2012-04-16
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Call Center Insider
Expert's Angle: Contact Centers in the Cloud
(by André Riemekasten, Business Development Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Cloud computing has become a hot topic in today’s contact center market. For some suppliers, cloud-based solutions are like a "silver bullet", while others are gravely concerned of the security risks. However, neither of these concepts is entirely correct.
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2012-03-19
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Call Center Insider
Expert's Angle: Evaluate Your Contact Center’s Processes with Screen Recording
(by Marco Mueller, Executive Vice President, ASC telecom AG)
Monitoring screen activities can play a vital role in improving agent performance and contact center processes.
Voice recording and monitoring fails to evaluate how agents use the infrastructure of the contact center or how they follow suggested or required corporate workflows. Determining the answers to these questions provides information about the effectiveness of contact center processes and their indirect impact on the quality of customer interactions.
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2012-02-17
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Call Center Insider
Expert's Angle: Has Quality Management Been Failing the Customer Service Industry?
(by Patrick Coleman, Managing Director, ASC telecom UK Ltd.)
In Bain & Company’s 2009 survey of U.S. contact centers, 80 percent of companies felt they offered a superior customer experience, but only eight percent of their customers agreed. How could such a gap between providers and consumers develop?
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2011-12-23
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ContactProfessional.com
Speech Analytics: A New Paradigm for Quality Monitoring
(by Verena Wissel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Globalization and the information technology revolution has transformed the business world, and contact centers must adapt if they wish to survive. The use of speech analytics for quality monitoring represents a sea change in the ability to improve customer service, optimize business processes and ensure compliance with government regulations. As such, it will soon serve as a differentiation point for contact center success.
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2011-12-19
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Eccco News
Trends and Evolution in Technology
(by Patrick Salg, Director Sales International, ASC telecom AG)
In today´s contact centers, the convergence of platforms for customer relationship management (CRM), workforce management (WFM) and quality management (QM) makes it easier to consolidate and maintain data instead of duplicating it in multiple systems. As a result, agent data from the QM system can be used in CRM to provide a comprehensive overview of customer interactions and satisfaction.
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2011-11-11
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ContactProfessional.com
Cloud Computing: A Revolution for Contact Centers
(by Marc Wildner, Director Channel Management & Presales,
ASC telecom AG)
The latest trend in the contact center business is Cloud computing. And it is no longer just a concept. In fact, it's being adopted rapidly by some of the biggest and most trusted companies in the world. Leading Cloud computing providers like Amazon, Google, Verizon, Microsoft and many more are investing a huge amount of money for new high-performance data centers.
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2011-10-11
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ContactProfessional.com
Quality is the Key to Success
(by Katrin Henkel, PR & Communications Manager, ASC telecom AG)
The following case study illustrates how quality and process management can be optimized in a financial institution’s environment.
Over 13 years of successful client service, company X handled more than 70 million calls, carrying out quality monitoring to ensure its agents met a basic standard. Customer contacts were analyzed by recording calls and on-screen information to verify service quality and manage call center processes.
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2011-09-30
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ContactProfessional.com
Quality Monitoring and CRM: A Perfect Couple
(by Verena Wissel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
In today’s contact centers, agents are expected to handle several programs and applications in parallel to handle address data, orders and complaints. Often, these programs are not integrated and lack the ability to exchange entered information. Without any search capability, customer history cannot be quickly reviewed. Post-processing of requests might take a lot of time because all the data must be added to the corresponding database manually. At the same time, agents must handle multiple communication channels such as calls, email, fax or chat.
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| 2011-08-24 |
ContactProfessional.com
The Value Proposition of Quality Management
So why is quality management so important? In today’s economic climate, contact centers are under considerable pressure to offer prompt service to retain customers, increase sales and reduce costs, without compromising the quality of the interaction. Contact center managers have realized that their frontline staff, their contact center agents, represent a key business asset requiring investment through training, coaching and development. Quality management helps to meet these critical challenges.
