Connections Magazine June 2011 issue features a Vendor Spotlight on AMTELCO. Celebrating its 35th Anniversary, AMTELCO offers More Choices, More Flexibility which equals More Revenue for call centers!

1. JUNE 2011
VOLUME 19, NUMBER 5
PLUS…
CHALLENGES WITH SPEECH ANALYTICS • MAKE SENSE OF
“SLANGUAGE” • WHAT ARE YOUR PROSPECT’S THREE FEARS?

2. More Revenue-Producing Op
More Revenue-Producing Opportunities
Opportunities
from AMTELCO!
from AMTELCO!
See What’s New at the ATSI Conference in San Antonio, TX, June 14-17, 2011
See What’s New at the ATSI Conference in San Antonio, TX, June 14-17, 2011
Cloud-Based Applications
Work with ANY Platform!
Your Vendor of Choices including: FREE AMTELCO University–at ATSI
APPLICATIONS THAT WORK
WITH ANY PLATFORM

3. Vendor Spotlight: Amtelco
More Choices = More Flexibility + More Revenue
By Tom Curtin coming years, especially as an element of the consolidation
that is taking place in the call center industry. Virtual call
T
he only constant in life and in business is change. We centers are more flexible than traditional call centers, which
are continually being pushed by clients to offer more are constrained by their location, floor space, and physical
choices for enhanced services to meet their unique agent positions.
business objectives. Clients don’t care about the technology Virtual call centers will utilize colocated call center
utilized to run our call centers as long as they feel we’ll be solutions and remote agents. Use of a colocated call center
there when they need us. They’re focused more on the services solution frees the call center from the physical constraints and
we provide for them. That’s where each call center has the overhead costs of a building, equipment room, and backup
opportunity to distinguish itself from the competition. power devices. The use of remote agents eliminates physical
There are so many choices that sometimes it’s hard to floor space requirements, heating and cooling, break rooms,
choose one direction in which your business can grow, reduce and agent computers. More importantly, employing remote
expenses, or add revenue. Amtelco has product categories to agents allows much more flexible hour-by-hour staffing,
make it easier to talk about and determine which solutions greatly minimizing the biggest nonessential expense a call
make sense for your call center. center faces, the overhead of idle labor.
For call centers that are happy with their on-site solutions,
there are still lots of ways that advances in technology can Cloud-Based Applications
improve the reliability of your operation and potentially Amtelco cloud-based applications can
increase your revenue. be used on any system with screen pop
capability. Choosing applications that use
Choose a Category and Grow at cloud computing yields benefits such as
http://callcenter.amtelco.com/features reducing run and response times, as well as
minimizing the purchase and deployment of physical
System & Switching infrastructure. Cloud-based applications offer energy
Amtelco’s Infinity Intelligent Series efficiency, flexibility, simplified systems administration,
continues to add revenue-producing features consumption-based pricing, and most of all, they limit the
and services for businesses to easily accommodate footprint of the data center. Additionally, subscription/rental
their clients’ evolving needs. At the same time, programs allow call centers to increase monthly revenue by
the Intelligent Series provides “six nines” reselling cloud-based applications.
uptime that enables you and your sales staff to meet your One such option is miSecureMessages, a secure,
business growth goals. cloud-based messaging and notification application that sends
Amtelco developed the Intelligent Soft Agent to interface encrypted messages to BlackBerry®, iPhone®, iPad™, and
with software-based switching systems, and it has been in the Android™ mobile devices. With the continually increasing
field for more than two years. Amtelco’s Soft Agent also number of mobile devices, miSecureMessages uses the
interfaces with switches provided by Asterisk, Cisco, Avaya, convenience of mobile technology, eliminates pager expenses,
Mitel, NEC, Nortel, and Siemens. and adds security to keep information safe. For healthcare
There are many positive features to soft switching, and organizations, securing patient information is required by
there are many clear benefits to your ongoing business. HIPAA and HITECH regulations.
Amtelco’s Soft Agent is switch-independent and utilizes the Another application is miOnCall, a powerful, flexible,
same Intelligent Series family of applications such as IS and secure cloud-based on-call scheduling application that is
scripting, IS OnCall, IS Web, IS appointment taking, and IS used to assign and view schedule coverage, dispatch
contact-based architecture. This switch-independent trend messages, schedule contacts, and manage and extend on-call
gives call center owners much more flexibility in selecting schedule information to physicians and staff via Web access.
switching platforms and opens up the opportunity to connect Third is miAppointments, another cloud-based application
directly to client PBXs and ACDs. that provides mobile and Web access to schedules and
Virtual call centers will become more prevalent in the appointments. Call center clients can connect to the schedule
12 • JUNE 2011 www.connectionsmagazine.com • Connections Magazine

4. using miAppointments to see and set their schedules. scripting engines.
Additionally, appointments can be forwarded to the clients’ Scripting shifts the burden of making decisions away
personal calendar applications. Call centers can also add new from frontline agents and puts it in the hands of supervisors
revenue by reselling miAppointments subscriptions to their and managers who can work with clients to determine and
clients. agree on the optimum call flow. The role of scripting will
continue to expand, and it will grow to include scripting of
Business Continuity the dispatch process and Web-connectivity to client systems.
Business continuity has become a major Amtelco’s Intelligent Series (IS) Web scripting provides
focus of the call center industry across all call centers with a one-click method to provide Web-based
vertical markets, and this trend will continue. demonstrations of new scripts for clients; it also can be used
Business continuity solutions may be put in to provide clients’ customers with script-driven data
place by call centers within their infrastructure collection applications using only a Web browser.
to provide redundancy of essential call center components.
Solutions also may be implemented by partnering with a Web-Enabled & Mobile
vendor on hosted disaster recovery solutions. Call centers can offer clients access to their
A recent example of the power of partnering with a call services without agent involvement through the
center vendor for disaster recovery is the situation that Internet or an intranet. Web applications are
occurred at a Chicago-area call center that lost all telephone available for on-call scheduling, appointment
connectivity for several days when a major cable was cut by a taking, reports, messages, directory information,
construction crew. The call center worked with its phone and contact information using Amtelco’s Intelligent Series
carrier to quickly redirect calls to Amtelco’s emergency Web features.
backup system in McFarland, Wisconsin. This kept the call Call center clients can connect to the call centers’
center in business during a situation that lasted for days and schedules using the IS mobile/Web applications to see and set
would have otherwise been catastrophic. Every call center their schedules.
should be making such business continuity plans. Change is inevitable and not to be feared. It’s one of the
exciting things about the call center industry. We are
Messaging & Scripting constantly forced to reshape our businesses to meet
Call centers have always guided agents ever-changing client demands. I guess that’s why we like
through call flows. In the past, this was done what we do so much. ¤
by reading instructions and having agents to
make on-the-fly decisions. The new model
for call flow guidance uses sophisticated
Tom Curtin is the president
of Amtelco and son of the
founder, William Curtin. For
more growth opportunity cate-
gories to choose from, go to
http://callcenter.amtelco.com/
features.
This year Amtelco is celebrating its 35-year tradition of excellence
and call center innovation. Amtelco’s three major divisions,
TAS call center, 1Call healthcare, and XDS digital switching, form
a winning combination, backed by an esteemed service and
support department.
Connections Magazine • www.connectionsmagazine.com JUNE 2011 • 13