“Money is King” in the field of call center and the result is well proved in a research. An important feature of human motivation is influenced by perks offered. The company Snowfly, which is the leading provider of Internet based employee incentive and loyalty program offers different rewards to its employees, some of which are reloadable debit or gift cards that can be swiped anywhere, merchandise and donations in form of charity. Out of all anywhere spend cards are overwhelmingly in demand as compared to others. In the results, more than 98% of the value of rewards was both types of cards against the cash equivalent as they are soon forgotten but cards have long term motivational value. Thus, the study shows direction of how incentives are valued and the end line is for all that matters is money. Read more at: http://www.callcentertimes.com/Home/tabid/37/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/395/CategoryID/1/NewsID/549/Default.aspx

Any rupture in the Contact Center can be expensive and damaging so it is worth to approach these matters in the right way. Security is a journey and corporate companies must mesh up with technologies that support it. At the same time with security, friendly culture is appreciated. Some of the key points towards it are following: Security starts at the top: Security experts should be included in the planning before important decisions specially like signing contracts are made. Context is king: Business documentation should be made in a clear way. Caveat Emptor: Vendors are an important link and they can create a whole set of tensions. Experience shows that a well-planned security network saves money and improves economics. Last of all every organization should be honest and lower risks and improve financial conditions. Read more at: http://www.callcentertimes.com/Home/tabid/37/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/395/CategoryID/1/NewsID/795/Default.aspx

Mostly all customer service providers offer there service through phone calls. It is time consuming and customers have to wait long before they can have a conversation personally. Optus is an Australian Provider in integrated communications and a subsidiary of SingTel, brings in effective action its [24]7's mobile chat capability in Optus mobile app. This application will allow customers to chat with Optus customer care from a mobile phone. It is a very smart choice and it will give personalized service to all consumers. The same user friendly service which they accessed from their laptops and PC's is now available on their phones. It is a brilliant experience for the customers and increases customer satisfaction as it saves a lot of time. The same service should be adapted by other service providers also so that they do not lose their market share. Read more at: www.contactcenterworld.com/view/contact-center-news/optus-makes-customer-service-brilliant-with-247s-chat-in-the-optus-mobile-app.aspx

Nuance communications is one of the world's biggest providers of voice and language solutions to many businesses and consumers. Its applications experienced by millions of people. To streamline customer authentication and fight fraud at the same time it has partnered with TRUSTID which is a provider in contact center authentication technology. Nuance Voice Biometrics uses a technique to detect unique characteristics of a person's voice and creates a voiceprint which is used for future reference. It replaces the intrusive questions often asked and saves time. Contact centers that uses TRUSTID and Nuance in combination can see greater reduction in time taken on a call, operation cost and strengthening of security. Read more at: http://www.contactcenterworld.com/view/contact-center-news/nuance-and-trustid-partner-to-help-contact-centers-streamline-customer.aspx

The first step towards managing the call volume peaks is identifying the patterns. Some of the several tips are as follows: The fewer variances available on the desktop like emails, printers, office suites the better standardized it is. It reduces variances which may cause problems with updates which ultimately lead to call spikes. The second most important thing is to be better placed in your environment i.e. to keep call center agents well informed about their tasks and coach specific agents on specific skills. Lastly, the most important aspect is to design an efficient action plan containing a trigger point which could easily signal when the plan should go into effect. Read more at: http://blog.inovasolutions.com/2014/surviving-call-center-peaks-and-valleys-part-2-managing-call-volume-peaks

Craig Borowski (Research Associate at Software Advice, that offers call center software comparisons) in his survey data outlines the reasons why should a company offer callback instead of making customers wait on phone impatiently. 63% of respondents prefer call back instead of waiting on phone. 43% of them expect a callback within half hour whereas 25% said it does not matter when the call was returned. Thus three measures to eradicate the problems are: Introducing an intelligent call back system such as Virtual Hold Technology (VHT). Allowing the use of applications like FastCustomer and help it to navigate the IVR. The best solution possibly would be to launch a new phone system altogether. If callback emerges as a growing technology it will eliminate the frustration among the customers of waiting long and increase customer satisfaction and call center productivity. Read more at : http://inovasolutions.com/blog/post/contact-center-callback-services-are-improving-customer-service.

