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  • Tanvir Alam

    Tanvir Alam 1:32 AM on March 3, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: 3G Technology, Mobile Application, mobile telecomminication   

    3G Technology and Call Center 

    3G Technology

    3G is next generation of mobile communication system, is a family of standards for  mobile telecommunications by international telecommunication Union. Unlike the Wi-Fi which you can use when you are in hotspot zone, you need to subscribe the 3G service from your mobile service provider. Most of the time they offer data plan for 3G services.

    What 3G can do apart from normal phone function ?

    • Mobile TV – a provider redirects a TV channel directly to the subscriber’s phone where it can be watched.
    • Video on demand – a provider sends a movie to the subscriber’s phone.
    • Video conferencing – subscribers can see as well as talk to each other.
    • Tele-medicine – a medical provider monitors or provides advice to the potentially isolated subscriber.
    • Location-based services – a provider sends localized weather or traffic conditions to the phone, or the phone allows the subscriber to find nearby businesses or friends.
    • High-speed Web

    3G and Voice

    Internet is a source of free and cheap calls worldwide save a lot of money due to the latest telephony application and service. 3G had edge of being connected while you are on move. Internet/connectivity is available all the time on your portable device. User with 3G device and plan is well-equipped with internet thus free/cheap calls. All you need mobile application on your device and you are ready to make calls. Lots of free applications are available for this purpose.

    3G and Call Center

    So imagine days when a agent can answer you call sitting in a cafeteria. You don’t have to spend a single penny for any kind of hardware for setting up call center. It’s just a glimpse what future looks like.

    3G Call Center

     
  • Amarveer Singh

    Amarveer Singh 10:55 PM on February 17, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: Call Center Setup, , Hosted call center, Risk Mitigation,   

    Mitigating risks for new entrants in the Call Center Business 

    A call center setup is a task in itself, or I would rephrase, HAD been a task in itself, till the time 3Clogic introduced the Telephony Application Grid (TAG).

    Any new entrant in the call center business is confronted with risks and challenges, primary ones being

    • Initial setup cost of the Call Center, this is huge
    • Expensive hardware
    • Hiring experts on the product for maintainability and support
    • Planning for scalability, which might result in buying expensive equipment in advance
    • Strategy to Ramp up and Ramp down quickly
    • Cost of minutes (Telecom minutes)

    What are mentioned are just a few examples, if we go on with the list, it is endless. 3Clogic fits in brilliantly as a risk mitigating solution to these complex business problems. Here is why

    • No expensive hardware required, bare minimum, Windows desktop PC’s serve the purpose
    • Hosted call center, so maintainability and support needs eliminated.
    • Scalable, add as many agent PC’s as you like.
    • Ramp up and Ramp down at will, no need to invest in expensive hardware or more over the more painful one, expensive hardware bought is lying on the shelf !
    • Choose your own provider, the one who gives you the best deal !
    • Keep as many backup providers for fail overs.
    • Strategize least cost routing, using multiple providers for multiple destinations with the least cost – big saving !
    • Don’t rent a location for a call center, let agents work from home !
    • Pay as you go :)

    Well, Do I still here someone say “Risk” :)

     
  • Ramana Reddy

    Ramana Reddy 3:31 PM on February 11, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , , , SaaS Call Center Solution Maintenance Window,   

    Delivering SaaS 24X7 

    3CLogic offers call center solution with Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Like any other SaaS provider we have our regular maintenance window Sunday mornings from 12am EST to 4 AM EST. As you can imagine running a call center is mission critical and any downtime even if it is a scheduled one needs to be minimized. 3CLogic is well aware of its customer profile and the mission critical nature of the call center application that it offers. For the last two years we had not done any extended maintenance on our servers. Recently we added a lot of new features and also redesigned the underlying database structure. This required an extended maintenance window than the usual four hours on Sunday morning. We sent out a notice to all of our customers indicating that we would need a longer window to perform maintenance. The response we received completely surprised us. Several of our customers called back and said that longer maintenance window will have a serious impact on their business.

