Uncovering Treasure: New Solutions Enable Businesses to Realize the Richness of Customer Data

CUSTOMER INTER@CTION SOLUTIONS — January/February 2012

Uncovering Treasure: New Solutions Enable Businesses to Realize the Richness of Customer Data

Call centers, CRM systems, social networking and other sources often house a gold mine of customer data. Yet uncovering those riches and putting them to good use can be as difficult as finding El Dorado. However, a wide variety of solutions providers now offer tools and services that can help your organization discover its own Lost City of Gold...

Feature Articles

ON THE COVER

CrowdControl Uses AI, Crowdsourcing to Analyze Big Data
A new company called CrowdControl is leveraging crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence to make sense of big data. Its solutions are used in everything from human sentiment analysis applications to keeping business listings up to date.

ON THE COVER

NICE Talk about Actionable Intelligence
NICE was founded in 1986 in Israel to address the compliance recording needs of the financial services industry. Today, NICE has approximately 24,000 customers globally, about half of which are in the Americas. That includes such big names as AAA, American Airlines, AT&T, Nationwide,T-Mobile, and US Bank.

CALL CENTER TECHNOLOGY

Intelliverse Makes a Comeback with New ION Platform
Intelliverse has been relatively quiet in terms of company messaging for the last three years. But the company recently opened the kimono on its new initiative called ION, which supports all Intelliverse services, including interactive voice response, automated call distribution, and VoIP.

Making Sense of Social Media
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn… everyone is on them, or so it seems, using these social networks to share their pictures and experiences with friends, family, colleagues, and by extension, the world. But what happens when those experiences are commentary on products or services from your business?

OPERATIONS AND MANAGEMENT

IvyTalk Spreads the Message
It you run an organization in which everybody is not on e-mail, you probably know just how difficult it can be to reach your employees quickly and easily should an urgent matter arise. However, a new company called IvyTalk - whose founders have roots in the cellular service provider and software worlds - aims to make it easier for businesses to communicate with their own employees, as well as with their customers and their suppliers.

Arcaris 'Gamifies' the Call Center
How do you engage call center workers and get them to give the job their all? The answer, according to Arcaris, is to make work like a game.

The Case for Remote Agents
Changing customer expectations require new ways of providing customer service. Companies are finding that using remote agents allows them to be more flexible, recruit highly-skilled agents, and save money. Technology exists to enable any company, of any size, in any geographic location, to utilize remote agents - it can require as little as a high-speed Internet connection, a computer, a phone, and a quiet environment (the last requirement may be the most challenging).

Fast, Cheap or Good - Pick Two?
In the past, picking two was good enough, but today's demanding consumers expect all three. In these times of tight budgets and entitled customers, how can we add real value to each customer interaction?

CRM, BPO & TELESERVICES

Driving Customer Loyalty in a Mobile World
In the last recent months, we've all watched as the mobile world rode out a roller coaster of announcements and technology glitches. It all began with the release of the iPhone 4s and Siri, which were met with mixed reactions yet high demand by consumers; then the RIM/BlackBerry outage that affected thousands of smartphone users; finally, the data problems with the iOS 5 software updates took hold of the media and consumers. One overarching issue that resonated: the need for quality customer service.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

TMC, Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine Congratulate CIS Product of the Year Award Winners
Customer Interaction Solutions magazine and its parent company, TMC, are proud to announce the winners of the CIS Product of the Year Awards.

OTHER ITEMS

Improving Agent Performance for the Multichannel Contact Center
Call centers aren’t what they used to be. Today’s customer inquiries come from every direction – from IVR platforms to e-mail, mobile support, chat, and the latest trend: social media.

Building Better Business Relationships, One Call at a Time
LKQ Corp. recently has improved its call center infrastructure and enabled collaboration, driving customer satisfaction and aggressive business growth at the company, which is the largest nationwide provider of aftermarket and recycled collision replacement parts products.

Columns

Publisher’s Outlook

Plantronics Headset Line Exudes UC DominanceGary and Mary West: Improving Health Care Through Disruption
Back in 1982 when my company TMC (I am CEO) launched the first magazine in the call center space, Plantronics was one of the few companies in the market, and almost 30 years later they have evolved into an organization delivering unified communications endpoints for virtually every segment of the market.

HIGH PRIORITY!

Social Media is Responsible Business
I recently had a conversation with Christian Goffi and Andrew Maher from Avaya (see my story in this issue, titled Making Sense of Social Media). Among the key takeaways from that conversation, corroborating my own previous beliefs, was the notion that, while not every business has to implement a social media strategy right away, they must understand their own social media presence, both from an internal and external perspective. In other words, they have to address the question of social media rather than ignoring it.

Ask the Experts

The Business Value of Consolidating and Centralizing Communications
Increasingly powerful servers. Robust IP infrastructures. Innovative design. Call it the new roadmap to consolidated contact center architectures and more centralized configurations. Along with reducing the number of applications and physical boxes to be administered and maintained, consolidation can potentially reduce the number of system and user licenses necessary in a contact center. Consequently, cost savings is an achievable and evident benefit.

Logout

Proposed Legislation Would Discourage Call Center Offshoring
If a bill introduced last month by U.S. Reps. Tim Bishop (D, NY-1) and Dave McKinley (R, WV-1) is passed, domestic companies that locate their call centers overseas would lose the ability to get federal grants and loans, would be kept on a list at the U.S. Department of Labor, and would have to be able transfer callers to onshore call center representatives upon customer request.