Author:  Jim Mitchell
When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Bank recently postponed their concert dates in Ft. Lauderdale and Orlando, FL, Ticketmaster proactively reached out to concertgoers to let them know. 
There was, of course, the public notification. Someone shared the information with the media who then communicated it to the public-at-large.  But, what if a [...]

Author:  Jim Mitchell
In my last blog I spoke a bit about the overall results from the most recent Aspect Contact Center Satisfaction Index Europe, mostly as they relate to contact center personnel. I think it’s also important to explore the business impacts of automation as determined by the research.  Self service is a delicate topic [...]

Author:  Roger Sumner
A leading wireless services provider recently “fired” some of its customers, news that was a little surprising to me.  Don’t get me wrong.  I believe that segmenting customers is a good practice, but firing customers outright can quickly become a very slippery slope.
There are basically two issues here.  First is this notion of [...]

Author:  Gary Barnett
I’m sure you’re familiar with a contact center’s core interaction technologies – the automatic call distributor (ACD), the self-service application, the predictive dialer, as well as email and chat capabilities.  These technologies are the primary vehicles through which many customer-company interactions take place before reaching an agent.
These core interaction technologies are themselves supported [...]

Author:  Roger Sumner
The results of the Aspect Contact Center Satisfaction Index are in and the news is mixed.  On the bright side, consumers are slightly more satisfied with their contact center interactions today than they were in 2005.  On the other hand, the Aspect Index shows that there is still a lot of room for improvement [...]

Author:  Gary Barnett
At the beginning of each year, I enjoy making predictions about the business and contact center priorities I expect to see during the coming months.  I believe that in 2007 company executives will increase their focus on the contact center as a source of revenue generation, and place more emphasis on the contact [...]

Author:  Roger Sumner
My visits to customer sites have led me to notice that customer segmentation means different things to different companies.  Some think of it simply as the ability to route customers based on the reason for their contact – they have billing or account questions, they want product information, or they need technical support.  [...]

Author:  Jim Mitchell
There is a relatively new movement taking hold of small contact centers - hosted solutions.  Small contact centers looking to build their client base and grow their call volume are using hosted systems to access functionality and resources that they might not otherwise be able to support or afford on their own.  Applications [...]

Author:  Gary Barnett
I recently read an Associated Press article by J.W. Elphinstone that I found a bit disturbing.  The piece mentioned that “no one likes to wait for customer service on the telephone while listening to elevator music, especially during the holidays.”  This statement is entirely accurate as the Aspect Contact Center Satisfaction Index found [...]

Author:  Roger Sumner
Nearly every day when I read the newspaper, listen to the radio, or turn on the television, I see something about the “Bird Flu.”  I haven’t yet started building and stocking my own personal bunker, but I am strongly recommending that our customers think about and plan for the possibility of a pandemic [...]