An Example of Poor Customer Experience
A few months ago, my wife and I decided to move our family to the foothills just outside of Denver, CO., right along the edge of the beautiful Rocky Mountains. We have a spacious five-acre lot, which is mostly rolling hills and towering Ponderosa Pine trees. It’s our little piece of paradise. Unfortunately, there aren’t quality Internet providers out here in “paradise.” As a matter of fact, the only option is satellite Internet. When we moved in, we decided to go with the company that advertised the most. For the sake of this post, I will refer to them as Badsignal.net.
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Topics:
better customer service,
Customer Experience,
Guest Blog,
Customer Churn,
Service Charges
Employees view working from home as a positive privilege
Recent data presented by the Flex+Strategy Group suggests that one-third of U.S. employees telecommute on a regular basis. And, according to a study conducted by the Ethisphere Institute and Jones Lang LaSalle a few years ago, it appears that there are some significant ways that companies can benefit from giving their workers this option.
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Topics:
Guest Blog,
Home Agents,
Telecommute,
Work at Home,
Customers,
Customers-How To
After years of call center jobs being outsourced abroad, companies are now bringing them back to the U.S., USA Today reports. Currently 5 million Americans are employed by call center providers. Industry experts believe that advances in technology, increasing oversees labor costs and the fact that customers were demanding better service have contributed to the trend.
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Topics:
Call Center Growth,
Customer Retention,
Guest Blog,
Outsourcing
We recently wrote an article about how more companies are outsourcing business functions. Additionally, a Forbes study found that companies outsource more services as they become more competitive. Now, we want to share our knowledge about the increasingly popular onshore model.
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Topics:
At-Home Agents,
Guest Blog,
Outsourcing,
Customers,
Customers-How To,
Home shoring
Market is Hotter Than Ever
2015 has been an excellent year for the cloud-based contact center infrastructure market. The total number of seats increased by 49.9%, from 1,302,788 in August 2014 to 1,953,249 in the same period in 2015. The size of deals is growing in many verticals, as is worldwide adoption of inbound, outbound, and blended cloud-based contact center infrastructure solutions.
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Topics:
Contact Center Infrastructure,
Guest Blog,
Infrastructure,
System Reliability,
Technology
On July 10, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Declaratory Ruling and Order regarding the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) in response to 21 petitions for TCPA rules clarification. This ruling followed a declaratory hearing held June 18, and, for the most part, became effective upon issuance. These “clarifications” triggered disagreement among the Commissioners themselves, who were sharply split on the ruling, passing it by a vote of only 3 – 2. Although the order was intended to clarify several issues regarding the use of dialers, it has resulted in greater confusion for companies that sell and use dialing solutions.
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Topics:
Guest Blog,
TCPA Compliance,
Security/Compliance,
TCPA Rules
There is a growing effort to build effective omni-channel contact centers to deliver consistently outstanding customer journeys for today’s consumers, who are demanding service in their channel of choice. The systems and tools available to enterprises have improved dramatically in the last few years, greatly improving an organization’s ability to deliver outstanding service in a cost-effective manner. At the same time, these new capabilities are allowing organizations to capture and respect consumers’ personal and channel preferences.
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Topics:
Guest Blog,
Omni-channel,
Customer Journey,
SMS
On May 27, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a fact sheet that summarizes proposed TCPA rulings Chairman Wheeler has distributed to the other FCC commissioners. Although the fact sheet contains few substantive details— and the full text of the proposed rulings was not released— the rulings are intended to address two dozen pending TCPA petitions. Relevant topics to be addressed in the rulings include the definition of “automatic telephone dialing system” and liability for calls made to reassigned numbers.
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Topics:
FCC,
Guest Blog,
TCPA,
Security/Compliance
For Cloud-Based Contact Centers
All of the vendors have a standard contract that they would like their customers to sign. This document is designed to give them great flexibility in all areas, including service level agreements (SLAs). Prospects are cautioned to carefully review the service level commitments that vendors are willing to make, as they are likely to be slanted in the best interest of the vendor and not users.
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Topics:
Guest Blog,
SLA,
call center software contract,
Contracts
A few years ago the outbound dialing market was written off as “dead.” The Do Not Call (DNC) Registry of 2004 in the US, and similar regulations and requirements in other parts of the world, seemed intent on preventing companies from using outbound dialing solutions to reach their customers. While this interpretation was justified, it wasn’t the true goal of these regulations.
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Topics:
Guest Blog,
TCPA,
Compliance Technologies,
Do Not Call,
HIPAA Compliance