Inside Virtual Call Center

Shiftboard Inc., an online and mobile call center scheduling software provider, has released a new scheduling application for the call center industry. The solution includes key features such as self-service scheduling, which allows call centers 24/7 coverage to meet call demand from around the world.

The Shiftboard virtual call center solution allows for efficient staff scheduling. Managers have 24/7 access to any number of schedules through any web browser and can fill in schedules as caller traffic changes. Schedules can be adjusted instantaneously so service is maintained. The application allows for communication with any staff member, regardless of location.

Call center managers can see schedules in a twenty-four hour schedule layout across multiple call centers. The Shiftboard software is also able to manage break times so that they are staggered and all customers can be answered.

On the other end, agents have access to and receive notifications for their schedules 24/7. Self-scheduling is also offered, so agents can independently pick up whatever shifts that are open at the moment, as well as trade shifts with other agents.

Scheduling can be accessed via web or mobile phone

By far, the largest cost factor to call centers is call representative staffing. This has become increasingly complicated as call centers expand coverage across larger areas. With better technological capabilities, call centers have also reduced the large, single-site centers to smaller, more widely distributed locations. Virtual call center representatives can even work from home. Bryan Lhuillier, chief product and technology officer at Shiftboard, notes that the new scheduling solution was designed “to meet the needs of an industry that has undergone a significant transformation in the last decade.”

Lhuillier continues, “With their highly distributed global workforces, today’s call centers can no longer tolerate the rigid and costly scheduling software of years past. With this announcement, Shiftboard has introduced a highly scalable, cost-effective solution that meets the needs of single location and globally distributed call centers.”

Shiftboard’s scheduling solution is now available to call centers on a subscription model at $79 per month. More information can be found at Shiftboard’s website at www.shiftboard.com.

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An OnState diagram of their call center capabilities

OnState, a cloud-based virtual call center provider, has released the spring 2010 version of its virtual call center software solution. This recent iteration has various updates for increasing service quality and productivity among call representatives.

OnState’s Virtual Call Center is a cloud computing application that offers business-grade customer communication and management capabilities.

Features of the Virtual Call Center include: communication through voice, video, chat, click-to-call, web call-back, IM and conferencing; business-rules routing; skills-based routing; customer and market segregation; support for multiple communication protocols; application integration; Pending Communications, which does automatic callback scheduling; reporting and analytics, and presence enabled.

This new product release adds visual analytics, new network-based call recording, graphic elements to the OnState dashboard, which makes administration easier, and other agent productivity updates.

The new Virtual Call Center’s enhanced real-time and past reports also give better performance visibility, so administrators are more able to monitor the flow of processes through the call center.

The network recording feature works on a variety of devices like landlines, mobile phones, SIP phones, and Internet video conferencing phones (ex., Skype and GTalk). The calls can be recorded in the network and stored through any one cloud-based option.

OnState’s Virtual Call Center and Virtual PBX can be run through Salesforce.com’s ERP application.

Technorati Tags: gtalk, OnState, Salesforce, skype

Companies often get ahead of themselves in marketing campaigns as they advertise their product with a special offer and ask customers to respond to a toll-free number. After these marketing campaigns, there is a great influx of calls. Unfortunately, most companies cannot handle these calls because they do not have enough agents or adequate call center software to handle the volume of calls. Vendors miss out on a large portion of their customer base because they do not provide themselves with the resources that they need to expand and handle the increase in clientele. This is where virtual call center software comes in.

Virtual call center software helps companies handle significant amounts of ingoing or outgoing calls. It ensures that customers do not have to wait longer than a designated amount of time before talking to an agent, which helps prevent abandoned calls. Virtual call centers are inexpensive but efficient, as opposed to call center outsourcers which many companies rely on. Call center outsourcing is when companies hire extra agents to handle calls- but this is both expensive and unpredictable because companies do not know how many extra agents to hire and whether or not the expenses of hiring them will even out in the end.

