Few industries have experienced as much change as the telecommunications industry in recent years. New communications technologies are disrupting older business models and bringing new competitors, with more companies vying to provide consumers and businesses with communications services.

To adapt and survive, telecommunication companies have had to look closely at their own business models. As a result, many are on the forefront of customer service innovation. They've implemented cross-channel customer service strategies and integrated social media with customer support. And they're empowering agents with the ability to deliver personalized service across multiple channels.

Learn from the leaders at G-Force 2013

Genesys works with most of the world's largest telecommunication and service providers – and we've seen first-hand the innovative approaches that they're taking to providing customer service in an extremely tough service envir... read more >

When you google ‘call center’ and ‘turn over rates’ you’ll get a number of alarming stats that range between twenty to thirty-five percent. You’ll easily find a number of posts on how to calculate the actual number – what to count and not to count, etc.

Whether you decide to take the low number or the high, when one in three or one in four customer service agents that you spend money to recruit, onboard, train and schedule decide to leave within a year of employment, you’ve got to examine why, and we’ve got to work as an industry to fix it.

The problem compounds itself when you examine how costly agent turnover is to the company – without even considering what it does to the customer experience. Labor costs represent anywhere from sixty to seventy per cent of a call center’s annual operating budget. Replacing an agent works out to the equivalent of three months of an agent’s salary. ... read more >

Independent research shows that the most important success factor for providing good customer service is having competent people to assist customers regardless of technologies, channels, or industries. Contact Center agents are often the primary and sometimes only contact a customer has with a company, which makes matching the right agent with the right customer critical. Executing on a ‘one-to-one’ agent and customer relationship is a challenge because the most competent people able to resolve customer issues promptly, or close a sale, are often outside the Contact Center in some other department within the Enterprise. Additionally, the right person could be in the back office, the branch office, or specialists in their remote or home offices.

The result? Customers get stuck in a maze of endless transfers across departments, and each time they have to repeat their issue. To solve this problem you need to virtualize your resource pool and extend it beyond... read more >

“ The Call Center School ” defines workforce shrinkage as “the amount of time agents are paid to be there but are not available to take calls”. This includes some things that are not changeable, such as vacations and breaks, but there is often a fair amount of time lost due to agents just not being in place and available when the schedule is expecting them to be.

“ Knowlagent, now Intradiem ”, recently conducted a survey of more than 100 industry leaders – across all types of call centers – to find out what activities make up shrinkage in their centers. According to the study, the average amount of an agent’s time spent in shrinkage is around 24%, or roughly one fourth of the work day.

Traditionally, shrinkage is broken down into three categories:

Planned – activities such as breaks, scheduled training, meetings and one-on-one’s are included in this category. These activitie... read more >

With increased pressure on cost control, it is essential for businesses to utilize their resources in the most optimal way and drive better business outcomes. To help accomplish this, businesses must understand customer value and opportunity value when evaluating the handling of an interaction.

Customer segmentation strategies allow businesses to focus on servicing, retaining, and developing high value customers. Low value/low opportunity customers are directed to lower-cost service options, including self and assisted service.

Companies typically do a pretty good job of providing exceptional service to their elite customers (the top 5-10% of their customer base). The problem is most companies treat the remaining 90% of their customers the same, as if they were all Mass Market customers applying an “Equal service for all” approach.

But this approach is costing you customers and revenue.

By focusing on the potential o... read more >