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The article discusses call-center software developed by ELoyalty. Based on analysis of hundreds of millions of conversations, ELoyalty's technology can identify which of six personality types a caller fits, and deduce the nature of the call. Armed with this information, client firms can then route calls to personnel best equipped to handle them. ELoyalty's customers say the software can reduce their call-center operating expenses by 20%. Founder Kelly Conway also sees opportunities in thwarting fraud and analyzing electronic mail.

Reports that Nice Systems, an Israeli software company, has launched call center technology that can tell which customers are angry and need to be steered toward help. Ways in which the program registers emotion in customers; Report that companies such as Federal Express have started using the software.

The article presents a profile of IT startup 24/7 Customer. 24/7 caters to U.S. corporations' love affair with outsourcing operations to India. Despite competition from big, established Indian players like Wipro, Infosys, and Tata Consulting, 24/7 has assembled an impressive list of blue-chip customers, including two of the top five credit card banks, one of the top three overnight couriers, one of the biggest software companies, and one of the largest ATM manufacturers. Unlike its Indian rivals, which specialize in software development, 24/7 has staked out the much more prosaic field of customer service and technical support--it routes customer calls via the Internet to India and answers them there. Managing phone banks generally drives CIOs nuts. Operators' computers frequently go down, and they are typically not savvy enough to fix glitches themselves. Supporting such operations eats up loads of IT staff time. 24/7 eliminates this headache, and its software also enables customers to monitor how their contract reps in India are doing. America's race to outsource has made 24/7 thrive: Sales are running about $30 million a year, with pretax profits approaching $5 million.

Discusses the strategies for customer service success in the U.S. Purpose of the use of an automated customer interaction recording and performance evaluation solution from Witness Systems by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide; Functions of call centers of American National Insurance Co.; Reason customers of Arctic Cat are not dissatisfied with the company's service.

Suggests ways to improve the efficiency of call centers without sacrificing customer relationships. Approach to managing time; Suggested computer applications to reduce call duration; Tips on improving call resolution processes.

The article discusses how IKEA Germany was able to implement a high call processing standard for its contact center by installing an IVR (interactive voice response) system. IKEA collaborated with Excelsis Speech Software, a German reseller of Voxeo's VoiceObjects solutions, in installing a voice portal into IKEA's contact centers.

The article reports that Radio Systems, selling as PetSafe, opted for an integrated customer relationship management, accounting, and telephony system from Extremely Productive to integrate its existing order management software with a customer relationship management solution. Before the integration, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based manufacturer of pet containment systems, electronic pet doors, indoor fences, and electronic feeders had to input the customer's data twice making it difficult to track warranty service, product exchanges, and shipment of replacement parts. With the integrated system, the company's research and development group and marketing group are also benefiting from the data that the call center employees are collecting and maintaining.

The article considers the claim of a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the customer service centers operated by government contractors lack guidelines to manage federal customer service and ensure accuracy. In fact most, of those centers do not include accuracy as a performance metric. Some agencies have tried to solve the problem by installing customer relationship management (CRM) software at contact centers. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Social Security Administration were among the government agencies that utilize CRM technologies to manage the operations of their service center.

The article presents news briefs on speech technology as of January 2006. Braintree District Council chose the Telephonetics ContactPortal as a portion of its Customer First program. Chi Mei Communications Systems licensed VoiceSignal VSuite 2.0 computer software for its Chi Mei Smartphones. Lab9 Solutions has launched a new wireless handset system featuring the Fluentsoft speech technology system from Sensory.

Customer service software developer Kanisa Inc. will announce version five of its eponymous product for call centers, in which it seeks to address agent time lost in finding the right person to answer customer queries by automating the process as of July 21, 2003. Kanisa5 will include the Kanisa Support Center module, with which agents should be able to increase productivity through features such as one-click data access, integrating straight into the CRM, billing or ERP packages running in the call center without the need to call them up that causes delays during calls. There is also a self-learning guided search facility that leads agents to the best source of information for problem solving, and a collaborative capability enabling them to connect to experts on a particular subject in a chat room.

The article reports that British Gas PLC is deploying a call monitoring service to help reduce customer defections and assess training needs for contact centre staff. The software captures real-time feedback from up to 6,000 customer surveys each week. Improving client retention and loyalty and promoting additional products and services were the main objectives of the system.

The article reports that the business-class airline Silverjet Aviation Ltd. has implemented contact centre software to improve customer service. The firm's call centre has been brought back in-house, and by giving staff access to customer and booking information and details of all previous correspondence by phone, email and text message, the airline aims to use information technology (IT) to ease travel with a more personalised service.

The article focuses on information technology (IT) help desk applications. These software record and resolve end-user computing problems and keep historical data about continual problems. There are some products that are related to these software but not included in this category like the call center applications because they focus on customer service, rather in IT help desk.

This article presents a corporate profile for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based WBM Office Systems (WOS), winner of the 2005 Channel Elite Awards' Best Service Organization. WOS aims to handle every call with a single point of contact so one does not end up being transferred through the organization. It began by building a six-person customer care center leveraging the company's SAP enterprise resource management system. The system logs calls and tracks customer contacts, allowing call center staff immediate access to details such as what piece of equipment has been serviced and the status of parts ordered.

