Contact centres are often perceived by businesses as ‘cost centres’, and they are often under pressure to be ever more ‘productive’ or, in other words, be less expensive to run. This is why Cloud technology has been met with such enthusiasm by call centres –and other industries– as it reduces set-up costs. However, savings are only one of the aspects in which the Cloud is beneficial, especially for small and medium businesses. Continue reading
In the first part, we reviewed some technologies that enable more productive contact centre services, like speech analytics, automatic call distributors and predictive diallers. We look at other clever applications that make a real difference in the day-to-day management of a call centre. Continue reading
Emails, phone calls, social media, Instant Messaging, chat and video chat: the communication channels customers use to contact companies are numerous, and so are the technologies accompanying them. Constantly changing, they can be hard to keep track of while running a busy operation. Continue reading
A decade or so ago was the scene of a great exodus, that of call centres being relocated off shore. Driven by the need to control costs, it provided companies with cheaper labour, although it was sometimes to the detriment of quality. However, there have recently been cases of high-profile corporations, such as British Telecoms, one of the biggest players in telephony in the UK, deciding to bring their contact centres home after customer complaints. Continue reading
Self-service AIs are becoming increasingly sophisticated and able to handle more complex queries. This is good news for customers and contact centres as the formers can access simple information without having to wait for an operator to be available, while the latters can re-allocate the freed-up agents to other parts of the contact centre that need human input. Continue reading
Delivering outstanding customer support in the digital age can be quite a challenge. Online services have led us to expect instantaneous resolution 24 hours a day, 7 days a week across a wide range of communication channels; our willingness to wait has greatly diminished and we still want to be able to talk to another human being when we need to. Continue reading
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or PCI DSS is a security standard for companies taking credit card payments from customers who use major credit providers such as Visa, American Express or Visa, and administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. Continue reading
In previous blogs, we have discussed the importance of meeting customers where they want to talk, and how phone calls are becoming a last resort in a customer’s journey. Conventional communication channels have fallen out of favour against digital media such as web chat, social media and, the latest newcomer, Instant Messaging. Continue reading
Digital technology has transformed communications between companies and consumers beyond recognition. Call centres have become ‘contact’ centres to encompass an omni-channel form of customer service. Continue reading