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 September 2008 | Volume 27 / Number 4
Customer Interaction News
Customer Interaction NewsConvergys to Buy Intervoice (News - Alert) 
Convergys has purchased Intervoice, a software
and professional services firm with voice portal,
IP contact center, hosted and mobile messaging,
and self-service applications for $335 million.
Convergys (News - Alert) says that by integrating Intervoice’s
complementary speech automation, Web selfcare
and mobile applications, it will be able to
offer a comprehensive array of automated and
live agent services. Intervoice’s extensive global
channel and technology partnerships and sales
presence also provide Convergys with crossselling
opportunities. That will enable the company
to penetrate deeper into current markets
and access new markets and geographies. Nuance (News - Alert)’s New SmartListener Enhances Speech Rec Apps Nuance has launched its new SmartListener
software technology that will enhance automated
speech applications at contact centers. Using
SmartListener a speech rec system can better
focus on the concept behind caller’s words and
decipher caller’s actual request. SmartListener
does this by recognizing out-of-grammar
inputs, enabling the system to identify the caller
requests correctly the first time more frequently.
The system then adapts to a larger variety of
more natural responses from callers. SmartListener
uses Nuance’s Adaptive Grammar Engine
to transform the grammar versions of an existing
speech solution into adaptive grammars. Downturn Slowing U.S. Contact Center Expansion The U.S. economic downturn has led to a
slowdown in contact center job creation, reports
the Site Selection Group. There has been a yearto-
date decrease of 27,189 new jobs to July 2008
as compared to July 2007 with 1,990 jobs in July
displaced at 11 facilities closing or downsizing.
At the same time there continues to be stable
growth in key offshore markets as well as at strategic
domestic locations. The global net effect has
been a monthly increase of 3,015 jobs displaced
as compared to June 2008, 9,725 new jobs created
at 16 facilities opening or expanding, and
an increase of 134 new jobs as compared to June
2008. There has been a year-to-date increase of
9,122 jobs displaced as compared to 2007. Philippines Contact Centers Look Beyond U.S. For Clients The Contact Center Association of the Philippines
(CCAP) has reported that local contact
centers are tapping other English-speaking
markets, such as Australia, Canada, and the UK
as the economic slowdown is impacting growth
from contact center operations for U.S.-based
companies. The U.S. market accounts for about
90 percent of the total Philippine industry
clientele. Jojo Uligan, CCAP executive director,
noted that while there may be reduced demand
in certain U.S. industries, the need to reduce
costs may actually lead to more outsourced
work to countries such as The Philippines. Do Not Call Works Fine: FTC (News - Alert) The federal Do Not Call (DNC) registry
may be a mixed bag for some telemarketers
and teleservices firms but from the consumers’
and regulatory standpoints the DNC has
worked well. The Federal Trade Commission
told Congress July 10 that more than 145
million phone numbers have been registered
by the end of FY 2007, which occurred
September 30, 2007, up from 132 million
numbers at the end of FY 2006. Consumers
are getting fewer unwanted calls while complaints
have been low and compliance high. The FTC received complaints totaling approximately
0.3 percent of the total number
of registered telephone numbers at the end
of FY 2007. The DNC registry has now been
made permanent, with consumers no longer
having to renew their registrations. Soffront CRM Supports Multiple Currencies Soffront Software now provides multicurrency
support in version 8.7 of its CRM
software. This feature increases efficiency of
sales teams in conducting business globally
using worldwide currencies. Multi-currency
support is available in all Soffront modules,
including sales, forecasting, quotes and
invoices, and reporting. Customers can
select a currency as their corporate currency
to run monthly, quarterly, and annual
reports for the enterprise. Yet sales teams
in different countries can still manage all
of their quotes and opportunities in their
local currency. A European sales team can
create quotes and opportunities in the euro,
a Canadian team can use Canadian dollars,
and a United States team can use U.S.
dollars while a U.S. VP of Sales can analyze
their forecasts in U.S. dollars. Soffront uses
this feature for its own operations; the firm
is headquartered in Thailand. OrecX Launches Open Source IP Recording OrecX LLC, a purveyor of open source voice
recording solutions, formally announced its
Oreka Total Recording (TR) software solution.
