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Contact Center Executive Outlook on 2020 and Beyond
Contact Center Pipeline
SEPTEMBER 12, 2019
Across industries, research reports are predicting that businesses can expect more change in the next five years than in the last 50.
Contact Center Pipeline
4 Characteristics of Best-in-Class Contact Centers
Contact Center Pipeline
DECEMBER 13, 2017
What does it take to deliver standout customer service? It’s a question on the minds of many business leaders since customer experience trumps price as the number one competitive differentiator in today’s economy.
Trending Sources
Customer Experience… Mystery, Myth, Mission or Magic?
Contact Center Pipeline
OCTOBER 9, 2019
Everyone is talking about it—promising it, claiming it and marketing it. But what is the customer experience really? Is it a mystery, a myth, a mission or simply magic?
Continuum Global Services: Launching A New Contact Center Industry Brand
Contact Center Pipeline
JULY 30, 2019
As customer interactions continue to become more complex, the contact center industry is increasingly turning to mergers & acquisitions as an effective solution to expand scale, improve access to new technologies and enhance geographic coverage.
How to Leverage Quality Management to Transform the Customer Experience
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When was the last time you took a step back to examine quality management (QM) in your contact center? Determining behaviors that are critical to successful customer experiences, and then coaching agents to exceed that standard on every customer interaction, is the key to running a great contact center. Download this eBook today, and uncover how winning organizations are improving Customer Satisfaction, NPS, and other key metrics!
Managing Different Personalities in the Contact Center: The Platinum Rule
Contact Center Pipeline
JUNE 26, 2019
Early in my management career, I followed the Golden Rule: Treat others as I would want to be treated. I believed that if I treated everyone the way I would want to be treated, it meant I was a great manager. Yet, I had significant conflicts with some members of my team. Often, I felt […].
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The Secret to Training Seasonal Agents
Contact Center Pipeline
SEPTEMBER 20, 2017
“They are just temps,” said one contact center manager describing his seasonal agents. They will be gone in a couple of months!” That condescending attitude was reflected in the seasonal team’s environment. They were crammed into an abandoned conference room filled with computers, phones and wires.
How AI Can Make the Holidays Bright
Contact Center Pipeline
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
The winter holidays aren’t always “the most wonderful time of the year” for the contact center. Time-off requests and spikes in call volume, especially in the retail industry, can bring forecasting and scheduling headaches that rival those induced by too much eggnog at the office party.
Onward and Upward… Or So the Saying Goes
Contact Center Pipeline
JANUARY 5, 2018
According to thefreedictionary.com, “onward and upward” is an expression that is defined as “something that you say in order to encourage someone to forget an unpleasant experience or failure and to think about the future instead.” Ah, the future!
Surprising Ways to Motivate Your Agents
Contact Center Pipeline
OCTOBER 25, 2017
I love movies. So, I was thrilled to win movie tickets as part of a contact center sales campaign back when I was an agent. However, the coworker sitting next to me hated movies and was not motivated at all by this contest. Everyone is different. What motivates one person may demotivate another.
How AI Can Help
Speaker: Roy Atkinson, Senior Writer Analyst, HDI and ICMI
Workforce Engagement Management has many “moving parts” including onboarding, forecasting, Quality Management, employee recognition, coaching and more. Contact Center managers spend a great deal of their time performing tasks related to engagement, and often don’t have the requisite time to properly prioritize and monitor progress. In addition, the complexity of the work performed in the Contact Center has increased, as customer contacts span many channels. This complexity is currently at a stage where emerging technologies such as AI and Machine Learning can have substantial impact and real ROI.
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Building a Resilient Contact Center
Contact Center Pipeline
SEPTEMBER 26, 2017
In the era of “five nines” of reliability, contact center leaders didn’t worry too much about the resiliency of their technology: It was always up. But with all the changes and permutations of technology, reliability can’t be taken for granted.
