Innovation Enhances the Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure Market The past year was excellent for the cloud-based contact center infrastructure (CBCCI) market. DMG had projected that the market would grow by 22% in 2017, and the actual growth rate was 25.4%. The vast majority of the sales were to existing contact centers whose management made the [...]
Question: Should the business case to acquire an omni-channel cloud-based contact center infrastructure solution be multiple mini-business cases (by channel) or one overall? Answer: A business case, which DMG defines as “a document designed to convince a decision-maker of the need for and benefits (contribution to the bottom line) of an investment,” are not one-size-fits-all. [...]
AI, Automation and Analytics Drive Vast Improvements in Contact Centers The WFO market has come a long way since DMG Consulting began covering this sector 15 years ago. The service economy has undergone many changes, all of which benefit from real-time contact centers, the subject of the book The Real-Time Contact Center, published by Donna [...]
Question: What’s the best way to use contact handle time as a key performance indicator? Answer: The amount of time agents spend handling interactions in each supported channel (e.g., inbound/outbound calls, chats, emails, short message service (SMS)/text, messaging, social media, etc.) is a critical key performance indicator (KPI) for contact centers, and has been one [...]
Question: We’re implementing analytics-enabled quality management to perform automated evaluation of customer interactions. Do we still need to do calibration sessions? Answer: Analytics-enabled quality management (AQM), which leverages capabilities that include speech, text, and desktop analytics to automatically evaluate up to 100% of customer interactions, enhances, but does not completely eliminate, traditional quality management (QM) [...]
Welcome to 2019! 2019 is looking to be a year filled with great innovation and practical applications for contact centers. Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation will be the driving forces behind much of the innovation and transformation that is anticipated during the year. It’s a year in which the number of contact center seats worldwide [...]
Cloud-Based ACDs and Dialers Come of Age Cloud-based contact center infrastructure (CBCCI) vendors have spent most of the last 20 years playing functional catch-up to the leading on-premise vendors. But this is no longer the case. DMG just completed our annual research on the CBCCI sector (see the Abstract for our most recent report on [...]
Question: We’re implementing a balanced scorecard to measure agent and contact center performance. What categories should we evaluate? Answer: There are hundreds of key performance indicators (KPIs) available in most contact centers, as each operating system – automatic call distributor (ACD), dialer, interactive voice response (IVR), recording, workforce management, customer relationship management (CRM) and more [...]
Question: I keep hearing about "smart" contact center solutions that use artificial intelligence. How does this work? Answer: Answer: Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science focused on the development of computer programs and machines to solve complex problems by simulating behaviors associated with intelligent beings. Specific capabilities include learning, reasoning, problem-solving and [...]
It's Time to Replace Traditional QA Contact center quality assurance (QA, also known as quality management (QM)), has been around for over 40 years. The concept and practice of QA is great – using actual agent conversations or written communications to evaluate agents’ performance and provide timely and actionable feedback. The idea has always been [...]
Question: Our customer satisfaction survey response rates are declining. What additional information can we use to determine customer satisfaction? Answer: Contact centers have a wealth of data that provides insight into customer satisfaction and can be used to augment enterprise feedback management (EFM)/surveying results. Here are some suggestions: Speech/text analytics – use contact center analytics [...]
What's New with Workforce Management? 2018 is the most exciting year in decades for the WFM market, with developments in innovation, interest and investment. Vendors are delivering innovation in the form of better user interfaces (UIs) that offer a much-improved experience without sacrificing function. These interfaces are delivering enhanced tools that engage agents and give [...]
The Next Act: The AI-Enabled Contact Center In 2005, 13 years ago, I published the book The Real-Time Contact Center. My goal in sharing the concepts in this book was to provide a technical and operational framework for anyone who uses this “delivery and service” vehicle for customer assistance or sales. The idea behind the [...]
Question: What can we do to attract candidates for contact center agent job openings? Answer: With 2018 US unemployment rates hovering near 18-year lows, contact center leaders need to think outside the box when attempting to fill agent positions. Here are some options: Consider automation to reduce the need for “entry-level” agents – Contact center [...]
Question: How do omni-channel contact centers route interactions? Answer: In an omni-channel contact center, interaction routing is centralized and agents have a comprehensive view of what happens with customers across all channels. In these environments, companies have one unified system that receives, queues, and routes all types of interactions, and is smart enough to identify [...]
