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The Objectives & Characteristics of Best In Class Contact Centers |
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In this podcast discussion, Forrester analyst Kate Leggett discusses the characteristics of best in class contact centers, the factors causing an evolution from CRM to Customer Experience Management (CXM), and many of the disruptive technologies making their way into contact centers—including cloud systems, social CRM, voice of the customer programs, speech analytics and mobile. |
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Contact Center CRM—How Cloud and Social Transition Contact Center Strategy & Delivery |
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Esteban Kolsky, veteran CRM analyst and CEO of ThinkJar, discusses what makes CRM for contact centers different than CRM for other lines of business — and advises how new thinking and new technologies such as the cloud and social are influencing contact center strategy. This is a helpful discussion for aligning strategy, process and technology in the contact center. |
Contact Center CRM Articles
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What To Know When Buying Call Center Software |
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Like any software technology selection or implementation, there are steps to take - and avoid - when it comes to selecting and buying the most appropriate call center software for your business. An investment of up-front time is much more likely to result in strong financial and operational returns. Here are some helpful tips to reduce risk and make an informed decision. |
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How Call Centers Benefit from CRM Software |
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More often than not the call center serves as the most visible public face of the organization. To operate the most efficient and effective call centers possible, companies need to equip their call center agents with powerful, data-rich applications that enable them to provide optimum service to customers and prospects. CRM software is vital to achieving agent productivity and customer satisfaction. |
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Questions To Ask CRM Customer References |
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Call center references are one of the best ways to gauge how effective a CRM solution may be at improving call center results and also a good way to pick up some best practices and lessons learned for your CRM implementation. However, while vetting information with call center references is vital, there are traps to avoid. |
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Building Better Call Center Metrics With CRM |
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Numbers are the life blood of contact centers. But while call center software produces a slew of metrics, most of them are very low level. The paradox of these measurements is that while they’re useful for managing the call center, they don’t do much to advance the customer relationship or further the purpose of the call center. |
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Call Center Learning | Achieving Best In Class Performance |
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Every customer who interacts with the contact center offers a chance to learn more about what works and what doesn’t. However, most companies don’t learn from customer experience, and instead, leave valuable information on the table—information that could be used to improve customer satisfaction while drive higher customer share and company revenues. |
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Contact Center Successes: New Technologies To Advance The Call Center Mission |
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Social media and new contact center technologies offer a powerful combination in transforming the contact center from a cost center to a profit center. New call software tools, such as smart agent desktops, natural language search engines and speech analytics offer new and innovative answers to decades old business problems. |
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4 Ways CRM Can Improve Call Center Agent Productivity |
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A great strength of customer relationship management software is that it can present an integrated and holistic view of the customer. It can also dramatically improve the performance of contact center agents by offering a 360 degree customer as well as deliver a major improvement in the automation, management and information reporting for the call center. |
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Call Center Avatars |
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Organizations are always searching for ways to improve customer service, reduce wait times, and save money. Some believe they have found an answer — in interactive virtual agents, known as Avatars. These personalized self-service applications are increasingly being positioned as a compliment or an alternative to live call center agents. |
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Call Center Successes and CRM Software |
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CRM software vendors claim their products will benefit customers in a number of strategic ways. Fortunately, through customer success stories users can learn from real world successes the tangible benefits of customer facing strategies and software solutions. In this article, Denise offers several CRM-driven call center enhancements culled from “real-world” implementations. |
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CRM Software Selection Advice For Call Centers |
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Call centers stand to gain a lot from effective use of a CRM system. But what are the key factors in determining which product makes the most sense in a call center environment? Price and product feature set are obvious selection criteria. But the decision-making process should go well beyond that if companies are to ensure their CRM delivers what their call center needs. |
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The Virtual Contact Center, Will It Work For Your Business? |
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Traditional contact center challenges have led more and more companies — some household names and a lot of smaller companies as well — to move to the virtual contact center model. Although agents are in multiple locations, they are, with the help of call center software designed for this purpose, managed as a single entity. |
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Contact Center of the Future |
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Most contact center predictions run along the same lines—they will have sophisticated technology like universal queuing, multi-channel integration, speech analytics, load balancing across channels, expert agents, geographically dispersed call center representatives, sentiment analysis, and take full advantage of whatever social media is most prevalent at the time. |
CRM Call Center Thought Leadership Views
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Downplay the Largest CRM Providers | ||
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90% of customer service decision-makers told Forrester that a good service experience is critical, and 63% think the importance of the service experience has risen Go To ...  |
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The 2011 Gartner CRM Contact Center Magic Quadrant suggests larger CRM providers are the most expense, the least flexible and the least innovative. Go To ... |
Call Center Market Briefs
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Survey Shows Contact Center IT Complexities
Over 70% of contact centers that participated in Rostrvm Solution's survey rely on back office operations to complete customer transactions, yet the front office and back office operations are not integrated and about half were not measuring back office performance. Another key finding was that while Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) continues to grow, over half of respondents still do not use CTI in their contact centers. The survey included both public and private sector contact centers and attempted to better gauge real world insight into contact center IT complexity. The findings also revealed that two out of three call centers still use three or more software applications at the agent desktop to process transactions.
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Gartner Ranking of Contact Center Customer Service Vendors Notes Social Still Hot
Despite the fever pitch rhetoric regarding the implementation and adoption of social media tools in the contact center, Gartner analyst Michael Maoz says "Most gave it lip service as opposed to really doing anything about it, if you looked at it from the customer service side." While CRM software vendors such as Salesforce.com did release social media tools such as Chatter, Maoz comments that these tools still focus mainly on sales. Looking forward, the most recent Gartner research report suggests integrating social CRM data will be one of the major customer service initiatives through the next several years. Maoz predicts that 35% of contact centers will integrate some form of social media tools as part of their core CRM system. The report highlights a new generation of consumers who resist telephone-based interactions and leverages multiple online channels. These customers prefer self-service, peer-based communities and social networks. Gartner also predicts that all contact centers will provide improved access to mobile users and social communities.
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Call Center CRM Call Center CRM adoption has grown in parallel to increased demands on call centers. CRM software can provide the point of integration and key enablement factor for company strategies, customer information, transaction history and business processes. The three most cited factors collectively contributing to the rise in Call/Contact Center CRM software, from annual single digit growth to low double digit growth, include decreased CRM application software costs, new software-as-a-service contact center solutions and the pursuit for increased business process automation and labor efficiencies by contact center management teams. |
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Customers don't expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong." ~ Donald Porter |
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