    One of the clients who called us back was Oasis Marketing. Oasis Marketing does outbound calling. They wanted to run a 36 hour campaign over the weekend when we wanted to do maintenance. Another 3CLogic customer, Digital Bridge Communications based out of Ashburn, Virginia was bracing for the blizzard of 2010 that weekend. They wanted their customer support folks to work from home while still providing the usual weekend coverage and support to their clients.

    The above were just two examples of customers who just could not have any kind of extended maintenance window even if it was pre-scheduled. 3CLogic quickly put a SWAT team in place, which started brainstorming ways to minimize or eliminate the downtime required for this extended maintenance window. Just as the blizzard moved into the DC metro area, we moved all the customers to backup servers. We took the production servers and started performing upgrades and maintenance on them. As soon as the maintenance was completed, we moved all the customers back to the upgraded servers. Result: Zero impact on our customers’ business. SaaS for mission critical application like call centers really means 99.999 up time.

     
  • Raj Sharma

    Raj Sharma 3:44 PM on February 10, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , 3clogic Avaya Aspect Call Center Cloud,   

    3CLogic – What’s in a Name? 

    We frequently get asked what does 3CLogic stand for or what does 3CLogic mean? Well, quite frankly there is no logic behind choosing 3CLogic as a name. Originally the 3Cs in 3C stood for Communications, Convergence and Collaboration. It gradually evolved into Customers, Communications and Collaboration. I like ‘Customers’ in 3C given how we listen to our customers and go the extra mile in delighting them. An old friend of mine from my days at Newbridge recently asked me if 3C stands for ‘Call Center in the Cloud’. I like that interpretation too. So whatever we were thinking when we came up with 3C in 3CLogic seems to be all good. So the next question is why 3CLogic and not C3Logic. Well, there is logic behind that one. C3Logic would be behind Aspect and Avaya when listed alphabetically and we just couldn’t have that. If you are still wondering why 3CLogic and not just 3C as a name; well there was really no logic in putting logic in 3CLogic. It just sounds logically cool. If your head is spinning by now you have been thinking about all this naming stuff too logically. Besides, what’s in a name anyway? A rose by any other name…..

     
  • Amarveer Singh

    Amarveer Singh 12:00 AM on February 10, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , dialer ROI, , portable contact center, sales, Telephony Application Grid   

    Portable Contact Center – I knew you would say – Really? 

    “All work and no play makes jack a dull boy” – Yeah, same old, same old is what you would say, but can you actually relate this simple saying to a business management problem?

    Persistent Sales Inc, a contact center with 30 seats has a series of issues:

      1. The company’s annual off-site meet, agents with their families, has been planned for the end of the month in Las Vegas, Nevada
      2. This months sales target have not been met, third week already, that translates to the simple fact – “They loose the account” – if they don’t catch up in the last week of the month.
      3. Agents are bored with the monotony of the work, big big problem, the company off-site was planned just to break this monotony.
      4. The agents are really looking forward to this break in Las Vegas.

    Steve, the account manager, is restless and worried, racing up and down his cabin. He is almost certain that he needs to cancel the company off-site trip knowing very well that would not go down well with the agents. He decides to break the news to the agents post lunch.

    Steve settles down for lunch and picks up a copy of the newspaper, flips around and hits upon an article on “Portable Devices” elaborating the way laptops, notebooks, mobile phones etc etc changed our life……and Bingo ! He knows what needs to be done ! He finishes his lunch is a hurry.

