Join VPI and Straumann for an exciting webinar showcasing the powerful reporting solutions for Cisco UCC Contact Centers. You'll learn how Cisco and VPI helped Straumann develop and award-winning real-time contact center performance reporting solution.

Date: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM ET, 10:00 AM PT
Register here.

Now you can get even more value from your Cisco UCC Express (UCCX) or UCC Enterprise (UCCE) investment. VPI, a Cisco Solution Developer, VIP and SIP Partner, has integrated its award-winning VPI Performance contact center reporting and performance management software application with Cisco. This functionality complements and enhances the UCCX and UCCE platforms greatly by consolidating data and presenting actionable, real-time information in the form of Web dashboards, interactive reports, scorecards and desktop tickers to empower contact center managers, supervisors and agents to make better, quicker decisions.

Learn how Cisco and VPI customer Straumann, a global leader in dental implant solutions and restorative dentistry, enhanced the capabilities of its Cisco Unified Contact Center system and operations with VPI’s award-winning real-time Cisco reporting software solution.

Register to attend the complimentary Webinar, hosted by subject matter experts from Straumann and VPI, to learn how you can:

• Create and report on metrics based on Cisco UCCX, UCCE and other contact center data (CRM, ERP, QA, WFM) to meet business objectives.
• Report across multiple teams and queues, locations and Cisco UCCX/UCCE systems to get a holistic view of contact center operations.
• Perform true historical reporting with unlimited data collection – get insights into trending over time and a historically accurate representation of your agents’ group assignments.
• Create flexible grouping structures to report on groups and teams in any manner that makes most sense to your business.
• Drill through layers of data for root cause analysis and trigger targeted alerts, notifications and Coaching assignments based on performance thresholds to promptly correct performance gaps.

Scheduling Conflict? Register for the Webinar and we'll send you the recorded version.

Presenters:

Carlo Wise - IT Specialist, Straumann

Carlo Wise serves as a senior IT Specialist at Straumann, a global leader in dental implant solutions and restorative dentistry, leveraging his strong background in all facets of telephony and network systems integration. He is an experienced IT and Contact Center professional with over 16 years of experience in supporting and implementing Contact Center technologies in small to large Contact Center environments. Mr. Wise holds a variety of industry certifications, including Cisco, CompTIA and Redhat.

Delee Shields - Channel Sales Director, VPI
 
Delee has been instrumental in working closely with Cisco in developing VPI's Cisco Developer Network (CDN) Solution Developer, Value Incentive (VIP) and Solutions Incentive (SIP) partnership programs. She is responsible for working hand-in-hand with Cisco customers and channel partners through the entire sales process. She has extensive knowledge of Cisco Unified Communications product platforms and is highly experienced in Cisco reporting software, Cisco call recording software, workforce optimization, VoIP, LAN, WAN, MAN and wireless solution design. Prior to joining VPI as a sales engineer in 2007, she worked in sales and sales engineering capacities promoting Cisco solutions as well as earning her Cisco CCNA and CCNP certifications.

Just like a home that sometimes needs to be refreshed, traditional quality assurance has reached a fork in the road of its 30-year life. Now's the perfect time to re-evaluate the way we monitor and measure our call center agents and “cleaning house” in the Quality Assurance (QA) department to make room for analytics-oriented QA tools and best practices. By implementing this makeover in your contact center, you can radically reduce manual steps required by most QA applications by more than 60 percent. And, who among us can’t use 60% less manual work?

Get started with these key items of focus in the new article 'Extreme Makeover: Contact Center QA Edition' authored by Patrick Botz, VP of Workforce Optimization at VPI, featured this month’s issue of Contact Center Association’s Inbound Magazine:

