Tag: Contact Center

Mobile Self-Help Applications Continue to Miss Customer Expectations

by , posted in Mobilize
Ken Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Customers’ expectations for high-quality mobile self-help solutions are growing rapidly and now higher than ever, yet customers continue to be disappointed by the solutions that are ubiquitous today.
  • Brand assessments and Net Promoter Score (NPS) evaluations are closely linked to the customer’s perception of a company’s ability to meet customer service needs.  Successful mobile solutions will be a critical element of positive customer assessments in the future.

Just about a year ago, I wrote a blog entry about the growing need to connect mobile self-service and agent-assisted customer service into a continuous and seamless customer experience.  The basic message was that providers of customer service technologies need to better accommodate the growing number of customers using their mobile devices to access customer service on demand.  It was somewhat uplifting recently to see the findings of a market research study performed under the sponsorship of the VHT Corporation (formerly Virtual Hold) that quantified and corroborated many of the underlying drivers which motivated me to write the original piece. Continue reading “Mobile Self-Help Applications Continue to Miss Customer Expectations” →

Unified Communications Is More a Way of Working Than a Technology

by Gary Barton, posted in Communicate
Gary Barton
Gary Barton

Summary Bullets:

  • SMEs should talk to providers about the benefits of UC solutions and demand that providers present solutions with broader efficiency rather than a specific vendor or technology.
  • SMEs should consider UC as a way of improving both internal working practices (e.g., hot-desking) and customer service (e.g., contact centres).

Demand for unified communications (UC) solutions seems to be growing, but remains far from achieving critical mass.  SMEs often ask why a business should pay for features such as IM or shared workspace when services such as Skype and Dropbox provide some of that functionality for free.  An obvious answer to this is security and reliability; a business-quality solution should provide a much more stable service than free applications.  However, it is not an unfair question for SMEs to ask.  Paying for a suite of UC services is likely a waste of money if working practices are not changed to best utilise those services.  So, SMEs should be wary of UC underachieving unless providers show how it can help increase customers’ efficiency. Continue reading “Unified Communications Is More a Way of Working Than a Technology” →

Video in the Contact Center: A Solution Looking for a Market and Finding Modest Niches

by , posted in Communicate
Ken Landoline
Ken Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Video applications are flooding the marketplace, making large gains in mindshare if not market share.  The technology has become better, simpler to implement and manage, and less costly to maintain.
  • Despite the popularity and growth of video in general, video conferencing penetration of the contact center has been minimal at best.  Implementation of the technology remains limited to niche segments of the customer care/helpdesk marketplace.

It seems video conferencing technology is infiltrating just about everything we do today.  Immersive telepresence, desktop video, room-based video, and mobile video on smartphones and tablets are becoming commonplace as the technology gets better and the cost and complexities of video solutions diminish.  Given this increasing acceptance of video in our lives, I wonder if and when video-enabled contact centers will become a reality.  As I discuss the topic with customer care executives and vendors of contact center applications, most tend to agree that there is a value proposition for video in the customer care environment.  The future benefits they see include video’s potential to enhance personalization, promote customer loyalty, and improve sales effectiveness as agents and customers see each other eye to eye.  Others mention video’s potential to enhance self-service functionality with pushed video clips as well as improvements in the wait in queue with the use of targeted advertising clips (i.e., video brochures).  In addition, customer care executives generally agree that the proper use of video in the contact center could be a significant competitive differentiator for those that get there first and develop the optimal blueprint for success. Continue reading “Video in the Contact Center: A Solution Looking for a Market and Finding Modest Niches” →

High Definition Voice, a Boon to the Contact Center – Really?

by , posted in Communicate
Ken Landoline
Ken Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • As VoIP and SIP become commonplace in the contact center environment, high definition voice is a potentially appealing enhancement to improve agent/customer communications, which some believe would result in shortened call times and therefore reduced phone bills.
  • However, with complaints about customer service escalating, there seem to be more pressing customer service issues to tackle that cannot be solved by simply broadening the bandwidth of the voice connection in order to improve audio quality.