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2011-07-12
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ContactProfessional.com
The Special Needs of Financial Contact Centers
(by Patrick Salg, Director Sales International, ASC telecom AG)
Financial institutions, and especially trading firms, present a much more demanding set of requirements for communications recording and quality monitoring than other organizations. In addition to preserving a hybrid system of TDM and IP communications, they must address an entirely separate infrastructure for their trading system, often just as critical for enterprise-wide success.
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2011-06-07
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ContactProfessional.com
Advertising for Prospective Customers
(by Bernd Ottow, Solution Marketing Manager, ASC telecom AG)
With the growth of social media, online commerce and direct customer communications through contact centers, the fundamental nature of advertising has undergone a transformative conversion from broad-based messages for the general public to targeted approaches to a carefully selected audience. To understand how this has occurred, and how it might evolve, it is necessary to take a general look at the industry as a whole.
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| 2011-05-06 |
ContactProfessional.com
Customers are Communicating More
When have you been in touch with a contact center lately? Or when have you sent an e-mail to "info@companyname.com?” Or simply, when have you last talked negatively about a product – among your family, friends or even on the Internet? Probably not that long ago. Today’s customers do talk about their experiences, and they are more ready to change.
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| 2011-04-06 |
ContactProfessional.com
The Transition to SIP Trunks and the Challenge of Voice Recording
IP-based communications have radically transformed the way people interact. Setting up separate infrastructures to transport voice and data traffic has become obsolete with Voice-over-IP (VoIP); one network can now handle both types leading to significant cost savings. But VoIP is just the first step in a plethora of additional features and technologies labeled Unified Communications, Collaboration, Presence, Mobility or Convergence.
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| 2011-03-29 |
ContactProfessional.com
Industry Best Practices: Communications Recording and Quality Management System Evaluation
In the landscape of today’s information technology arena, customers are looking for superior “value-for-money” solutions to achieve better investment protection and quicker ROI. Information is readily available over the Internet with search engine giants such as Google, educating customers who already know what they want.
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2011-02-01
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ContactProfessional.com
Quality Management in the Cloud
(by Berthold Hofmann, Executive Project Manager, ASC telecom AG)
With cloud computing, companies can now benefit from the software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach for their contact center, moving away from local installations for many business applications, including packages for accounting, project management and customer relationship management, and relying instead on the software residing in the cloud.
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| 2010-12-15 |
ContactCenterWorld.com
The Fundamental Value of Quality Management
and Speech Analytics
Many contact center decision makers, despite widespread recording of telephone calls, still fail to exploit the full potential of automated solutions available for quality management, customer feedback and speech analytics.
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| 2010-11-22 |
ContactCenterWorld.com
Deutsche Telekom
Any company continuously strives to improve operations and optimize processes in a number of ways. Many managers focus on internal aspects such as eliminating waste and reducing costs, but today’s businesses are driven primarily by external factors: by customers and markets. Successful companies know how to listen to the customer’s voice.
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2010-10-25
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Contact Management (10/2010)
Unearthing and fixing agent flaws
(by Ralf Roesel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Quality management and eLearning systems improve training programs by providing courses tailored to an agent’s weakness. They are starting to deploy speech analytics and mining tools to uncover even the most hidden conversation nuances. Here’s what is happening.
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2010-10-12
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ContactCenterWorld.com
The Versatility of Speech Analytics
(by Katrin Henkel, PR & Communications Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Speech analytics has become the next step for contact centers looking to supplement their quality monitoring solutions with more powerful technology. In today’s economy, contact centers provide an essential differentiation point for competitive industries as customers decide between companies with similar products based on the level of customer service and the ability to resolve seemingly intractable problems in one interaction.
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2010-09-21
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ContactCenterWorld.com
Quality Management for Financial Contact Centers
Quality management has served as a mandatory, comprehensive and efficient tool at many contact centers for more than a decade. It provides an independent method for improving agent skills through customized training and can now also increase their efficiency through business process optimization.
