GORDIAN SELECTS COSMOCOM FOR
HEALTH CARE CONTACT CENTER

Nurses and Health Coaches Reach Clients More Efficiently and at Less Cost

CosmoCom recently announced that Gordian, an industry leader in health and productivity improvement, has adopted its state-of-the-art, IP-based contact center platform. Gordian plans to improve the efficiency of its health care coaches by providing new and better ways to reach client groups with timely advice on healthy lifestyles.

Gordian provides integrated health management services to employee groups and other plan members. Until now, the company used a traditional phone system to connect its nurses, dietitians, exercise physiologists, and other professionals with clients in need of healthy lifestyle coaching. The capabilities of CosmoCom's CosmoCall Universe (CCU) platform exceed those of traditional phone systems.

"The contact center is our lifeline to our clients," explained Tim Wade, Gordian's vice president of information technology. "CosmoCom gives us a blended environment with phone, email, and online chat, helping us integrate our products and deliver them in multiple ways to help meet the various needs of our members."

Read the full story for more details.

COSMOCOM SELECTED AS MICROSOFT LAUNCH PARTNER
FOR CUSTOMER CARE FRAMEWORK 2008

In early December, CosmoCom announced the latest development in our relationship with Microsoft Corp. We are a launch partner for Microsoft's Customer Care Framework 2008, and the solution will be pre-integrated with CosmoCom's CosmoCall Universe.

"Integrating the two major facets in any customer care organization--the information platform and the communication platform--to achieve improved efficiency and customer experience is a major roadblock to contact center success," said Ari Sonesh, CosmoCom Chairman and CEO. "CosmoCall Universe, integrated with Microsoft Customer Care Framework 2008, is a solution that meets this challenge by aggregating line-of-business applications with the communication platform to achieve dramatic improvement in customer interactions."

Read the full press release for more details.

ANNOUNCING COSMOCOMMUNITY 2008 NEW ORLEANS

Save the Dates: 29-April to 2-May

As you finalize your 2008 plans, be sure to reserve 29-April to 2-May. That's the time to join CosmoCom and our community of partners and end-users in the exciting city of New Orleans, Louisiana, for CosmoCommunity 2008.

The event will begin with a welcome reception on the evening of Tuesday, 29 April, and continue through Wednesday, Thursday, and most of Friday. These dates are right between the two weekends of the Historic New Orleans Jazz Festival. You may want to extend your trip and see more of what the city has to offer, especially at this exciting time. We'll be putting optional hotel and entertainment packages together for those who want to take the opportunity.

CosmoCommunity 2008 promises to be even more informative and stimulating than our previous highly-successful gatherings. CosmoCom, along with industry experts and visionaries, will show you how to Jazz up your contact center strategies and prepare for success with Consolidation 2.0 and Unified Customer Communications. There will be plenty of opportunities to network through activities in the colorful New Orleans tradition.

If you miss CosmoCommunity 2008 you'll be singing the blues!

Online registration will be launched in early January, so watch your inbox for this announcement and full details about the event . Sponsors are already coming on board. If you would like to sponsor the event, please contact us at cosmocommunity@cosmocom.com to request more information, or to reserve one of the limited number of sponsorship slots.

We look forward to seeing you in New Orleans !

CALL CENTER TRENDS

By Ari Sonesh, CEO - This is the time to reflect upon the past year and look toward the coming one.

Of course, 2007 isn't over yet, so I'll save my 2007 results summary for the January newsletter. However I would like to talk about trends.

In 2007 we have seen many changes in the market. I would summarize 2007 as "the year of great momentum." VoIP has reached maturity and is now an accepted technology in the Call Center. Large enterprises have shown great interest in the technology. Pragmatic buyers recognize the huge benefits of consolidating their call center applications into a single virtual call center on a centralized, multi-tenant platform managed internally, or by a service provider. We call this market trend "Consolidation 2.0." The "2.0" signifies the next generation of call center consolidation that is better and more efficient than the prior approach of consolidating technology under one vendor, but keeping the same wasteful architecture of many "Iron Cabinets" at different physical call center locations throughout the enterprise. With a "Consolidation 2.0" centralized, all-software architecture, our customers realize much higher savings as well as faster implementations and ability to respond to new business needs, which is paramount in today's global markets.

Another important trend we've seen is what we call, "Unified Customer Communications," or UCC. UCC is based on the principal of an extended contact center environment that includes all customer facing employees across the enterprise participating in a well-supervised process utilizing a "Consolidation 2.0" architecture. UCC means better resource utilization, a highly efficient customer service process, and increased customer satisfaction; resulting in better first call resolution and higher sales.

So what should we expect in 2008? I believe we'll see continued expansion of the 2007 trends. But I also believe that we will see the mobile workforce increasingly become part of the Unified Customer Communications environment. With the proliferation of 3G and 3.5G mobile network capabilities, such applications are now practical and CosmoCom is well positioned to support this trend and to provide the best solutions.

Finally, another interesting trend will be increased utilization of web 2.0 technologies, with social networking technologies (such as Facebook) entering into customer business communications and becoming part of, "Unified Customer Communications." I have personally taken great interest in Facebook as an amazing phenomenon that is changing our social lives. I believe similar concepts in the business environment will add a new dimension of communication with our customers. Perhaps I'll share more of my thoughts on this subject in a future article. But here again, CosmoCom - whose mission is improving and managing communication between businesses and their customers - is well positioned to take a leadership role.