The most recently developed modern call center has emerged with so much of technology usage from cloud to Customer Relationship Management and Integrated Voice Response with new phrases catching up on people’s minds. It can be compared to an Oxford dictionary which gets 1000 new words added almost every year. There is always a need of new word to describe an innovation, idea or technology. These new words lead to puzzling communication. Thus the need of the hour is a jargon busting guide. Some examples are COLO which stands for Colocation. It refers to the service where data can be stored by a host company in a third party data center. For access to the whole guide visit: http://www.newvoicemedia.com/blog/understanding-the-modern-call-centre-our-jargon-busting-guide/#colo

IVVR ( Interactive Voice And Video Response) which was once thought as a revolutionary technology has lost its grasp and nobody is interested in it anymore. Cloud telephony as well as hosted IVR services seems to have substituted it. Most of the Value Added Service providers are moving towards cloud telephony to provide corporate IVR services. But, in India it has to face a lot of difficulties. Till date, 3G technology has still not covered a majority of India and so even video calls are difficult leave alone IVVR. Also WhatsApp has become more popular and people prefer using it. Moreover, smart phones generally have a good quality camera but not speaker which makes it inefficient for IVVR. Hope that with the launch and greater spread of newly launched 4G IVR can gain its position back in India. Read more at: http://www.ivrsworld.com/ivvr-2/ivvr-failed-to-make-any-impact-in-india/#more-2372 http://www.ivrsworld.com/ivvr-2/ivvr-failed-to-make-any-impact-in-india/#more-2372

Cloud computing has become very popular in the last few years and many of the market researchers believe it to be the future but only if the security problems are eradicated. Not only businesses but also regular internet users are looking forward towards cloud computing through various ways like that of Dropbox, Google Docs and more to access their files in a fast, cheap and efficient manner. But this is one side of it. On the other hand experts are worried about the lack of data security it offers and the high risks of hacking involved. A recent survey reveals that 80 percent of the experts are suspicious on using cloud computing due to its security reasons. Cloud computing is at its nascent stage and it shall be given time so that the providers can improve over its security issues and to expand its usage freely in the coming future. Read more at: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/8449/20140615/cloud-computing-is-the-future-but-not-if-security-problems-persist.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/8449/20140615/cloud-computing-is-the-future-but-not-if-security-problems-persist.htm

Big Data has joined the crowd of millions with the fever of 2014 FIFA World Cup on. Much like the social media, marketing, advertising- big data has become important. With a whooping figure of 3.2 billion people who watched the last World Cup, this year the figure is expected to explode even further. Ronaldo's Nike shoes ad is one of the example to illustrate the growth and potential of online videos. It was seen online by 78 million people before it appeared on TV. 12.2 million tweets about the 'first-match' all during the hours match was played, depicts the social captivity of the universe. An event of this magnitude is likely to generate Big Data. The 2014 World Cup is so big that it is expected to have a negative impact on the economy of Brazil, as "major Brazilian cities have the power to grant local public holidays on the dates that World Cup matches are played". Read more at: http://www.infinitive.com/category/big-data/

Government today is suspected to be unworthy by most of us. And it is totally justified because of the increasing corruption and selfishness creeping in the society. US president Barack Obama has agreed to keep full transparency between him and the people and prove his credibility. He has signed an 'Open Data Policy' to create an open government. The idea behind is simple. All the government departments are required to update their expenses on the website USASpending.gov. People have full access to this website and can mine the data available for finding any expense that is unnecessary or excessive. Only some areas covering the expenditure of military and covert operations are unlikely to be revealed. Read more at: http://analytics.theiegroup.com/article/538f58943723a83b6f000205/Obamas-Open-Data-Policy

This is the 21st century and here everyone expects more from business interactions. Call center analytics is an efficient and quick way to gauge its overall approach to Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Earlier, call recordings were thought to be an approach for analyzing customer demands. But due to its shortcomings like delays in recording and transcribing, has open doors to new methods. Every company seeks for newer methods to differentiate their customer service experience and optimizing it to the fullest level. A recent example is of Amazon Mayday Functionality which promises help from a real person with prior knowledge of functionality and the service is delivered with high quality video experience. With visual demonstrations it is easier to resolve the problems sometimes in matter of seconds. The greatest contribution for this technology is made by WebRTC supported on desktops and even android phones. It has proved itself successful providing the customers with the best they deserve. Read more about this aspect in Ashley Unitt (founder of NewVoiceMedia)'s article link: http://www.mewvoicemedia.com/blog/contace-centre-innovations