E-commerce solutions provider The Exchange has introduced a call center CRM system that is now live with UK-based Click Group, reports TMCNet.com.

The Officeweb call center solution, developed together with Callmedia, is customizable for financial intermediaries or other call-center oriented businesses that require a CRM solution integrated to their telephony systems.

The latest call center solution has enabled Click Group to develop a full-automated end-to-end CRM system, which is expected to improve efficiency by 20 percent. This expected efficiency improvement is a result of a seamless sales process online that makes facilitates faster and easier purchase of life assurance.

Despite the several advantages of on on-demand contact center, such a solution is not for every company. Organizations thinking of setting up an on-demand contact center have to be prudent and adopt best practices, says Mae Kowalke, an associate editor at TMCNet. 

In a recent column, she points to a white paper by virtual call center solutions company, Contactual that debunks some of the common myths about on-demand contact centers. These common misperceptions are:

• On-demand contact centers are costlier than on-premise centers--- people often ignore the ongoing maintenance costs for the latter when making this statement.


• On-demand solutions are difficult to be integrated with other applications—availability of sound APIs belies this argument.


• Increased security risk--- numerous options are available to protect all data and can in fact make an on-demand contact center more secure.


• On-demand contact centers offer less features: a myth in the present day and age.


• On-demand is suitable only for small contact centers: no longer true since virtual contact centers are now available with 500 or more agents.


• The virtual solutions are suitable for short-term arrangements: the benefits of an on-demand center can be enjoyed more in the long term.

The Spring 08 LiveOps on-demand call centre platform provides better capabilities for cal centres such as enhanced outbound dialing capability, improved call routing user interface for business users, CTI integration with external call delivery services, as well as integration with major call routing systems.
 

The LiveOps Predictive Dialer optimizes automated outbound calls for highly distributed agents to handle large volumes of outbound calls. Business users can create routing rules automatically with results measured directly from their CRM applications, as a result of the enhanced web-based interface.

CTI enhancements include data integration with external call delivery services. LiveOps Spring 08 also includes a Web Services API layer that enables tighter integration with call routing solutions such as Genesys and Cisco, allowing the platform to work seamlessly in a heterogeneous call center environment.

Infinity CCS has introduced a 'contact centre in a box' – a 15-seat contact centre software for £10k.

The new contact centre software includes inbound and outbound call/contact management, desktop scripting, automated dialling and blended CTI, agent reporting and time-sheeting, call recording and quality monitoring.

The highly modular software removes the complexity out of contact centre software, with simple, elegant screens that are integrated with a number of databases and information sources, which will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of contact centre staff.

The etalk Qfiniti Enterprise solutions suite from Autonomy Corporation plc has been awarded the 2007 Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation's (TMC) Customer Interaction Solutions magazine.

The contact center solutions suite lets businesses to capture, analyze, and share customer interactions from a single user interface. The solutions feature multi-channel interaction analysis, real-time agent support and contact center performance management, including tools for compliance recording, quality monitoring, agent performance evaluations, eLearning and customer surveys.

According to the company, the key value proposition of Qfiniti Enterprise is in its ability to deliver several call centre solutions such as compliance recording and interaction analysis in one consolidated package, which enhances their customers’ competitiveness.