Customer service is changing, broadly driven by three areas - people, places and technology. Find out how changes in these areas can help you deliver better customer service.
Do you believe in your contact centre?
Phone systems brisbane 11 smart questions a 27 year telecommunications vetera...Greg Eicke
11 Questions A 27 year Veteran of the Telecommunications Industry Would Ask
Before he bought a Telephone System
1. Do you offer any Guarantees?
Telephone system vendors can make all manner of claims… often with little accountability. The key question for the telephone system buyer is “does this vendor put their money where their mouth is?”
Greg Eicke from Phone Systems Brisbane can help any business with a monthly phone usage bill of $492 or more to pay for a new phone system out of bill savings. Greg also asserts that he can do this without changing the existing phone carrier for the business.
If your business fixed line telephone account usage is $492 or more per month, I’m not just confident that I can provide a powerful business communication solution that pays for itself, I guarantee it.
2. What are your implementation and Support processes?
The document discusses the need for a new budgeting tool for young people as many are getting into debt due to not properly budgeting their finances. Research found that only 25% of young people create budgets, 50% do not stick to them, and 37% do not like creating budgets. Existing budgeting solutions like financial advice, paper budgets, and software are not working due to issues with time, money, and simplicity. Young people want budgeting tools that are simple, fun, and allow them to visually see income and expenses. The document proposes a new budgeting tool called BudgetSimple that aims to address these issues through added interactivity and "gamification".
Here are my rankings for the call center motivation factors from 1 (highest importance/most difficult) to 10 (lowest importance/least difficult):
1. Management Style
2. Working Environment
3. Salary
4. Incentives
5. Benefits
6. Training
7. Career Development
8. Recognition
9. Work/Life Balance
10. Diversity/Equality
I ranked management style and working environment highest because establishing the right culture and leadership is so important for motivation but also one of the most challenging aspects to get right. Salary, incentives and benefits are also highly important for motivation but may be easier to address through policies. Training, career development, recognition, work/life
Преимущества NoSQL баз данных на примере MongoDBUNETA
Докладчик: Винников Олег – .NET Developer in Digital Cloud Technologies (https://twitter.com/#!/VinnikovOleg)
Тема доклада: «Преимущества NoSQL баз данных на примере MongoDB».
Доклад посвящен альтернативе реляционных СУБД - классу концепций NoSQL. Вы узнаете о основных видах NoSQL баз данных, их отличие и преимущества перед реляционными базами данных. Как основное преимущество, в докладе будет рассмотренно масштабирование NoSQL баз данных на примере MongoDB. Ключевые вопросы, которые будут рассмотрены в докладе:
- Почему NoSql;
- Краткий обзор видов NoSql баз данных;
- Масштабирование NoSql баз данных;
- Шардинг и репликация на примере MongoDB;
http://uneta.ua/community/events/9
Выбор NoSQL базы данных для вашего проекта: "Не в свои сани не садись"Alexey Zinoviev
Alexey Zinoviev Алексей Зиновьев рассказывает о выборе одной из следующих баз данных CouchDB, Neo4j, Mongo, Cassandra, HBase, Riak на Happydev 2013
Article "Choice of NoSQL database for your project: Don't bite off more than you can chew" presented on HappyDev 2013 (IT-conference in Omsk) by Alexey Zinoviev
The main idea of this article is comparison of the most popular NoSQL databases: CouchDB, Cassandra, Mongodb, Riak, Neo4j, HBase
Phone systems brisbane 11 smart questions a 27 year telecommunications vetera...Greg Eicke
11 Questions A 27 year Veteran of the Telecommunications Industry Would Ask
Before he bought a Telephone System
1. Do you offer any Guarantees?
Telephone system vendors can make all manner of claims… often with little accountability. The key question for the telephone system buyer is “does this vendor put their money where their mouth is?”
Greg Eicke from Phone Systems Brisbane can help any business with a monthly phone usage bill of $492 or more to pay for a new phone system out of bill savings. Greg also asserts that he can do this without changing the existing phone carrier for the business.
If your business fixed line telephone account usage is $492 or more per month, I’m not just confident that I can provide a powerful business communication solution that pays for itself, I guarantee it.
2. What are your implementation and Support processes?
The document discusses the need for a new budgeting tool for young people as many are getting into debt due to not properly budgeting their finances. Research found that only 25% of young people create budgets, 50% do not stick to them, and 37% do not like creating budgets. Existing budgeting solutions like financial advice, paper budgets, and software are not working due to issues with time, money, and simplicity. Young people want budgeting tools that are simple, fun, and allow them to visually see income and expenses. The document proposes a new budgeting tool called BudgetSimple that aims to address these issues through added interactivity and "gamification".
Here are my rankings for the call center motivation factors from 1 (highest importance/most difficult) to 10 (lowest importance/least difficult):
1. Management Style
2. Working Environment
3. Salary
4. Incentives
5. Benefits
6. Training
7. Career Development
8. Recognition
9. Work/Life Balance
10. Diversity/Equality
I ranked management style and working environment highest because establishing the right culture and leadership is so important for motivation but also one of the most challenging aspects to get right. Salary, incentives and benefits are also highly important for motivation but may be easier to address through policies. Training, career development, recognition, work/life
Преимущества NoSQL баз данных на примере MongoDBUNETA
Докладчик: Винников Олег – .NET Developer in Digital Cloud Technologies (https://twitter.com/#!/VinnikovOleg)
Тема доклада: «Преимущества NoSQL баз данных на примере MongoDB».
Доклад посвящен альтернативе реляционных СУБД - классу концепций NoSQL. Вы узнаете о основных видах NoSQL баз данных, их отличие и преимущества перед реляционными базами данных. Как основное преимущество, в докладе будет рассмотренно масштабирование NoSQL баз данных на примере MongoDB. Ключевые вопросы, которые будут рассмотрены в докладе:
- Почему NoSql;
- Краткий обзор видов NoSql баз данных;
- Масштабирование NoSql баз данных;
- Шардинг и репликация на примере MongoDB;
http://uneta.ua/community/events/9
Выбор NoSQL базы данных для вашего проекта: "Не в свои сани не садись"Alexey Zinoviev
Alexey Zinoviev Алексей Зиновьев рассказывает о выборе одной из следующих баз данных CouchDB, Neo4j, Mongo, Cassandra, HBase, Riak на Happydev 2013
Article "Choice of NoSQL database for your project: Don't bite off more than you can chew" presented on HappyDev 2013 (IT-conference in Omsk) by Alexey Zinoviev
The main idea of this article is comparison of the most popular NoSQL databases: CouchDB, Cassandra, Mongodb, Riak, Neo4j, HBase
Expertek Cyber Solutions is a business process outsourcing company that provides call center and customer service solutions both onshore and offshore. It offers inbound and outbound call center services, data processing, back office services, and customized business process outsourcing options. Expertek aims to help businesses balance tight budgets with customer demands through low-cost and effective call center strategies. It employs trained agents who are available 24/7 to handle customer questions. Expertek also offers flexibility to adapt its services as businesses change and allows clients to pay only for the services they use.
