Meeting of the contact center minds in Foxboro, MA

CSI was excited to be exhibiting at the annual NECCF show in Foxboro, MA. Riding on the heels of releasing our fourth generation of product (VO4), a browser-based quality optimization solution, we were able to present our customer-friendly options to an audience of contact center professionals and executives from all over the Northeast and New England.

The NECCF is a non-profit organization and was founded in February 2001 by contact center executives and specialists who wanted an unbiased "user group" to facilitate the exchange of ideas among contact center executives and managers. Since that time, the NECCF has grown and remained committed to addressing the day to day management concerns and strategic planning needs of contact center professionals throughout the region.

We sent two key team members to the show who had a great day interacting with the attendees and other exhibitors, as well as some of our own customers from the region.

NECCF members (or anyone running a contact center, especially new centers) are also encouraged to download a whitepaper detailing some bullets relative to the benefits of implementing a call recording and quality monitoring system.

Inside CSI: Driving quality implementations with both hands on the wheel

Inside CSI: In this edition of "Inside CSI", I am pleased to provide you with a few glimpses into a key member of our Support and Implementation Team, Mr. Blake St. John.

Highly technical and organized just might be the prerequisites for a CSI engineer, but to say Blake St. John is technical or organized might be a vast understatement. In charge of managing his stable of customer implementations, Blake also finds time in his busy schedule to oversee technical server specifications and configurations for turnkey server projects.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Blake for a lunchtime interview. It had to be a neutral place, as the engineering staff doesn't normally allow the marketing team up in the lab area. Just kidding.

Blake, you got your start with CSI in CSI’s sister company, CSI.net, doing IT consulting and network administration for small business. Has that helped in your transition to VO support and implementation?
It surely has. A strong foundation in Information Technology and network administration is definitely helpful. I will say that it is only a piece of the pie though.

Please tell us a little bit about your background.
I have roughly 8 years of official schooling in IT and Windows systems administration, (and a couple of unfinished associates’ degrees, as well as a bachelor’s degree) along with a pile of IT certifications that are in a pile of dust or propping up a desk somewhere. My real schooling (books and papers only go so far) was out in the field, doing everything from computer hardware repair, network wiring, network design, and windows administration. I also had a several year jaunt in college performing DSL and router support for SBC as well as server operations at IBM Global. My background is also speckled with industrial construction, freight elevator repair, commercial auto parts sales, and in high school I was a restaurant swing manager.

What type of call recording projects get you the most excited?
The projects I really dig into are the ones that make people’s head’s spin; where you go into these international organizations and build these recording and Q/A solutions that span the globe. They are the systems with over a thousand agents and hundreds of different components in all different countries that tightly integrate into one custom solution. Those are the solutions that after you design it and then build it, you sit back and look at how well everything flows together and how seamless it is.

What point in the project plan is most critical to a successful implementation?
They all are; but especially the recording requirements and the server / network requirements. Without either one of those being successfully fulfilled, the project grinds to a halt.

What will you be doing on your next vacation?
I wish I could say that I would be going away somewhere, but instead I will be continuing the endless process of restoring and renovating my home, a 125 year old Victorian.

What tech companies do you admire (besides CSI, of course!)?
Fog Creek Software: they make great products and there is always a support person available to answer your questions quickly (Just like us here at CSI!)

4.0 reasons to celebrate

Today CSI announced the newest version of our call recording and quality optimization solution, Virtual Observer Version 4.0

One of the most significant enhancements in our storied history (39 years in business) is the new web interface, which enables call playback, scoring, reporting and more from your browser.

Here are 4 more reasons to celebrate this announcement:

* All of the robust quality monitoring features of our client-server version have been carried over to the web version, in a user-friendly browser environment.

* Enhanced Dashboard Analytics. Our reporting has been overhauled to include an easier-to-use querying wizard and bundled dashboards for displaying groups of data with live real-time updating.

* Painless upgrade path for current customers. As always, current customers are brought along to the latest software release without costly upgrade fees.

* Call Insight Speech Analytics is available in the web interface as well, of course. The new reporting UI gives new meaning to "insight in action"!

Other sites reporting the news:

PR on the wires

CRMxChange

ContactCenterWorld

TelecomReseller

TMCnet