Blog

If you’ve interacted online with pretty much any sort of business in the past year, there’s a good chance it was handled by a chatbot. Lately, I’ve encountered more local small businesses using them to take orders and answer questions. The convenience offered by their chatbot helped to win my business. And they seem more prevalent than ever. Have you noticed the proliferation of chatbots on websites and social media platforms? The chatbot is one modern technology that’s more than a trend; it’s becoming an important part of customer service and leveraged by businesses that want to stay ahead of the competition in their sector.

When it comes to employee engagement, the research and survey data consistently find that engaged employees perform better, churn less, and are happier at work. That’s not surprising. The tricky part is knowing how to foster engagement such that employees are motivated, personally invested in their work, and committed to their own success and the success of the business.

A hybrid workforce model isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Agents are loving the flexibility and comfort it offers. But like anything, it comes with its own unique challenges as you try to keep employees engaged in their positions. If you’re unsure of where to start, the six pillars of a hybrid contact center workforce engagement strategy listed above would be a great place to start.

Using artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to deliver agent guidance in real time, at the exact moment it’s needed, helps contact centers maximize agent performance, delight customers, and reduce costs. That’s the finding of a report by Aberdeen, which surveyed more than 300 contact center leaders across industries around the world.

This is the third article in a four-part series designed to help small call centers choose the right software to enable them to thrive and compete. The first article focused on cloud call center software as a growth enabler, the second was all about building customer loyalty, and now we'll discuss how to use modern technology to compete more effectively and take performance to the next level.

Biometric authentication is already a fact of life for billions of people around the world. They routinely use their faces or fingerprints to activate smartphones, PCs or other personal devices. Hundreds of millions of people with smart speakers are delighted to find that their voice assistant is able to offer personalized responses based on the unique quality of their voices. Opus Research estimates that over half a billion people have already enrolled their voiceprints with their banks, brokers, tax offices and others in order to simplify and accelerate required authentication procedures and carry out their business on trusted communications links.

Contrary to some science fiction movies, artificial intelligence (AI) hasn't subjected humans to robotic overlords. And contrary to some current opinions, contact center AI isn't all about replacing customer service agents with armies of bots.