Recent stories in "Technology"
The “Gotchas” Of Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions
There is a growing trend to migrate from premise-based contact center platforms to hosted or “cloud” based solutions (aka, SaaS or CaaS). The attraction is obvious: “Let the experts handle the technologies specific to routing and managing our contacts, and let IT focus on our core business systems.” Agents can reside anywhere—your center, a home [...]
Volume Challenges? Technology Can Help
The “HAIR ON FIRE” DAYS of alarms and emergency back-up staff running into the center to log into the ACD to take calls are gone. Workforce management systems and staffing strategies help managers plan for and react to variable contact volume. Yet even with effective planning, centers still struggle to handle unpredicted volume and peak [...]
Social Media Technology Connects the Contact Center
For those of us who like welldefined boundaries, social media is problematic. As individuals, we may prefer to keep our Facebook friends separate from LinkedIn connections, but folks tend to cross-pollinate. As contact center professionals, we may prefer people use traditional forms of contact to request assistance, discuss issues and air grievances, but customers may [...]
Make Technology Your Agent’s Best Friend
Where have the simpler days gone? This is a common plea in the contact center. Selfservice, an explosion of contact channels, varied customer needs, and a revolving door of product and service offerings have made work on the front lines increasingly complex. Agents want and need help! Fortunately, there is a wealth of technology that [...]
Embracing Mobile Chat
It’s no surprise to business leaders that mobile is increasingly the device of choice for consumers—though many have not anticipated the rate at which traffic via the mobile channel has grown. Research firm GfK reported that smartphones accounted for 17% of total time spent on the Internet across all devices in 2012, compared to 12% [...]
The Chicken and the Egg: How IT and the Contact Center Succeed Together
In 20 years of consulting and hundreds of projects, I have seen some typical scenarios play out in client environments, often based on the communication and collaboration—or lack thereof—between IT and the contact center. Stalemates ripe with finger-pointing are common situations. IT stands in one corner declaring “tell me what you want to do.” [...]
Guidelines for a Pain-Free Technology Deployment
You have just survived the contract engagement process with your vendor. Sometimes that process can takes months to complete. Now you are ready to jump right into the meat of the project and immediately use your new software… but wait, there’s more—that pesky implementation! The implementation process doesn’t have to be painful if you take [...]
Real Time Is the Real Deal
I don’t like the sound of 2013. It has an ominous ring to it. When good things happen, they rarely happen on the 13th of anything, let alone in a year with a 13 in it. Just look at 1913. 1913 was the year the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was passed. The 16th Amendment [...]
Achieve Contact Center Goals through Strategic Synergy and Realism
Technology is the great enabler for contact centers to achieve their operational goals for service effectiveness and efficiency. So why are so many contact centers struggling with outdated technology and technology gaps? Why can’t they get funding approval? The contact center continues to “make do” and perform admirably, but it could do much better [...]
Simplexify Your Life
I just got a new mobile phone. It’s a Samsung Galaxy S III, which is supposed to be stateof- the-art in terms of mobile communications. I didn’t get an iPhone because iPhones aren’t supported on the T-Mobile network and I’m not really hung up on owning an iPhone anyway. The Galaxy S III is supposed [...]
Mobile and the Contact Center: The Game Is Changing
We recently got rid of our landline, and I bet many of you have already done the same, or will soon. We live by the smartphone. It’s our “go-to” directory, information, web and application source. We use it to self-serve or seek assisted service with companies big and small. Whether we make contact frequently or [...]
Win! Win! Win! The Cloud Contact Center Has Something for Everybody
Contact center operations has long been interested in cloud contact center solutions to compensate for scarce IT resources and to pursue enhanced contact center technology. As cloud solution providers have expanded the features/functions, architecture choices and services provided, there truly is something for everybody. Contact center management, contact center support, and IT in centers [...]
Contact Center Technology Monitoring
We all use tools to monitor important elements of our personal world in ways that we never did before: GPS and text messaging on the kids’ phones, home security systems with remote notification and control, apps to follow activity with your favorite sports teams or stocks, and updates about your flights or financial accounts. Now [...]
Optimize the Agent Desktop
Desktop complexity is a primary driver of inefficiency in contact centers of all sizes. Product silos with disconnected development and upgrade strategies, disparate applications for different customer segments, multiple enterprise customer information systems, and multiple information sources force agents to use an array of non-integrated applications for contact handling. To top it off, the contact [...]
Today’s Tools Take QA to the Next Level
Everybody wants to provide quality customer interactions. The good news: The technology to enable basic quality assessment is affordable with viable options for centers of all sizes. As a result, most centers do some form of quality monitoring on their primary mode of contact, phone calls. The bad news: Scoring individual calls is not nearly [...]
