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A new study shows 72% of small business owners believe economy will improve or stay the same this year. Click through for a podcast of the Eyes on the Future radio show in which Jeff Valentine was a guest. The show focuses on the local entrepreneurial outlook for 2011. The URL is http://shar.es/XPxik
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Hybrid isn’t just for cars anymore.
I’ve been having a pretty typical (for us) discussion with a potential customer, so I thought I’d share some of this as it may apply to others. Here’s a summary of how the conversation went:
Customer: “I believe in the cloud, but I don’t want VoIP in the cloud.”
Me: “Why do you believe in the cloud?”
Customer: “Because I can scale up and down without any capital investment, I don’t have to install or maintain anything, and the upfront cost is much lower.”
Me: “This is a good fit for our hosted deployment. We provide everything to you – including the telecom service – and you just pay monthly.”
Customer: “But what if I don’t want Callfinity to be my phone company?”
Me: “That’s why we also offer HybridHosted. SAAS, not VAAS.”
The offer is pretty compelling, and I’m proud to say that Callfinity literally invented this model and we’re the only company offering it. It goes something like this: the customer puts some of our equipment at their location – just enough to connect their own voice service as SIP trunks or Voice T1 lines/PRIs – but the rest of our solution exists in our cloud. Customers get to BYO telecom service, while Callfinity brings the software applications (the real value) as a service. The customer gets all of the benefits of a hosted model (OpEx, no installs/upgrades, easy management and deployment) with the safety and security of an on-premise system (local PSTN connections, no VoIP over the Internet.)
Is this for everyone? No. But for those customers that aren’t ready for fully-hosted VoIP in the cloud but still want a SAAS-based contact center solution with no CapEx, we’ve got the solution. What do you think? Does our HybridHosted technology solve an important problem for your business?
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Midsize to enterprise customers represent a growth area for the firm, Murphy adds. The health care, retail and financial services market segments look particularly promising and are not as cutthroat as the small-business and residential arenas, he says.
“I would say where we’ve chosen to play, there’s plenty of work to go around,” he says.
Original article provided by Rochester Business Journal.
Sheila Livadas is a Rochester-area freelance writer.
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Reported by: Evan White, 13 WHAM
Rochester, N.Y.–In June, the Empire Zone program ended, paving the way for a new business tax incentive plan known as “Excelsior.” Businesses are trying to figure out what the change wil mean to them.
Leaders have acknowledged that the Empire Zone program, which cost on average $550 million per year, was not living up to the job-creation expectations.
Businesses involved with Empire will still receive tax breaks owed to them, though they will be deferred according to Empire State Development Corporation.
Excelsior will begin with $50 million in funding, roughly 10% of the annual cost of its predecessor.
That number will grow within five years to $250 million, according to ESD. After nine years, ESD says the state’s total investment will be $1.2 billion. Still, some businesses are not happy with the change.
“It’s very unfortunate that there was new legislation to change the program so dramatically that companies looking at the area can no longer take advantage to those benefits,” said Jeff Valentine, President and CEO of Callfinity, a Rochester telecommunications company.
Hammer Packaging President Jim Hammer said the Empire Zone incentives have been critical to the growth of his company.
In the last 6 to 7 years, he estimates that with the help of tax breaks, Hammer Packaging has doubled.
He’s expecting less funding in the future, which, in his eyes, could hurt growth and jobs.
“We have global competition and every cent that we can get to reinvest in the business to reduce costs is important to us,” said Hammer.
President and CEO of Greater Rochester Enterprise, Mark Peterson said the Empire Zone program was confusing and problematic. However, he is hopeful that once fully introduced, the Excelsior Program can boost business and investment statewide.
“I think the proof is always in the pudding, we really need to see the regulations of the new Excelsior program,” said Peterson.
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By Myra Golden
The call record method is, in my opinion, one of the best approaches to coaching agent phone calls and ensuring quality. Here’s a 9-step plan for effectively coaching call center agent phone calls:
1. Randomly record 2 -3 telephone calls. Random recording is important. Do not record 3 calls back to back or on the same day, as your employee may be having a bad day and this may be reflected in all of one afternoon’s calls, but is not necessarily reflective of their typical performance.
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By Myra Golden
In my live complaint resolution seminars, I demonstrate the martial art Aikido and offer it as a strategy for diffusing anger. I began teaching this unconventional approach to managing conflict after having my breath taken away as I watched Steven Segal effortlessly defeat his opponents without violence or aggression in half a dozen of his movies.
Aikido is a nonviolent martial art that never meets force with force and can be applied to conflict situations with demanding, irate or unreasonable customers. (I’ve personally applied Aikido to situations with customers, employees and co-workers.) Using the principles of Aikido, you too can diffuse anger and demonstrate amazing control over all aspects of verbal attacks.
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By Vinti Vaid
Parks Associates, an international research firm predicts that U.S. revenues in consumer-oriented technical support services will approach $5 billion by 2014, with roughly 50 percent of the revenues coming from remote technical support services.
The research firm stated that the development of remote online solutions will complement the growing premium tech support industry by providing improved marketing channels and enhancing automated and live support services.
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Jeff Valentine recently sat down with News 10’s Rebecca LeClair to talk about the Rochester economy, the importance of networking, and employment opportunities in the region. Jeff also gives viewers some tips they can use when searching for employment and trying to schedule interviews. Click here to watch the full interview.
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Callfinity, a rapidly growing telecommunication applications and services provider, announced today its partnership with salesforce.com as an ISV application partner and the private beta release of its salesforce.com application called VirtualCall®. Callfinity’s VirtualCall product is built as a native Force.com application and will be marketed to existing and new salesforce.com customers. Simultaneously, Callfinity is announcing the formation of a new division, vForce®, and the appointment of Jerry Wheaton as Vice President for that division.
[click here to read more…]
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Callfinity is proud to announce that our customer, Accent Marketing Services, won the Best Contact Center and Best Leader for 2009 at the 2010 ContactCenterWorld.com’s Top Performers Conference. The Best Contact Center Award is the most prestigious award at the conference. Accent’s continued drive for excellent performance, however, did not end at the close of 2009. Instead, Accent chose to improve their performance by hiring Callfinity to develop call center software with added functionality. Callfinity is proud to assist companies create value by improving their call centers through our innovative and adaptable software. Please click here for the full article on Accent.
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