Artificial Intelligence and Customer Service- Oil and Water?

Posted by Rachel Brink on Aug 12, 2016 9:27:09 AM

The customer service space has undoubtedly evolved over the past several years, and the momentum is not expected to slow down as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance. AI-powered voice recognition software—known to the customer service space as the “virtual agent”—has already made its way into many of today’s contact centers, replacing live agents to assist clients with a variety of tasks and inquiries. Coupled with the proliferation of messaging apps, many are also beginning to see the development of chatbots—software programs that use messaging as the interface through which to carry out any number of tasks, from checking an account balance, to making a reservation, to helping users buy a pair of shoes. Virtual assistant startup, Interactions, recently secured an additional $56 million in funding, indicating that the trend is certainly picking up speed.

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Topics: customer service, contact center, self-service, virtual agents, artificial intelligence

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) for ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management (CSM) Platform

Posted by Rachel Brink on Aug 5, 2016 9:08:15 AM

3CLogic is a leading provider of cloud communications as a service offering the only seamlessly integrated multichannel and Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) platform for today's enterprise businesses.  Designed to complement existing operational workflows and on-premise legacy systems, 3CLogic provides a unified 360-degree view to optimize and analyze client interactions for either sales, customer support, or call center organizations.  Built on a unique distributed architecture hosted on AWS, 3CLogic offers both a pure cloud and hybrid cloud solution while delivering market-leading security, reliability, and system flexibility. 

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Topics: customer service, customer service management, CTI, ServiceNow, ServiceNow CTI, computer telephony integration, CSM

Preparing for Increased Call Complexity in the Contact Center

Posted by Rachel Brink on Jul 29, 2016 11:54:00 AM

As consumers continue to gravitate towards alternative digital touch points such as online knowledge bases, social media, and web chat for customer service, many contact centers have unsurprisingly experienced a noticeable shift in the volume and nature of their calls. In fact, according to the 2016 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, contact centers have seen a 13.2% decrease in call volume in the past year. And while a transition to lower cost alternatives certainly helps improve an organization’s bottom line and customer experience, it also presents the call center with its own unique set of challenges—increased call complexity, to be specific.

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Topics: customer service, call center, multichannel communications

Why Your Company Should Be Providing Multichannel Customer Service

Posted by Rachel Brink on Jul 8, 2016 9:20:56 AM

In today’s digital age, customers are contacting businesses from a variety of different touch points—phone, email, text, chat, Facebook, Twitter—and they expect to be delighted with exceptional service on each. In fact by 2020, the demand for omnichannel customer experience will be amplified by the need for nearly perfect execution. And for businesses, it has its benefits—those companies with extremely strong omnichannel customer engagement retain on average 89% of their customers, compared to only 33% for those with weak omnichannel engagement. Yet still, only 11% of consumers strongly agree that companies are effectively converging digital, mobile, social, and traditional channels.

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Topics: customer service, multichannel

Guest Post: 3 Things Your CRM & Contact Center Solution Can Teach You

Posted by W-Systems Corp. on Mar 24, 2016 9:33:33 AM

what-your-crm-and-contact-center-solution-can-teach-you

The first thing you should do to make powerful discoveries about your customer is successfully adopt a CRM system. The next step is integrating your CRM with a contact center software platform. By combining the data in your CRM with data from your call center, you can get to know your customer even better. Here are some examples of what you will learn:

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Topics: customer service, CRM, contact center solution

Guest Post: How SugarCRM Helps Improve Customer Service

Posted by Faye Business Systems Group on Mar 11, 2016 8:58:26 AM

Many company executives realize the importance of customer service to their organization. It’s no longer seen as just an outlet for customer complaints but instead a department to help ensure customer loyalty. As its core function, customer service is expected to effectively handle basic customer transactions.

Think back to a bad customer service experience. What do you wish the rep had done better? How about the best experience you had? If you’re like most people, you expect customer service to be able to quickly and proactively help answer questions and resolve issues. After all, isn’t that why they are there?

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Topics: customer service, CRM, SugarCRM

5 Ways to Boost Customer Satisfaction in Your Help Center

Posted by Rachel Brink on Mar 9, 2016 8:56:01 AM

Customer experience is quickly becoming a business’ next competitive battleground, expected to overtake price and product as a brand’s key differentiator by the year 2020. And as consumers become more informed and empowered, and alternative touch points continue to emerge, customer expectations are only anticipated to grow even larger. But as it stands, the global “Switching Economy”—or the potential revenue up for grabs in the U.S. market due to changes in consumer spending patterns and switching rates—has swelled to $1.6 trillion (a 29% increase since 2010), indicating that a large percentage of businesses are not adequately keeping up with their customers’ growing demands, causing them to take their business elsewhere. But with the help of technology and a few best practices, businesses can help boost their customer satisfaction scores and retention rates: 

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Topics: customer service, call center, contact center, customer support, help center

Guest Post: 10 Ways to Use SugarCRM for Customer Service

Posted by Faye Business Systems Group on Feb 26, 2016 9:01:23 AM

As a Customer Success Manager, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to keep customers happy and productive with their products. The retention of current customers is fundamental to most businesses and quality customer service is at the core of facilitating that. Having a system in place to enable your team to provide excellent customer service is very important. Let’s look at how you can use SugarCRM for customer service:

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Topics: customer service, CRM, SugarCRM

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