CUSTOMER — SEPTEMBER 2013

Bringing Voice of the Customer to the C-Suite

The Chief Customer Officer has become widespread at companies of all sizes. The notion of a creating such a position in the C-suite began to take hold about a decade ago. Today CCOs exist at 40 percent of $1 billion-plus enterprises, 46 percent of enterprises with less than $250 million in revenues, and about 15 percent of mid-sized companies, says Curtis N. Bingham, the Chief Customer Officer Council's founder and executive director, who just completed a study revealing these numbers.Read More >>>

FEATURES

Strategic Solution Series

If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It
If you were asked to draw a line exactly 17 cm long, could you do it? You could probably give it a good guess, but unless you had a ruler in your back pocket you just can't be sure.

DELIVER

How to Build a Better IVR
While I am sure the majority of contributors for this month's issue of How to Build a Better IVR will be focused on inbound IVR processes like customer service, I feel compelled to answer this question from the outbound perspective.

DELIVER

Verint Details its Business Impact Solution Initiative
Verint Systems Inc. has introduced what it calls a robust set of products to address specific business needs. Under the Business Impact Solution umbrella, Verint now offers High-Efficiency Performance Management, Regulatory Compliance, Personalized Guidance, and Operational Excellence offerings.

DELIVER

Candidate Pre-Screening: How to Better Predict Contact Center Agent Success
Contact center representatives draw on an array of skills to achieve the level of customer engagement, call handling efficiency and revenue production companies expect, and most industry insiders recognize the inherent complexities of these jobs.

DELIVER

How Telecom Companies Can Use Technology to Improve Customer Service
Telecom companies often struggle to achieve two important metrics - customer satisfaction and retention. In the digital era, it's becoming increasingly difficult for telecom companies to deliver a high level of customer service across new technological branches and far-reaching geographic areas..

engage

Winning Over The New Consumer
When the economy started to struggle in late 2008, so did the consumer - emotionally as well as financially. At first, consumers, like businesses, contentedly waited for the economy to bounce back. But, as the bounces took longer and were far less impressive than expected, consumer confidence began to wane.

engage

Hyfiniti Delivers Next-Generation Social Analytics, Engagement, and Mobile Care
A company that got its start a couple years ago offering a mobile call-back customer service application called Hold-Free has since introduced two additional services, which Hyfiniti CEO Lance Fried says are more in the social vein of customer service.

ACCOLADES

TMC Labs Innovation Awards Uncovers Some Exciting New Solutions
2013 marks the 14th annual TMC Labs Innovation Awards for CUSTOMER magazine. Each year TMC Labs analyzes dozens of applicants to find the most unique and innovative products. In past years we've had several innovative workforce management solutions win, and this year is no exception.

ASK THE EXPERTS

Contact Center Metrics that Matter
Contact centers thrive on performance metrics. Yet while standard metrics like average speed of answer (ASA), average handle time (AHT), hold time, and abandon rate are still widely accepted, they aren't always relevant beyond phone-based transactions.

SUCCESS

Multichannel Strategy Drives Customer, Employee Experience to New Heights
Efficiency, reduced costs, increased customer satisfaction and boosted revenues are on the wish list of every organization. In the contact center, multichannel communication systems are turning these goals into reality by converging management of any support service medium into one comprehensive tool.

TARGET

Rethink Your Contact Center for 2013 and Beyond
In 2012, Western Power's contact center beat 1,500 contenders to be named the best medium-sized contact center in the Asia Pacific at the Contact Center World Awards. The facility receives 100,000 calls per month and answers 90 percent of them within 30 seconds. But that's hardly remarkable in this business.