Transera is one of the best virtual call center companies today. Their innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution improves customer service and reduces the overall cost of operations. Transera’s on-demand call center software offers a centralized global queue, reducing the abandoned call rate to less than 5% because it makes sure that customers do not have to wait for a long period of time before talking to a real agent. Transera also matches customer needs with qualified agents so that callers talk to product-specific agents. Customer data is presented to the agent on a screen, which reduces call handling times. This increases call efficiency, sales, and overall customer satisfaction.

Transera claims that their virtual call center software dramatically increases revenue and profits. It is a productive solution that companies should not hesitate to adopt. Their SaaS call center product is the future of call centers because Web 2.0 is expanding the capabilities and overall performance of call center operations. Transera is at the front of this trend.

Transera has many awards to back up their claims, including the 2009 Customer Interactions IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer Award and the 2008 Communications Solutions Product of the Year. To find out more about Transera and their virtual call center software, go to their website. On their site,  you can view webinars or online demos that explain their software.

Technorati Tags: Call Center, Call Center Solution, Call Center Technology, On Demand Call Center, transera, Virtual Call Center

Call centers are traditionally very organized, very efficient ways of providing customer service. With the focus on efficiency and productivity at many call centers, the focus on the customer and their experience is often lost or forgotten about. With many call center to choose from, companies may often try to choose the most productive solution with the lowest cost. However, this may not always be the wisest choice as many different platforms offer a wide range of features.

One popular solution to consider is Contactual’s On Demand Platform. With Contactual, companies can quickly set up their call centers at a very low cost. For companies focused on developing the customer experience, Contactual is a great choice. Its comprehensive features enable companies to do a lot more than other traditional call center platforms.

Contactual provides the capabilities for call center agents to easily work from the comfort of their own home or anywhere as long as they have access to a phone line. In addition, Contactual provides integration with other CRM platforms to make it easy to fit into your existing CRM System. With Contactual, companies save money while simultaneously increasing productivity, providing significant benefits to the company.

With Contactual, a wide range of activities are easily carried out that could not be done with other traditional call center solutions. Many of Contactual’s customers have found unique ways of utilizing their software within their organizations. For more information regarding this advanced call center solution, check out Contactual’s website today.

Technorati Tags: Call Center, Call Center Agent, Customer Service

International food safety company, NSF-CMi, handles client inquiries from companies all over the world on all types of food-related issues. As a result, NSF-CMi’s call volume can be a lot larger than many companies are able to handle. This made it necessary for NSF-CMi to consider a variety of solutions in order to adequately address the inquiries in a timely fashion.

With thousands of calls and inquiries yearly, it becomes difficult to answer to and track progress of all of these inquiries in an efficient manner. In addition, with new regulations requiring the reporting of work injuries to NSF-CMi, they are forced to take on additional call volume. However, NSF-CMi has been able to deal with this in a relatively effective manner.

The key to maintaining a productive and efficient call center was to be organized and prepared, traits that NSF-CMi carried. With calls coming from all over the world, NSF-CMi uses a virtual call center solution to help facilitate the need for call center agents at different parts of the day. With this solution, agents are able to work from the comforts of their own homes, yet still being able to maintain the high levels of customer service and response necessary. NSF-CMi has discovered that maintaining a virtual call center has enabled it to keep up with the demands of its organization and provide great customer service at a low cost.

Technorati Tags: Virtual Call Center, Virtual Call Center Agent

CallFire has been providing a number of services for small businesses as it offers a wide array of call center and voice solutions which specifically address the needs of SMBs. In addition CallFire provides unique Voice Broadcast services which provide voice updates to customers to help boost sales.

This feature enables agents to easily reach out to a number of prospective customers for a new product that they may be offering or a new promotion that customers may be interested in. This allows customers the opportunity to benefit on deals many customers may have not usually known about. CallFire’s Voice Broadcast Services allow businesses to easily and quickly promote their products to provide the best returns on their promotions.