    The distributed dialer solution from 3clogic that his company incorporated a couple of months back was a solution to his business management problem!!……..He thinks aloud in his mind – “For one week we are porting our contact center to Las Vegas”

    So he proposes a deal to the agents

      1. Morning 9AM to 2PM they make sales calls.
      2. Evening’s they enjoy Las Vegas.

    “So what do we need to carry with us?”, questions an agent, Steve just says “minimal equipment, one laptop per agent and a headset…..Thats it !”… Smiles :)

    The resort, Bally’s, on the strip in Las Vegas where they proposed to stay had Wi-Fi connections in all rooms, that’s all they would need to make calls to leads, the central hosted management portal would still be able to do lead management, live monitoring, and reporting!

    Steve ran the contact center from Las Vegas for a week, coupled with team building exercise in the evening, they made 32% more sales than any week they had in the previous year and before I forget, yes they did meet the target.

    On the last day of the week, when Steve met his agents for dinner, he raised a toast with his bottle of beer … all he said was “Cheers !”

    Persistent sales still successfully runs the account and yes Portable contact centers is not fiction! Distributed Dialers and Telephony Application Grid from 3clogic, makes this a cake walk!

     
    • Tanvir Alam

      Tanvir Alam 2:03 AM on February 10, 2010 Permalink

      All you need a laptop,internet and headset, you are up and running. it’s a cool concept, It’s true callcenter in your bag.

    • Raj Sharma

      Raj Sharma 10:14 AM on February 10, 2010 Permalink

      The work-at-home agent concept sounds great and it seems it s a no-brainer for large and small Call Centers. In the past it had not been that easy to implement. Even some of the pioneering companies like JetBlue have not completely moved to work-at-home agents. They allow their agents to work from home 2-3 days a week. This is because the technology is a barrier – virtual ports on their Call Center switch are expensive and complex to implement. With what you are describing, technology no longer poses a barrier. It is about time that more and more companies opt for virtual call centers.

  • Raj Sharma

    Raj Sharma 8:28 AM on February 6, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , , channel, , social media   

    Social Media in Contact Centers: Another Channel or Another Force Fit 

    Not only is social media all the buzz, social media is also being used to create a lot of buzz about anything and everything. Let’s look at how social media could potentially play a big role in next-gen contact centers. From the perspective of the contact center that is providing customer service, taking orders, or doing outbound telemarketing campaigns, social media is another channel that provides customer touch. Similar to phone, e-mail, Instant Messaging and fax channels, social media provides yet another way to interact with the end customer.

    Treating social media as just another channel can be very deceiving for the call center. Partly because this is a new channel and partly because the use of social media channel may not be well understood by the call center. There is a viral element to social media which can have huge ramifications; both positive and unwanted. Social media when used as another channel in contact centers can certainly provide a 360 degree view of a company’s client base if it is managed properly and is part of an overall strategy to enhance customer touch.

    For contact center technology vendors such as 3CLogic, social media provides an opportunity to bring new capabilities to contact centers. Optimizing the use of social media channel in contact centers requires integration of social media capabilities into existing call center platforms. New agent and supervisory skills are essential for the social media channel to work effectively in contact centers. Continuous monitoring of the buzz and chatter on the net combined with the appropriate reaction and response from the call center is paramount to the success of social media as a channel in contact centers. The speed with which the contact center must react and respond to the buzz and chatter cannot be underestimated. Adoption of social media in contact centers can be challenging and overwhelming for their decision makers. Technology vendors like 3CLogic can help call centers take the next step in the right direction.

     
  • Raj Sharma

    Raj Sharma 1:59 PM on January 30, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: 3Clogic call center, , , , SaaS business models call centers contact centers enterprise operating lease software as a service distributed computing usage based,   

    Software As A Service (SaaS) Business Models For Contact Centers 

    Let’s face it. One of the key reasons why Enterprises like the SaaS model is it eliminates or dramatically reduces upfront capital outlay. Given the capital crunch that businesses are facing these days, it is no surprise that SaaS and Cloud Computing Services are making huge leaps in adoption and acceptance.

