Unified Communications Dealers: Enhance Revenue Streams with App Sales

"App Stores" and the "App Market" are familiar phrases in today's tech world, gaining popularity with the emergence of the Apple iPod, iPad and Google Android devices.

In a logical, winning business move on the b2b side of things, many Unified Communications dealers are also building a diverse portfolio of applications for their customers.

Many such dealers are complimenting their phone system sales with application sales. Besides being a good foot in the door to large revenue telephony platform sales, application sales can generate a high-margin revenue stream of their own.

For years, telephony dealers have aligned themselves with the large, incumbent call recording vendors in order to bundle call recording and quality monitoring with their phone system solution sales.

The typical "Large-Call-Recording-Company" offering was typically a monstrous suite of features which shut out the small and medium sized enterprise and locked the bigger customers into a lifetime's high cost of ownership as well as a re-buy scenario when it comes to upgrades.

We (Coordinated Systems, Inc.) used this as an entry point to entrench our Virtual Observer call recording and quality monitoring solution as an obvious alternative to the existing call recording offerings made available from the telecom market.

Virtual Observer enables channel partners to not only sell call recording and quality monitoring to the smaller and mid-level enterprises, but also to provide enterprise customers with a more affordable, robust system and lower overall cost of ownership.

We also enable our partners to share in professional services (such as CTI, custom integrations, onsite training, etc.) and annual support agreements. It's a very win-win situation for CSI and our partner ecosystem.

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News, RSS Feeds and Social Networks for our supported phone systems

Virtual Observer connects to most popular phone systems, and I've tried to round up some of the latest news from each of them. After perusing the excerpts and links, you will find a list of RSS feeds for each phone system vendor so you add them to your RSS feed readers. If that's not enough, I've also compiled a list of the various social networks where these companies have presence.

LATEST NEWS EXCERPTS:
ShoreTel: Nortel Demise Marks the Beginning of a Huge Category Shift
An excerpt: "As you've no doubt read, Nortel Networks has filed for bankruptcy, marking the demise of a once leading company in the communications industry. Is Nortel just another unfortunate victim of the recession? Does it indicate major problems for all providers of telephony solutions? No and no....click here to read the full article on ShoreTel's Blog.

Avaya: Avaya Unified Communications and Contact Center Solutions "Certified Green" by Independent Test Labs
An excerpt: "Avaya, a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, today announced that its Unified Communications and Contact Center solutions have been "Certified Green" by Miercom, an independent testing organization. The designation verifies that Avaya Communication Manager-based networks are environmentally-friendly designs that can save companies money and boost efficiency....click here to read the entire news release.

Cisco: 1-800 CONTACTS is deploying Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise to help it manage growth and increase uptime. An excerpt: "By integrating contact center, web support and administration on the same platform, 1-800 CONTACTS is now able to expand capabilities of its at-home agents by blending inbound and outbound calls into a single queue, allowing contact center associates to answer calls faster. In addition, the entire system is more stable and uptime has been increased by eliminating technical issues inherent in a patchwork system...click here to read the entire article

PHONE SYSTEM VENDORS' RSS FEEDS:
- Avaya Contact Center News RSS Feed
- Cisco Unified Communications RSS Feed
- ShoreTel news feed
- Mitel RSS Feed
- Alcatel-Lucent RSS Feed
- Nortel RSS Feed

FIND PHONE SYSTEM VENDORS ON THE SOCIAL NETWORKS:
- Avaya DevConnect on LinkedIn
- Avaya DevConnect on Facebook

- ShoreTel on LinkedIn
- ShoreTel on Facebook

- Cisco Ecosystem on Facebook

- Mitel Solutions Alliance on LinkedIn

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A. Duie Pyle leverages call center quality monitoring solution from CSI

A. Duie Pyle offers a complete transportation and logistics service throughout the Northeast United States. On-time performance of A. Duie Pyle exceeds 99% on all shipments delivered direct throughout the Northeast.

Investment in technology for customer service has helped Pyle win numerous quality-recognition awards from 1989 to the present.

Two members of the Pyle team, Jeannine Risley, Director of Customer Service, and Jim Dobson, Director of Information Technology, were able to discuss the technology initiatives which have been put in place to continue meeting quality objectives.

In describing the Pyle contact center, Risley stated that "Our objective is to continue to answer the highest percentage of calls within 20 seconds or less. At least 90% of our calls are getting answered within three rings to provide the highest level of customer service possible. Our focus is to be proactive in service, as opposed to the typical call center model where you wait for customers to identify a problem and call you. We make quite a few outbound calls to preempt the inbound calls that otherwise might come." As far as staffing, in 2003 Pyle had 21 people in the contact center and has since expanded to two facilities with 50 people between the two.

When it came down to choosing a vendor for call recording and quality monitoring, Pyle selected CSI’s Virtual Observer solution. "Price and functionality were the two main contributors. They were considerably less expensive than the solution offered by our PBX vendor. And they didn’t just offer the call monitoring. They offered the call evaluation package as well. We really got more for our money. And they were very helpful before we even finalized the contract by customizing the evaluation forms and things like that so that we could have a true sense of what it would look like should we sign a contract with them," Dobson reported.

"It was more than just cost, though. They actually scheduled time with us, including all of our supervisors, so that we could go through a web demonstration and actually see how we could use it. Where Virtual Observer enables to deliver a quality experience to our customers is the way calls are always being monitored. We can go in and review them at our convenience. There’s a call monitoring form that goes over everything, from the way that the call is opened to the conclusion and of course making sure that accurate and appropriate information is given in between. So, we want to make sure that we’re answering the calls quickly and that once we answer them, that we’re providing the highest level of service possible," added Risley.

Read the entire A. Duie Pyle & Virtual Observer success story here