Technology

We recently asked you about how social media is used in your contact centre.
The results show that Social Media is still very small and most people are not using much technology to support it.  It is also still in the hands of the marketing department.

In ten years, how will organisations interact with their customers?
Dani Muir explores how a member of the public might contact an organisation in 2022.

This week we launch phase 3 of  our Call Recording and Speech Analytics Reference Guide.
Follow this link to visit the Call Recording and Speech Analytics Reference Guide.

While on-hold music has the potential to soothe, calm and appease prospective complainants, it also has the power to irritate callers to the point of tears.
Minimise the chances of unnecessary exacerbation by avoiding these seven inappropriate music on-hold tracks….

The latest Ofcom regulations, introduced earlier this year, have brought in tough penalties for all people making outbound phone calls.
But the regulations are highly complex and very difficult to understand.  To help make the regulations clearer to understand here is a one-page ‘cheat sheet’.

Well, you voted in your masses and we have now compiled the results of what you, our readers, feel is the Top 25 Contact Centre Technology based on the number of votes received.
Thanks to the 374 people who voted.  It makes these the most impartial of all the contact centre technology awards.

Despite many changes that have happened to the internet, support forums seem to have remained essentially unchanged since their inception as bulletin boards back in the early 1970s
Orhan Ertughrul explores 5 areas where support forums are no longer up to the mark.

Ask any customers about automated voice services and you tend to get a chorus of universal scorn about pressing 1 if you don’t want service and getting stuck in an infinite loop without the ability to talk to a “real person”.
However, is this knee-jerk reaction a real reflection of how customers are using voice self-service [...]

Speech analytics is starting to enter the mainstream.  But like most new technologies there have been some teething pains along the way.
In this article Martin Hill-Wilson looks at what has been holding back speech analytics and where it is likely to be moving in the future.

Are virtual reality characters or avatars really the best way to give customer service?
Andrew Mennie explains how the technology can be used in call centres and Matthew Brown takes a look at the avatars already in use.