Technology

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.

Finding the right music on hold strategy can be difficult, especially when customers can now complain instantly via social media if they don’t like a particular song. Matthew Brown looks at Twitter to find out what customers really think about the music they listen to while on hold.

CRM used to be the flavour of the month, but of late it has fallen from grace.  Richard Snow looks at the future of CRM and where it goes from here.

Effective use of workforce management can be a difficult balance to find, and to get the best from it, you’ll want to avoid these deadly sins of WFM.

It can be unnerving to answer the phone to a recorded message. But automated outbound voice calls can save money for call centres and have some interesting uses.
Matthew Brown looks at the good, the bad and the ugly of automated outbound voice calls.

Here is a nifty example of an Erlang calculator that has been sent in by Phil Wright.
This calculator is a bit more sophisticated than our Excel-based Erlang calculator in that it provides extra figures such as the percentage of abandoned calls and the number of calls that are not answered within the time-to-answer threshold.

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is helping contact centres to transform the way they communicate by providing an affordable, reliable, and simple alternative to the desk phone.  We asked a panel of experts for their views on how SIP is changing the contact centre.

We’ve all tried to play around with call routing strategies, perhaps dabbling with multi-site or skills-based routing.  But is there something more innovative out there?  Jonty Pearce investigates.

Call centres have been looking at social media for some time.
Keith Pearce outlines here ten different ways organisations can use social media to gain a competitive edge.

This week we look at how police forces across the country use workforce management solutions to support their contact centre or control-room function.