Recently I have been reading and hearing a great deal about how high definition (HD) voice is, or soon will be, changing the world of voice services. The major cellular carriers are planning to introduce HD voice on their mobile phone connections in the coming year, the new Apple iPhone 5 has HD voice capabilities, audio and videoconferencing providers are already offering HD voice as an enhancement to their teleconferencing portfolios, and several landline carriers (at least those outside the U.S.) are providing HD capabilities on their public phone networks. However, for HD voice to really make a difference the connection must be HD quality (between 50 Hz on the low end and 7 kHz or higher on the high end) from end-to-end, as opposed to standard voice lines that transmit between 300 Hz and 3.4 kHz. Therefore, it is not likely that customers calling into a contact center today can be connected via an end-to-end HD voice connection and that HD voice will improve the quality of the conversation between customers and agents. Continue reading “High Definition Voice, a Boon to the Contact Center – Really?” →

Contact Center Investments Make Good Cents

by Jeremiah Caron, posted in IT Leader
Jerry Caron
Jerry Caron

Summary Bullets:                

  • Customer service in general and contact centers in particular play a crucial role in the health and image of virtually any business
  • The contact center market is stepping up with innovations to meet growing demands, and IT departments and business leaders should carefully examine their level of investment given the importance

The annual global spend on advertising, or customer acquisition, is roughly $500 billion. The customer relationship management (CRM), or cross-selling, market stands at approximately $50 billion. The contact center slice of the pie is $9 billion. These figures were trotted out at last week’s Genesys G-Force conference in Barcelona by the company’s top sales executive in an effort to make the case that perhaps enterprises need to adjust their priorities a bit. That Genesys—one of the contact center market leaders—would make that argument is hardly surprising, but given the irrefutable influence that customer service in general and contact center activities in particular have on brands, the fundamental point sits on a solid foundation despite the self-serving platform upon which is was delivered. Continue reading “Contact Center Investments Make Good Cents” →

Harnessing Big Data in the Contact Center: A Slow but Worthwhile Struggle

by , posted in Communicate
K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Contact centers have been dealing with the ‘big data’ issue for years as they strive to develop the elusive 360-degree view of the customer across an assortment of structured and unstructured data collected from billions of customer interactions each year.
  • Despite a long history of dealing with big data, there has been little progress in utilizing the information to optimize operations in most contact centers, and thanks to a lack of centralized management capabilities, data silos continue to be a major hindrance to the development of the ‘intelligent enterprise.’

Managers dealing with contact centers on a daily basis are perplexed with the industry’s sudden fixation with big data since they have been obsessed with the issue for more than thirty years in their voice call centers.  Now, the shift to the multichannel contact center, through which recorded phone calls, e-mails, faxes, Web chats, social media, and survey feedback data flow, makes the challenge even more complex and unwieldy.  How to deal with the volume, velocity, and variety of data moving through the multichannel contact center today and use the information to improve enterprise operations is a discussion worth having if we ever hope to reach the dream of the much-discussed ‘intelligent enterprise.’ Continue reading “Harnessing Big Data in the Contact Center: A Slow but Worthwhile Struggle” →

Is It Time to Abandon Your Interactive Voice Response System?

by , posted in Communicate

K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Customer complaints regarding the IVR interface with customer service are so plentiful that many customers and companies wonder if they may not be achieving the purposes for which they were designed: to speed up service, reduce company costs, and improve customer satisfaction and longevity.
  • More intelligent IVRs and the expanding use of smartphones/tablets by consumers have the potential to alleviate today’s major IVR frustrations.  They can eliminate unnecessary interactions and enable visual IVR functionality allowing customers to navigate more easily through menu choices. 