The document discusses recruitment and selection processes at IMS Learning Resources Pvt. Ltd. It begins by outlining the objectives of studying their employee hiring process. It then describes the research methodology and importance/scope of the project. The document discusses internal and external factors that affect recruitment. It provides details on various internal sources of recruitment like current employees, former employees, and referrals. It also discusses external sources such as employment exchanges, advertisements, professional associations, and campus recruitment. The summary highlights the key topics and goals covered in the recruitment and selection case study.
This document provides information about time management. It begins with an introduction that defines time management and discusses why it is important. It then discusses time management in the construction industry specifically. It provides details on the relationship between time, cost, and quality in construction projects. It also outlines the time management process, including activity definition, sequencing, resource estimating, duration estimating, schedule development, and progress monitoring. Finally, it provides some tips for improving time management skills such as writing things down, prioritizing to-do lists, and avoiding procrastination.
An immersive workshop at General Assembly, SF. I typically teach this workshop at General Assembly, San Francisco. To see a list of my upcoming classes, visit https://generalassemb.ly/instructors/seth-familian/4813
I also teach this workshop as a private lunch-and-learn or half-day immersive session for corporate clients. To learn more about pricing and availability, please contact me at http://familian1.com
3 Things Every Sales Team Needs to Be Thinking About in 2017Drift
Thinking about your sales team's goals for 2017? Drift's VP of Sales shares 3 things you can do to improve conversion rates and drive more revenue.
Read the full story on the Drift blog here: http://blog.drift.com/sales-team-tips
How to Become a Thought Leader in Your NicheLeslie Samuel
Are bloggers thought leaders? Here are some tips on how you can become one. Provide great value, put awesome content out there on a regular basis, and help others.
This document discusses how call centers are leveraging unified communications to improve customer service. It outlines challenges like increased customer demands for self-service and social media interactions. Unified communications can help by providing access to enterprise experts, enabling remote collaboration, and improving first call resolution through features like three-way voice conversations. The solution discussed, Savi, uses real-time collaboration to bring customers and experts together to quickly resolve issues.
Enghouse Interactive:Top 5 trends in customer communicationsEnghouse Interactive
The 5 trends covered include:
1. Changes in customer interaction methods - the move to omni-channel and customer collaboration
2. The evolution of self-service - knowledge management, the Internet of Things, and beyond
3. Dramatic increase in mobility - the impact on customer communications
4.The "enterprise as contact center" - collaboration, back office service and the blurring of contact center boundaries
5.The evolution of contact center metrics - making it about quality and customer value
Enghouse Interactive - Top 5 trends in customer communicationsEnghouse Interactive
The 5 trends covered include:
1. Changes in customer interaction methods - the move to omni-channel and customer collaboration
2. The evolution of self-service - knowledge management, the Internet of Things, and beyond
3. Dramatic increase in mobility - the impact on customer communications
4.The "enterprise as contact center" - collaboration, back office service and the blurring of contact center boundaries
5.The evolution of contact center metrics - making it about quality and customer value
How a call center improved csat levels and abandon rates!Daniela Puzzo
In this one hour webinar you’ll learn one proven method that can change your approach to customer service and is guaranteed to improve the customer experience. You’ll hear from guest speaker Jeannie Sugaoka, Senior Vice President of Support Services, at Technology Credit Union who will talk about how her company reduced abandon rates by 37% and seized the opportunity to offer a great customer experience.
The document is a presentation from E*Pro Technologies about their Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution. The CEM solution aims to improve the customer experience across multiple channels by integrating technologies like intelligent IVR, voice biometrics, notification systems, and social media integration. The CEM solution seeks to improve customer satisfaction, agent productivity, and reduce costs for businesses.
PlumLife is a Dallas-based technology startup that offers a cloud-based, open source total life scheduling system product, but has struggled to gain customers, funding, and traction since launching in 2010. The document discusses PlumLife's journey in creating their business plan and product, customer segmentation efforts, marketing challenges, funding needs, and lessons learned along the way as they work to achieve revenue goals and scale their subscription-based business model. It provides an overview of PlumLife's progress to date and goals for 2011 in securing additional funding and growing paid subscribers.
Strategies for dramatic cost reduction v2 june aus contact finalEnghouse Interactive
This document summarizes a webinar about strategies for reducing costs in contact centers. The webinar discusses how improving self-service options, agent productivity, and routing calls more efficiently can help lower costs while maintaining customer satisfaction. Specific strategies covered include offering more robust interactive voice response (IVR) systems, moving some calls to email handling, blending proactive outbound calls with inbound work, automatically identifying customers to save agent time, and intelligently routing calls to skilled agents. The webinar provides an example where implementing these strategies could potentially save a contact center with 50 agents and handling 1,500 calls per day around $408,000 per year.
Strategies for dramatic cost reduction june aus contact finalEnghouse Interactive
This document summarizes a webinar about strategies for reducing costs in contact centers. The webinar discusses how improving self-service options, agent productivity, and routing calls more efficiently can help lower costs while maintaining customer satisfaction. Specific strategies covered include offering more robust interactive voice response (IVR) systems, moving some calls to email handling, blending proactive outbound calls with inbound work, automatically identifying customers to save agent time, and intelligently routing calls to skilled agents. The webinar provides an example where implementing these strategies could potentially save a contact center with 50 agents and handling 1,500 calls per day around $408,000 per year.
This document discusses a unified communications solution called Vodafone One Net that is designed for small and medium-sized businesses. It notes that 99% of businesses have less than 49 employees but most unified communications solutions are not designed with small businesses in mind. Vodafone One Net converges fixed and mobile phone networks, allowing phones to share numbers, voicemail and features while providing unlimited free calls between internal phones and single pricing plans for external calls from either network. It addresses common small business challenges like increasing mobility, reducing costs, and providing flexibility without large upfront investments.
Vodafone has a long history in telecommunications dating back to the 1980s when it was awarded the first mobile license in the UK. More recently, Vodafone has moved into unified communications to help customers meet challenges around securing information, simplifying communications, and improving workforce effectiveness. Vodafone's portfolio includes products and services built on its strong network and partnerships to provide tailored solutions for securing information, simplifying communications, getting closer to customers, and improving workforce productivity and customer engagement.
This document provides an overview of VoIP phone system options for businesses. It discusses that while VoIP systems offer lower costs than traditional phone systems, choosing the wrong VoIP system can lead to issues like dropped calls and poor call quality. It outlines the four main types of VoIP systems and recommends choosing a business-grade VoIP system over consumer options. SIP trunking is identified as an option to mostly save money but still uses an outdated phone system and can cause call quality problems.
The document discusses strategies for reducing costs in contact centers. It outlines key areas where costs can be reduced, including through self-service options, agent productivity improvements, and reducing agent attrition. The Enghouse approach promotes reducing costs through enabling more customer self-service via IVR and online options, automating processes to improve agent efficiency, and unifying communication channels for better management and metrics. Quick success stories from clients saw large cost savings from reduced call volumes through expanded self-service IVR and improved agent productivity.
This document discusses the challenges facing corporate call centers and how cloud-based solutions may help address them. The three key challenges are: 1) a credibility gap between marketing promises of excellent customer service and the actual call center experience, 2) a sales gap in losing potential sales due to poor call handling, and 3) technology limitations of legacy on-premises call center systems. Cloud-based call centers offer lower costs, greater flexibility, and ability to provide improved customer service across multiple channels. Case studies demonstrate cloud systems can increase customer satisfaction metrics and revenue growth compared to traditional call centers. The document concludes cloud technology can help call centers overcome challenges by converging applications to reduce costs while improving customer support and sales.
