CUSTOMER INTER@CTION SOLUTIONS — JULY 2011

Calabrio's App-Based Performance Solutions

There are new ways of enabling contact centers to provide superior performance through technology. The first is cloud/hosting delivery that offers flexibility and upgrades at low or no capital costs...

Feature Articles

Call Center Technology

Serving The Empowered Customer
Today’s customers are empowered; they control the business conversations with vastly increased ability to find out information on products, services and suppliers and, through social media, to influence others’ buying decisions, not just their own. They know they are invaluable and cannot be ignored by companies in today’s slowly growing economy. Therefore they want – and rightly so – high quality service in realtime.

CRM, BPO & TELESERVICES

The Coming of Social/CRM Convergence
A little over a decade ago e-mail, chat and the Web became viable customer interaction channels and impacted CRM, classified as “eCRM”. They offered an exciting and useful new interaction option to phone calls, faxes, “snail mail”, paper catalogs and in-person retail and meetings. Yet while these text-based “e” means took over some of the customer conversations, most continued on the other channels – the newer and older methods gradually became integrated, and with this eCRM converged with CRM.

Operations and Management

Creating Winning Performance
Contact centers need to work even harder to create winning performances. A slow-growth economy, financial pressures and rightfully demanding customers are forcing the bar upwards.

Awards and Recgonition

2011 IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer Awards
Customer Interaction Solutions realizes that technology is the key to success of every contact center, and we have been editorially detailing the evolution of contact center and CRM technologies for our readers for the past 30 years.

Columns

Publisher’s Outlook

Avaya's Support Strategy Emulates Successful Cancer Diagnostic Systems
It is an unusual occurrence for me to receive a call from any company to discuss their support. Generally, the media gets all warm and fuzzy about tangible things, like new product launches, scoops and items you can put in the category of breaking news. Ironically, though, if you ask most companies what differentiates them from the pack, service and support is typically the most common answer. Yet, I can't remember other companies asking me to meet their new head of global services.

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In Hiring, To Avoid 'Big Brother' Quit Being 'Nasty Sister'
"In order to be prepared to complete our online pre-screen questionnaire and application you will need your address history for the past seven years…"

HIGH PRIORITY!

Why Your Business Must Form a Social Media Strategy Today
There has been an unworldly volume of social media related content filling the pages of media sites of late – and you’ve certainly read a fair amount within the pages of Customer Interaction Solutions as well over the past 18 months.

Ask the Experts

The New Customer Service Model in Insurance: Enabled by Unified Insurance Solutions
Some insurers are able to realize service excellence in one line of business or in a single functional area. The key to "great" customer service, however, is being able to effectively provide it across the the entire business with consistent, timely communications between policyholders and the organization. Do so, and customer retention improves.

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9-11-01 to 5-01-11…
We were commuting from our then-home on Staten Island to midtown Manhattan, riding on the M6 bus from the ferry when the driver stared through his rear view mirror and screamed, "The World Trade is on fire!" We ran to the left side of the bus, craned our eyes upward and saw the smoke billow from the north tower.

Case Study

The Hosting Experience
Hosting, also called cloud-deployed software, is becoming a much-discussed and tested option to buying, installing and maintaining/upgrading contact center solutions on premises servers. The benefits include increased flexibility and scalability, low or no upfront costs, reduced upgrades and support costs and business continuity/disaster recovery.

Innovative Solutions

8 Healthy Habits for Highly Effective Call Centers
Customers want their problems resolved efficiently and without the hassle of being transferred - or worse, having to call back. Executives expect call center managers to figure out a way to have agents improve their First Contact Resolution rate, but without losing any recent efficiency gains.