Take The
Interactive Co-Sourcing Challenge
By
Martha Lanaghen, Center Partners
Under pressure to strengthen customer relationships and cut costs, most
teleservices managers carefully monitor their contact center services.
Looking for greater efficiency, they implement new programs and measure the
results. Especially during the last decade, techniques and technologies for
performance monitoring and analysis have exploded. Even many small contact
centers have developed sophisticated programs to detect inconsistency and
pinpoint weakness, and they have indeed driven costs down.
Do Not Call:
The Gathering Storm?
By Joe Sanscrainte, Call Compliance
On July 29th, 2003, the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) released its final rules regarding the fees to be imposed on
entities accessing its Do Not Call (DNC) registry. This is the last piece
of a complex puzzle that first began being assembled in November of 1999.
Now, some three years and eight months later, this article attempts to
provide some insight into how the pieces of the puzzle fit (or in some
cases, do not fit) together.
RE:
LOCATIONS:
Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania
By James Beatty, NCS International, Inc.
What do you think of when Pittsburgh is mentioned? Perhaps smokestacks,
foundries and steel mills come to mind. Years ago, that would have been
true. Now as they say, 'Pittsburgh Is On It.' Today, it's more accurate to
think of CRM, high-tech, info tech, fiber optics, life sciences, logistics
and research and development. The 'New Pittsburgh Region,' as they refer
to themselves, has been transformed.
The CEO Spotlight
This month, the editors of Customer Inter@ction Solutions' feature the
comments of Bill Meade, president and CEO of StarTek, Inc. (www.startek.com).
Executive Roundtable
At the executive roundtable this month is Tom Cardella, CEO of Precision
Response Corporation, an outsourced provider of consumer care services
headquartered in Plantation, Florida.
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DEPARTMENTS
Publisher's Outlook
Assuming the Telemar-keting Sales Rule (TSR)
survives several lawsuits filed against it, one of which questions its
constitutionality, one must consider compliance. I must admit that this
unfortunate legislation has already created several major problems, as
follows:
High Priority!
Like most people, I seldom look forward to embarking on a writing project,
but having just returned from a whirlwind tour of the Northeast and
California, I welcome a few minutes off my feet. I spent much of my time
in Silicon Valley and have positive news to report, as things seem to be
picking up in this veritable primordial soup of technological innovation.
Whereas last year I saw a lack of traffic on the freeways, this time I was
stuck in three jams in four days (this is good news, really). Where there
was once pessimism among the companies in this area, I am seeing cautious
optimism due to increases in sales and RFPs. One thing that hasn't changed
is the for lease signs, which may have even increased since my last visit.
Of course, this can simply be credited to overbuilding during the Internet
and telecom bubbles.
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