The document discusses the rise of the "social customer" and how companies need to adapt their customer service models for this new environment. It notes that social networks and user-generated content have given customers more control over conversations and that they now trust peer recommendations over traditional advertising. The new customer service model needs to focus on engagement, multiple channels, and understanding how customers think and feel. Companies also need to transform their contact centers to focus more on customer experience through communities, social monitoring and strong self-service options.
This document discusses the growing trend of flexible and remote working. It notes that 90% of enterprise employees work off-site at least some of the time, and conferences are occurring more frequently via video and audio. However, virtual collaboration presents challenges like partial attention and lack of non-verbal cues. New products are introduced like the SmartSet headset and SmartSpeaker that aim to improve virtual interaction. There is also a discussion around the need for training and support for remote workers and managers. In conclusion, unified communications and smarter working practices are needed to fully realize the benefits of new ways of working.
Expertek Cyber Solutions is a business process outsourcing company that provides call center and customer service solutions both onshore and offshore. It offers inbound and outbound call center services, data processing, back office services, and customized business process outsourcing options. Expertek aims to help businesses balance tight budgets with customer demands through low-cost and effective call center strategies. It employs trained agents who are available 24/7 to handle customer questions. Expertek also offers flexibility to adapt its services as businesses change and allows clients to pay only for the services they use.
The document discusses recruitment and selection processes at IMS Learning Resources Pvt. Ltd. It begins by outlining the objectives of studying their employee hiring process. It then describes the research methodology and importance/scope of the project. The document discusses internal and external factors that affect recruitment. It provides details on various internal sources of recruitment like current employees, former employees, and referrals. It also discusses external sources such as employment exchanges, advertisements, professional associations, and campus recruitment. The summary highlights the key topics and goals covered in the recruitment and selection case study.
This document provides information about time management. It begins with an introduction that defines time management and discusses why it is important. It then discusses time management in the construction industry specifically. It provides details on the relationship between time, cost, and quality in construction projects. It also outlines the time management process, including activity definition, sequencing, resource estimating, duration estimating, schedule development, and progress monitoring. Finally, it provides some tips for improving time management skills such as writing things down, prioritizing to-do lists, and avoiding procrastination.
An immersive workshop at General Assembly, SF. I typically teach this workshop at General Assembly, San Francisco. To see a list of my upcoming classes, visit https://generalassemb.ly/instructors/seth-familian/4813
I also teach this workshop as a private lunch-and-learn or half-day immersive session for corporate clients. To learn more about pricing and availability, please contact me at http://familian1.com
3 Things Every Sales Team Needs to Be Thinking About in 2017Drift
Thinking about your sales team's goals for 2017? Drift's VP of Sales shares 3 things you can do to improve conversion rates and drive more revenue.
Read the full story on the Drift blog here: http://blog.drift.com/sales-team-tips
How to Become a Thought Leader in Your NicheLeslie Samuel
Are bloggers thought leaders? Here are some tips on how you can become one. Provide great value, put awesome content out there on a regular basis, and help others.
This document discusses how call centers are leveraging unified communications to improve customer service. It outlines challenges like increased customer demands for self-service and social media interactions. Unified communications can help by providing access to enterprise experts, enabling remote collaboration, and improving first call resolution through features like three-way voice conversations. The solution discussed, Savi, uses real-time collaboration to bring customers and experts together to quickly resolve issues.
Enghouse Interactive:Top 5 trends in customer communicationsEnghouse Interactive
The 5 trends covered include:
1. Changes in customer interaction methods - the move to omni-channel and customer collaboration
2. The evolution of self-service - knowledge management, the Internet of Things, and beyond
3. Dramatic increase in mobility - the impact on customer communications
4.The "enterprise as contact center" - collaboration, back office service and the blurring of contact center boundaries
5.The evolution of contact center metrics - making it about quality and customer value
Enghouse Interactive - Top 5 trends in customer communicationsEnghouse Interactive
The 5 trends covered include:
1. Changes in customer interaction methods - the move to omni-channel and customer collaboration
2. The evolution of self-service - knowledge management, the Internet of Things, and beyond
3. Dramatic increase in mobility - the impact on customer communications
4.The "enterprise as contact center" - collaboration, back office service and the blurring of contact center boundaries
5.The evolution of contact center metrics - making it about quality and customer value
How a call center improved csat levels and abandon rates!Daniela Puzzo
In this one hour webinar you’ll learn one proven method that can change your approach to customer service and is guaranteed to improve the customer experience. You’ll hear from guest speaker Jeannie Sugaoka, Senior Vice President of Support Services, at Technology Credit Union who will talk about how her company reduced abandon rates by 37% and seized the opportunity to offer a great customer experience.
The document is a presentation from E*Pro Technologies about their Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution. The CEM solution aims to improve the customer experience across multiple channels by integrating technologies like intelligent IVR, voice biometrics, notification systems, and social media integration. The CEM solution seeks to improve customer satisfaction, agent productivity, and reduce costs for businesses.
PlumLife is a Dallas-based technology startup that offers a cloud-based, open source total life scheduling system product, but has struggled to gain customers, funding, and traction since launching in 2010. The document discusses PlumLife's journey in creating their business plan and product, customer segmentation efforts, marketing challenges, funding needs, and lessons learned along the way as they work to achieve revenue goals and scale their subscription-based business model. It provides an overview of PlumLife's progress to date and goals for 2011 in securing additional funding and growing paid subscribers.
Strategies for dramatic cost reduction v2 june aus contact finalEnghouse Interactive
This document summarizes a webinar about strategies for reducing costs in contact centers. The webinar discusses how improving self-service options, agent productivity, and routing calls more efficiently can help lower costs while maintaining customer satisfaction. Specific strategies covered include offering more robust interactive voice response (IVR) systems, moving some calls to email handling, blending proactive outbound calls with inbound work, automatically identifying customers to save agent time, and intelligently routing calls to skilled agents. The webinar provides an example where implementing these strategies could potentially save a contact center with 50 agents and handling 1,500 calls per day around $408,000 per year.
Strategies for dramatic cost reduction june aus contact finalEnghouse Interactive
This document summarizes a webinar about strategies for reducing costs in contact centers. The webinar discusses how improving self-service options, agent productivity, and routing calls more efficiently can help lower costs while maintaining customer satisfaction. Specific strategies covered include offering more robust interactive voice response (IVR) systems, moving some calls to email handling, blending proactive outbound calls with inbound work, automatically identifying customers to save agent time, and intelligently routing calls to skilled agents. The webinar provides an example where implementing these strategies could potentially save a contact center with 50 agents and handling 1,500 calls per day around $408,000 per year.
This document discusses a unified communications solution called Vodafone One Net that is designed for small and medium-sized businesses. It notes that 99% of businesses have less than 49 employees but most unified communications solutions are not designed with small businesses in mind. Vodafone One Net converges fixed and mobile phone networks, allowing phones to share numbers, voicemail and features while providing unlimited free calls between internal phones and single pricing plans for external calls from either network. It addresses common small business challenges like increasing mobility, reducing costs, and providing flexibility without large upfront investments.
