Let’s face it, employees are either engaged or disengaged. There is generally very little middle ground, and that makes tracking and measuring employee engagement rates rather difficult for HR executives and the C-suite. I read a recent article on LinkedIn from Mark Crowley...Read More

Recently the U.S. Federal government held their annual stress tests to determine if banks could withstand a severe economic crisis and avoid a taxpayer bailout. We won’t name names, but there were a few financial institutions who failed quite badly. This got me to thinking, what...Read More

Many of us in the customer experience space, myself included, think we know our customers and what it takes to do business with them. We believe that the traditional customer will continue doing business in the same way, even with the adoption and use of new technologies like digital...Read More

Would you embark on a cross-country journey without taking a map? It sounds crazy, yet that is exactly what most organizations ask their customers to do every day.Over the past decade the number of ways we can now communicate with businesses has exploded – voice, email, chat, social, SMS...Read More

Did you know that companies will lose billions of dollars this year due to bad customer experiences? In fact, companies will lose more than $31 billion in revenue over the next few years due to abandoned shopping carts alone? At the same time, marketing professionals who focus solely on...Read More

One of the earliest lessons in marketing and sales is that you should know your customer. What does the customer profile look like? How do customers behave and what triggers them to ultimately buy one of your products or services? This knowledge helps to optimize your marketing message, your...Read More

You see it, you like it, you buy it. Well, actually, if you’re like most of us, you see it, you like it, read reviews — and then take a look at the price tag. Is it too expensive? Do I need it? What value will I derive from it?Whether deliberating a personal or business purchase, when...Read More

Oh, where is that elusive Waldo hiding? Your contact center agents aren’t spending time literally looking for Waldo. But unless they have a unified agent desktop, they may be undergoing a similar search every time they try to help a customer.When a call comes in, does your agent have...Read More

On this St. Patrick’s Day everyone should be seeing (and wearing) green! And for those companies that have switched to a modern self-service IVR platform – they are probably seeing even more green flow to their bottom lines as a result of improving their self-service...Read More

This week, we’ll be at Enterprise Connect in Orlando where omnichannel customer journey management will take center stage for Genesys. We’re kicking things off today with the launch of the next generation of the Genesys Customer Experience Platform. The platform is truly a game...Read More

All customers are not created equal. This is also true for relationships. No business has the same relationship with their customers as you intend to have with yours. The thing is though, you must first define what a relationship with your customer looks and feels like and in turn, how they would...Read More

As a professional services consultant working with companies everyday, I am seeing a revolution taking place in customer service right before my eyes. Companies are tossing out their multichannel strategies and related solutions. This is more than a little surprising.  How can this be...Read More

The recent viral picture of a dress that caused many debates on its true color can teach us a lot about great customer experience. If you are not aware of this event, by all means check it out onBuzzFeed, where the debate raged on in the socialsphere. Now, it’s possible that many...Read More

Lawsuits have played a major role in American history.  Even school-aged children can name some of the more famous lawsuits that have had a profound impact on our society, such as Roe vs. Wade or Brown vs. the Board of Education Topeka.  They may even know about a case that on the...Read More

Compliance is far and away the number one issue facing collections organizations today. Not only are requirements growing in number and complexity, but the risks associated with non-compliance are skyrocketing.As a result, maintaining compliance for collections requires more than legal awareness....Read More

When it comes to looking inside a company’s business operations, it’s a common to see the obvious missing link between the people and technologies supporting businesses processes. John Seely Brown (Former Chief Scientist at Xerox) aptly stated, “Processes don’t do...Read More

Mobile application adoption and usage by customers is increasing rapidly across the globe with more and more customers using it as their primary method for self-service.In fact, RackSpace recently published an info-graphic titled, The Evolution of Mobile Commerce, which emphasizes the...Read More

You may recall that just two years ago, Ovum reported that nearly 75% of customers used at least three channels when interacting with an organization for customer-related issues. At the time, many observers thought this was a bit controversial, with many challenging the notion...Read More

Managing the workforce to be both efficient and effective will pay every contact center operation great dividends. Contact center agents are the decisive factor in making or breaking the customer experience. Understanding what drives inefficiencies and training your workforce accordingly...Read More

The holiday season of 2014 illustrated the degree to which consumers have adopted mobile devices as their preferred channel for shopping and commerce.  Major retailers Amazon and Target both reported that 60% of all holiday shopping traffic was through mobile devices, according to industry...Read More

Last week, Genesys announced record results for 2014, including 15% year-on-year revenue growth. Our sales were propelled by 100% growth in our cloud offerings. If you have not seen the press release, you can read it here. In short, our business grew through our ability to address a broad...Read More

Life was simpler when you were a kid. You mowed the lawn and then you got paid. But what if the lawn mower’s gas tank was empty? Or perhaps it was a rusty push mower, left over from decades ago. You knew what needed to be done, but it certainly made the job tougher when you did not...Read More

Let’s face it, when your customers call they are not typically reaching out to thank your company or give a contact center agent a pat on the back. They are calling because there is an issue, a question, or a purchase that is about to be made and they need help. If they are calling...Read More

Speech Analytics has proven to be a powerful solution for optimizing workforce performance and the customer experience.But, don’t just take my word for it! Look at some of the dramatic results that our customers have achieved with Speech Analytics, including:23% reduction in...Read More

Online shopping. Multi-channel service. Proactive customer communications. As companies and customers evolve, these things are indeed getting easier, transforming the customer experience.So, why has collecting overdue payments become more complicated?Reasons include:Declining contact ratesLower...Read More

Recent research by Capgemini has quantified the challenge being faced by insurance companies in today’s market, and it’s daunting: 70% of customers are at risk of switching insurance providers, while globally only 32% of insurance customers reported a positive customer...Read More

As consumers, we’ve all been there. Waiting on hold. Repeating information. Being transferred. Getting even the simplest task done with some companies can require you to navigate a bumpy road. You often end up on a customer journey that is so time-consuming and difficult that...Read More

As we kick off 2015, companies are having more conversations with their customers on social networks than ever before – lots of conversations. Arecent study by Social Bakers revealed that the number of questions asked of brands on Twitter has doubled in the last year alone. As...Read More

In the hit US show on AMC, The Walking Dead, a small town police officer Rick Grimes awakes from a coma to find himself as one of the few survivors after the world has been overrun with zombies. He needs to quickly adapt and make critical decisions to respond to the ever-changing and...Read More

Insurers are ranking almost dead last in customer satisfaction with the online customer experience, lagging behind banks and government, which are not typically known for their groundbreaking service.But, the numbers tell a more complex story. A new study quoted in Insurance...Read More

Looking back, 2014 turned out to be a breakthrough year for cloud contact centers. According to Frost & Sullivan, half of all contact centers in North America use some type of hosted/cloud solution today – and this number is predicted to rise to 90% by 2016. Wow!As we kick off...Read More

