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Curious about the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in contact centers? Is all the hype surrounding AI genuine or just a buzzword? This ebook guides you through the myths and ethics of AI in contact centers, separating facts from fiction and exploring the ethical concerns of using bots in customer service.

Do you want to benchmark your contact centre against others and be in with a chance of winning a Ninja Foodi Air Fryer?

The days of rigid adherence to a 9-5 working day are long gone. But this brave new world comes at a price. Offices are places where we chat and gossip, make friendships, build teams, enjoy lunches out and after-work drinks. They are also the ideal spaces for spontaneous meetings, overheard insights or ad hoc brainstorming sessions.

Quality assurance and monitoring are essential tools for contact center management, but, most organisations have a large disparity between the number of QA analysts and contact centre agents.

This webinar shares top training tips from the experts, as well as how the latest tech can help ensure that your agents are treating vulnerable customers fairly, every time.

An effective forecast for an operations team is like having a healthy heart. Your forecast takes in data and pumps out information and guidance for your scheduling and service level management functions. Everything is predicated on getting the forecast right.

Call centers today are faced with challenges that demand both immediate and long-term attention in order to improve results for customers.

We’re at the beginning of a massive shift in how brands will deliver customer service. The large language models behind ChatGPT and other generative AI systems are going to be like rocket fuel for the contact center.

Bots do more than automate self-service. When used strategically, chatbots elevate the customer experience (CX) and provide measurable gains for your business. And by taking on mundane, repetitive tasks, bots give your employees more time to focus on higher value conversations.

Today, customers have seemingly endless options to contact businesses and get their questions answered.

Robotic process automation (RPA), also known as unattended automation, has been widely embraced on a global scale in sectors as varied as telecom, financial services, government, and retail. Automating repetitive or routine tasks is now a common solution for streamlining and optimizing back-office business processes.

This eBook provides a deep dive into the top seven trends that will affect contact centers in 2023 and the role that workforce management plays in rising to the opportunities and challenges.

Ensuring continued customer satisfaction and cost-efficiency is a delicate balance, and companies with intelligent CX programs in place are succeeding in delivering on this promise. Using intelligent CX programs to develop internal capabilities that enable businesses to provide seamless assisted and self-service experiences, and equipping their employees with relevant tools to maximize employee productivity and employee engagement, all leads to better CX outcomes. Consequently, business leaders with intelligent CX capabilities boast greater operational success and reduce operational costs without compromising customer satisfaction.

From contact centre phone calls to text-based communications that take place between your customers and your employees, these conversations are ripe with intelligence and business value just waiting to be uncovered.

Today’s customers are increasingly intolerant of waiting in queues, while contact center agents are overwhelmed with extremely high call volumes.

The past three years have forever changed the way customers interact with brands. And retail was one of the sectors impacted the most.

If you’re a Team Leader, this playbook is designed to help you. EvaluAgent has worked closely with the UK’s leading contact centres to identify the most common challenges facing today’s Team Leaders, allowing us to guide you in truly supporting your team whilst delivering tangible value to the rest of the business.

Get the full Gartner research report for use-cases from organisations across industries to learn how they’re using AI – and three ways they’ve benefited.

As the world continues to connect, innovate, and grow, the need for bridges, is paramount in the CX world as companies communicate, or attempt to communicate, with their customers.

Are you taking care of all the elements of the forecast? Are Planning and Operations teams working together for success? Are you delivering efficient schedules? Do you focus on Employee Engagement?

Contact centers have had a disruptive ride over the last few years. Understaffed shifts, pandemic restrictions, urgent and often messy digital transformations to the cloud, frustrated customers weary of supply chain and service disruptions, overworked agents saddled with handling sales and revenue generation — contact centers have been stretched to the max.

This eBook is designed for contact center managers who want to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their quality operation.

Centrical surveyed 500+ operations leaders across industries and the globe to get their thoughts on the state of workforce engagement in 2023.

This webinar had actionable advice from our industry experts, so you can give your performance strategy a much-needed spring clean.

Today, contact centres increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve performance; boost efficiency; and deliver a more individualised, empathetic customer experience at scale. Early AI adopters are now reaping big rewards. And, as the competitive advantages of AI expand, adoption is accelerating.