    However, there is more than meets the eye. Software has been available for lease for several decades now. Software when leased, offers similar financial advantage as SaaS. When leasing software, there could be little or no upfront capital outlay just like SaaS. In case of an operating lease for software, the monthly payment shows up as an operating expense on the income statement. The leased software stays off the balance sheet and does not show up as an asset. It would seem that the financial benefits of a SaaS model are not much different than getting an operating lease for software. This is true in theory.

    At the current time operating leases to purchase software-based technology are not really being considered, because the leasing companies want a hard asset. Software may have tangible value, but it is often customized to meet the needs of a specific client, making it hard to transfer to a new owner. Software programs are also often governed by licensing agreements that either limit or prohibit the transfer of a license to a new owner. A lot of software products would not be an option for operating leases since the software license can’t be in the lessor’s name.

    With SaaS, Enterprises can now truly rent software and pay only for what they use and when they use it, and still get all the financial advantages of leasing the software. In case of Contact Centers, 3CLogic has come up with innovative models to make SaaS truly attractive from a financial perspective.

    1) Customers can rent Contact Center seats on a monthly basis. They pay a monthly subscription fee per seat for the use of Contact Center software. The model is similar to how salesforce.com charges for its SaaS. In case of Contact Center SaaS from 3CLogic, the customer pays an additional fee for call termination for outbound application, or toll free service charges for inbound application. It is customer’s responsibility to manage the number of seats they will be using from one month to next. They can increase or decrease the number of seats in any given month. This model provides tremendous amount of flexibility to the customer – they only pay for the seats that they use and when they use it.

    2) It is well known that the attrition rate in Contact Centers is one of the highest in the business world. When a Call Center agent quits or is terminated, it is still necessary to retain all the statistics and analytics associated with his or her ID; at least for a few months. In some marketing companies, the telemarketers are frequently active for a few months and then become inactive for some time, only to return back after a few months. In such scenarios, the enterprise may find it difficult to keep track of active and inactive seats on a monthly basis; and which IDs to retain for tracking purposes and which IDs to be deactivated. 3CLogic offers a purely usage based model as well. The Enterprise only pays for the total number of hours the agents are logged into the hosted Call Center Service.

    3) The third model that is tied to the usage works as follows. The total number of call termination minutes are calculated for the entire Call Center in any given month and the enterprise is charged a fee based on the number of minutes consumed. This per minute charge consists of both a software charge plus a charge for call termination for outbound application, or toll free service charges in case of an inbound application.

    3CLogic can offer these kinds of flexible business models because its platform is designed to be a multi-tenant platform from the ground up. The original design took into account that every tenant on its hosted service is going to have different technical and business requirements. 3CLogic’s distributed computing platform has been designed not only to address a variety of technical and business requirements, but the results are delivered to the customer in a matter of days, as opposed to months and years it takes with traditional Call Center platforms.

     
  • Nitin Gupta

    Nitin Gupta 5:37 AM on January 30, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: direct marketing, home based agents, , pre-paid, , virtual call center   

    Has the time come for pre-paid Contact Centers? 

    More than 40% of the mobile phone users in OECD markets are pre-paid customers. Does this mean that there is equally big size of marginal customers in call center business who would like to use the services of “Virtual Call Centers“? If I believe my intuition, there should be.

    One of the major users of such service would be companies engaged in direct marketing. Ever since American Express began marketing its credit card directly through post, the sales and marketing has evolved further in personal selling by companies like Tupperware, Amway and Oriflame. Such techniques usually have no advertising budget for media, but for parties and rewards.  The sales agent in this model is not usually the direct employee of the company. These companies form hierarchy of sales agents from freelancers (usually housewives). The goal for each sales agent is to sell the maximum and add equally good number of sales agents. Such agents do need a sort of call center and definitely they are not pros to handle the daily functioning of such call centers. These agents have no budgets other than the estimate of how much they earned last month. Such agents are “the” marginal agents who will love the idea of pre-paid contact center. The reason is simple and quite analogous to the reasons mobile companies have pre-paid cards or banks issue debit cards:

    • They allow user to monitor their usage
    • They can be used by students, immigrants
    • They can be used by people who have poor credit ratings

    Personal selling agents are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more home based agents who I consider “marginal”. They are engaged in selling insurance and sometimes just campaigning for a cause, political and apolitical. These agents get to earn against the number of calls they make or the number of successful sales they make. These agents have very small budgets and very small campaigns that do not even run into weeks. Such agents will definitely like to benefit from a pre-paid account.

