An inbound, outbound and blended call center solution, NextContact delivers PBX, VoIP, automatic call distribution (ACD), fax on demand, e-mail and predictive dialing in single-source solution.

NextContact software works with NextWest PCXi to provide fully-integrated convergence that combines analog, digital, wireless and IP capabilities into a single platform. As a result, contact centers have a choice of deploying traditional, IP telephony or combination of both to handle customer contacts through voice calls, voice mail, email, web integration, collaboration and fax.

“Our single source solution delivers a comprehensive list of features unavailable from other contact center vendors,” said Matt Morales, NextWest COO. “Because we provide so many features in a single system, we reduce complex multi-vendor integration and enable distributed traditional or VoIP call centers. NextWest makes it possible for our customers to enhance performance, reduce costs and speed up implementation time.”

One of most significant enhancements is VoIP phone integration which, combined with an agent console, allows agents to work from home or anywhere in world. Additionally, automatic number identification (ANI) is now configurable by trunk so that call centers can simultaneously promote multiple company products or services easily and economically.

Manually importing phone lists for predictive dialer is now a thing of past. Phone lists can now be dragged and dropped directly into a folder for ease of implementation.

By Deryck Richards

Managing Partner

DESKTRONIX

desktronix.com

Text messaging is a quick way to stay in touch with people for personal or business purposes. With text messaging, you can chat with a partner by typing on keyboard and reading what they write to you on screen. Many text messaging products can work with cell phone text messaging (aka SMS or Short Messaging Service) so you can chat with people who aren’t in front of their computer. So, why not just pick up phone and talk?

It’s faster than e-mail and phone calls. And you don’t have to pay anything to text. If you need to chat with someone briefly or ask a quick question, it’s much less intrusive than calling someone. As with most developing technologies, several types of text messaging are available and each one is incompatible with others. But don’t let that keep you from trying it out. The main text messaging products are ICQ (www.icq.com), MSN Messenger (www.msn.com), AIM (www.aim.com), and Yahoo Messenger (www.yahoo.com).

btw (By Way...)

Each one is free and simple to download, install, and sign up. You can locate your “buddies” by searching in an online directory by their screen name, e-mail address, name, or telephone number. Once you get hang of it, text messaging can be extremely addictive. As you continue to use text messaging, you will find yourself learning to abbreviate words and sentences. When you leave an online chat, you might say BRB (Be Right Back), I’m afk (away from keyboard), or TTYL (Talk to You Later). See glossary below.