News

Soul Machines launches Digital DNA

Pretty soon, more companies will be using digital humans.Soul Machines has been collecting a gene pool to make it easier to create such digital assistants. Click here to read more.   

Most Innovative Agency 2018 is Madison!

We would like to congratulate one of our sponsors, Madison, for recently winning the award for "Most Innovative Agency 2018" at the Sara Awards - The SEEK Annual Recruitment Awards. The awards recognise the work of industry leaders and best practice, as chosen by a panel of expert judges. We are proud to have Madison as a CCiNZ sponsor and industry partner!

How to tell which IoT predictions to pay attention to

Here's a useful article that can assist us when assessing vendors... Click here. 

Microsoft is building an army of AI Partners in NZ

Microsoft has rolled out an educational campaign targeting AI practice. Read more of this article from reseller.co.nz. Click here.

Inside NZQA's Digital Transformation....

Getting culture right, challenging the norm... Digital transformation is the buzz word nowadays and NZQA's Lukasz Zawilski shares how they rise to the challenge. Click here for more.

Apple Dumps Auckland Call Centre

Apple has cancelled its contract with Concentrix, which will affect more than 100 jobs. Read more by clicking here.

Booster tops the table for Kiwisaver customer engagement

The annual FMA Kiwisaver Report 2018 has ranked Booster first for engagement in helping members make a choice in which funds to invest in. Read more of this article published in Scoop Business. Click here.

UFB Connections Surge as Kiwis Go Unlimited

More than half a million homes and businesses now have high-spoeed fibre-optic internet connections, according to Reseller News. Click here to read more. 

Kiwi partners ready to capitalise as HP rolls out device-as-a-service

HP has launched device-as-a-service (DaaS) in NZ, designed to simplify how businesses source, support and manage IT. Read more by clicking here.

New Tools from IBM and Google highlight trust issue in AI

This article published in Reseller News discusses the risks that AI might present and how to lessen those risks. Click here to read more.

CCiNZ Mentor Programme Launched

A huge thanks to all our sponsors, members, exhibitors, and the rest of you who supported and attended our 2018 CCiNZ Conference! The overall feedback was wonderful and we are grateful that all our speakers did a wonderful job in sharing their insights on how to survive in the contact centre industry! We also received quite a few queries regarding our Mentor Programme so, as promised, more info can be found here. We look forward to seeing you in more CCiNZ events!  

Nigel Latta will talk about....

Our 2018 CCiNZ Conference keynote speaker, Nigel Latta, has provided us a teaser on what he will be discussing...

Human beings weren't really designed for change. Most of our time here on this little blue-green planet has been a much simpler, much less complex affair. For a long time, there were no staff meetings, no building inspectors, no talent shows and no smart phones. We were born, we hunted, gathered, reproduced, hunted a bit more, and died.

Our lives are far more different and, in fact, they're even far more different than that of our parents. In this globalized, hyper connected, market driven world that we all live in now, it's not about whether you like change or not, because the truth is it's change or die. Constant change and adaptation is the only way businesses can survive now, and so bringing all the people in that business along with the change is fundamentally important.

In this presentation, I'll show you what all this has to do with ukuleles and helicopters, how neuroscience can explain why change is often so difficult, and provide a few simple pointers so you can help the people you're travelling with to survive and thrive in a world where contant change is the key to everything. 

We are so excited to hear more on the 14th of September! Book now by clicking here.

Kiwi Business Confidence Dips to Decade-Low

Read this piece of news published in reseller.co.nz. Click here.

How talking machines are taking call centre jobs

They aren't physical robots but actually intelligent software which may replace contact centre agents in the near future. Read this interesting article by clicking here.

Police Emergency Call Staff Fear Being Penalised by Sick Leave Formula

This article, published on stuff.co.nz, talks about police emergency call handlers being worried over the system used to work out the impact of their sick leaves. Click here to read more.

Customer Service Index: How NZ Industries Fare on the Satisfaction Front

Check out this interesting news bit from the Herald. Click here.

Cloud Service Providers Accelerate Their Growth

While other parts of the internet economy continue to be challenged, cloud computing is at a high. Read more of this article published on Reseller News. Click here.

Microsoft let millions more people work in their underwear!

Got your attention? Read more by clicking here.

ANZ Unveils New Virtual Assistant

ANZ has a virtual assistant called Jamie. Check out this news article from the NZ Herald. Click here.

Facebook, AWS seek changes to New Zealand Privacy Bill

Facebook director of policy for Australia and NZ, Mia Garlick, has suggested changes to the Bill's proposed mandatory data breach notification rules. Read more of this news published on www.reseller.co.nz by clicking here.

Cove sells NZ's first insurance policy via chatbot

Auckland based Cove Insurance has sold what is believed to be New Zealand's first insurance policy by a chatbot. Cove is initially offering this chatbot experience through Facebook Messenger. Read more by clicking here. 

Czech Bank Introduces Voice Biometrics for Call Centre Customer Authentication

Finextra published this news of a Czech Bank using voice biometrics. The banks' customers no longer need to worry about answers to security questions and the like. Will NZ banks soon follow suit? Read more here.

