Results Companies Inc. selects Virtual Observer to rapidly create better trained customer service agents

Results Companies, Inc. is a global firm providing outsourced call center services. They started out 18 years ago as a privately held company with a predictive dialer product. As they ended up working more and more with telemarketing agents on an outbound basis, they eventually grew to offer both inbound and outbound call center services. Results Companies now has a “best of breed” product used by front line managers of call centers, helping them produce better trained agents.

In the call center solutions market, finding the right vendor can be a daunting process when your investment will eventually integrate with your existing solutions. This is exactly the scenario which faced Results Companies, Inc. last fall when they set out to select a call recording and quality assurance vendor. They needed a solid solution with robust features which would not only scale with their aggressive growth plans, but also would compliment their outsourced call center offerings.

Results Companies, Inc. also planned to use the features of the call recording and quality monitoring system as a marketing differentiator. Using the quality assurance tools of the new system would enable them to not only handle customers’ inbound and outbound phone traffic, but it would allow them to evaluate the performance of each interaction and provide targeted training back to the agents.

Results Companies looked at a few different call recording systems and eventually chose Virtual Observer (VO) by Coordinated Systems, Inc (CSI).

“We were looking for a call recording and quality monitoring solution that our team would be comfortable with,” said Alec Brecker, Chief Operations Office at Results Companies. “Virtual Observer offered everything we wanted to do at an attractive economic value. We wanted something that would be easy to use, so as we scaled up, it would be something that wouldn’t hinder our growth.” Click here to read more...

Creating a network of call center industry blogs

We're looking to find other company blogs to include in our new "blogroll" (a "blogroll" is a list of like-minded blogs) that we'll be debuting soon.

Virtually any company in the call center solutions market (who has an active blog) is encouraged to submit a link.

We'll review the quality of the blog and let you know if you've been included. We'll then ask for a link back and we'll make the entire blogroll available to include on your blog.

This will have positive effects on your blog traffic.

Segments of the call center industry we're seeking initially:

- CRM software companies
- IVR software companies
- VoIP systems companies
- Speech Analytics systems companies
- Call Center outsourcers
- Phone Systems integrators
- Call Center trade journals and news sites

If you are interested, please comment below.

5 critical reasons for implementing a call logger in a small business

These are in no particular order...

* Verification purposes - capturing every call means you'll be able to go back and play calls where customers placed orders or made billing adjustments.

* Dispute resolution - call logging maintains peace of mind as "he said, she said" conflicts are easily investigated and resolved.

* Training purposes - even if you only have 3 agents, and it's not a "real" call center, capturing every call and being able to go back and evaluate process mistakes can improve the bottom line over time, as your agents begin to increase upsells and prevent cancellations.

* History - you can build a nice repository of customer communications from which you can go back in time and investigate why a customer left - or, for training purposes (positive mindset!), you can see why the customer upgraded.

* Storage Space is cheap! - storing all your calls is less of a space issue than it was even a few years ago.

Updated: the latest call center openings...

Ever the purveyor of news that is positive, we bring you a list of new call center openings:

Alere(R) Medical Expands with Opening of New Ohio Call Center
Genetic Engineering News (press release), NY - Feb 12, 2007
Alere Medical, Inc., one of the leading disease management companies, today announced the opening of its newest call center in Columbus

Comcast opens fourth area call center
Chicago Daily Herald, IL - Jan 31, 2007
Comcast Corp., which has its Midwest headquarters in Schaumburg, is opening a call center Thursday in Woodridge that will add 550 jobs by this summer

Lifespan to open 'anti-scam' call center (Rochester Business Journal)
Rochester Business Journal
February 12, 2007
Lifespan of Greater Rochester Inc. has received a $200000 grant to open a call center dedicated to educating older adults around the country about scams by telephone, mail, etc.

Glossary defines CTI and SMDR, among other things...

We've added a new glossary of technical call center terms to the site. This includes many of the frequently used acronyms you've grown to hear and love, such as:

TDM
ANI/DNIS
SMDR
CTI
VoIP

Please click here to browse the call center glossary

Daylight Savings Time notice for Virtual Observer users

As most users are aware, the United States Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed the rules setting when DST starts and ends. Starting in March 2007, this law extends Daylight Saving Time (DST) by four weeks (DST will begin on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November).

How will the change in DST affect Virtual Observer?

Because CSI-developed software works off of the Windows Operating system clock and assuming that all applicable updates are made to your Microsoft operating systems, the change in DST observance will have no effect on the processing of any CSI software. This includes all supported releases of Virtual Observer

Gain customer feedback with new Virtual Observer Surveying feature

CSI releases Customer Survey Module for Virtual Observer

Coordinated Systems, Inc. (CSI), of East Hartford, CT, is pleased to announce the release of a new Customer Survey Module for Virtual Observer (VO) 3.0, a complete call center quality monitoring and VoIP recording solution. The new module, named VO Survey, automates the customer feedback process as part of an overall call recording and quality monitoring program.

Users of Virtual Observer have always been able to utilize supervisor evaluations of recorded calls between customer service agents and their customers in order to assess quality and provide training to their agents. This process is now enhanced by the ability to also include actual customer feedback in the evaluation process, creating a very accurate assessment of call center performance....read more about this customer survey tool.