The article reports that the Jobcentre Plus (JC+) customer management system has suffered problems since the rollout of the second-generation version, CMS2, which started at the end of last year. Employees at every link in the chain, including contact centres, local JC+ offices, benefits processing centres and local authorities, say the business process is overly-complex, the IT system badly designed, and employee training inadequate. Staff are stressed and unhappy: absence levels at one CMS2-enabled call centre reached 20 per cent in August, according to figures seen by the journal "Computing."

This article reports that speech software rivals Scansoft Inc., and Nuance Communications Inc., are teaming up to fight off challenges from enterprise IT heavyweights Microsoft Corp., and International Business Machine Corp. ScanSoft, Massachusetts, officials said last week it will pay $221 million to acquire its Menlo Park, California rival, Nuance. As the speech business has grown, it has attracted a lot of people, like IBM and Microsoft, who are investing heavily and making a lot more noise. The combined company's resources will bring enterprises more innovative products in such areas as call centers, directory assistance, dictation and mobile phones, as well as better services to support those products. Industry insiders agreed that the merger would help enterprises ease the pain of evaluating speech deployments. The merger will also bring the combined company a savings of $20 million to $25 million, through cutting some of the companies roughly 1,100 employees, consolidating office sites and eliminating duplicate operating expenses according to Paul Ricci, ScanSoft's chairman and CEO. INSET: Top speech players.

This article focuses on Experience Based Management (EBM). Some companies are using new methods to collect information about what their customers are thinking. The company ResponseTek in Vancouver, British Columbia, purports to be leading the field in EBM, letting executives learn in real time how their customers feel about their company. ResponseTek's software can be implemented on a web site or at a call centre and enables users to rate all aspects of the company's operation. Syed Hasan, president and CEO of ResponseTek, says that feedback corners on web sites and at call centres are just the beginning of the EBM wave.

Siebel Systems Inc. is providing solutions designed to help call center operations that will soon be hamstrung by National Do Not Call Registry regulations and that are often troubled by high employee turnover rates. The San Mateo, California, developer last week introduced two packaged software offerings designed to improve the performance and effectiveness of call center and sales personnel. Offerings, Siebel Contact Center Performance Solutions and Sales Performance Solutions, are focused on increasing the skill levels and capabilities of customer service and telesales employees.

The article reports on the essence of a call center software in organizational efficiency in the U.S. and Canada. It offers information on Blinds.com which is a provider of window treatments conducted online through its six company-run websites. It discusses the benefits of installing Customer Interaction Center (CIC) system that gives users functionality for multichannel routing and queuing, interactive voice response, Web chat, Web callback and screen capture for monitoring and training.

The article focuses on the agreement signed by UCN Inc., the market leader with InContact Echo, a natural gas company for on-demand contact center software. UCNN provides the market leading ondemand call center platform to inContact with over 500 contact centers across the globe. Meanwhile, UCN customers can realize significant cost savings and flexibility compared to premises-based alternatives.

Focuses on the importance of multi-channel contact centers. Management of a Web channel with a content management system; Key aspect of multi-channel integration; Common set of knowledge items used by customer service representatives for answering questions on the phone.

The article focuses on the Interactive Intelligence Communications-as-a-Service Small Center (CaaS Small Center) which is a cloud-based solution essential for contact centers. It says that CaaS Small Center offers customers with several services including fast deployment time, less information technology (IT) requirements, and lower capital investment. Moreover , the solution also renders cloud benefits which include product maturity, reduced risk, and scalability.

In this article, the author discusses the advantages of the customer contact or call centre for learning and development (L&D) specialists. He relates the LEGO customer centre at Slough, England, which can respond to queries in 15 different languages and calls directed to the relevant person by using sophisticated telephone software. He points out that the call centre allows the advisor to review the product building instructions at all stages.

The article focuses on the benefits of Wagner Equipment Co. from its use of the HiPath Internet Protocol-based communications systems with an open, virtualized contact center from Siemens Enterprise Communications. The author points out that Wagner Equipment was able to save about $500,000 in capital expenses needed to construct or buy a new contact center. Additionally, its customer service levels have increased to more than 90 percent.

The article presents the results from the study "SaaS CRM Reduces Costs and Use of Consultants," conducted by Gartner Inc. that examines the use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) in contact centers. The study indicates that more and more contact centers are recognizing the significance of SaaS in their operations. Additionally, it forecasts that the penetration of customer service applications delivered via SaaS to contact centers will increase by more than 20 percent annually through 2012.

The article reports that InQuira has been chosen by International Gaming Technology (IGT) to provide solutions to improve its customer service and support. The Knowledge Management System software platform and customer service application of the former will be used by the latter's call center agents. Jack Angelo of IGT asserted that the company wants to boost its customer service experience.

