Hosted Customer Care Solutions: Are They Gaining Traction?

Ken Landoline
Program Manager, Customer-Centric Strategies
Yankee Group

Ken Landoline is Program Manager, Customer-Centric Strategies at Yankee Group. Prior to joining Yankee Group, he was an analyst with Robert Frances Group and Giga Information Group (now Forrester Research), where he developed voice telephony services and created industry-leading research on voice and data convergence and technology evolution in the telecommunications marketplace. In these roles, he advised many Fortune 2000 end-user companies, vendors and investment institutions on the development and implementation of telecommunications systems and services, with special emphasis on multichannel contact centers, speech applications and VoIP technology. Prior to becoming an industry analyst Landoline spent 20 years holding a variety of management positions in the telecommunications industry at Siemens Business Communications, AT&T Large Business Systems (now Avaya) and Fujitsu. He held management positions in marketing and product management, focusing on strategic planning, distribution and market segmentation strategies for the business telephone systems divisions of these global telecommunication companies. Ken earned a B.A. degree from Rutgers College and an M.B.A. from Seton Hall University.

Carole Altman
Software as a Service (SaaS) Product Manager
Interactive Intelligence

Carole Altman serves as the Software as a Service (SaaS) Product Manager for Interactive Intelligence where she is accountable for overall communication and profitability of the SaaS (Hosted Solutions) offering. A seasoned IT and Telecom industry veteran, Carole previously served as a Global Product manager with Avaya. While there she introduced Unified Communications Center version 1.0 and acted as product manager for Contact Center Express/ Customer Interaction Express. For the six years prior, Carole was Director of Business Development-Wireless Products at Southwestern Bell, introducing a wireless cordless phone and the first pre-paid wireless offering.

Carole was also the Trade Commissioner for Canada opening up the first Mountain States Canadian Consulate General office in Denver, Colorado in 2004. She has an MBA in Marketing and resides in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

Stephen Kowarsky
EVP
CosmoCom, Inc.

Stephen R. Kowarsky is the Executive Vice President and one of the founders of CosmoCom. He came to CosmoCom from Comverse Technology, which he joined in early 1985 as its second U.S. employee after a distinguished career in software development and IT management. At both Comverse and CosmoCom, Mr. Kowarsky has played a key role in major account selling, key relationship management, product strategy and positioning, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property. He now has primary responsibility for CosmoCom’s marketing communication activities. He is an industry authority and thought leader on the subjects of Unified Customer Communications and Consolidation 2.0.

Ali Giacomin
Product Director
Qwest Communications

Ali Giacomin is product director for contact center solutions for Qwest Communications. In this role, Ali leads a team that develops and produces call center-related services for business customers of varying sizes. Ali and her team are responsible for product development, pricing and marketing for Qwest’s network hosted ACD and IVR product suites as well as voice services. Over her 9 year career with Qwest, Ali has held several positions at Qwest. Prior to her current role, she was product director for transport services including SONET, Wavelengths and Ethernet offerings.

Prior to joining Qwest, Ali was a Senior Manager at MCI where she led a team of individuals that helped develop a CRM warehouse for the Consumer Markets division of the company. She was also a lead consultant for Accenture. Ali earned an MBA from Kellogg at Northwestern University.