Embracing Remote Work

The ability to work from home continues to top the list of desired benefits for employees seeking better work-life balance. Over the past five to 10 years, technology has enabled the growth of remote work across sectors and professions, and research suggests that nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce will be working remotely by 2025 […]

Creating a Collaborative Virtual Team

The percentage of people working from home has grown exponentially in recent years. New technologies make it so much easier for remote workers to perform their tasks. Creating an environment of collaboration can improve the performance of individuals and teams who don’t work face-to-face. It can also increase worker retention and enhance a caring culture […]

Innovation: What’s the Right Amount for your Contact Center?

Innovation is a requirement in most organizations. Without innovation, businesses will likely struggle to stay relevant and even survive. Most of us have a mandate (implied or explicit) to be innovative. To deliver on that mandate, you need to understand your organization and how it treats innovation. This is particularly true in a dynamic contact […]

The Customer Journey In The Land Of The Smartphone

“The smartphone is becoming the ubiquitous and predominant tool for both selfservice and assisted service.” I want you to join me on a journey to the land of the smartphone. I’m from Portlandia, so I’m going to call this (not the least bit mythical) land Smartphonia. This is an incredibly exciting and compelling adventure that […]

Technology’s Role In The Omnichannel Pursuit

“Enterprises will not achieve an omnichannel customer experience with tools alone. Strategy comes first, followed by the process, integration and organizational elements to drive value from the technology and deliver on the goals.” Omnichannel Is Everywhere—Vendor Marketing, Analyst Articles, Conference Sessions, Client Wish Lists. While touted as a new concept, it doesn’t seem all that […]

Is Email Still A Viable Channel For Your Center?

Everywhere you turn, there is a new app or a new social media tool popping up on smartphones, tablets and laptops. In turn, customer service is becoming more about what you have done for me now, not in one hour, four hours or one business day. It is just not enough! Phone calls may still […]

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  • Customer Engagement

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    Digital Customer Care

    “A fundamental element of providing an excellent customer experience is making it easy for customers to get their questions answered through whichever means they prefer.” [...]
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    All About Ease

    The 1950 movie “All About Eve” starring Bette Davis is a “backstage” story revolving around an aspiring stage actress named Eve Harrington. Tattered and forlorn, [...]
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    Enough of the ideas, where’s the execution?

    I’ve just had the pleasure of chairing a customer engagement conference. There were some great speakers. One of my favourites was Stewart Bromley from Atom [...]
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    Smartworld Launches Cloud Customer Engagement Solutions in the UAE

    The new offering leverages the virtualized capabilities of the Altitude uCI 8 platform to deliver Altitude’s flagship contact center applications in a cloud-based service model. [...]
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  • Technology

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    Let’s Chat About Chatbots

    Those chatbots that pop up on websites, apps or social media platforms may mimic human interaction, but they aren’t there to replace humans. When used [...]
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    Enhance Your Customer Support with Video

    It’s 2019: Your customers are going to expect immediate communication and results. At one time, sure, this seemed like a lot to ask for. But [...]
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    Collaboration Just Might Be Your Silver Bullet

    A few universal truths guide contact centers, and one is that everyone seeks “efficiency and effectiveness.” Efficiency includes timely responses and (relatively) short contact handling. [...]
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    Chatbots in the Contact Center

    With consumers increasingly expecting anywhere, anytime access to conduct simple transactions, more businesses are deploying chatbots to handle routine and repetitive customer service tasks. Automation [...]
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  • Also in Customer Middle East

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    Al-Futtaim Technologies implements Genesys remote working solutions to ensure business continuity for vital sectors of the UAE’s economy

    Al-Futtaim Technologies has implemented mission-critical mitigation strategies for its contact centre customers. In collaboration with Genesys®, the global leader in customer experience and contact centre solutions, Al-Futtaim has enabled customers service agents to work remotely, ensuring they continue to provide important business functions during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Al-Futtaim Technologies has put into place secure […]

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    Target Those Manual Processes with Automation

    Automation, from Dictionary.com: “The technique, method or system of operating or controlling a process by highly automatic means, as by electronic devices, reducing human intervention to a minimum.” Way too many centers still have way too many manual process steps, negatively impacting the customer experience and the cost of doing business. Long handle times are […]

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    Be Proactive in Protecting Customer Data

    Businesses are facing ever-increasing risks of fraud and cybercrime. Every day brings more reports of security breaches and compromised customer data. Cybercriminals are clever and quick to find new ways to steal customers’ and employees’ personally identifiable information, which can be used to commit fraudulent activities ranging from spamming to accessing online accounts to extortion. […]

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    Win the Fight for a Better Desktop

    It jumped out at me as big news: “Lack of and/or bad desktop tools (CRM, KM, Collaboration, etc.)” took the No. 1 spot on our challenges list for 2019. About 20% of participants put this in their top three challenges. That data confirms what we see in countless projects. Centers have many applications, from core […]

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    Speech Analytics in 2019 and Beyond: With Change Comes Opportunity

    If you’ve been lucky enough to be in the audience when an engaging speaker hits the stage, you know that his or her first words come with authority. Because of that, everyone else’s ears perk up a little bit, the notebooks and pens come out to scribble down the firehose of information being shared, and […]

