Imagine you're trying to book a flight. You call the toll-free number and use the interactive voice response (IVR) to get through to bookings, but instead you are put through to the baggage area. You hang up and try again, but this time you wind up speaking to the airline lounge. Do you try a third time or call a competitor? I know what I would do. The IVR is now a key component to delivering a great customer experience, so what steps should a business take to ensure these systems are working op...

In the eyes of many customers, self-service is not a compound word but rather a four-letter one. It’s not that there’s anything inherently bad about IVR or web self-service applications – it’s that there’s something bad about most contact centers’ efforts to make such apps good. Relatively few contact centers extend their quality assurance (QA) practices to self-service applications. Most centers tend to monitor and evaluate only those contacts that involve an interaction with a live agent – i.e...

Are carrier and toll-free services still correctly provisioned?Are cloud services working as expected?Are IVR and self-service applications up and running?Are host response times acceptable?Are speech recognition and TTS services available?Are failover/backup servers up and ready to take traffic?Did the right data pop on the agent’s desktop?Does call intelligibility degrade at certain times of day?Is your customer-facing technology performing 24 x7?Are customers having the issue-free technology ...

The convergence of voice, web, social media and video means that solution providers are coming up with exciting and sophisticated ways to allow users to take more control of their customer service experience. Customers want to decide how they communicate with your company, and how your company communicates with them. Two of the challenges facing contact centres today are “multichannel” and “multimodal” technologies. This article will explore these terms and introduce some ways to ensure that the...

Providing Contact Centres with Reliable, End-to-End Performance Metrics Many people believe they are best served by real people, not by voice robots. That’s the rationale behind GetHuman.com. But the economics and utility of self-service as an alternative to live agent interactions are so compelling that self-service solutions are here to stay. Providing multiple touch-points is a huge technology investment. Technology is great, but you can’t just diligently manage the implementation process and...

In the world of computing technology and communications solutions, the last twenty years have been one revolution after another. Faster processes, niftier appliances, smarter phones, and virtualized services are everywhere. Contact centers have grown from hunt groups and operator consoles to full-blown CRM solutions riding on top of evolving, complex technologies. Many of us are excited to use the new technologies because of three potentially significant benefits: generate cost savings facilitat...

Since Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems were first introduced as a customer service tool, there have been many detractors. However, a recent Forrester Consulting survey indicates that the tide has turned and customers have accepted IVR and, in some cases, even prefer it to live operators. Speech-enabled self-service IVRs have become so commonplace that many consumers report that they prefer to use such systems for simple tasks such as checking account balances, flight statuses or shipment...

Whether in the product business, or in services, a company’s brand image is shaped by how customers feel about interacting with the company. The impression they take away from a call to the business’s support or contact center has a lasting impact that can be either good or bad. Customer facing operations are crucial. As a business grows or undergoes other strategic changes, it may require updating its contact center operations as well. Signaling Change Arnab Mishra is Senior VP, Products and So...

The IVR is an integral part of any call center. Customers can call the center and get what they need without ever talking to a human, allowing agents greater availability to handle the more pressing calls. Yet despite their obvious advantages, most IVR systems aren’t perfect and can benefit from some improvements. How do you know when your IVR is due for some revamping? One of the best ways is to dial the number yourself. By putting yourself in the shoes of the customer, you’ll get to experience...

“IQ Services really made it easy. I learned all sorts of things about my routing tables that really caught me by surprise" It was essential for a major player in the mobile & computing devices industry to know for certain its three contact centers could handle full calling volumes during an upcoming shopping season. The company turned to IQ Services for an answer to the question “How can we be sure our self-service and contact center solutions will really work when we need them?” 7000+ Ports...