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TMCnet Outbound Call Center Week in Review

If it’s Friday, then it’s time for a look back at this week’s outbound call center news.

Contact center technology solutions developer Noble Systems (News - Alert) Corporation announced that Invacare HCS, a medical patient compliance and medical products provider, has decided to expand its current use of the Noble Enterprise solution. The added capabilities will permit automated prescription refill notification and fulfillment functionality using outbound messaging and speech technology. Invacare will use Noble Messenger’s automated outbound messaging system to send prescription refill notifications to customers waiting for medical supplies.

Canada's more left-leaning political parties – the NDP and Liberals – have accused the nation's Conservative Party of deliberately confusing voters to suppress support for the opponents of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a Conservative, during the lead up to last year's federal election with misleading robocalls.  The news broke, when three former employees of a call center owned by Responsive Marketing Group Inc., located in Thunder Bay, Ontario, told the Star newspaper that they were instructed to make calls and read scripts telling Liberal and NDP voters that Elections Canada (an independent agency that administers federal elections) had changed their voting locations.

Cloud communications provider Telecentris (News - Alert) announced that it now offers wholesale short-duration call services to businesses that produce significant high volume short-duration calls from their outbound call centers. Businesses that own their own switches can obtain Telecentris’ VoxOx (News - Alert) in Business SIP Trunks with a specified number of concurrent outbound calls. Once the agreement has been finalized, the business can start sending outbound short-duration calls. Two service agreement options are offered, with the first featuring a flat rate per minute and the second, the NPA (News - Alert)/NXX option, “offering different rates for every rate center to terminate calls.” The second option is designed to appeal to resellers interested in offering this service to their call center clients.

Political campaign organizing firm, Kathy L. Nealy & Associates (KLNA), revealed that it will team with call center solutions provider 3CLogic to enhance outbound functionality at call centers handling election year political campaigns. KLNA hopes to reach voters mostly residing in Dallas County, Texas, and the surrounding area. KLNA call center agents will gain access to 3CLogic (News - Alert) solutions, including Call Blast, which distributes candidate news and announcements to thousands of residents in a matter of seconds, and 3CLogic's predictive dialer, which automates dialing and reporting.

According to a new survey conducted at the 15th Annual Debt Buyer’s Association International Conference, held recently in Las Vegas, the future for collection industry call centers revolves around two important issues: compliance and customer service. Collections industry executives say they will be placing increased emphasis on developing compliance controls and improving the customer experience during 2012. The survey, conducted by Firstsource found that an overwhelming number of debt industry executives (70 percent) said they anticipate that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will impose significant changes on the collections industry over the next year. 40 percent of respondents stated that these changes will greatly influence their focus on implementing compliance controls across their organizations. Nearly 75 percent of executives surveyed said addressing compliance-related issues will be the top priority for the collections industry in 2012.

For more Outbound Call Center news, be sure to visit TMCnet again next week for all the latest developments.