Vodafone has a long history in telecommunications dating back to the 1980s when it was awarded the first mobile license in the UK. More recently, Vodafone has moved into unified communications to help customers meet challenges around securing information, simplifying communications, and improving workforce effectiveness. Vodafone's portfolio includes products and services built on its strong network and partnerships to provide tailored solutions for securing information, simplifying communications, getting closer to customers, and improving workforce productivity and customer engagement.
This document provides an overview of VoIP phone system options for businesses. It discusses that while VoIP systems offer lower costs than traditional phone systems, choosing the wrong VoIP system can lead to issues like dropped calls and poor call quality. It outlines the four main types of VoIP systems and recommends choosing a business-grade VoIP system over consumer options. SIP trunking is identified as an option to mostly save money but still uses an outdated phone system and can cause call quality problems.
The document discusses strategies for reducing costs in contact centers. It outlines key areas where costs can be reduced, including through self-service options, agent productivity improvements, and reducing agent attrition. The Enghouse approach promotes reducing costs through enabling more customer self-service via IVR and online options, automating processes to improve agent efficiency, and unifying communication channels for better management and metrics. Quick success stories from clients saw large cost savings from reduced call volumes through expanded self-service IVR and improved agent productivity.
This document discusses the challenges facing corporate call centers and how cloud-based solutions may help address them. The three key challenges are: 1) a credibility gap between marketing promises of excellent customer service and the actual call center experience, 2) a sales gap in losing potential sales due to poor call handling, and 3) technology limitations of legacy on-premises call center systems. Cloud-based call centers offer lower costs, greater flexibility, and ability to provide improved customer service across multiple channels. Case studies demonstrate cloud systems can increase customer satisfaction metrics and revenue growth compared to traditional call centers. The document concludes cloud technology can help call centers overcome challenges by converging applications to reduce costs while improving customer support and sales.
The document discusses the rise of the "social customer" and how companies need to adapt their customer service models for this new environment. It notes that social networks and user-generated content have given customers more control over conversations and that they now trust peer recommendations over traditional advertising. The new customer service model needs to focus on engagement, multiple channels, and understanding how customers think and feel. Companies also need to transform their contact centers to focus more on customer experience through communities, social monitoring and strong self-service options.
This document discusses the growing trend of flexible and remote working. It notes that 90% of enterprise employees work off-site at least some of the time, and conferences are occurring more frequently via video and audio. However, virtual collaboration presents challenges like partial attention and lack of non-verbal cues. New products are introduced like the SmartSet headset and SmartSpeaker that aim to improve virtual interaction. There is also a discussion around the need for training and support for remote workers and managers. In conclusion, unified communications and smarter working practices are needed to fully realize the benefits of new ways of working.
This document discusses the telecom industry landscape including constant changes in technology, mergers and acquilitions, billing errors, and disparate billing platforms. It notes the confusion this causes for budgeting and managing telecom expenses. It introduces Schooley Mitchell as the largest independent telecom consulting firm that can provide an objective review to help optimize expenses, identify billing errors, and provide ongoing support and savings validation. The value proposition is helping clients achieve their objectives through money, time, and knowledge savings with an infinite return on investment.
This document discusses the telecom industry landscape including constant changes in technology, mergers and acquilitions, billing errors, and disparate billing platforms. It notes the confusion this causes for budgeting and managing telecom expenses. It introduces Schooley Mitchell as the largest independent telecom consulting firm that can provide an objective review to help optimize expenses, identify billing errors, and expand internal resources through their specialized tools, processes, and industry expertise. The value proposition includes saving money, time and securing knowledge while helping clients achieve their objectives with an infinite ROI.
Pete Blackshaw - Keynote Speech: Word of Mouth Marketing Association Annual S...Pete Blackshaw
1. The document discusses how word-of-mouth marketing has become more powerful with new technologies that allow consumers to share their opinions and experiences more widely.
2. It describes how Comcast addressed negative consumer feedback by monitoring social media, responding rapidly to address complaints, and designating an employee, Frank Eliason, to authentically engage with customers.
3. Some key lessons highlighted are the importance of listening to customers, being transparent, and focusing on building trust and positive experiences to maintain brand credibility in today's digital environment.
This document discusses managing remote project teams and provides tips for improving communication, relationships, and task performance in virtual environments. It notes that remote teams often fail due to a lack of good information, misaligned priorities, and systems that do not work effectively. Building trust between team members and assessing task completion, relationships, and communication are identified as important areas to focus on. A variety of communication tools are recommended for keeping remote teams connected despite physical separation.
The quarterly voice and speech technology newsletter from Business Systems, offering you the latest news and insights on call recording, quality montioring, speech analytics, PCI Compliance and much more. Featuring our latest case studies, webinars (including our latest one 'What are the most successful contact centres doing right?') and sponsored guides.
e-Guide Comme le prouve notre étude récente, le bruit est une préoccupation croissante. Le volume sonore est encore plus amplifié dans les espaces de travail ouverts ne disposant pas d’une bonne acoustique.
Unwelcomed workplace noise disrupts concentration, decreases productivity and increases stress amongst your associates according to a recent University of California study. And these are challenges that are being over-looked in even the most modern of working environments.
This guide illustrates the key acoustic challenges and the measures needed to minimise their effect on your smarter working environment.
"Technology has redefined the boundaries of work so that employees now want flexibility, mobility, and the ability to communicate effectively. At the same time, the organisation must continue to improve productivity, maintain compliance with workplace legislation and operate efficiently in order to compete. All this has led to a change in the way that we utilise the workplace.
New ways of working are changing employee and organisational expectations. How can Human Resources respond?
This paper reveals how organisations are embracing change by adopting the principles of Smarter Working."
Technology has redefined the boundaries of work so that employees now want flexibility, mobility, and the ability to communicate effectively. At the same time, the organisation must continue to improve productivity, maintain compliance with workplace legislation and operate efficiently in order to compete. All this has led to a change in the way that we utilise the workplace.
New ways of working are changing the requirements of both the individual and the organisation. How can IT respond?
This paper reveals how organisations are embracing change by adopting the principles of Smarter Working.
As our recent study proves, it is a key factor in lower levels of staff motivation. It negatively impacts customers who are frustrated when they are asked to repeat themselves. It undermines collaboration between teams and it even disadvantages the business through lower levels of productivity.
Collaboration virtuelle, reconfiguration des bureaux, nouvelles méthodes de travail : ces changements ont un impact sur notre productivité. Mais certains aspects fondamentaux permettant de garantir une meilleure efficacité n’ont-ils pas été négligés ? Qu’en est-il de l’impact du bruit de fond
sur la qualité de nos appels ?
Whether you’re in the office or on the go, to run your business, you need to be connected no matter
where you are. More and more, the employees you’re hiring want the same thing: the flexibility to
choose where and when they work and the technology to keep them connected. Providing this
flexibility is key to staying competitive in an ever-changing market.
Чтобы центры обработки вызовов смогли оказывать услуги на высшем уровне, необходимо понять, как этого достичь. Это возможно, если знать 6 ключевых факторов.
