“Product of the Year” again and again and again

Nothing says “story to hype” like receiving a prestigious “Product of the Year” award. And publisher TMCNet and its Customer Interaction Solutions magazine are prestigious, make no bones about it.

TMC publications include print magazines Customer Interaction Solutions, Internet Telephony, SIP Magazine and IMS Magazine, and digital publications Speech-World, WiFI Telephony Magazine, VoIP Developer, IPTV Magazine and WiMA. In addition, TMC produces The Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO, The VoIP Developer Conference, VoIP Demo, IMS Expo and Call Center 2.0 Conference.

Customer Interaction Solutions has been the flagship publication of the Technology Marketing Corporation print house since 1982, and focuses on the customer relationship management, call center and teleservices industries.

So you’d figure the TMCers’ “Product of the Year” would be a heck of story, and you’d be right: Across industry outlets today are a number of press releases and articles telling of the victory in Customer Interaction Solutions magazine’s “product of the year” competition for 2006.

Ladies and gentlemen, the winner is … ASC! ASC is a provider of innovative software for the recording, analysis and evaluation of communications, and took home Product of the Year honors for its Marathon EVOlite.

Marathon EVOlite is a Linux-based communications recorder, a product which promises to assist financial organizations in complying with regulatory requirements for the recording of phone, VoIP and radio conversations. The latest version of Marathon EVOlite offers VoIP and TDM recording; online storage of up to 175,000 hours; and compatibility with IOMEGA or DVD-RAM drives for long-term archiving.

Said Nadji Tehrani, Customer Interaction Solutions executive group publisher / editor-in-chief. "I am pleased to honor their hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from them in the future."

Well, then, congratulations to ASC. For all runners-up, well, as they say in sportsland, “Wait ‘til next year!”

But wait a minute … what’s this?

Ulysses Learning is claiming that they’ve been bestowed “Product of the Year” accolades by Customer Interaction Solutions. The product in question this time is Ulysses Learning’s ServiceMentor Service to Sales, and the award is publicized on the Ulysses homepage under a link marked “Ulysses Wins Again…”

Winning Customer Interaction Solutions’ “Product of the Year” for an incredible eighth consecutive year, Ulysses Learning president/CEO Mark W. Brodsky produced a whopper of a sportsland metaphor upon announcing his firm’s win: “Being in the performance improvement industry is like being a sports team – the crowd can cheer you today and boo you tomorrow. The only thing that matters is how you play the game today. And we’re thrilled that others recognize that we continually get better game after game.”

How could the fans boo such a performance? Eight championships in a row? Come on! And Tehrani said, “…We’re proud to honor their hard work and accomplishments.”

Congratulations, Ulysses Learning, et cetera et cetera.

Except.

Here’s OPC Marketing proudly displaying “Product of the Year” honors from guess who for SpitFire HYBRID, a MySQL-based predictive dialer/auto dialer solution.

And Tehrani said, “…We’re proud to honor their hard work and accomplishments.”

Neocase Software announced on Friday that Neocase had received “Product of the Year” honors from CIS, “a testament to Neocase’s value in arming companies of varying sizes with a definitive competitive advantage in quickly improving their customer service operations,” in the words of Neocase president/CEO Philippe Gaillard.

Neocase is designed to work seamlessly alongside the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 sales and marketing suite, and can be deployed either on-demand or on-premise. This customization allows partners and customers to focus on the business objectives at hand and fulfill their customers’ needs in an efficient, timely manner.

Altitude Software, an independent contact centre solutions vendor, announced today that the Altitude Fast Script Builder won “Product of the Year.” The Altitude Fast Script Builder is part of the Altitude Script Studio, an interface for contact centre campaign flows and agent desktop screens creation. Upon rewarding Altitude, boss man Tehrani said, “I am pleased to honor their hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from them in the future.”

Sage Software, meanwhile, took home “Product of the Year” twice, for both SalesLogix v7 and SageCRM v5.8. Sage products support accounting, operations, customer relationship management, human resources, time tracking, merchant services and the specialized needs of accounting practices and the construction, distribution, manufacturing, nonprofit and real estate industries.

Tehrani said – stop me if you’ve heard this one – “…We’re proud to honor their hard work and accomplishments.”

What gives? As it turns out, Customer Interaction Solutions awards many prizes called a “Product of the Year,” a designation which would seem to imply a superlative. Sure, talking about many “Products of the Year” is grammatically correct, but isn’t that playing a bit fast and loose? And doesn’t it make a run of eight consecutive wins a bit meaningless? What, a company gets in good with Customer Interaction and gets a business lifetime’s worth of good publicity and maybe a little trophy? Yes, we all enjoy rituals and facades and pats on the back for doing work that sometimes no one seems to appreciate, but isn’t this a bit see-through?

Can’t wait for the CRM Excellence Award winners for 2006, eh? That should be out in May/June or so…

The Product of the Year Award winners for 2006 will be featured in the January and February 2006 issues of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine.