One
of the key priorities for a customer care organization is the
engagement and retention of customers. To strengthen rapport with
customers at scale, some companies are turning to interactive
outbound interactive voice response (IVR) solutions. However,
poorly executed outreach can alienate customers rather than
ingratiate them, so it is important to select a platform that
delivers your ideal customer experience.
Customer service is increasingly viewed as a
strategic element of a product’s...
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Features commonly provided by unified desktop solutions are as
follows:
Single
login/logout - Once the agent logs into the application
they have unified access to multiple applications. There is no need
to log in and out to access data bases or other applications.
Pre-populated screen
pops - Unified desktops rely on the CRM as well as other
sources, such as IVR entries and data gleaned from enterprise data
bases to fully populate screens before the agent takes the call.
All unified desktops pop...
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Since the emergence of multi-channel self-service, there is a
growing disconnect between the typical strategy employed in
telephone self-service design and what many customers actually
need. A new Nuance report details the results of a
commissioned survey which attempts to uncover customer channel
preferences for an array of banking tasks, including
recommendations for optimizing the IVR to both accommodate those
preferences and minimize the frustrations associated with today’s
multi-channel...
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Customer Experience has become the
mantra of senior management looking to enhance revenue and margins.
This is a huge opportunity for whichever department can create
a unified picture of the current CE and then help management to
decide how to manage and improve it. Innovative, data driven
departments as diverse as customer service, quality, consumer
affairs or marketing services could capitalize on this opportunity
to dramatically raise both their visibility and status within the
organization.
Cu...
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The following are some more information on the vendors who
attended the IQPC event.
Analytics
For companies frustrated with isolated or disparate data sources,
360'CRM's latest advances in its InSight data
analytics tool provides new levels of actionable information for
the Call Center or Channel Management practitioner. InSight
not only automatically draws call center performance data in to a
common, universally comparable dashboard and report analytics
library, it also integrates internal...
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The staff of CRMXchange was
present at the IQPC Las Vegas Call Center Week. IQPC did a
commendable job with the content and speakers in the
event. The exhibit hours were long, running close to 11 hours
on day one, but the vendors were pleased with the amount of
interest that people showed in their products and
services.
We traveled the exhibit
hall. Below are some vendor highlights.
Analytics
Contact Solutions
– The Continuous
Improvement Practice (CI) is based on a unique methodology and
supported...
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When considering a hosted contact center infrastructure solution,
references are one of the best ways to gain an understanding of a
vendor’s experience, initial and ongoing service and support,
training and professional services. It’s also a great way to learn
about a product’s performance, ease of use and flexibility.
Although checking references can be time consuming, it’s a great
way to avoid costly surprises.
DMG
Consulting recommends that RFPs ask for the names of at least
five references,...
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NICE Systemsrecently conducted a Consumer Channel Preference Survey on the
communications channels preferred by consumers when contacting
business and service providers. The survey reveals that the role of
the contact center is evolving to "Tier 2" status, that is - for
taking care of escalated service requests that were not addressed
by other channels such as the web or Interactive Voice Response
(IVR). This change in consumer behavior reflects the importance and
strategic role that the contact...
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Your customers are evolving. So are their methods for interacting
with your company. While most customers prefer to pick up the
phone, they now reach out in other ways such as chat, email, and
social forums. Companies are inundated with a myriad of these
unstructured interactions, but lack the ability to synthesize them
into a total understanding of customer needs and desires.
Customer Interaction Analytics allows organizations to analyze
every phone call, chat, email, and tweet and translate...
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If your business is like most, change is the only constant.
Companies that strive to improve customer satisfaction and maximize
revenue opportunities, while keeping up with their ever changing
business environment, will find 'Citizen Development', an effective
strategy to achieve their business objectives. "Citizen
Development" is a unique way for organizations to create new
business applications for consumption by others from scratch, in
parallel with IT and its governance. This shift gives...
