Not too long ago, if you needed a loaf of bread, you went to the local bakery. Without even asking, the shopkeeper, who was often the owner, knew what you wanted and would even have your loaf bagged and ready for checkout. He or she might ask about how your family’s doing or let you Read More
Five Strategies to Avoid Crisis in the Contact Center
We live in a customer-obsessed culture, and consumers have come to expect excellence in all areas of service. This has been the driving force behind things such as 24-hour access to customer support and, more recently, the media attention around flying drones designed to get things to our doorstep even faster. This has also created Read More
Predictive Analytics Report: Using Big Data to Improve Omni-channel Customer Service
Contact center interaction management solutions have historically taken a retroactive approach: examining past transactions to form judgments on the value of customers today. In many contact centers, callers are still routed to the longest available agent. More advanced contact centers go one step further, using skill-based routing to send callers to the agent who is Read More
Using the Cloud and Analytics to Modernize Legacy Contact Center Systems
As customer service demands escalate, contact centers must be quick to adapt. Here are some of the critical changes I see happening inside of today’s contact centers and the wide-range of challenges they face. For example, 1. While call load balancing was efficient in the past, offshoring and outsourcing to home agents have complicated the operating model. Read More
Industry Perspectives: Transforming the Customer Experience
This week, I’m continuing our Industry Perspectives series by highlighting Kate Leggett’s blog post, “Forrester’s Top Trends For Customer Service In 2014”. In the piece, Kate explains how the recent shifts in digital communication, mobility, and the acceleration of innovation are impacting customer expectations. The article highlights the top 12 customer service trends for 2014 that Read More
Industry Perspectives: Contact Centers or Customer Engagement Centers?
This week’s Industry Perspectives comes from a recent article by Patrick Budmar for Australia-based ARN. In his article, Businesses to turn to multi-channel customer engagement: Gartner, Patrick highlights Gartner’s recent prediction that companies will continue to transition into multi-channel customer engagement centers. Read More