Innovative Customer Experiences in a Laundromat

Innovation can happen anywhere, even in a Napier laundromat! Read this piece of interesting news by clicking here. 

Gov't Launches Nationwide Sexual Harm Helpline

The Minister of Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, has said that Safe to Talk He pai ki te korero will give people the opportunity to seek free. anonymous and confidential support. Read more of this article publishe in contactcentreworld.com  by clicking here. 

Medical Assurance Society Gains Clean Bill of Health with Promapp

Medical Assurance Society (MAS), a NZ membership-based society that provides a range of financial and business advisory services, has started to deploy Promapp's cloud-based business process management software to support its business transformation programmes.Click here to read more.

VoiceFoundry Expands Global Deployment of Amazon Connect Services

VoiceFoundry, a principal provider of cloud-based contact centre solutions, announced that it is now expanding services for Amazon Connect to Australian and New Zealand businesses. Read more by clicking here.

150M Under Armour MyFitnessPal accounts breached

The stolen data includes account user names, email addresses and scrambled passwords for the popular MyFitnessPal mobile app and website. Read more here.

Probe Group Enters Agreement to Acquire Salmat Ltd's Contact Business

Click here for media release from Probe.

Small Contact Centre, Big Outcomes

Student Job Search Aotearoa has a Wellington-based contact centre that's punching well above its weight - connecting student candidates with potential employers. This article was published on nzbusiness.co.nz and you can read it by clicking here.

Man allegedly called 'f***wit' in customer service blunder

A salesman has allegedly been recorded calling a customer an expletive over the phone after thinking he had hung up. Read more of this story from NZ Herald by clicking here.

No Customer Service Centre Closures

Contrary to reports in the New Zealand Herald, Auckland Council is not closing customer service centres. Read more by clicking here.

Enghouse Interactive Receives 2017 Cloud Computing Excellence Award

Enghouse Interactive has announced that its contact centre as-a-service offering, Contact Centre: Service Provider (CCSP), has been awarded the 2017 Cloud Computing Excellence Award by Cloud Computing Magazine. Read more here.

New Vendor Entering NZ Contact Centre Market

Last month CCiNZ was contacted by NZ Trade Connection to assist them with exploratory discussions for a possible new entry into the New Zealand contact centre market.

Although we can’t yet mention the vendor’s name due to the current commercial sensitivity of this, the potential new business is the leading cloud-based, multi-channel commerce platform for small and medium-sized businesses. Based out of Canada, they are looking to set up a technical support contact centre to complement their 24/7 ‘follow the sun’ model they currently deployed in Canada, USA and Ireland.  With over 3,000 existing staff, they expect to increase that by another 2,000 this year alone, and they are looking to employ many of those here in New Zealand solely via their ‘work from home model’.

CCiNZ talked to the potential vendor at length around both the excellent opportunities and the realistic challenges that we all face as operators within our industry. This was especially around recruitment which will be a significant contributor for them to achieve their goals. CCiNZ was able to introduce the vendor to our sponsors and partners who specialise in the ‘working from home’ space along with our key organisational partners within the industry to assist them with their scoping phase.

This could be a great coup for New Zealand! They are wanting to provide a clean, green and sustainable operating model which will provide a very large number of jobs for our industry. They are extremely eager to be a part of CCiNZ and align closely with our practices. We’ll keep you updated with their progress over the coming months.

ANZ planning to send jobs to Manila

Last week, Stuff.co.nz published an article regarding ANZ planning to transfer around 40 jobs from its Wellington office to Manila. These are mainly in the collections team and contact centre. Read more here.

Will this be the year chatbots take on customer service?

Kiwi conversational engagement start-up company, Ambit, says that this is the year chatbots will rule. Read more of this article published by Techday. Click here.

Datacom creating jobs for Australians

Datacom recently announced that they have entered into a 3-year contract with Australia's Department of Home Affairs to provide client enquiry services. To read more about this, click here.

Celebrating 100 Years of the Erlang Formula

For those in the contact centre industry, the Erlang Formula is a familiar word used especially in workforce management. Read more about it here.

Tweets Increase on Black Friday

Although this happened in the UK, it was very much a trend that also occurred worldwide. Read more by clicking here.

Orcon to close Manila call centre, re-establish in NZ

Good news for our contact centre industry! Orcon is bringing back its call centre operations to Auckland. Read more here.

Global Recognition for Kiwi Tech Company in Vienna

NZ-based IT company, The Testing Consultancy, recently won two prestigious awards at Europe's largest software testing conference. 

The Tricentis Accelerate Conference, which was held in Vienna last week, saw the company win the Best Global Customer Implementation award in recognition of its work for global oil and gas giant, ExxonMobil. The Testing Consultancy (TTC) was also named as the Tricentis Best APAC Services Partner for 2017, mirroring the award the company received in 2016. 

TTC is a niche software testing practice, consulting to corporates in the oil and gas sector in the US, the financial sector in Singapore, and various telco's, government departments and utility companies in New Zealand. With over 130 staff operating out of offices in Auckland, Wellington, Houston and Singapore, TTC is growing quickly and is soon to be opening an office in Europe. 

-reprinted from article written by Serena Benson, 25Oct17