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  Ramana Reddy 11:35 AM on April 26, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Why We chose JAVA for the Server and .NET for the Client 

  If we had selected just one platform for both server and client, then we would need developers for only that platform. Also, we would need fewer software tools to build the 3CLogic application. We deliberately selected .NET for the client and JAVA for the server because we wanted to select the right platform for the environment.

  Why We Chose JAVA for Our Server:
  1.    Applications built on JAVA are highly scalable.
  2.    Linux servers are more reliable and more available than Windows servers. If we had selected .NET over JAVA, then we would have been limited to Windows servers.
  3.    JAVA applications are server agnostic and can be run either on Linux or Window servers.
  4.    .NET can only run on Windows servers which are more expensive than Linux servers. This translates to lower prices for our customers.
  5.    Almost all financial companies use Linux-based servers. Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Amazon, to name a few, run on Linux servers.

  Why We Chose .NET to Build the 3CLogic Client Software:
  1.    Windows PCs are standard in all call centers. 92% of all PCs are Windows-based.
  2.    .NET integrates better with Windows OS and typically uses less memory. We have even successfully run the 3CLogic Client in Windows 2000 machines with only 512 MB Ram.
  3.    Installation of .NET-based applications on Windows is an easier and faster process.
  4.    .NET makes it easier to give software the look and feel of an application like Windows.
  5.    For Windows application development, .NET has better tools and technologies available than just those for JAVA.

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  Ramana Reddy 5:43 AM on November 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
  Tags: 3CLogic (20), Amazon AWS, BCP, Business Continuity Plan, Hurricane Sandy   

  Frankenstorm, Amazon AWS and 3CLogic Service 

  We at 3CLogic understand that the last few days have been extremely difficult for everyone in path of Hurricane Sandy and we hope that you are safe and quickly returning back to normalcy.

  During the last few days, all of our support staff were working from home and it was business as usual. There was no reduction in service quality, like many other companies, as we were able to receive calls from home. Our team implemented the Business Continuity Plan to ensure that our customers are not impacted by the Hurricane. Below is the text of the email that we shared with our customers this Monday.

  As the brunt of the storm heads our way, we have completed contingency plans for 3CLogic operations and support. Amazon, our hosting provider had provided the following update:

  A spokesperson for Amazon Web Services has said they are ready for “Frankenstorm.” According to the spokesperson, “We are monitoring Hurricane Sandy and making all possible preparations, e.g. generator fuel, food/water, flashlights, radios, extra staff. Our infrastructure teams are following our storm response plan that we have developed and utilized during major storms over a multi-year period.”

  In case of an outage, all inbound numbers will be serviced from Amazon’s US-West (California Region). There will be a greeting directing your users to leave a message in your individual voice mail box. We will provide you access to your voice mail box so that you can retrieve all the messages left for you during the outage. This is only in case of emergency while we work on bringing primary services up. This will ensure your customers will not get a busy signal in case of an outage.

  Our staff will work from home and continue to provide phone and email support.

  Critical data files are being backed up and transferred to Amazon US-West (California Region) data center.

  We will keep you updated, but at this time we feel comfortable about the precautions that have been taken.

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  Ramana Reddy 10:26 AM on June 21, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
  Tags: 3CLogic (20), call center (22), Cloud (13), CRM (11), Dial (6), flexibility (5), Reliable (4), sales (12), Salesforce (4), Salesforce Security Review V-TAG Data Sensitvity, security (3)   

  3CLogic Application Passes Salesforce Security Review 

  When you dial into a call center, do you often find yourself wondering if you should give out your personal details: social security number, date of birth or address? If you are like me, you worry about these types of things all the time and with so many cases of identity theft being reported today, you should.
  Data security is of paramount importance to anyone entrusted with customer data. Not only do they have the obligation to take care of sensitive data, but certain types of data are protected by regulation.
  Now you can be sure that if the call center you are calling into is powered by 3CLogic that their solution is reliable, protected and secure. The 3CLogic application recently passed the Security review which was developed by Salesforce to assess the security posture of the application.
  With the 3CLogic application running your call center services for inbound calling, there is no need to store any of your sensitive data within 3CLogic. Whenever a customer calls in, the 3CLogic client will show the customer’s information on a Salesforce screen opened within the 3CLogic client. For outbound dialing, we use tokenization (phone number and Salesforce ID) so you can keep the rest of your data in Salesforce securely. This means there is no personal information stored outside of Salesforce (or any CRM system) if you are using 3CLogic as your call center solution.

