TUANZ - Telecomunications Users Association Of New Zealand

TUANZ - Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand

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Posted Fri 26 February 2010 @ 12:31 p.m. by Ernie

Everything has its day. "Mouthpiece" is no exception.For several years its been a popular resource for contact centre professionals up and down new Zealand. But since the recession, things have changed dramatically in the contact centre arena. We've seen a decline in visitor numbers to this part of our site, while the viability of luncheons, awards and conferences specific to contact centres has evaporated. We can see no sign of it coming back.So reluctantly, our Board has decided to stick...

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Telecom's customer service technology

Posted Thu 19 November 2009 @ 2:15 p.m. by Megan

Telecom is getting ready to implement its new NGT (Next Generation Telecom) customer service technologies – it sounds like overdue good news. What does it all mean? For the contact centre staff, I believe it will speed up their resolution time with customers, as they will have a newer, faster, more customer-friendly system to work with. They will finally have some bells and whistles to work with as they don’t have much flexibility with the current Integrated Customer Management System (ICMS)....

Categories: Profile | Technology | Vendors

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Avaya to buy Nortel enterprise unit

Posted Thu 24 September 2009 @ 4:52 p.m. by Louis

by Megan LacyAvaya has won a bid to purchase Nortel's Enterprise Solutions Business.Avaya is expected to pay $900 million for the business unit once the deal gets approved in the US, according to an announcement made last week.For now it means business as usual for Nortel New Zealand. For customers this agreement promises to bring benefits with the complementary capabilities of the combined Avaya and Nortel products and services.This purchase is of interest, especially if you are looking to upgrading...

Categories: International | Technology | Vendors

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Live Ambassador for your website.

Posted Fri 26 June 2009 @ 10:09 a.m. by Megan

I love new to see the lastest and greatest technology and as a customer I like to see whether it will hold my attention. I must say 'Live Ambassador' technolgy did that. I couldn't stop staring, and thinking: "Wow, that's smart".Live Ambassador is a live interactive tool which includes a real person who walks and talks visitors through a company’s website, directs them around it and making it easier to do business.Developed by New Zealand IT company, Genesis Interactive, Live Ambassador...

Categories: Profile | Technology | Vendors

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Nortel Contact Centre luncheon

Posted Thu 11 June 2009 @ 1:55 p.m. by Megan

I attended the last two Nortel Contact Centre Luncheons in Hamilton and Auckland last week. Luckily I knew after the Hamilton session that I had the opportunity to listen to it again in Auckland as there was a lot of information given in speaker Darren Leffler's presentation and as much as I scribbled notes, I knew I could still take in more.Entitled Communications Enablement, this was a presentation I would have insisted my general manager to attend - if I was still working for one. This would...

Categories: Events | Leadership | Technology | Vendors

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Nortel Asia gives its take on unified comms

Posted Wed 3 June 2009 @ 12:48 p.m. by Ernie

Nortel Asia is running around New Zealand this week giving its take on unified communications. Speaker Darren Leffler, a veteran of the TUANZ circuit, hails from Sydney, and is accompanied by colleague Steve Harris from Melbourne. There are a lot of messages in Leffler’s presentation which I found rich in insight. To me it lifted the case for unified communications to a new level. Check here for more on UC. He talked a lot about the notion of “human latency” – the delays caused by people’s unavailability...

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Is this NZ’s most interesting contact centre?

Posted Fri 1 May 2009 @ 5:33 p.m. by Ernie

Ok guys, be as jealous as you like! Last Friday night I had a fascinating experience, with a visit from 10pm until 2am to an amazing contact centre – the Police Northern Communications Centre which takes the 111 emergency calls. I was lucky to get in there through my role on the Board of the Telecommunications Carriers Forum which does a bit of work with the emergency services and issued an invitation. It helps us to understand the issues they have around call clarity, CLI and others. This is,...

Categories: Events | Leadership | Profile | Technology

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Internet addiction in Contact Centres

Posted Thu 11 December 2008 @ 3:36 p.m. by Megan

Do I dare to blog about this? How much time does a Contact Centre lose daily, weekly to the internet addiction? Am I over reacting? Has anyone done at research on this? I believe there is reason to be concerned. I bet every centre at one time or another have performance managed a staff member due to high internet use. I am always amazed to watch staff that are on the internet and on a phone call at the same time and they actually believe they can talk to the beloved customers and simultaneously...

Categories: Lifestyle | Technology

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A new way to audit your Centre?

