The face of the Call Center business is changing!

Conservative consumers, shifting economic conditions and increasingly competitive business conditions are making it easier than ever to get new customers. These factors are also making it harder than ever to keep your customers. Customer loyalty isn't something easily given, it is something that is earned. The fight for customer loyalty is nothing new to contact center professionals, but the changing face of the contact center industry is. Database integration with predictive dialer systems has been designed for the next generation of contact centers and the new breed of contact center professional. Database technologies and evolving team management strategies will lead the industry into the next phase of contact center growth. The driving force behind these changes is FTC Legislation also an expansion/revision in basic call center objectives. Measures of success in call center operations have changed dramatically in the last decade. While once only call completions or number of orders were the primary measure, depending on the call center function, customer centric measures are now the focus Predictive dialing is changing almost as fast as traditional dialers bring screen pops to an agent's desktop. The US market, which is the leader in terms of installed systems, is in a period of transition. Predictive Dialing started off as a way to attract new customers and to sell new ideas, but that model does not fit well in today's marketplace. Instead, companies are implementing database enabled predictive dialers in innovative ways, calling airline consumers if their flights are late, alerting utility customers to power shortages, reminding drivers to get their annual checkup, and even notifying retail customers when a package will be shipped late. Does that mean that consumers can say goodbye to someone asking for "the man or woman of the house," or having someone stumble with a long last name? Probably not, but there will be a drastic change over the next five years in which predictive dialers will migrate from being used for primarily outbound sales activity to being used for proactive outbound/inbound blending, IVR and more in the customer service arena. Companies without call centers, though, will be at a distinct disadvantage if their competitors have them. Database call center technology is made for dealing with a customer