• Recent Co-Sponsors

The Focus Group are proud to have the support of the following recent co-sponsors. Click on the company name for more information.

BT

  • http://www.bt.com  •  Co-Sponsor

 Drawing on BTs in-depth experience as a global practitioner and our expertise as a leading supplier, we can deliver Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions that enable you to focus cost effectively on activities that add value.

If you want to improve a single area of customer management, or embrace opportunities offered by the latest cloud-based services, or mitigate potential exposure to the unexpected, we have the business understanding, the portfolio range, the partners and the deployment expertise to accompany you on your journey to making your contact centre more efficient.

Wherever you are on your journey, we can take you to where you want to be, at your own pace. Our proven capacity for systems integration means we can work with your existing contact centre investment. And the rise in cloud services allows us to offer innovative features such as payment and business continuity options, as well as fully scalable solutions, so you can flex up and down to meet demand – and simply pay as you go.

A key strength of our approach to providing excellence in our customer management solutions lies in our partnerships. We have longstanding relationships with world-leading contact centre technology providers.

We recognise that no one solution fits everyone. Every organisation, of course, has specific needs. So these relationships are vital; they translate into real choice, and give us the freedom to offer the very best solution for you.

Our credentials

Experience – as a practitioner, we run contact centres around the world:

  • We manage over 8 billion minutes on our Global Inbound Network
  • We employ over 13,400 agents
  • We handle 135 million calls per year
  • We handle over 46 million online transactions every year
  • We handle 40 million self-service transactions per year
  • We handle 1 million emails and chats per year
  • We serve 22.6 million lines.

Expertise – as a supplier, we have over 25 years’ experience ofdelivering customer management solutions:

  • We’ve established 4,000 contact centres globally to over 1,000 customers

We provide solutions to:

  • Over 75 per cent of the world’s largest banks
  • 11 out of 20 of the largest airlines
  • 13 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies
  • 8 out of 10 of the world’s largest utility companies
  • We have deployed the world’s largest hosted contact centre– 32,000 seats
  • We operate in 173 countries.

Confirmit

  • www.confirmit.com/  •  Co-Sponsor
Confirmit enables businesses to capture feedback and derive business actions in order to drive change throughout the organization. Confirmit offers the world’s most secure, reliable and scalable solution for Voice of the Customer, Employee Engagement and Market Research programs. By creating multi-channel, multi-lingual feedback and research projects, Confirmit’s clients develop clear insights and take action to increase customer and employee engagement. Businesses that use Confirmit deliver stronger customer experiences, drive positive word of mouth and promote long-term growth. In the last 3 years, over 500 million surveys have been completed on the Confirmit platform, through channels including: Web, telephone, SMS, mobile and paper. The company has more than 270 employees and is headquartered in Oslo, with offices and partners around the world. 

Customers include British Airways, Dow Chemical, Farmers Insurance, GlaxoSmithKline, Halifax Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Ipsos, Nielsen, The NPD Group, Statoil, Symantec, and Wells Fargo. Visit www.confirmit.com for more information.

Customer Innovations

  • http://customerinnovations.wordpress.com/  •  Co-Sponsor

Customer Innovations helps organizations influence the choices that customers make in areas where customer behavior is critical to business success:

 

  • Winning more sales opportunities by influencing customers’ purchase choices
  • Retaining more customers by influencing customers’ loyalty behavior
  • Improving profit by influencing how customers make price – value tradeoffs
  • Increasing revenue by influencing visit frequency and size of purchase
  • Improving customers’ acceptance of changes in pricing, products and services
  • Driving word of mouth by influencing customer advocacy and story telling.

We recognize that it is not possible to influence what customers do without understanding why they behave the way they do. Our proprietary approach, grounded in behavioral science and behavioral economics, helps clarify the complex interaction between what customers think, feel, and ultimately do, allowing you to design products, services, and experiences that resonate with and influence natural behavioral pathways.

We’ve helped companies achieve bottom line improvements of 10-25% in the form of longer term relationships, incremental sales, reduced acquisition costs, positive word of mouth, higher price realization, and improved productivity of customer-facing operations. Most of our work has been with organizations that deal with complex networks of “customers” including agents, distributors, brokers, retailers, and other influencers.

Disney Institute

  • http://disneyinstitute.com  •  Co-Sponsor

Since its founding in 1923, The Walt Disney Company and its affiliated companies have remained faithful to their commitment to produce unparalleled entertainment experiences based on the rich legacy of quality creative content and exceptional storytelling. The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with four business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment and consumer products.

