In Focus
Improve Your Call Center With An
Ergonomics Makeover
By Steven D. Rudnik, Magnitude Information
Systems, Inc.
Every new call center worth
its salt should be designed with ergonomic considerations in mind. But
what about existing call centers? Must they undergo an expensive redesign
and be rebuilt from the ground up to meet current ergonomics standards?
No, experts say. Instead, call center managers can perform an
"ergonomics makeover," an easier solution that can achieve most
of the benefits of a full redesign at a fraction of the cost.
Teleservices
Outsourcing
Teleservices Agencies 2000: Who's Who
With the growing pressures both
internal and external to hold on to your current customers as well as
acquire new ones, and the amount of customer interactions increasing daily
through e-mail, Web chat and voice over IP, it's no wonder that your
internal call center may be overloaded. If so, outsourcing to a
teleservices partner may be the answer to your prayers. Learn who's who in
the industry and use this guide as a resource to help you find the
outsourcer to best fit your business' needs.
Customer
Relationship Management
CRM Throughout The Enterprise: How To Make It Happen
By Tim Guleri, Octane Software
We are all familiar with
the reasons for getting closer to our customers to improve their
satisfaction and retention -- the costs of acquiring a new customer far
outweigh the costs of retaining an existing customer; decreasing customer
defection by as little as five percentage points could double profits. To
achieve high customer retention rates, companies have been striving to
reconnect with customers to build personal relationships with each
customer.
Raising The Standards: A Commitment To
Multivendor CRM Solutions
By Kim Mackay, Lucent Technologies
Overarching business strategies
like CRM focus on bringing the intellectual capital of an entire
enterprise to bear on customer interactions, so they must have flexibility
and diversity at their very core. To properly align the many disparate
departments within an enterprise -- from the back- office through multiple
customer interactions to final product or service fulfillment -- requires
the use of flexible, open-standards-based technologies that work easily
within existing infrastructures in all areas of an enterprise.
E-Sales--E-Service.com
One Very Happy Customer
By Marc Robins, Associate Group Publisher,
[email protected] CENTER CRM Solutions�
We have often written in
the pages of this magazine about the many challenges facing a company
looking to provide a first-rate e-sales and e-service experience for
customers. We have covered the bad and the ugly, detailing the e-sales
disservices of e-commerce companies that, by all appearances, seem intent
on providing the worst customer experience imaginable. [email protected] CENTER CRM
Solutions� Associate Group Publisher would like to bring to light
one company that has perfected the customer experience.
E-Sales -- E-Service.com News
Internet Telephony Transforms The Call Center
By Sandra Reese, Natural MicroSystems
The call center is currently
going through an "e-volution." Call centers are beginning to
expand their service beyond providing or taking information. The ultimate
goal of these new customer contact centers is to interactively service the
customer and make every interaction a positive, responsive experience --
to create what might be termed "customer joy." To achieve this
level of customer service, next-generation customer contact applications
and services must bridge existing internal networks, including traditional
PBXs, with the vast Internet world.
The Next Wave: Internet Technology In The Call Center
By Murray Bookman, Cisco Systems, Inc.
To meet growing customer
expectations for multimedia interaction -- and remain competitive -- your
company's call center operation must ride the wave of Internet technology
change. Internet communication channels such as Web collaboration, Web
callback, chat, e-mail and video kiosk are available today and fast
becoming mainstream interaction channels.
Building The
Perfect Call Center
The Evolution Of The PBX In The Call Center
By David Perez, COM2001.com
Today's fast-paced, mobile
workforce has needs that go well beyond the conventional digital PBX.
Workers must be able to access and manage their communications on the fly,
and at a moment's notice -- from anywhere in the world. But it was not
always so. The author looks at the telephone systems of yesterday, today
and tomorrow.
CRM Excellence Awards
TMC� Award Winners Celebrate At Communications Solutions� EXPO
At the recent Communications
Solutions EXPO in Washington, D.C., Technology Marketing Corp. (TMC)
hosted a dinner to honor recipients of the first-annual CRM Excellence
Awards. The award is designed to honor companies with innovative products
that have furthered Customer Relationship Management.
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DEPARTMENTS
Publisher's
Outlook
High Priority
Technology Highlights
Call Center News
TMC LABS
MATRAnet's M>WebTouch Mercom
System's IntellAgents2000
More and more tools are being
developed to help companies improve customer service and sales on their
Web sites. One of these products comes from MATRAnet, which has released
its new version of its M>WebTouch product. The TMC� Labs engineers
also tested IntellAgents2000 from Mercom Systems, Inc., a solution
designed for call recording, agent performance and the evaluation of these
processes.
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