CUSTOMER — NOVEMBER 2012

Fundraising: The Value of the Donor

The recent devastation left behind in the Northeast by Hurricane Sandy has resulted in countless aid campaigns to help victims of this unfortunate event. All those that have helped in the relief efforts should be praised for their donations of goods, money, and time. But, year-round, similar aid efforts are put into action for any number of causes, from medical research to educational services to children's charities and much more. Why? Because such campaigns are successful in aiding their respective causes... Read More >>>

It's Time to Accept Responsibility for Your IVR
Most companies are focusing on adding channels to their customer support, such as live chat, social media and smartphone apps, while simultaneously adding features to enhance their contact centers, such as click-to-call or allowing premium status callers direct access to a live agent (as we've seen with the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card).

How to Retain Customers with Real-Time Engagement
Customer churn is by no means unique to the telecommunications industry. But unlike other industries, success in the telecommunications business is nearly defined by it. In fact, the churn rate is the focal point for most quarterly reviews and reports. What is also particular to this industry is that a greater percentage of customers switch to other providers due to dissatisfaction with customer service - not price, packages or offerings.

How to Engage Your Generation Y Call Center Agents
For anyone tasked with managing a call center, recruiting the right talent is among the primary goals. When the center experiences attrition, management faces the high costs of finding, hiring and training replacement agents. And, as it takes time for new workers to fully orient themselves to the job and the work environment, the call center may not provide the desired level of service to customers, which can impact business results.

Cloud vs. CPE-based Contact Centers: How to Decide which is the Best Match for You
Having technology provided and managed by a third-party away from a customer's premises is not a new idea, with service bureau and application service providers being around for many years. That cloud-based contact center solutions are now hot is down to a mixture of factors, including the recession's negative effect on capital investment, the increasing functionality of hosted applications, and the proven success and general acceptance of cloud-based solutions, particularly those in the CRM sphere. Additionally, the stranglehold that incumbent customer premises equipment telephony providers had on the industry has been loosened by the advent of IP and more open systems, with the net result being a greater choice of solution providers.

Latin America: A New Land of Opportunity for Outsourcing
When most people think about outsourcing, the two prominent locations that come to mind are India and the Philippines. India's BPO sector continues to grow at an astounding rate, with more than 2.77 million employed in the country overall, only to be outdone by the new leader in outsourcing: The Philippines. However, experts have been looking toward Latin America as the new land of opportunity. Countries such as Nicaragua Panama, Colombia and Brazil are positioned as the future venue for BPO. With the combined factors of proximity and cultural affinity to the United States, there doesn't appear to be a better location for BPO practices.

Using Speech Analytics to Drive a Better Customer Experience
Speech analytics is a complex, sophisticated and frequently pricey application that purports to offer great results in terms of contact center performance and a better customer experience. And recent research shows speech analytics is gaining traction in contact centers. According to DMG Consulting, the market has grown to over 3,000 implementations in 2011 from a base of approximately 25 in 2004. So what problems are organizations tackling with speech analytics?

Transforming Customer Care via Big Data
Big data, put simply, refers to datasets that are so large and diverse that traditional data management and analytics tools are incapable of handling them. Big data can be either structured or unstructured, which is important because only about 10 percent of all enterprise data is structured and formatted to cleanly fit into databases and logical organization schema.

Transforming a Measurement Program into a Meaningful Program: 8 Great 'Next Steps'
Post call IVR surveying and customer feedback management has been making its way into the customer experience process now for a few years. At latest count, roughly 6.5 percent of all contact centers globally have adopted the technology. And while an industry-wide ROI benchmark has yet to be established, it's safe to say a majority of centers that have implemented post call survey practices thus far have benefitted by way of customer satisfaction improvement.

Communications Service Providers Target Businesses with Big Data Analytics
Telephone and cable TV companies have long been in the business of moving information. Now many of these network operators are bringing to market solutions to help marketing folks at the businesses they serve more effectively leverage information to reach and upsell customers.