Bharti intros hosted services in India

Bharti Airtel has partnered with Cisco and Indian firm Servion to introduce hosted contact centre services in India, according to Reuters.

Hosted contact centre solutions offer access to technology without having to buy software licences, or hardware, helping to bring cost savings for firms, Bharti said in a statement.

According to the mobile giant, the Indian market for these services is valued at $50 million.

Hosted collaboration solutions provider PBworks has released its Customer Relationship Edition, which extends CRM solutions such as Salesforce.com by offering shared online workspaces for collaborating with customers and prospects throughout the customer life cycle, says PR-Canada.

While existing CRM solutions have done a good job of tracking the sales funnel and customer support tickets, they have done little to generate deeper customer engagement and information exchange, the company says.

Most communications still take place using traditional channels such as e-mail and telephone, with little context or permanent record, it notes. "The big difference between what PBworks is doing and standard CRM is that PBworks is interactive for the customer," said David Coleman, MD of collaborative strategies.

The traditional world of customer relationships is in danger of falling into anarchy, due to the impact of Internet sites and social media, according to a new report by IT and management consultancy firm, BearingPoint Ireland, states Irish Developer Network.

The report 'Next-generation customer management' says the rapid rise of social media means "businesses must now rebuild their customer relationships from the bottom up, because over time the functions of each contact channel have become confused.

“This is both costly for the business and lacks transparency for the customer". The report points out that a large proportion of customer relations has now shifted to social media where: "One negative service or product issue can have a whole community discussing it in an instant," said BearingPoint Ireland partner, Martin McKenna.