Innovation in the Call Recording Space

Potential new customers may not ask "How Innovative Are You?" during the sales process, but perhaps they should.

Businesses who innovate well and often, such as Apple and Google, don't typically need to be asked because their audience just knows they do, from the constant PR and web buzz that surrounds each new release.

At CSI, we're excited about the next wave of product announcements and innovations we have planned for our customers, partners and potential new customers.

These announcements are truly groundbreaking.

I can tell you this, right now, there will not be one call center supervisor or manager who won't want to get their hands on these new time-saving features.

For a long time, CSI has kind of flown under the radar, content to be the "best kept secret in the call recording industry." However, we have been doing this innovation thing for a long time.

Let's quickly review:

Virtual Observer was one of the first integrated call recording and quality monitoring solution designed to deliver robust QA features AND call recording.

At the time, the industry giants were priced way beyond the reach of the small and mid-sized call centers.

We saw our opening.

The marketing opportunity is not where the innovation was, however. The innovation was in designing our system with a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), meaning we'd be delivering an enterprise-ready solution for everyone.

SOA makes Virtual Observer a true enterprise-ready solution, translating to an extremely scalable platform for mid-sized centers with seasonal spikes in activity or global multi-location enterprises who are adding locations through growth and acquisition.

Delivering true enterprise scalability and aggressive quality assurance feature set truly shook up the call recording industry, which previously froze out the non-fortune 500 companies from similar  suites because of an amazingly expensive price point and upgrade path.

Virtual Observer’s competitors have since multiplied as the industry has noticed the success of our business model.

Virtual Observer was also the first vendor in the call recording space to offer lifetime free full software upgrades for customers on active maintenance contracts.

Bringing customers along to the latest release of our products made sense, and was in direct contrast to the "re-buy" proposition upgrade path offered by our larger competitors.

Many other vendors in our space have copied this model as well.

Virtual Observer was the first call recording suite to assist customers in becoming PCI Compliant by encrypting recorded media. We’ve broken through again with additional tools to assist in the PCI process and we will continue to stay at the forefront of the standards committee, as they continually update their rule set.

Virtual Observer was the first quality monitoring suite to include an advanced real-time supervisor-agent assistance tool, called "VO Live", which enables supervisors to view thumbnails of all agent desktops where they can then assist via chat or by taking control of the desktop.

Competitors are still attempting to knock this off.

We will continue to blaze trails for call centers, giving them the tool sets needed to exceed quality assurance objectives and meet organizational goals.

Stay tuned on this blog and on our Twitter page for all of our exciting forthcoming announcements.

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The Rewarding, Renewing Cycle of Sales-Technical-Sales

We at CSI are coming off another solid quarter of new business.

The success of our sales teams directly fuels the workloads of our project management, support and training teams.

Ironically, it's the performance of those same technical folks which gives our sales teams added confidence and gives us marketing staffers the customer retention stats, success stories, and testimonials which we so proudly speak to.

It is always a pleasure to open my Outlook inbox and find a shining example of the customer service efforts provided by my team:

"I just wanted to send an email out to thank all of you at CSI for the great tools and support you offer. I can’t really say enough about the level of customer service provided to me on every interaction I have with your teams. We use one of your products (Virtual Observer) and anytime I’ve had a question or any issues, I give you guys a call and it feels like you drop what your doing to make sure we are up and running. I was assisted in the past by the training team,who always takes care of business. I have also been working with the project teams who always takes the time to answer every questions I may have. I also love that  they take the time to check out our systems and ensure we are running to full capacity.

At Rewards Network we pride ourselves in our World Class Customer Service experience and it’s great to know there are other companies out there that feel the same way. Thanks again for all the help!!!!"

This email was sent today from the desk of Gil Alvarez, Member/Merchant Services Trainer/QA Supervisor for the Rewards Network.

The Rewards Network runs Virtual Observer on an Avaya S8710 phone system, handling recording and quality assurance tasks for their customer service center.

This is proof of the endless cycle of sales feeding the technical staff, who in turn feed the sales and marketing folks.

Internally, at CSI, we treat each individual in our company as a customer, with tremendous respect and consideration for their individual goals as well as the company's goals. We're also not shy about crossing over to help out if another team member needs help.

It's all about keeping the cycle turning.

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