Outbound IVR for Service Companies and Utility Providers (Part 1 of a series)
Service organizations such as air conditioning companies and pest control companies and utility providers are finding Outbound IVR an invaluable business solution.  They have found that Outbound IVR can help them increase their customer contact rates, proactively communicate with customers which reduces inbound traffic to their customer service centers, increase sales, and improve results in their collections departments.  Outbound IVR solutions with the ability to conduct interactive customer satisfaction surveys lets service companies know if customers are not …

Working for some of the Top Call Center Operations, for the past 25 years, has afforded me the opportunity to gain a full understanding of those intriguing dynamics that help shape an efficient Call Center.  Through a series of industry best practices, I have seen some of the best kept secrets of “world-class” customer services implemented. These best practices have also been used to help manage industry service levels, abandonments, and the required agent talk times. Conversely speaking, I have also seen how agent attrition, agent call -ins, inclement weather, …

Imagine that you are a doctor with a busy medical practice.  Keeping your appointment slots filled and moving along is important, not only from a financial standpoint but in regards to the care of your patients as well.  An appointment time that is not filled is a time that could have been used by a truly sick patient.  When a patient leaves your office, they typically leave with their instructions, prescriptions and a follow up appointment date.  In the case of a sick person, some of this information may not …

 
To understand what comprises a Green Call Center let’s first look at what keeps a traditional call center from being Green.
1. Using an equipment based, site based call center platform, requiring replication at each site,  takes a tremendous amount of energy, not only to run the equipment but also to keep it cool.  For example, at an energy cost of $1.65 per square foot, at a 100 seat agent call center costs $13,200 per year in unnecessary power and gas bills.

Call center agents work onsite.  This means that each agent must use some means …

Currently, one of the fastest growing trends for contact centers and outsourced contact centers is to move away from costly equipment based, premise based call center platforms and to move to more versatile, “on demand” virtual call center platforms.  Companies that have moved to or are using a virtual call center platform in some capacity include: Overstock.com, AMD, Vonage, Expedia.com, Hilton Grand Vacations, Kodak, American Express and many others.  Why is this transformation to virtual call center platforms taking place?
 On Demand Functionality
Virtual call center platforms provide an on-demand solution for …

The number of businesses vying for office or factory space depends on the size of the area as well as the economic health of the community in question. A small town with limited resources is not likely to have people clawing each other out of the way to get the prime business locations. A commercial real estate agent must be able to gauge the interest of the target audience as well as the other factors of the market to close a deal. No matter how tepid the economy has become, …

There are countless individuals who would be perfect additions to your contact center or business; however they are not sitting in your office right now waiting for their interview time to arrive. They are stuck at home because of disabilities, mobility problems, vision problems or because they are working around a child’s schedule that is not compatible with the nine to five work day.
Of all of the people you are interviewing on site, only a few are acceptable to you and of the rest, only a handful found the job …

Outbound IVR, also referred to as Proactive Notification, has become one of the most popular business solutions on the market today. Traditionally it was used for notification services, such as emergency and collections. Today’s Outbound IVR solutions offer a wider range of benefits, including enhancing customer relationships, reducing inbound interactions with live agents, and increasing revenues with compelling interactive outbound sales and marketing campaigns. By proactively contacting customers, companies can provide personalized, relevant and customer-specific information in a timely manner.
New research reveals the North American market for hosted outbound integrated voice response …

When a company is faced with the critical decision of choosing the platform to base their call center operations on they are faced with a new set of options.  The old traditional model of equipment based versus the emerging one of those provided virtually require consideration of questions not previously asked.  Typically, a call center consultant or manager who has worked with equipment based platform solutions will argue “if we own our equipment then the cost to maintain what we already have versus the monthly cost of a virtual platform …

Q: Been reading quite a bit on this topic and would like some clarification.
How does a virtual solution stack up against a traditional hardware based solution including:
ROI (Capex)
Technology Integration with existing infrastructure
Deployment
Bandwidth reliability and ongoing support
A: The question of Virtual Platforms to support In-House Teams or Virtual Teams has been in high interest in recent years for obvious functional and financial reasons. To respond to your questions:
ROI (Capex):
These items are usually separate in that ROI is a return on investment and CapEx is an actual expenditure or funds applied to …