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...

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...

A pre-eminent financial services firm provides products for customers around the world. Dedicated to serving clients’ financial needs‚ the firm is committed to delivering the best customer experience possible. Its commitment doesn’t stop with clients‚ but extends to improving the lives of individuals in communities around the world. A Business Challenge The customer was interested in implementing a web services-based self-service platform to bring together web services and IP telephony in all of...

The Company A worldwide technology company operating in more than 170 countries is focused on helping people apply technology in meaningful ways to their businesses, personal lives and communities. With R&D investments of almost a billion US dollars, the company is able to offer a complete technology product portfolio to the market. The ultimate goal of this market leader is to offer products, services and solutions that are high tech, low cost and deliver the best customer experience. The c...

“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...

A premium insurance financing company based in the United States decided to upgrade their interactive voice response (IVR) platforms in call centers located in Philadelphia, PA, and Irvine, CA. Their project team leader was given responsibility for ensuring all new and existing contact center components worked together at go-live. The team leader knew the only way to accomplish this was to test each system’s ability to handle real telephone calls that “behaved” just like real callers. The compan...

Anyone who uses a phone has experienced IVR by now. It's the "Interactive Voice Response" system that many companies have implemented to handle incoming customer calls. I've found it's been helpful and efficient most of the time, but IVR seems to be the subject of jokes and scorn by many. Why all the animosity? IVR gets a bad rap and I know why: bad design and implementation. Let's look at some common problems and solutions. Having to press 1 for this and press 2 for that seems to really irritat...

Contact center and communications solutions offer companies a significant opportunity to control costs and improve customer satisfaction if implemented and maintained appropriately. If the solutions are not implemented and maintained properly, the opportunities become risks and eventually customers are negatively impacted. With StressTest™ performance and load testing, you can validate the performance of your end-to-end contact center and communications solutions to assure the best possible expe...

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 touchpoints is a huge technology investment. Technology is great, but you can’t just diligently manage the implementation process and then assume all is well with the customer service experience. Because no...

In today’s connected world of smartphones, social media, text messaging, and Web browsing, customers have never been more vocal – and ears have never been more willing to listen. Contact centers thus may feel lost in the sea of new digital customer touchpoints and interaction avenues. Staying ahead of these trends is critical to successful customer service, and technology plays a large part in catering to these evolving needs. There are several solutions out there for businesses to leverage, eac...

Almost every contact center leader analyzes the rich data coming from their Avaya Aura system in order to improve the effectiveness of their agents, better determine trends, accurately schedule their workforce, lower costs and drive additional revenues. A good deal of the information used is based on historical data from previous intervals (ex. day/month/year) for planning purposes, and in terms of their ability to predict things like agent shrinkage and call volumes. However, that data doesn’t ...

The June 2013 issue of Contact Center Pipeline included “Underutilized Metrics,” an article written by Jay Minnucci. Minnucci highlights three metrics that could be used with more frequency and effectiveness to provide a more comprehensive understanding of contact center performance: Contacts per customer – While the expectations for this metric will vary across industry, understanding the contacts per customer within your center and industry can help you answer questions about your customer bas...

This one hour presentation from CMIQ brings together 4 panelists to help you understand the pitfalls of implementing new technology today. When implementing technology we are constantly asked to do more with less, while maintaining or drive better customer experience, and increase or improve our return on investment. The first challenge in implementing new technology is to get funding, especially when the center can be considered a cost center. We then have to pick the right technology, either a...

HeartBeat™ Availability and Performance Monitoring for Voice Communications Solutions Contact center and communications solutions offer companies a significant opportunity to control costs and improve customer satisfaction if maintained properly. If solution performance is not maintained after implementation, the opportunity becomes a risk and eventually customers are negatively impacted. With HeartBeat™ availability and performance monitoring, you validate the performance of your end-to-end con...

Proper forecasting and accurate scheduling are critical to the success of your contact center. But accurate scheduling, by design, doesn’t leave much room for error and puts most contact centers dangerously close to the edge in terms of being over-staffed or under-staffed. Given the random nature of the arrival of contacts, being ‘right-staffed’ can be a fleeting concept. More often than not, you will have too many or too little agents available to address current demand. Add in the normal daily...

Superstorm Sandy roared into our lives following more than a week’s worth of warnings. Warnings are great and give you time to prepare, cross your fingers, and fret about your contingency plans. But why fret about your contingency plans? You can be sure they work. And don’t you owe it to yourself to be confident? Think about it - If a key system component or an entire site fails, your contingency plans have to work. Period. Because if the plans fail, your entire solution may completely malfuncti...

A contact center often functions as the the face of a business, so it should provide customer service solutions that support and defend the company’s advertised brand promise. Call center evaluation solutions help companies assess and monitor the performance of call center technologies and ensure that they deliver seamless customer service, enhancing customer retention and the overall return on investment (ROI). IQ Services, a company that provides virtual evaluation services for contact centers...

Think about it - If a key system component or an entire site fails, your contingency plans have to work. Period! You can be sure they do work. And don’t you owe it to yourself to be confident? If your Disaster Recovery plan fails, your entire solution may completely malfunction, drop all current calls, shut down incoming calls & transactions across all your touchpoints, and paralyze customer contact altogether. Think of the impact on you & your company - upset customers, lost revenue, ul...