A few weeks back I was debating with a friend — who also happens to be a respected research analyst in the contact center space — about the merits of call blending. His take was that call blending has been and always will be a bit of a “myth,” as it poses serious challenges to implement, especially for larger organizations. “It almost never happens,” he said, pointing out that most …Read more
Consumers today move between channels without even pausing to think about it. They take it for granted that all communications channels are integrated. This is perceived as a “right,” and they don’t like it when they run into barriers, which happens too frequently in the service world. A surprisingly large number of contact centers still answer only phone calls or handle just calls and emails, but in totally separate and …Read more
While ease of deployment, low upfront cost, reduced strain on internal IT resources, high scalability and redundancy continue to be the main factors driving organizations to migrate their in-house contact center systems to the cloud, companies considering making the switch should know that those aren’t the only reasons for selecting a particular cloud vendor. First and foremost, it’s important to remember fast deployment and low-upfront cost are the hallmarks of …Read more
Want to know why organizations continue to ditch their on-premises contact center systems in favor of cloud-based platforms? It’s the ROI that comes as a result of improved customer service, among other advantages. Because today’s cloud-based systems bundle the applications on a single shared platform, organizations can get the features and functionality they need, in a la cart fashion, without having to worry about integration issues the can degrade overall …Read more
When I founded Connect First I wanted to start a company that provided a premier cloud contact center solution, but I also wanted to create an amazing work culture because in my mind, happy people meant happy customers. More than anything else, I wanted this company to provide the best service possible. Our original team ‘way back when’ were not only skilled in the development of cloud telephony – they …Read more
As I mentioned in my first post, I used to work as a part-time outbound call center agent in the 1980s. Although I certainly do not consider myself a “veteran,” by any stretch, I think I can safely say the early 80s were glorious years to be an outbound agent. The “Do Not Call Registry” did not exist, people were still relatively tolerant of unsolicited phone calls in the middle …Read more
Universities or other institutions of higher education need contact center solutions to cost effectively route and/or respond to inbound calls, place outbound calls for fundraising, student recruitment outreach and collections, as well as for proactively alerting and sending notifications to students and staff. In the old days, these institutions had to purchase one and frequently many automatic call distributors (ACDs), dialers and interactive voice response (IVR) systems to meet the …Read more
I am absolutely thrilled to be contributing to the Connect First blog, marking my return to covering a topic I feel intimately familiar with: the contact center industry. Some of you might recognize my name from the five years I worked as an editor for Technology Marketing Corporation, where I covered the contact center technology space for TMCnet.com as well as Customer Interaction Solutions magazine (now Customer magazine). I also …Read more
Imagine being able to scale your call center up or down as needed and only pay for services used. How about a solution with scalability and virtually no upfront costs? Scalability may well be the number one reason so many call centers are either moving to or supplementing with hosted call center solutions. In the traditional, brick-and-mortar call center, adding seats for a larger campaign or a seasonal influx of …Read more
Virtual Call Centers: The Way of the Future At one time, huge brick and glass buildings filled the sky, dominating the city streets. Those buildings were filled with employees all doing basically the same thing, and costs grew out of control. Soon those buildings grew outdated and were torn down in favor of bigger and grander designs that eventually collapsed the very companies that built them. The sheer cost of …Read more
