If I were to poll a cross-section of call center leaders, I’d probably find a love-hate relationship with reporting software. They love the technology for cranking out tons of data and reports. But they’re not crazy about how difficult it is to find the meaningful information among all that data. Since reporting is the key… Read More »
We have had PCI compliance as part of the discussion in many of our projects over the last few years, focused on the technology requirements for data protection and vendor’s abilities to comply. However, we recently heard an unusual – I hope – situation that raised concerns for me. A client who is undergoing a… Read More »
Multichannel customer contact is a fact of life. Unfortunately, so are organizational silos and divided ownership of the media that your customers use, or want to use. In an increasingly complex customer interaction environment, there’s no time like the present to get your corporate act together. Start with a discovery process that takes inventory of… Read More »
Many elements play a role in routing, including the network, IVR, ACD, and potentially CTI and databases. Centers need to review or define a call path carefully, end-to-end, to apply the technology properly. Skills capabilities allow agents to handle various call types and priorities, and conditional routing makes “if…then…” decisions for each call. Most centers… Read More »
There’s no doubt about it. Contact center technology has gotten much more sophisticated. It offers a whole gamut of features and functions that we wouldn’t have thought possible years ago. But it’s also more difficult to create the same degree of stability and reliability that we used to enjoy with the old telecom systems. Here… Read More »
Whenever I tell people that I’m in the call center business, I brace myself for a diatribe about “those darn systems” real people too often hide behind. Without fail, an Interactive Voice Response system (IVR) takes center stage. It doesn’t have to be this way. Imagine a world where the response from your new acquaintance… Read More »
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 multi-channel strategy, an effective governing body, and the right people, processes, and technologies to support… Read More »
If there was Pulitzer prize for achievement in ambiguous terminology, contact center “analytics” would certainly be in the running. Seemingly every vendor has a solution – e.g., speech analytics, data analytics, text analytics, performance analytics, customer experience analytics – with no consistent naming convention to describe the target use. If you are planning to purchase… Read More »
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 »
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 »