• Random Selection = Random Results The focus is no longer just on recording calls or randomly checking on how well agents adhere to scripts and policies, but rather upon prioritizing customer interactions according to their business value – so that every minute of the in-depth quality evaluation is optimized by its potential to deliver business insights.
• Embrace the New Generation of QA The new generation of QA goes far beyond internal agent compliance – representing a rebirth and evolution of the concept of QA designed to meet the needs of today‘s contact centers. The new, intelligent QA systems rapidly identify and deliver insights into critical business issues and opportunities to improve the customer experience and revenue.
• Using Analytics to Focus QA on Desired Business Outcomes Tagging data directly from desktop screen analytics enables you to focus your QA resources on calls with outcomes such as: Was the call put on hold? Was it transferred? What level of employee was it handled by? Was it a VIP customer? Was there a sale or no sale? What was the value of the sale?
• Re-evaluate your current QA Evaluation Forms As your business evolves every year, so should your QA forms. Ask questions on your call center quality assurance forms that are interesting to your business. Any question that makes the form should be owned and some should be held accountable for that question. For example, if “Upselling” falls below a certain threshold, who is accountable for making sure that agents are being properly coached and trained on upselling? And consider using different QA forms for different call types to get more valuable information from your QA program.
• Rapidly Close Skill Gaps With an automated QA solution, instead of flying blind, every agent, supervisor and executive gets their own personalized desktop ticker, dashboard and scorecard displaying all the metrics or KPIs on which they’re measured in real-time. This level of transparency often leads to improved agent satisfaction and supervisor efficiency.

Spring cleaning may not have been enough this year. Is it time for an Extreme Makeover: QA Edition in your contact center? Check out the full article here. What are you doing to keep your contact center quality assurance program fresh?

The holidays are right around the corner and that means everyone’s favorite day to shop, Black Friday, is too! The National Retail Federation recently released its estimates for the holiday shopping season and its expecting an increase this year with total spending reaching $465 billion.  Is your call center workforce management team and help desk support center ready to handle the increased call, email and Web chat volume?
 
CRM Analyst Lauren Carlson’s article, “Four Tips to Make Your Holiday Help Desk Shine,” outlines four quick fixes that will boost your call center workforce optimization and get your help desk and support center fully ready for the high-volume holidays. Here are the helpful, holiday tips:
 
1) Create a holiday-specific FAQ list.
2) Cross-train your staff.
3) Communicate unavailability ahead of time.
4) Develop a plan of agent support.
 
Click here to read the full article, “Four Tips to Make Your Holiday Help Desk Shine.”

Lately it’s been tough to find much positive news about business and the economy. However, the latest report from the National Association of Call Centers (NACC) shows a very positive outlook for the contact center industry. The benchmarking report shows that the contact center industry has rebounded from the recession and has been steadily growing over the past couple of years. In fact, 95% of the respondents felt that economic and business conditions in 2011 will be the same or even better than they were in 2010. Download the North American Contact Center Industry 2011 Mid-Year Update and Forecast research report now to learn more about how our industry has weathered the tough times and come out smarter, stronger and prepared for the future.

In this report you’ll learn what the NACC sees as some of the contributing factors to the industry's resilience, including:

• Advances in Workforce Optimization technology, including quality monitoring, performance management, E-learning and workforce management.
• Growing interest in Social Media
• High interest in Desktop Analytics solutions
• How First Call Resolution is being tracked
• Key Unified Communications trends
• Contact Center Hiring patterns and trends

Recently, VPI teamed up with Ovum Research, a premier analyst firm in the technology and telecom sectors, on a new white paper titled “Getting Workforce Optimization Right: How to Align Your Agent Training and Management with the Needs of Your Customers.” It was a great opportunity for us to learn firsthand what Ovum Analyst, Aphrodite Brinsmead, sees as the “must haves” for best-in-class contact centers to use as Workforce Optimization Technologies (or WOTs as she calls them). She specifically focuses on the many advantages of levering an integrated workforce optimization suite, like VPI EMPOWER suite.

As I’m sure you’re painfully aware, contact centers are under immense pressure to improve customer satisfaction while at the same time, reducing costs. It seems that the mantra for businesses these days is “Do More With (much) Less.” This is challenging in any enterprise, but the contact center is unique in that its performance metrics and satisfaction scores are usually separated. It’s tough to know where to cut back or where to add staff when you can’t pinpoint the problems! Ovum believes that enterprises need to connect those traditionally siloed customer satisfaction metrics with agent performance, and tailor training accordingly. Makes perfect sense, right? But, in many cases, easier said than done!

This is where WOTs clearly provide a clear competitive advantage. This white paper shows you how to harness the power of these unified solutions in your own contact center. I really liked the graphic Ovum created to illustrate how the tools work together and the role each plays in the overall success of the contact center:

1. Quality Monitoring + Analytics: Desktop or speech analytics can be integrated with quality monitoring/call recording to automatically select important calls or call from a particular category to be monitored.
2. Quality Monitoring + Performance Management: This enable managers to combine quantitative and qualitative information for a complete assessment of contact center productivity and its contribution to the bottom line.

