The Contact Center Blog

ACCM Early Registration Savings

Mark your calendars for the Annual Conference for Catalog and Multichannel Merchants (ACCM) taking place in Orlando, Florida on May 19-22, 2008.

The ACCM is one of the only conferences devoted to merchants who need to understand, segment and market to today's customers and prospects across an array of media. ACCM will help you focus on the strategies you need to successfully integrate your catalog, web, store, phone, sales force, e-mail and other channels.

To REGISTER visit - www.accm4me.com/merch. If you register by March 7th you will save up to $100 on a full conference pass. Use savings code E05.

24-7 INtouch (Booth 607) will be at this event along with other call center outsources such as AnswerNet, Cyber City, Hamilton Call Center, and Midco.

- MK

Beware of the Taxman

For the past year I have been following the tremendous debate about the taxation of products purchased online. The New York Times published this article earlier in the month about the subject.

Technically, individuals are responsible for paying the sales tax on purchases made online to the State in which they reside. Not surprisingly, this is rarely done and States are lobbying ever more aggressively to get back this piece of the taxation pie.

Why is this relevant?

I have mentioned this subject on The Contact Center Blog, because any new laws that pass will affect call centers that provide sales support to clients. Accounts that are using a client maintained website to place orders will probably be spared (onus on client to make adjustments), but if you have developed a custom internal ordertaking application, you probably have a substantial amount of re-programming to do to comply with the new taxation rules.

The New York Times article quotes Amazon.com stating that ‘there are 7,500 taxing jurisdictions [in the United States], each of which imposes sales tax on different sorts of items.’

I hope everyone keeps this issue on their radar, and it would be great to hear from anyone else knowledgeable on the subject.

Love is in the Air...and online!

Happy Valentines Day!

February 14th represents a big sales day for many online retailers, and not just flowers and jewelry sites. Email marketing leading up to today has increased with retailers in all industries using Feb 14th to promote their gift sales. The National Jeweler Network polled more than 600 small business owners between Dec 31st and Jan 9th and the survey showed that 68 percent of small business owners are planning special promotions for the holiday, compared with 53 percent last year. Also, according to those polled, 46 percent expect consumers to shop the week of Valentine's Day, and 11 percent expect consumers will wait until the final day to pick up gifts.

Online retailers must be ready to deal with this influx of calls and visitors to their website. In a recent article  InternetRetailer.com describes a potentially disastrous situation for Vermont Teddy Bear, a multi-channel retailer of stuffed animals and other gifts, whose land line phone service went out last February in the area of their contact center, during on of the busiest times of their sales year. Fortunately the retailer was prepared and had contracts with multiple outsources to handle customer calls and e-mails during this time. One of their outsourced partners was able to get the agents taking calls in less than 45 minutes.

Want to learn more about trends online during one of the busiest gift giving days outside Christmas? One Up Web published a great white paper last year. One Up Web President and Founder Lisa Wehr comments, "Valentine’s Day is such a short sales season—different from Christmas where purchases may be made months in advance—that I expected paid search to play the larger role. For many of our clients, Valentine’s is second in revenue to Christmas and bigger than Mother’s Day. Clearly the data shows that e-commerce companies that don’t optimize will miss out on a huge part of the market.”

- MK

Calling all Catalog, Online, and Multi-channel Retailers

Registration is now open for NCOF 2008. The Operations & Fulfillment Conference will take place through April 7-10, 2008 at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center, in Orlando FL. To register visit www.ncof.com.

New this year - Zappos.com Keynote. Benchmark Results on: Fulfillment, Returns, Contact Center, DC Trends. Session Tracks: Distribution Mgmt, Customer Experience; People Mgmt, Material Handling.

Call centers attending the show as exhibitors include 24-7 INtouch , Cyber City Teleservices, Global Response, Midco Call Center, The Connection, and USA 800.

I personally will be at the show so please feel free to stop by Booth #608 to discuss how you can contribute to the Contact Center Blog, or just to say hello!

- MK

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