Air Pacific and Pacific Sun will outsource their telephone reservations services to Mindpearl, an independently owned global contact center specialist.  It will be effective November 1, 2009.

Air Pacific’s current telephone reservations centers in New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji will close and all reservations calls from those countries will be routed to Mindpearl’s 24/7 call center in Suva.  Subsequently, calls from other points in the South Pacific will cutover.  In 2010, when the current North American call center contract expires, calls from North America will be routed to Mindpearl in Fiji.

The new call center will provide Air Pacific and Pacific Sun customers 24/7 access to make new reservations, ticket purchases, queries on travel, and alterations to bookings.  This will provide greatly enhanced service levels for customers in Fiji and improved services across all Air Pacific destinations.  Currently, call center services are limited from 8:00 AM to 10 PM each day.

Another podcast has been added to podcast.connectionsmagazine.com.  This one is of incoming ATSI president Larry Goldenberg.

Although we won't be posting notices here each time, six more will be added, one each of the following Tuesdays:

Bill Lane, Startel, June 30
Stan Jasinski, Onvisource, July 7
Patty Anderson, Telescan, July 14
Wayne Scaggs, Alston Tascom, July 21
Gary Kerner, Amtelco, July 28
Vince McGlone, TASterix, August 4

Already posted:

Dennis O'Hara, ATSI president 2008-2009 (three podcasts)
Larry Goldenberg, ATSI president 2009-2010

Check podcast.connectionsmagazine.com each Tuesday or go there and enter your email address if you wish to be notified.

(These and all Connections Magazine podcasts are available on iTunes.)

Voicenation, a leading provider of Virtual PBX solutions, chose TASterix due to advanced feature set, flexibility, and "openness."  Voicenation currently supports tens of thousands of small to medium sized businesses, as well as Fortune 500 clientèle.

"We're excited to implement TASterix as the platform for our answering services division.  It's obvious this solution was developed by a team who truly knows this industry and we appreciate the 'common sense' approach," stated Jay Reeder, founder and CEO of Voicenation.  "There isn't anything these guys didn't think of.  If we want to do something out of the ordinary, we have the ability to extend or enhance the TASterix solution because it is based on the open source Asterisk switch." 

"Having Voicenation on board immediately brings validity to our solution.  They are a carrier grade Virtual PBX provider with an advanced understanding of software development," stated Vince McGlone, CEO of TASterix.  "We are excited to be pioneers piercing this industry with a breath of fresh air from a cost and custom development standpoint, and Voicenation will help TASterix drive the 'openness' message."

The convention dates and location for the 2010 ATSI convention have been announced.

It will be held May 12 through 14 in San Diego, CA.  (Note that this is a month earlier than recent conventions have been held.)

Mark your calendars now and plan to attend.

Connections Magazine took several hundred photos at the 2009 ATSI Convention and Expo.

Some of them will be included in the July/August issue of Connections Magazine, while an expanded selection of ATSI Convention photos has been uploaded to Flickr for you to peruse.

Enjoy!

The ATSI (Association of TeleServices International) Call Center Award of Distinction program focuses on and evaluates customer relationship management (CRM), courtesy, etiquette, and proper call techniques of teleservice call center agents.  The program assists outsourcing call centers in assessing, controlling, and improving the quality of service provided to their call center clients.  Through this third-party evaluation, recipients of the Call Center Award of Distinction are independently verified as leaders in the call center industry. 

This year's Call Center Award of Distinction winners are:

• Pronto Connections, Inc., Chicago, IL
• One World Direct, Mobridge, SD
• The Lifespan Call Center, Providence, RI
• AAMCOM, Redondo Beach, CA
• Contact One Call Center, Tucson, AZ
• Answer Quick, Louisville, TN
• Extend Communications, Inc., Brantford, ON
• Spectrum Communications Services, Inc., Brookfield, WI
• Telelink Call Centre, St. John's, NL
• TigerTel, Vancouver, BC
• TigerTel, Toronto, ON
• Focus Comm Centers, Eldersburg, MD
• Answer Center America, Inc., Chicago, IL
• Appletree Answering Service, St. Louis, MO
• Answer 1 Communications, Phoenix, AZ
• Time Communications, St. Paul, MN

The ATSI 2009 Call Center Award of Distinction Winners are also listed on the Connections Magazine website, as well as the ATSI Award of Excellence Winners for 2009.

Congratulations to all the award recipients.

ATSI Attendees were treated to many informative and insightful sessions throughout the 2009 ATSI convention.  The two primary speakers addressed packed audiences, providing valuable information and astute observations.  Those who missed these sessions, missed a great deal.

First, on Thursday (June 18), attendees were treated to presentation by Marilyn Landis, entitled "When Cash is Tight."

The entire focus of Friday (June 19) was on the keynote address from renowned author and speaker Tom Hopkins, the "builder of sales champions," who gave a full-day "interactive sales boot camp."

Attendees were left with a plethora of practical and useful information to help strengthen and grow their call centers.

ATSI held their annual election at the 2009 Convention.  Donna West was re-elected to the board and is joined by Maryann Wetmore.

As previously determined, Larry Goldenberg is the new president and Mike Fultz is president elect.

The 2009-2010 ATSI board consists of:

Larry Goldenberg (President)
Mike Fultz  (President Elect)
Douglas Gregg
Allan Fromm
Brian Gilmore
Wil Porter
John Robinson  
Donna West
Beth Cooper  
Marla Duncan
Gordon Mott
Jonathon Pierce
Stacy Polinsky
Maryann Wetmore
Sharon Campbell
Dennis O'Hara (Immediate Past President) 
Charlene Glorieux (Executive Vice President)

A new podcast has been added to podcast.connectionsmagazine.com of 2008-09 ATSI president, Dennis O'Hara, as recorded at the 2009 ATSI convention, June 18, 2009.

Check back each week on podcast.connectionsmagazine.com as we have eight more podcasts that will be added.

(This and other Connections Magazine podcasts are available from iTunes.)

The 2009 ATSI Convention and Expo began today.  The paid attendance was reported to be a record, as was the number of first time attendees.

The vendors at the expo includes both familiar names, as well as several new presenters.   The vendors include:

Alston Tascom
Amtelco
Appointment-Plus
ATSI
BackgroundCheckExpress.com
CAM-X
CenturiSoft
Creative Voice Solutions
Eventide
Global Fone
Hays Affinity Solutions
Infradapt
Olivia Greets
OnviSource
Outsourcing Int’l
Professional Teledata
Skystream Broadband & Voice Integration
Startel
Szeto Technologies
TAS Marketing
TAS Source
TASTERIX
TDI, Inc.
Team SNUG
Telescan
XLScheduler

Given the current economic conditions, there was an overall pleasant degree of optimism among both the attendees and vendors.  Some vendors reported making an unexpected number of good contacts and many attendees interested in the new offerings of the vendors.