Category Archives: Contact Center

Insight on Bots, Human Agents and the Future of Customer Service

Recently, I was interviewed by Convo, a publication of NewVoiceMedia. The focus of the interview was on the impact of bots and AI, the continued need for human interaction, and the changes taking place in customer service. Take a few minutes to read the interview and consider if your organization is prepared for the changes ahead.

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Offer More Consistent Customer Service with Accurate Workload Forecasts

Everything to do with getting resources right in a contact center begins with predicting what the workload will be. Workload is what leads to how many agents are hired, what your schedule should look like, the number of work stations you need, even how many snacks are in the cafeteria. You get the idea. In a recent LinkedIn Learning course …

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Managing Customer Feedback – as It Happens

An important aspect of building customer relationships is managing customer feedback. This includes both short- and long-term objectives: it involves responding to feedback as it happens and collecting and analyzing feedback from many customers to look for recurring problems and opportunities. In a past issue of The Edge of Service™ Newsletter, I look at what it takes to manage customer …

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Employee Engagement Statistics

Do you need to make the case for your efforts to improve employee engagement? These numbers may help: 51% of US workers are not engaged, while 17.5% are actively disengaged. (Source: Gallup) Compared with disengaged employees, highly engaged employees are 4.7x more likely to do something good for the company even if it is not expected of them. (Source: Temkin …

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The Strategic Value of Customer Service

There are three levels on which effective customer service creates value: efficiency, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and strategic value. Only a small percent of organizations harness the true strategic potential of the insight that comes from customer service. In the LinkedIn video featured below “Strategic Value” from the course “Service Metrics for Customer Service,” I discuss the importance of capturing …

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The Edge of Service™ Newsletter, Issue 28: Motivation: Removing the Barriers

Dave Koz, the recognized jazz saxophonist and composer, has received nine GRAMMY nominations and has had nine No. 1 albums on Billboard’s Current Contemporary Jazz Albums chart. He’s played for several presidents, hosts two popular radio shows, and is a successful entrepreneur. Most impressive to me—even beyond his musical talent—is his ability to bring out the best in those he …

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The Best Managed Contact Centers: #8 — They Leverage Technology to Support and Further Their Mission

New technologies are not passive — they are changing customer expectations, causing reallocations of resources, creating power shifts in organizations, and changing the responsibilities of agents and managers. The best contact centers identify the technologies that further the mission of the organization, and they implement them with the necessary foresight, planning and training. They also recognize that an important (according …

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