As companies look to self-service automation in hopes of both reducing cost and enhancing customer service, their customers are faced with a growing number of opportunities to interact with virtual agents and chatbots. In some cases, these experiences are positive. In far too many others, poor design can lead to experiences that are negative or even downright frustrating.

The pace of digital adoption is accelerating. As a result, consumers’ expectations for instant gratification are increasing, yet voice remains a critical ingredient in the customer experience.

It is not easy to create and strengthen customer relationships while ensuring that customers enjoy interacting with your company and contacting your employees. And disjointed communications with your company make this even more difficult.

How can you manage the ongoing challenge of workforce capacity planning in an ever-changing contact centre environment?

Companies that are not customer-centric will not continue to scale and grow. Customer service (CX) is the key differentiator companies can and should optimize to outperform.

Contact center business process outsourcers (BPOs or “outsourcers”) have similar goals and challenges to in-house contact centers - and some additional ones of their own. They’ve got to keep several plates spinning at all times. Do they have a secret sauce that helps them to achieve that?

Customers look for businesses to communicate with them in a proactive fashion to inform them of potential issues that may affect product/service experience and advise on the steps the company is taking to mitigate.

The 2023 UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers’ Guide is based on surveys with 229 UK organisations and 1,000+ interviews with UK consumers.

The current economic climate has brought about many challenges for organisations, especially retail. With continuing consumer demands on personalised experiences, retailers need to think of new creative ways to stand out from the crowd and not be left behind.

BPOs and enterprise contact centers see high turnover, and an equally high cost with business disruption. But consider this: according to one study, highly engaged employees are 75% less likely to leave their company.

The way we do business has changed. The shift away from in-person service has driven greater reliance on contact centers. And customer service representatives (CSRs) are now working in a hybrid capacity — supporting customers from both the office and from home. Making this transition was difficult, but we’ve learned a lot.

Generative AI tools – such as ChatGPT – have captured the minds of everyone across the technology spectrum and beyond.

Achieving the right balance between employee productivity and excellent customer experiences starts with bringing voice, video, and chat together on an integrated cloud communications platform.

Organizations are facing unprecedented challenges—and powerful new opportunities—in serving customers. A key enabler is effective workforce management: getting the right people and supporting resources in place at the right times.

You need to create an environment where your staff are empowered and encouraged to give their best every day. Combined with the fact that switching jobs every now and then is becoming the norm, retaining the best people and developing them is quite the challenge...

Check out this webinar to hear what our industry experts believe will be the real game-changers in the months ahead, so you can invest wisely and truly wow your customers.

A contact center’s journey to the cloud can be as challenging as it is exciting.

This eBook explores what digital motivation can do for frontline employees and their managers, from real-time performance management to learning, coaching, and recognition.

Channels like surveys, while valuable, only offer a glimpse into positive or negative reactions, leaving a whole middle ground of feedback untapped – many shaded or grey in between the black and white.

This guide takes a detailed look at the main contact centre pain points and issues that affect the industry UK wide.

Customer experience (CX) has become extremely challenging as companies face the perfect storm of increasing call volumes, talent shortages, and rising customer expectations.

As customer demands and behaviors continue to change at a breakneck pace, delivering top-notch support feels like more of a moving target than ever before.

We'd love to tell you that setting up your Workforce Management system is a complete walk in the park, and you can do it in two clicks, but... we'd simply be insulting your intelligence as a Workforce Manager, Operations Director or IT Manager.

Many brands view customer service as a cost centre – a necessary function charged with fielding customer enquiries and complaints. But that perspective couldn’t be further from the truth!

It’s no secret that today’s contact centre advisors are under immense pressure.

As we head into 2023, companies face difficult crossroads with increasing economic uncertainty which is poised to affect the CX industry.

This webinar shared actionable advice from our workforce engagement experts, so you can get the very best results out of your workforce.

An excellent customer experience (CX) can not only influence how a customer feels about your brand, but also the bottom line.

What is customer experience (CX)? It is the perception that your customers form of your organization from the interactions they have throughout their journey with you. Think about companies that have given you a great customer experience and how you recommend them to your friends.

