Outbound Call Center Featured Article

TMCnet Outbound Call Center Week in Review

By David Sims
TMCnet Contributing Editor

Outbound call center is one of those industries where there’s always something interesting happening, and this past week was no exception. So let’s review the top news stories:

TMC’s (News - Alert) Mini Swamy noted that Rostrvm Solutions, which is celebrating 25 years of successful business in the contact center industry, is sponsoring the 6th Annual North West Contact Centre Awards.

The purpose of the award is to recognize and acknowledge excellence in a customer-oriented industry. Simon Wellings of Rostrvm said, “We wanted to sponsor these awards because CallNorthWest has been working with the region’s contact centers for many years, helping them to overcome the obstacles to high performance, as individuals and organizations strive to achieve ‘excellence’.”

The awards are organized by CallNorthWest, which has become the largest regional network of contact centers in the U.K. They gather greater significance in the light of increased competition and a vulnerable economy.

With a solid reputation as a premier software developer of a suite of applications that help that help contact and call centers to work more efficiently and effectively, Rostrvm has been regularly sponsoring awards and believes that the effectiveness of a call center and its supporting processes could underscore the difference between success and failure.

Also this past week, Calvin Azuri reported that 3CLogic, a company in cloud-based contact centers, released a report titled “The Five Most Dangerous CRM Mistakes That Sales Organizations Make.”

The report, now downloadable from the company’s website, details how often-used CRM platforms like Salesforce.com hold an organization’s precious lead-based information. It is reported by industry-related articles, researches and experts that almost 75 to 90 percent of sales leads are not followed up by companies. This works out to be a major issue ending up in low conversion as well as sales ratios.  

In addition, the report provides information on how automation of calls and following up on leads can result in better closure rates.

Raj Sharma (News - Alert), president and CEO of 3CLogic, said “Having worked with hundreds of customers over the past five years, we know that many companies have invaluable customer information stored in their CRM systems which can be used with our secure cloud based contact center. We have helped these companies increase their conversion rates resulting in 300 percent increase in sales. With our cloud-based contact center they can call their leads fast and be the first to call.”

And Carolyn J. Dawson wrote that Pinpoint Media Group will be acquired by iSIGN Media Solutions.

According to an announcement made by iSIGN, the company has signed a purchase and sale agreement for the same. A new contract with Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. is also being finalized by iSIGN. The contract is expected to be finalized within 45 days.

In exchange for all the issued and outstanding shares of Pinpoint, 7.5 million iSIGN treasury shares will be issued by iSIGN. While 500,000 will be available for free trading, a four month hold period will apply to the remaining 7 million shares. Advertising revenue will be increased by iSIGN through this purchase. Interactive Marketing Solution or IMS 3.1 software from iSIGN will be used to enhance the entire 5,900 screen network.

Alex Romanov, CEO of iSIGN, said, “We are excited by this acquisition and by the additional revenue opportunities that it will generate for us in both ad network sales and software licensing. Our new convenience store channel is in the fastest growing and profitable segment today, with frequent shoppers and opportunities to influence purchases and collect anonymous shopper data.”

Finally, TMC’s Susan J. Campbell noted that using a call center on demand requires more than just expanding into the virtual realm; it also demands a clear dedication to improving customer satisfaction. This was the goal for Vonage (News - Alert) when the company elected to deploy the Five9 Virtual Call Center Suite.

As captured in this case study Lev Rejanovinshi, customer support director who once served as Retention Director, suggested the timeline for outbound service from the PBX (News - Alert) vendor was too long. The company needed a quick, and easy-to-use and manage call center system that would support operations in customer retention, revenue assurance and technical support. Five9 (News - Alert) was selected as the provider of choice to get the predictive dialer in place in just four days.

To meet this intense timeline, Five9 deployed its implementation team for the call center on demand operations in the U.S. and Canada, dedicating a customer success manager to the Vonage implementation. The call center on demand launch was successful and Vonage was able to restore service, collect revenue and poll for satisfaction.