Customer Service

Traditionally, the contact center has been a cost center. However, with the contact center transforming into a profit center, the selling of products and services has emerged as an opportunity for the center to improve agent and customer interaction. Yet the challenge will be balancing customer sati...

Who would have thought the meltdown in financial services could fuel the overhaul of the industry's customer service departments? Actually, it's just one of several factors driving companies to put customer service initiatives on the fast track in pursuit of compelling business advantage. The subpri...

Pharmaceutical companies manage large quantities of content about their product lines. However, unlike other industries, the challenge of managing this information is exacerbated by regulatory and compliance demands and the need to manage information from multiple "touch points" across a diverse cus...

After Best Buy lost the laptop Raelyn Campbell had brought in for repair, the D.C. resident filed a lawsuit demanding $54 million from the company. That eye-popping claim -- and the publicity it engendered -- was the culmination of a long blog campaign during which Campbell related her frustration w...

The contact center has become the focal point of the customer interaction. Customers spend more time researching products, managing account and order information, resolving issues, and utilizing self-service than they do within the traditional brick-and-mortar storefront. This requires contact cente...

Much ink has been spilled about what, exactly, has been the secret of Barack Obama's overwhelming success. There is no denying his charisma or the appeal of his message, but a behind-the-scenes look at how his political machine operates -- namely, how it empowers its people on the ground to operate ...

Avaya has introduced Intelligence Presence, a new software application that gives users -- both in corporate environments and call centers -- the ability to view so-called presence information across multiple sources. For example, it would allow a contact center rep engaged with a caller to see if a...

Contact consolidation is not for the lighthearted. For years, contact center management has been attempting to control costs by reducing the number of agents, physical sites and consolidating software and hardware solutions. Often these attempts are in conflict with customer and corporate demands.

RightNow has updated its flagship SaaS CRM product with new agent desktop functionality, customer-tracking abilities, enhanced analytics and chat features. The new version, which it calls "February '08," also includes a contextual workspace -- that is, a user interface for contact center service rep...

The customer is always right -- except for, of course, when he or she isn't. When it's inconvenient for the company, or when the customer asks for something that could negatively affect the company's revenue streams or business model, the customer is never right -- even when he or she is. That's why...

RightNow has enhanced its retail industry-specific app with chat and feedback functionality -- changes that give users more outreach options to customers using self-service channels. "With this app, retailers can incorporate feedback into chat," said Susan Meriwether, VP of product marketing, "to ma...

A frustrated Best Buy customer has filed a $54 million lawsuit against the electronics retailer in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Her complaint? Best Buy lost the laptop she had brought in for repair; the tech staff was evasive about its whereabouts; and the store refused to compens...

An increasing global customer base is driving companies to provide "follow-the-sun" customer support services. In order to enable this level of support, agents are now being located in any part of the world. The challenge is to merge technologies and provide seamless, accurate and real-time customer...

As social media become more embedded in our lives, tragedies like the Megan Meier case -- the Missouri teenager killed herself after a fictitious friend invented by the mother of a neighborhood girl left nasty messages on her MySpace profile -- may be the inevitable fallout. Corporate Web 2.0 usage...

Companies' integrated voice recognition applications are being stretched thinner and thinner. Even with the best interface designs in place, customers are still abandoning calls before completion. Forty-three percent of companies surveyed in the Aberdeen Contact Center Analytics benchmark report are...