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Do not worry if you missed our webinar. There is still time to see it! 'High Maintenance Customers: Strategies for Handling All Customer Types Profitably' is now available for your review in the archives. Watch the Archive Now! http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=369753&s=1&k=AD69310ABED05BECA23AAD1D798CEA75   Let’s face it, not all customers are created equally. Some are wonderful, but others cost you more time and money than they make you. So, in a competitive world where customers are at a premium, how do you deliver great service to those that make you money and weed out those that don’t? This webinar will show you current customer trends and arm you with the ideas and strategies you need to handle customers of all kinds. It will also provide you with a step-by-step plan to elevate your contact center’s customer experience while weeding out those customers that are more trouble than they are worth.

Let's face it, not all customers are created equally. Some are wonderful, but others cost you more time and money than they make you. So, in a competitive world where customers are at a premium, how do you deliver great service to those that make you money and weed out those that don’t? This webinar will show you current customer trends and arm you with the ideas and strategies you need to handle customers of all kinds. It will also provide you with a step-by-step plan to elevate your contact center’s customer experience while weeding out those customers that are more trouble than they are worth. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear it like it is and gain real world strategies for real world problems. Sign up today! Please click here for more information

This year at ICUC marked the 3^rd Annual Coder Royale!  It seems that each year is getting more and more competitive, as well as more and more creative.  This year’s Coder Royale theme was “Innovation in the Contact Center” and the only requirement was that you used the inCloud API. The ingenuity that we were able to demonstrate to our live audience was so cool and, can I get a drum roll, please?  The winner is… Pete Blackmer from SpiceCSM. Pete’s application leveraged the inCloud API using 7 different methods.  The application is embedded in SpiceCSM, and has several features including click-to-call, a cherry pick function, and various reporting scenarios. I think a highlight for me was the event injection application.  The function allowed voice contacts to be injected into queue based on a pre-determined logic.  Of course, this is great because it allows end-users to manage when and how they

September 15, 2011 SpiceCSM’s CTO Wins InContact Coder Royale Award Salt Lake City Utah- Pete Blackmer current Chief Technology Officer wins an award for outstanding API use. Partner, InContact announced its “2011 InContact Coder Royale” winner at their annual user conference this last week. Pete competed against several submissions to this contest many of which were outstanding. Winning Ideas: Click to Call: Using the API this functionality allows the agents to call a customer using the phone number field which will actually push a call out of the InContact agent. Real Time Queue Management: Give your Supervisors and Management the ability to change skill, priority and agent from within the SpiceCSM application using the data pulled from within InContact in real time. Event Injection: Using our callback functionality, when the customer is scheduled to be reached again SpiceCSM will push

SpiceCSM is proud to be a bronze level sponsor of the 2011 InContact User Conference. While we are attending this action packed event our CEO, Michael Ryan will be on the agenda to deliver a stunning presentation about “service level differentiation”. This will be done in coordination with two other speakers from other companies. InContact has defined this as “The proliferation of interaction channels today means that customers have an ever increasing variety of choices for how they can obtain customer service. Companies that don’t have a strategy in place to optimize their mix of self-service and agent-based support risk alienating valuable customers and destroying customer value. And companies that recognize the unique attributes that each customer carries and differentiate service to customers based on those attributes have an important competitive advantage.” We are looking forward to showing how successful we are at delivering the best strategy while using a best

InContact Integration for the NG Platform! SpiceCSM is proud to announce a full telephony integration with the inContact NG platform. This integration provides many new features including:

• Click to Call! Outbound dialing made easy! Through the use of the inContact integration any valid phone number found in the CRM or case histories can be "clicked" on to initiate the outbound dial, no need to manually enter the phone number.
• Call Metric Data! Easy access to vital statistics! Call metric data can be tied directly to a case response, allowing for quick access to key metrics such as queue time, talk time, etc.
• Call Recording Access! Download and listen! - Call recordings can be tied directly to a case response allowing for easy review of agent interaction even with multiple responses and agents.

Look at the graph below. Why are so many people angry? Customer service today is being viewed differently with Social Media, and so many modes of communication it’s hard for people not to get the word out. When someone has a problem with something often times they will call support and are already frustrated. Then to make matters worse they get someone who is having a bad day, no lunch, under paid or under trained. Not a good mix.

June 2, 2011 - The cost of overnight staffing for a limited amount of customer interactions has lead many companies to turn support duties over to third party organizations. In order to reduce internal staffing requirements while still being able to maintain high quality of service with a "co-source" support model, a large regional Internet Service Provider has selected SpiceCSM for Customer Service Management and Guided Agent Services Software. SpiceCSM allows both the ISP and their outsourced support provider the ability to accurately determine the nature of a customer's issue, all while taking care of the problem and enabling extensive documentation. The VP of Customer Care said "Choosing spice was a 'no-brainer'. The ability to provide best practice Guided Processes to our agents was a key but the fact that we could use it to co-source with an outsourcer allowing us to eliminate the need to internally staff 24X7

So you've decided to use "cloud-based" helpdesk / CSM software to provide your callcenter agents with a guided process with which to work from. The question written on the brick wall most people hit at this point is "Where do we go from here?" The answer to this question really depends on a number of characteristics about your organization, and how you will provide support to your customers. One of the large differentiations here that can send you on vastly different paths towards success, is whether your company is a "startup", or if you are an existing company that has been (or has contracted a company to be) providing support to customers previously. A company that has experience supporting their customers will in many cases have a more clear direction as to what issues occur most frequently. This gives a starting point as to what guided processes will need to be developed