When President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) into law, the healthcare industry was given the mandate to expand public and private insurance coverage while reducing costs and improving outcomes. As the legislation took effect, insurance companies and healthcare providers needed to support a more diverse patient population. Given the… Read More »
If you’re launching a new sales contact center or looking to bolster lead conversions in an existing center, it’s well worth the effort to institute contact center “best practices” to get the most out of your investment. Your staff’s core knowledge of your products and services is an excellent base upon which to build a… Read More »
We are frequently approached by contact center or IT leaders who want outside help with a project but first need to convince the “powers that be” to consider using a consultant. Some of the reasons they seek us out: Lack in-house expertise for the task at hand, often seeking some “best practices” insights or help… Read More »
Contact centers in public utilities face increasing pressure to trim costs and find creative ways to respond. At the same time, customers have elevated service expectations based on their experience with other centers. It’s a real Catch-22. We have worked with many utilities to help them make effective use of technology as a means of… Read More »
Over the years, we’ve watched key players in contact center technology evolve their solution positioning from enterprise communication with contact center (CC) applications, to unified communications (UC), to converging CC and UC. They want the market to take notice as their core technology advances, their product portfolios offer more complete and innovative solutions, and/or they’ve… Read More »
Credit unions today face growing competition and heightened member expectations for an exceptional interaction experience. As a result, their contact centers have to find ways to raise their standards of service, and many engage contact center consultants for expertise and best practices insights. Historically, many credit union contact centers have had a difficult time garnering… Read More »
Managed services (MS) has garnered plenty of energy and enthusiasm in the contact center technology marketplace, both from buyers and sellers. It is perceived as solving problems companies face today, notably IT cost, responsiveness, resource bandwidth, and expertise. The contact center wants more control for strategic and day-to-day changes, and has an increasing need for… Read More »
As companies make decisions about sourcing for new contact center technology, a crucial question to answer is whether to pursue “best-of-breed” (BoB) solutions or solutions that are part of a “suite.” The BoB strategy was common when vendors had a more narrow focus. For example, there were “CTI vendors” or “IVR vendors” and “WFM vendors”… Read More »
We’ve been on our soapbox for years to encourage organizations to adopt the 3 Ms of implementation – Project, Change, and Vendor Management. Project Management (PM) focuses on the tasks associated with an implementation – planning, executing, and completing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet business objectives. Change management (CM)… Read More »
Contact centers always seem to be short on time and resources when it comes to their selection processes for new technology. And most are under pressure to move fast. Here are some common mistakes that don’t serve them over the long haul. ONE: Failure to assess the upside potential of your current solution. If your… Read More »