Going the classic trade show route in an era of Twitter

Last week we exhibited at an industry trade show. The face to face meet and greets at a trade show can be like speed dating in that you have about a minute to impress people (kudos to my sales manager for the analogy).

On the opposite end of the marketing spectrum (debatable?), last month we also saw the launch of our Twitter account, which is available at http://twitter.com/virtualobserver.

We're going to use it to deliver brief bursts of CSI and Virtual Observer news, as well as snippets and other noteworthy call center industry links.

The best way to describe Twitter for those who don't really understand what it is yet is that Twitter allows you to post or receive quick status updates on people/companies/brands that you care about. In about three minutes, you can go to your Twitter homepage and review what everyone is doing. That's it, you're caught up, you can get back to your busy day.

Many companies are using Twitter to reach their most loyal customers, updating them with exclusive specials, breaking product news, or insider tidbits that only a true fan would want to know.

Of course, many people bombard Twitter with many trivial and useless tidbits of information. If you don't want to follow those people, you don't have to.

Back to the trade show. The trade show was very fruitful -- very glad we went. Sometimes you can't beat good, old fashioned face-to-face contact.

CSI and Windstream partner to deliver Siemens call center quality monitoring to Assurity Life Insurance Company

We are pleased to announce that Assurity Life Insurance Company, located in Lincoln, Nebraska, has selected CSI’s Virtual Observer Professional for call recording and quality monitoring. Virtual Observer was implemented to record calls off of Assuritys’ Siemens phone system.

CSI worked hand-in-hand with partner Windstream Communications to configure a robust quality monitoring solution for Assurity which not only met all project requirements but was also able to bring in the total project cost under budget.


About Assurity:
Assurity Life Insurance Company offers a wide variety of insurance and annuity products and services designed to solve complex financial problems for individuals, families and businesses. Assurity is committed to tailoring clients’ plans with a variety of creative solutions to fit wide-ranging needs for protection and wealth accumulation. For additional information about Assurity, please visit www.assurity.com

About Windstream:
Windstream Corporation is an S&P 500 company that provides digital phone, high-speed Internet and high-definition video and entertainment services to residential and business customers in 16 states. The company has approximately 3.1 million access lines and about $3.2 billion in annual revenues. For more information, visit http://www.windstream.com

Recent enhancements to call recording performance reporting features

Here’s a quick update on some of the latest updates to VO's Performance Reporting & Analytics features:

- Added dynamic real-time date range capabilities to our "Dashboards" feature: Current Day, Current Month, Current Year.

Added Trending Reports:
* New Recording Statistics which cross-reference a period of time (Hour, Day, Week, Month, Quarter and Year) against Agent, Agent Type, Supervisor, etc.
* New SMDR Statistics Report: gathers SMDR Stats over a period of time, such as (Hour, Day, Week, Month, Quarter and Year) and grouped by Extension, Trunk, Direction, Digits (ANI / DNIS) etc.
* New Channel Statistics Report: includes recording attempts over a period of time, such as (Hour, Day, Week, Month, Quarter and Year) and grouped by Agent ID, Agent Name, Extension, Channel, Result Code.

- Added a "simple" view for our Query Wizard as an alternate option for diving deep into data. Simple mode is a new mode that allows a user to quickly select a field and a value and quickly get the result they are looking for. You may also chose a condition, such as equals, not equals etc, and a relation to each piece of data (AND or OR). The user has the option of moving between advanced and simple by clicking the proper buttons. The query wizard will remember your last selected mode and will stay in that mode until you change modes.

- Enhanced Calibration features within our evaluation system.

- Enhanced the Event Log with "Favorites": Users can now set a quick-pick list of commonly used data searches. These Favorites are saved in the User Profile so they are independent from user to user and are not shared. The system ships with and initially sets up a list that is empty. The user can click the new "favorites" button and then add, edit or delete favorites. Each time thereafter, when the event log is loaded, the favorites will be available from the pick list.

Please contact customer support for questions about these new features.