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2010-09-21
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ContactCenterWorld.com
Improving Agent Performance Through Monitoring and Training Systems
(by Ralf Roesel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Improving agent performance represents the most critical task in any contact center, and the most competitive organizations employ a wide variety of methods to evaluate customer interactions and train their personnel in an effective manner.
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| 2010-09-17
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ContactProfessional.com
Seven Pointers on Speech Analytics for Contact Centers
Speech analytics has arrived. Once viewed through a hazy prism of artificial intelligence, the technology is now widely employed by medium and large contact centers to increase ROI, ensure quality service and optimize agent training based on the content of calls as well as agent performance.
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2010-08-27
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ContactCenterWorld.com
Integrating Quality Management and Workforce Management in Contact Centers
(by by Steph du Toit, Operations Manager, Payg CSE and Patrick Salg, Director of International Sales, ASC telecom AG)
In today’s ultra-competitive environment, the centrality of customer satisfaction is a given. However, the focus on service quality in contact centers lags behind the rest of the business world because these organizations were developed primarily to serve customers in a cost-effective manner.
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2010-08-25
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Call Centre Europe (Nr. 87/2010)
You can listen, but now you can learn what your callers are really saying.
(by Mike Murley, Sales Director, ASC telecom UK Ltd)
Trawling through hours of calls takes time and will not give you a true picture of how your call centre and your company are serving customers. Speech analytics is the answer, say your experts - and they have some innovative ideas.
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2010-08-05
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Contact Center International (2/2010)
Silent Monitoring - Listen-In for Quality
(by Ralph Roesel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Companies who want to beat their competition have to provide excellent customer care services and handle customer calls quickly and precisely. Silent monitoring works as an efficient tool for the quality management of a call center. Quality Management is a critical tool for the continuous monitoring and improvement of inbound and outbound communications.
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2010-07-14
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ContactCenterWorld.com
Customer Feedback or How to Make Customers Happy
(by Bernhard Wagner, Director Sales International, ASC telecom AG)
The role of contact centers in today’s economy is clear – "make customers happy" – a more demanding goal than many realize. For a long time, companies around the world have eschewed investing in their contact centers as an important segment of their business. This attitude has changed, and contact centers are now upgrading their infrastructure by implementing quality management, speech and content analytics, e-learning, recording, WFM and CRM.
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2010-06-07
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ContactProfessional.com
Eight Reasons Why Your Contact Center Needs
Business Process Optimization
(by Katrin Henkel, PR & Communications Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Business process optimization (BPO) is an emerging technology, primarily for contact centers, encompassing five key components: communications recording, quality monitoring, speech analytics, eLearning and workforce management. Its enterprise-wide impact on business processes, human resources and executive decisions differentiates contact centers using it from those that don't.
Here are eight reasons why your contact center needs BPO and its inherent value for your future growth...
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2010-05-21
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ContactCenterWorld.com
Business Process Optimization for Supervisors
(by Patrick Salg Director of International Sales, ASC telecom AG)
Historically, supervisors have used communications recording systems with quality monitoring to improve agent performance. Today, however, business process optimization is creating a sea change in supervisor capabilities, providing deep insights into their agents’ activities to increase operational effectiveness.
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2010-04-12
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ContactCenterWorld.com
Hosted Solutions and SaaS
(by Andre Riemekasten Business Development Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Business markets are undergoing transformational change, and product cycles are becoming shorter. This presents a challenge for global companies, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises, and requires a flexible IT infrastructure to respond to each change in a dynamic manner.
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2010-03-18
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ContactCenterWorld.com
Customer Care in the Era of Social Media and Web 2.0
We are living in a world where social and cultural changes influence the requirements of customer services and customer communications. The generation of the so-called "Digital Native" demands a new approach to customer care.
