The Telax solution allows each agent to be assigned a skill and a priority for that skill, which is a number between 1 and 10. If two agents are both assigned the same technical skill, but one is more knowledgeable than the other, a higher priority will ensure that the more knowledgeable agent takes every call possible. Instead of taking turns receiving incoming calls, the agent with the lower priority will only get a call if the other agent is on a call and a second comes in.

There are actually many reasons to take advantage of skill prioritization beyond just making sure your best agent takes every call possible. For instance, lets take a company that has two skillsets: sales and technical. If sales calls are high and the company doesn’t want to miss an opportunity, the technical staff can be given the sales skill but with a lower priority so that they only take sales calls if all the sales agents are busy.

Or it could simply be the case that a company doesn’t want to bombard a new employee with many calls during their first few days, so a lower priority will cut down on that agent’s call volumes until they are comfortable with the position.

Whether it’s to give your best employees the most calls, give a team some backup, or allow a new agent to ease into a role, skill priority is a very useful feature that can help keep caller wait times to a minimum, and there is nothing to say that you won’t come up with yet another reason to use skill priorities. The more the merrier!

Cybercrime has not become some unstoppable force that’s going to make us all keep any electronic data we might be worried about on a USB key in our pocket and nowhere else. Most of the crimes committed are avoidable, and a secure password is the number one cause of secure data. Back in November, we wrote a blog post that referred to a list of the 25 worst passwords, and that we all need to make sure we have unique passwords. Change Your Password Day is a way to motivate some of the worst offenders to update their passwords from passwords like ‘password’ and ‘12345’ to ‘SIP4All’ or “n0HareWare’.

The biggest problem people have with creating complicated passwords is remembering them. It’s hard to remember a string of seemingly random letters and numbers, so people chose things that are familiar to them or easy to remember, but that is exactly the reason those passwords get hacked. If it’s easy to remember, it’s easy to crack. I don’t use string to close my gym locker because it’s easier than remembering a padlock’s three numbers, so why would I create a password that’s easily guessed?

You don’t have to literally make your password a random string of characters, but logging in with a number or two and a couple words can make the difference between being secure and being a victim. By the way, if you were proud that your password wasn’t on the list of the 25 worst passwords, they’ve updated that list. It’s now a list of the worst 525 passwords.

Customer’s waiting in queues can appreciate that call volumes are sometimes high. No one expects a company to keep employees at their desks in case there is a sudden rush of calls, but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to expect a customer to wait on hold for long stretches of time. There must be other options. One option is of course to leave a voicemail, but it takes time to listen to voicemails, and an agent is probably going to have to call the customer back anyway. A better option is to give the customer the option to have an agent call him or her back.

Now just because a customer has opted to receive a call back instead of waiting on hold, it doesn’t mean an agent will call them back once the call volumes have dropped. That customer still retains his or her same place in the queue. The difference is only that instead of waiting on hold for the call to be transferred to an agent, the agent is transferred to the customer, so to speak. From the agent’s point of view, when a call back is next in line, the call begins with the agent’s phone dialing the customer’s number.

The benefits for customers are tremendous, especially in a business to business environment. As I’m sure all our readers can attest, being on hold can be distracting. It can be difficult to concentrate on another task while waiting for an agent to pick up. Between the hold music and the anticipation of being connected at any time, it’s easy for someone to idly wait for the call to be answered.

Waiting for a phone call is something we’ve all done, and it’s rare that someone literally waits by the phone, especially if you have a cell phone, or maybe then we’re always waiting by the phone. The point is that it’s much easier to get things done when you’re not waiting on hold, which is why the call back feature is not just an add-on. We here at Telax think it’s a feature that all of our customers should be able to enjoy.

The biggest difference between Megaupload and other similar services is that Megaupload encourages piracy and the others discourage it. Megaupload gives incentives to users that upload large amounts of data and will even delete data that isn’t downloaded regularly.  The Megaupload indictment also alleges that lead programmer Bram van der Kolk suggested Megaupload reward users that upload “full popular DVD rips” with cash. These are  not the practices of most file sharing services.

Legit file-sharing services actually write it into their terms of service that users cannot upload copyrighted material and they follow up on it. If you try to use Dropbox or MediaFire to share copyrighted music, movies, or software, they will find out and cancel your account. Megaupload would also find out, but it seems instead of cancelling your account, they would give you some money.

This story is eerily similar to the SOPA story. The fear that legit sites will be shut down for minor infractions could very well be a real concern, but it is not the intention of the US government to prevent businesses that try to adhere to the law from doing business. The owners of Megaupload were profiting from the distribution of illegal material. That was their business model. That’s why they were targeted. If Dropbox, MediaFire, Rapidshare, or any other file sharing service encourage or turn a blind eye to copyrighted material being shared on their site, they might risk being shut down. But that’s simply not going to happen. While I would never suggest putting all your eggs in one basket, or files on one hard drive, your data is safe in the cloud as long as you’re careful to avoid sites that moonlight as .xxx sites.