The document summarizes the results of a survey of 75 participants from the UK and Ireland on the benefits and barriers of implementing home working for contact centers. The main benefits identified were improved flexibility for employees and resources, cost reduction, and improved employee engagement. The top barriers were lack of control over employees, engagement challenges, and technology/connectivity issues. Most companies surveyed had implemented or were exploring home working, using broadband and softphones. Responsibility for equipment typically fell to the company.
The increase in remote interaction means that more and more interactions will be via the phone rather than face to face. Your voice and how you use it will become the vital tool for business success
1 in 4 contact centre agents suffer from vocal health issues, find out how the Plantronics portfolio of products and services can help you minimise the risk in this area.
Fueling AI with Great Data with Airbyte WebinarZilliz
This talk will focus on how to collect data from a variety of sources, leveraging this data for RAG and other GenAI use cases, and finally charting your course to productionalization.
Dandelion Hashtable: beyond billion requests per second on a commodity serverAntonios Katsarakis
This slide deck presents DLHT, a concurrent in-memory hashtable. Despite efforts to optimize hashtables, that go as far as sacrificing core functionality, state-of-the-art designs still incur multiple memory accesses per request and block request processing in three cases. First, most hashtables block while waiting for data to be retrieved from memory. Second, open-addressing designs, which represent the current state-of-the-art, either cannot free index slots on deletes or must block all requests to do so. Third, index resizes block every request until all objects are copied to the new index. Defying folklore wisdom, DLHT forgoes open-addressing and adopts a fully-featured and memory-aware closed-addressing design based on bounded cache-line-chaining. This design offers lock-free index operations and deletes that free slots instantly, (2) completes most requests with a single memory access, (3) utilizes software prefetching to hide memory latencies, and (4) employs a novel non-blocking and parallel resizing. In a commodity server and a memory-resident workload, DLHT surpasses 1.6B requests per second and provides 3.5x (12x) the throughput of the state-of-the-art closed-addressing (open-addressing) resizable hashtable on Gets (Deletes).
In the realm of cybersecurity, offensive security practices act as a critical shield. By simulating real-world attacks in a controlled environment, these techniques expose vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them. This proactive approach allows manufacturers to identify and fix weaknesses, significantly enhancing system security.
This presentation delves into the development of a system designed to mimic Galileo's Open Service signal using software-defined radio (SDR) technology. We'll begin with a foundational overview of both Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and the intricacies of digital signal processing.
The presentation culminates in a live demonstration. We'll showcase the manipulation of Galileo's Open Service pilot signal, simulating an attack on various software and hardware systems. This practical demonstration serves to highlight the potential consequences of unaddressed vulnerabilities, emphasizing the importance of offensive security practices in safeguarding critical infrastructure.
Taking AI to the Next Level in Manufacturing.pdfssuserfac0301
Read Taking AI to the Next Level in Manufacturing to gain insights on AI adoption in the manufacturing industry, such as:
1. How quickly AI is being implemented in manufacturing.
2. Which barriers stand in the way of AI adoption.
3. How data quality and governance form the backbone of AI.
4. Organizational processes and structures that may inhibit effective AI adoption.
6. Ideas and approaches to help build your organization's AI strategy.
How information systems are built or acquired puts information, which is what they should be about, in a secondary place. Our language adapted accordingly, and we no longer talk about information systems but applications. Applications evolved in a way to break data into diverse fragments, tightly coupled with applications and expensive to integrate. The result is technical debt, which is re-paid by taking even bigger "loans", resulting in an ever-increasing technical debt. Software engineering and procurement practices work in sync with market forces to maintain this trend. This talk demonstrates how natural this situation is. The question is: can something be done to reverse the trend?
Northern Engraving | Nameplate Manufacturing Process - 2024Northern Engraving
Manufacturing custom quality metal nameplates and badges involves several standard operations. Processes include sheet prep, lithography, screening, coating, punch press and inspection. All decoration is completed in the flat sheet with adhesive and tooling operations following. The possibilities for creating unique durable nameplates are endless. How will you create your brand identity? We can help!
Main news related to the CCS TSI 2023 (2023/1695)Jakub Marek
An English 🇬🇧 translation of a presentation to the speech I gave about the main changes brought by CCS TSI 2023 at the biggest Czech conference on Communications and signalling systems on Railways, which was held in Clarion Hotel Olomouc from 7th to 9th November 2023 (konferenceszt.cz). Attended by around 500 participants and 200 on-line followers.
The original Czech 🇨🇿 version of the presentation can be found here: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/hlavni-novinky-souvisejici-s-ccs-tsi-2023-2023-1695/269688092 .
The videorecording (in Czech) from the presentation is available here: https://youtu.be/WzjJWm4IyPk?si=SImb06tuXGb30BEH .
Digital Banking in the Cloud: How Citizens Bank Unlocked Their MainframePrecisely
Inconsistent user experience and siloed data, high costs, and changing customer expectations – Citizens Bank was experiencing these challenges while it was attempting to deliver a superior digital banking experience for its clients. Its core banking applications run on the mainframe and Citizens was using legacy utilities to get the critical mainframe data to feed customer-facing channels, like call centers, web, and mobile. Ultimately, this led to higher operating costs (MIPS), delayed response times, and longer time to market.
Ever-changing customer expectations demand more modern digital experiences, and the bank needed to find a solution that could provide real-time data to its customer channels with low latency and operating costs. Join this session to learn how Citizens is leveraging Precisely to replicate mainframe data to its customer channels and deliver on their “modern digital bank” experiences.
Essentials of Automations: Exploring Attributes & Automation ParametersSafe Software
Building automations in FME Flow can save time, money, and help businesses scale by eliminating data silos and providing data to stakeholders in real-time. One essential component to orchestrating complex automations is the use of attributes & automation parameters (both formerly known as “keys”). In fact, it’s unlikely you’ll ever build an Automation without using these components, but what exactly are they?
Attributes & automation parameters enable the automation author to pass data values from one automation component to the next. During this webinar, our FME Flow Specialists will cover leveraging the three types of these output attributes & parameters in FME Flow: Event, Custom, and Automation. As a bonus, they’ll also be making use of the Split-Merge Block functionality.
You’ll leave this webinar with a better understanding of how to maximize the potential of automations by making use of attributes & automation parameters, with the ultimate goal of setting your enterprise integration workflows up on autopilot.
Skybuffer SAM4U tool for SAP license adoptionTatiana Kojar
Manage and optimize your license adoption and consumption with SAM4U, an SAP free customer software asset management tool.
SAM4U, an SAP complimentary software asset management tool for customers, delivers a detailed and well-structured overview of license inventory and usage with a user-friendly interface. We offer a hosted, cost-effective, and performance-optimized SAM4U setup in the Skybuffer Cloud environment. You retain ownership of the system and data, while we manage the ABAP 7.58 infrastructure, ensuring fixed Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and exceptional services through the SAP Fiori interface.
"Choosing proper type of scaling", Olena SyrotaFwdays
Imagine an IoT processing system that is already quite mature and production-ready and for which client coverage is growing and scaling and performance aspects are life and death questions. The system has Redis, MongoDB, and stream processing based on ksqldb. In this talk, firstly, we will analyze scaling approaches and then select the proper ones for our system.
The Microsoft 365 Migration Tutorial For Beginner.pptxoperationspcvita
This presentation will help you understand the power of Microsoft 365. However, we have mentioned every productivity app included in Office 365. Additionally, we have suggested the migration situation related to Office 365 and how we can help you.
