The 9 Characteristics of Highly Successful Outbound Care

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Thursday, August 25, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »

 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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Basic Featured of Unified Desktop

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Tuesday, August 23, 2011   |   [1] Leave a Comment »

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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Multi Channel Preference Survey for the Banking Industry

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Monday, August 15, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »

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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Driving the Customer Experience and Top Line with an Integrated VoC

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Monday, August 8, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »

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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Additional Highlights from Call Center Week 2011

Posted By Larry Matte   |   Wednesday, June 29, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »

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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Call Center Week – June 2011

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Tuesday, June 28, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »

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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Hosted Contact Center Vendor Satisfaction Analysis

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Wednesday, June 8, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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,...continue reading this post »

Consumer Channel Preference Survey

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Thursday, May 19, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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...continue reading this post »

Using Multi-Channel Analytics

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Wednesday, May 18, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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...continue reading this post »

The Impact of Real Time Solutions

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Wednesday, May 11, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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...continue reading this post »

Communication Channels Foster Stronger Customer Relationships

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Tuesday, May 3, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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...continue reading this post »

Quality Assurance 2.0, The Rebirth of Contact Center QA

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Wednesday, April 20, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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...continue reading this post »

Speech Analytics For Business Value

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Monday, April 18, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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...continue reading this post »

Winning Strategies for Next-Gen Care

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Friday, April 15, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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. tellme
A new white paper from Tellme, Winning Strategies for Next-Gen Care,  discusses the three C’s -...continue reading this post »

Three Shortcomings of Tranditional QA Systems

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Thursday, April 14, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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‘...continue reading this post »

Contact Center Quality Assurance

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Tuesday, April 5, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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...continue reading this post »

First Contact Resolution and the Call Center

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Monday, March 21, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »

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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Insurance as a Commodity: How Are You Keeping Customers Loyal?

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Tuesday, March 8, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »

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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Using Data in Smart Ways for a More Effective Customer Experience

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Thursday, February 24, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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...continue reading this post »

Common Obstacles Eroding Customer Loyalty

Posted By Sheri Greenhaus   |   Tuesday, February 15, 2011   |   [0] Leave a Comment »
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...continue reading this post »