In the famous novel written by Mary Shelley, eccentric scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment that we know as a Frankenstein.

Victor Frankenstein’s vision was to create a beautiful human being, but he stitched it together with available parts and not much long-term thought.

Tragically, the creature who sprang to life was hideous. It lumbered through his laboratory with watery yellow eyes and a translucent, yellow skin that barely concealed the muscles and blood vessels beneath.

Not a pretty sight.

I frequently see the same tragic combination of inspiration and frightening result when reviewing the contact center architecture of many operations.

Their story is almost always the same – you need to connect your Workforce Management solution from vendor A with your PABX from vendor B. And then you need to connect the multiple channels like Email,... read more >

What’s the real definition of on-time delivery? According to a recent book titled Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit, the real definition for on-time delivery is not defined by anyone except the customer and standards are dynamic and getting tougher daily. Companies like Amazon are resetting the definition and changing the way customers think about on-time delivery. How do Amazon’s standards apply to your operation? See what these authors are saying…

On-time Delivery is one of the four elements of customer satisfaction

A key section of the book describes the four elements of customer satisfaction, and timeliness is number 3 along with: a great product, caring and friendly people and processes dedication to resolving problems. The authors are very clear about the importance and growing standards for on-time delivery:

“In a world of iPhones and IM, your customers get to decide what is or isn’t an appropriat... read more >

In the many contact centers I've worked with, I have found that more often than not, the service level goals are set at 80/20 - 80% of calls/contacts answered within 20 seconds. When I ask why clients use that as their goal, I often hear the answer of "It’s industry standard" or "That's what we've always used."

Is 80/20 an industry standard? Maybe 30 years ago. It also doesn’t seem like most people even know where 80/20 came from. One recent client did, and reminded me of the source: AT&T did a study in the early days of call centers that determined that customers were likely to start hanging up at around 20 seconds. That 20 seconds was actually the amount of time that a phone call would physically ring before customers assumed no one was there and would hang up. In other words, three or four actual rings of the phone.

This was before the days of IVRs, front-end messaging, music on hold or sold-on-hold messaging, etc. Very rarely do custo... read more >

Workforce Management solutions have been around for years and for most current users, they can’t live without the advanced tools they have become accustomed to using for Forecasting, Scheduling, Reporting, and Real-time Management.

Today, use of Workforce Management solutions has expanded beyond the contact center. Many companies are using the WFM solution for back-office, branches and beyond (think enterprise) and companies are recognizing the same performance improvements they realized when implemented the solution in the contact center.

Weather you have already moved beyond spreadsheets and are using basic or complex WFM software, knowing the ROI is key to validating a purchase or upgrade. In addition, if you are looking to expand the use of your solution beyond the contact center, here are six benefits you can use to evaluate your next Workforce Management Solution.

Reduction of Overstaffing - Workforce Management enables the prec... read more >

For the past decade, there has been increasing desire within contact centers to improve upon customer satisfaction and experience, in order to keep customers loyal and profitable for longer.

In the early days of the call center industry, supervisors listened in with their agents and gave direct feedback or used spreadsheets to keep track of quality and performance. Very quickly this process was replaced by call recording solutions and call quality measurement forms. This category is called ‘Quality Management’.

In 2002 the first speech analytics application for business use was launched. A few years later, text analytics was added and ‘Interaction Analytics’ as a category was born. Adding to the hype, an alternative use case for Interaction Analytics emerged. It’s no longer just about increasing performance of agents. Through ‘Voice of the Customer’ initiatives we can now learn what customers value, identify trends or ... read more >