What a wonderful surprise it was to discover that Genesyswas chosen by Glassdoor as one of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work! The honor is especially meaningful knowing that it came from those who make Genesys what it is by living our values every day – our employees.The...Read More

Like all of us, sometimes analysts get it right, and sometimes they miss the boat. Remember a few years ago when everyone was predicting a precipitous drop-off of phone calls in contact centers, anticipating customers would transition to email and chat? That didn’t materialize. We all now...Read More

Now more than ever, customers just want to be recognized and understood. We live in the personalization era and 2015 will only take it further. At the same time, the lack of efficient customer engagement technology in place at companies worldwide and the number of ‘impersonalized&rsquo...Read More

As your company evaluates call center applications and other enterprise technologies, you’re likely faced with the hard fact that current capabilities and aging systems are not aligned with the direction your customers are heading – nor the demands they now make for...Read More

We recently sat down with communications industry analyst and strategic consultant Sheila McGee-Smith, of McGee-Smith Analytics, for a Q&A session on a topic that seems to be on everyone’s mind in the customer experience industry today: customer journeys! Below is a recap of...Read More

During the holiday season, retailers see an influx of shoppers in-store and online, but that is likely just the beginning of your customer engagement. For every new electronics device purchased, there may be an order question, an installation needed, or a technical support call.  After...Read More

I had the privilege this year to attend and present sessions at all three Genesys GForce events, which were held in New Orleans, London and Melbourne. These events provide fantastic opportunities to engage with customers and partners from all around the planet – all in the course of just a...Read More

As we close out on 2014, now’s a great time to reflect on the year in customer experience (CX). And what a year it’s been! Looking back there’s too much to cover in a single blog, but I’d like to call out a few areas that I think we’ll see impacting CX for years...Read More

As business professionals, we all deal with competing pressures from multiple sources, but just look at what CIOs have to address. The CEO wants to know which technologies are just a flavor-of-the-month versus what needs to be implemented immediately to ensure the company doesn’t get washed...Read More

Your customers are a saavy bunch that interact with many different businesses. They’re growing more technically proficient by the minute it seems. They also have come to expect certain inalienable rights as a customer of your business. If you want to keep customer satisfaction high and...Read More

We’ve all had the experience of walking into a corporate event or industry tradeshow without any idea what’s going on or how best to find out. Don’t let this happen at your events! Smart brands today are starting to take action to improve their event experiences by...Read More

My car was recently towed late one night in San Francisco, and jumping through the various hoops to get it back made me realize just how needed emerging translation call centers for the government sector have become.While attempting to get my car back, I was standing in line behind a Vietnamese...Read More

A well defined customer experience strategy is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for companies and organizations. It is mission-critical. Especially in today’s digitally-driven era of customer experience. Customers almost dictate what your CX strategy should look...Read More

Anyone who has played Words with Friends knows that the game can be a little addictive. For those who’ve never played, it’s like a modern-day, online version of scrabble that challenges you to remember lesser-used vocabulary words, while making good use of letters like Z, X,...Read More

We have officially entered a digital world with customers demanding that companies and organisations communicate with them in a broader variety of ways – including via the web, social, and mobile. From marketing to sales and service, it is fast becoming critical for companies to...Read More

As a former computer tech support representative, I have been asked a lot of questions that have made my head spin. I once received a call from a frustrated customer who could not figure out why his mouse was not turning his computer on. After walking through a series of questions,  I found...Read More

Do you remember where you were in November of 1989? Throughout Berlin this past week, thousands celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I can vividly remember the television stories of one of the most historical transformations in history.In a WSJ article...Read More

Customers don’t like it when a company’s IVR doesn’t really understand them.  Or doesn’t help them resolve their issue. Especially when they are trying to do one thing done, and the IVR seems to want them to do something else. If this sounds familiar, it...Read More

In case you missed it, we recently held webinar titled, Benchmark Your Contact Center Routing: How Do You Score Against Today’s Best Practices?, hosted by our Genesys Business Consulting practice. In the webinar, we drilled down on four best practices for contact center routing to...Read More

Space: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission. To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!Being a Star Trek fan, the opening line of each...Read More

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to keep five plates spinning in the air at the same time like they do in the circus? Looks stressful to me!Well, this is how workforce planners and operations teams typically feel day in, and day out.Delivering on the multi-channel customer...Read More

This week at the ICMI Contact Center Demo & Conference in Chicago, I had the opportunity to speak to companies and present to attendees on creating great customer journeys. For those unable to attend, my main takeaway from the conference was that customer journeys are still largely...Read More

When a retailer takes customer experience to heart, they understand what it takes to keep customers happy and loyal in order to build a high-value brand that will see them through to the next century. And that is exactly what Marks & Spencer, a 130-year old British multi-national...Read More

Warning: Zombies have infected your contact center workforce.  You can’t escape these agents of the undead, lifelessly pacing around muttering brains… service levels…smoke break.As contact center professionals and leaders, I think we have to ask ourselves two...Read More

Are you planning your move to the cloud? The shift to cloud-based contact centers has typically been led by smaller companies, as they can more quickly realize gains in capabilities and add expertise, without the CAPEX associated with on-premises solutions. However, companies with large...Read More

At Genesys, we are all about connecting customers to the right person at the right time – across any channel. But, it’s what happens after that connection is made that usually makes or breaks the customer experience. And it typically comes down to the action that the agent takes ...Read More

Today is a fitting occasion to recognize customer service heroes who live customer experience in everything they do.  They’re the front-line in our customer acquisition and retention efforts, the difference between keeping and losing a customer — often the unsung heroes of the...Read More

At Genesys, the security of our software – both in the cloud and on-premises – is extremely important to us. Over the past few days, Genesys has received several inquiries from our customers regarding the Shellshock bug, and I wanted to share what we know, as well as some...Read More

Businesses all over the world are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of their customer-facing processes – from the front office to the back office.  To stay competitive, businesses are training their agents to successfully manage multiple channels while their...Read More

Did you know that more than $3 trillion in merchandise is abandoned every year in online shopping carts? The figure dwarfs the $1.4 trillion that’s actually sold.  As retailers struggle to find new ways to get merchandise from cart to check-out, the abandonment rate is...Read More

Today’s consumers are chronically pressed for time, constantly juggling responsibilities between home and work, and turning to technology to help simplify their lives. They depend on Facebook to track birthdays, GPS to get where they’re going, and smart phones for just about...Read More

An international group of researchers recently reported that they successfully transmitted information in a brain-to-brain link between two people. In the article Mind Reading? Brain-to-Brain Message Sent from India to Paris, scientists from the U.S., France and Spain say they leveraged...Read More

For today’s blog, the webinar’s guest analyst speaker, Sheryl Kingstone from the 451 Research Mobility Team, shares her perspective on the three game changers for mobile customer experience below:1. Channel preferences demand mobileYankee Group’s Mobile and Connected Devices...Read More

