Tag Archives: cisco

Industry Voices on Avaya’s Next Move

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Industry Voices on Avaya's Next Move via Fonolo

It was hard to turn anywhere last week and not see news or commentary about Avaya. Their CEO announced that Avaya is in “advanced discussions with multiple parties” for a “strategic transaction” and that the process will be concluded in 30 days. As the behemoth of the call center industry, with $3B in revenue and 150,000 customers, whatever this move will be, it will have broad repercussions. We wrote about it last week.

While we wait for the shoe to drop, here’s a quick summary of comments from around the industry.

 

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Earnings Reports Show Call Center Momentum

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Earnings collage - 2018-11A number of call center companies reported earnings in the last few weeks, so it’s time once again for an informal, semi-regular, not-at-all-intended-as-investment-advice look at what’s going on. Twilio and RingCentral both had a bumper crop of news and their stock prices have reflected that; this continues the momentum from the last time we talked about them.

We’re going to cover Cisco and Vonage for the first time, because there’s a lot of call-center-related news there. We’re not covering Avaya today because they don’t report for another two weeks, but we’ll do a stand-alone post on them. (Lots going on there.) Continue reading →

5 Intriguing Call Center Acquisitions from the First Half of 2018

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5 Intriguing Call Center Acquisitions from the First Half of 2018We’re about half-way through 2018, and the pace of acquisitions in the call center space has been brisk. We’ve seen transactions for every size and covering a wide range of technology. It always amazes me how dynamic and fluid this industry is. Below are the 5 most interesting deals I’ve seen so far. An honorable mention goes out to Mitel’s acquisition by a private equity firm and departure from the public market. (Kind of the reverse of Avaya’s move last year.)

It’s interesting that three of the five deals below are related to “analytics” or “intelligence” of customer behavior. That’s emerging as a key frontier in the broader world of customer interaction management. Four of them include “AI” or “machine learning”, although those terms are being used so casually now, they are almost meaningless.

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Legacy Call Center Vendors Jockey for Position

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Legacy Call Center Vendors Jockey for PositionLast week I wrote about the cloud-based call center gang. This week, let’s look at the “legacy” gang. Yes, the term “legacy” is used in a negative way these days, but I don’t mean it that way. I just want to group together companies that have been selling call centers for many years, compared to the relative new-comers. (If there’s a nicer term, someone please let me know in the comments.)

As you would expect, the large call center vendors are jockeying for position fiercely. Avaya’s recent bankruptcy created an opportunity for competitors to pounce. Meanwhile, they are all worried about the threat “from below”, i.e. newer cloud-based competitors that started by focussing on small business, but are moving steadily up-market.

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Enterprise Connect – Analyst Round-up   

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Enterprise Connect – Analyst Round-up This year’s Enterprise Connect conference was a whirlwind of sessions, demos and announcements. There was also an abundance of big reveals from major vendors including Cisco (re-launching its UC endeavor as “Spark”), Interactive Intelligence (announcing PureCloud Collaborate), Microsoft (unveiling Skype for Business) and Avaya (announcing a new call center partnership with Google).

I wrote up my top takeaways on trends related to call centers a couple weeks ago, you can read that here. Many industry analysts did the same and, now that the dust has settled, I’ve assembled the top posts here for easy reference. Continue reading →

Yes, you can add cloud-based call-backs to your contact center without security risk.

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In-Call RescueAs cloud-based services overtake more and more of enterprise IT, data security remains a concern that must always be addressed. With contact centers, security concerns are heightened because voice data often requires extra care and might involve additional regulations. (This is especially true in verticals like financial and health care.)

With Fonolo’s cloud-based call-back service, voice calls between the company and the customer will flow through our servers and so we are frequently asked about security. In last week’s webinar (available for on-demand viewing here), an attendee asked:

If we add Fonolo to our call center, is it possible to ensure that voice data is secure?

The answer is “absolutely!” and the reason why is our recently unveiled appliance option.

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Comparing Fonolo and Virtual Hold

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Virtual Queuing Solutions Comparison - Fonolo In-Call Rescue, Avaya Callback Assist, Cisco Courtesy Callback, Virtual Hold Conversation BridgeWe held a terrific webinar last week (over 200 attendees!) titled “Top 5 Call Center Trends of 2013”. During the part about “Intelligent Call-back” (one of the top trends), we received several questions about how Fonolo compares to Virtual Hold. I asked Shai to elaborate on some of his answers during the webinar.

 

Q: How does Fonolo compare with Virtual Hold?

Shai: Both Fonolo and Virtual Hold provide the functionality of replacing hold time with a call-back which is what we call, generically, “virtual queuing”. The concept has been around for decades, but is now gaining renewed interest because of rising consumer expectations. Continue reading →

The End of Hold: Comparing Fonolo In-Call Rescue, Avaya Callback Assist, Cisco Courtesy Callback and Virtual Hold Conversation Bridge

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Virtual Queuing Solutions Comparison - Fonolo In-Call Rescue, Avaya Callback Assist, Cisco Courtesy Callback, Virtual Hold Conversation BridgeAre you still putting your callers on hold?

Here’s some bad news: They hate it. They’ll leave you for it. And they’ll tell the whole world in the process.

Here’s some good news: Virtual queuing eliminates hold time and there are a growing number of ways you can add it to your call center.

Most major call center vendors now offer a virtual queuing add-on to their product. For example, Avaya offers Callback Assist and Cisco offers Courtesy Callback. There are also vendor-independent options. Virtual Hold, a pioneer in the field, offers Conversation Bridge and Fonolo offers In-Call Rescue. Fonolo’s offering has the distinction of being the only cloud-based offering (which also gives it the lowest cost).

If you’re considering virtual queuing for your call center, tune in to this week’s webinar (register here) where we’ll discuss the pros and cons of these options. Continue reading to preview the webinar slides and download our new In-Call Rescue datasheet.
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5 Call Center Technologies Heating Up Customer Service

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Emerging Contact Center TechnologiesLet’s face it, most people don’t associate the call center world with innovation or excitement. For many, it’s a business expense, a necessarily evil, a source of many headaches, or a dreaded project.

I see things a bit differently. If you look past the surface and dig a little deeper, the North American call center industry is going through an unprecedented transformation, driven by the influential power the customer has on major business decisions.

At the forefront of this transformation are 5 innovative technologies that are changing the call center experience and inspiring businesses to think differently.

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