E-mail has never been popular in business environments, so reports of its death are celebrated
If e-mail is going to die, however, it will be long and slow, with new approaches requiring e-mail integration at the very least
Not long after e-mail went mainstream in late 1980s people started to complain about it. In fact, it was nearly instantaneous. At first there was a hint of pride embedded in complaints about the number of e-mails received – the eye-rolling moan about the “hundreds of e-mails each day” that really served to illustrate the complaining party’s indispensable magnificence.
Social media as a potential source of strategic information in the contact center has been a serious consideration for the past two years as social media Web sites have become a channel for individuals venting and/or boasting regarding their customer service and business interactions.
Many businesses have jumped to quick conclusions regarding the value of social media and what should be done with its information relative to other data currently available to agents. It is becoming apparent that more thought, time and effort is required before the marketplace settles on strategies that will optimize this potentially valuable flow of information.
Over the last decade many call centers have made the transition from a single channel, voice-only solution to multichannel contact centers. In addition to customer self-service channel access, which includes Web browser and interactive voice response (IVR) interfaces, end users now expect to have additional agent-assisted channels such as e-mail, fax and chat accessible to handle their corporate interactions available at their discretion. Over the past two years yet another very tempting channel of access has become available to customers seeking to get their customer service issues resolved – social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others. Some contact center managers have been investigating social media data as the nirvana of customer care solutions. And many contact center vendors, including Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Interactive Intelligence and Siemens now incorporate interfaces to popular social media sites into their contact center application functionality. This enables corporations to monitor social media site feeds for both negative and positive mentions of their company by customers and prospects and actually put relevant social media interactions into to contact center queues along with voice calls, chats and e-mails for agent consideration, handling and resolution. Continue reading “Is Your Contact Center Ready to Jump on the Social Media Bandwagon?”→
Experience-level agreements offering guarantees beyond connectivity are an aspirational concept.
But competitive market drivers are pushing service providers in this direction, which is encouraging.
One of the 2012 IT market predictions I discussed during the Current Analysis webinar in December related to so-called experience-level agreements. As I noted during the session, predictions sometimes are not really predictions at all, rather, they are expectations or hopes. The development of experience-level agreements certainly falls in the latter category, for the desire of service providers to gain differentiation by changing the game in relation to their commitment to customers is truly aspirational at this point. Continue reading “Time to Take Experience to Another Level”→
Mobility will continue to be a huge priority for enterprises in 2012, with BYOD, mobile apps, mobile security, and tablet adoption as major themes.
How is the supplier ecosystem responding to the needs of business customers, and what will we see from them in 2012?
2011 was a busy year for enterprise mobility, as it was the year of the tablet (or at least the iPad) explosion; BYOD support became a priority (even beyond the U.S.); there was a surge in the development of mobile applications; mobile security finally gained precedence; the availability of LTE in the U.S. became widespread enough to matter; M2M deployments grew in the automotive, utility, and health care verticals – we could go on and on. Suffice it to say that while enterprises are becoming increasingly dependent on mobile devices and applications, the supplier ecosystem (wireless operators, IT service providers, handset/tablet vendors, mobile application developers, enterprise infrastructure equipment vendors, and platform providers for TEM, MDM, mobile security, and mobile application enablement) has stepped up initiatives to generate revenues by satisfying the enterprise’s hunger for mobile solutions. So, what were some of the key service launches in 2011 among these vendors and service providers, and what do we see as their priorities for 2012? Continue reading “Enterprise Mobility 2012: What Can Businesses Expect in the New Year?”→
Enterprise adoption of now-generation collaboration tools has been slower than expected
This could change in 2012 – if suppliers get the solutions right
The calendar made its ritual shift from one year to the next over the weekend – just another day, to be sure, but one that no doubt triggered a flurry of Facebook updates and a torrent of Twitter tweets with even casual users joining the devotees in contemporary online social revelry. Texting is so last century. And as for “Happy New Year” phone calls? Well, I did ring my octogenarian parents, and didn’t even use video. Continue reading “Productive Collaboration a Target for 2012”→
LTE bandwidth will make tablets and smartphones even more powerful tools.
Reliability remains fundamental for all mobile solutions.