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| 2010-02-16 |
ContactCenterWorld.com
Business Process Optimization for Contact Centers
What are the key success benchmarks driving the use of quality monitoring (QM) in contact centers in Europe? And what are the main challenges in its implementation?
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| 2009-12-08 |
TMCnet.com
The Use of Quality Monitoring in European Contact Centers
What are the key success benchmarks driving the use of quality monitoring (QM) in contact centers in Europe? And what are the main challenges in its implementation?
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2009-11-19
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TMCnet.com
Sales Opportunities for Quality Monitoring
(by Ralph Roesel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Today, voice recording is included in most dealer portfolios either to help the customer meet financial compliance regulations or simply to verify telephone transactions. Another common driver occurs when the customer migrates to IP telephony and must deploy IP recording software. However, the real profit margin today involves pro-active selling of broader solutions with recording as the core.
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2009-10-14
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TMCnet.com
Voice Data Compression in Recording Solutions: A Blessing or a Curse?
(by Peter Schmitt, Director Research & Development, ASC telecom AG)
Compression of voice data is widely used for digital recording solutions in analog and digital telephony environments to reduce the storage footprint for recorded audio. For VoIP, compression is required for low-bandwidth network links; however, recording solutions normally store the audio data in the same format as it is received over the network.
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| 2009-10-05 |
ContactCenterWorld.com
Key Technologies for Contact Centers
What are the most common applications for speech analytics software?
1. Emotion detection to filter calls with anger;
2.Gender and age spotting to segment calls, to measure campaign efficiency or for routing to suitable agents;
3.
Keyword and phrase spotting to categorize and classify calls automatically, to sort by topic and to verify adherence to call scripts; and
4. Speech-to-text transcription for semantic analysis on root causes or to enable the VOC (voice of the customer).
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2009-09-16
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TMCnet.com
The Role of Communications and Networking in Driving Change
(by Bernd Ottow, Product Line Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Let's do some time travelling. Jump back a few thousand years and consider the development of mankind. Our ancestors' lives remained pretty much the same from the end of the Stone Age, about 7000 BC, until the dawn of the New Age in 1500 AD. Progress has occurred in quite a static way until the last two centuries, when we've been beset by an exponential explosion of dramatic life-changing inventions.
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2009-08-06
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TMCnet.com
Financial Contact Centers of the Future
(by Marc Wildner, Director Business Development, ASC telecom AG)
Financial institutions have relied on communications recording and quality monitoring in their contact centers for decades for a variety of purposes including verification of transactions, compliance with government regulations, protection from liability and improvement of agent performance and customer service.
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| 2009-07-20 |
TMCnet.com
Excellent Service Isn't Just Luck
Risk management has become more necessary than ever due to the current financial crisis. Important transactions must be documented by tamper-proof recording to protect financial institutions and trading floors and avoid monetary loss or damage to an institution’s reputation.
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2009-07-03
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COMMSDEALER.com
Margin in QM solutions
(by Mike Murley, Sales Director, ASC telecom UK Ltd)
The 'real' margin opportunity in call recording is achieved through selling a broader range of solutions with recording at the core, according to Mike Murley, Sales Director at ASC Telecom UK. Voice recording is now part of many dealer portfolios, but Quality Monitoring (QM) applications are a rarer breed, despite the significantly higher margin opportunities they offer.
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| 2009-07-01 |
Computer TELEPHONY (Japan)
Quality Monitoring with INSPIRATIONpro in Japan
published in the Computer TELEPHONY Magazine
more... |
| 2009-06-09 |
TMCnet.com
VoIP Recording Saves Lives
The centrality of effective VoIP recording solutions is widely acknowledged, especially for emergency and other critical situations. However, the adoption of VoIP communications can pose many problems during the transition period, and the best recording systems must migrate smoothly from TDM to IP to prevent the loss of essential interactions.
