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Outbound Call Center News

By David Sims
TMCnet Contributing Editor

There’s been a lot of outbound call center news recently, let’s round it up for you.

For one thing, TMC’s (News - Alert) Madhubanti Rudra reported that the pioneer of the virtual contact center model, Alpine Access, was selected by one of the nation’s largest membership organizations for people over 50 to provide nationwide support to thousands of its members.

Under the contract, the company’s home-based employees will provide assistance to both new and existing members of the organization.

A number of factors influenced the organization’s decision to hire Alpine Access. First of all, the company has a huge US-based workforce that receives training through Alpine Access University. It reportedly has the proven ability to match agents according to client-specified criteria. The company’s focus on service metrics such as quality and service levels, call volume, and average handle time was another key factor that encouraged the non-profit to hire Alpine Access.

Also, TMC’s Jayashree Adkoli wrote that in an organization, hiring most qualified candidates while saving significant time for managers is a key factor for Human Resource (HR) personnel. In an effort to improve quality of hires and take the guesswork out of consistent talent selection, The Cheesecake Factory has deployed PeopleAnswers’ HR solution for pre-employment selection.

The Cheesecake Factory Inc. operates 164 full-service casual dining restaurants throughout the U.S., including 150 restaurants under The Cheesecake Factory mark; 13 restaurants under the Grand Lux Cafe mark; and one restaurant under the RockSugar Pan Asian Kitchen mark.

PeopleAnswers signed a new software licensing agreement with The Cheesecake Factory Inc. Under the terms of this agreement, The Cheesecake Factory could deploy PeopleAnswers’ HR solution in its 164 restaurants.

And, TMC’s Anil Sharma wrote about TeamSupport.com, a trend-setting provider of SaaS (News - Alert)-based customer service and help desk tools, has announced integration with Batchbook, a powerful social CRM system from BatchBlue Software.

“Customer Support & Bug Tracking tools rarely communicate efficiently with CRM systems, so keeping their separate customer databases synchronized is often a tedious and error-prone manual process,” said Robert Johnson, CEO of TeamSupport.

“We make it easy to connect the data points by automatically importing key fields for any Batchbook record flagged as a ‘Customer.’ TeamSupport then monitors the CRM for any changes to those contacts and instantly updates itself,” Johnson said.

Johnson said that TeamSupport can also place ticket data directly into a Batchbook customer record in the form of a note, complete with an active URL link back to the support ticket.

TMC’s Meenakshi Shankar wrote that Telrex (News - Alert), a member of the Enghouse group of companies, and a provider of IP call recording and contact center optimization software, unveiled version 4.1 of CallRex Call Recording software.

CallRex Call Recording is noted as an easy and affordable IP call recording and monitoring solution for IP telephony and unified communications systems. The latest release, as indicated by Telrex officials, is focused on newly added granular security options, making it easier for customers to create a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards-compliant call recording environment.

“Enabling customers to secure call recordings and the sensitive customer data within the recording files was a central focus in our CallRex version 4.1 development efforts,” said Bruce Sherman, product manager at Telrex.

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