Rick McFarland, CEO of Voice4Net, Turns Call Center Nightmares into Dreams Come True with 'Custom Boutique' Interactive Software Solutions

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Feb 05, 2013, 08:35 ET

LEWISVILLE, Texas, Feb. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, Rick McFarland learned an important corollary to the traditional "Golden Rule" about treating people the way you want to be treated. Later coining it the "Platinum Rule," it's an ethic which says to treat people the way they want to be treated—and the foundation of his successful 30-year-plus career as a software developer and entrepreneur dedicated to helping companies better serve their customers and enhance the customer service experience.

Twenty five years after making his mark in the telecom industry developing one of the first voice automatic banking applications for credit unions, McFarland, CEO of Voice4Net, is still on a singular mission to create what should be the simplest--yet is often one of the most elusive—achievements in daily American life: a pleasant caller experience for both the customers and the customer service staff.

Employing their trademark custom interactive solutions, one of Voice4Net's primary aims is to generate new and useful tools that integrate "telephony" and database systems. At its core, the evolving technology addresses an often broken system whose inefficiency can be captured in a simple question millions of people can relate to on a daily basis: "Have you ever called a business and a voice prompt asks you to enter in your account number and password, get verified by the system, only to have the Customer Service Representative ask you for the same information all over again?"

"I use that term 'pleasant caller experience' a lot in presentations and speaking engagements, because I believe that the one thing that will always differentiate companies offering similar services or products is their customer service," says McFarland. "If the caller is not happy, if we can't create a fast and accurate experience for them on that crucial phone call, then everyone is wasting their time. Interactive voice response (IVR) and self-service solutions have a bad name today because of the abuse of the technology that exists. When a call comes in, the rep should be able to immediately see the corresponding information from the database in front of them.

"Too often," he adds, "the phone system in their contact center is not connected to the database on the back end or the IVR system. There's no communication between them. Voice4Net offers our distributors our products that they can bundle with the phone systems they install for their customers. Contributing to customer relationship management, we bring the so-called 'middle ware' between those two, connecting the back end database to their established phone system so the agent can provide the optimal caller experience."

In all of the official literature connected to such Voice4Net system solutions -- the Contact Center HD (CCHD), Screen Pop Pro Server (SPPS), Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Event Broadcast System (EBS) –there is mention of a key takeaway for the companies that buy Voice4Net technology with their telecom systems: ROI. Whether they employ a single solution or a custom-designed mix, the end result for users is a significantly stronger Return on Investment.

The Voice4Net website has a References & Testimonials page listing and showing the logos of some of the company's most valued new and ongoing relationships with everything from restaurant chains, financial institutions and telecommunications companies to healthcare companies and local municipalities of various sizes.

"There are some other companies like ours out there, with software designed to help automated call centers, but we go about our business in a unique way," says McFarland. "Our philosophical approach goes back to the platinum rule. Where most of my competitors make software they think the industry will want and hope their instincts are correct, I go to my distributors directly, find out the specific needs of their customers and build what they want. It's a hands-on, custom boutique approach."

Voice4Net's flagship solution is the Contact Center HD (CCHD), created to provide easy-to-use tools for managing both voice and text communication. It helps manage both voice and text communication. McFarland says, "CCHD is multi-media, which means effective communication with customers any way any time. The customer can call into the system, reach it by live web chat, send a text, or email. Everything is consolidated into a single queuing system."

SOURCE Rick McFarland