Leading industry analyst firm, Gartner, predicts that employees will account for up to 80 percent of contact center budgets in the increasingly demanding world of customer interaction. Such a substantial investment cannot be left to chance, yet, it is often an area that is overlooked and rarely reviewed by managers.

Like many other industries in which employee performance is crucial to the customer experience, the utility industry provides an essential commodity to the public. As they are often under intense scrutiny, utility companies must also take steps to minimize their exposure to liability issues. For utilities that provide direct service to retail power customers, the large volume of customer service calls they manage demands both courtesy and accuracy on the part of call center agents. And, consequently, their contact centers need reliable and effective quality monitoring and training solutions. Similarly, "upstream" energy providers specializing in transmitting power to other utilities need interaction recording systems to accurately record 100% of their service and event calls to and from their technicians (and other utilities) for liability protection and to recreate major incidents.

By now, most successful utility contact centers have already adopted baseline call recording and quality monitoring solutions –  the fundamental building blocks for any type of workforce optimization solution. However, although useful, these solutions can be of limited value if they are outdated, early generation quality monitoring applications,  and may be due for review and reevaluation..

The good news is that quality assurance technologies have evolved significantly. They have now reached  the point where they can enable contact centers to focus the entire process on what really matters and what can make the biggest impact on business performance – all without losing objectivity in the assessment of agent performance.

Anticipate and Plan for Agent Satisfaction to Maximize Operations and the Customer Experience

Customer service and help desk environments have traditionally been known as high-turnover environments, where employees tend to consider their positions to be transient or temporary. There are many things that contact centers can do to overcome this challenge.

To anticipate and reduce  turnover, it is best to give agents some time away from the phone for cross-training and multi-skilling. Allowing agents to respond to email or perform other administrative duties while they are mastering the skills of becoming expert contact center professionals makes their jobs feel more fulfilling and enables them to provide a better customer experience.

It is also crucial to provide ongoing training. This will keep agents engaged, alert and empowered to quickly and accurately resolve customer issues. In fact, with today’s tightly integrated quality monitoring and coaching software tools, skill development can be highly personalized according to the needs and objectives of each agent.

The Right Technology Can Help

In addition to process improvements, implementation of the latest technologies can be crucial to the continued success of utility contact centers. When liability and accuracy are the challenges, it is vital to adopt an interactions recording solution that can record 100 percent of calls and data interactions. Using an advanced telephone call recording solution, utility companies can determine what to retain, for how long, and on which storage device by implementing flexible, intelligent business rules. Recordings can be unified across audio and data sources and multiple locations while users can freely search, locate, playback and share using instant searches and filters.

The beauty of a completely integrated suite of workforce optimization applications is the interoperability. Each technology application – recording, QA, performance management, analytics, coaching, E-earning – has valuable capabilities, but multiple solutions can work symbiotically to provide even greater results. Beyond the immediate improvements in contact center performance and lowering operating costs, workforce optimization solutions allow for quick decision making, which helps resolve customer issues.

By adopting advanced technologies for monitoring quality and optimizing customer service — including analytics-driven call center quality assurance systems that help identify and automate routine contact center tasks — utility companies can dramatically improve performance and profitability. The decision to choose one solution instead of another depends on the specific utility’s needs, goals and circumstances. However, with modular workforce optimization software suites, there is a sensible, financially sound path for every budget and objective.

2011 is certainly shaping up to be VPI's year - VPI Quality Pro recently received the 2010 Product of the Year Award from Customer Interaction Solutions (CIS) magazine! Even better, this is the second consecutive year we've won the award. And while our most valued praise always comes from our customers, it never hurts to receive recognition from the industry. We know that selecting a call center Quality Assurance solution is a big decision, and most people rely on industry resources such as TMC and CIS magazine to help guide their decisions.

So, you may be wondering what this award is all about. Each year, CIS presents its Product of Year awards to products and companies in the contact center and CRM industries that help users deliver an enhanced customer experience. Why did CIS choose VPI Quality Pro? First, it's built on our secure and powerful VPI Empower platform. This gives users confidence and reliability. Plus, VPI Quality Pro allows users to automatically categorize and prioritize recordings by customer names, products offered, transaction values and more -- across multimedia communication channels -- so that contact centers can focus on their most critical business issues instead. Now managers have these crucial recordings at their fingertips and can act quickly to resolve issues, improve performance and increase productivity. We're proud to deliver this innovation to our customers and the industry.