There are few departments who have felt the rise of remote and hybrid work more than the contact centre: with 73% of agents wanting to continue working remotely into the future. However, the most innovative organisations are those that understand how omnichannel conversation analytics can help them adapt, and excel, in the face of change and uncertainty.

Cloud transformation has the potential to bring about rapid change, a deeper understanding of your customers, and better working practices for your agents.

Forecasting is complex with many moving parts. It is one of the most challenging parts of the workforce management cycle. Without a clear process, a lot can go wrong. However, with careful planning, you can master the art of accurate forecasting with five fundamental steps.

The compliance and risk landscape for organisations has become increasingly complex when it comes to consumer protections. Today, there are many factors that are driving global regulatory demands.

The role of AI does not stop at self-service and agent support.

As customer and employee expectations evolve, contact centers must adapt by providing intelligent customer service technology.

Todays’ CX teams can’t afford to remain isolated in their separate contact centre, service desk or CRM camps. The pressure for brands to differentiate via their customer experience now makes any CX technology decisions taken more important than ever.

Today, many global organisations are managing a rise in remote and hybrid work – and few departments have felt the impacts of that more than the contact centre.

Agent attrition has always been a challenge in the contact centre industry but growing pressure from the way contact centres operate and the demands of customers have increased even further since the pandemic, reducing retention and increasing disengaged agents.

AI has been at the forefront of transforming everything from the way we work, to the way we handle customers and the customer experience. But the business benefits of AI often remain elusive because so much emphasis has been placed on the merits of the technology versus the positive business outcomes the technology enables.

An effective automation and AI solution can transform your business. For your customers, it means a smoother and more effortless experience. For your advisors, thanks to AI’s ability to listen in to customer interactions, augmenting the experience and equipping advisors with key contextual insights.

In their efforts to deepen customer relationships in the face of economic uncertainty, many forward-thinking brands have transitioned from helping customers in an efficient, yet seemingly transactional way, to understanding and engaging with each customer as an individual.

When it comes to contact centre operations, there’s a certain level of automation that drives efficiency. However, there are specific interactions – such as those with a vulnerable customer or a complex issue – that still require the human touch, and always will.

Reducing contact centre abandonment is key to maintaining customer experience. It is also very important to consider how to reduce abandonment. Customers often abandon due to long wait times, but there are other factors that lead to abandonment.

Natural language processing (NLP) has evolved as a revolutionary technology in the field of AI for CX. But it’s not a plug-and-play solution.

More than ever, customer experience (CX) is shaping the competitive landscape and providing a significant advantage for organizations that make it the cornerstone of their business strategies.

2022 has seen the world attempt to return to the new normal and continue to adapt to the ongoing impact of the past two years.

Vulnerable customers are at a greater risk of harm due to financial, health or capability constraints. It is vital that every contact centre knows how to identify vulnerable customers and tailor services accordingly to minimise the risk of harm.

Simply resolving issues and delivering customer satisfaction is no longer enough. But by consistently offering a great customer experience, it can deliver huge strategic value for your business. This has been backed up by recent Watermark Consulting research which states CX success 'builds value, while a poor customer experience erodes it’.

Customers are regularly contacting you and explaining how a product didn’t work or when a service didn’t meet their expectations.

AI is now recognized as a key component of any digital transformation, especially in the customer experience sector. It will, in fact, help to open up the organization and to reinvent business processes.

Contact center managers have access to more data than ever before. As a leader, it is important to set your organization and business up for success by engaging in benchmarking to determine best business practices, critically evaluate your business and implement necessary changes has become essential for the success of any contact center.

Believe it or not, there are five generations that make up today’s workforce. Each of these generations has different ways in which they communicate and different preferences in the ways they like to be communicated to. Understanding how each operates in your workplace can be invaluable when it comes to delivering highly personalised, effective feedback and coaching.

As the cost of living crisis continues and bills continue to soar, contact centres are facing an increase in vulnerable customers who are seeking support.

Knowledge has never been more important in the contact centre. Or more difficult to manage effectively. For this reason, companies must ensure they have a knowledge management strategy in place.

As the Great Resignation continues, contact centre leaders must be creative to attract and keep the necessary staff to serve their customers. Agents want to work for employers who treat them more like customers.