Adding Value with Live Chat
As consumer preference for using live chat continues to grow, so, too, are the number of contact centers that are adding it to their channel mix. Industry research has predicted substantial growth in the number of contact centers adopting chat over the next 12 to 24 months (ContactBabel’s 2012 U.S. Contact Center Decision-Makers’ Guide, and [...]
Personality-Based Call Routing Optimizes Contact Center Performance
Faster, better, cheaper has long been the mantra for contact centers. And with today’s slimmed down operating budgets, it’s even tougher for centers to make the most of their current staffing resources. To improve quality, efficiency and better manage costs, most leaders rely on traditional approaches, such as increasing frontline coaching and training, revising agent [...]
Turn Speech Analytics into Action
It’s easy to get excited about the promise of . The ability to gain insight into customer interactions and potentially enhance internal quality efforts is a compelling prospect when faced with fewer resources and the need to focus on elevating the customer experience. But can speech analytics live up to the hype? Does it offer [...]
How to Get the Most Out of Live Chat
We live in a vastly different consumer world today than we did just a decade ago. The continuing rise of online sales presents an enormous challenge in determining best business practices. Although customer service may have shifted away from face-to-face interactions, it remains an equally important part of a customer’s experience. Live chat, also known [...]
Contact Center Technology Testing
Imagine that you’ve finally secured budget to add new functionality and technology to your contact center. You’ve labored through vendor evaluations and inked a deal. You go full speed ahead on implementation to start living in the “promised land” of your newly enriched applications environment. But wait… as you cut over to production, the new [...]
Set Your Sights on FCR
As I work with contact centers across all sizes and vertical markets, I hear a consistent theme focusing on serving customers in excellence. So why aren’t more customers raving about their experiences? And why do some centers excel in service while others only talk the talk? While there are no simple answers, I can offer [...]
Got Insights? Ready for Action? Consolidated Reporting, Scorecards and Analytics
Corporate leadership says the contact center must deliver great service and drive revenue. Customers expect to experience a personalized, effective interaction regardless of media. Center leadership wants to know what’s working and what’s not, why and how to make things better. Delivering on those expectations requires insight and action based on the mountains of data [...]
Enhancing the Impact of New Technology on QM and VOC
There is a growing amount of technology available in both the call quality monitoring (QM) and customer analytics arenas. A lot of it is expensive and often seems to be a solution looking for a problem. On the other hand, call center quality is still lacking in a majority of contact centers and most executives [...]
Multichannel Technology Comes into Its Own
Multimedia is not new to the contact center. Most companies have had “contact centers” rather than “call centers” for years. Multichannel technology is not new either; vendors have been offering integrated multimedia routing and reporting since the “dot-com” boom days. So why have so few centers implemented it? Should centers finally put these requirements into [...]
Share the Wealth of Knowledge in Your Center
Knowledge is power. For contact center representatives, it’s the power to access the right information, the right resources, and/or the right processes to serve customer needs. It’s the power to resolve issues on the first contact in a timely manner. And it’s the power to feel competent and confident on every interaction. For customers, it’s [...]
Key Factors for Effective Online Chat
Online chat continues to develop as an influential, profitable customer service and sales delivery method. However, even with growing consumer preference, impressive ROI and high customer satisfaction, online chat remains an undeveloped channel. Forrester Research has predicted U.S. Online retail sales will reach nearly $250 billion by 2014. Increased consumer demand for web-based customer support [...]
Let’s Get Small (or Medium)
It may have appeared that Randy Newman attacked the self esteem of every person of lesser stature (including myself ) with his 1977 song about short people, but no one would dare to pen a hit against small to medium contact centers (SMCCs). Today’s market respects smaller centers by offering them advanced contact center functionality [...]
Customer-Centric Web Self-Service (Yes, It Does Exist)
While the best contact centers ensure that they have well-trained, talented and mentally stable e-support agents in place to handle customers’ emails, chats and web calls, the very same organizations also have in place powerful, alluring and user-friendly online self-service applications so that only customers with complex issues or who are extremely lonely require live-agent [...]
Contact Centers Need to Go Mobile: Are You Ready to Move?
According to CTIA–The Wireless Association, there are now over 300 million wireless connections in the United States alone. Society as we know it has clearly gone mobile. We can reach family, friends, colleagues and service providers anytime, anywhere, increasingly with web-friendly smartphones and tablets. Your IT organization may already have plans for the infrastructure and [...]
Use the Right Enabling Technology to Support Multichannel Customer Contact
In a world of expanding customer contact channels and the departmental silos that go with them, is it possible to optimize the customer experience and deliver on business objectives? The answer can be a resounding “YES!” given a carefully constructed multichannel strategy, an effective governing body, and the right people, processes and technologies to support [...]