Recently, the Wall Street Journal published a column with a provocative headline that read: It’s Time to Take Artificial Intelligence Seriously. In the article, the WSJ explains how artificial intelligence has transformed from an academic curiosity into something that has measurable...Read More

If you’re managing customer experience at your company and your contact center is acting like a customer experience baby, I feel sorry for you – but I can help!  You may not have known it when you took the job, but you found out that you actually adopted a customer...Read More

Imagine you walk into a diner and ask for toast, only to be told that it’s not on the menu. As a customer, you would scratch your head wondering why such an important staple isn’t being served.This is the feeling that a customer experiences when they want to reach out to your company...Read More

If you have kids under 12 years old, chances are you have heard more than you ever wanted to about Minecraft.  For the uninitiated, it’s a hugely popular video game about a guy named Steve who has to mine for minerals to help him build a home, grow food and stay away from killer...Read More

Today’s contact centers are one of the most important components of a company’s relationship with its customers. As new channels and technologies are integrated into the contact center, customer experience leaders are beginning to change the ways they evaluate contact...Read More

Today’s contact centers are one of the most important components of a company’s relationship with its customers. As new channels and technologies are integrated into the contact center, customer experience leaders are beginning to change the ways they evaluate contact...Read More

At Genesys, we’re always looking for new ways to help our customers improve the customer experience. As we recommend new approaches, we keep coming back to a word that just seems to fit: cloudification.  At a high-level, we define cloudification as moving all services to the...Read More

Successful brands know that the contact center plays a huge role in delivering great customer experiences and driving long-term loyalty.  The need for new capabilities made available quickly and cost effectively means considering a variety of deployment options...Read More

In today’s Internet-driven and mobile-driven economy, it’s more important than ever for organizations to focus on customer experience. For many companies, this means focusing on new technology. But no matter how great the latest technology is, the customer experience will...Read More

There seems to be no shortage of stories lately about social customer service gone awry. By now you probably heard of last month’s incident with a Southwest airlines passenger and his two children asked to deboard their flight due to a Tweet he posted. This week, a story broke of...Read More

Imagine all of your contact center agents posses superpowers and every customer that contacts your organization has their problems instantly resolved. No matter how difficult the challenge is or how unsatisfied the customer might be, your agents have special powers to save the day ...Read More

We are in the height of the summer road trip season – packing up the car, turning up the tunes, hitting the open road, and eventually having to stop for gas. Over the years there has been a continued evolution of the self-service gas pump. From the launch of a self-service model 50 years...Read More

Leveraging the cloud for application and data services has become almost commonplace for most companies and consumers these days.  Most of us can quickly rattle off the many benefits of the cloud, such as improved flexibility, faster deployment, reduction in required IT resources, and...Read More

No matter where you look and what research report you read, all roads point to consumers increasing their use of digital channels for customer service. At the same time, only a third of companies succeed at fulfilling their customers’ expectations when it comes to handling multiple...Read More

Does your organization have a Customer Experience strategy with set KPIs? Have you implemented either Net Promoter Score or Customer Effort Score?Like most managers, you understand that these metrics provide value. After all, you can’t manage what you can’t measure...Read More

Is your contact center having a bit of an identity crisis? Are you at a crossroads where you need to figure out if you are content with what you have or ready to invest in a new way to deliver great customer service? As a customer experience professional, everywhere you look you see...Read More

Turning analytics into action is probably high on the list of both the VP of Customer Experience and the Director of Contact Center Operations. In their attempts to better understand the customer through voice of the customer initiatives, they typically set out to identify and fix...Read More

Here is a common social media issue heard from brands all over the world: if one of my customers posts an issue that requires my company’s immediate attention on Facebook, Twitter or other networks, will the message even be received, or will it go unnoticed in the overwhelming amount...Read More

Recently I was watching the classic baseball movie, Field of Dreams – you know, where the farmer hears the voice from the cornfield say, “If you build it, he will come.” The famous quote made me think: if your company asked you to build a contact center from scratch...Read More

There is no simple answer for what keeps customers coming back to a brand, but there are strategies and solutions businesses can use to create customer experiences that have a proven impact on loyalty. We are increasingly seeing the wave of customers expecting their...Read More

Business intelligence, analytics and big data have been buzzwords in the IT industry for a while now, and the old saying that “you cannot manage what you cannot measure” will hold true for many years to come.For most contact center managers however, this is old news.The...Read More

“Gooooaaal!”  That’s what I wanted to jump out of my chair and shout more than once yesterday, as I was one of millions in the world watching the nerve-racking USA vs. Belgium World Cup soccer game. Ugh.  As much as Tim Howard and the rest of the team wowed the...Read More

At last month’s G-Force in London, I sat down with keynote speaker and author Joseph Pine. We had a great opportunity to dig a little deeper into his book, The Experience Economy, and what it takes to deliver great customer experience today. Below is a Q&A recap of our...Read More

Today, billions of global internet users are driving growth in digital sales, support and customer service. As these customers surf the web, they are increasingly looking to connect and chat with the companies from whom they purchase products and services.As this rise in digital channel...Read More

If your organization’s driving goal is to lower customer effort, increase sales, and create more loyal brand advocates, the processes used to route, manage, and report on interactions between each customer and your organization can make or break the customer experience.As an...Read More

Workforce Optimization (WFO) solutions come in all shapes and sizes. The majority of WFO solutions find their roots in the early days of call center evolution through basic call recording capabilities and further developing into quality management and coaching solutions.At the same time...Read More

It’s no surprise that consumers love shopping  online. It’s quick, convenient, and incredibly easy to comparison shop, find product reviews, and ship directly to anywhere you want. It’s forcing industries from retail to banking to insurance to battle for consumers who...Read More

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the original title of a novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1886. The story is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll...Read More

We’ve been discussing contact center workforce optimization (WFO) suites for years. DMG defines a workforce optimization suite as a “collection of integrated modules designed to capture, analyze and give managers the information required to evaluate the performance of...Read More

So, you’re thinking about moving your contact center to the cloud? We’re not surprised – a cloud-based customer experience platform boasts multiple benefits, including scalability, agility and security, as well as ease-of-use and cost savings – in the...Read More

Genesys EVP of Product and Solution Strategy Merijn te Booij kicked off the second day of main stage presentations at G-Force London with a view to the future of CX. Today’s keynotes came on the heels of last night’s gala event, which helped our G-Force attendees warm up for the...Read More

Driving customer loyalty while growing market share means competing aggressively. To do that, you need to differentiate both your products and your customer service. Like many consumers out there, I find that my satisfaction and loyalty increase with a company when my effort during critical sales...Read More

Customer experience plays a major role in driving long-term loyalty and repeat business. It can determine whether you keep your account with a large national bank or move to a small, local credit union. You might think that larger companies have an advantage when it comes to implementing cloud...Read More