Posted Thu 4 December 2008 @ 4:37 p.m. by Megan

Curiosity got the better of me this week, and I had to find out what this new contact centre audit tool was all about. New Zealand based business Customer Services Audit are promoting their new Snapshotz software that is specifically design for contact centres.How do you benchmark your Contact Centre and/or perform a full audit on all areas? From my perspective, I had barriers that were time, effort and price. Enter Snapshotz, what can it do? Does this software cover all areas of...

Categories: Benchmarking | Profile | Technology | Vendors

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Speech Recognition-Don't make me talk to the automated person...

Posted Thu 20 November 2008 @ 1:22 p.m. by Megan

I was out to dinner with small but successful business the other night and the conversation got on to contact centre’s that have speech recognition as part of their service option when calling. And the most disappointing thing was that there were no ‘happy’ service stories with the technology during the evening. One story was of a genuine cough during the call and the next thing this person was transferred to another area as it ‘recognisied’ a cough as a word. I know this is might be an extreme...

Categories: Benchmarking | Leadership | Lifestyle | Technology

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Learnings from the ICMI Conference

Posted Mon 22 September 2008 @ 3:58 p.m. by Sarah

On her way back from Phoenix, TUANZ Key Relationships Manager Bernice Archer has found time to reflect on the ICMI Annual Call Center Exhibition and Knowledge Exchange Conference. Here are her findings: The ICMI Annual Call Center Exhibition and Knowledge Exchange Conference was held over a few days in Phoenix Arizona last week. I was fortunate enough to attend and witness some very informative sessions. The theme throughout the conference leaned towards work relationships, and...

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Hyperconnectivity, and Gen Y

Posted Mon 28 July 2008 @ 1:15 p.m. by Ernie

Hyperconnectivity! Its a wonderful word and sums up beautifully the presentation being given at the TUANZ Contact Centre lunches this week.In one of the most thought provoking and engaging presentations for some time, Darren Leffler of Nortel in Australia told the audience at our bulging Christchurch venue today about the impact of Web 2.0 on the contact centre. The new way Generation Y customer interact in Web 2.0 is a historic inflexion point, he said.Leffler - a Gen X who got an iPod for his 40th...

Categories: Events | International | Technology | Vendors

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Do not call list - United Future wants legislation

Posted Wed 16 July 2008 @ 4:54 a.m. by Ernie

As the election approaches and parties look around for differentiating issues, United Future has called for outbound telemarketing to be legislated through a national "do not call" list. This is despite the voluntary list that has been run for several years now by the Marketing Association.While there is no doubt telemarketers can sometimes be persistent and annoying, the issue in New Zealand has reached nothing like the scale of countries such as the USA where some consumers had reported receiving...

Categories: International | Lifestyle | Technology

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TUANZ lifting the bar on contact centre activities for 2008/2009

Posted Wed 9 July 2008 @ 4:57 p.m. by Ernie

Bernice Archer, TUANZ Key Relationships Manager, reports as follows: “Following a decision in May by the TUANZ Board to allocate more resources to serving the needs of contact centres, A dynamic and buzzing TUANZ Contact Centre Committee convened a few days ago for a Strategic Planning Session for 2008 through to 2010. Committee Chair Megan Lacy (Livestock Improvement Corp), committee members Anne Withington (TelstraClear), Paul Eastwood (Coca Cola Amatil), Giles Potter (Great Outcomes),...

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We're all in sales now

Posted Mon 23 June 2008 @ 5:26 p.m. by Sarah

I’m on the plane returning from a jam-packed Contact Centre Lunch in Christchurch. Any three of the speakers chosen by host Nick Egerton from UCMS could have held the room for 40 minutes, but together under the title ‘The Importance of Customer Interaction’ they presented a comprehensive session on this broad topic.Chris Price from Permission (specialists in online marketing) talked about how to turn website leads into paying customers. That is, the casual user who is looking for a product or service...

Categories: Events | Recruitment and HR | Technology | Vendors

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Monitoring agents on the web – but where’s the trust?

Posted Tue 17 June 2008 @ 10:52 a.m. by Sarah

Staff abusing their web privileges and wasting time on sites like Trademe and Facebook is a problem that plagues many contact centres. There is plenty of software out there that will monitor individual workstations, and I often get press releases emailed to me from companies advertising their solutions. But the one I received today for a product called Spector 360, gave me pause. Here’s their advertising pitch: With Spector 360 you will find out: Which agents are off-task instead of doing their...

Categories: Leadership | Recruitment and HR | Technology | Vendors

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Speech analytics – is this the next big thing?

