Industry News

June 2006

Professional Teledata to Début PInnacleNET at ATSI

Professional Teledata will demonstrate its new PInnacleNET product at the 62nd Annual ATSI Convention & Expo in Portland, ME on June 21-24.  PInnacleNet provides seamless integration of call handling across multiple PI-2000 or PInnacle sites.   Messages and orders can be taken at multiple remote locations and immediately returned to the originator for dispatching and other post-processing tasks.  Alternatively, calls can be handled entirely by the remote site.  PI-2000 and PInnacle customers benefit from load sharing, agent scheduling efficiencies, and disaster recovery.

"PIinnacle agents are typically trained in a fraction of the time of competing systems, so handling calls on unfamiliar accounts is not an obstacle," said Jim Graham, Vice President of Software Development.

"The sharing of high volume accounts and disaster recovery are obvious implementations of PInnacleNET," added Allen Kalik, President of Professional Teledata.  "Multi-site services will utilize PInnacleNET to create a flexible, configurable, secure operation acting as a single system."

PInnacleNet is currently being tested and will be available for general distribution by July 1, 2006.

Professional Teledata (www.professionalteledata.com) provides systems and software products for the telemessaging and call center industries.  Contact Karen Black at 800-344-9944 x112 for more information.

Startel Announces Developments For CMC

Startel Corporation announced CMC release 6.200, which includes a revamp of the reports module, providing a new look and feel for reports and two new reports, members report and detailed agent call report.  

CMC 6.200 enhances the intelligent dispatching capabilities, including the addition of the Short Messaging Service (SMS) transport.  This enables call centers to connect directly to an SMS terminal; full SMS and numeric only SMS are available.  Intelligent dispatching offers the ability for an agent to stop a dispatch script in progress and dispatch based on a submenu.

The IntelliForms have been enhanced to incorporate all of the functionality found in message forms, including special functions and alpha paging, to handle more complex accounts.  Another change is that the day-of-week enhancement has been added to message forms and IntelliForms.  "This capability enables these forms to be defined not only on a time-of-day basis, but also on a specific day-of-the-week basis," said Geri Cerkovnik, Vice President of Marketing.

Gregg Snyder of Inland Answering Service added, "The enhancements to dispatch script have improved the efficiency in delivering the messages to the customer while decreasing agent involvement."

For more information, visit Startel at www.startelcorp.com.

Amtelco Announces New Intelligent Messaging Features 

Call center clients are demanding fewer errors, flexible call handling, and message dispatch. Intelligent messaging guides agents through the message-taking process, using scripts created to meet the needs of each client.  To increase the labor savings and accuracy of message handling, Amtelco has added new features to intelligent messaging including:

• Easy Script Editor: streamlines the script writing process and reduces complex programming tasks.

• Script Styles: changes the color of scripts' background, foreground, description, button, and font.

• Actions: Allows supervisors to define what should happen when a button is pressed, a list item is selected, or a screen is accessed or closed.  Actions perform functions like dialing, changing information pages, popping directories and on-call schedules, and connecting to an external database.

• Message Branching: allows the flow of each message to be controlled by selections made by agents.

• Dynamic Linking: interfaces to other sources of information to ensure agents accurately complete a message.  Agents receive instructive information from sources such as intelligent directory, on-call schedule, external databases, Websites, and Microsoft MapPoint maps.

For more information on the Infinity Intelligent system, call 800-356-9148 or email info@amtelco.com.

SNUG Releases Supervisor Excellence DVD

SNUG began shipping the Supervisor Excellence DVD on May 3, 2006.  The DVD is volume two of its Training Excellence package, a professional development series for the teleservices industry.  It contains information on the following topics: managing staff, managing the call center, customers-their needs and care, and legal issues. 

Volume one is Agent Excellence and deals with message basics, including taking quality messages, challenging calls, and delivering messages.  All chapters are produced by owners of teleservice call centers, specifically for the industry.  The material follows the ATSI Award of Excellence guidelines and is completely non-platform specific and appropriate for training on any call center platform.

For more information, contact Dan L'Heureux at 800-317-8529 or visit www.teamsnug.com.

Professional Teledata Hosts PIN User Group Meeting

Professional Teledata hosted the annual Professional Inbound Network (PIN) meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire on May 1-3.  The meeting was preceded by a dedicated pre-meeting session of PInnacle users.  In addition to company and product updates, sessions included:

• reporting and account documentation capabilities
• recent changes in the credit card industry
• monitoring quality of service
• disaster recovery
• marketing of services

A multi-station system was available throughout the meeting for attendees to try out the newest enhancements and improvements.  The meeting concluded with the usual lively wish list session.  Professional Teledata also included a preview of their new PInnacleNET product that will be officially announced at the 2006 ATSI Convention & Expo in Portland, Maine on June 21-24.

Professional Teledata (www.professionalteledata.com) provides systems and software products for the telemessaging and call center industries.

ATSI Awards Certification to Intercon Messaging

Association of Teleservices International (ATSI) announced that Intercon Messaging, Inc. has received the Gold 24/7 Call Center Certification Award.  Intercon is the second Canadian call center to be so awarded and the first in Alberta. 

The certification indicates that Intercon has met or exceeded high standards in the following areas: business practices, life safety, operations including normal and emergency procedures, personnel hiring, training, and ongoing evaluations through a peer review program focusing on 99.9% annual run time.