  With data just in Salesforce you can leverage the security features of Salesforce which provide both strength and flexibility. However, protecting your data is a joint responsibility between you and salesforce.com. The security features in Salesforce enable you to empower your users to do their jobs efficiently, while also limiting exposure of data to the users that need to act upon it. Implement security controls that you think are appropriate for the sensitivity of your data. Your data is protected from unauthorized access from outside your company, and you should also safeguard it from inappropriate usage by your users.
  Please do email me at ramana@3clogic.com if you have any questions or comments.

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  Ramana Reddy 7:59 AM on June 11, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  3CLogic Eats Its Own Dog Food 

  Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, is a slang term used to define a scenario in which a company (usually, a software company) uses its own product to demonstrate the quality and capabilities of the product.^[1]

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food

  When you walk into an Apple store you will notice that all the ‘Geniuses’ are using apple products only.  For demos, they are very happy to pull out their iPhones and show you the feature you ask for; and at the inevitable end when you pull out your credit card, they will take the payment using the iPhone itself.  In restaurants before ordering, I usually ask the server for her favorite item on the menu.  If the server says, I never eat here, would you still eat there? Not me.

  Similarly, when you are shopping for a service center solution you should always ask the salesperson if they are using the solution they are pitching. If the answer is yes, then you should continue with the call. Otherwise, you are better off disconnecting the call and finding a vendor who uses the same service center solution that they are trying to sell to you. How can you use a companies’ solution whose salespeople do not even use to run their business operations for your critical service center operations?

  Did you know that when you call into 3CLogic that you are calling into a call center solution developed by 3CLogic themselves? 

  3CLogic’s support and sales staff use the same call center solution to make/receive calls that our customers use for their call centers. As a company developing software for businesses everywhere, we are fortunate to be able to use the same product as our customers to have a deeper understanding of the market requirements. This allows us to not only understand where our customers are coming from with questions and concerns but also creates a sense of integrity and strong support, thus resulting in a vastly superior product.

  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to direct all questions to me at ramana@3clogic.com

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  jmunson 9:50 AM on June 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Sandbox in the Cloud 

  Do you watch the trailers before heading out to see the latest movie?  Do you go to the electronics department and test drive the latest model of your favorite PC brand before taking it home?  Similarly, in 3CLogic, a couple of weeks before a new release goes into production, all the new changes are made available on the 3CLogic Sandbox.

  The sales and support team get the first ‘spin around the block’ of upcoming features in the Sandbox. If a customer is really excited about getting to try out any of the new feature(s), we create a test account on the sandbox and let the customer test it out with their customized set of requirements. We also give customers a “live simulation” which generates calls to complete the end to end testing without making calls to actual leads.

  Would you like to play before you use?

  Test your full set of custom integrations without making real calls to your customers to make sure the integrations work perfectly within your business model before applying them to your ‘live’ operations. With your mission critical service centers operations there should be no other way you should push new features or integrations.

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  JohnL 10:54 AM on June 7, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  More Than Just Tech Savvy Support 

  Throughout my experience in the IT field, I have had to call tech support for many different vendors to get issues resolved with their products and services. Many times I would have to wait for over 24 hours to get a response. I am not talking about receiving a resolution to my issue, but simply an acknowledgement of my inquiry. Some companies would send the same email multiple times which stated that they had received my trouble ticket and that someone would get back to me; I guess that is better than no response at all.

  When I joined the 3CLogic support team, I was very impressed by how well customers were treated. Issues were many times resolved immediately after they were reported. For the problems that needed additional troubleshooting, the resolution was still handled in an efficient matter; everyone working as a team and doing what they could to make things work, while keeping good contact with the customer.

