Call Centers

ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE REPORT

CRM Conference to Showcase the Retail Experience

CRMC (Customer Relationship Management Conference) is being held May 29 to 31 at the Chicago Hyatt Regency. This annual event offers a unique agenda for retailers, Devon Wylie, CEO of CRMC told CRM Buyer. “It’s specifically focused on case studies from topnotch multinational retailers. With this approach, attendees can get actionable learnings they can take home with them.”

The conference will offer three streams: basic loyalty and strategy; analytics implementation; and social and mobile.

“Social and mobile is a new piece,” Wylie said. “While we have touched on it in the past, this year it’s hitting mainstream.”

Walgreens, GameStop, Express, Best Buy, Bass Pro Shops and Groupon are among the retailers who will be participating in the event.

Soraya Daraby, cofounder of Foodspotting and digital strategist for ABC News, is scheduled to deliver a keynote speech at the conference on “The ROI of Social Media for Today’s Retail Brands: How to Make It Work for Your Business.”

Loyalty specialist Kobie Marketing will also be leading a roundtable discussion on “The Best Technology to Drive Customer Engagement & Generate Measurable Results.” The focus of the discussion will be on understanding and delivering an effective customer experience in retail with a particular focus on integration approaches.

“Retail channels have evolved over the years to include mobile, tablets and integration with social media platforms,” Michael Hemsey, president of Kobie, told CRM Buyer.

“It’s well beyond someone liking you as a brand. Now you have to engage with customers and create customer experience management strategies through those channels to differentiate yourself over the long term,” he said. “You also have to know how to monetize those behaviors by tying them to your offline programs to drive new relationships.”

Kobie will be releasing a new white paper, “Omnichannel Loyalty: Designing the Ultimate Consumer Experience,” on its website at the end of this month.

Zoho Support Integrates With Twitter, Facebook

Zoho Support now offers tight integration with Twitter and Facebook. With this integration, companies can now easily employ Zoho Support to engage with and support their customers in real time via the popular social networks, without ever leaving Zoho Support’s user interface.

This is the latest in a series of social media integration announcements from Zoho. The company has already rolled out Facebook and LinkedIn integration with Zoho CRM, and LinkedIn integration for Zoho Recruit.

The user interface for Zoho Support now includes a new social tab with options for Facebook and Twitter. These features allow users to monitor customer profiles, pages, hashtags and defined keywords, as well as reply to public tweets and Facebook comments from within the application.

An Escalates feature automatically sends alerts to assigned company officials when tweet spikes — based on certain keywords — occur. Companies can also use keywords to expedite ticket routing to specific support agents or teams.

Facebook and Twitter integration for Zoho Support is available immediately, free of charge, in the Zoho Support Enterprise Edition and Zoho Support Professional Edition.

CallCopy Delivers Upgrade

CallCopy, a provider of contact center call recording and workforce optimization (WFO) solutions, has announced an updated version of its cc: Discover WFO suite. cc: Discover allows organizations to better utilize business intelligence and ensure optimal end customer satisfaction through integrated call recording, speech and desktop analytics, quality management, screen capture, agent coaching, performance management, customer survey and workforce management.

Upgraded security features include role-based permissions. An enhanced auditing system records all system changes with data, including originating IP address, in order to provide management with greater detail. Audio and screen capture playback now features TLS encryption support.

Both cc: Discover’s speech and desktop analytics were upgraded in Version 5.0. Users can now utilize business logic within recording schedules to dictate which calls speech analytics should be run on. Analytics can also be run remotely to lower infrastructure costs and speed processing. Archiving rules can now be set for desktop analytics based upon the user’s screen workflow.

New recording integrations include support for cloud-based telephony providers, Cisco MediaSense, Avaya PC 5.0, and Siemens v8.0. Existing integrations with Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) and Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX) have been updated.

CallCopy will showcase the latest features of cc: Discover v5.0 in a webinar on May 17.

ShoreTel Announces M5 Portal Offering

ShoreTel, a provider of on-premises and cloud-based business phone system and communication solutions with fully integrated unified communications (UC), announced its newest M5 Portal for existing customers at Interop Las Vegas.

M5 Portal provides a single application for managing user preferences, system configuration and business intelligence data. With it, individual users can set preferences such as personal call routing, manage voicemail, and review call statistics through a simple Web interface. Managers can use the portal to look into organizational activities including sales.

Denise J. Deveau is a seasoned freelance writer based in Toronto, Ontario. She has more than two decades of experience in business- and technology-related subjects.

1 Comment

  • Very interesting, Denise. I’m looking forward to seeing the news that comes out of this show. It’s great to see the new focus being placed on mobile and social — retailers need to stay on top of consumers’ use of such technology, and how it relates to their CRM systems. It’s an approach we use to inform the design of our RQ and XQ product lines: http://www.iqmetrix.com/products

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