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Convergys Corporation, a provider of customer care, human resources, and billing services announced its signing of a direct response contract with Rosetta Stone, publisher of Rosetta Stone language-learning software.

Convergys will provide agents and a routing platform to direct calls. Convergys first began providing inbound customer care and sales support to Rosetta Stone in December 2006.

Rosetta Stone is claimed to be the top-selling language-learning software in the world, and the thirty languages’ worth of product is sold in over 150 countries. Inc. Magazine recently named Rosetta Stone Inc. one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the United States, and Deloitte and Touche has named it one of the fasted-growing technology companies in Virginia. The company’s corporate office is in Rosslyn, Va. and the company’s main office is in Harrisonburg, Va.

Convergys Corporation provides customer care, human resources, and billing services in more than seventy countries and 35 languages. Convergys clientele is based in industries including communications, financial services, technology, and consumer products. Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, Convergys employs some 74,000 in 75 customer contact centers, three data centers, and other facilities in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Folks from outsourced CRM services provider Teleperformance announced the company had “ramped up its India operations,” as it has launched its shiny new facility in Gurgaon.

Yesterday (yes, Sunday, believe it or not) saw the facility’s first day of operation. The facility measures some 150,000 square feet, employs 800, and is promised to be “state-of-the-art” and “ergonomically designed.” At the grand opening, Teleperformance USA Group CEO Dominic Dato praised Teleperformance India as “among the best outsourced CRM centers of Teleperformance across the globe.”

Teleperformance is quite a heavy hitter in the world of outsourced CRM. The firm boasted $1.82 billion in revenues, employing 70,000 in 42 countries and handling a reported one billion customer contacts annually. Teleperformance operates 56,500 workstations in 263 contact centers in 60 languages. The company’s proprietary Customer Contact Management System received the Product of the Year award from Customer Interaction Solutions magazine in 2006.

At the VoiceCon Conference in Orlando, Fla. yesterday, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. unveiled key capabilities of its Dynamic Contact Center, a product that proports to showcase “how customer service can be elevated to a strategic business asset designed to increase overall customer loyalty and business value.” The DCC implementation will be on display through Thursday.

Acting as platform for DCC is Genesys 7.5, a product to be released in April 2007. Genesys 7.5 features Open IP and SIP standards and lays claim as the first contact center software to incorporate presence through IM, chat and IP telephony. DCC is pitched primarily at banking and insurance contact centers.

Along with the announcement of unveiling, Genesys representatives reported their firm’s recent commissioning of McGee-Smith Analytics to discuss the implementation of SIP Server with Genesys customers. A white paper summarizing McGee-Smith’s findings, entitled “Customers’ Expanding Reliance on the Genesys Suite” is available at the Genesys homepage.

Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. is an Alcatel-Lucent company focuses exclusively on software to manage customer interaction over the phone, web and in e-mail. Genesys software today directs more than 100 million customer interactions daily for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries.

Graham Technology, a provider of customer-oriented business software and services, today announced that Standard Bank of South Africa will be employing Graham to provide a contact management solution for its front-office contact centre.

Graham Technology and global IT services firm, Dimension Data, has been chosen to roll out the solution in a phased approach beginning in the first quarter of 2007.

Graham launched their flagship product Ciboodle, its customer relationship management software bundle for the multi-channel contact centre, in October.

Promising full integratibility with all contact centre channels such as telephony, web, interactive voice response and instant messaging, ciboodle provides a single interface for contact centre agent/customer interaction. Ciboodle is plugged as “a product of 20 years of CRM and business process management expertise at Graham Technology,” and as a solution to “many of the key challenges facing today’s multi-channel contact centre.”

Standard Bank of South Africa is reportedly the largest South African banking group and operates in some 17 African countries and 21 others. SBSA employs 40,000.

Graham Technology specializes in contact centre software and services. Graham was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Scotland; the company today has nine global offices.

Nothing says “story to hype” like receiving a prestigious “Product of the Year” award. And publisher TMCNet and its Customer Interaction Solutions magazine are prestigious, make no bones about it.

TMC publications include print magazines Customer Interaction Solutions, Internet Telephony, SIP Magazine and IMS Magazine, and digital publications Speech-World, WiFI Telephony Magazine, VoIP Developer, IPTV Magazine and WiMA. In addition, TMC produces The Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO, The VoIP Developer Conference, VoIP Demo, IMS Expo and Call Center 2.0 Conference.

Customer Interaction Solutions has been the flagship publication of the Technology Marketing Corporation print house since 1982, and focuses on the customer relationship management, call center and teleservices industries.

So you’d figure the TMCers’ “Product of the Year” would be a heck of story, and you’d be right: Across industry outlets today are a number of press releases and articles telling of the victory in Customer Interaction Solutions magazine’s “product of the year” competition for 2006.