Does your contact center use VPI Quality Pro? We'd love to hear what you think! Or click here to learn more about VPI Quality Pro.

Credit unions and community banks are increasingly coping with federal and local legislation, interest rate hikes and volatility in capital markets, all of which entails placing greater emphasis on local and regional customer retention, quality assurance, internal controls, as well as more careful compliance and risk management. Although these smaller banks share many common challenges with large contact centers, they have unique needs that can be addressed using today’s modular, highly customizable call quality monitoring and workforce optimization solutions.

Small- to mid-sized financial services contact centers face a number of operational challenges relatively unknown to the larger contact center. With limited resources and shrinking budgets, a Branch or Regional Manager for smaller contact center needs to carefully keep an eye out for inefficient practices to find opportunities for cost reduction. He or she needs to carefully plan capital expenditures, and training investments, while keeping up with significant hardware and software investments within their broader organization.

Traditionally, customer service and help desk environments are known as high-turnover environments. This is rather typical for smaller financial services contact centers as well, where employees tend to consider helpdesk positions to be transient or temporary. To anticipate and reduce the impact of this phenomenon, it is best in the early days of their careers to give agents some time off the phone for cross-training and multi-skilling to respond to email or perform other administrative duties while they are mastering the skills to becoming expert contact center professionals.

Another necessity is ongoing training to keep them engaged, alert and empowered to resolve customer issues quickly, while they answer phone calls during their careers. In fact, with today’s tightly integrated quality monitoring and coaching software tools, skill development can be highly personalized according to the needs and objectives of each agent and simultaneously targeted directly at business goals of the contact center as well as the broader home organization. Gartner predicts that staffing will account for up to 80% of contact center budgets in the new world of customer interaction. The need for such a substantial investment just cannot be left to a chance. Yet, it is often an area that is overlooked and not really routinely reviewed by managers.

Regardless of size, every contact center must provide excellent customer service, reduce costs and maintain a healthy profit margin to thrive in the new economic model. By adopting advanced technologies for monitoring quality and optimizing customer-service and contact centers — including analytics-driven call center quality assurance systems that help identify and automate routine contact-center and customer-service tasks — mortgage companies and credit unions can dramatically affect their performance and profitability.

By now, most successful contact centers have already adopted at least baseline grade digital call recording and quality monitoring solutions. They are the fundamental building blocks for any type of workforce optimization solution, but they are just a start that may be due for review and re-evaluation, especially if they come from early generations of quality monitoring that couldn’t see beyond the horizon of individual agent compliance with (possibly outdated) internal rules and policies. These older technologies did not really have a good way of connecting standards for customer/agent interactions with evolving business objectives of the bank, let alone being able to incorporate voice of the customer into any part of the quality management process. The good news is that the call center quality assurance technologies evolved to the point where contact centers can focus the entire process onto what really matters and what can make the biggest impact on business performance, without losing any objectivity in assessing agent performance. In fact, evaluating agents based on their quantifiable contributions to the contact center’s business success supports their drive to do well, succeed in their jobs and avoid defection.

The proverbial “needle in a haystack” is now rather easy to find – with the implementation of advanced desktop screen analytics, supervisors can easily identify and evaluate the calls that resulted in a customer cancelling their account and taking their business elsewhere. Or the calls where agents attempted an upsale successfully or unsuccessfully, or where they saved a customer by resolving their issue during the first call – even without unnecessary concessions. Instead of wasting time and adding costs with reviewing completely random selection of low-value calls, why not concentrate on evaluating those calls that provide insights into the bank’s business practices every time, so that something could be done about it before opportunities are missed or lost forever?

Real-time performance management and automated E-Learning tools are the latest additions to the workforce optimization family of solutions that can be closely tied into quality management processes, to provide options for action mechanism whenever a manager needs to be notified or agent supported by just-in-time help.

The decision to choose one solution instead of another depends on a company’s needs, goals and circumstances, but with modular workforce optimization software suites, there is a sensible, financially sound path for every budget and objective.

