Contact center personnel often feel like the ill-fated crew on “Gilligan’s Island” – cast away on their own island. Lacking connection with the “mainland,” they leverage their own resources to devise tools and processes that meet their immediate needs. Everyone knows that this situation is far from optimal, but the organizational chasm always seems too… Read More »
Posts By: Lori Bocklund
Co-Browsing Takes Web-based Customer Service Up a Notch
If you strike up a conversation about Web-based self service with contact center professionals, you’ll likely get a glow of satisfaction over the growing base of customers tinged with a hint of frustration over the channel’s isolation from other modes of contact. Organizational siloes are an unfortunate reality that most folks tolerate due to the… Read More »
VoIP Transforms Outsourcing for Agents
Outsourcing is nothing new. For years, centers have allocated certain inbound call types and/or percentages of calls to third party service partners using relatively simple technology. In such cases, the outsourcer supplies people as well as the technology for contact routing, management, and reporting. While this model offers ease of implementation with simple, proven technology,… Read More »
Self-Service for Tech-Savvy Consumers
If you think self-service is old news, think again. A new generation of tech-savvy consumers has entered the fray with decidedly different notions about what constitutes effective communication. Mobile trumps land-line and full-screen. Text messaging trumps voice. Event-triggered notices trump customer-initiated inquiries. There’s a golden opportunity to deliver superior customer service AND bolster the bottom… Read More »
Technology Enables Cross-Selling/Up-Selling for Contact Centers
Cross-selling/up-selling is a strategic focus for centers that seek to add value to their customer interactions. Technology is a crucial resource when setting these strategies in motion. It plays a part in every stage of the process – from hiring/training agents to management contacts to evaluating results. Technology prepares agents for success. During the hiring… Read More »
Contact Center Vendor Selection: Get to Know Potential Partners Early
A healthy relationship with a vendor takes hard work, effective communication, and setting appropriate expectations. It starts before you sign on the dotted line. Take time to build relationship with potential vendors/distributors well in advance of your target procurement and implementation time frame. A “courtship” is far more than an educational exercise to become familiar… Read More »
7 Steps to Success for Web Chat in the Contact Center
Web chat for contact centers is on the rise. Three-quarters of the participants in our 2010 Multi-Channel Customer Contact Survey said they either supported web chat today or planned to do so within the next 2 years. I’m not surprised. Web chat boosts the success rate of Web-based self-service by helping customers solve problems or complete… Read More »
Unified Communications in the Call Center
Historically, the call center was left to its own devices to care for customers while managing service delivery. It was a cost center aspiring to evolve to a profit center where it held some chance to protect or drive revenue. Then UC came along with big promises of revolutionizing call center operations and their enterprise… Read More »
Seven Tips for Effective Contact Center Technology Planning
Technology is the “Big Top” of contact centers. It has so many thrilling attractions on so many stages that it’s sometimes hard to know where to focus your attention. Every solution promises to reduce your costs, increase your revenue, improve quality and service levels, add efficiency, make your CSRS and Supervisors happier, and win you… Read More »
7 Steps for Selecting the Right Contact Center Technology
Call center buyers face an embarrassment of riches in call center technology, sourcing, vendor, and distributor options. The good news: It’s a highly competitive market with ample room to compare products and negotiate prices. The bad news: It takes time to get to know the vendors and give them the chance to know you. Don’t… Read More »