I recently saw the results of a study done by New York University that said 49% of the people surveyed believed that use of interactive voice response (IVR) systems in customer service environments benefits neither the customer nor the company.  Only 15% of respondents felt that, as customers, they received any benefit from this common self-service tool being used by enterprises of all sizes today.  With this negative perception of IVRs being so widespread, you may wonder what is driving the growing use of the technology.  Well, to be honest, there are a few benefits to both customers and companies that originally brought IVRs to prominence in customer care circles.  First of all, IVRs enable companies to extend service hours without having to staff expensive live contact centers on a 24×7 basis.  Secondly, they do reduce queue times, because it has been shown that approximately two-thirds of calls coming into contact centers are fairly simple requests that effective IVRs can handle very well, freeing up live agents to take more complex calls requiring human interaction.  Finally, IVRs provide a sense of privacy or anonymity to consumers who may be calling to verify they are overdrawn on their checking account or late on a payment – facts they may not want to discuss with a live person.  So, don’t throw away your IVR just yet. Continue reading “Is It Time to Abandon Your Interactive Voice Response System?” →

The Smartphone and the Tablet: Catalysts of Change in Mobile Customer Care

by , posted in Mobilize

K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Today, there are more mobile phones in service in the U.S. than there are people.  It is estimated that 40% of these phones are smartphones, and this percentage will likely double in the next four to five years.
  • Smartphones and tablets offer a broad range of functionality that will improve the mobile customer service offerings of enterprise contact centers.  To date, contact center application providers have only scratched the surface of the many possibilities.

In my December 22, 2011 blog entry, “Step Two in Mobilizing Your Contact Center: Create a Continuous and Seamless Customer Experience,” I discussed the importance of providing a smooth transition from self-service to live agent assistance on the mobile phone.  Since that blog was published, no fewer than four contact center software providers (Genesys, Interactive Intelligence, NICE Systems, and Virtual Hold Technology) have announced or introduced such functionality to take advantage of the advanced capabilities available on increasingly ubiquitous smartphones and tablets.  While this is very encouraging, I see it only as an initial step in capitalizing on the capabilities of these devices. Continue reading “The Smartphone and the Tablet: Catalysts of Change in Mobile Customer Care” →

The Perfect Customer Interaction: You Will Know It When You Experience It

by , posted in Communicate

K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:         

  • Most customers would probably not be able to describe the perfect customer interaction until they experience it.  So, asking customers to describe their expectations will probably be an unsuccessful effort on your part.
  • ‘Personalization,’ ‘up-selling,’ and ‘cross-selling’ are often perceived as negative terms in customer service efforts.  However, experience tells me that, if used appropriately, they can enrich customer interactions and often lead to customer elation.

Most savvy customer service executives would tell you their goal is to use personal information to cross-sell and up-sell every customer that contacts their enterprise.  It’s just good business, right?  However, the terms ‘personalization,’ ‘up-sell,’ and ‘cross-sell’ have negative connotations with many customers who are worried about protecting their privacy and being forced to buy something they do not need.  Allow me to relay an experience I had with my financial institution that, I am certain, will open your mind to the benefits of personalization, up-selling and cross-selling. Continue reading “The Perfect Customer Interaction: You Will Know It When You Experience It” →

Customer Surveys: Balancing Information Needs with Customer Survey Fatigue

by , posted in Communicate
K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:         

  • Collecting customer opinions regarding your company’s service is crucial to monitoring company performance and improving levels of customer satisfaction and longevity.
  • The excessive use of surveys today is breeding customer fatigue and scorn for the companies that impose them on their customers at a rapidly increasing rate.

We all know that communicating with our customers is a critical part of good customer service.  In my last blog, I discussed the importance of social media for capturing customers’ perceptions.  Today, I will discuss proactive customer surveys as a means of measuring customer satisfaction.  The use of post-interaction surveys has grown dramatically over the past few years.  Surveys have become so important that two large contact center optimization software companies, NICE Systems and Verint Systems, have made acquisitions in the past year (Fizzback and Vovici, respectively) to boost their customer survey offering capabilities. Continue reading “Customer Surveys: Balancing Information Needs with Customer Survey Fatigue” →