Itracks

  • http://www.itracks.com  •  Co-Sponsor

Itracks is a world-leading provider of online data collection and online marketing services.  We provide online qualitative and quantitative research tools, online marketing research communities, online panels, concept-testing tools and custom development.  Itracks specializes in highly complex multi-country studies and has software available in over 20 languages.  

Our products are designed to help your company make informed decisions and reduce your marketing budget.  Leading market research professionals and Fortune 500 companies recognize Itracks' online applications as the most client-focused, reliable and flexible available.  

Itracks pioneered online qualitative research and has conducted over 10,000 online sessions.

Jacada

  • http://www.jacada.com  •  Co-Sponsor

Jacada (NASDAQ: JCDA) is a software company and leading provider of next-generation contact centre productivity solutions that help customers rapidly simplify and improve high-value business processes without the need for long and expensive system replacement projects. Jacada solutions simplify, automate and optimise work processes across disperate business systems, eliminating inefficiencies and boosting productivity.

The modern customer service representative is tasked with doing more than ever - from handling basic customer service enquiries to performing complex sales transactions. As a result, demand is steadily growing for tools that enable agents to effectively execute increasingly complex tasks. Jacada addresses this demand with Jacada® Workspace and Jacada® Fusion.

The Unified Desktop for Contact Centres

Jacada® WorkSpace is a unified desktop for the call centre that provides an intelligent view of all relevant data and processes required by the agent (CSR) to effectively and efficiently complete a customer interaction. Jacada WorkSpace represents the next generation of contact centre desktops, using state-of-the-art technology to delivery a platform for managing and integrating all tools and applications. Jacada WorkSpace provides sophisticated CTI support and state management facilities for supporting multiple channels of communications. Jacada WorkSpace can deploy as a browser-based ‘thin client’ enabling an organisation to more easily support virtual customer service models, work-at-home agents and outsourcing.

Jacada WorkSpace integrates with your existing systems through the use of open standard APIs and web services, or non-invasively through Jacada Fusion.

Jacada® Fusion is our non-invasive process optimisation platform for simplifying user interactions with existing systems and web service-enabling these systems for use in Service Orientated Architectures, Event Driven Architectures and the delivery of composite applications. Jacada Fusion allows any application – legacy green screen, Windows or web – to be service-enabled. Jacada Fusion helps organisations unify multiple applications into one desktop presentation, improve efficiency and accuracy by eliminating redundant data entry, and streamline business processes.

Jacada eliminates the inefficiency of the desktop maze by providing the agent with an intelligent interface to access the multitude of disparate systems and resources needed to effectively perform his or her job.

The Jacada Unified Service Desktop solution features the following powerful capabilities:

  • An ‘Intelligent’ View – Jacada WorkSpace can dynamically alter the appearance and arrangement of the desktop to adapt to the specific function the agent is performing. Most contact centre agents deal with tens, if not hundreds, of call types. A ‘single’ view of the customer is no longer appropriate. Today’s call centres require an intelligent view of data and processes to most effectively and efficiently interact with customers. A dynamic, intelligent desktop is enabling organisations to achieve that elusive Universal Agent model.
  • Dynamic Interaction Flows – A powerful and easy-to-use interaction management tool enables business analysts to design, modify and deploy intelligent interaction flows to guide the agent through the unique aspects of any call type. The interaction model chosen can be driven by a selection made in the IVR, the role or skill level of the agent, or by actions taken by the agent during the call.
  • Single Sign-On – Jacada WorkSpace eliminates redundant log-in activity by enabling agents. Jacada WorkSpace can automate the launching and sign-on to all required applications through a single ID and password.
  • Desktop Automation – Jacada WorkSpace can automate redundant or time consuming tasks at the desktop to speed processing time and free the agent to focus on the customer and not time consuming navigational tasks. This feature can open and display applications when and where they are needed, automate redundant data entry, and even ‘watch’ what the agent is doing, to trigger events or alerts based on agent navigation or data input.
  • Web Service Automation – Using Jacada Fusion, any business application can be web service-enabled. This means Jacada WorkSpace can use the data and process logic from the application by invoking open standard web services – hiding the complexity of the application from the agent. It also means that the web service-enabled application can actually be removed from the desktop, providing for a smaller desktop footprint, and providing a path to a completely browser-based, thin client desktop.
  • Application Nesting – Any business application or tool can be ‘nested’ within Jacada WorkSpace in a tab or Viewlet. This provides a single point of access to any and all business applications. And using Desktop Automation, nested applications can be opened and automatically navigated to position the agent to the proper screen or even field - even data entry can be automated.
  • Notifications and Alerts – Fully customisable alerts communicate critical information about customers, up-sell/cross-sell offers, or corporate information, before and during the interaction.
  • SmartPad – The SmartPad eliminates redundant data entry and increases data entry accuracy. With SmartPad, the agent can select information entered in one application to be automatically populated into similar fields in other applications.
  • Context-Sensitive Help and FAQs – Provide agents with easy access to pre-existing help systems, knowledge bases, information portals, frequently asked questions and other reference materials.
  • Soft-Phone Features – Provides agents with call control features such as availability, call transfer, conferencing and call holding from the desktop.
  • CTI Integration – Enables screen-pops of customer information as well as automatic interaction flow and offer selection based on customer ID or inputs.

