I joined Twitter at the beginning of 2009. Sometimes I think the communications industry analysts, vendors and press are busy just tweeting each other and I wonder at the value. It reminds me of trade shows where there aren't many users and we're all there just talking to each other.But this morning I saw a Tweet that has me re-thinking my position. It was posted by LiveOps and highlighted an article that ran in the Sunday New York Times Business Section, Software That Monitors Your Work, Wherever You Are. LiveOps is a company in Santa Clara, CA that since 2000 has operated virtual call centers with agents that work exclusively from home.
LiveOps contact center routing and management software was initially written for the company's own use, managing the 20,000 or so agents they now employ. In 2008 the company made the strategic decision to package and resell the capability in a software-as-a-service model and hired a team seasoned in creating and marketing contact center software--many of them from Genesys. This includes President Wes Haydn and SVP of Product Management Paul Lang as well as several other sales and marketing staff.
It is the thirty-something Senior Director of Product Marketing, John Finch (who spent several years at Genesys), that initiated and maintains LiveOps' Twitter presence. This brings me back to the initial point of this post. I get the weekend New York Times delivered, but hadn't gotten to the cover page of the Business Section yet, let alone page 4 where this article appears. Even if I had, the title of the article might not have alerted me to the fact that it was about contact center software. John's Tweet did that, and
John was able to communicate with me, and his other 135 hand-picked Twitter followers, by writing a 140 character message. And he ended up getting a No Jitter blog written as well. Not bad for the amount of effort involved.