I believe that blur that flashed before me a couple of days ago was the year 2007. Although my father has often told me that time goes by faster the older you get, I honestly can't remember a year going by faster in my life than this last one.
In the contact center industry, 2007 wasn't really much of a year to remember. Industry consolidation continued at an unprecedented pace as familiar industry names such as Witness Systems were swallowed up and morphed into names reflective of the new parent company (Verint Witness Actionable Systems). Even the little guys -- like the traditional start-up company -- were acquired by bigger companies before they got a chance to spread their wings. Case in point: Latigent LLC, which was basically a couple of guys working out of a garage in Chicago who came up with a brilliant performance management/business intelligence platform for the contact center. Both company founders came from the contact center industry and had pretty good ideas regarding what they thought the industry really wanted and needed. Before they could get their party started, they were acquired by Cisco. Lots of industry names, both familiar and unfamiliar, disappeared in 2007.
One of the biggest disappointments of the year, from my perspective, was the disappearance of Call Center magazine. I first began writing a column in an industry magazine back in 1993 when I wrote for Voice Processing magazine. Like Call Center, Voice Processing was driven by editorial content rather than by advertising dollars spent. Voice Processing eventually morphed into Enterprise Communications, which was a magazine that was way ahead of its time. Published in 1995, it only survived a few issues. If it were published today, it would be right on the money.
Anyway, I wrote a column in Call Center for the past two years and was proud of my association with that magazine. Call Center championed the customer service industry and provided an objective and reputable voice for those in the customer care business. I suppose it was that commitment to integrity that ultimately proved to be the magazine's downfall. Over the past few years, most of the companies that traditionally advertised in contact center trade magazines and supported trade shows began withdrawing their commitment to these traditional marketing channels. As the advertising dollars dried up, the magazine began getting smaller and had to operate on a steadily shrinking budget. Some other contact center trade magazines turned to a strategy of trading editorial pages for advertising dollars in order to stay afloat, but Call Center stuck with its commitment to objective trade journalism. Unfortunately the advertising spending trend continued downward in 2007 and with its July issue, Call Center magazine ceased publication. I for one will miss that monthly journal.
I'm told by many vendors that they spent their 2007 advertising dollars on the web, but I can't see where. I remember a few years ago many websites were filled with useful information and companies seemed to be very forthright in their desire to provide web surfers the data they desired. Today most of the contact center vendor websites I visit contain only very high level information and a form to fill in so a sales rep can contact me if I want more information. Maybe advertising dollars are being spent on those annoying banner ads that seem to pop up everywhere on the web.
There were no significant technology innovations or breakthroughs in 2007 although I did notice an increase in the number of products out there that I can only describe as "gimmicks." I have reviewed or have been briefed on a few of these products and they usually left me with the feeling that someone figured out a way to make something and now they are trying to figure out how to sell it. In other words, there are quite a few products out there that, as far as I can see, are not based upon any sort of demand from the contact center industry.
That leads me to wonder if 2008 will be a throwback to the old computer-telephony integration (CTI) days of the mid-1990s where engineers built lots of cool applications that had virtually no place in the communications industry, but they built them anyway because they could. Lots of people looked at those applications and agreed on the cool factor but didn't open the corporate wallet. I think this will be the topic of a future essay in the NACC newsletter.
Overall, 2007 was a year that was rung out with a shrug of the shoulders. I won't miss it. I am optimistic that 2008 will be a little more exciting and I'm already hearing about new applications developments for 2008 that sound pretty interesting. I'm ready to ring in the new and I hope the contact center industry is too.