Posted Thu 5 June 2008 @ 8:39 a.m. by Sarah

It appears the tech boffins are at it again – they’ve come up with a software tool that will electronically analyse what customers say, text and blog about a company. According to an article in this month’s CIO magazine, text analytics technology is able to group and categorize customer comments and then electronically produce an easy-to-read report that will pin point for senior management exactly where customer dissatisfaction lies. The article features a case study about a hotel chain in America....

Categories: International | Technology

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Clarity, Specificity, Brevity, Power of the pause – Conference 08

Posted Thu 1 May 2008 @ 9:57 a.m. by Sarah

As a delegate, the success of a conference can be measured by the number of tools that you take back to your workplace the next day. So it was rather good of keynote Kare Anderson to provide so many 'take-home' in the first session on day one of the TUANZ Contact Centre Conference 2008. Her insights into how we communicate and how those at the coalface of customer service can ensure they make a good – and lasting – impression, were extremely valuable According to Kare, there are four ways to can...

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Hanging out with the Manawatu Contact Centre Cluster

Posted Wed 19 March 2008 @ 9:07 p.m. by Sarah

The Manawatu Contact Centre Cluster held their first meeting of the year today and I was lucky enough to be invited to make a presentation to the group. About 30 managers and team leaders were present from 9 centres around the Manawatu and lower North Island. It’s such a vibrant area for contact centres and I was left wondering how much of this is down to the fact that those who work in the region are committed to getting together on a semi-regular basis (about four times a year) and sharing...

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E-govt – 6 days to answer an email!

Posted Mon 18 February 2008 @ 2:32 p.m. by Sarah

I've just received a press release from Otago University about research conducted by Associate Professor Robin Gauld from the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine. Apparently his team of researchers has been studying e-government responsiveness – a flash way of saying that they’ve worked out how long it takes to get a reply from a government agency when you send them an email. Professor Gauld says the team emailed 273 government agencies in New Zealand Australia. The message asked...

Categories: Benchmarking | Technology

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Judges tips for 2008 TUANZ Contact Centre Awards

Posted Fri 15 February 2008 @ 6:49 a.m. by Sarah

Entries for the TUANZ Contact Centre Awards are now open and can be accessed on our website. This year, the entry criteria has been completely revamped by a panel of three of our most experienced judges* in order to ensure they reflect best practice in the contact centre profession in 2008. Filling out the online entry forms is the first, very crucial stage. If you can effectively express your achievements in writing, you will make it into the second round. Once you are in the finals, the...

Categories: Benchmarking | Events | Leadership | Recruitment and HR | Technology

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Conference programme at the printer

Posted Wed 13 February 2008 @ 9:30 p.m. by Sarah

Well the TUANZ Contact Centre Conference and Awards 2008 Programme is off to the printers and it's 8 pages long. No wonder I haven’t had any time to write Mouthpiece blogs! It feels like a novel (with plenty of interesting characters I assure you!). TUANZ members should receive the programme in the mail early next week. You all know about our keynote – Kare Anderson – and the theme is Leadership and we’ll be having site visits and well, I think that’s all I’m willing to divulge. Today at any rate....

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How much should you pay for 'On Hold' music?

Posted Fri 1 February 2008 @ 8:18 a.m. by Sarah

We've had an enquiry from a large contact centre wanting to know what fees they should pay for playing music on their PABX systems to customers when they are on hold. They had thought they were coverd by purchasing an annual license to APRA via the organisation On Hold Marketing. Now another organisation - Phonographic Performances NZ - has approached the contact centre and demanded they too are paid a fee or they'll take legal action. Is this a problem facing...

Categories: Technology | Vendors

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Ma'as Salaama 2007

Posted Fri 21 December 2007 @ 9:19 a.m. by Sarah

For those of you wondering, Ma’as Salaama means goodbye in the version of Arabic spoken in Egypt. Or at least according to the website I just Googled it does. I thought it would be an appropriate way to sign off on the Mouthpiece blog for 2007 because the post about Vodafone outsourcing the pre-pay section of its contact centre to Egypt was one of the top five blogs for 2007.The metric I’ve chosen to assess blog popularity is the number of comments the post received. Scanning through all 106 posts...

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CSRs working from home – whatever happened to that idea?

Posted Fri 19 October 2007 @ 9:15 a.m. by Sarah

Stay-at-home agents have become a kind of holy grail in the contact centre sector. The idea that CSRs can be scattered around the country, taking and making phone calls via sophisticated VoIP connections that ensure they meet their KPIs is just, well, not happening. We all know what the benefits of a remote agent are – lifestyle gains for the employee, a committed and plentiful staff for the employer, and less traffic commuting on clogged motorways will benefit the environment (just think...

Categories: International | Recruitment and HR | Technology

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