Alliance promises virtual contact centres

An alliance between Cisco and Salesforce.com designed to move all technology elements of customer service operations into the virtual realm is due to deliver its first tangible product in the first quarter of next year, according to CustomerStrategy.

By linking Salesforce's Service Cloud 2 customer management software with Cisco's Unified Communications platform, the resulting Customer Interaction Cloud promises to eliminate the need for physical installations of hardware and software.

The businesses claim the product will also move companies closer to customers who are increasingly conversing on social networking sites.

Technology is failing to provide sufficient and timely information in customer service situations. This is the key finding of a new survey conducted by Corizon, says SourceWire.

Conducted across the UK in August, a joint survey of 2 127 consumers by YouGov and of 90 contact centre managers by Corizon, revealed that despite significant investment in technology to increase customer service, strategies are not being delivered in ways that satisfy consumers, agents or businesses.

The survey discovered that contact centre staff face challenges from the increasing number of applications that they need to switch between when responding to customer queries. More than a third (37%) of call centre managers cited this as a problem, with 30% saying that it had worsened over the past year.

Ignify, a CRM and ERP consulting firm, has unveiled an enhanced contact centre platform for Microsoft's CRM Call Centre Agent Desktop, states TMCnet.

The platform will allow customer service agents using Microsoft CRM to prioritise incidents and take care of the most important incidents with a single click of the mouse.

This capability enhances first contact resolution and customer satisfaction cost effectively.