Adaptive IVR Blog

As you close out the calendar year, catch up with these top articles and videos.

The calendar year may be coming to a close, but customer service is only picking up for many of us.

So what does that mean for you? Has your customer service been naughty or nice this year? And next year, are you planning to be on the” good list” or the “very, very good list?” (Hey, if there was a “very, very good list,” you sure would target it, wouldn’t you?)

One thing’s for sure, we are absolutely committed to helping you stay at the top of the “very, very good list,” and look forward to supporting your business in the future.

When have you had the opportunity to delve deeper into contact center data mining, and in particular in the customer self-service channel? This is historically a “set it and forget it” channel, which means there’s a whole source of actionable analytics that you may be missing out on.

We get it, no one can be accused of being Superman in the contact center - seeing through the data, tools and technology in the blink of the eye to the core actionable answers. That would be great, but it’s not reality.

As we see played out in most enterprise contact centers – most technologies are decentralized, unintegrated and lacking common goals.

The challenges for you as contact center leaders and front-line managers are to deliver an optimal customer experience that satisfies the customer, while maximizing the value of your operational teams, processes and infrastructure. These conflicting yet equally critical priorities compound the already complex role you have to create a smoothly executed, cost-savings operation that solves your customers’ needs in the ways they wish and need to be served.

So what does this mean for your enterprise? How can technology vendors become true partners to maximize the pulse of your contact center?

Customer Service is no longer just about answering the phone; it’s about being responsive to voice, social media, messaging, video, email, digital web and mobile.

Addressing today’s digital consumer-centric environment is now table-stakes and your Contact Center technology has to step up and keep pace.  Working with clients struggling with outdated telecom and contact center infrastructure while others seize market advantage by embracing advanced multi-channel integrated cloud platform solutions is an eye-opening experience.  The conclusion is clear.  There’s only one-way to go.  That’s forward – and fast.

Perhaps you remember the refrain from the popular sitcom, “Cheers,” “Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.” Everyone wants to be treated as an individual.   And now big companies also are trying to make you feel like someone special.  Even McDonald’s, which owes its decades of success to conformity, is testing a create-your-taste menu.

When you think about your interactive voice response (IVR), leaks may not come to mind. You are probably more concerned about costs, the customer experience (CX), and system efficiency and uptime. But make no mistake, IVRs may develop leaks just like your pipes – and these steady drips can affect cost, CX, efficiency and more. 

It’s not far-fetched to say that the contact center is the single most critical operation in any company. If a company has a poor relationship with its customers, its other operations might as well cease to exist. The contact center is the place where the company and its customers meet. Whether this place is a battlefield (hello, Comcast!) or a collaborative and productive environment is a choice every company makes, and it usually starts with one person.

The VP of Operations is usually the contact center’s biggest decision maker. In most medium-sized and large enterprises, this is the person who crafts strategies for people, processes and technology and sets the tone for an organization’s relationship with its customers. It’s therefore critical that this individual understand people: both a company’s customer support personnel and customers themselves.

If you're the Vice President of Contact Center Operations, you have a lot on your shoulders. You’re responsible for one of the most highly-visible customer interaction points in your business. You set the strategy for customer care fulfillment and it’s your job to measure the results and report them to your company’s leadership team.

Because your responsibilities lie at the intersection of customer experience and a huge cost center, you’re under the magnifying glass.