You can also read: https://www.systoolsgroup.com/updates/office-365-tenant-to-tenant-migration-step-by-step-complete-guide/
Conversational agents, or chatbots, are increasingly used to access all sorts of services using natural language. While open-domain chatbots - like ChatGPT - can converse on any topic, task-oriented chatbots - the focus of this paper - are designed for specific tasks, like booking a flight, obtaining customer support, or setting an appointment. Like any other software, task-oriented chatbots need to be properly tested, usually by defining and executing test scenarios (i.e., sequences of user-chatbot interactions). However, there is currently a lack of methods to quantify the completeness and strength of such test scenarios, which can lead to low-quality tests, and hence to buggy chatbots.
To fill this gap, we propose adapting mutation testing (MuT) for task-oriented chatbots. To this end, we introduce a set of mutation operators that emulate faults in chatbot designs, an architecture that enables MuT on chatbots built using heterogeneous technologies, and a practical realisation as an Eclipse plugin. Moreover, we evaluate the applicability, effectiveness and efficiency of our approach on open-source chatbots, with promising results.
Monitoring and Managing Anomaly Detection on OpenShift.pdfTosin Akinosho
Monitoring and Managing Anomaly Detection on OpenShift
Overview
Dive into the world of anomaly detection on edge devices with our comprehensive hands-on tutorial. This SlideShare presentation will guide you through the entire process, from data collection and model training to edge deployment and real-time monitoring. Perfect for those looking to implement robust anomaly detection systems on resource-constrained IoT/edge devices.
Key Topics Covered
1. Introduction to Anomaly Detection
- Understand the fundamentals of anomaly detection and its importance in identifying unusual behavior or failures in systems.
2. Understanding Edge (IoT)
- Learn about edge computing and IoT, and how they enable real-time data processing and decision-making at the source.
3. What is ArgoCD?
- Discover ArgoCD, a declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes, and its role in deploying applications on edge devices.
4. Deployment Using ArgoCD for Edge Devices
- Step-by-step guide on deploying anomaly detection models on edge devices using ArgoCD.
5. Introduction to Apache Kafka and S3
- Explore Apache Kafka for real-time data streaming and Amazon S3 for scalable storage solutions.
6. Viewing Kafka Messages in the Data Lake
- Learn how to view and analyze Kafka messages stored in a data lake for better insights.
7. What is Prometheus?
- Get to know Prometheus, an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit, and its application in monitoring edge devices.
8. Monitoring Application Metrics with Prometheus
- Detailed instructions on setting up Prometheus to monitor the performance and health of your anomaly detection system.
9. What is Camel K?
- Introduction to Camel K, a lightweight integration framework built on Apache Camel, designed for Kubernetes.
10. Configuring Camel K Integrations for Data Pipelines
- Learn how to configure Camel K for seamless data pipeline integrations in your anomaly detection workflow.
11. What is a Jupyter Notebook?
- Overview of Jupyter Notebooks, an open-source web application for creating and sharing documents with live code, equations, visualizations, and narrative text.
12. Jupyter Notebooks with Code Examples
- Hands-on examples and code snippets in Jupyter Notebooks to help you implement and test anomaly detection models.
Discover top-tier mobile app development services, offering innovative solutions for iOS and Android. Enhance your business with custom, user-friendly mobile applications.
2. 75% of consumers say they would do business with a company based on a great Contact Centre experience. 1 80%of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience, but only 8% of their customers agree. 2 69%of large B2C organisations in the UK and US view their call centers as business-critical revenue generators. 3 The Contact Centre is Changing – Why? 8/5/2011 2 1 Genesys, Global Consumer Survey 2 Bain & Company 3 Loudhouse Research survey of strategic decision makers
6. Customer Experience Defined by Your People New management styles needed Trust Empowerment Investment 8/5/2011 6
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9. Big problem at home with BT internet they r tinkering to change to adsl 2. real cock up brain dead in call centre clueless. After 5 mins told BT bloke on phone who I was and I make pc's and routers for day job. Made no diff still went tru stupid check list.Help! This BT call centre is for biz line and so called VIP, hate to think what happens to normal consumers BT were talking cr.. my IT guy coming with new router to prove 100pc. Will spend today making BT CEO sorry he got out of bed this morn I touched a nerve at BT got top people on the case THANKS TO TWITTER : BT were monitoring . All fixed thanks to MY IT man long story...... To be fair BT service to sort my Internet since highlighted on twitter been excellent I even got a call from the CEO. Investigating BELKIN Recognise This? 8/5/2011 8
10. David Caroll United Breaks Guitars (Youtube – 9.5M views) Youp van ‘t Hek De Help (@youpvanthek - 75,000 followers) Lily Allen @lilyroseallen – 2.5M followers Have You Heard of ...? 8/5/2011 9
11. It’s not just your call recording systems listening now ... 8/5/2011 10
12. Customers are more empowered with knowledge gathered through self-service channels Companies can no longer afford to ‘follow the scripts’ Poor service for customers Frustrating for agents Direct link between self-determination and job satisfaction Higher job satisfaction = lower agent turnover A New Work Dynamic - EMPOWERMENT 8/5/2011 11 Lynn Holdsworth, Susan Cartwright, (2003) "Empowerment, stress and satisfaction: an exploratory study of a call centre", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 24 Iss: 3, pp.131 - 140
13. You trust your team ... You’ve empowered them to solve problems ... But you’re not training them? And you want them to use last century’s technology? Investment in Contact Centres 8/5/2011 12
16. Centralised Contact Centre BENEFITS Simplest to manage Economies of scale Controlled environment Cultivation of common culture Low-cost of personnel development Best data security protection Noise controlled with environmental factors CHALLENGES High fixed CAPEX Heavy OPEX Unnatural work environments Difficult to offer ‘local’ service (language/knowledge) or specialist service offerings 15 8/5/2011
17. Centralised Contact Hubs BENEFITS Resources grouped together in different locations Creates ‘local offices’ Supports short-term campaigns Offers local language/knowledge support Can phase out operations when not needed Robust perimeter security CHALLENGES Cost per head may be higher Higher facilities management overheads 16 8/5/2011
18. Virtual Hubs BENEFITS Ultimate in flexibility No geographical limits on deployment of skilled individuals and new expertise Zero fixed costs Cost savings as much as 50 percent Low investment in technology for end points CHALLENGES Acoustic challenges that need to be managed with headset technology Need to work harder to maintain culture Requires new management approach to maintain morale Data issues and network security Unsupervised access to customer data 17 8/5/2011
19. Does your voice experience inspire trust? How do you deal with varying noise levels across multiple environments? Consistent Customer Experience? 8/5/2011 18
20. EncorePro Best in class background noise reduction Complete flexibility on microphone position Audio Processors Reduce background noise for contact centre and customer Overall Impact? Easier to understand calls Less mistakes and repetitions Shorter calls Better Security Reduce the Impact of Noise? 8/5/2011 19
22. Unified Communications in the Contact Centre Transformation offering real benefits to first call resolution Delivering three way conversations Remote team collaboration 8/5/2011 21 86% of companies are planning Unified Communications in the Contact Centre Nemertes Research annual benchmark survey, 2010
23. Maximising collaboration in the contact centre Increasing number of calls need escalation UC used to find best available expert Savi wireless headset enables 3-way conversation Drives first call resolution Improves agent learning 22 8/5/2011
Time and again, surveys of customers show that quality service is a differentiator that improves customer satisfaction. These stats are some of many that show how good service allows companies to differentiate themselves in a world of increasingly similar products.If you can, add some personal anecdotes here about the way you felt when you received good or bad service from a company.However, there appears to be a major disconnect between how companies view the quality of the service they deliver, and the consumers view of that service. This is reflected in the poor perception of contact centres, and the rise of social media and online interactions with companies.What is the benefit of this change to companies?