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    It’s Time to Rethink Your Approach to Supporting Customer Service Agents

    Building powerful and engaging customer experiences through the contact center requires several important ingredients—just-in-time and in-context analytics, artificial intelligence for self-service and after-contact work, seamless omnichannel options for customers, and fair, accurate scheduling. But one of the most critical components are the contact center agents themselves. Representatives live on the front lines and they are […]

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    Guide to a Successful Vendor Relationship

    Maintaining successful vendor relationships is crucial to gaining the competitive edge in the contact center industry. Every business relationship comes with its own unique set of challenges, especially when you have one or more vendors involved. As a contact center veteran for the past 25+ years, on both the BPO and owner/operator sides of the […]

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    Voice-First Experiences Offer Help in the Moment

    Fresh off another holiday season, Amazon, Google and other tech companies saw record sales of voice-activated devices. More Americans can ask Siri, Alexa or their Google Assistant to tell them the weather, the news, their favorite music or even play a game—without ever having to lift a finger. My Jeopardy knowledge is getting better everyday. […]

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    Innovative Training for the Contact Center

    Frontline agents are under pressure to perform in a role that has become increasingly challenging due to more complex products and services, constantly updating information, and an internet-savvy, informed customer base. It takes a lot of knowledge and confidence to deliver a quality service experience on a call-by-call basis under such circumstances, even for seasoned […]

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    How to Put Your Machine Data to Work

    As consumer goods become increasingly commoditized and compete on features and pricing, many businesses are focusing their attention on delivering excellent customer service to build customer loyalty. For many businesses, this will require a reinvention of their approach to customer service. It can no longer be just a “support” function—it needs to evolve into a […]

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    Does AI Make Agents Happier?

    The growth of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered self-service in contact centers understandably raises job-security questions for agents—will my job still exist in five years? Three years? Next year? The reality is that AI is far more likely to serve as a resource assistant to agents than it is to take over their jobs. Today, and for […]

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    What’s New and What’s Next for Your Center?

    As we end 2018 and reflect on what’s ahead in 2019, it seems like a good time to think about what’s new and what’s next in contact center technology. My team of consultants identified the top things that we see dominating contact center technology discussions. While this is a bit of a look into the […]

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    Could Your New Seasonal Employee Be a Robot?

    As a society, we’ve been fascinated with robots since the mid-1950s. My favorite was Rosie from The Jetsons—I’d love a robot maid! While we are still some ways off from having animatronic co-workers and household help, we do have software robots that—through robotic process automation (RPA)—can help improve the performance of today’s contact center agent. […]

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    Compliance and the Contact Center: A Proactive Approach Works Best

    Compliance violations draw big penalties today. We’ve all seen the headlines. When 134 million credit card details were exposed in 2015 at Heartland Payment Systems—a breach of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)—the company not only paid an estimated $145 million in compensation, but it also was prevented from doing what the company […]

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    ROI, ROI, Wherefore Art Thou ROI?

    Just for fun, let’s start this technology article with some English literature and vocabulary. I chose the title hoping it would capture your attention, but there’s method to my madness. Most of us think that “wherefore” means “where”—as in, Where is the Return on Investment (ROI)? But Shakespeare’s Juliet said, “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art […]

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    How AI Will Change the Nature of Contact Center Work

    There is no doubt that artificial intelligence, robotics and automation in the contact center offer the potential to drive faster, more consistent around-the-clock service and deliver higher customer satisfaction. Or that senior executives are enthralled with the possibilities for enhancing products and services, automating routine tasks and improving decision-making. While organizations forge ahead with plans […]

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    How to Elevate Your Customer and Agent Experience

    A Sponsored Article by Monet Software The contact center world is getting increasingly more complex. New technologies and communication channels are coming out every year, and customers’ and employees’ expectations are growing as fast. It can be challenging to keep pace and keep everyone happy. Now might be a good time to reevaluate the tools […]

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    You Can’t Afford Not to Pursue Knowledge Management

    Knowledge Management (KM) may be the single most impactful technology to help centers address key goals: Reduce workload through greater self-service and shorter handle times Improve First-Contact Resolution (FCR) rate, and with it, the customer experience Enable agents to handle increasingly diverse and complex contacts without extensive training and specialization Contact center leadership understands the […]

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    THE EVOLUTION OF CUSTOMER SERVICE: LANDLINE TO AI

    Back in the day when you had to call for a cab instead of opening up the Uber or Lyft app, the only way to contact customer service was by calling… from your landline. We’ve come a long way and today the typical contact center now supports an average of nine communication channels between voice, […]

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    Jeddah-based Frontliners Boosts Contact Centre Efficiency with Altitude Software

    Altitude Software, a global provider of omnichannel solutions to deliver great customer experiences, today announced that FRONTLINERS Contact Center Outsourcing, a major customer service provider in the Middle East, has implemented the latest Altitude Xperience release to ensure excellence in customer care delivery and handle the growth of its outsourcing operations in the Kingdom of […]

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    Clamping Down On Nuisance Calls

    Nuisance calls are becoming a real problem in the industry. We have all been there, whether it is someone constantly ringing you about an accident you may have been in or some robotic voice advising you on PPI. Some businesses continue to break the law through their persistence. As it stands at the moment only […]

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