Author Archives: Shai
About Shai Berger
Before co-founding Fonolo, Shai was at Keynote Systems (NASDAQ: KEYN), where he led the team responsible for Streaming Perspective, the industry standard for streaming performance measurement.Shai led the Streamcheck team as co-founder and president. By selling hosted services to companies like Microsoft, AOL, Akamai, Viacom and BBC, he got the company to profitability while defying the high-tech slump of 2001. Along the way, Streamcheck established the industry standard for measuring of streaming media, used to this day by Microsoft to certify its hosting partners.
Shai has been involved in start-ups since the late 90's and presents frequently at industry events. In 2000, he was named one of the "Most Influential People in Streaming" by Streaming Media magazine. His writing appears in several books including the "Streaming Media Bible".
Shai has a degree in Engineering Physics from Queen's University and a Master's degree in Applied Science from the University of Toronto.
Blog: www.shaiberger.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/shaiberger
Linked-In: www.linkedin.com/in/shaiberger
We’re excited to attend IQPC’s fourth annual Customer Experience Summit in Biscayne Bay, Miami, on May 21-23. Building on the excitement from last year, the show will include even more innovative workshops, networking opportunities, and keynote speakers to help you deliver the ultimate customer experience.
Fonolo focuses heavily on providing the ultimate customer experience with your call center. We’ve been blogging a lot about best practices and will be hosting a webinar on Thursday, May 17th. Customer experience is high on the priority list when it comes to corporate strategies and with customers expecting immediate customer service whether on the web, social media, mobile, call center, or in the store – it’s time to take action.
Meet Me At The Summit
If you’re planning on attending the show and want to connect with me, I’d love to further discuss customer experience trends. Send me a note here shai@fonolo.com or via Twitter @shaiberger.
Hope to see you there!
Fonolo is all about fixing the call center experience, yet we spend a lot of time talking about social media through whitepapers, webinars and our blog (see 6 Steps to The Ultimate Social Contact Center).
The connection between call centers and social media might not seem obvious, so let me explain.
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The intersection of the call center and the smartphone has become one of the most exciting spaces to watch in enterprise IT. To understand why, look at the typical consumer-facing enterprise – a bank, airline or online retailer. They have a call center whose operational costs are substantial and rising (mainly due to rising labor costs). At the same time, that call center produces an experience despised by most consumers, due to frustrating IVRs, long hold times and the need to repeat information to agents. These are problems the industry has been struggling to fix for decades, to no avail.
My post last week demystifying Call-Backs vs Click-to-Call vs Virtual Queuing got quite a bit of interest, so I guess there was genuine confusion about those terms. One comment I received was from a fellow at Virtual Hold Technologies (VHT) who wanted to correct my description of their product being solely “dial-in triggered virtual queuing”. He clarified that they support web- and mobile-based triggering as well. This led me to revisit their website where I was surprised to see a major overhaul.
In the battle to improve the call center experience, three frequently used terms are: call-back, click-to-call and virtual queuing.
These terms are closely related and often confusing, so I’m going to explain the differences between them in this post.
No one should have to wait on hold anymore. Virtual queuing technology — which replaces hold time with a call-back — has been understood and available for over a decade. And yet, the majority of call centers still put callers on hold.
Why is this so? There are quite a few reasons and I’ve discussed them on this blog (here and here), in webinars and on my personal blog (here and here).
Good news is on the horizon. One day soon, virtual queuing will be the norm and waiting on hold will be extinct like the Dodo. Below are 5 signs that show we’re approaching a turning point.
This post is based on a question that was recently posted on Quora titled “Does Google plan on adding Fonolo-like features to Google Voice?“. The question was posted anonymously so I have to guess what the questioner meant by “Fonolo-like” features. I assume he is referring to the two most well-known aspects of our product:
Visual Dialing allows callers to walk through a company’s IVR (aka phone menu) and then connect directly to the point they need (thus avoiding the “press 1 for this, or 2 for that” mess); and …
A recent survey commissioned by Nuance Communications and conducted by Vocal Laboratories concludes that, “consumers have an appetite for voice biometrics”. I agree there is an appetite, but I wonder if that appetite is great enough to trigger a switch from text-based passwords to voice-based passwords.
The downsides to text-based passwords are: (A) You have to remember them. (B) You have to type them (which means occasional errors and backspacing, especially on mobile devices).
Q: I’ve been struggling with trying to implement some new customer experience strategies with my call center but I just don’t have much of a budget to play with. I was at The Call Center Summit in January and remember seeing Fonolo but assumed that it wasn’t within our company’s financial reach. Just wondering how you can help.
Jeff P. – Austin, TX
A: Hi Jeff, thanks for your question. Fonolo ties in with any call center (big or small). In fact, our call center solution seamlessly integrates with the web and smartphone (free white paper: Your Customers are on the Smartphone. Is Your Call Center?).
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Popular Posts
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