A few weeks ago, my home Internet went down. As I was working from my home office with a meeting in two hours, I quickly began to troubleshoot my connection. This set me along a customer journey that made me realize that the total customer experience is everyone’s responsibility...Read More

With every contact your agents have with customers there are essentially two dimensions:  the technical components and the softer communication elements.  The hard truth is that soft skills most often have more influence on customer experience.  Customers who encounter agents...Read More

There are some things that get better with age, like wine, cheese and some life stories. Unfortunately, automatic call distribution (ACD) systems do not make the list!Here are some of the biggest inconveniences your contact center will face when its on-site ACD unit begins to end of...Read More

Have you ever sat in a noisy restaurant, trying to enjoy your food and understand what those at your table are so passionately discussing? Personally, I always have a hard time keeping my concentration level up to fully grasp and understand the complete conversation. The constant flood of voices,...Read More

So there I was, meeting with the VP of Customer Experience of a large telecommunications company to discuss the contact center challenges they were facing in delivering on their brand promise, when I’ll never forget what she said to me next:“Historically, we have optimized...Read More

At a recent conference of contact center leaders in Canada, a consultant took the stage and asked the audience how many of them were using what he called, ‘voice of the customer analytics.’ He defined that asspeech and text analytics used to analyze customer interactions with the...Read More

We’re all concerned about our privacy these days.  This is especially critical when it comes to customer experience. Everywhere we turn, we hear about another instance of data incursion invading our lives in ways we don’t always understand.  But, before we condemn data...Read More

Are you looking to build a contact center as your new organization has grown fast during the last couple of years and your existing solution simply does not work anymore? Sure, your PBX provider probably offers an ACD solution, but the capabilities are not really convincing. You could select...Read More

No one wants to spend time in the doctor’s office, but I have a four small children and it seems this past winter I spent days of my life there. But what makes the visits more tolerable as the staff listen to crying children –  and deal with their exhausted parents – is the...Read More

Senior executives often expect contact centers to do more than simply resolve customer issues; they expect them to be revenue-generating entities that increase customer lifetime value.  In fact, 69% of strategic decision makers within both UK and US in-house contact centers believe they...Read More

Enterprise workforce management is a relatively new idea that can literally transform a customer service organization, and forward-thinking businesses must at least have it on their radar, if not their 2014 priorities list. But just as critical is workforce optimization (WFO), a more...Read More

As companies better understand how customer loyalty impacts revenue and profits, most want to take immediate action to improve.  While not the only factor, technology can be the key element in quickly driving a customer experience (CX) strategy change.But, here’s the rub:You and senior...Read More

The adoption of multi-channel contact centers continues to accelerate, driven by the growth of social and mobile channels, and by the imperative that companies put the customer experience first. In addition to the traditional channels—including voice, email, text, chat, and the Web&mdash...Read More

Global mobility is growing at a rapid pace. Recent research indicates that mobile penetration has reached 92 percent, and grew by 70 percent between Q4 2012 and Q4 2013.  At this rate, IDC predicts that more people will access the web using a mobile device than through a...Read More

The innovation heating up in the mobile world is the micro-location technology of Apple’s iBeacon. Last week Fortune wrote how iBeacon is the turning point for mobile engagement. And with US retailers like Macy’s, Best Buy, Target, J.C. Penney and Kmart all looking...Read More

Think back to 10 years ago. Or even just five. The landscape of how customers interact within and around the contact center has been astoundingly dynamic, and there are very few signs of things slowing down.  There are a variety of ways for companies to remain proactive and vigilant in order...Read More

According to Wikipedia, “Utility is usefulness, the ability of something to satisfy needs or wants.” Yet for many utilities sector customers, including those for services like electricity, gas, and water, the wikipedia definition of the word utility may not be one they’d...Read More

Like many people in the era of pervasive mobile technology, I maintain a love/hate relationship with my wireless Internet service provider. In fact, it is fair to say that our relationship is complicated: complicated by the provider’s billing statements that would puzzle a Talmudic scholar,...Read More

In a recent blog post titled Converting Loyalty into Economic Advantage, Bain gives us very helpful insights on how to achieve growth through customer centricity.In particular, Bain shares with us the following finding: 135 companies in more than a dozen sectors and geographical regions...Read More

I can vividly remember listening to radio shows for children when I was young and one of the songs that has stuck in my memory was by Danny Kaye called “The King’s New Clothes”, based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen. The story tells of a king (or Emperor) who was...Read More

Recently, the Harvard Business Review published a blog post called Don’t Let Data Paralysis Stand Between You and Your Customers. According to this article HBR reminds us how in the last couple years, multi-channel customer interactions have literally revolutionized the way consumers...Read More

This classic Dickens opening could be used to describe the state of customer loyalty in the media and telecommunications industries just about anywhere in the world today. Even in these best of times with flourishing technology like multi-room accessible DVRs, streaming downloads, vast on-demand...Read More

Protecting your organization’s databases from hackers is a lot like trying to defend a large country house from ants. No matter how much time and money you invest in sealing the cracks or laying traps, it is inevitable—in the same way, hackers are out there, and eventually they will...Read More

Driven by the economic downturn from the past several years, many companies have invested in increasing their ability to collect money from their customers. In a time where revenues are falling, getting paid has become even more important than ever.To increase the productivity of the collections...Read More

In order to get a sense of the importance of providing great customer experience anytime and any place, picture your customers waiting at a bus stop. When they require assistance, they do not have all day to sit around and wait for answers. And if your company cannot respond in time to answer...Read More

Happy New Year! We hope 2013 was good to all of you. At the end of each year we take a look back at which of our posts were the most popular.As we kick a new year we wanted to share our top ten posts from 2013. We look forward to taking customer experience to the next level with all of you...Read More

Right now, companies everywhere are adopting the customer engagement and experience mindset. In fact, a recent study by Korn/Ferry International indicates that customer engagement is now the top marketing concern for 52 percent of CMOs.Of that group, 30 percent believe that creating...Read More

Back in the mid-90s I worked for an electricity supply company in the Southwest of England. At that time the company was going through the final throes of privatization and it was bought by a major US energy company.The new owners instigated a business improvement program around what it referred...Read More

Picture this: eight months after Susan signed up to receive your company’s services your contact center agents still do not know her name when she calls. She repeatedly has to provide basic information and re-explain her problem and situation with every conversation.Susan is beginning to...Read More

During our recent Genesys Best Practices webinar on 5 Steps for Building a World-Class Contact Center in 2014 we discussed the new customer experience model companies can adopt to address the changes in customer behavior and expectations coming in 2014. We also discussed the key...Read More

The continuous decline of branch office visits and the booming growth of digital channels are forcing retail banks to reinvent the role of the branch office touch point. In fact, retail branch visits are expected to drop by more than 50% by 2015.The challenges of this transformation reside at two...Read More