CallFire’s advanced voice broadcast technology is capable of sending text messages as well as voice messages to customers. Also, CallFire is capable of leaving a message ensuring that customers will get the message.

With its easily usable and highly affordable solutions, CallFire’s products are definitely something many companies should consider. Their new innovative products can provide companies with the competitive edge necessary in order to capitalize effectively on many prospective customers. For more information on CallFire products, you can read the full article found here.

Technorati Tags: CallFire, Virtual Call Center, Voice Broadcast, Voice Technology

VEGA Telecommunications recently made the switch to CosmoCom to maintain its virtual contact center capabilities. In making the switch to CosmoCom, VEGA was able to consolidate its previous 28 separate telcos into one 150 seat contact ceter that is open 24 hours a days and 7 days a week. This improvement should provide customers with a dramatic boost in customer service levels, allowing customers to get the best support possible.

As VEGA continues to plan for its continued growth, they eventually plan to expand their contact center to hold more seats and handle the expected increase in customer service requests. CosmoCom’s contact center platform provides a host of award winning features that make it easy for employees to provide top notch customer service to customers.

CosmoCom was able to follow through on its guarantees in being able to consolidate all VEGA’s seperate telcos into one unified system in a short period of time, limiting any shutdowns to service while also providing the ability to sustain future growth within the organization. VEGA Telecom is pleased with the overall results and recognized the importance of having the technology to support its growing business.

For more information about CosmoCom and VEGA’s experience with the implementation process, you can read the full article here.

Technorati Tags: CosmoCom, Telecommunications, Virtual Contact Center

Promero announced the release of the newest version of its virtual contact center software. Promero’s Contact Center Software had always been an on-demand offering which provided companies with a number of features that improve the productivity of the call center.

Contact Center Anywhere is easily integratable with existing software and provides a host of other communication tools such as chatting and web collaboration features. There are also features such as email management and recording capabilities which make maintaining accurate records of calls sent and received much easier and a lot more accurate.

Contact Center Anywhere has won a number of awards for the usefulness as well as the effectiveness of its software. For more information on what this new version of Contact Center Anywhere can do for you, you can read the full article found here.

Technorati Tags: On Demand Contact Center, Virtual Call Center, Virtual Contact Center

Omega Direct Response has announced that it has chosen Five9 as its virtual call center software provider. Five9 will implement its virtual call center suite in Omega Direct offices worldwide. The newest release of Five9 Virtual Call Center added a number of new features such as improved predictive dialing as well as IVR and call routing. In addition, a number of other improvements to its existing virtual call center software have made Five9 a much more attractive option for prospective customers. 

Five9 Virtual Call Center offers a number of features that enhance both outbound and inbound campaigns for businesses. Omega decided on Five9 due to its multilingual capabilities which are vital to the work Omega does. Omega has a number of company offices that use a variety of different languages and finding a solution that can fit into that business model was very important to Omega. In implementing Five9’s new software, Omega now has a step up on the rest of the competition.

For more information regarding this new partnership, you can read the full article found here.

Technorati Tags: Virtual Call Center, Virtual Call Center Features, Virtual Call Center Software

Five9 announced the launch of its newest call center project in which it has undertaken with TMC. The newest project is a new site filled with content to promote Five9’s virtual call center products to prospective buyers and visitors to the site.

The Call Center On-Demand Site can be found here: www.tmcnet.com/channels/call-center-on-demand.

This channel is meant to be a resource for prospective virtual call center buyers while simultaneously promoting Five9’s virtual call center products. Readers and visitors to the site have access to a lot of content including: news, articles, and product reviews. With the vast number of virtual call center products available in the marketplace today, this resource should be a tremendous help to a lot of buyers who may be unsure or clueless on where to turn to for their virtual call center solution.

For more information regarding this new electronic content channel, you can read the full article found here.

Technorati Tags: Call Center On Demand, On Demand Call Center, Virtual Call Center