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From June through September Opus Research mounted a Web-based
survey to gain insights into the deployment plans and levels of
interest in a variety of channels and networks for customer care
and marketing efforts. Here are the top line findings:
• Transformational times in the Contact Center – Contact center
personnel are increasingly engaged in multi-modal, multi-channel
and social interactions.
• Monitoring and call recording are high profile – In response to
questions about technology in...
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Intelligent QA systems rapidly identify and deliver insights into
critical business issues and opportunities to improve the customer
experience and revenue.
A new
VPI
white paper,
Quality Assurance 2.0, The Rebirth of
Contact Center QA, defines Quality Assurance as:
1) A proactive method for rapidly identifying and resolving
business issues associated with customer interactions.
2) A requirement to minimize liability risk and ensure compliance
with laws, regulations and internal policies.
3) A...
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The purpose of speech analytics is automatically mine for customer
intelligence and performance optimization data within the context
of a recorded voice interaction. Used in conjunction with a contact
center’s recording technology, speech analytics scans recorded
conversations with the objective of finding key words or phrases
that can offer the user insights into such common business and
performance factors
According to Saddletree Research, there are essentially three
business use cases for...
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Consumers today expect customer service to play more than a
transactional role in meeting their needs. They desire service that
fits their connected lives and is enhanced by contextual,
personalized interactions. They seek continuous, ongoing
conversations that work seamlessly so that every agent knows their
history, understands what they have been promised, and values them
as a customer.

A new white paper from Tellme,
Winning Strategies for Next-Gen
Care, discusses the three C’s -...
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According to a new white paper from VPI,
Quality Assurance 2.0, The Rebirth of Contact
Center QA, traditionally QA involved random recording or the
selection of a random sample from all recorded calls from which to
periodically evaluate and score a small number of calls for each
agent. The objective was to confirm that agents exhibit desirable
behaviors, without deviating from prescribed internal rules,
scripts and policies. The outcome of the evaluation was then
reflected in the agents‘...
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The measurement of performance is fundamental to contact center
operations of all sizes. The contact center quality assurance (QA)
measurement process is often one of the main performance data
collection vehicles for management. With the power of
analytics-driven QA, organizations can see the quality of their
operations and customer interactions clearly at all times, along
with early warnings of problems and bottlenecks. However,
many contact centers do they have adequate resources in place...
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First Contact Resolution, the ability to identify, solve and
close the customer’s issue(s) during the first customer/enterprise
contact, may be the foremost KPI in evaluating a contact
center/customer care organization’s overall operating performance
from a business perspective.
Despite the knowledge that a high level of FCR in the contact
center correlates closely with general levels of customer
satisfaction and loyalty, low levels of FCR in customer care
settings remain a significant industry...
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Given the current economic climate,
health, life, and property & casualty insurers have more to
worry about than the risks they cover for their customers.
Increasingly, insurance is becoming a commodity — meaning that
insurance companies have to operate with the lowest cost structure,
the greatest efficiency, and the best customer service to beat out
competitors. For healthcare insurers, the historic healthcare
reform recently enacted introduces new uncertainties for both
service and...
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Customer contact professionals often find themselves awash in data,
but short on the kind of intelligence they need to improve the
customer experience. A new white paper
,
Using Data in Smart Ways for a More Effective Customer
Experience, shows how you can use data to drive positive
experiences that not only increase customer loyalty but also boost
efficiency and the bottom line. The paper discusses
translating data into insights, patterns, and actionable
information to create meaningful and...
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A recent
Harvard Business
Review article authored by Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and
Nicholas Toman,
Stop Trying to
Delight Your Customers, found most customers encounter
loyalty-eroding problems when they engage with customer
service.
56% report having to re-explain an issue
57% report having to switch from the web to the phone
59% report expending moderate-to –high effort to resolve an
issue
59% report being transferred
62% report having to repeatedly contact the company to resolve an
issue
Th...
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