As with every initiative, this will only succeed if it is driven from the top down – not just team leaders, but CEO/MD level must Believe in the value of the contact centreAs an example, Ken Kannappan knows the average speed to answer calls in the PLT contact centres. He monitors this, and questions any change seen. He believes in offering excellent customer service.
Addressing all issues around getting the right people
Later in the presentation, we’ll show that working outside of a central environment is becoming more common. This implies that a great deal more trust is needed between managers and employees – no more management by walking around!A number of studies have shown that when people are given the freedom to work remotely, or at home, they work harder or longer. In some cases this is proving that they are worthy of the trust being put in them, and changing their work approach to ensure they keep that ability to work where suits them best.Main point to emphasise on this slide is that with that advent of social media, then every interaction has the potential to influence your brand – positively or negatively.
This is an extract from Twitter – the author is Lord Alan Sugar with approx 170K followers.The point to get over here is that those 170K followers drive a very large amount of influence. By posting on social media, people with a large amount of followers have more influence over getting a company to deliver the service they want or expect. The channel doesn’t have to be Twitter, it can be Facebook, Quora, LinkedIn, Xing, Youtube or any similar ‘social’ platform If you aren’t in the UK, then swap this slide out and replace with a local version showing a similar interaction
These are further examples of social media interactions that have proved to be negative for companies. David Carroll allegedly caused a 10% reduction in the price of United’s shares (think about how powerful this argument is for C level executives)Lily Allen’s tweet about BT managed to get the CEO of BT onto the phone to solve her problem directly – how expensive is this for companies to work like this?What do all of these have in common? None of them started on social media – they all started through traditional contact centre media such as the phone. All those companies that are investing large amounts in social media are mistaken – invest in your traditional channels as that’s where interactions start. If you deliver good service there, then your interactions on social media will be positive as people recommend your company – you won’t need to have the immediate panic response on social media that most companies use.
Customers are more empowered through internet driven knowledge. Dealing with customers who have this higher level of knowledge requires a different approach to ensure customer satisfaction. Companies can no longer follow a scripted approach – a ‘one size fits all’ method. Agents must be given the knowledge, tools, and flexibility to treat customers individually. Empowering them with this knowledge, and saying ‘you can’ will lead to improved customer service.Another benefit of empowering agents, is that this gives them greater self-determination – they have more control over what they say and do. They no longer feel part of a machine, and can allow a human touch to come through in their service. This greater self-determination leads to higher job satisfaction, which leads to more loyalty. Loyalty is a key measure in contact centres as high turnover of staff is a major expense. So, there is a financial benefit to companies by empowering staff – they have lower hiring, recruitment and training costs. There is also an additional benefit that knowledge is retained within an organisation enabling them keep a high level of service.
So with all this improvement in how you treat people, are you still going to make them work with last century’s tools?PLT CC teams get 10hrs training per monthWe’re not looking for people to use cutting edge innovation (example of ipad and BT headset), but to use the best technology that helps them meet their objectives. They should also invest in training for teams to ensure knowledge is kept up to date.
Most traditional contact centres have followed the centralised model, which is a single organisational unit where all resources are based. This is the simplest of the three models to manage as all resources and costs are in one place and can be co-ordinated en-masse: all calls are made, received and processed from within a single building by a regular, fixed workforce. Centralised contact centres are a good solution for long-term, routine contact with a large base of customers, all of whom share similar cultures, or at least speak the same languages. They offer the most controlled environment for relentlessly improving the customer experience. Having the entire workforce under a single roof enables the cultivation of a sense of community and common culture, which can really help create consistency across all employees’ work. Additionally, it enables teamwork and competition to be introduced to motivate employee performance, and also creates opportunities for the rapid escalation of customer issues between different departments. Most beneficially, however, the centralised contact centre model is the optimal model for low-cost personal development. Development programmes can be created, teaching sessions easily arranged, and on-the-job training also provided at a stroke. Moreover, having everyone in one place leads, inevitably, to anecdotal skills transfer, perhaps in the staff canteen over lunch for example. In an industry whose number one challenge is maintaining consistent skills, the ability to deliver training so effectively is a key benefit of the centralised model. From a data security perspective, centralised contact centres offer the best protection, as their IT systems can be standardised and locked-down for most employees, with restricted access from outside the building. That means that while employees may be able to access personal details of individual customers as required, only privileged system users have access to many records at the same time, and it’s near impossible to hack-in from outside. Moreover, centralised contact centres provide the best perimeter security and it’s very difficult for employees to record and steal customers’ personal information and credit details. In an age of ever increasing data liability, and depending on the industry, security may be a crucial consideration. In general, the centralised contact centre offers control over every aspect of the working environment, from the computer systems used right through to the acoustic environment. With modern headset technology, the level of background noise can even be moderated and tuned to make sure that customers hear nothing but the person they’re speaking to. Centralised contact centres offer strong economies of scale: they are often based in high occupancy offices on non-premium real estate; administration is much easier, with payroll, HR and people-management functions co-located under one roof; bulk discounts can be negotiated on capital investments like technology, and strong savings can also be made on operating costs. However, while they can offer good returns per employee, they do also require a high fixed capital investment, which is usually spread over several years. They are not, therefore, a flexible option. Indeed, with their heavy overall operating costs, centralised contact centres become very expensive if, for any reason, they operate below capacity, or, indeed, become unable to operate at all. Issues like technical redundancy therefore become crucial to ensure that phone lines can still be kept up, for example, even when the primary telecommunications supplier goes down. Another problem with centralised contact centres is that they can feel like unnatural working environments to employees. A common complaint is “battery hen syndrome”, and some people would rule-out contact centre work altogether, although that tends to diminish in roles with greater autonomy. From the customer perspective, a centralised contact centre is the model most likely to provide a consistent quality of service, but many customers prefer to believe they are receiving a more personalised service, particularly in the case of high-value products. For businesses that frequently need to offer highly specialist advice, or operate across several different cultures and language-zones, attempting to centralise all resources in a single location may be counter-productive. Moreover, for many businesses, the set-up costs of even quite modest centralised contact centres are prohibitively high
An increasing trend over recent years is to create contact centre hubs, which group resources together in different locations, connected with modern technology. All office resources and costs are managed and controlled by the business, and all calls are made, received and processed from each location. Contact centre hubs are, effectively, local offices, and are perfect for dealing with customers that are distributed over a large area, or for short-term campaigns in different areas. The model shares many of the benefits of the centralised model, although each hub is typically smaller. That means the set-up and operating costs may be lower per hub, but so too will the economies of scale, so the cost per employee may well be higher. Contact centre hubs also offer a highly controlled environment for relentlessly improving the customer experience. Indeed, they share most of the advantages of centralised contact centres in creating strong communities and cultivating teamwork. Plus, although culturally different – perhaps the reason they were set-up in different locations in the first place – there are strong opportunities to encourage competition. Crucially, the training advantages of centralised contact centres apply to hubs too. The two main reasons for businesses to deploy hub contact centres are to include local knowledge, culture or languages within their service offering, or to make it easier to access certain kinds of people as employees. In the first case, it might be simply that a business needs telephone-based support for a product launch in England, France and Germany. While it would certainly be possible to recruit multi-lingual employees to a centralised contact centre, it might just be easier to resource contact centre hubs in each country. In addition to speaking the language more naturally, the customer experience may well be improved with shared cultural references and easier rapport. Moreover, with smaller offices on shorter leases, there is the added flexibility to phase out the operation after a period of time. Hubs are also ideal for capitalising on particular groups of people as employees. For example, if a business in a particular industry makes redundancies, an opportunist competitor might open a local hub to benefit from the available, skilled workforce. Alternatively, in the example just above, the product launch business might locate a remote hub in Switzerland to give access to many people who speak French, German and English. Alternatively, hubs can be set-up in locations to capture certain demographics as employees, such as mothers returning to work or older workers who want to go part-time. Although perimeter security is just as strong as with the centralised model, contact centre hubs are reliant on sharing information over public networks to co-ordinate activities, which creates a nominal additional security risk. There are also higher facilities management overheads in managing multiple hub sites, and those that operate below capacity also pose similar financial risks to centralised contact centres. To employees and customers, hubs are not very dissimilar to centralised contact centres. There is still a contact centre culture, and still a commute to a fixed place of work, although they are often found in more central locations.
