Question: Our new workforce management (WFM) solution includes gamification capabilities. How should we use this feature? Answer: Gamification can enable employees to earn rewards, recognition, and/or social rank for achieving key performance indicator (KPI)-based goals, helping peers improve performance, successfully completing eLearning activities, adhering to schedules, and much more. Organizations in many industries are leveraging [...]
Vision 2020 We enter the new decade with great momentum in technological innovation. Start-ups and large enterprises are investing billions in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation-based initiatives that are going to change the way we live our lives and conduct business over the next 10 – 20 years. Technologies that have been talked about for [...]
2019 Was a Fantastic Year for Service It’s December, a time when we look at the year in review to see what has changed in the world of service and summarize the major drivers of progress. (Our January 2020 column will discuss the leading drivers of change for 2020, the first year of the new [...]
Question: I’ve used workforce management (WFM) in a contact center, but now I’m managing a back-office team. Can I use WFM here too? Answer: WFM solutions can help back-office (and branch) organizations optimize employee utilization, however these environments require applications that are purpose-built to address their unique needs. First of all, back-office WFM suites need [...]
Question: Is voice biometrics used only for live-agent interactions or does it work with intelligent virtual agents too? Answer: Voice biometrics can provide authentication for interactions that take place with humans as well as with intelligent virtual agents (IVAs). Voice biometrics and IVAs are complementary solutions that deliver enhanced and additional benefits when used in [...]
A Channel is a Channel Headlines shout the power and benefits of the newest “servicing” channels – one day it is social media and the next it is chat. In fact, no single channel is more important than another. What matters is that customers, prospects, partners, and everyone else receives a response in their channel [...]
Making RPA Positive for Employees Robotic process automation (RPA) is a logical approach for companies to take in order to improve productivity and quality. The three primary categories of RPA solutions are: Attended – the ability to “sit side-by-side” with an agent or employee at their desktop application and assist them with their tasks, such [...]
Question: I’ve heard of speech analytics to analyze phone calls; what’s used for the new digital channels? Answer: Interaction analytics (IA), which combines speech and text analytics capabilities, enables enterprises to gain insights from both voice and digital channels. IA solutions convert unstructured recorded and/or live-stream audio and digital customer conversations into transcripts. Once transcribed, [...]
Digital Transformation Initiatives for Contact Centers In contact centers, digital transformation is often thought to mean converting from a multi-channel environment to omni-channel engagement, but it is so much more. While adding digital channels is a step in the right direction and a necessity for contact centers of all sizes, it is just the beginning [...]
Question: Is robotic process automation another name for workflow management software? Answer: Robotic process automation (RPA) and workflow management software applications are different – but complementary – solutions. Both applications are intended to help organizations streamline processes and optimize resources, including the use of automation. While there are some similarities, the differences are significant. Here [...]
Question: Can contact center infrastructure solutions integrate with home-grown servicing systems or only commercially available CRMs? Answer: Although many contact center infrastructure vendors offer pre-built, out-of-the-box integrations with leading customer relationship management (CRM) solutions like Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics, etc., they generally support custom integrations for proprietary applications as well. To integrate with a customer [...]
Call Tracking: Where Phone Calls Enhance Digital Marketing and Service This year we decided to cover a niche IT sector, call tracking, which is growing in importance due to the digital transformation occurring in organizations worldwide. Call tracking is currently attracting a great deal of interest because of its ability to deliver significant improvements in [...]
Question: What’s the difference between customer journey mapping and customer journey analytics? Answer: Customer journey mapping provides enterprises with a visual representation of the touchpoints that prospects or customers traverse when interacting with their organization, from the first touch through the last. While customer journey mapping provides valuable insight into the channels and activities experienced [...]
The Advantages of Analytics-Enabled Quality Management For most of the past 40 years, contact centers have performed quality management (QM) the same way. Calls are identified for evaluation from recordings, and then a QM specialist listens, assesses and completes a monitoring form for each of them. While traditional QM applications have been enhanced over the [...]
Question: I used to hear about multi-channel contact centers, now it’s omni-channel. Are they the same thing? Answer: While there are some surface similarities – both terms refer to contact centers that support customer interactions in more than one voice and/or digital channel – the differences are significant. Multi-channel contact centers manage each channel (e.g., [...]
Making Sense out of the RPA Market The robotic process automation (RPA) market is growing rapidly, and new uses are being identified throughout enterprises continually. Hundreds of vendors around the world have entered the RPA segment, coming from many existing IT sectors such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), contact center infrastructure, [...]