The solution takes advantage of open
source to enable more efficient contact center
deployments. The Oreka solution offers
several levels of recording capability including
the ability to record all calls, or initiate
on-demand or selective recording. Contact
center managers have the option of listening
in to live calls for the purposes of monitoring
employees for training and the like. The
solution passively listens to network packets
as it records VoIP SIP sessions. Both sides
of the call are then mixed together, and each
resulting audio file is logged separately. Compliance Coach Partners with Identity Theft Resource Center Compliance Coach has partnered with the
Identity Theft Resource Center, Inc. to
jointly promote each other’s services to combat
identity theft. They will also raise awareness
among the business community for the need
to comply with the FACT Act Identity Theft
Red Flags Rule by November 1, 2008. The
Federal regulation imposes new responsibilities
on businesses to prevent consumer identity
theft. Each affected entity must perform a
risk assessment, identify covered accounts and
applicable red flags, then map the red flags
to detection and response procedures and
implement a written identity theft prevention
program. They must also train staff and
update the program periodically and report on
its effectiveness. Earlier this year Compliance Coach launched CompliancePal, a Web-based
software that uses a unique five-step system to
facilitate compliance with the Red Flags Rule.
The CompliancePal software enables companies
to comply more quickly,
and with less effort. CallRex Saves ARM (News - Alert) Firm Thousands Of Dollars Telrex’s CallRex suite of
IP call recording and call
center optimization products
has saved accounts receivable
management (ARM)
firm Evergreen Professional
Recoveries tens of thousands
of dollars. The solution closed off agent
training, compliance, and dispute resolution
gaps, as calls are now recorded and archived
through an Inter-Tel (News - Alert) 5000 IP telephone
system using CallRex Professional software.
Evergreen Professional Recoveries president
Ken Ross said that call recording has headed
off at least two frivolous lawsuits in the past
three months, which would have cost it at
least $10,000 in fees. Prior to CallRex his
firm had no recourse when lawyers were calling
with claims. It became a ‘he said, she said’
situation where there was no hard evidence to
base a decision or dispute on. Asia-Pacific Contact Center Industry To Keep Growing: Frost The current economic slump in the
United States has not had a major impact
on the market for contact center solutions
in Asia-Pacific according to Frost
& Sullivan. Its new report on this topic:
Asia Pacific Contact Center Applications
Market, finds that the revenues in the
contact center applications market covering 14
Asia-Pacific countries rose 12.2 percent year-onyear
in 2007 to $665.4 million and is expected
to show 14.2 percent growth this year. In 2007,
contact centers from all Asia-Pacific countries
except Philippines increased their investment
on infrastructure and business applications to
improve their services. Japan topped the market
with 24.9 percent ($165.5 million), followed
by India at 17.8 percent ($118.6 million) and
Australia at 15.3 percent ($101.7 million). The
research firm cited high priority for customer service in Asia, leading to the demand for more
sophisticated applications such as quality monitoring,
voice portals and analytics solutions. Metro One (News - Alert) Introduces Internal Do Not Call List Hygiene Product Companies and non-profit organizations
engaged in telemarketing efforts now have a
convenient way to cleanse their internal do-notcall
lists. Metro One Telecommunications (News - Alert)’ new
Internal Do-Not-Call (IDNC) Cleanse product
helps telemarketers by identifying numbers in
their internal do-not-call files that have been
surrendered, and returning those numbers to
the pool of active prospects. The firm says that
until now there has been no systematic way to
update internal do-not-call lists, leaving telemarketers
with a growing file of restricted numbers
even though many of those numbers have
been reassigned. The IDNC Cleanse leverages
Metro One’s Historical Directory Assistance
Listings database and its ability to handle rapid,
large-scale data processing. Get The 'Performance Edge' In eLearning, Hiring 
PerformanceEdge, from Aspect (News - Alert) Software
now offers PerformanceEdge eLearning and
PerformanceEdge Job Match. These two
solutions will enable contact centers to get
an edge in agent recruitment, retention, and
training and in contact center productivity.