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| 2009-04-30 |
TMCnet.com
Value Proposition for Workforce Optimization
Workforce optimization (WFO) has been touted for some time now, but many contact center managers have delayed in fully adopting its technology.
You have to measure something if you want to improve it. If you want to measure the quality of your agent’s performance, or if you want to verify compliance, you must track relevant customer interactions.
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| 2009-04-14 |
TMCnet.com
Communications Recording: 10 Questions to Ask
Communications recording has become indispensible to enhance customer service, increase productivity, fulfill documentation requirements, increase security and reduce costs. The following list of questions will facilitate finding the vendor best for you.
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2009-04-03
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9-1-1 Magazine
The Two Major Roles of Public Safety Recording Systems
(by Michael Sauer, Vice President Operations, ASC telecom AG)
Recording Systems for public safety agencies may be viewed from different perspectives: their performance during an event and their performance after one. During an emergency, the protection of lives and property eclipses all other needs.
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2009-03-02
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TMCnet.com
Using SIP for Flexible Integration in Call Centers
(by Berthold Hofmann, Chief Technology Officer, ASC telecom AG)
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) establishes and terminates multimedia communication sessions such as voice and video over IP. It is rapidly becoming the standard telephony protocol in contact centers because it facilitates the integration of third-party applications, enables encryption and avoids the need to invest in expensive proprietary hardware. SIP also lets call centers protect their previous investments by helping to incorporate existing infrastructure with new solutions.
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2009-02-13
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Contact Professional (January/February issue)
Embracing the latest Features of Monitoring and Recording Solutions
(by Ralf Roesel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Although many contact centers still focus on traditional telephony models, most have become convinced of the multiple advantages of Voice-over IP (VoIP) because it uses the same network infrastructure for both data and speech, thus reducing investment and maintenance costs dramatically.
It is easier managing VoIP systems because their browser-based configuration tools work for both IP phones and PBXs.
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2009-02-11
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TMCnet.com
Evaluating PCI DSS Compliance in Call Recording Solutions
(by Peter Schmitt, Director Research & Development, ASC telecom AG)
PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is rapidly becoming the international standard for credit card safety in contact center environments. Recent failures to protect financial data provided in customer interactions have resulted in legislation to protect the consumer, with a direct impact on the selection and operation of call recording solutions.
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| 2008-12-11 |
Telecom Reseller Magazine (October/November 2008 issue)
Benefits of bulk recording
(by Richard Zeno, Solutions Architect, ASC telecom Inc. USA)
Compared to selective recording typically used in contact centers and related organizations to improve agent performance, evaluate customer service and support quality monitoring, bulk recording encompasses a fundamentally different paradigm with unique goals and purposes.
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| 2008-11-26 |
Telecom Reseller Magazine (September/October 2008 issue)
Understanding the power of SIP
In contact centers, the quality of agent/customer insteractions play a vital role in your company's success. Quality Management (QM) software addresses the execution of these interactions and serves as an integral component of workforce optimization (WFO), which encompasses e-learning and performance management analytics.
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2008-10-31
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Telecom Reseller Magazine (August/September 2008 issue)
Quality for the SMB World
(by Ralf Roesel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
In contact centers, where communications serve as the sole business driver, companies must deliver quality costeffective service to differentiate themselves. Recording and quality monitoring are becoming prevalent to fill the knowledge gap of what is really going on.
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| 2008-09-29 |
Telecom Reseller Magazine (July/August 2008 issue)
Integrated communications recording
A communications recording solution must be integrated into an organisation's network and telecommunications structure to avoid a plethora of difficulties. When choosing a recorder either for traditional telephony or VoIP, carefully analyze compatibility with the company enviroment as well as product features.
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2008-09-03
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Telecom Reseller Magazine (June/July 2008 issue)
The global demand for recording and quality monitoring
(by Katrin Henkel, PR & Communications Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Recording customer communications is used for a plethora of reasons. In contact center, recorded conversations serve as the foundation for comprehensive quality monitoring solutions and systematic improvement of customer service.
