TMCnews Featured Article

Avtex, a provider of integrated, interaction technology solutions, recently revealed that in conjunction with Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert), both companies will be hosting a seminar series titled, ‘Trends in the Contact Center.’ This informative event will be the first of seven seminars that will begin in Atlanta with Michele Rowan of Contact Center Strategies, as the keynote speaker.

Each event that follows will have a different focus on one of three major contact center trends including remote agent strategies, communication technology innovations and best practices in social media.

The featured presenter Michele Rowan was previously the head of performance management for Hilton Reservations and Customer Care, and now holds the title of president and CEO of the consulting group, Customer Contact Strategies. Customer Contact Strategies is an organization that helps to integrate At-Home agents with contact centers.

“We’ve clearly moved into the era of the empowered customer,” Rowan said. “Companies need to move beyond thinking only about cost and efficiency. Today, it’s about enabling customer interaction across multiple touch points and connecting on their terms. With cloud, the Internet, social computing and advanced methods of communication, there are affordable options for companies of all sizes. It’s becoming not so much a matter of “if” a remote agent strategy is right, the question to ask is, “when?”

As part of the series, Interactive Intelligence will speak about potential opportunities and best practices when utilizing social media within the contact center. Many organizations continue to avoid social media completely, as they are not completely sure how to go about integrating it into daily business practices. Interactive Intelligence will talk about how social media is becoming a mandatory media for communications and will show consumers the most effective ways to leverage social tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (News - Alert) and YouTube without risking distraction and lost productivity, according to a press release.

“Each point of interaction impacts the total customer experience,” said Owen Robinson, vice president of Contact Center Solutions for Avtex (News - Alert). “As the use of mobile devices and social media become more prevalent, contact centers have to adapt to new ways of communicating. This seminar series gives us an opportunity to share some of the valuable lessons we’ve learned while showcasing new contact center technologies and best practices.”

The third part of the presentation, a Technology Innovations showcase, will be led by the Avtex team who will expose the latest communication and collaboration technology trends, as well as demonstrate new software applications that help to elevate the level of client interactions.

New software innovations that the team will demonstrate include Interaction Portal which essentially is a unified agent desktop that can provide access to any information needed to help answer a question; Elle, a knowledge explorer that offers agents new ways to look at data;  Video Kiosk which enables companies to provide high-touch service by routing video call requests directly into the contact center and Voice Analytics which has the functionality to respond in real-time to key words that are spoken to and by call center agents.