The beauty of a completely integrated suite of workforce optimization applications is interoperability. Each individual solution has valuable capabilities, but multiple solutions can work symbiotically to provide even greater results. Beyond the immediate improvement of contact center performance involving operating costs, workforce optimization solutions allow for quick decision making which in turn helps resolve issues for customers. Easy access to call recordings can help contact centers give better customer service. Call records can be used to settle disputes quickly and with minimum inconvenience.

Recorded calls provide excellent material for training purposes – real-life examples of good and bad agent-customer interactions. This helps the manager effectively intervene when agents are underperforming. The latest-generation solutions have the capability to automatically select and assign coaching and training through courses, tips, quizzes, training flashes, pre-shift announcements and bulletins according to individual agent needs, identified through quality evaluations or simply by monitoring their performance metrics. This tool allows you to set rules that send targeted coaching and training to individual agents or groups when they reach predetermined thresholds based on their performance scores, customer survey results and more. By targeting the right training to the right person at the right time, your agents will be empowered with personalized guidance that will make it easier for them to offer improved service, thus heightening customer satisfaction and ultimately increasing both, agent productivity and satisfaction with the job. Managers can track sales and address marketing and service challenges quickly.

Integrated workforce optimization systems can accomplish this in a cost-effective manner while decreasing expenses, increasing revenues and enhancing customer loyalty and satisfaction – all of which can lead to strengthened market position, customer loyalty and long-term bottom-line growth.

Highly Anticipated 4th Annual Call Center Optimization Forum Will Provide Contact Center Professionals with Groundbreaking Strategies and Proven Best Practices to Boost Performance and Profitability

A full schedule of cities and dates was released today for the highly anticipated 2011 Call Center Optimization Forum (http://www.OptimizeYourCallCenter.com). The fourth annual event, which has garnered rave reviews from industry experts and attendees alike, will be hosted by the Call Center Network Group (CCNG), and Quality Assurance and Training Connection (QATC), the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) and CRMXchange, and sponsored by VPI, Cicero, Pipkins, FurstPerson and Mindshare Technologies – pioneers in the development of best-of-breed call center optimization technologies. The nationwide series of educational seminars is tailored for call center professionals challenged with keeping up with the latest performance optimization strategies, techniques and solutions. In an effort to maintain a free and open exchange, the Forum is open to end-users only – registrations submitted by non-sponsoring vendors and consultants will not be accepted.

“Over the last three years, we have been delighted by the remarkable success of the Call Center Optimization Forum,” said David Hadobas, president and CEO at CCNG. “We’ve diligently maintained contact with attendees in order to ensure that they’ve had the most rewarding experience possible and we’ve been deeply gratified to hear their success stories upon having implemented the strategies and best practices learned at our events.” Hadobas went on to explain that attendee feedback is crucial to the success of future events. “We listen to our attendees and act upon their opinions and advice. As a result, the agenda for the 2011 Call Center Optimization Forum is more informative and engaging than ever before.” In addition to the event’s various educational seminars and workshops, attendees that register and attend will receive many additional benefits, including a one-year full CCNG individual membership (a $150 value), connection to a 90-minute Call Center School Online Training Class of the attendee’s choice (a $275 value) and a registration to the 2011 CRMXchange Virtual Contact Center Conference.

Attendees will learn how to fully maximize the value of key contact center solutions for pre-hire assessment and simulation, workforce forecasting and scheduling, quality monitoring and performance management. They will also discover the importance of implementing the latest solutions for customer experience management and post-contact surveying and customer feedback. With support from leading call center industry networking and educational organizations including CCNG (Call Center Network Group), The Call Center School, CRMXchange, QATC and SWPP, the 2011 Call Center Optimization Forum seminars will outline breakthrough strategies and techniques that can be used to exceed customer expectations, raise performance standards, intelligently reduce costs and achieve attendees' personal career goals. The seminars will reveal powerful new, cost-effective ways to hire the right employees, set and track the right performance objectives, accurately forecast workload and schedules, improve quality of service, measure and boost customer satisfaction, and win the support of top executives.

