Unification raises appreciation

Recent media coverage reports that UK consumers are unhappy with the service they get from customer contact centres, states What PC?.

Amid the doom and gloom, two interesting points are raised: that the IT and telephony within call centres do not communicate; and that companies need to invest more in joined-up technologies that can support better customer service.

While standalone solutions can improve the customer experience, organisations still operating a traditional telephony infrastructure are starting to feel the limitations, particularly when evolving a call centre into a more outward-facing customer interaction network.

Warwickshire County Council (WCC) has invested in a Macfarlane automated Speech Dialler in the latest stage of its Service Transformation programme, reports Public Technology.

The Dialler will answer incoming customer calls with an automated greeting and then ask callers for the name of the person they wish to speak to.

Using advanced speech recognition techniques, the system will then match spoken names to those contained in its database, and route calls through to the correct telephone extensions.

Customer Interaction Solutions magazine has named the LiveOps On-Demand Call Center Platform the recipient of a 2008 IP Contact Centre Technology Pioneer Award, says RedOrbit.

"We are proud to be recognised as a leader in call centre technology by one of the premier publications in the call centre industry," said Maynard Webb, CEO of LiveOps.

The LiveOps On-Demand Call Center Platform is a hosted IP telephony platform that manages and deploys virtual call centres consisting of agents in heterogeneous environments, including bricks-and-mortar facilities, branch offices, and home offices.