]]> http://www.telax.com/2012/01/25/megaupload-megafail/feed/ http://www.telax.com/2012/01/20/feature-friday-busy-reasons/ http://www.telax.com/2012/01/20/feature-friday-busy-reasons/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:45:42 +0000 Telaxer http://www.telax.com/?p=2944 Before I began working with call centers, I envisioned seas of desks, endlessly ringing phones, and maybe even some papers flying through the air as people rush to and fro amongst a maze of cubicles. But not every call center resembles the call center from Boiler Room (Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, its a good movie, you should check it out). Some contact centers just aren’t that busy and some companies have their agents perform a variety of tasks that make them unavailable to receive incoming calls. Regardless of how big an environment is or how many duties agents are responsible for, tracking how employees are using their time can be essential to the success of any company. So this week’s Feature Friday post (that’s right it’s back) covers agent Busy Reasons.

It’s one thing to know that an agent has signed off, but there are endless potential reasons why an agent has signed off. It could be a lunch break or a call wrap-up, but it could also be that an agent is scheduled to receive new training, or perhaps they’ve been asked to assist with some testing, or maybe they’ve been recruited to assist in a special project.

Many call centers ask their agents to do quite a few things other than simply answer calls, but that doesn’t mean those companies don’t need to know what their agents are doing when they’re not taking calls. A call center manager may know ten people are staffed everyday, but how many agent available hours are there? And if they discover they’re not meeting their goals, how do they know what their agents are doing and what they can cut back on? That’s where our Busy Reasons feature comes into play.

If an agent is asked to do anything aside from be available to answer incoming calls, he or she can indicate exactly what they are doing by selecting the appropriate busy reason in the Call Center Agent (CCA). When a report is run, managers can see exactly what agents are doing with their time. That information can be used to determine if there is a need to hire additional staff, if the current staff has enough time to take on additional responsibilities, or if things are running as smoothly as can be expected.

As is the case with all the features we here at Telax offer, it can be customized. If a company decides they want agents to spend time scanning financial documents, that task can be added to the list of busy reasons. This additional business intelligence allows managers to see exactly how much time agents spent on that particular task.

Adaptability and visibility are two very important words in the contact center industry, and features like customizable busy reasons allow us and our customers to be both.

Just recently, new top level domain names were opened for registration, which will change domain naming conventions considerably. Something that might have a much larger impact on the internet is an American bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Wikipedia today announced that they will be shutting down Wikipedia.com for 24 hours on Wednesday, January 18^th in protest to this new bill. And Wikipedia is not the only site willing to go offline in protest. Reddit, Mozilla, Word Press, and TwitPic have all signed up for the protest, along with many other websites.

The government is trying to stop copyright law infringements with SOPA. Basically, the act would allow the American government to cut off access to websites from around the world if they were found in violation of any copyright laws. Websites that broadcast illegal movies or sporting events cannot operate in the United States, but they can in many other countries around the world. Since the American government can’t stop them from operating, they intend to restrict access for their own population.

The concern on the other side is not that people are going to be prevented from streaming illegal content, but rather that this bill is going to create a level of censorship that will not be easily reversed and could stop the internet from being the free forum that it has become. If the American government can block access to any website they want, will they stop at just those websites that are the worst offenders or will sites that commit minor infractions be targeted as well? Wikipedia allows anyone to create content, and while the intention is to create new content, if someone plagiarizes some text for a Wikipedia article, will the American government cut off access to all of Wikipedia until that text is removed? Wikipedia would argue that SOPA gives the government too much control over the internet, and it’s hard not to agree.

The internet is supposed to be a place for the sharing of information; a free form for anyone that cares to get involved. At the same time, it’s not fair to steal creative work from people that work hard to create it. Ever since Napster, which recently shutdown in Canada, we’ve been trying to find a happy medium between the sharing of information and the prevention of illegal activities throughout the internet. SOPA is going to be a huge factor in deciding whether or not the internet should stay free despite a few bad apples, or if it’s going to be heavily regulated. Stay tuned.

There have always been many domain names to choose from. We’ve had access to the commonly used domain names that are supposed to be descriptive such as .org for non-profit organizations and .gov for governments, and we’ve had access to country based domain names such as .us for the United States and .ca for Canada. As of today, personalized, or maybe we should say vanity, domain names are available for registration. In a year or so, you might be going to websites with URLs such as  ipad.apple or weather.chicago, but don’t expect everyone to jump on the vanity domain name bandwagon. Registration costs $185,000.

Right now, there are 22 domain names that don’t represent a country, another 252 that do, and registration for a domain name rarely costs more than $20. It will be interesting to see who is willing to pay such an large amount for a new domain name, and will websites like blogspot.com and tumblr.com become obsolete? If someone registers .blog, they could gain an effective monopoly on blog sites.

