many
of whom have been orphaned or separated from their families and are in critical
need of basic care and support. Potential
donors can still contribute by calling, 800-486-4233.
"We
are honored to be a part of this effort to bring relief and hope from this
disaster," says AnswerNet CEO Gary Pudles.
"We urge everyone to continue to contribute to UNICEF's efforts to
help those in need."
Quick Connections Announces
PInnacle Installation
Quick Connections announced the successful
installation of their new PInnacle Telemessaging System from Professional
Teledata to accommodate expansion of both its client base and product offerings.
The company provides telemessaging services to a wide variety of industries.
"We were impressed with PInnacle's capabilities and considering
Professional Teledata's reputation of outstanding customer support and
reliability, it was a very comfortable decision for us," says Lisa Mills,
Vice President.
"We anticipate an increase in our ability to
accurately capture incoming information and deliver that information to our
clients in a timely manner. We anticipate a substantial increase in our ability
to handle complex accounts with minimized errors due to PInnacle's automated
methods determining appropriate dispatch and relay recipients." Allen Kalik,
President of Professional Teledata added, "We are pleased to have been
chosen by Quick Connections to enable their growth and expansion."
For more information about Quick Connections,
call 301-486-1844.
Alliance
Contact Services Awarded
Certified Center
of Excellence
BenchmarkPortal and the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue
University
have awarded Alliance Contact
Services the "Certified Center of Excellence" designation. This
award is determined by an on-site certification process that benchmarks a call
center against thousands of other call centers to measure best practices.
To receive the award, a call center must place in the top ten percent of
all call centers included in the Purdue study (currently over 20,000 call
centers). Certification means that
efficiency and effectiveness metrics are fully optimized.
Essential success criteria include operational efficiency, service level
standards, process management, customer satisfaction, leadership, resources, and
employee training. Dr. Jon Anton, Director of Research for BenchmarkPortal and
the Center for Customer-Driven Quality, stated that contact centers that achieve
certification balance a commitment to service excellence with cost-effective
service strategies.
Don Williams, President of Alliance Contact Services said, "We
strive to provide the best possible service to our clients and in turn to their
clients – to be recognized as a Certified Center of Excellence is an honor of
which we are extremely proud."
8x8
Inc. has selected IEX Corporation's TotalView® Workforce Management Small
Center (SC) system. TotalView SC will help 8x8, a provider of Internet-based
telephony solutions, optimize customer service by providing call forecasts and
producing efficient agent schedules.
"We're
experiencing high growth in our contact center call volumes," said Richard
Murray, Director of Customer Service for 8x8.
"In order to keep-pace with business demands, we needed a workforce
management system that could help us better forecast our call volumes and plan
our schedules. Having used TotalView
and competing systems in the past, I knew TotalView was the right choice."
TotalView
SC delivers workforce management
functionality in a package designed to meet the needs of smaller contact center
operations, providing contact center managers the tools they need to improve
service while lowering costs and allowing employees more control over their work
assignments. Features include
workforce forecasting, scheduling, adherence monitoring, intra-day management,
productivity analysis, reporting, and long-term planning.
TotalView SC makes it easier for contact centers
to provide the service experience their customers expect.
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