The article discusses how Cars.com handled its customer service problems. The company, a vehicle classified advertisements listing service, is visited by more than 8 million buyers and dealers monthly but had problems with their customer handling capability because it lacks case management tools. It decided to implement Salesforce.com with the help of Model Metrics and integrated back-end systems and data to establish a unified contact center.

The article focuses on Taylor Corporation's use of workforce optimization in its contact center. As a support system for semi-custom printed materials, the company's call center is crucial to its business plan because it is where customers turn to with order and delivery issues and product questions. To enhance its performance, the company implemented Impact 360 Workforce Optimization, which focuses on workforce and performance management, e-learning and quality monitoring.

The article reports that Homeserve GB is installing software from Corizon at its call center to support its sales and customer support staff. The firm provides insurance-paid home emergency call-out services and repair. The software will be operational over the next three months at the company's West Midlands headquarters. The Corizon technology will give the company the scope to deliver a customer contact system that allows our agents to be more effective. Integration with the company's telephony system will be managed by specialist supplier Sabio.

The article reports on Unified Customer Interaction Analyzer, the latest product offering from Cisco Systems Inc. The software, developed by Lake Forest has the ability to scan detect problems from calls. Furthermore, it can be used by call center supervisors to track conversations with angry customers. John Reike, Uniprise Innovation Lab senior vice president affirmed that almost 300 call center agents already have the software. His company spent millions of dollars for the project but expects payback in several months. He believes that the software can improve the retention of the employee and keep their customers happier.

Provides information on Charter Communications, recipient of the 2006 Service Elite Awards for the workforce optimization category. Number of customer care centers operated by the company; Purpose of the Focus on Excellence initiative of the firm; Benefits of implementing Witness Systems' Impact 360 quality monitoring and evaluation software from Witness Systems to the company.

Provides information on Interactive Intelligence, the Rising Star of "Customer Relationship Management" in 2006. Number of employees of the company; Services offered by the firm to contact centers; Applications of the Customer Interaction Center software released by the firm; Award received by the company from Frost & Sullivan in September 2005.

The article focuses on ways to make the call center business, a profitable proposition. A multichannel contact center is a requisite member touchpoint for credit unions, but the challenge is minimizing costs while contributing to the bottom line. Integrated and outsourced call center solutions for a pofitable business include interactive voice response(IVR) and workforce management software. IVR allows a member to perform simple commands without reaching a live agent, thus reducing your staffing cost. Scheduling and staffing software predicts inbound call volume and optimum staffing helps a credit union to improve service level performance and member satisfaction.

The article provides information on the benefits of process portal in customer service industry as it can reduce errors and improve the functioning by eliminating the need for staff to switch between different applications to complete a single business process. According to research commissioned by software tools company Corizon, 66% of call center agents use three applications or more to serve customers on a typical call and 27% use five or more. More worryingly, 71% claimed time is wasted on or after a call because of switching between different applications and 53% admitted that errors do creep in when entering data into multiple systems. The answer to this is a "process portal", a unified user interface that enables end-users to perform a business process, regardless of how many underlying systems that process touches. Employees can use the portal to co-ordinate the steps involved in a single process. Each business process is represented by an underlying composite application that has a web services-based interface, presents content and application interfaces in a step-by-step process, and integrates with the services of the underlying portal platform, such as authentication, search and entitlements. INSET: At a glance.

The article reports that ING Direct Bank has achieved a 400% return on investment from customer relationship management software used by its call centre staff. Call centre employees at ING have used the software to update information from customer accounts and help it to identify opportunities for cross-selling relevant services to customers. The bank said its conversion rate for making sales on customer calls has risen to about 9.25% since implementing the software. This is 25% higher than the average rate for call centres, it claims. The retail bank calculated that CRM software supplied by E.piphany had made it £2.8m in its first year. To track customer data, ING also uses business intelligence software from Cognos Inc., which extracts information from an Oracle datawarehouse.

This article reports that Avaya Inc. has introduced a call centre system called Contact Centre Express to simplify and lower the costs of improving customer interaction. Avaya said customer feedback has shown that medium-sized firms were aware of the need to improve customer service but are wary of investing in technology that may not "pay its way." Contact Centre Express incorporates customer contact through voice, web chat and e-mail, intelligent routing and straightforward installation with circuit or IP systems. The software integrates with customer relationship management systems and Microsoft Outlook. Research by analyst company Datamonitor Inc. found that cost-effectiveness, ease of installation, integration and maintenance are the main factors medium-sized firms consider when buying a contact centre product.

The article presents information about a new Advanced Diagnostic Manager (ADM), a script-driven diagnostic application, developed by Sigma Systems, a computer software developer, targeted at the needs of first tier call centers managing incoming service problem calls. ADM provides a single communication service request (CSR) tool and interface for diagnosing all services offered by the provider. The diagnostic scripts define a step-by-step process for categorizing, troubleshooting and resolving the specific service problems encountered by subscribers.

Focuses on the availability of call monitoring software that allows companies to supervise their customer service representatives in the U.S. Features and capabilities of call monitoring software; Advantage of the program; Projection on the sales of monitoring software.