SER Solutions Acquires VorTecs

Call it addition by recognition: Earlier this week SER announced an agreement to acquire VorTecs, a company that specializes in voice recognition technology.

According to Carl Mergele, CEO of SER, dovetailing VorTecs computer telephony integration with SER's existing solutions will give the company the opportunity to "change the whole economic model."

"There are three major components to running a contact center," Mergele says. "One is your dialing equipment and other hardware. Two is the location, where it is all housed. The third is the agents staffing the center. That's the last bastion to be conquered in this equation. If you make the agents more productive and increase their ability to do their job and earn money, you decrease turnover and improve the whole process."

Supervisors monitor only about one to three percent of calls, according to Mergele, and that is done in a hit or miss fashion. He claims that VorTecs voice recognition software will enable supervisors to get alerts when agents are in need of assistance or correction. The supervisors can then quickly address the problem, leading to faster resolution time.

Mergele is so confident of SER's ability to put the technology to use, he asserts that after only a 60 to 90--day integration time, contact centers implementing the new software would see a positive ROI in 9 to 12 months.

As part of SER's acquisition of VorTecs, it was also announced that several VorTecs executives would be given new leadership roles within SER to help with the transition. Specific terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.