Ladies and gentlemen, the winner is … ASC! ASC is a provider of innovative software for the recording, analysis and evaluation of communications, and took home Product of the Year honors for its Marathon EVOlite.

Marathon EVOlite is a Linux-based communications recorder, a product which promises to assist financial organizations in complying with regulatory requirements for the recording of phone, VoIP and radio conversations. The latest version of Marathon EVOlite offers VoIP and TDM recording; online storage of up to 175,000 hours; and compatibility with IOMEGA or DVD-RAM drives for long-term archiving.

Said Nadji Tehrani, Customer Interaction Solutions executive group publisher / editor-in-chief. "I am pleased to honor their hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from them in the future."

Well, then, congratulations to ASC. For all runners-up, well, as they say in sportsland, “Wait ‘til next year!”

But wait a minute … what’s this?

Ulysses Learning is claiming that they’ve been bestowed “Product of the Year” accolades by Customer Interaction Solutions. The product in question this time is Ulysses Learning’s ServiceMentor Service to Sales, and the award is publicized on the Ulysses homepage under a link marked “Ulysses Wins Again…”

Winning Customer Interaction Solutions’ “Product of the Year” for an incredible eighth consecutive year, Ulysses Learning president/CEO Mark W. Brodsky produced a whopper of a sportsland metaphor upon announcing his firm’s win: “Being in the performance improvement industry is like being a sports team – the crowd can cheer you today and boo you tomorrow. The only thing that matters is how you play the game today. And we’re thrilled that others recognize that we continually get better game after game.”

How could the fans boo such a performance? Eight championships in a row? Come on! And Tehrani said, “…We’re proud to honor their hard work and accomplishments.”

Congratulations, Ulysses Learning, et cetera et cetera.

Except.

Here’s OPC Marketing proudly displaying “Product of the Year” honors from guess who for SpitFire HYBRID, a MySQL-based predictive dialer/auto dialer solution.

And Tehrani said, “…We’re proud to honor their hard work and accomplishments.”

Neocase Software announced on Friday that Neocase had received “Product of the Year” honors from CIS, “a testament to Neocase’s value in arming companies of varying sizes with a definitive competitive advantage in quickly improving their customer service operations,” in the words of Neocase president/CEO Philippe Gaillard.

Neocase is designed to work seamlessly alongside the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 sales and marketing suite, and can be deployed either on-demand or on-premise. This customization allows partners and customers to focus on the business objectives at hand and fulfill their customers’ needs in an efficient, timely manner.

Altitude Software, an independent contact centre solutions vendor, announced today that the Altitude Fast Script Builder won “Product of the Year.” The Altitude Fast Script Builder is part of the Altitude Script Studio, an interface for contact centre campaign flows and agent desktop screens creation. Upon rewarding Altitude, boss man Tehrani said, “I am pleased to honor their hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from them in the future.”

Sage Software, meanwhile, took home “Product of the Year” twice, for both SalesLogix v7 and SageCRM v5.8. Sage products support accounting, operations, customer relationship management, human resources, time tracking, merchant services and the specialized needs of accounting practices and the construction, distribution, manufacturing, nonprofit and real estate industries.

Tehrani said – stop me if you’ve heard this one – “…We’re proud to honor their hard work and accomplishments.”

What gives? As it turns out, Customer Interaction Solutions awards many prizes called a “Product of the Year,” a designation which would seem to imply a superlative. Sure, talking about many “Products of the Year” is grammatically correct, but isn’t that playing a bit fast and loose? And doesn’t it make a run of eight consecutive wins a bit meaningless? What, a company gets in good with Customer Interaction and gets a business lifetime’s worth of good publicity and maybe a little trophy? Yes, we all enjoy rituals and facades and pats on the back for doing work that sometimes no one seems to appreciate, but isn’t this a bit see-through?

Can’t wait for the CRM Excellence Award winners for 2006, eh? That should be out in May/June or so…

The Product of the Year Award winners for 2006 will be featured in the January and February 2006 issues of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine.

Eircom had the sort of success in Las Vegas this week that all visitors to Sin City wish for, taking home to Ireland the title of “Best Contact Center in the World” at the 2006 World Contact Center Awards. In August, winners were announced at Contact Center World Awards Conferences for Best in Europe, Middle East and Africa; the Americas; and Asia Pacific.

Eircom Telesales and Service Centre won the award for “its commitment to customers and for its alignment of contact centre performance and objectives with the organization’s corporate goals.” Statistics show that eircom staff, answering 85 percent of its 6000 calls received weekly within 10 seconds; 36 percent of these calls are said to represent cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

"It is fantastic to be recognised as the best of the best by our industry peers from around the world," said Annette Hickey, head of Eircom TSS, in the Las Vegas awards ceremony upon receiving the call-center Oscar.