    And just to add, 3CLogic is one of the few companies who setup pre-paid accounts for this micro-economy community of Virtual Call Centers.

     
  • Raj Sharma

    Raj Sharma 5:28 AM on January 29, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , , , , SaaS security call center CRM financial services credit card numbers social security numbers,   

    Security And Data Lock-In Concerns with Software as a Service (SaaS) 

    Whenever I read an article about SaaS or participate in a discussion that has anything to do with SaaS, concerns about security and data lock-in always surface at some point. When call center software is being delivered as SaaS and if the client application is in the financial industry, security requirements may even become show stoppers for the call center service to be delivered as a cloud service. The financial client may mandate that confidential customer information such as credit card numbers and social security numbers cannot be transmitted or stored outside of the customer premise. Traditionally such stringent security requirements dictated that the call center solution be deployed on customer’s premise. Only if there was a solution that would let the financial customer have the cake and eat it too i.e. opt for the call center solution as SaaS while ensuring that sensitive customer information never leaves its premise.

    Marrying distributed computing architecture for a call center solution with SaaS, it is possible for customers to have their cake and eat it too. With a distributed computing architecture for call centers, sensitive and confidential information is stored on-premise close to where the call processing is happening on agent’s desktop. And non-sensitive information about that customer record such as name and phone number is stored in the cloud and used as a pointer to fetch sensitive information from a local database or a CRM application when the call is connected. All the management, reporting and analytics for the call center is still delivered from the cloud. Sensitive and confidential information such as call recordings are stored locally on customer premise instead of storing these in the cloud. This is possible because with a distributed architecture there is no centralized dialer operating in the cloud. Recordings are done on agent’s PC where the call processing is also done and the recordings are streamed to a local server for retrieval later on. If all this sounds like “just-in-time” security for call center SaaS, it is. And it is made possible by combining distributed computing with cloud computing services.

     
  • Raj Sharma

    Raj Sharma 11:40 AM on January 28, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , , , Hosted Services, ,   

    What’s The Difference?: Cloud Computing Services, Hosted Services, Software as a Service (SaaS) 

    Ever wonder what’s the difference between all these service types? They all deliver a service over the Internet cloud. Whether it is a backup or word processor application or a call center application, the customer is still using software and hardware resources of servers maintained by someone else. Traditionally, the customer was responsible for sizing the hardware and software resources, procuring the servers, installing and configuring the servers and maintaining these resources in a data center.

    With hosted services, all these tasks are delegated to the provider of Saas or Cloud Computing Service. Since the SaaS provider has hundreds of customers, she may decide to house these customers on the same set of servers, using partitioning or virtualization. Server resources are efficiently utilized lowering the total cost of the service that is being delivered.

    The customer only pays for what she uses and has the added flexibility of ramping up or down the number of subscribers using the service. It is easy to implement and get started, thus lowering the burden and dependency on the in-house IT staff. There are concerns about security and trust when you turn over your mission critical application to a service provider. There is additional worry about being locked into a service because it may be hard to move or migrate the application data from one provider to another or if the data needs to be brought in-house.

     
    • Tanvir Alam

      Tanvir Alam 7:24 AM on January 29, 2010 Permalink

      Cloud computing is good for the companies who can’t afford hardware/software resources at large scale or they want to use it for very limited period of time. It gives them more flexibility to explore new option and take more risk with less investment.

      The real concern of cloud computing is downtime and security. In last year Sep, gmail was down for couple of hours and it’s created mayhem!

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