Let’s face it, employees are either engaged or disengaged. There is generally very little middle ground, and that makes tracking and measuring employee engagement rates rather difficult for HR executives and the C-suite. I read a recent article on LinkedIn from Mark Crowley...Read More

Recently the U.S. Federal government held their annual stress tests to determine if banks could withstand a severe economic crisis and avoid a taxpayer bailout. We won’t name names, but there were a few financial institutions who failed quite badly. This got me to thinking, what...Read More

Many of us in the customer experience space, myself included, think we know our customers and what it takes to do business with them. We believe that the traditional customer will continue doing business in the same way, even with the adoption and use of new technologies like digital...Read More

Would you embark on a cross-country journey without taking a map? It sounds crazy, yet that is exactly what most organizations ask their customers to do every day.Over the past decade the number of ways we can now communicate with businesses has exploded – voice, email, chat, social, SMS...Read More

Did you know that companies will lose billions of dollars this year due to bad customer experiences? In fact, companies will lose more than $31 billion in revenue over the next few years due to abandoned shopping carts alone? At the same time, marketing professionals who focus solely on...Read More

One of the earliest lessons in marketing and sales is that you should know your customer. What does the customer profile look like? How do customers behave and what triggers them to ultimately buy one of your products or services? This knowledge helps to optimize your marketing message, your...Read More

You see it, you like it, you buy it. Well, actually, if you’re like most of us, you see it, you like it, read reviews — and then take a look at the price tag. Is it too expensive? Do I need it? What value will I derive from it?Whether deliberating a personal or business purchase, when...Read More

Oh, where is that elusive Waldo hiding? Your contact center agents aren’t spending time literally looking for Waldo. But unless they have a unified agent desktop, they may be undergoing a similar search every time they try to help a customer.When a call comes in, does your agent have...Read More

On this St. Patrick’s Day everyone should be seeing (and wearing) green! And for those companies that have switched to a modern self-service IVR platform – they are probably seeing even more green flow to their bottom lines as a result of improving their self-service...Read More

This week, we’ll be at Enterprise Connect in Orlando where omnichannel customer journey management will take center stage for Genesys. We’re kicking things off today with the launch of the next generation of the Genesys Customer Experience Platform. The platform is truly a game...Read More

All customers are not created equal. This is also true for relationships. No business has the same relationship with their customers as you intend to have with yours. The thing is though, you must first define what a relationship with your customer looks and feels like and in turn, how they would...Read More

As a professional services consultant working with companies everyday, I am seeing a revolution taking place in customer service right before my eyes. Companies are tossing out their multichannel strategies and related solutions. This is more than a little surprising.  How can this be...Read More

The recent viral picture of a dress that caused many debates on its true color can teach us a lot about great customer experience. If you are not aware of this event, by all means check it out onBuzzFeed, where the debate raged on in the socialsphere. Now, it’s possible that many...Read More

Lawsuits have played a major role in American history.  Even school-aged children can name some of the more famous lawsuits that have had a profound impact on our society, such as Roe vs. Wade or Brown vs. the Board of Education Topeka.  They may even know about a case that on the...Read More

Compliance is far and away the number one issue facing collections organizations today. Not only are requirements growing in number and complexity, but the risks associated with non-compliance are skyrocketing.As a result, maintaining compliance for collections requires more than legal awareness....Read More

When it comes to looking inside a company’s business operations, it’s a common to see the obvious missing link between the people and technologies supporting businesses processes. John Seely Brown (Former Chief Scientist at Xerox) aptly stated, “Processes don’t do...Read More

Mobile application adoption and usage by customers is increasing rapidly across the globe with more and more customers using it as their primary method for self-service.In fact, RackSpace recently published an info-graphic titled, The Evolution of Mobile Commerce, which emphasizes the...Read More

You may recall that just two years ago, Ovum reported that nearly 75% of customers used at least three channels when interacting with an organization for customer-related issues. At the time, many observers thought this was a bit controversial, with many challenging the notion...Read More

Managing the workforce to be both efficient and effective will pay every contact center operation great dividends. Contact center agents are the decisive factor in making or breaking the customer experience. Understanding what drives inefficiencies and training your workforce accordingly...Read More

The holiday season of 2014 illustrated the degree to which consumers have adopted mobile devices as their preferred channel for shopping and commerce.  Major retailers Amazon and Target both reported that 60% of all holiday shopping traffic was through mobile devices, according to industry...Read More

Last week, Genesys announced record results for 2014, including 15% year-on-year revenue growth. Our sales were propelled by 100% growth in our cloud offerings. If you have not seen the press release, you can read it here. In short, our business grew through our ability to address a broad...Read More

Life was simpler when you were a kid. You mowed the lawn and then you got paid. But what if the lawn mower’s gas tank was empty? Or perhaps it was a rusty push mower, left over from decades ago. You knew what needed to be done, but it certainly made the job tougher when you did not...Read More

Let’s face it, when your customers call they are not typically reaching out to thank your company or give a contact center agent a pat on the back. They are calling because there is an issue, a question, or a purchase that is about to be made and they need help. If they are calling...Read More

Speech Analytics has proven to be a powerful solution for optimizing workforce performance and the customer experience.But, don’t just take my word for it! Look at some of the dramatic results that our customers have achieved with Speech Analytics, including:23% reduction in...Read More

Online shopping. Multi-channel service. Proactive customer communications. As companies and customers evolve, these things are indeed getting easier, transforming the customer experience.So, why has collecting overdue payments become more complicated?Reasons include:Declining contact ratesLower...Read More

Recent research by Capgemini has quantified the challenge being faced by insurance companies in today’s market, and it’s daunting: 70% of customers are at risk of switching insurance providers, while globally only 32% of insurance customers reported a positive customer...Read More

As consumers, we’ve all been there. Waiting on hold. Repeating information. Being transferred. Getting even the simplest task done with some companies can require you to navigate a bumpy road. You often end up on a customer journey that is so time-consuming and difficult that...Read More

As we kick off 2015, companies are having more conversations with their customers on social networks than ever before – lots of conversations. Arecent study by Social Bakers revealed that the number of questions asked of brands on Twitter has doubled in the last year alone. As...Read More

In the hit US show on AMC, The Walking Dead, a small town police officer Rick Grimes awakes from a coma to find himself as one of the few survivors after the world has been overrun with zombies. He needs to quickly adapt and make critical decisions to respond to the ever-changing and...Read More

Insurers are ranking almost dead last in customer satisfaction with the online customer experience, lagging behind banks and government, which are not typically known for their groundbreaking service.But, the numbers tell a more complex story. A new study quoted in Insurance...Read More

Looking back, 2014 turned out to be a breakthrough year for cloud contact centers. According to Frost & Sullivan, half of all contact centers in North America use some type of hosted/cloud solution today – and this number is predicted to rise to 90% by 2016. Wow!As we kick off...Read More

