As an Altitude Software partner, contact centre technologies service provider, Ocular Technologies has introduced Skype for Asterisk, a new interaction channel built in with the Altitude IP Contact Center solution, which will enable contact centres to take advantage of the unified interaction channel monitoring, reporting and development environment.

Even against the backdrop of global recession woes, cost and risk based resistance to upgrading contact centre systems, and market saturation, the global inbound contact routing (ICR) market continues to grow, reporting a year on year growth of 5%.

Spescom DataFusion has entered into a strategic partnership with QPC, a UK-based ICT organisation with an international presence, to resell QPC's Management Information Gateway (MIG) application into sub-Saharan Africa.

Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories has announced that it has joined the Cisco Developer Network as a registered developer within the Unified Communications technology category.

has seen measurable results in its support call centre through the use of unified communications capabilities and the Seamless Customer Service UC application for the contact centre.

Aspect was honoured in the 2009 InfoWorld 100 Awards from IDG’s InfoWorld magazine for its global unified communications deployment.

The global recession has seen contact centres all over the world waking up to the potential of remote agents, also known as home workers.  In a recent survey of contact centres in South Africa conducted by Interactive Intelligence, 45% employed a home-worker strategy to some degree.  88% said it made the company more productive, while 73% saved money on facility costs.

Over the last year, companies have had to change the way they do business, due largely to the global economic downturn driving cost reduction or control. In times like these, contact centres should be seen as competitive differentiators, rather than as compulsory cost centres, writes Ebrahim Dinat, sales & marketing director at Ocular Technologies

There is no loyalty to a company that provides bad customer service, and as a result poor customer service is costing the average South African company millions in customer churn.

Just 20 years ago, inbound call centres consisted of groups of people with telephones and in some cases even headsets, ready to answer customer calls which were delivered to agents in a hunt-group fashion, writes Paul Fick, MD of Spescom DataFusion.

The level of service and support a customer receives from a contact centre has become an important gauge of a company's commitment to service excellence. However, those calling into an emergency contact centre expect nothing but the very best in terms of response times, agent expertise and information accuracy.  In many cases, lives depend on it. The technology used in emergency contact centres - systems, applications and services - is vital.

The human capital of any contact centre is by far its largest expense, and as a result, managing this aspect effectively is of utmost importance, writes Paul Fick, MD of Spescom DataFusion.