Call center software provider Zeacom has reportedly launched a new U.S. Associate Channel Manager Program to provide its reseller and channel partners with additional training and resources for sales development, customer service and support. 

 

Before going live in the field, Zeacom Associate Channel Managers (ACMs) must complete an eight-week training program including courses entitled “Call Center 101,” “UC 101,” “Fundamentals of Telephony,” “ZCC Product Training,” “Customer-Centric Sales & Presentation Techniques,” “ROI and How to Measure It” and “Channel Engagement.”

Upon completion of the training, ACMs will be deployed in the U.S. cities of Irvine, Calif.; Seattle, Wash.; Denver, Colo.; Houston, Texas; Lexington, Ky.; Minneapolis, Minn., Hoboken, N.J.; Manhattan, N.Y.; Charlotte, N.C.; and West Palm Beach, Fla., the company reports.

“A key driver for Zeacom’s success is our ongoing commitment to customer service, and a belief that a sales cycle continues long after a deal closes,” said Zeacom Vice President of Sales Brady Cox (News - Alert) in a release. “Upon completion of our intensive training regimen, Associate Channel Managers will be dispatched across the country to support Zeacom’s current Channel Partners.”

 

“We understand that in an economic environment characterized by instability and volatility, sales teams must perform in a manner that is nothing short of exceptional,” Cox added. “We are relentless in our effort to provide our partners with the best possible training, support and other resources they need to succeed, as evidenced by our investment in the Zeacom ACM Program.”

Zeacom’s award-winning unified communications platform, Zeacom Communications Center (ZCC), is sold to enterprises exclusively through partners and value-added resellers (VARs) that have direct distribution channels to users of Avaya, Cisco (News - Alert) and NEC telephony platforms.

Unified communications is seeing rapid adoption in both the enterprise and the SMB, as organizations come to recognize its ability to reduce communications costs, improve customer service, increase collaboration and boost employee productivity.

While it has been challenging to prove UC’s benefits tangibly, let alone monetarily, a recent report from market research firm Aberdeen (News - Alert) Group concludes that it does deliver measurable business value. The report, "Unified Communications: Gaining a Competitive Advantage While on the Move," finds that 79 percent of companies surveyed achieved a break-even return on their UC investment within the first 12 months. The savings was realized by streamlining internal and external communications, maximizing telecom spend, increasing productivity through improved collaboration, and reducing customer churn through increased customer responsiveness.

 

Companies participating in the survey reported that UC had increased knowledge sharing among the workforce by 35 percent, increased workplace flexibility by 35 percent, improved their organization's competitive performance by 25 percent, increased collaboration for decision making by 16 percent, and accelerated speed of conflict resolution by 11 percent, on average.

 

Zeacom’s ZCC platform delivers a full suite of UC features and capabilities, including “presence,” which is the ability to view the availability status of other users on the network. In addition the platform is fully standards-based, which means it interoperates with a wide range of other systems – including Microsoft (News - Alert) Office Communicator as well as a slew of other telephony and CRM systems. Zeacom is a Gold member of the Avaya DevConnect program, thus its solutions are fully compatible with Avaya IP phone systems.

Typically companies deploy Zeacom’s ZCC solution in the call center first, but once they discover the cost savings and productivity-enhancing features it brings, they often decide to deploy it across the entire organization. The solution is ideal for companies with geographically-dispersed call centers and locations.

 

In the release, Bill Carden, a Zeacom Associate Channel Manager and recent college graduate who is now working in Manhattan, said the Associate Channel Manager Program “presented a unique opportunity to fast-track my career into a position that what would normally take several years (working in a related field) to reach. Also, Zeacom’s corporate culture is exactly what you look for as a professional – a chance to work for a stable company that sells an exciting new technology, and is committed to the success of its enthusiastic team.”

Last week Zeacom announced that it now offers a direct gateway for Avaya IP Office and Communications Manager users to Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2.

That means a company running an Avaya IP PBX (News - Alert) for corporate-wide telephony and Zeacom ZCC in its call center can integrate both those systems with Microsoft OCS and pick and choose the features and capabilities that are desired from each system – whether it be presence, conferencing, mobility, single-click access to voicemail, or process automation. What’s more, UC features and functionality can be customized to match the needs of each department or each individual user in the organization.