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| 2008-06-19 |
9-1-1 magazine (June 2008 issue)
New Trends in Voice Logging: 2008 and Beyond
Voice logging recorders have become a misnomer in recent years because new trends have transformed them into complex, multi-faceted solutions. These trends may be grouped into three major categories: compatibility, new features and auxiliary systems.
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2008-06-10
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Telecom Reseller Magazine (May/June 2008 issue)
The power of speech analytics
(by Ralf Roesel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
In contact centers, where communications serve as the sole business driver, it is critical to deliver quality and cost-effective service to differenciate your company. Recording and quality monitoring help by filling the knowledge gap of what is going on.
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2008-06-06
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Telecom Reseller Magazine (April/May 2008 issue)
New developments in Quality Monitoring
(by Katrin Henkel, PR & Communications Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Monitoring solutions facilitate continuous quality improvement in contact centers by making customer contacts more professional and adding value to contact center infrastructures.Today’s oversaturated markets make enduring customer relationships essential. The fierce competition in many industries means product features, often very similar for high-end solutions, are secondary to customer retention for ensuring sustained growth.
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2008-05-06
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Telecom Reseller Magazine (April 2008 issue)
On-demand services
(by Michael Sauer, Vice President Operations, ASC telecom AG)
Have you ever thought of running your own power plant? Probably not. Instead, you buy electricity on a payper- use basis. This approach may soon become a reality for information technology. Cost reduction and innovation are the two main challenges for any industry.
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2008-04-24
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Telecom Reseller Magazine (March 2008 issue)
The Impact of VoIP Encryption
(by Patrick Salg, Director of International Sales, ASC telecom AG)
The growth of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) transmissions represents one of the most important trends in the communications industry today. Unfortunately, this technology may be abused by people searching for confidential information. VoIP vendors quickly recognized this dark side of an otherwise beneficial technology.
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2008-01-15
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Telecom Reseller Magazine (January 2008 issue)
Call Recording for larger companies, Part III
(by Ralf Roesel, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Even though companies rely on communications to prosper, the content and quality of customer interactions are often unexamined. In contact centers, where communications serve as the sole business driver, it is critical to deliver quality and cost-effective service to stand out from the competition. Call recording and quality monitoring fill the knowledge gap of “what is really going on” by monitoring crucial business processes and changing agent communications from a phantom to a valuable data resource.
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2007-12-13
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Telecom Reseller Magazine (December 2007 issue)
Call Recording for Larger Companies, Part II
(by Martin Komm, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Today, traditional TDM communications are being replaced by the rapid growth of Voice Over IP (VoIP), a powerful, new technology used to send audio signals over electronic networks. Larger companies need voice recording systems that incorporate both TDM and VoIP.
more..... |
| 2007-12-13 |
Article published in the 9-1-1 Magazine
Migration from TDM to IP in Public Safety Environments: The Challenge for Voice Recording
VoIP communications are becoming commonplace, and the best IP recording solutions can migrate from TDM to IP to provide investment protection for public safety organizations in transition between the two technologies.
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2007-12-10
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Article published on TMCnet.com
The Latest Trends in VoIP Recording
(by Bernd Ottow, Product Line Manager, ASC telecom AG)
The world is changing. New technological innovations occur every day, impacting the way we work and live. Only a decade ago, people would have been stunned at the prominence of the Internet in almost every home for information, commercial transactions and communications.
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2007-11-06
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Telecom Reseller Magazine (November 2007 issue)
Call Recording for Larger Companies, Part I
(by Martin Komm, Product Manager, ASC telecom AG)
Companies record customer interactions for a variety of reasons. Some, such as banks, trading floors or insurance companies are required by law to document business transactions. Others, especially organizations with call centers, use recording for quality monitoring, to supplement agent training programs and provide optimal customer support.
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