Another interesting feature is the inclusion of other languages. Until today, website domains were only available within the confines of the Latin alphabet. Now, any language can be used.

The best part about all of this is simply that the internet is continuing to evolve. Perhaps ICANN is correct when they say that these new top level domain names will change the internet forever, and perhaps that’s a bit of an overstatement, but at the very least the internet is improving. Take HTML5 for example, it has already improved browser-based software by eliminating the need for 3rd party software, and we’re expecting much more from HTML5 over the next little while.

There are rarely giant leaps made in internet technology, although the internet itself was a giant leap, but we seem to consistently make small steps. What’s next? The elimination of www? We’re practically there already. It’s hard to find a site these days that requires www in front of the domain name. Go ahead and try.

Telax Hosted Call Center, a leader in cloud contact center solutions, announced the release of its HTML5-based Call Center Agent (CCA) today.  Key to the development of the browser-based CCA was Websocket, a component of HTML5 that provides a bi-directional, full-duplex communication channel over a single Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket. Websocket is currently supported by the latest versions of Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Firefox, making Telax’s new CCA compatible with the most popular browsers in Mac environments.

“We’re pleased that Mac infrastructures are growing so strongly in business environments. It allows us to develop contact center tools that have capabilities beyond what they’ve traditionally had,” said Vladimir Pereira chief architect at Telax. “The adoption of Websocket by most major browsers is a huge step towards scalable real-time web applications. Our ultimate goal is to provide reliable and scalable solutions that are both easy to use and easy to deploy. This one is as easy as pointing a Mac browser to a url.”

Before HTML5, real-time unified communication software was better served as a client because its browser-based counterparts were unable to deliver an acceptable user experience. Some browser-based clients use 3^rd party software such as Adobe Flash or Sliverlight to operate adequately, but both solutions require software installation and are not mobile friendly.

Telax Hosted Call Center for Mac OS contact centers is the first web-based application that allows contact center agents to work from any location without needing to install software or suffer with an application that provides only partial functionality and unstable connectivity. This advancement in contact center software gives IT staff in Mac environments the opportunity to concentrate core competencies while significantly improving the customer experience.

About Telax Hosted Call Center:

Telax Hosted Call Center is North America’s leader in hosted call center solutions. Based in Toronto, Canada, Telax has been providing cloud-based business solutions to prominent public and private sector organizations since 1999. The simplicity delivered by Telax services enables clients like Best Buy, Northrop Grumman, Johnson & Johnson, CI Investments, the Globalive Group of Companies, Health Canada and the GSA, to reduce costs and improve efficiency, so that they can do more with their most critical resource: people. For more information, visit http://www.telax.com. For the latest Telax news, visithttp://www.telax.com/category/news

HTML5 is not a new concept. It’s been in development for years, and it’s not done yet, but it is being used by most web browsers, which really is the way to do it. There’s no need to release software with the claim it’s complete and then worry about finishing the job with service packs as customers make complaints. HTML5 will expand and in the meantime, the features that are complete are available for use.

One of the active features of HTML5 that has been important for us here at Telax, specifically for our call center software for Mac OS environments, is Websocket. Simply put, Websocket allows two-way communication within a browser. It means that unified communications software, IM clients for example, can be effective within a web browser. Until now, web clients that require two-way communication have had difficulties, particularly with firewalls, and as a result have not been useful. That’s why IM clients are typically local clients, software that you install and use separately from your web browser, but HTML5 gives us the opportunity to use unified communication applications within a browser and without needing to install any software.

Of course not every browser is adapting quickly to HTML5. One report, from Chitika Insights, informs us that while 99% of Google Chrome users have access to HTML5 features, only 26% of users running Microsoft’s IE have that same access. Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox are both close to Chrome in HTML5 adoption.

HTML5 gives us too many new features to summarize in a blog post, but luckily for us there is a pretty incredible slideshow that not only gives insight into what HTML5 is capable of, it’s also interactive, so check it out and have fun!

Just a couple of months before Microsoft purchased Skype for $8.5 billion, we integrated Skype calling into our Hosted Call Center solution, allowing our customers to connect to their customers in a new and avant-garde way.

We went to the Canadian Independent Telephone Association’s annual telecommunications conference, the 2011 Metaswitch Forum, and the 3^rd Call Center Summit for Financial Services, at which Koray Parmaks, Director of Client Services here at Telax, presented a session entitled Export the Contact Center up the Value Chain: Managing Beyond Traditional Queues.

And we were awarded a Federal Supply Schedule contract by the U.S. General Services Administration, making us the only hosted call center provider on the GSA’s Information Technology Schedule 70.

Yes, it’s been a busy year and with more and more companies climbing aboard the cloud computing balloon, 2012 looks to be even busier!

Have a happy and safe New Year celebration and a prosperous 2012 from all of us here at Telax.