  I have found that it is one thing to be tech savvy and another thing to care about people’s needs and be an ideal representative of your company. Here at 3CLogic, I would say that our technical support team is both (and I could not say that honestly about every company).

  It has been said that customers are more loyal to companies that have resolved their technical issues than to companies for which no issues have occurred. With the minds that are at work behind the scenes, technology will continue to get better. But regardless of the excellence of products, there will always be the human factor. People, both developers and users, make mistakes. What is important is that we have patient and effective support people as we navigate the cyber world. I’m proud to be part of a company of such people.

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  Ramana Reddy 10:00 AM on May 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
  Tags: 3CLogic (20), 3Clogic call center (4), Business (9), call center (22), Call Center operations (2), channel (6), Cloud (13), contact center (12), cost (8), Dial (6), FCR, First Call Resolution, First Contact Resolution, support (5)   

  90% First Contact Resolution (FCR) 

  First contact resolution is of utmost importance for all contact centers striving to improve customer satisfaction, increase customer retention rates and reduce operating costs. At 3CLogic, more than 90% of all contacts (calls, emails and chats) that come in during normal business hours are resolved during the first contact without the need for customers to make a second contact. With this level of service, there is no wonder as to why 3CLogic customers are raving about our support. Customer satisfaction is critical to 3CLogic as we deliver services remotely and the solution is always on-demand to deliver complex call center features from the cloud.

  How does 3CLogic achieve high FCR rates?
  • All 3CLogic Support staff members are provided with full training, access to customer information and are empowered to resolve all incoming issues or inquiries.
  • 3CLogic’s support staff and customers use the same contact center solution to make/receive calls and manage the contact center. We understand the issues you may be facing by experiencing the look and feel of the software first hand.
  • The 3CLogic call center solution is designed with simplicity in mind. We provide you with all of the tools you need to simply get the job done in the most efficient way.
  • The self service portal is used by the 3CLogic support staff as well as our customers. By using the same tools and resources as our customers, we can understand every question and assist with a solution within the first contact. (http://support.3clogic.com)
  • The 3CLogic staff has defined processes to monitor emails and chat so that any of our customers using non voice channels are accounted for and addressed; sometimes faster than if they were to dial in.

  The only problem with managing 24/7 support and maintaining high first contact resolution rates is shortage of resources during certain periods of time. To improve our customer satisfaction rates and create an optimal approach for support inquiries, in addition to calls, we implemented a new online ticketing system wherein either the customer or support rep opens a trouble ticket. The support team member responds back sometimes in a few minutes but always in less than 2 hours.
  We are interested in how our customers are feeling about this new system, and invite all comments and suggestions openly.

  We love to hear any feedback, comments, suggestions or questions from our customers. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to direct all questions to ramana@3clogic.com.

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  Raj Sharma 7:06 PM on May 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
  Tags: 3CLogic (20), call center (22), channel (6), Cloud (13), CRM (11), sales (12), security (3), Telephony Application Grid (3), Voice (9)   

  If You can’t Trust Your Cloud Provider, Who can you Trust? 

  I can’t imagine having a talk about moving to a cloud based call center without talking about security in the cloud. Inside sales reps and customer service reps are constantly accessing, sorting and storing invaluable data as they communicate with your customers and prospects. This data can be in the form of voice, chat, text and e-mails depending on the communication channel that is utilized. Additionally, there is tons of data regarding trends and analysis in reports that are generated during customer interactions.

  According to a Network World article, users shouldn’t rely on their cloud service provider’s security features to protect their most critical data. Another study from Gartner indicates that 75% of customer service organizations will move to cloud by 2013. So on one hand we have a lot of companies moving to cloud based call centers, while security in the cloud remains a big concern.

  So what are users supposed to do? Call center decision makers should look for a system that not only uses end to end encryption, but also uses “tokenization“. This way none of the sensitive data ever leaves the enterprise network. Tokens that only have names and phone numbers are stored in the cloud. Even these are encrypted end to end further securing sensitive data.

