The overall potential of AI within customer service has now been a hot topic for several years – but where does it deliver real benefits and what is the state of AI deployment? To find out, the latest ContactBabel Inner Circle Guide to AI, Chatbots and Machine Learning report, sponsored by Enghouse Interactive, surveyed both contact centre leaders and a…
Deploying Microsoft Teams within customer service delivers significant benefits, such as increasing collaboration, underpinning hybrid and blended working and ensuring agility by improving integration and information sharing with other departments. All of this helps to create a more unified and efficient experience for customers and agents. However, extending Teams into the contact centre requires careful planning if you are to…
The last twelve months have been difficult for everyone working in customer service. As we move forward with new hybrid ways of working, agents, managers and businesses will face fresh challenges. How can they successfully navigate these changes and deliver service that delights customers, while retaining and nurturing staff? The answer is to focus on emotional intelligence, as a recent…
An effective call recording or call monitoring system is essential for today’s contact centre. Not only does it help organisations meet regulatory compliance obligations, but it can also assist in dispute resolution and has an important role to play in improving call centre performance. It can be used to extract actionable insights from conversations and to reward good performance, or…
Customer experience has never been more important. Customer service teams are under increased pressure to deliver the right answers to a growing volume of calls, across a wider range of topics than ever before. For example, over half of respondents to the latest ContactBabel UK Contact Centre Decision Maker’s Guide 2020-21 said that calls had increased due to the pandemic. When you…
The last twelve months have seen a major acceleration in the use of collaboration and communication tools across businesses thanks to the pandemic and the rise of home working. These tools enable employees to work together seamlessly and access the information they need to do their jobs, wherever they are based. At a time of increased focus on customer service,…
Your people are your greatest asset, and this is particularly true when it comes to the contact centre. Your agents are the frontline representatives of your company and brand and are central to delivering the service and experience that attracts and retains customers. That means that investing in ensuring their wellbeing is vital to your business. The pandemic and lockdowns…
Over last year we’ve seen tremendous growth in Microsoft Teams, with the number of daily users nearly trebling to 115 million between March and October 2020 alone. Extending Teams into the contact centre has the potential to deliver major benefits in terms of agility, collaboration and communication. However, to justify rolling out any new platform or technology, it’s important to quantify…
“The times they are a changing”…according to Bob Dylan anyway. It is fair to say that the past year has been an odd one. We’ve been socialising over video rather than down at the pub, our living room has become our office, and we’ve been increasingly shopping online because physical stores have been shut. But has the pandemic fundamentally changed…
Customer needs are always changing, while expectations are constantly rising. For example, the questions customers ask are growing in complexity and come through a widening choice of channels – while answers have to be delivered faster at the same time. Being customer-centric is essential to success – and it starts with the contact centre. So, what exactly do customers want…