The Scotland-based SwordCiboodle surrendered its unusual corporate name this week after being acquired by Kana, a Sunnyvale, Calif., provider of customer service solutions. The company will move forward with only “Kana Software” in the masthead.

The Kana brand name “is stronger and more mature in key markets,” according to Mitch Lieberman, the vice president of market strategy for SwordCiboodle.

“That said, Ciboodle will be missed by some. There is no middle ground, though, people loved it or hated it and the ‘Sword’ in front made it tougher to say,” Lieberman wrote in an email.

SwordCiboodle started in 1986 with a softer name. Whereas Sword and Scotland conjured visions of battle, initially the company was known as Graham Technology (think crackers.)

When the Sword Group bought Graham Technology in 2008, the company first switched to “Ciboodle,” recognizing the name of its flagship customer interaction platform. Later it added the weapon, with “SwordCiboodle” reflecting its corporate parentage.

Lieberman said KANA and Ciboodle are a good fit, both centering on customer service solutions for the enterprise.

“Ciboodle has built a reputation providing contact center, agent desktop, business process management and case management solutions,” Lieberman wrote. “KANA has built a reputation providing email response management, knowledge management, Web self-service and chat, and more recently social listening.”

Everyone at Ciboodle and Kana looks forward to the days ahead, Lieberman wrote, particularly one minor advantage to the deal.

“I will not miss the ‘No, Key-boodle, not See-boodle’ conversations, though.”

Diana Kelley

Raised cubicle walls, safe rooms for credit card data, different colored badges for different agents – it all seemed a bit draconian. Yet, many contact center managers are struggling with some of the stringent requirements for PCI DSS when they first run across them. It may not be a police state, but most contact center professionals need some help and advice. The security professionals often responsible for PCI DSS projects do not always understand the operations of the contact center, what’s important and what’s not. And the same goes for contact center managers dealing with PCI DSS auditors.

In an attempt to get the two sides together, SearchCRM.com News Director Barney Beal delved into some of these issues with Lori, president of Strategic Contact Inc., a call center

Lori Bocklund

consultancy and Diana Kelley, a partner with Security Curve.

The roundtable discussion covers PCI DSS compliance across a multitude of topics in two parts. In the first part, Diana and Lori discuss the physical requirements for complying with PCI in the contact center, the importance of clear communication between contact center and IT/security professionals and what Lori’s recent experience revealed about some unexpected requirements.

Highlights of first podcast are listed below: 1:00 Lori’s experience with a recent PCI audit regarding physical facility specifications

• 2:15 Are some of the physical requirements surprising people? (Maybe: Why are some of the physical requirements are surprising organizations?)
• 5:05 The PCI Security council talks about “best practices” and “common sense” steps but why is it so confusing to contact center professionals?
• 7:55 Has there been a shift in contact center responsibility for security? How so?
• 9:52 Does Lori’s experience jive with what Diana has seen from security professionals? What are the areas of PCI compliance open to interpretation? How do you deal with contact center with software vendors? (reread last question, not sure what you’re trying to say)
• 15:45 How can you address specific issues with an auditor?

There’s more information across SearchCRM.com, SearchSecurity.com and the web in general for contact center professionals interested in PCI DSS compliance.

SearchSecurity.com did a lengthy special report on PCI compliance featuring video of Diana Kelley and other PCI experts.

The PCI DSS standards body has offered some PCI compliance tips for contact centers.

Finally, the PCI standards body’s website is a valuable resource for organizations preparing for an audit.

“Smart phones, social media and all these ways to interact have created a need to listen to customers and build products or services around what they are asking for and what they say is imperative,” said Brad Cleveland, an advisory board member of the International Customer Management Institute,
which runs ACCE.

Turns out, there really is a big difference between “hearing” and “listening.” (This is reminding me of a lecture I frequently give my children, but that’s another story).

For starters, if you don’t have a listening strategy that extends out to social channels by now, you should figure that out – and fast.

But most companies know this. They understand that they need to listen to what customers are telling them and respond to it. What they need to know is how to take the idea of Voice of the Customer and move it from concept to implementation.

When asked what he thinks is keeping contact center managers awake at night, Jorge Blanco, vice president of contact center marketing at Avaya said “it’s when they know they have a problem and they don’t know how to solve it.”

So, here’s hoping that some of the ACCE sessions and workshops will give companies real answers to some very basic problems. For example, Lori Bockland, president of Strategic Contact Inc., is leading a “Contact Center technology 101” workshop that will cover the basics on technologies every call center needs.

There’s also a scheduled keynote from the folks at Comcast who will be talking about how to best integrate social media in a company’s customer service strategy.

ICMI’s Cleveland said the impact of social channels and mobile communications has “created more change than we’ve ever seen.”

“Social media is seen as exotic and new, but really, customer relationships aren’t new,” Cleveland said. “It is just scale. We’ve got to use what we’ve learned all these years.”