  One way to do this is to use 3CLogic’s distributed architecture called V-TAG (Virtual Telephony Application Grid). Even functions like call recording are not done centrally, which allows for these recordings to be stored on customer premise. 3CLogic uses tokens, such as incoming caller id, to access customer information from local CRMs and databases. Since V-TAG uses a distributed architecture, none of the sensitive information ever leaves the customer premise. This information is pulled from the local database and displayed in a single window interface to the reps. The reps are unaware of where different pieces of information are coming from.

  A cloud based offering that uses centralized servers instead of V-TAG, has to upload sensitive data to cloud before it can be displayed to reps for incoming or outgoing calls. This not only causes additional delays, it often violates a company’s security and compliance policies.

  At 3CLogic, we often hear how the users are pleasantly surprised when they see the customer information on the screen instantly, much in advance of their answering the call or the call getting connected. On hearing this, we all have that familiar smile on our faces because we know that these are some of the benefits of a distributed architecture like V-TAG. Additionally, Call center managers and administrators can sleep peacefully because their security policies are not compromised.  What’s not to like about this?

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  Raj Sharma 5:52 PM on May 22, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
  Tags: analytics (2), Automated (2), Business (9), Cloud (13), cloud call center (5), cloud contact center, contact center (12), CRM (11), PBX (2), Reporting (7), threshold   

  How Do I Know I Need One? 

  When does it make sense to fly versus driving to your destination? We were discussing this around the water cooler the other day. There were three of us and each one of us had different preferences. One of us had a pretty high threshold. For him if he could get there in 8-10 hours of driving, that’s what he would default to. For me, the threshold was five hours. Driving 300 miles would take me 5 hours. Given where the Airline industry is today, and assuming that I could take an hour and a half flight, it would still take me 5 hours door to door after everything was said and done. Probability of variables like not finding a direct flight and getting caught in traffic would mutually cancel each other out. So for me the threshold is, if I have to drive for more than 5 hours, I would opt to fly.

  A lot of times we get asked by prospective customers: How do I know I need a contact center? We have a PBX system and phones and my reps use the company phone system to make and receive calls. Why do I need an automated system?

  I offer them a very simple thumb rule. If your reps are on the phone for more than 2 hours a day, you need a cloud based contact center system. 2 hours a day is 40 phone calls every day. Assuming that 80% or 32 of these calls are to and from customers, these are some of the most valuable interactions between the company and its customers or prospects. There is all kinds of Business Intelligence (BI) hidden in these interactions that I would really like to get my hands on. A traditional PBX or phone system is just not going to give you that kind of insight into how your reps and customers are interacting with each other.

  At about $150 per rep per month you get a phone system that is integrated with your CRM. Because of automation the reps can now call or service more customers making them two or three times more productive. You get a 360 degree view of all your prior interactions with a prospect or customer whether it was voice, chat or text communication. You get management, reporting, analytics and BI that you just wouldn’t get with a PBX system.

  So here’s the bottom line: If you have reps in your organization that are on the phone for more than 2 hours every day, you should really start evaluating cloud based contact center systems.

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  Raj Sharma 6:31 PM on May 21, 2012 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
  Tags: 3CLogic (20), availability (3), call center (22), Cloud (13), cloud call center (5), cost (8), CRM (11), CRM Integration (4), security (3)   

  WHAT’S PREVENTING CALL CENTER EXECUTIVES FROM MOVING TO THE CLOUD 

  We just released this ad which really captures the sentiments of call center decision makers. When Gartner Research predicts that at least 75% of call centers will leverage the cloud by 2013, you have to believe that every call center executive is being asked “when”, and not “if”. Call Center executives have got to be in a bind. The CEO is asking them what is their cloud strategy and when they are moving their call center to the cloud. There is pressure from the finance guys about justifying moving to something new when there is sunk cost in call center equipment. The IT guys are concerned about security, reliability and disruption to existing operations. The VP of Sales is wondering what happens to CRM integration. You can almost hear what is being said in the hallways. To really find out what is being said, click on the image and read the bottom half of the ad.

  

  Constraints for call centers to move to the cloud

  Go ahead and +1 here http://3clogic.com/cloudad.html if you like what 3CLogic is saying!

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