It’s Time to Tune Up Contact Routing
Contact Center Pipeline
NOVEMBER 28, 2017
Contact center leaders often express dissatisfaction with their current technology. They think that if they’d just implement some new technology, they’d be primed to achieve their business goals.
The Future of Contact Centers: What Technology Is Right for Your Customers?
Speaker: Laura Sikorski, Contact Center Consultant
Your Contact Center is the most customer focused area in your organization. It is where centralized conversations take place, the voice of the customer is amplified, and the amount of data captured is significant. Technology must provide reliable options for customers to reach you when they want and obtain the same great service regardless of the channel they choose. Your customers should have a positive customer experience with every interaction.
Garbage In, Garbage Out… Makes Contact Center Managers Want to Shout!
Contact Center Pipeline
NOVEMBER 9, 2017
Remember Oscar the Grouch on “Sesame Street”? For some reason, he was our son Brendan’s favorite character. He even had an Oscar the Grouch Halloween costume! During that period, I would sometimes borrow the mask to alert the family to an emerging “grouchy” condition.
Chatbots in the Contact Center, Part 2: Internal Use and Adoption
Contact Center Pipeline
MARCH 20, 2019
Consumers are increasingly turning to virtual assistants to save time and effort in their personal lives.
7 Steps to Superior CX
Contact Center Pipeline
OCTOBER 10, 2019
Customer experience (CX) is the new marketing battlefront.” These are not the words of me, Stephen Pappas. That’s Gartner talking. That’s right—the research and advisory leader is advising you to raise your CX game.
The Future of the Contact Center
Contact Center Pipeline
AUGUST 22, 2019
We embarked on a fun little survey this spring to gather input on the future of the contact center. Our focus was on which technologies are expected to have the greatest impact and what that impact might be.
How to Build a CX Program from the Ground Up
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It’s no secret - customer experience is the new competitive battlefield. In this eBook, TopBox shares step-by-step guidance on how to build and scale a rock-solid CX program that will fuel measurable revenue and affect organizational change.
Bet the Ranch, Bet the Brand
Contact Center Pipeline
AUGUST 28, 2019
The American Heritage Idiom Dictionary defines “to bet the ranch” as “to risk everything you have because you are certain of success.” This idiom most likely began at poker tables in saloons of the American Wild West.
Top 5 Posts in July
Contact Center Pipeline
JULY 31, 2019
What will you remember about July 2019? Fireworks? Record-breaking heat? Amazon Prime Day? If you found yourself otherwise occupied this month and missed some of the insightful content published on the Pipeline blog, the following is a list of the five most popular posts in July.
Now What? The Impact of Chaos on Contact Center Operations
Contact Center Pipeline
FEBRUARY 7, 2018
We have all at one time or another uttered the phrase, “Now what?” According to TheFreeDictionary.com, this phrase means, “What is going to happen now? What kind of new problem has arisen?” In these days, the question is asked frequently and not always as it relates to the contact center.
Differentiator Series, Part 5: Selling and Promoting the Contact Center
Contact Center Pipeline
AUGUST 23, 2017
Our final installment of the differentiator series is perhaps the most important for customer service leadership. Our topic is selling and promoting the contact center.
Straight Talk about Security, Compliance and Reliability in Cloud Communications
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The risk is real - every organization recognizes the consequences of inadequate security, compliance and reliability in communications systems. Data breaches make headlines and privacy violations put companies at legal risk, not to mention the very real revenue costs of downtime. In this report, 8x8 shares how they secure data across every step of their communications system - and how you can easily comply with tightening regulations.
To a More Cost-Efficient 2018
Contact Center Pipeline
SEPTEMBER 5, 2017
Many of you reading this are likely in the throes of it right now: the annual budgeting process. You are being pressured to “do more with less,” and you will be held accountable for everything you agree to during this period (and yes, even some things that you never agreed to).