By significantly reducing call handle times, training costs and error rates, the Jacada Unified Desktop Solution delivers a rapid, easily measured return on investment, with payback typically achieved in months, not years.

Unify, Simplify and Automate… and Deliver the Perfect Interaction.

“By employing the Jacada Fusion solution, Vodafone has cut the time of a successful retention call by more then half, and we completely eliminated our wrap-up process. Vodafone agents are now better informed and we have increased our up-sell opportunities. We are very pleased with the ease of use, rapid delivery time and flexibility of the solution.” - STEVE JOHNSON, Chief Architect, Vodafone UK

KPMG

  • http://www.kpmg.com  •  Co-Sponsor

KPMG is the global network of professional services firms who provide audit, tax and advisory services. KPMG LLP operates from 22 offices across the UK with over 9,000 partners and staff. KPMG recorded a UK turnover of £1.28 billion in the year ended September 2005

Lithium International, Inc

  • http://www.lithium.com  •  Co-Sponsor,Round Table Sponsor
Today's customers are impatient, empowered, and connected. They trust their peers more than they trust you. Lithium helps companies understand their customer's influence, engage their passions, and turn them into superfans – which means they'll contribute to your company's marketing, commerce and customer service.

By focusing on building a social support community with clearly defined business objectives, workflows and metrics, Autodesk is one company that has demonstrated that social media and peer-to-peer support have enabled the company to meet the expectations of their customer base, while reducing support costs and fostering greater interaction with the Autodesk brand. To download your free Gartner case study on Autodesk click here

The world's most innovative companies use Lithium today.

MarketTools

  • www.markettools.com  •  Round Table Sponsor

MarketTools is the leading provider of software and services for Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) and Market Research. MarketTools CustomerSat is a Web-based EFM solution used by the world’s leading businesses to capture, analyze, and act on feedback from customers, employees, and partners. MarketTools helps clients optimize satisfaction and loyalty programs that deliver high-value business impact.
 

People 1st Training Company

  • http://www.people1st training.co.uk  •  Co-Sponsor

Who is the principal contributor of excellent customer service and experience? Smart CRM technology? Or dedicated and highly trained frontline representatives who are the interface between their employer and customers? Undoubtedly both! 

The People 1st Training Company – the training arm of sector skills council for the hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism sector which specialises in training programmes to improve customer service, management and craft skills – champions the importance of providing an exceptional welcome.  All of our programmes are shaped by on-going research into industry needs by People 1st’s research division with input from leading employers.

We have identified and secured the exclusive rights to deliver WorldHost™ - the best customer service programme of its kind worldwide. WorldHost™ was developed by Tourism British Columbia, Canada – a country ranked consistently among the top countries in the world for its visitor ‘welcome’. Canada trained 40,000 volunteers and tourism staff to WorldHost™ standards during the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 as well as almost a million people worldwide.

With WorldHost™, we help businesses across all sectors  - hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism, retail, sports, security, banking and logistics – to raise their game in customer service by training their customer-facing staff on the principles of customer service, how to communicate with those from different cultures as well as people with disabilities. 

For further information on WorldHost™ and other People 1st Training Company training programmes or to enquire about one of our forthcoming WorldHost™ introductory and taster sessions, visit our website or contact us via the details below. Alternatively, please come to our booth during the ECEW Conference.