What a wonderful surprise it was to discover that Genesyswas chosen by Glassdoor as one of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work! The honor is especially meaningful knowing that it came from those who make Genesys what it is by living our values every day – our employees.The...Read More

Like all of us, sometimes analysts get it right, and sometimes they miss the boat. Remember a few years ago when everyone was predicting a precipitous drop-off of phone calls in contact centers, anticipating customers would transition to email and chat? That didn’t materialize. We all now...Read More

Now more than ever, customers just want to be recognized and understood. We live in the personalization era and 2015 will only take it further. At the same time, the lack of efficient customer engagement technology in place at companies worldwide and the number of ‘impersonalized&rsquo...Read More

As your company evaluates call center applications and other enterprise technologies, you’re likely faced with the hard fact that current capabilities and aging systems are not aligned with the direction your customers are heading – nor the demands they now make for...Read More

We recently sat down with communications industry analyst and strategic consultant Sheila McGee-Smith, of McGee-Smith Analytics, for a Q&A session on a topic that seems to be on everyone’s mind in the customer experience industry today: customer journeys! Below is a recap of...Read More

During the holiday season, retailers see an influx of shoppers in-store and online, but that is likely just the beginning of your customer engagement. For every new electronics device purchased, there may be an order question, an installation needed, or a technical support call.  After...Read More

I had the privilege this year to attend and present sessions at all three Genesys GForce events, which were held in New Orleans, London and Melbourne. These events provide fantastic opportunities to engage with customers and partners from all around the planet – all in the course of just a...Read More

As we close out on 2014, now’s a great time to reflect on the year in customer experience (CX). And what a year it’s been! Looking back there’s too much to cover in a single blog, but I’d like to call out a few areas that I think we’ll see impacting CX for years...Read More

As business professionals, we all deal with competing pressures from multiple sources, but just look at what CIOs have to address. The CEO wants to know which technologies are just a flavor-of-the-month versus what needs to be implemented immediately to ensure the company doesn’t get washed...Read More

Your customers are a saavy bunch that interact with many different businesses. They’re growing more technically proficient by the minute it seems. They also have come to expect certain inalienable rights as a customer of your business. If you want to keep customer satisfaction high and...Read More

We’ve all had the experience of walking into a corporate event or industry tradeshow without any idea what’s going on or how best to find out. Don’t let this happen at your events! Smart brands today are starting to take action to improve their event experiences by...Read More

My car was recently towed late one night in San Francisco, and jumping through the various hoops to get it back made me realize just how needed emerging translation call centers for the government sector have become.While attempting to get my car back, I was standing in line behind a Vietnamese...Read More

A well defined customer experience strategy is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for companies and organizations. It is mission-critical. Especially in today’s digitally-driven era of customer experience. Customers almost dictate what your CX strategy should look...Read More

Anyone who has played Words with Friends knows that the game can be a little addictive. For those who’ve never played, it’s like a modern-day, online version of scrabble that challenges you to remember lesser-used vocabulary words, while making good use of letters like Z, X,...Read More

We have officially entered a digital world with customers demanding that companies and organisations communicate with them in a broader variety of ways – including via the web, social, and mobile. From marketing to sales and service, it is fast becoming critical for companies to...Read More

As a former computer tech support representative, I have been asked a lot of questions that have made my head spin. I once received a call from a frustrated customer who could not figure out why his mouse was not turning his computer on. After walking through a series of questions,  I found...Read More

Do you remember where you were in November of 1989? Throughout Berlin this past week, thousands celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I can vividly remember the television stories of one of the most historical transformations in history.In a WSJ article...Read More

Customers don’t like it when a company’s IVR doesn’t really understand them.  Or doesn’t help them resolve their issue. Especially when they are trying to do one thing done, and the IVR seems to want them to do something else. If this sounds familiar, it...Read More

In case you missed it, we recently held webinar titled, Benchmark Your Contact Center Routing: How Do You Score Against Today’s Best Practices?, hosted by our Genesys Business Consulting practice. In the webinar, we drilled down on four best practices for contact center routing to...Read More

Space: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission. To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!Being a Star Trek fan, the opening line of each...Read More

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to keep five plates spinning in the air at the same time like they do in the circus? Looks stressful to me!Well, this is how workforce planners and operations teams typically feel day in, and day out.Delivering on the multi-channel customer...Read More

This week at the ICMI Contact Center Demo & Conference in Chicago, I had the opportunity to speak to companies and present to attendees on creating great customer journeys. For those unable to attend, my main takeaway from the conference was that customer journeys are still largely...Read More

When a retailer takes customer experience to heart, they understand what it takes to keep customers happy and loyal in order to build a high-value brand that will see them through to the next century. And that is exactly what Marks & Spencer, a 130-year old British multi-national...Read More

Warning: Zombies have infected your contact center workforce.  You can’t escape these agents of the undead, lifelessly pacing around muttering brains… service levels…smoke break.As contact center professionals and leaders, I think we have to ask ourselves two...Read More

Are you planning your move to the cloud? The shift to cloud-based contact centers has typically been led by smaller companies, as they can more quickly realize gains in capabilities and add expertise, without the CAPEX associated with on-premises solutions. However, companies with large...Read More

At Genesys, we are all about connecting customers to the right person at the right time – across any channel. But, it’s what happens after that connection is made that usually makes or breaks the customer experience. And it typically comes down to the action that the agent takes ...Read More

Today is a fitting occasion to recognize customer service heroes who live customer experience in everything they do.  They’re the front-line in our customer acquisition and retention efforts, the difference between keeping and losing a customer — often the unsung heroes of the...Read More

At Genesys, the security of our software – both in the cloud and on-premises – is extremely important to us. Over the past few days, Genesys has received several inquiries from our customers regarding the Shellshock bug, and I wanted to share what we know, as well as some...Read More

Businesses all over the world are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of their customer-facing processes – from the front office to the back office.  To stay competitive, businesses are training their agents to successfully manage multiple channels while their...Read More

Did you know that more than $3 trillion in merchandise is abandoned every year in online shopping carts? The figure dwarfs the $1.4 trillion that’s actually sold.  As retailers struggle to find new ways to get merchandise from cart to check-out, the abandonment rate is...Read More

Today’s consumers are chronically pressed for time, constantly juggling responsibilities between home and work, and turning to technology to help simplify their lives. They depend on Facebook to track birthdays, GPS to get where they’re going, and smart phones for just about...Read More

An international group of researchers recently reported that they successfully transmitted information in a brain-to-brain link between two people. In the article Mind Reading? Brain-to-Brain Message Sent from India to Paris, scientists from the U.S., France and Spain say they leveraged...Read More

For today’s blog, the webinar’s guest analyst speaker, Sheryl Kingstone from the 451 Research Mobility Team, shares her perspective on the three game changers for mobile customer experience below:1. Channel preferences demand mobileYankee Group’s Mobile and Connected Devices...Read More

