I had the opportunity a few months ago to spend a week in Munich, Germany working with one of our premier partners who will sell and support the inContact suite of products throughout EMEA.

It was fascinating to see a couple of things that were new to them that seemed commonplace to me, having been in this cloud business for so long. It's nice to have a reminder of all the benefits of the cloud...

• First, the different line of thinking that the cloud brings to the table vs. the premise model of having the box in the call center, having to maintain it, and having to provision for peak periods all year long for trunking and hardware. 
• Second, the ease of use in the cloud model with the ability to scale up and scale down easily to accommodate for peak seasons and slow periods. 
• Third, concept of queuing calls in the cloud vs. at the premise allowed for better use of the customer’s facilities to be solely for taking calls by agents vs. queue time or IVR interactions.

I know I am two months late in getting in my end of 2011 recap blog, but it’s like they say . . . better late than never.

2011 was a busy, crazy, challenging and fun year around here. Constant change, learning new lessons daily and expanding into new territories – it was quite the year. What I saw in our market segment that has elements of both hosted software and telecom was incredible. First in the hosted (SaaS) software market: we saw a rapid adoption of hosted software of all kinds from CRM to back office functions and, of course, contact center software.   Read more»

We recently announced our new data centers and European infrastructure in Frankfurt and Munich.  I led the team that deployed the infrastructure to those two German locations and, although it was a whirlwind of activity from many internal sources with a few roadblocks along the way, I was appreciative of what we learned and how the team rallied to make it happen.   Read more»

I often train new employees trying to learn telephony, and especially international telephony, on the routing and multiple carriers, networks and equipment involved in a single international telephone call.  Many find it interesting (or at least they pretend to) so I thought I’d share it here so you can appreciate what’s involved when you call your friend in a different continent.   Read more»

Last week I was invited to speak in a joint UK/US session put on the by Utah Chapter of the World Trade Center.

The topic of discussion was “Economics of the Cloud,” meaning cloud computing or hosted services.

There were business leaders from many industries in attendance ranging from Education to HR recruiting to Government and high tech interested in learning more about the cloud, its adoption rate and whether it made sense for their organization or not.   Read more»

I had the opportunity to present at inContact’s annual user’s conference, ICUC 2011 a couple of weeks ago. The conference gets better and better each year in terms of attendance, content and networking opportunities. My session was titled “Follow the Sun, How to Create a 24/7 Contact Center”.

In part 1 and part 2 of this three part series, we discussed common objections to deploying an at-home workforce and some benefits to having such a workforce either as a supplement to or substitution for a brick-and-mortar workforce. Now for the ‘what’s next’...

If you are saying to yourself,  “I’m sold, now how do I get started?” – take some advice from Michele Rowan, at-home workforce advocate and expert who would tell you when preparing to move employee home (see www.gohome.us.com):   Read more»

In part 1 of this blog series, we explored some of the common objections to an at-home workforce and offered some help around those objections. In this segment I want to explore some benefits of sending agents to work from home.

Beyond the common objections discussed in the previous entry, why should you hire or send your workforce home?  Let’s look at what CEOs care about.  Most that I know are focused on three primary objectives:   Read more»

Contact centers have begun to take notice of those using an at-home workforce either in conjunction with brick-and-mortar centers or in some unusual cases, instead of brick-and-mortar centers.  Think it's just the smaller companies moving in this direction?  Guess again.  Why should you consider the at-home model regardless of size or industry? Let’s take a look.

 For starters, let’s tackle some of the objections most have to deploying an at-home workforce:

1. Control – if you can’t walk the floor and see your agents, you can’t control their action & behaviors
2. Security – network security is sketchy with remote workers
3. Coaching and feedback is more difficult

Editor’s Note: As we wrap up 2010, I wanted to share some of our favorite blog posts from the past year. We’ll be back with new content on January 4. This post by Mike Perry first ran on December 1.

You may have heard the exciting news that inContact has recently expanded into Europe and Asia! As a North American-based provider of hosted contact center solutions with international customers, we knew we needed to expand our reach and footprint to be able to accommodate our US customers with foreign operations as well as help the many contact centers abroad improve their overall call quality. Read more >>