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Summary: I was very impressed
Review: I have been in the call center world for a long time, and have seen the fads and the buzzwords and the technology come and go. The authors did a great job in covering the technology necessary to run an effective call center and get the most from your investment.I was particularly impressed how they wove the technology story within the context of the business need. Obviously in an economy where capital dollars are tight, they concentrated on the business need first, and then described the various technologies that could meet that business need. For someone considering an investment, this is a great reference book to have.
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Summary: Essential book for Contact Center leaders!
Review: I have what I feel is a pretty extensive contact center reference library that I have accumulated over the past 15 years, ranging from call center design, CRM, CTI, speech recognition, benchmarking, telecom, etc. By far, the Call Center Technology Demystified book is THE book that I find myself referring to most often. Besides the holistic view of the contact center technologies, I have found the sections on Building a Customer Contact Technology Strategy and Information and Applications Bring CRM Strategies to Life sections to be valuable every day, every project. Great diagrams and charts add tremendous value to the clear and concise writing. This is also a book that will stand the test of time; the principles surrounding business drivers and the realistic expectations regarding CRM will provide value to contact center strategists for many years.
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Summary: Finally! A Call Center Reference book for the rest of us!
Review: In short, this book delivers what the title promises. Once read, this book now occupies an easy to reach spot in my office. I recommend this book for anyone that manages agents or technology in a call center or that markets to the industry. Thank you to the authors for demystifying call center technology in a consise and fun format.
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Summary: Great Guidelines for CAll Centers
Review: It's interesting that as I am pursuing new business I constantly have to explain concepts that I just take for granted everyone knows. After going back to this book three times in one week, first to get a better explanation of VOIP, and then ODBC, and just plain old legacy systems, its clear that this is an "encyclopedia" that every call center professional should use.
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Summary: A true stand-out among many books on the subject!
Review: Like a compass on a stormy sea,this book navigates both technology experts and non-technical novices through the often complex, murky call center technology waters.
As a consultant with over 16 years of call center experience and more technology books on my shelves than I can count, Call Center Technology Demystified is one that I will reference again and again. Alone who wants to know more about the subject, from someone looking for the big picture, to those wanting the in-depth details will find this an engaging,informative read. The book is sprinkled with humor and chockful of realistic examples, charts and tables that alone make it well worth the investment! (of time and money)
The real differentiator though, is the approach the authors take to the role of technology. Both effectively drive the point home that an integrated approach to strategy, one that identifies key business drivers and then the necessary people, processes AND enabling technologies to achieve the organization's objectives is what is critical for success. All throughout the book, the authors continually link back to this message and urge the reader to make sure the technology "fits with the overall business strategy." Most importantly though, they tell you HOW and WHAT you can to do make sure this happens...this is the true measure of a book worth reading.
I have recommended this book to several colleagues, call center managers, technology specialists and senior executives who are trying to understand the role technology plays in their "Customer Relationship Management" strategies. Thank you for this great resource!
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Summary: Technology Demystified and Explained
Review: One of the best call center books on the market, Call Center Technology Demystified gives a practical explanation of call center technologies in language a non-techie person can understand. We have found it valuable in our call center in helping our management team understand what to purchase and how to get the most out of their technology investment. Good work!
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Summary: Knowledge Management (and Sharing) for the Call Center Set
Review: Perhaps it is the human dimension of contact centers that make them so difficult to understand. Contact / Call centers are one of the few corporate functions where technology has been truly and deeply integrated with the workers. This places the proper operation of the environments firmly in two camps - operational managers and technologists. Few of these managers have had the opportunity to spend the time and attention to become expert in both. The specific and granular details of the integration of people and technology in these environments has not been comprehensively recorded until now. Call Center Technology Demystified captures many of the best practices for technology planning and implementation in call center environments. The discussion is properly deep to allow readers the ability to move beyond buzz words and on to concept understanding. Powerfully illustrated with functional and technical views, this book is a invaluable for visual learners. Comprehensive descriptions of the multiple data reporting sources, detailed CTI call flow, and self service technology interactions are specific examples of work that would take business analysts weeks to create. Call Center Technology Demystified will prove to be a powerful tool to increase the relavent pool of business professionals who understand the technology and operations of complex contact center environments. I recommend it as one of the fastest ways to attain a grip on the many layers of technology that have developed in contact centers and how to leverage this technology forward.
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Summary: A great reference and an excellent guide
Review: The topics of "Call Centers" and "CRM" are becoming each day more popular, as businesses evolve and become faced with the challenge of "growing and adapting" (in order gain competitiveness and excel in the modern economy), but still keeping its relationships and interactions with its customers unique and valuable, increasing loyalty and driving profitability. Ranging / starting from the CEO/CFO/CxO who has to strategically comprehend and support its operations, to the Marketing Executive who will have to define and manage the "branded experience" of its customers with the business through it, to the IT Manager who will be responsible of integrating this new technology to their existing infrastructure, to the Call Center Manager who will deal with it's daily performance evaluations and fine tuning - in essence, the area of Call Centers involves a lot of people and can potentially touch almost every single area of the business, directly or indirectly. "Call Center Technology Demystified" does a very nice job in providing clarity about the foundation and the key elements of a Call Center, addressing both the business and the technology sides of the equation. Based on the authors' vast experience in this arena, the book is enriched by real-life examples and applications, as well as illustrated by meaningful facts and compelling statistics, making the reading experience very pleasant. Because of the way the chapters are divided, starting with the fundamentals and drilling down to specific subjects (like Self-Service and Web / Multimedia), passing through implementation considerations and futures, "Call Center Technology Demystified" can serve as an excellent educational source if you are trying to get yourself familiar with these concepts (and get to know "enough to be dangerous"), or if you are a call center professional or work in the area, as a nice knowledge refresher that will help in maintaining yourself informed and updated about this ever-evolving / ever-changing area. In other words, a great reference, an excellent guide, a must-have in my opinion. Congratulations to both authors for the great book!
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Summary: You won't need caffeine to read through this one!
Review: There are many books on the subject of Call Centers...many of which are difficult to read without injesting alot of caffeine or putting toothpicks in your eyes to stay awake through it...This book is easy to digest, is splashed with humor, and flows along nicely. It helps the non-technical understand technical issues and applications, and the business minded individuals to appreciate how technology can improve the way they do business. Definitely worth the time to read!
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Summary: A Must Own Call Center Treatise
Review: This book is strongly recommended for those who wish to avail themselves of a comprehensive written multi-media contact center primer featuring the latest in applied technology in realistic every day easy-to-relate-to settings. The informative, consultative manner in which this is written should resonate well with any reader with a general business and/or technical background. It is clear that the consultants that wrote this have "lived thru these topics", actually "get it" and love their work. As a consulative engineer for a well-known global leader in call center manufacturing and software and a former technical manager for a major travel and entertainment corporation, I find myself putting this book at the very top of my recommended reading list. Since I've read this in early July, I've been consistently recommending this book to my customer contacts (C-Club and below) and industry peers because of its open and honest review of varied technology solutions to today's pressing call center issues. This book should be required reading in any academic course on CRM. It's clear they realize that CRM is managing customers' total relationship through the integration of technology, process and people. At roughly 370 pages, it manages to recap in 11 chapters encompassing the areas of "Foundation, Fundamentals, Data/Business Applications, Extending Your Reach, and Where to from Here?" just the right amount of information about a myraid of subjects. I was pleasantly suprised that the book maintaind such focused, yet delicate balance between "too much depth" and "not enough substance." Thanks Lori and Dave for creating this "great investment."
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