The long-promised goal of home working, or “home shoring”, is at last becoming a reality, with skilled individuals using modern technology to connect with customers, contact centres, hubs and each other. In this model, the employees operate remotely, usually with systems supplied by the business, and calls are typically made, received and processed via a contact centre, hub or other business-owned resource. Home workers represent the ultimate in flexibility for a contact centre, offering scalability at zero fixed cost and negligible incremental cost. They are by far the lowest cost option for contact centre resourcing. Those who work from home are considerably more loyal than centralised or hub employees. In the very worst cases, staff turnover can be as high as 60 per cent in centralised contact centres, but it’s in single digits for home workers, and typically less than 5 per cent. Home workers can offer skills and expertise via the contact centre that may not be within physical commuting distance. That means a business can potentially launch new services, up-size existing ones, or expand into new territories quickly and easily by using remote workers. Indeed, home workers make it possible for businesses to experiment with new service offerings without making any additional fixed investment. The virtual contact centre model can also be attractive to those who would choose not to work in a typical contact centre environment, or for whom the cost or time involved in commuting is prohibitive. The evolution towards virtual contact centres is being made possible by new technology that enables calls to be routed seamlessly to home working agents. Systems vary in complexity but typically don’t require any additional hardware investment other than existing phone lines and perhaps a home computer. Calls are routed to employees based on their skills, availability and the need to balance call volumes, and managers can keep a close eye on performance and call resolution with detailed, real-time statistics. Modern headsets can compensate for the more unpredictable home acoustic environment, with the ever-present risk of external noises such as children or barking dogs. Of course, the change in working practices also creates a need for brand new management approaches. Isolated home workers enjoy none of the physical community, cultural, competitive or training benefits of the centralised or hub models, and nor do they have any physical supervision. While an effective company extranet can provide up-to-date training materials and modern technology can deliver opportunities for remote management and social interaction, daily action is required to nurture team spirit and maintain morale, just as in physical contact centres. Additionally, home working creates data issues both in network security, where there are many more public network nodes that can be targeted by hackers, and also in perimeter security. The idea of individuals having unsupervised access to customer data from the privacy of their own homes is truly terrifying to some business leaders. Even with access to only one record at a time, it would be easy for an errant employee to record 500 sets of credit card data in just a week if they were handling 100 calls per day. Secure technology solutions are being developed to counter this issue, but there has been very little real-world evidence to suggest that this kind of fraud is actually a serious problem. Industries such as finance and medical, which were initially cautious about adopting virtual contact centres, are increasingly being won over by the benefits. And those benefits are substantial. For business, it means capital investment can be rationalised with potential cost savings of as much as 50 per cent; more flexible capacity planning is possible, with the potential to ramp-up resources exactly as required; there is less risk of a costly single point of technical failure as in the case of a dedicated contact centre, and loyal workers also make skills retention much easier. Employees enjoy flexible working hours, increased autonomy, and no commuting. Finally, for customers, it can mean access to more highly skilled people, specialist services and faster problem resolution
One of the advantages of a contact centre environment is that it is generally a controlled environment for noise. Most companies make some effort to control the level (and type) of background noise. When yo move out from these centres to hubs, and especially a home environment, the level and type of noise changes.Even if background noise in a contact centre is high, it sounds like general office noise and gives some measure of confidence to customers calling in.However, in a home environment, the background noise types can be vehicles (in the street), children, animals. These are obviously not typical ‘office’ sounds, and so if a customer hears these, it will lead to a loss of trust between customer and organisation.
So how do we reduce the impact of that background noise? This is where we start to bring in Plantronics strengths.EncorePro – the headset with the best noise cancelling. See next slide for competitive positioning. The ability to move the microphone freely ensures best performanceAudio Processors also work to reduce noise. They are best described as a ‘switch’ – if the noise level is below a threshold, they turn off the microphone reducing the effect of background noise even furtherSo, if there is less background noise, then the conversation can be heard clearer and easier, with less mistakes and repetitions. This leads to shorter calls – for contact centres this can mean less people for same level of service, or higher level of service with same number of people.Why better security? Well if you are talking to agent 1, and you can hear agent 2 reading out the credit card details of another customer, this is a major security compromise. By using the best noise cancelling, you can reduce these cross-conversations and hence reduce the security risk. This can also help with PCI compliance.
Large amounts of ‘easy’ customer service is moving to self-service – through options such as IVR or web. This means the calls coming into contact centres are increasingly more complex. This complexity is driving greater collaboration and escalation to resolve the issues.Escalation is a hit and miss affair currently – stand up, wave your hands. With UC, escalation becomes much easier to find the person who has both the right knowledge and is available. Savi then enables you to have a 3 way conversation between customer, expert and agent – this ensures the customer gets their issue resolved on the first call (First Call Resolution is a major measurement for contact centre managers). Companies are trying UC to use IM as an escalation route, but this is not a satisfactory interaction for customers as the agent keeps typing messages and acting as a relay to the expert. Some UC systems are using skill based presence – rather than having to know a name, you can find availability of an expert by their skill rather than name.Savi is still the only headset that enables this 3 way mixing – no other competitive products do this. And yes, an SI can enable this at the PBX level, but a headset is still a quick an easy way to implement this.
Acoustic Intelligence is a practice that runs across contact centre and office – its all about Getting the design of headsets right – the weight, balance, comfort. Evidence of this is our IF award for the EncoreProThe right technology – a key example here is wideband audio or HD Voice. All PLT professional headsets are wideband already.Once you get the technology right, now its time to get the most from your voice – The Speech Impact course will teach you this