For more information, visit www.atsi.org.

AnswerNet Acquires S&D

The AnswerNet Network, a leading contact center and telemessaging outsourcer, has acquired Philadelphia, PA-based outsourcer S&D Marketing.  AnswerNet had held a 50% stake in S&D.  The deal enhances AnswerNet's telemarketing, customer service, and direct response capabilities.  It also fully integrates S&D's operations with AnswerNet's to provide a seamless suite of services.  With S&D contact center (now known as AnswerNet-Philadelphia) a part of the network, clients have the option of having their large-scale outbound telemarketing and inbound CRM applications supplied at a single contact center.

AnswerNet-Philadelphia has 120 workstations, predictive dialing, and IVR.  Stephanie Mulreaney has been appointed as General Manager to run the contact center.  "Integrating AnswerNet Philadelphia into The AnswerNet Network enables us to accelerate our growth by providing more capabilities and options for our customers," said The AnswerNet Network President and CEO, Gary A. Pudles.

For more information about the AnswerNet Network, visit www.answernet.com.

Poll Finds Americans Frustrated with Poor English in Contact Center Agents

A new international contact center survey revealed that Americans are more frustrated by talking to customer service agents with hard-to-understand accents than they are by talking to agents who don't understand the problem they are calling about.  Nine thousand people were surveyed online in nine countries -- Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and USA.  The research was powered by global market intelligence solutions provider GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.) on behalf of its wholly owned subsidiary NetReflector in March 2006. 

When asked what frustrates them most about contact centers, U.S. respondents said bad accents (29%) are their top complaint.  This was followed by rude or condescending agents (18%), being made to wait too long on the line (17%), or having to listen to an agent "upgrade" their services (15%). 

"With support jobs moving to China and India, it's not surprising that English-speaking countries' top frustration revolves around the difficulty of understanding customer service representatives," said Bob Hayes, Ph.D.  Hayes is an expert in customer satisfaction measurement and author of the book Measuring Customer Satisfaction: Survey Design, Use, and Statistical Analysis Methods.  He said, "Even if the level of customer service is exceptional, the extent to which poorly-understood accents trump quality of service speaks to English-speaking customers' growing intolerance of non-native speech, more so than in other countries."

Consumers in non-English-speaking markets rate other issues as more problematic. For example, French and Germans feel waiting on the phone is the prime problem, while the leading frustration for Chinese and Russian respondents is that contact center staff is condescending or rude.

The findings substantiate a growing trend among companies to find alternatives to counter Americans' increasingly hostile attitudes towards overseas contact center agents, including online chat, email, and improved automated voice systems that can resolve problems more quickly.  Other companies are bringing front-line customer service operations back home, but leaving their back-office processing overseas.  Still others are investing heavily in "foreign accent reduction therapy" where accents are neutralized to appeal to the English-speaking population.

Finding creative ways to circumvent the phone call could prove difficult.  However, as the poll also reported, over three-quarters of U.S. respondents prefer to contact customer service departments by phone (76%) over email (20%), chat (1.8%), or mail (1%).  

Americans win first place in this category, citing "personal contact" (48%), "convenience" (25%), and "speed" (21%) as reasons for choosing to pick up the phone over any other method.  At 75%, Canadians come in second for favoring phone contact and Australians weigh in third at 74%.  Although all nine countries preferred interacting over the phone, a surprising 27% of Russians favored the chat room -- over five times the global average (5%) -- as a way of asking for help.

The definition of good customer service seems fairly consistent.  Across the world, a good customer service experience is one in which the customer interacts with a knowledgeable service agent who can handle problems quickly and effectively.  Less important are the interpersonal skills of the service agent or how long a customer is required to wait before they become impatient.  The global average for willing to wait 5-10 minutes is 48%; Americans weigh in at 46%.

The survey also reported that the costs of a bad customer service interaction, regardless of the reason, run consistently high across the globe.  The poll found that 86% of respondents would likely or very likely move to a competitor following a poor experience.  Customers from Brazil, are more likely to switch to a competitor (91%) compared to the UK (84%), USA (82%), or Russia (81%).

TAS Marketing to Increase Rates for "Preferred Client"

TAS Marketing announced a rate increase for its "Preferred Client" program, which gives its paid members advanced listing information about businesses for sale before they actually hit TAS Marketing's Website or are advertised.

"The number of buyers for telephone answering services has increased dramatically over the last couple of years," stated Steve Michaels, president of TAS Marketing.  "It is simply a matter of supply and demand that has driven up the price of telemessaging call centers and thus the price increase for the "Preferred Client" program."

Last year, 45% of TAS Marketing's "Preferred Clients" were able to get advanced listing information and purchased those businesses before they were put out to the general market.  The new pricing structure will go into effect on June 1, 2006.

For additional information on the "Preferred Client" program, contact Steve Michaels at 800-369-6126 or visit www.tasmarketing.com.

Amtelco EVE List Serve

The EVE list serve, for users of Amtelco EVE systems, is looking to add new participants.  There are over 20 companies on board, but we are hoping to find others to join," said Bill Smith, an EVE user who is leading the effort.  "EVE users represent a number large enough to get some attention if we all get together," Smith continued. "There is much that we could learn from each other and many EVE specific topics that we could discuss." 

Any EVE user who would like to join the list serve should email Bill at bill@answerone.net with their name, company name, location, and email address; they will be added to the list.  "You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain," concluded Smith.