Designed to improve training and coaching,
PerformanceEdge (News - Alert) eLearning delivers the right
content at the right time to agents and supervisors,
while PerformanceEdge Job Match
is a Web-based job screening application designed
for contact centers. These capabilities will help customers overcome the difficult
task of lowering hiring costs and improving
agent retention and skills, ultimately enabling
their contact centers to deliver improved
customer service, collections and sales. Both
tools will be available a Software as a Service,
which won praise from Paul Stockford,
president and chief analyst at Saddletree Research.
He said Aspect is making eLearning
capabilities easily accessible to its customers
and speeding the adoption process of this essential
performance optimization application. Hotels, Retail, Onshore Outscore Cable/Satellite,
PC Firms, Offshore: Satisfaction Study www.cfigroup.com Diamond Resorts International Selects Noble Diamond Resorts International has selected
Noble Systems Corporation’s Noble Solution
for blended inbound and outbound contact
management in its new 177-seat membership
sales and service center. Noble’s unified
system is expected to give it a single platform to
increase the productivity and efficiency of their
contact center. The Noble Enterprise solution
provides tools to manage telemarketing, customer
service and reservations, and collections
in one integrated package. Noble combines
features including predictive dialing, blended
inbound routing, appointment setting, automated
messaging, IVR, and account ownership,
with an integrated database and a complete
suite of quality monitoring, management, and reporting tools in a scalable, open environment. Toshiba (News - Alert) Debuts Largest-Ever Strata CIX IP Switch 
Toshiba has unveiled the newest and biggest
member of its family of Strata CIX IP-enabled
switches, the Strata CIX1200. Its main features
include 1,152 ports, networking with up to 128
sites, and 200 to 1,000 users network capacity.
Prior to the CIX1200 the largest such unit was
the CIX670. The Strata CIX1200 offers quality
and reliability in an affordable IP system that
supports medium-to-large companies. It allows
networking up to a total of 128 sites and can
accommodate larger capacity or distributed
configurations. That makes the CIX1200 an
ideal solution for a headquarters’ site that is
networked to small or remote contact centers,
or to offices or retail/restaurant locations as informal
centers. When used along with Toshiba’s
FeatureFlex adaptability and customization
tool, the CIX1200 offers smooth migration
path from smaller Toshiba systems. South African Contact Center Industry: Will Growth Match Goals? South Africa’s outsourced contact center industry
is experiencing the growth, but it may not reach
the government’s targets. A study by Frost &
Sullivan predicts the total number of outsourced
seats will reach about 60,000 in the next five to
seven years, yet the government has a goal of
100,000 by 2009. The current number of outsourced
seats in South Africa is estimated to be
between 24,000 and 25,000. According to the
research organization the government needs to
re-evaluate its value propositions to maintain
strong growth rates. While the government is
supportive of the sector some industry organizations
feel it is slow and bureaucratic. Labor
costs are also shooting up. In response Frost
says the country must invest in skills training to contain a high attrition rate and must address
a belief in the market that South African telecoms
costs are amongst the highest in the world. Comm, Financial Services Better At Customer Service: Study A study commissioned by Genesys (News - Alert) Communications
Laboratories revealed that communication
and financial services companies are
doing a better job at using customer service as
a strategic differentiator than other companies.
One common characteristic is the strong likelihood
that companies not currently using an IPbased
contact center will likely implement one
in the next two to three years. The study found
that 66 percent of financial services companies,
45 percent of communications companies, 58
percent of utilities and 83 percent of healthcare
companies not using the technology are moving
toward IP installations. SoundBite Intros New Collections Platform SoundBite Communications (News - Alert) has released a new
product, Intelligent Communications Platform
for Collections. It incorporates field-proven
technology to help organizations maximize
profits, accelerate debt recovery and mitigate risk.
Its SoundBite Hold Queue and FastConnect
features improves agent utilization through increased
direct connect success rates and reduced
hold times. They eliminate ring time and hold
times associated with dialing an agent, which
reduces abandoned calls. The platform also has
new features enhance agent productivity and
enable virtual contact center operations. Using
SoundBite’s Agent Skill Group capabilities,
organizations can more easily leverage dispersed
agents across their entire enterprise and place
their best agents on their best accounts.  CIS Magazine Table of Contents |