Due to limited availability, early registration is recommended in order to guarantee a place at any of the following Call Center Optimization Forum seminars:  

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA (April 7^th) - http://www.optimizeyourcallcenter.com/Charlotte

WASHINGTON DC (June 2^nd) - http://www.optimizeyourcallcenter.com/WashingtonDC

OMAHA, NEBRASKA (July 14^th) - http://www.optimizeyourcallcenter.com/Omaha

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS (August 8^th) - http://www.optimizeyourcallcenter.com/Boston

ORLANDO, FLORIDA (September 15^th) - http://www.optimizeyourcallcenter.com/Orlando

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA (November 10^th) - http://www.optimizeyourcallcenter.com/Las-Vegas

To register or for additional information on the upcoming 2011 Call Center Optimization Forum seminars, please visit http://www.OptimizeYourCallCenter.com.

About Call Center Optimization Forum

The Call Center Optimization Forum is a worldwide series of educational seminars tailored for call center professionals challenged with keeping up with the latest performance optimization strategies, techniques and solutions. Hosted by the Call Center Network Group (CCNG), CRMXchange, QATC and SWPP, and sponsored by VPI, Cicero Pipkins, FurstPerson and Mindshare Technologies – pioneers in the development of best-of-breed call center optimization technologies – the event is designed for executives, managers and IT decision-makers who need to stay informed about the latest industry trends, best practices, and rapidly evolving contact center optimization technology. Attendees will have the unique opportunity to learn about industry best practices from multiple experts in the field at one time and see demonstrations of the latest advancements in call center technology. To learn more and register to attend, visit: http://www.OptimizeYourCallCenter.com.

You may have felt the pain yourself. For three decades now, the Quality Assurance (QA) process for most contact centers has been a cumbersome undertaking. But there is a light at the end of this tunnel. New research reveals that the next generation of call center quality assurance solutions is here and can seriously streamline your QA processes.

Among the findings are that workflow automation and contact center analytics can reduce the manual steps required by most QA applications by 60 to 80 percent, while ensuring that you still hear the very important voice of the customer (VOC).

There is so much to learn about what's next for call center quality assurance, and you can get your complimentary white paper with all of the details at http://www.VPI-corp.com/New-QA.

The paper discussed how this new generation of call center quality assurance and workforce optimization (WFO) solutions automate low-value tasks that do not require human cognitive capabilities. It illustrates the differences between the 'old' way of doing QA and new closed-loop automated processes, and how those processes can enhance the customer experience, increase agent satisfaction and improve QA specialist productivity by 15-20%.

It's time to see how you can adopt a new approach to contact center quality assurance today! Download your complimentary copy of the white paper now.

For the past 15 years, APCO has been carefully crafting a list of operational standards in order to ensure the best possible quality in public safety emergency communications. Now, in collaboration with NENA and associated industry bodies, this lengthy endeavor has culminated in the development of Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) standards, along with soon-to-be introduced Quality Assurance (QA) standards. These new requirements are raising the bar for the quality of service required from the nation’s public safety agencies.

Quality of service is impacted by both the performance of employees and the processes in use.  Periodic, systematic quality evaluation of emergency contact center communications can provide invaluable transparency to everyone involved and expose inadequacies in both employee and process areas. This is especially critical in the current transitional period when old, inadequate communication systems are being replaced with Next Generation technologies and 9-1-1 centers are expected to handle various different types of communications - not just voice and TTY communications any more. Plus, the increasingly complex nature of public safety communications entails new regulations that PSAP centers will have to demonstrably comply with. The traditional approach to quality management is being replaced with evaluation of multiple communication streams and types involved in incidents, along with a variety of supporting evidence, such as images, videos, text documents and data. Prioritization of such evaluations is driven by significance of various incident types, so selection of recordings for evaluation has to be subordinated to that. When correctly planned and executed, the latest-generation software-driven quality evaluation can deliver valuable insights into the best course of corrective actions to support the new demands.

In response to the introduction of the new NG9-1-1 and QA standards and the difficulties faced by cash-strapped organizations in attempting to comply with them, VPI is launching its ‘Upgrade to Quality’ program for public safety and security organizations.  The program, valid from now through June 30th, 2011, stretches the tight budgets of public safety and security organizations by enabling them to affordably upgrade their legacy recording systems with VPI’s state-of-the-art VPI CAPTURE™ voice logging system and provides double the value by including free VPI QUALITY™ call taker quality assurance software. VPI CAPTURE is an affordable, NG9-1-1 ready recording system that installs quickly to reliably and securely capture, manage and share critical incident information and to provide insights to optimize workforce efficiency.

