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 >

Genesys is participating in the IQPC eighth Call Centre Canada Event in Toronto this week - April 29 th – May 2 nd . The event is centered around how to help take your contact centre to a whole new level. Looking at the changes facing call centers and strategies for addressing those challenges is the focus.

Topics Include:

Leverage social media to reduce calls, drive strategic direction and measure ROI Gain the insight and skills to stay ahead of contact center evolution Ensure you connect with consumers through all channels of communication Realize cost and efficiency savings and demonstrate the ROI of technology investments Create a culture that drives customer experience Brad Baumunk, Sr. Solution Manager is running a workshop today Monday, April 29 th , 2013 2:00 – 4:00

DEVELOPING AN INTERNAL LEADERSHIP ROADMAP: STRATEGIES FOR KEEPING EMPLOYEES MOTIVATED

The call centre management structure... read more >

It’s true that inbound calls will probably never go away completely from the contact center environment. But as new customer interaction channels continue to emerge with email, chat, SMS, video, social media, and mobile applications, the traditional call center faces the challenge of evolving from a call center to a contact center, and ultimately to a customer care center.

Easier said than done. Companies have struggled to optimize resources, and manage multiple interaction channels. When not managed well the Customer Experience will suffer and the cost per interaction will increase.

The combination of the following 3 use cases will enable a better, more personalized Customer Experience and keep cost under control:

Implement consistent customer identification across all channels To provide personalized customer service it’s fundamental to fully identify the customer and get enough context to make an intelligent routing de... read more >

I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about customer experience and how it suddenly has become such a hot topic these days. As we shared ideas, my friend mentioned that it all sounded very similar to the discussions we had years ago when CRM was first introduced – he asked what the difference between customer experience and CRM was.

When you stop to think about it, that’s a very good question! Wikipedia defines customer relationship management (CRM) as a model for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. Although it had been around in various forms for a long time for things like Salesforce automation, the term CRM really got wind in the sails in 1993 when Siebel entered the market. The term CRM was coined by Gartner in 1995 as a way to describe ‘front office applications’ then in use.

Customer experience has also been around a long time. In fact, one could argue that it has been a... read more >