Recently, the Wall Street Journal published a column with a provocative headline that read: It’s Time to Take Artificial Intelligence Seriously. In the article, the WSJ explains how artificial intelligence has transformed from an academic curiosity into something that has measurable...Read More

If you’re managing customer experience at your company and your contact center is acting like a customer experience baby, I feel sorry for you – but I can help!  You may not have known it when you took the job, but you found out that you actually adopted a customer...Read More

Imagine you walk into a diner and ask for toast, only to be told that it’s not on the menu. As a customer, you would scratch your head wondering why such an important staple isn’t being served.This is the feeling that a customer experiences when they want to reach out to your company...Read More

If you have kids under 12 years old, chances are you have heard more than you ever wanted to about Minecraft.  For the uninitiated, it’s a hugely popular video game about a guy named Steve who has to mine for minerals to help him build a home, grow food and stay away from killer...Read More

Today’s contact centers are one of the most important components of a company’s relationship with its customers. As new channels and technologies are integrated into the contact center, customer experience leaders are beginning to change the ways they evaluate contact...Read More

Today’s contact centers are one of the most important components of a company’s relationship with its customers. As new channels and technologies are integrated into the contact center, customer experience leaders are beginning to change the ways they evaluate contact...Read More

At Genesys, we’re always looking for new ways to help our customers improve the customer experience. As we recommend new approaches, we keep coming back to a word that just seems to fit: cloudification.  At a high-level, we define cloudification as moving all services to the...Read More

Successful brands know that the contact center plays a huge role in delivering great customer experiences and driving long-term loyalty.  The need for new capabilities made available quickly and cost effectively means considering a variety of deployment options...Read More

In today’s Internet-driven and mobile-driven economy, it’s more important than ever for organizations to focus on customer experience. For many companies, this means focusing on new technology. But no matter how great the latest technology is, the customer experience will...Read More

There seems to be no shortage of stories lately about social customer service gone awry. By now you probably heard of last month’s incident with a Southwest airlines passenger and his two children asked to deboard their flight due to a Tweet he posted. This week, a story broke of...Read More

Imagine all of your contact center agents posses superpowers and every customer that contacts your organization has their problems instantly resolved. No matter how difficult the challenge is or how unsatisfied the customer might be, your agents have special powers to save the day ...Read More

We are in the height of the summer road trip season – packing up the car, turning up the tunes, hitting the open road, and eventually having to stop for gas. Over the years there has been a continued evolution of the self-service gas pump. From the launch of a self-service model 50 years...Read More

Leveraging the cloud for application and data services has become almost commonplace for most companies and consumers these days.  Most of us can quickly rattle off the many benefits of the cloud, such as improved flexibility, faster deployment, reduction in required IT resources, and...Read More

No matter where you look and what research report you read, all roads point to consumers increasing their use of digital channels for customer service. At the same time, only a third of companies succeed at fulfilling their customers’ expectations when it comes to handling multiple...Read More

Does your organization have a Customer Experience strategy with set KPIs? Have you implemented either Net Promoter Score or Customer Effort Score?Like most managers, you understand that these metrics provide value. After all, you can’t manage what you can’t measure...Read More

Is your contact center having a bit of an identity crisis? Are you at a crossroads where you need to figure out if you are content with what you have or ready to invest in a new way to deliver great customer service? As a customer experience professional, everywhere you look you see...Read More

Turning analytics into action is probably high on the list of both the VP of Customer Experience and the Director of Contact Center Operations. In their attempts to better understand the customer through voice of the customer initiatives, they typically set out to identify and fix...Read More

Here is a common social media issue heard from brands all over the world: if one of my customers posts an issue that requires my company’s immediate attention on Facebook, Twitter or other networks, will the message even be received, or will it go unnoticed in the overwhelming amount...Read More

Recently I was watching the classic baseball movie, Field of Dreams – you know, where the farmer hears the voice from the cornfield say, “If you build it, he will come.” The famous quote made me think: if your company asked you to build a contact center from scratch...Read More

There is no simple answer for what keeps customers coming back to a brand, but there are strategies and solutions businesses can use to create customer experiences that have a proven impact on loyalty. We are increasingly seeing the wave of customers expecting their...Read More

Business intelligence, analytics and big data have been buzzwords in the IT industry for a while now, and the old saying that “you cannot manage what you cannot measure” will hold true for many years to come.For most contact center managers however, this is old news.The...Read More

“Gooooaaal!”  That’s what I wanted to jump out of my chair and shout more than once yesterday, as I was one of millions in the world watching the nerve-racking USA vs. Belgium World Cup soccer game. Ugh.  As much as Tim Howard and the rest of the team wowed the...Read More

At last month’s G-Force in London, I sat down with keynote speaker and author Joseph Pine. We had a great opportunity to dig a little deeper into his book, The Experience Economy, and what it takes to deliver great customer experience today. Below is a Q&A recap of our...Read More

Today, billions of global internet users are driving growth in digital sales, support and customer service. As these customers surf the web, they are increasingly looking to connect and chat with the companies from whom they purchase products and services.As this rise in digital channel...Read More

If your organization’s driving goal is to lower customer effort, increase sales, and create more loyal brand advocates, the processes used to route, manage, and report on interactions between each customer and your organization can make or break the customer experience.As an...Read More

Workforce Optimization (WFO) solutions come in all shapes and sizes. The majority of WFO solutions find their roots in the early days of call center evolution through basic call recording capabilities and further developing into quality management and coaching solutions.At the same time...Read More

It’s no surprise that consumers love shopping  online. It’s quick, convenient, and incredibly easy to comparison shop, find product reviews, and ship directly to anywhere you want. It’s forcing industries from retail to banking to insurance to battle for consumers who...Read More

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the original title of a novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1886. The story is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll...Read More

We’ve been discussing contact center workforce optimization (WFO) suites for years. DMG defines a workforce optimization suite as a “collection of integrated modules designed to capture, analyze and give managers the information required to evaluate the performance of...Read More

So, you’re thinking about moving your contact center to the cloud? We’re not surprised – a cloud-based customer experience platform boasts multiple benefits, including scalability, agility and security, as well as ease-of-use and cost savings – in the...Read More

Genesys EVP of Product and Solution Strategy Merijn te Booij kicked off the second day of main stage presentations at G-Force London with a view to the future of CX. Today’s keynotes came on the heels of last night’s gala event, which helped our G-Force attendees warm up for the...Read More

Driving customer loyalty while growing market share means competing aggressively. To do that, you need to differentiate both your products and your customer service. Like many consumers out there, I find that my satisfaction and loyalty increase with a company when my effort during critical sales...Read More

Customer experience plays a major role in driving long-term loyalty and repeat business. It can determine whether you keep your account with a large national bank or move to a small, local credit union. You might think that larger companies have an advantage when it comes to implementing cloud...Read More

