Business Technology Roundtable

There's a touchy little secret about call centers: their employee turnover is atrocious; it can reach as high as 26 percent per year, according to one expert's estimates . As a result, companies strive to ease the stress of their customer service agents. Continental Airlines , the fourth largest airline in the U.S. with $14 billion in revenues, realized that by deploying VoIP technology with personal computers, it could route reservations calls to agents' homes. This not only reduced the need for call center real estate, but it also gives reservations agents the ability to both telecommute and time-shift their work. Today, almost 1,100 agents work at home. Turning To Videoconferencing Technology Unfortunately, even good ideas sometimes have bad side effects. Continental found that they could easily keep employees up-to-date on staff issues with regular teleconferences. But for training and evaluations -- activities that required visual interaction -- agents still had to get...

Conventional wisdom says TelePresence -- the next-generation video conferencing technology -- is best positioned for enterprise customers with big IT budgets. But through affordable managed services, small businesses are poised to join the TelePresence party. Fact is, TelePresence can benefit small businesses in many ways. It can allow entrepreneurs to meet virtually with business partners, customers, investors and even job candidates scattered across the globe -- without booking expensive business trips or depending on impersonal conference calls. TelePresence creates a virtual environment where all participants feel as if they're seated in a single executive conference room. You can read each person's body language. You can maintain eye contact. And you can focus on deep discussions. Only for Big Enterprises? Now, for the challenge: The TelePresence industry is gaining momentum within large enterprises that want to improve virtual communications with customers, board members...