Voice of the Customer

Useful Vendor Specific Blogs/Forums

Moderated by: Jason Alley, Vanguard Communications

Here are a few contact center vendor specific blogs/forums you may find useful:

User Community Sites

These are my personal favorites, as the content is authored by various end users (and the occasional vendor resource looking to interact with end users).

Avaya

Community for Avaya Users

Cisco

Networking Professional (Unified Communications and Video, Contact Center)

Genesys

Better Interactions

DevZone

Genesys CTI Users Forum

Interactive Intelligence

Interactive Community

There are other information sharing resources available to members of vendor user groups.  The above are just a few public sites that I’ve run across.

Vendor Industry Sites

These provide some interesting information, but expect the usual marketing, positioning slants.

Angel.com

IVR Blog

Aspect

Contact Center: Unplugged

Avaya

The Blog

Cisco

Blogs@Cisco (Collaboration, Contact Center)

Genesys

GenesysWire

Nuance

the entitled consumer

TuVox

TuVox Speech Central

Are there other vendor specific blog/forum sites that you have run across?

Let me know if any of these links end up helping you out.

Case Study: Why UC Strategy is a Must

Moderated by: Jason Alley, Vanguard Communications

There doesn’t seem to be any doubt that Unified Communications (UC) is the next big thing.  However, is UC relevant to Contact Center investment decisions being made today? 

In a recent No Jitter posting, “UC Strategy Impacts Today’s PBX/ACD Decision,” a case study reveals some interesting insight on this topic.  You’ll see why I am passionate about the idea that every enterprise should have a UC Strategy in place before making major PBX/ACD decisions. 

Click here to read the posting and submit your thoughts, ideas.

Case Study: A Common (Sense?) Process Improvement Opportunity in the Contact Center

Moderated by: Linda Van Doren, Vanguard Communications

“This is the way we’ve always done it.”  How often is that the answer when you ask the question: “Why do you do it like that?”

Contact centers (and organizations, and individuals, for that matter), have different tolerance levels for change.  Some organizations are nimble and can quickly incorporate newness and change quickly into their business models.  Other organizations struggle to change the way things are done (anyone remember how difficult going from F keys to drop-downs were for some agents?).  No matter where your contact center is on that spectrum, there are always opportunities to examine processes and to improve especially broken ones.

Rule Breaking Behavior

Moderated by:  Anne Keefer, Vanguard Communications

Elaine Cascio’s post, “When Rules are Meant to be Broken” brought back memories of the days when I was a call center agent and a manager.  In my time in the call center I was faced with some fairly tough company issues; bottled water recalls, hurricane relief and support, video game violence, and missed warning labels.

Performance Management Optimization Case Study

Moderated by: Jason Alley, Vanguard Communications

We all know what it’s like to be buried under statistics and reports that do little to really illustrate for us what the customer experience with our business is and how agents are contributing to the success of the business.  Customer service agents likely have the truest ‘pulse’ on what this reality is, and we need to figure out how to fully empower them to do their jobs.

In a recent No Jitter posting, “Agent Metrics: Less is More…Sometimes,” a case study reveals some interesting insight regarding agent behavior and how one company shifted gears to seize an opportunity to boost agent performance.  I’d love to hear your reactions.  Click here to read the posting and submit your thoughts, ideas.

READY-SET-COLLABORATE

When Rules are Meant to be Broken

Moderated by: Elaine Cascio, Vanguard Communications

My partner’s son was in a horrible accident several weeks ago and is still hospitalized out of state. My small bit of assistance in all he’s going through is to deal with airlines and car rentals as he’s been forced to extend his stay several times.  The good news?  Delta airlines has been understanding, accommodating and compassionate. They’ve changed, cancelled and rebooked his reservation several times and waived any fees because of the circumstances. Unfortunately, the agents I spoke with at the car rental agency were trained to do everything by the book.  In the course of speaking with six agents and supervisors, only one agent extended the rental without demanding to speak to the “primary driver.”

Disruptive Technologies Changing the Game in the Contact Center

Moderated by: Jason Alley, Vanguard Communications

In a recent No Jitter posting, “Wii Economics in the Contact Center,” I share a realization that came to me after making a connection between the impact of the (Nintendo) Wii on the gaming industry and the impact of Unified Communications on the Enterprise Voice and Contact Center markets.  Links to YouTube videos have been included to help give you a feel for the Wii if you haven’t yet experienced it first hand.  I’d love to get your reactions.  Click here to read the posting and submit your thoughts, ideas.

READY-SET-COLLABORATE

The End of the PBX (Again?)

Moderated by: David Powis, Vanguard Communications

As you can probably imagine, the VoiceCon conference last week was buzzing about ‘all presence/UC/collaboration, all the time’.  But my aha! moment came pretty early in the week’s events.  I was sitting in a presentation that gave an overview and comparison between Microsoft’s OCS solution and IBM’s SameTime solution, both Unified Communications platforms (and more).  What struck me about the session was that these were two completely non-telephony companies (in the traditional sense) talking about how their solutions can bring voice to the desktop (along with many other things) with basic, off the shelf SIP phones from a third party.  Sure, this has been possible in theory for the bleeding edge and brave among us, but does anyone doubt that 2-3 years from now this stuff will be a ‘real’ solution?

The Seven Ps

Moderated by: Jason Alley, Vanguard Communications

At today’s Contact Center Executive Forum at VoiceCon, the moderator asked supplier executives about top end user pain points during implementation.  In response, one of the suppliers acknowledged that there can sometimes be a disconnect between customer requirements and what ultimately gets configured, implemented.  Expanding on this, another supplier recognized that implementation teams (I’m not sure if he was referring to the end user, supplier or both…) can often rush into things without taking steps necessary to ensure a smooth implementation, migration.  He postulated that projects that ignore the “Seven Ps” can take 2-3 times longer to complete.

CinaC (pronounced: Sin a see)

VoiceCon Conference Orlando 2008 - The Next Generation Contact Center (Conference within a Conference)

Moderated by: Anne Keefer, Vanguard Communications

I first encountered this acronym, CinaC, in an email between Marty Parker and Don Van Doren.  And even though I have been working in telecommunications for many years, I have to confess that I had a feeling it was in reference to an actual conference and not a technology or transport layer service.  So I attempted to locate the ”CinaC” conference, where was it last held, who attended, who were the key speakers?  But after a slightly exhaustive search of the internet, I simply could not find the CinaC conference.  No dates, no conference materials, no vendor sponsors.  I had to wonder what underground society had Marty and Don tapped into?