2012 will see the launch of Long Term Evolution (LTE) services in the UK. It is tempting to see this as the beginning of a revolution in delivering mobile services. Trials of LTE have already occurred in the UK, with BT and Everything Everywhere partnering to run trials in Cornwall whilst O2 has run its own trials in London. The promised increase in bandwidth from around 14 Mbps up to around 50 Mbps, and even above 100 Mbps in the longer term, certainly seems to offer a lot of potential. However, the question must be asked: what extra advantages does this bandwidth offer business users? Even for consumer users watching YouTube video clips, 14 Mbps is usually more than sufficient bandwidth. In theory, LTE supports a maximum speed of up to 150 Mbps on current technology. However, when deployed in the real world, BT has predicted that 30 Mbps will be the maximum likely speed (and then only during low-usage periods), whilst Everything Everywhere has suggested that speeds will be between 2 Mbps and 40 Mbps. Continue reading “LTE: Revolution or Evolution for Business Users?”→
The enterprise’s motivation in driving customers to do more via the mobile channel should be to provide a highly differentiated customer experience, enhance the overall lifetime value of the customer to the enterprise, and reduce operational costs.
Due to the growing popularity of mobile phones as a channel of access to customer service centers and the customer’s natural aversion to an IVR interface, it will be essential to allow customers to shift from a mobile, self-service mode to live agent assistance as simply as possible.
In my October 13th blog posting, “Step One in Mobilizing Your Contact Center: Send Your Agents Home,” I suggested that an initial step in mobilizing a contact center might be to implement an at-home agent strategy. In this posting, I would like to broach the issue of planning and preparing for interactions with clients who will be using mobile phones more often in the future. Preparing for increased mobile traffic will be essential to maintaining and/or improving current customer satisfaction and preparing for the younger generation of customers who will demand easy remote access to your customer service communications infrastructure. Continue reading “Step Two in Mobilizing Your Contact Center: Create a Continuous and Seamless Customer Experience”→
The human-centricity of collaboration software invites innovation driven from many disparate industries and technologies.
Natural interface design, information foraging techniques and game theory are set to change the collaboration landscape in 2012.
There are few certainties in this world. And yet, as if bound by a cosmological force greater than the pull of gravity itself, at this time every year, those of us in the technology industry feel an unshakable pull, an unrelenting need to prognosticate. I am in no way immune to such innate stipulations, so it is with great pleasure that I bring to you my own forecast for 2012’s enterprise collaboration platform marketplace. But, just to keep things interesting, what follows are the three most unusual yet profoundly influential trends I think we are likely to see play out this coming year. Continue reading “Unusual Suspects Set to Move the Collaboration Space in 2012”→
Service provider consolidation should be good for business customers as providers compete to develop compelling services.
Businesses should proceed with caution if their providers are moving into new service areas.
2011 was a merger-heavy year that also included Windstream’s acquisition of PAETEC, CenturyLink’s purchase of Qwest and Savvis, EarthLink’s purchase of One Communications and Time Warner Cable’s purchase of NaviSite. While each carrier had its own reasons for making its acquisition – increasing size and footprint, and improving financial conditions were two big drivers – these carriers are all interested in moving upmarket, whether to win mid-size businesses or larger enterprises. Enhancing business services and building up the customer base to support this transition were key elements behind these transactions. In many cases, the acquirers were strong in mass market (i.e., residential and very small business) services, a tough market that can have high levels of churn and pricing pressure. Carriers are looking at increased use of mobile devices in the workplace and interest in cloud-based service models as the way to move away from commodity offers to business services, creating a revenue stream with strong growth potential. Windstream and CenturyLink are both moving from their rural local exchange carrier (LEC) roots to be national communications providers. Their respective acquisitions add business customers and services, including hosting, managed services and cloud service options. Similarly, Time Warner Cable’s NaviSite purchase added advanced services that are in demand from larger businesses. EarthLink acquired New Edge Networks in 2006: In 2010-2011 the carrier “took it up a notch”, making a string of purchases (One Communications, Deltacom and STS Telecom) to expand the reach and depth of its network footprint, and to develop managed IT services for multi-site businesses and distributed enterprises. Continue reading “Will Recent Telecom Mergers be a Boon to Enterprises?”→
Financial market-related worries are causing major corporate shifts among UC solution developers.
IT buyers should ensure UC solution developers’ problems are not passed on to them.
Many major developers of UC solutions are in a state of disarray thanks in part to the financial markets. Cisco, in response to investor complaints about its stagnant stock price, is in the latter phases of a corporate re-organization that saw major shifts in its business strategy and widespread layoffs. Alcatel-Lucent, in what many believe to be a bid to raise a quick $1.5 billion in cash to help it make good on promises for a financial turnaround, is excising its Genesys contact center business from the larger enterprise organization – something that for years the company said it would never do. Moreover, Avaya is preparing itself for an IPO to help pay back investor Silver Lake and reduce the debt incurred from its 2009 acquisition of Nortel’s enterprise business.Continue reading “Wall Street Occupies the Thoughts of UC Developers”→
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