Eircom can put the big prize together on the metaphorical mantelpiece with Ireland’s Contact Centre Award for best innovative use of technology and the IM B2C Commerce Award for demonstrating vision and skill in new technology.

Eircom uses the Genesys Voice Platform and Nuance speech recognition engine to power its “1901” freefone customer service application that handles 100,000 calls per week.

Eircom Ltd. offers services specifically to assist U.S. corporations expanding into Europe, including international direct dialing, toll-free, ISDN, frame relay, ATM, private circuits, charge card, call centers, shared service centers and a range of ISP and corporate internet services including hosting and co-location services. The Eircom clientele includes Dell, EMC, Oracle, Gateway, Microsoft, Radisson, Citibank, Hertz and E*trade.

Representatives of American Medical Alert Corp., provider of healthcare communication services and advanced home health monitoring technologies, have announced the acquisition of American Mediconnect, Inc. and Phone Screen, Inc.

Founded in 1985, American Mediconnect is a Chicago-based firm which specializes in health care communications, exclusively serving hospitals, medical center, physician practices, clinics, pharmaceutical companies, and healthcare advertisers. American Mediconnect numbers show that the company handles several million calls a year from medical patients through its telephone answering service.

Phone Screen Inc. was founded in 1991 as a specialty services provider for the niche market of medical answering service.

With the announcement of acquisition, American Medical Alert CEO Howard M. Siegel stated that Chicago is "a great city and a logical next step for our call center geographic expansion plan," and that specialty call center services for the pharmaceutical industry is "a natural extension of our current healthcare communication services offerings."

Informiam had a good year; how was yours? The provider of “Customer Experience Optimization” has released figures for 2006 which show a 500 percent increase in customer seat growth, representing some 120,000-plus new seats for calendar year. Plus, adds Informiam chairman of information Steve Kostyshen, “The increase in the number of seats becomes even more substantial when you take into consideration the number of customers impacted.”

The Informiam brain trust gave credit for the growth to the addition of new customers in 2006, with a substantial number “from the ranks of the Fortune 500,” but “Informiam has also signed up new mid-sized enterprises as well.” New customers were signed in financial services, retail, high-tech, logistics and telecommunications industries.

Informiam is a contact center management solutions provider specializing in Fortune 1000 organizations.

Digisoft and TMCnet have announced their teaming to conduct an online series of webinars for “all business professionals interested in gaining a competitive edge in the call center market.”

The first webinar is scheduled for this coming Thursday, December 14 at 2pm Eastern Standard Time at www.digisoft.com. The event promises to provide practical knowledge on call-center solutions to small- and mid-sized businesses, specifically on integrating IP technology and other turnkey call center solutions.

Vertical Communications will serve as a panel guest. Topics will include adopting innovative customer support solutions, using cost effective tools such as IP technology, and covering methods to increase employee productivity.

Host of the webinar will be Digisoft director of sales Norma Mozeé. "The TMCnet webinar theme of providing affordable contact center solutions to the SMB market is timely. Small and medium-sized businesses have the same needs as large companies: to provide high quality customer service … Our goal is to introduce options that meet both their customer centric solution needs and their budgets.”

TMC, as the leading online publisher for call center solutions including VoIP, CRM, and telephony products and services, brings quite a base to the table. TMC has sent invites to some 20,000 subscribers for webinar. Reportedly, registration for the webinar can be done at www.tmcnet.com, but I’ll be damned if I can find it…

Digisoft announced that two additional TMC co-hosted webinars will be scheduled over the course of the next several months, and will cover additional topics related to call center technology and strategic customer service solutions.

Founded in 1983, Digisoft is a provider of contact center solutions including telemarketing software, CRM applications, and call transaction management systems. As of 2005, Digisoft has been owned by TouchStar Software. TouchStar is headquartered in Denver, Colo., and has offices in New York, N.Y.; Davenport, Iowa; Manchester, England; Manila, Philippines; Mumbai, India; and Durban, South Africa.

Representatives of Envox Worldwide, a voice solutions provider, have announced the availability of Envox CT Connect 7, the latest version of Envox’ standards-based CTI software. Envox CT Connect 7 promises enhanced computer telephony interoperability with IP communication networks and integration with platforms based on web services or service-oriented architectures.

Key new features touted in the release include SIP call control, which enables call monitoring and third-party call control among SIP-enabled devices, such as soft-switches, gateways, and end points; a web services-based application programming interface, enabling organisations to create next-generation contact centre solutions that integrate with business solutions such as CRM, SFA and unified communications, over a service oriented architecture; and the Integrated Envox Call Information Manager, which controls telephony and application data associated with a call and makes this data available to applications.

An evaluation copy of Envox CT Connect 7 is available on the Envox homepage. Envox Worldwide is a global provider of voice solutions. Headquartered in Boston, Envox products are available through a network of global channel partners.