A few weeks ago, my home Internet went down. As I was working from my home office with a meeting in two hours, I quickly began to troubleshoot my connection. This set me along a customer journey that made me realize that the total customer experience is everyone’s responsibility...Read More

With every contact your agents have with customers there are essentially two dimensions:  the technical components and the softer communication elements.  The hard truth is that soft skills most often have more influence on customer experience.  Customers who encounter agents...Read More

There are some things that get better with age, like wine, cheese and some life stories. Unfortunately, automatic call distribution (ACD) systems do not make the list!Here are some of the biggest inconveniences your contact center will face when its on-site ACD unit begins to end of...Read More

Have you ever sat in a noisy restaurant, trying to enjoy your food and understand what those at your table are so passionately discussing? Personally, I always have a hard time keeping my concentration level up to fully grasp and understand the complete conversation. The constant flood of voices,...Read More

So there I was, meeting with the VP of Customer Experience of a large telecommunications company to discuss the contact center challenges they were facing in delivering on their brand promise, when I’ll never forget what she said to me next:“Historically, we have optimized...Read More

At a recent conference of contact center leaders in Canada, a consultant took the stage and asked the audience how many of them were using what he called, ‘voice of the customer analytics.’ He defined that asspeech and text analytics used to analyze customer interactions with the...Read More

We’re all concerned about our privacy these days.  This is especially critical when it comes to customer experience. Everywhere we turn, we hear about another instance of data incursion invading our lives in ways we don’t always understand.  But, before we condemn data...Read More

Are you looking to build a contact center as your new organization has grown fast during the last couple of years and your existing solution simply does not work anymore? Sure, your PBX provider probably offers an ACD solution, but the capabilities are not really convincing. You could select...Read More

No one wants to spend time in the doctor’s office, but I have a four small children and it seems this past winter I spent days of my life there. But what makes the visits more tolerable as the staff listen to crying children –  and deal with their exhausted parents – is the...Read More

Senior executives often expect contact centers to do more than simply resolve customer issues; they expect them to be revenue-generating entities that increase customer lifetime value.  In fact, 69% of strategic decision makers within both UK and US in-house contact centers believe they...Read More

Enterprise workforce management is a relatively new idea that can literally transform a customer service organization, and forward-thinking businesses must at least have it on their radar, if not their 2014 priorities list. But just as critical is workforce optimization (WFO), a more...Read More

As companies better understand how customer loyalty impacts revenue and profits, most want to take immediate action to improve.  While not the only factor, technology can be the key element in quickly driving a customer experience (CX) strategy change.But, here’s the rub:You and senior...Read More

The adoption of multi-channel contact centers continues to accelerate, driven by the growth of social and mobile channels, and by the imperative that companies put the customer experience first. In addition to the traditional channels—including voice, email, text, chat, and the Web&mdash...Read More

Global mobility is growing at a rapid pace. Recent research indicates that mobile penetration has reached 92 percent, and grew by 70 percent between Q4 2012 and Q4 2013.  At this rate, IDC predicts that more people will access the web using a mobile device than through a...Read More

The innovation heating up in the mobile world is the micro-location technology of Apple’s iBeacon. Last week Fortune wrote how iBeacon is the turning point for mobile engagement. And with US retailers like Macy’s, Best Buy, Target, J.C. Penney and Kmart all looking...Read More

Think back to 10 years ago. Or even just five. The landscape of how customers interact within and around the contact center has been astoundingly dynamic, and there are very few signs of things slowing down.  There are a variety of ways for companies to remain proactive and vigilant in order...Read More

According to Wikipedia, “Utility is usefulness, the ability of something to satisfy needs or wants.” Yet for many utilities sector customers, including those for services like electricity, gas, and water, the wikipedia definition of the word utility may not be one they’d...Read More

Like many people in the era of pervasive mobile technology, I maintain a love/hate relationship with my wireless Internet service provider. In fact, it is fair to say that our relationship is complicated: complicated by the provider’s billing statements that would puzzle a Talmudic scholar,...Read More

In a recent blog post titled Converting Loyalty into Economic Advantage, Bain gives us very helpful insights on how to achieve growth through customer centricity.In particular, Bain shares with us the following finding: 135 companies in more than a dozen sectors and geographical regions...Read More

I can vividly remember listening to radio shows for children when I was young and one of the songs that has stuck in my memory was by Danny Kaye called “The King’s New Clothes”, based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen. The story tells of a king (or Emperor) who was...Read More

Recently, the Harvard Business Review published a blog post called Don’t Let Data Paralysis Stand Between You and Your Customers. According to this article HBR reminds us how in the last couple years, multi-channel customer interactions have literally revolutionized the way consumers...Read More

This classic Dickens opening could be used to describe the state of customer loyalty in the media and telecommunications industries just about anywhere in the world today. Even in these best of times with flourishing technology like multi-room accessible DVRs, streaming downloads, vast on-demand...Read More

Protecting your organization’s databases from hackers is a lot like trying to defend a large country house from ants. No matter how much time and money you invest in sealing the cracks or laying traps, it is inevitable—in the same way, hackers are out there, and eventually they will...Read More

Driven by the economic downturn from the past several years, many companies have invested in increasing their ability to collect money from their customers. In a time where revenues are falling, getting paid has become even more important than ever.To increase the productivity of the collections...Read More

In order to get a sense of the importance of providing great customer experience anytime and any place, picture your customers waiting at a bus stop. When they require assistance, they do not have all day to sit around and wait for answers. And if your company cannot respond in time to answer...Read More

Happy New Year! We hope 2013 was good to all of you. At the end of each year we take a look back at which of our posts were the most popular.As we kick a new year we wanted to share our top ten posts from 2013. We look forward to taking customer experience to the next level with all of you...Read More

Right now, companies everywhere are adopting the customer engagement and experience mindset. In fact, a recent study by Korn/Ferry International indicates that customer engagement is now the top marketing concern for 52 percent of CMOs.Of that group, 30 percent believe that creating...Read More

Back in the mid-90s I worked for an electricity supply company in the Southwest of England. At that time the company was going through the final throes of privatization and it was bought by a major US energy company.The new owners instigated a business improvement program around what it referred...Read More

Picture this: eight months after Susan signed up to receive your company’s services your contact center agents still do not know her name when she calls. She repeatedly has to provide basic information and re-explain her problem and situation with every conversation.Susan is beginning to...Read More

During our recent Genesys Best Practices webinar on 5 Steps for Building a World-Class Contact Center in 2014 we discussed the new customer experience model companies can adopt to address the changes in customer behavior and expectations coming in 2014. We also discussed the key...Read More

The continuous decline of branch office visits and the booming growth of digital channels are forcing retail banks to reinvent the role of the branch office touch point. In fact, retail branch visits are expected to drop by more than 50% by 2015.The challenges of this transformation reside at two...Read More