The Contact Center Blog

A Call for Help in Haiti

In light of the earthquake this week in Haiti, the importance of aid and emergency communication lines becomes a prevalent topic of conversation.

These are not your regular 911 calls I’m referring to, but calls in response to an emergency on such a vast scale that very few people can imagine the devastation.  It is times like these when help lines, donation lines, and phone lines for inquiry become important to aid in the relief of an entire country.

Campaigns have begun on Facebook and Twitter, text message lines set up, telephone numbers posted to donate, and much more. 

From a humanitarian perspective this tragedy is extremely devastating and it’s comforting to see the support of so many people through various donations.  From a contact center perspective, I give my thanks to those who are behind the social media campaigns, answering the calls, and organizing the emails and tweets.  This is the finest example of the ability of a contact center to ramp up on queue – and proof of the capabilities of great call centers.

* To learn more on how you can donate, visit the Mashable Social Media Guide blog at http://mashable.com, which has an extensive list of options including updates from participants.

Welcome to the Contact Center Blog!

Well folks, here it is, finally, at long last, the contact center blog has arrived.  What is the contact center blog you ask?  The general idea was to create a blog where people who are stakeholders in contact center outsourcing companies, whether it be clients, suppliers, partners, or even outsourcers themselves can have open discussions on all things contact center.   Whether it be topics like operations, new technology, driving volumes, workforce, human resources or whatever, we want to encourage open and honest communication in our industry.

I'm sure your next question is "who the heck is this guy?"  Well, my name is Greg Fettes, and I am the President and CEO of 24-7 INtouch, a contact center outsourcer based in Canada.  You can check out my LinkedIN profile or visit the about us area on the 24-7 INtouch website.  At the risk of sounding too "salesy" (a big no-no on this blog from here on!), we have been recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in Canada two years in a row and pride ourselves in being a true leader in innovation for technology, process, and management in contact centers.  In fact, that is the underlying reason this blog got started.  It was a way to create a community that will push the industry in a new direction.  In the coming months you will see guest authors from inside and outside the contact center world make posts on different issues concerning contact centers.  But here's the trick; we are depending on you, the readers, to make comments and push discussions forward.  Maybe you agree, maybe you disagree, or maybe you have experiences that you can share that will bring the conversation in a new direction.  We will not be censoring posts or comments for any reason (except vulgarity of course!) so you will be free to absolutely speak your mind.   Anyways, enough background already, lets get on to the blog!

My plan for posting comments on the contact center blog will be to follow a somewhat similar format each week.  I am hoping to post regularly once per week on Mondays and have a few random posts throughout the week.  Please feel free to give feedback on the blog in general as my goal is to make it as useful and informative as possible.

Thanks and happy blogging!

GF