Stay tuned throughout 2008 for more on these topics and other exciting news. I wish all CosmoCom friends, partners, customers and employees a great holiday season and a Happy New Year. Hope to see you at CosmoCommunity 2008 in New Orleans in April.

BE OUR GUEST AT CALL CENTER 2.0 IN JAN

It has gotten very cold in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere and winter is definitely upon us. If you are planning to escape to the vicinity of sunny Miami around January 23-25, make sure you visit CosmoCom at TMC's Call Center 2.0 show at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Call Center 2.0 is a show within a show that is co-located with Internet Telephony Conference and Expo East. CosmoCom is proud to be a Gold Sponsor of the event.

Meet with us in person at booth CC523 to learn more about Consolidation 2.0 and Unified Customer Communications or listen to Tom Changparticipate on the "Unified Communications in the Contact Center" panel taking place on Friday, Jan 25 from 12:30 to 1:15 pm.

As promised in last month's CosmoChronicle, here is a special CosmoCom VIP pass to help you with free admission to the show floor or discounted admission for the full conference. Hope to see you there.

NEW INTELLECA CASE STUDY AVAILABLE

Intelleca, a leading CosmoCom VAR business partner expanded its business by establishing the first multi-tenant CCOD business in South Africa. You can now access a new case study on the CosmoCom website that tells you about their thriving new business made possible by CosmoCall Universe.

Access the Intelleca case study and others on our Case Studies page.

COSMOCOM DEVELOPERS AMONG TWENTY TOP TECHIES

On December 10, LISTnet (Long Island Software and Technology Network) held its annual Twenty Top Techies Awards ceremony where it recognizes the top technical talent in the Long Island Area. Once again we are proud to have, not one, but two CosmoCom recipients. Developers Serge Stepansky and Hasanain Khalil from our HQ R&D team received the prestigious award and now sit proudly within the ranks of Long Island's Twenty Top Techies of 2007.

Over a dozen fellow CosmoCom colleagues attended the award celebration to support Serge and Hasanain in their win and to have a great time. Congratulations to both Serge and Hasanain on this well deserved recognition by their technical peers. We in CosmoCom know of their great technical contribution and dedication to the company, now the rest of Long Island (and the world) will know too.
 

WHO'S TALKING? RECENT INK

CosmoCom, Microsoft Meld Call-Center Expertise
On December 5, TelecomWeb wrote an article about the recent news of CosmoCom being a Microsoft Customer Care Framework 2008 launch partner. The editor adeptly frames the story of the pre-integration in the context of Consolidation 2.0 and solidifies the concepts for readers. Read the article on TelecomWeb.

NEW MEMBERS OF THE COSMOCOM FAMILY

CosmoCom Asia

Draco Chan has joined CosmoCom as a Systems Engineer working in our Hong Kong Office. He brings a great deal of practical engineering experience working with numerous call center and telecommunications technologies. Prior to CosmoCom Draco held systems engineering and programming positions at such companies at Towngas Telecom, iCare.com and iCall Telecom. He holds a M.S. degree in Telecommunications and a Bachelors in Computer Engineering.

HQ HAPPENINGS

HQ Holiday Party

HQ staffers rocked the night away on December 16th at the annual CosmoCom Holiday Party. The elegant Fox Hollow was this year’s venue, complete with carolers at the door, an electrifying DJ, wonderful food, and our Company logo in an ice sculpture gracing the buffet table. A great time was had by the nearly 100 people in attendance.

On behalf of all of us at CosmoCom's Melville NY Headquarters, Happy Holidays...and best wishes to all for a Great ’08 !

TRADESHOW NEWS: COMING ATTRACTIONS

	Call Center 2.0/IT Expo East January 23 - 25, 2008  Miami Beach Convention Center Miami, FL, USA www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/call-center/  CosmoCom is a Gold Sponsor of Call Center 2.0 See us in Booth CC 523
	Call Center World - 2008 February 18 -21 2008 Estrel Convention Center Berlin, Germany Booth Hall 1: 1A16    www.callcenterworld.de
	VoiceCon Spring 2008 March 17 - 20, 2008 Gaylord Palms Hotel Orlando, FL, USA http://www.voicecon.com/orlando/ See us in Booth 1300
	RECORDED WEBINARS
	View recordings of our Webinar events including "Consolidation 2.0", "Hosted Contact Center for Outsourcers", "Contact Center On-Demand" and "Telecom Customer Care"

	SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
	Please pass this issue of CosmoChronicle on to others who might be interested. If you are not already receiving the monthly CosmoChronicle you can sign up now. This and past issue are also available in the CosmoChronicle Archives.

	TECH SUPPORT UPDATES
	CosmoCom has replaced SupportNet with a new improved support site, for customers and partners, called CosmoCom Online Technical Support. You can find the latest documentation, Hot Fix bundles, Microsoft updates that have passed QA for CosmoCall Universe deployment, discussion groups and more. In addition, you can now access your support tickets online. If you have not yet obtained your secure login information, please contact your CosmoCom representative or send support an email.

	LIAISON PROGRAM FOR CONSULTANTS
	If you are a call center industry consultant, join the CosmoCom Consultant Liaison Program for access to our consultant extranet, a dedicated newsletter for the consultant community and more...