Call Centers

Verizon Business is targeting the small to mid-sized market with the introduction this month of IP Web Center, a hosted contact center application. It is providing this functionality by adding Internet protocol capability to its Verizon Web Center service. This means that Verizon Web Center and Veri...

Cisco Systems has introduced its Unified Communications system -- a new suite of voice, data and video products and applications based on the Session Initiation Protocol, or SIP standard. Cisco is no stranger to this open standard. Last year, for instance, it acquired Dynamicsoft, the company that o...

Avtex, a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner that offers contact center, IP telephony and unified messaging applications, will be moving into the hosted contact center VoIP space once its acquisition of Interactive Solutions International is completely absorbed. The company announced on Friday that it ...

Talisma has released a new version of its Customer Interaction Management suite, Talisma CIM 7.0. The software integrates multiple communication channels, including e-mail, chat, Web self-service and phone. Able to handle million of interactions, Talisma 7.0 can be deployed on-site or on-demand. Thi...

FrontRange Solutions is expected to introduce GoldMine IP Voice in the United States within the next few weeks. The application, which combines contact management and VoIP telephony in one package, is integrated in the GoldMine Corporate Edition CRM suite. Linking the telephony layer to the CRM appl...

Dell has indicated it will continue to expand its ties in the Indian outsourcing market, building on the contact center and R&D operations it already has established. Its most recent initiative? Plans to establish a customer contact facility in Gurgaon to complement its existing operations in Ba...

Microsoft has introduced an upgraded version of a product it quietly rolled out last year. Called Customer Care Framework 2005, it is a desktop application for contact-center operators that provides customer-care information via e-mail, instant messaging, interactive voice response and the partner-d...

The home-based customer care market -- a small but quickly growing niche of the contact center industry -- could triple by 2010 to 300,000, according to a new report by IDC. "Current estimates put the number of home-based agents at 112,000, so that is a strong growth rate," Stephen Loynd, senior ana...

When Oracle agreed early in September to buy former rival Siebel Systems for US$5.85 billion, some questioned how long Siebel would continue its CRM OnDemand service. That question came to light because Oracle rival IBM plays a big role in the on-demand service. Yesterday, Siebel responded with the ...

Service has been restored on a damaged telecommunications cable that links India and Pakistan to the West, but not before the international service outage caused widespread financial damage, most especially to the cell center industry. Service on the cable was restored on Friday. The cable was damag...

Damage to the undersea telecommunications cable SEA-ME-WE3 (SMW3) Monday initially disrupted most of Pakistan's international telephone and Internet connections, but the outage spread to India, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Djibouti as repairs were started yesterday. Call centers in India using...

In a move designed to quickly expand its call center capacity and productivity, Vonage today announced its sales and service subsidiary, Vonage America, has chosen Avaya's SIP-based telephony and contact center solutions. Vonage, a provider of broadband telephony in North America, hopes the move wil...

May I take your order please?" These sometimes-garbled words uttered through a speaker at your local drive-through restaurant may soon originate from a different city or even another state thanks to new customer-relationship-management technology. Hardee's -- part of CKE Restaurants Inc. in Carpint...

Vendors of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services have made big promises to corporate America and consumers about the cost savings to come from VoIP. The possibilities of VoIP savings have stirred excitement even among jaded CFOs. But the adoption of a technology that accommodates data and t...

Since the end of the U.S. presidential campaign, the issue of outsourcing has ceased to be daily fodder for television news outlets. But it remains an issue that many American corporations struggle with on a daily basis. Aside from controversy surrounding the loss of American jobs, companies must d...