Making AI Work in the Contact Center
Contact Center Pipeline
JULY 17, 2019
In the late 2000s, right around when videosharing platforms were really coming into their own, there was a curious trend among marketing executives.
What, Exactly, Makes for Great CX?
Contact Center Pipeline
SEPTEMBER 13, 2019
We talk a lot about delivering an exceptional customer experience (CX), but the talk focuses on how to deliver it. Improve first-call resolution,” or “Capture customer feedback.”
Revisiting Contact Center Schedule Adherence
Contact Center Pipeline
JULY 16, 2019
When you find someone in a contact center who is passionate about schedule adherence, it’s a good bet he/she is (or once was) a member of a workforce management team (WMT).
Redefining Customer Experience Metrics for Better Performance
Speaker: Lynn Hunsaker, Chief Customer Officer of ClearAction Continuum
Join us for this insightful webinar with Lynn Hunsaker, Chief Customer Officer of ClearAction, who will show you how to zero-in on true leading indicators and describe how to connect business results metrics with employees’ workflow metrics.
Is Your Contact Center a Fantasyland… Or Not?
Contact Center Pipeline
NOVEMBER 7, 2019
I am not the biggest fan of Disney, but I have always had a warm spot for Fantasyland. A young friend of mine recently visited Disney World and among his tales of the trip was an expressed enthusiasm for Fantasyland. As I listened to my friend’s story I was reminded of a speech I delivered […].
3 Easy Ways to Appreciate Your Agents During Customer Service Week
Contact Center Pipeline
OCTOBER 8, 2019
Happy Customer Service Week! Hopefully, your Customer Service Week celebration has kicked off and your agents are basking in the glow of much-deserved recognition, food and gifts!
High Absenteeism? Consider Your Agents’ “Breaking Point”
Contact Center Pipeline
MAY 14, 2019
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty frustrated by clients, prospects and some contact center managers who think that the only reason agents are absent from work is because they are lazy.
Top 5 Posts in August
Contact Center Pipeline
AUGUST 30, 2019
Millions of students returned to the classroom in August, which is National Back to School Month in the United States. In the contact center world, learning takes place every day.
How to Make the Transition to Customer Service Outsourcing
Speaker: Randy Clapp, Chief Revenue Officer, Advantage Communications Inc.
You’re feeling the pressure of keeping your employees engaged and improving your customer experience, but you’re not sure if you’re ready or even know how to make a smooth transition to a contact center. Randy Clapp, Chief Revenue Officer of Advantage Communications, will lead you through an outsourcing Self-Assessment you can apply to your business in this insightful webinar developed to provide you with the building blocks to take your customer service experience to the next level.
How Technology Is Paving the Path to Contact Center Workplace Wellness
Contact Center Pipeline
AUGUST 27, 2019
For years, organizations have embarked on workplace wellness initiatives to help reduce healthcare costs, cut absenteeism, prevent employee burnout and keep employee productivity on point.
Contact Center Pipeline Magazine: Inside Our November 2019 Issue
Contact Center Pipeline
NOVEMBER 5, 2019
This is our 5th year conducting our Contact Center Challenges and Priorities survey. We will be reporting the results in our January issue. I’m excited to see our evolution and our plans for 2020. Please take a few minutes and share your insights.
Eight Days a Week: The Always-On Contact Center
Contact Center Pipeline
SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
In February 1965, The Beatles released a song called “Eight Days a Week” as a single to the U.S. market before it appeared on the album Beatles VI. It became the band’s seventh No. 1 single in the U.S. in just over a year.
Is Your Organization Ready for a Coaching Culture?
Contact Center Pipeline
FEBRUARY 15, 2018
When it comes to culture, lasting change starts at the top with the leadership team.
Beyond the Contact Center: Unlocking Insights with Speech Analytics
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A global survey of 500 key decision makers by Opus Research shows the core benefits of making the leap to an omnichannel contact center, such as uncovering actionable business insights on employee-customer interactions.
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