By Deryck Richards Managing Partner DESKTRONIX desktronix.com (562) 694-2853

More Than Just a Phone

Selecting a cell phone is no longer just about mobile communication – it is now a lifestyle choice. If you don’t select phone that fits your personality, you won’t be happy with it. New cell phones are beginning to have little in common with earlier cell phones. The new models feature color screens, digital cameras, high-speed internet connections, multimedia games, and music playback. In case you were wondering, you can also use them to make phone calls. It’s only a matter of time before everyone has these features on their cell phones.

Text messaging or “texting” is now available standard on most cell phones. It is similar to instant messaging except that messages are sent and received by cell phones instead of computers. Multimedia messaging allows you to send audio, video, and pictures as an attachment to a text message. Multimedia messaging was once seen as entertainment, but is rapidly becoming valuable to business world. Real estate agents take photos of houses with their cell phones and employment agencies may use camera phones to photograph job applicants – all away from their office.

Dial In On Options

Cellular providers in United States use either GSM or CDMA technology. When you buy a cell phone, it is tied to either GSM or CDMA cellular network, but can't be converted from one to other. If you ever switch cellular providers, you may also need to switch phones. Most cellular providers now have high-speed data networks. These data networks work with high-end cell phones and special network cards you can purchase for laptops. Data networks usually transmit data slightly faster than a dialup internet connection. These networks are still being developed and are yet to be available everywhere. Look for higher speed networks to be much more common by 2006.

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.