If you are a contact center manager, you are a busy person and always have something going on. You probably spend time thinking: 

How will I make my service levels again today?   Should I make strategic decisions about outsourcing staff or not?  How do I drive consistency and efficiency across channels? In my previous blog called ‘ Seven Habits of Highly Effective Contact Center Managers ,’ I discussed the many talents each contact center manager should possess. Today, let’s take a look at how these talents can be turned into actions, and what the 5 key items should be on every contact center manager's to-do list.

Monday: Meet with at least one of these ‘types of persons’ in your organization: forecasters and planners, team managers, supervisors and agents. These meetings should enable you to understand what challenges they face and discuss how you can help them. Figure out any key issues and make a pla... read more >

As the head of NA Sales Operations for Genesys I am lucky to be in a unique position to talk daily with some incredibly smart customer service people in various industries who are leading the way in transforming customer service. For my first blog I wanted to provide a few snippets from customers I have spoken with in the last couple weeks.

Airline Consolidation Brings Consolidated Customer Service Genesys has long held a leadership position among airlines, and with recent mergers in the news I am reminded how every airline requires a customer experience platform that works across disparate infrastructure elements (especially true when systems are mixed in a merger) and must still provide a scalable, carrier-grade level of reliability across the different channels flyers demand (mobile, web, phone). And with flyer complaints often Tweeted or sent virally on Facebook, let’s not forget the importance of the social channel and the need to listen and respond in r... read more >

The first post in this series discussed how government customer service is good governance. That begs the question — how do you define good customer service, particularly in the public sector?

Both commercial and government organizations need to define and measure customer service. Unfortunately, there's often a disconnect — the customer (or citizen) has a different perspective than the people tasked with providing customer service, particularly in a traditional contact center.

The customer view of customer service From the customer view, customer service is about resolving problems or issues.  In government, these can be a wide variety of issues, from finding the status of a tax refund or license reinstatement to filing for financial aid or small business loans. 

Many government engagements will have several interactions. For example, earning unemployment benefits takes multiple steps, starting with filing for eligibil... read more >

Genesys yesterday announced its plans to acquire Angel , a leading provider of cloud-based self-service contact center solutions. This acquisition is significant to Genesys and infuses new capabilities, solutions and expertise. At the same time, this event is representative of some large shifts happening within the customer service marketplace, and within every company. 

Reading the tea leaves from yesterday’s event, how is the market shifting, and what does this mean for the future of customer service?  

Multichannel self-service is essential in a social, “always on” world. Angel helps companies rapidly deploy self-service interactive voice response (IVR), SMS, chat, and mobile applications to support their customers’ self-service needs. As more consumers rely upon the web, smart phones and social media to resolve their service requests, companies must quickly develop a coherent digital customer service strateg... read more >

Most customer service and contact center software professionals are very familiar with the concept of First Contact Resolution (otherwise known as FCR) and how this process improves efficiency and creates a better customer experience. Some argue it's the 'holy grail' of customer service.

The idea is that it’s better to find the best resource the first time, even if that means you sacrifice another 'holy grail' like Average time to Answer or Average Speed of Answer (ASA). Quickly finding an employee does improve ASA scores, but potentially results in a second or even third contact occurrence for the same customer request. In the long run this metric is less cost effective and increases customer effort.

The “Invisible”FCR So far, First Contact Resolution has been primarily relegated to the contact center, but what many organizations do not realize is that the problem also exists on a larger scale across the enterprise. Why?  FCR is ... read more >