CSM is a brand new show organised by CMP (the same people who publish Call Centre Focus and bring us the Call Centre Expo).

Whilst not being specifically a call centre show, it’s relevant to what we do and therefore had a sprinkling of call centre exhibitors. By far the most popular technology on site was CRM, although it’s interesting how CRM seems to be splitting into different directions. On one had we’ve got systems that are really just call centre datacapture screens, and on the other we’ve got some quite aggressive sales workflow packages.

The first thing I noticed upon driving into the car park is that the cost of parking has now risen to £7. I don’t really understand what the NEC think they’re doing to deserve this amount of money for lending us their tarmac, but I suppose I’ll just have to put up with it.

I was too busy chatting to make it to any of the keynote sessions, but the speakers looked interesting.

A few things that caught my attention:
MX Digital
I had a really interesting chat with Paul Moorman about how it’s important to ensure that your hosted service provider cuts the mustard. It’s all too easy for someone to host your call centre system from their back room - and you need to ensure that something as business critical as your call centre is supported with correct voice and data links in a secure, fire protected location on servers that are correctly maintained and patched.

Right now
Rightnow provide an on-demand CRM package (which I plan to discuss in CCF this month). What’s really interesting is that they are bundled with a speech service. This means that the CRM is in a position to provide complex voice self-service from information captured by the CRM system.

Talisma
Talisma are placing their CRM as a multi-channel solution, providing a level of workflow management for enquiries into the contact centre. I expect that they’ll look to bundle this with an ACD in the near future to provide a complete out of the box call centre system. When I mention this to the guy on the stand he said that there were no plans at the moment, but did hint that Talisma were owned by the same VC group as Concerto. Could be one to watch.

DPS direct mail
Have some software which, although starting out as a data processing tool, is starting to look little like CRM. This allows data from many sources to trigger a customer contact through any channel (Such as inbound mail resulting in a record ending up in an outbound call queue). I look forward to learning more about this in the future.

Reach2Mobile
These guys have just started selling text message marketing software. Unlike most systems till now, these send messages directly from a GSM modem (rather than over the ‘net to a gateway). Purchasing pre-paid SIMs is a great way to get cheap texts, and the software is well put together. It’s targeted towards getting mobile numbers to opt-in for marketing and could find some great uses soon.

I believe this holds potential for a “call me” text from mobile although the MD told me that they’ve no immediate plans to do this.

ContactCentreWorld
Were there in full force - and kept hassling me everytime I walked past the stand. Frankly, it’s as annoying as when I have to remove spam messages from the forum about how we should visit their website.

Next stop, Call Centre Expo.

Regards,
db