Call Center Software Featured Article

CRM Week in Review - Call Recording, RFP's, and Customer Service

By Juliana Kenny
TMCnet Web Editor

This week in the CRM, the industry witnessed many exciting changes and trends. Early in the week, I discussed the trend these days of cell phones to come with call recording features that enable the user to record live interviews, sound clips, or ambient audio. Beneficial for journalists, podcasters, and laymen alike, the call recording applications of any phone, not just smartphones, can let the user record sound and publish through social media sites or by converting the files to mp3s and publishing with services such as Soundcloud, Houndbite or Libsyn.

From a journalist’s perspective, this call recording ability eliminates the need for handling awkward recording sets or tape recorders in the case of interviews. CNN blogger, Amy Gahran reported that even “if your phone does not have an audio recorder, you can set up an account at Cinchcast and use its dial-in access number to record sound.” There are several tactics that a user can be aware of when using a cell phone to record sound, according to this guide for mobile audio recording.

I also portrayed how Craig Antonucci’s white paper from BPA Quality discusses how building proper Request for Proposal processes can help your business improve efficiency and save money. The white paper talks about how to develop RFP practices that can best help you choose which company’s offerings match your requirements.

The call center industry frequently uses RFP’s, and the benefits of instituting efficient RFP processes will enhance any business’ work productivity. Antonucci notes that “typically, an organization will release a RFP or RFQ (Request for Quote) requesting prospective suppliers to submit their bids for potential business as described in the Request’s scope of work” which should “have a standard set of questions that will be used to compare the prospective vendors .” The company then selects the most appropriate business to partner with based on how best the business fits the company’s needs.  

Later in the week, we noted that call centers are constantly confronted with decision making when it comes to implementing the software that will maximize customer service experiences while maintaining cost-effectiveness. With a myriad of software operations to choose from, occasionally call center managers may need a little help in making decisions. Over the years, the industry has seen the strong effectiveness of VoiceXML (News - Alert) applications, and VoiceXML itself has risen through the ranks of the IVR industry to the forefront of call center services.

 Susan Campbell for TMC (News - Alert)  once described the various ways in which VoiceXML provides productive and cost-effective service. She noted that “VoiceXML allows for the creation, modification, and personalization of its applications, which can provide substantial cost savings over proprietary and traditional IVR systems. It also allows companies to leverage in-house resources instead of depending on specialized developers because of its ease of application development.”

David Sims for TMC wrote this week about a good recent post on BooshNews that runs over the benefits of using the PDF format on a help desk. Some of it might be review, but you'd be surprised how many people are simply unaware of it.

Portable Document Format -- the "pdf" format from Adobe -- is an application for sharing or exchanging information or data across the platform. There are features that have made PDF file format popular and common among the users, including the fact that the compression algorithms make the file size of a Portable Document Format application smaller.