For more information, conditions and restrictions on VPI’s ‘Upgrade to Quality’ program, visit http://www.VPI-corp.com/Quality or contact us at 1-800-200-5430. 

Current economic challenges are forcing organizations to rethink their approach to customer service and how they balance efficiency and effectiveness objectives. With regard to call center optimization, complexities have vastly increased with the growing number of communication channels and higher expectations from customers. The implementation of workforce optimization software technologies has become crucial in today's environment, ultimately resulting in increased profitability and improved strategic position in the marketplace.

Download your complimentary white paper authored by prestigious industry analyst and research firm Datamonitor, to learn:

• Key challenges faced by contact centers today

• How contact centers are responding and adapting to current economic challenges

• How using workforce optimization software technologies can help you maintain the proper balance between efficiency and effectiveness

• The capabilities and advantages of workforce optimization software technologies, including voice call recording, quality assurance call monitoring, workforce management, call center performance management, desktop contact center analytics and call center coaching solutions

Want to Learn More about the Call Center Recording Software, Quality Assurance Call Monitoring and Call Center Workforce Optimization Software Market, Key Trends and Products?

VPI is pleased to be able to offer you this exclusive opportunity to get your copy of the executive summary of DMG Consulting's comprehensive annual Call Center Quality Assurance/Telephone Call Recording Product and Market Report. Offering 35 pages packed with valuable information, this guide is essential to navigating in the complex market of contact center workforce optimization software technologies.

Use the promo code LINKEDIN to download your complimentary report summary authored by renowned industry analyst and research firm DMG Consulting, to learn:

• Which call center optimization technologies help call center managers achieve contact center optimization 

• Key technology trends that are altering the direction of contact centers

• How to take your call logging software program to the next level and increase productivity while enhancing the customer experience and agent satisfaction

• The direction workforce optimization software technologies are heading and how to best leverage them, including Telephone Voice Recording, Call Center Quality Assurance, Call Center Performance Management, eLearning, Call Center Coaching, Surveying, Contact Center Analytics and Workforce Management (WFM)

• Comparison of workforce optimization software suites vs. stand-alone solutions

• How industry regulations are impacting voice call recording 

• The new strategic role of contact center managers

• Return on investment (ROI) analysis and workforce optimization software 

• What to expect in the future and more!

VPI, the premier global provider of contact center recording and analytics, quality assurance call monitoring and workforce optimization software solutions for enterprises, trading floors, government agencies, and emergency service providers, announced today that VPI EMPOWER has received a 2009 Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC®) Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, the leading publication covering CRM, call centers and teleservices since 1982.

"I am pleased to honor VPI for its hard work and success. VPI has displayed true innovation and excellence in the development of its VPI EMPOWER suite of analytics-enhanced contact center recording, call center quality assurance and workforce optimization solutions, and is dedicated to improving the contact center experience as well as the ROI for companies that use them," said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC.

VPI EMPOWER is a powerful, modular suite of Web-based contact center recording software and contact center optimization solutions, comprised of applications for multimedia communications recording and contact center analytics, quality evaluation, electronic learning and call center coaching, and real-time call center performance management. VPI EMPOWER marks a radical departure from the conventional solutions currently available to contact centers. Built upon the foundation of VPI’s long-established, proven technologies, VPI EMPOWER leverages VPI Fact Finder™, a ground-breaking desktop screen analytics technology that automatically detects events and data directly from application screens being used by employees and tags them to appropriate points within recorded interactions. This enables automated classification and more meaningful, targeted quality assurance call monitoring focused on key business issues, such as customer churn, first contact resolution, missed up-sell opportunities, product issues, long hold and handle times, multiple transfers or escalations, and much more. VPI EMPOWER contact center workforce optimization software delivers a significant advantage in just weeks, with an easy-to-use product that requires minimal training.

"We are deeply gratified that VPI EMPOWER has been honored as Product of the Year for Exceptional Innovation by TMC’s Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine," said Patrick Botz, vice president of solutions marketing at VPI. "This prestigious award is a testament to VPI’s commitment to providing innovative, world-class digital and VoIP call recording, call center quality assurance, call center reporting and call center coaching solutions that enable organizations to rapidly and affordably maximize the potential and profitability of their customer contact center operations.