May 17, 2012

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3 Important Roles that SIP Plays in a Contact Center

May 8, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
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Anyone who runs a contact center has to be concerned about issues like disaster recovery, business continuity and smooth, reliable communications, including for call transfers and between applications. Increasingly, the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is playing a big role in enabling those capabilities and more in contact centers. SIP, as we’ve covered before, is a signaling protocol that handles call setup, tear down andsession management for a variety of call types, including voice and video but also extending to applications that may play into a call center environment, such as interactive voice response and recording systems. SIP also provides the… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Contact Center, Productivity, Telephony, VoIP Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Best Practices for Implementing a Multimedia Contact Center

March 22, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

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In an era where companies are trying to do more with less, the contact center is a good place to look for ways to improve employee productivity. In many cases, companies are relying too heavily on voice when they should be augmenting with technologies including chat, text, email and interactive voice response (IVR), says Zach Shankle, Director of Call Center Services for Carousel Industries. One customer Carousel worked with was quite proud of the service its call center provided, pointing out its great stats for call handling times and high customer satisfaction ratings. “But have you thought about how much… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Contact Center, IT Strategy Tagged With: , , , , ,

4 Steps to Effectively Planning a Call Center Upgrade

February 10, 2012 By Editor 1 Comment

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Too often, customers make upgrades to their Contact Centers in haste, often because a product will no longer be supported under a maintenance contract, or because a system is on the verge of failure. Consequently, they fail to get the full benefit of a potential upgrade. In order to avoid costly missteps, what’s required is a thorough assessment of contact center assets and requirements prior to upgrading, says Zach Shankle, Director of Call Center Services for Carousel Industries. He recommends customers take four steps when considering a call center upgrade. Conduct a call center inventory The first step is to… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Contact Center, Telephony Tagged With: , , , ,

Facing the Top Challenges Confronting IT: Avaya Podcast

February 6, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

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As a leading vendor that supplies infrastructure and tools to help customers address business requirements around voice, data and unified communications, Avaya sees first-hand the biggest challenges companies are facing. But it also knows how to address them. In this information packed podcast, we caught up with Steven Bandrowczak, Vice President of Global Accounts at Avaya, to get his thoughts on what he sees as the most vexing IT challenges of the day. 3 Biggest Challenges Facing IT Without hesitation, Bandrowczak cites the bring your own device phenomenon as the # 1 trend, “in every industry, every size segment, every… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Contact Center, Industry Trends and News, Mobility, Network, Network Architecture, Podcasts, Social Media, Unified Communications Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Emerging Technologies Make for a More Effective Contact Center – and Happier Customers

January 26, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

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The keys to running an effective contact center are keeping agents as productive as possible and increasing customer satisfaction. Accomplishing that, of course, has always been a challenge but companies are taking advantage of a number of technology trends to help raise the bar on both fronts, says Zach Shankle, Director of Call Center Services for Carousel Industries. Contact Centers Get Social Asked what sorts of new things are happening in call centers, Shankle doesn’t hesitate: social media integration. Companies are monitoring what people are saying about them on social media venues like Twitter and Facebook and having contact center… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Contact Center, Productivity, Social Media, Telephony Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Realizing the Benefits of UC Takes Careful Planning – and a Proper Partner

January 4, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

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Collaboration is a staple in most any organization today, as users have to routinely work together around documents, projects, customer issues and more. That makes enabling effective unified communications a core requirement of the IT organization. That can be a daunting task, given the various moving parts involved, but the benefits can be significant when the job is done well. Planning for an Effective UC Implementation UC involves integrating technologies including e-mail, voice messaging, audio and video conferencing, instant messaging, presence, Web conferencing and voice, both fixed and mobile. As such, it requires a significant effort to first define requirements,… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Unified Communications Tagged With: , , , ,

Got a Great App Idea? Tell Carousel and You Could Win $1000 – and Get Your App Built

October 28, 2011 By Editor Leave a Comment
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In the course of any given work day, many of us find ourselves thinking there must be a better way to do some task at hand, and wishing that a tool existed to help. Carousel Industries is giving you a chance to make your wish come true with its 2011 APPY Awards. Enter your idea for an app that will make your work life easier. If it’s chosen as the winner by our panel of esteemed judges, you’ll will have the app built by Carousel’s developers, and receive $1,000 to boot.  In addition, 10 finalists will get $100 each and… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Android, Carousel Industries News, Contact Center, Productivity, Telephony, iOS Tagged With: , , , ,

Jabra Podcast Interview: In a Unified Communications World, Voice is Still King

August 8, 2011 By Editor 1 Comment

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Imagine you’re viewing a webcast and the presenter runs into a glitch that prevents him from advancing to the next slide for a few seconds. No big deal, we’ve all seen that lots of times, right? You don’t give it a second thought. But what if the audio keeps cutting out, so you’re missing a few words every 30 seconds or so? That you can’t handle; it touches a primal annoyance button deep inside you. If it keeps up you’ll likely click on the X and be done with the whole thing. Such is the power of voice communications, even… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Podcasts, Telephony, Unified Communications Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Trends in the Call Center Marketplace

July 16, 2011 By Editor Leave a Comment
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With Carousel’s deep background in telephony and call center deployments, we are often asked about the new things that are happening in the Call Center space and trends to keep an eye on. In a recent conversation with Rick Houlihan, a Call Center/Contact Center expert at Carousel, we discussed some of the items on businesses’ radar when it comes to Call Center’s role in the enterprise. “At a top-level, the major theme is process automation,” says Houlihan. “How can we utilize technology to automate and improve activities in the call center so businesses have happier customers, drive more sales, comply with regulations… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Contact Center, Telephony Tagged With: , , , ,

Social Media and Unified Communications – How Do They Relate

February 15, 2011 By Editor Leave a Comment
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At Carousel, we often have discussions with customers and colleagues about the opportunity that social media represents and the role that it should play in an enterprise’s strategy.  When most businesses think about social media, they focus on Twitter, Facebook and company blogs and consider it in the purview of marketing.  However, the tools that have evolved in the social media realm are now making their way into the business world with a trend towards ‘social business and collaboration”.  IBM recently announced a major Social Business initiative, and as they describe it: Social business is the world of possibility that… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Contact Center, Productivity, Social Media, Unified Communications, service Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,