Outbound Call Center Featured Article

TMCnet Outbound Call Center Week in Review

By Linda Dobel
TMCnet Contributor

During a week that was fraught with stock market volatility and what seems to be a never-ending dour jobless outlook, it was refreshing to get the mid-week report TMCnet’s Contributing Editor Tracey Schelmetic that “TMOne, which calls itself the ‘most nimble BPO Firm in America,’ has announced it has chosen Spearfish, South Dakota as a location for a new 500-seat inbound and outbound call center to serve its clients.”

Her report said the newly established inbound and outbound call center will offer its clients “customer service, e-commerce, first-party collections services and telephone account management interactions.” Most noteworthy is that the BPO will said it will “begin the hiring process late this month with an initial 50 hires. Live operations will begin in September. Ultimately, the company plans to staff the center to capacity, with a total of 500 agents.”

Also making an employment announcement this week was the American Teleservices Association (ATA). TMCnet Contributing Editor Madhubanti Rudra reported  that the National Board of Directors for the American Teleservices Association said that “Phil Grudzinski has been named chief executive officer, effective immediately.” The report went on to explain that “Grudzinski formerly served as chairman of the ATA Board of Directors for four years. Prior to that, he held senior management roles in some blue-chip companies such as American Express (News - Alert), General Electric and Sears Roebuck and Company.” In addition it said he has been “credited with driving growth and large scale change in complex, multi-matrixed organizations, using teleservices as a primary distribution and service channel, ATA officials noted.”

Another group in the news this week was American Bible Society. TMCnet Contributing Editor Carolyn J. Dawson reported that “Blackbaud, Inc., a provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations, announced that the American Bible Society (ABS (News - Alert)) will leverage its Blackbaud CRM to expand its mission by boosting its fundraising efforts and enhancing its supporters’ experience.” The article further notes that the “Blackbaud CRM solution will support the ABS by ensuring integration of web services to enable a personalized online experience for its supporters in addition to providing it with self-service tools.”

Making a new product announcement this week was Volt Consulting Group (News - Alert). TMCnet Contributing Editor Calvin Azuri reported that this “provider of consulting and process mapping, workforce design and delivery, workflow automation, and managed solutions” has announced the release of its “new VAST business intelligence offering.” The company, which is recognized as a leader in the human capital business intelligence market, is said to currently provide” one of the most robust human capital data warehouses” available. The company’s president was quoted in Azuri’s report as saying, “The VAST BI offering is unique in the market place because of the diligent effort invested into cleansing and normalizing the data at the front end of the process, the breadth of benchmarking available, and the deep analysis performed on the data to reach significant and meaningful conclusions.”

And one last positive report to conclude our recap; TMCnet Contributor Nathesh reported this week that “Broadview Networks (News - Alert),” a network-based business communications provider, has its Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) and Recording solution OfficeSuite ACD to thank for winning a People’s Choice Stevie Award in the Favorite New Telecom Product or Service category.” Azuri said the Stevie Awards are presented by the American Business Awards (ABA), and were “created to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and business people worldwide.”

The article included the fact that “TMCnet reported that OfficeSuiteACD is integrated with OfficeSuite, a hosted IP phone solution from Broadview. OfficeSuite ACD provides robust call center capabilities including advanced call routing, call recording, out-of-the-box reporting, queuing, and dashboard functionality to business customers.”

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