Mobile

Comparing Fonolo and Virtual Hold

By Daniela Puzzo on February 5, 2013

2

We held a terrific webinar last week (over 200 attendees!) titled “Top 5 Call Center Trends of 2013”. During the part about “Intelligent Call-back” (one of the top trends), we received several questions about how Fonolo compares to Virtual Hold. I asked Shai to elaborate on some of his answers during the webinar.

Q: How does Fonolo compare with Virtual Hold?

Shai: Both Fonolo and Virtual Hold provide the functionality of replacing hold time with a call-back which is what we call, generically, “virtual queuing”. The concept has been around for decades, but is now gaining renewed interest because of rising consumer expectations. Continue reading →

Don’t Sink your Mobile E-commerce Experience by Sending Customers to an IVR

By Shai Berger on January 30, 2013

Reply

The battle for e-commerce market share will be won or lost on the mobile app. In 2012, 11% of all e-commerce sales were through mobile, according to eMarketer. That number was only 8% the previous year and is forecasted to be 15% in 2013.

Many retailers are seeing great success through their mobile apps. At Gilt Groupe, for example, mobile now accounts for 30% of overall sales, up from 5% a year ago. When asked in a recent interview about the future of mobile e-commerce, Gilt’s chairman, Susan Lynne answered bluntly: “It’s going to continue to just crush it”.

What features elevate a decent mobile commerce app into a great one? If we follow the trends of recent data, it’s all about customer service. Too many mobile apps drop the ball in this department by having a “contact us” page that does nothing more than display a phone number. Thus, forcing a customer who needs to speak to an agent to “start over”. Chances are, he’ll put his phone back in his pocket and your sales opportunity is gone – a preventable risk that can be remedied by connecting your call center to your mobile app.

Continue reading →

Top 5 Call Center Trends for 2013

By Daniela Puzzo on January 15, 2013

6

The call center is going through an exciting and speedy transformation, quite unprecedented in its long history. Emerging technologies, changing consumer behaviors, and fierce competition present new challenges and exciting opportunities for managers.

The gap between customer expectations of phone-based support and reality is greater than ever. Over 80% of people prefer a phone call for customer service, but only 8% of them feel the service they receive is ‘excellent.’

Be sure to read the following list of call center trends that will help shape your support strategy in the coming year and beyond.

Continue reading →

Whitepaper: Connecting your Call Center to the Smartphone Revolution

By Shai Berger on January 10, 2013

2

In a few short years, the smartphone has revolutionized the way we communicate. This transition impacts customer service in two ways: 1) An increasing number of companies have released mobile apps as an extension of their customer service and 2) More and more consumers use a smartphone when calling a call center.

We’ve written quite a bit on this topic over the past few months:

Now we’ve pulled together all our latest thinking, sprinkled in some new stats, and released an updated whitepaper on smartphones, customer service and call centers.

If you’ve been a following those posts, or if you enjoyed last year’s smartphone whitepaper, or if you are at all involved in planning for your call center’s future, this is a document worth downloading. It discusses: smartphone adoption rates, the impact on call centers in different verticals, and — most importantly — how your call center can use this revolution to improve your customer service and lower call center costs.

Download it for free now, or read more below…

Continue reading →

Top 10 Customer Service Trends for 2013

By Daniela Puzzo on January 8, 2013

Reply

Customer service has never been as exciting or quickly changing as it is today. New technologies, empowered consumers, and a difficult economic climate are creating new opportunities and challenges for organizations.

Businesses recognize its importance. According to Forrester, 90% of customer service decision makers think that good service is critical to their company’s success, and 56% use it to create a competitive advantage.

The following list of customer service trends will help shape your support strategy in the coming year and beyond.

Continue reading →

Webinar on-demand: 3 Ways to Reboot Your Call Center

By Daniela Puzzo on December 13, 2012

Reply

We weren’t sure how receptive everyone would be with regards to a December webinar. With the holiday festivities in full swing and organizations winding down for the year we decided to take our chances and hope for the best.

What we didn’t expect was that this would turn out to be Fonolo’s best webinar ever! The challenges facing call centers aren’t isolated to any one industry and executives are perking up and paying attention to the changing landscape pertaining to customer service within the call center. With a full house of hospitality, health, retail and financial executives, our audience came prepared with a steady stream of questions directed to our guest speaker, Kent McInall.

Continue reading →

These 7 Charts Show Why Customer Service Needs to Get Smart about the Smartphone

By Shai Berger on December 11, 2012

10

With the end of the year approaching, the predictions are rolling out! Last week, we were treated to two massive slide decks from respected analysts, Mary Meeker and Henry Blodget. Meeker of Kleiner Perkins released the Internet Trends Year End Update report and Blodget of Business Insider released The Future of Digital. With 250 slides combined, these decks covered every angle of the digital and internet economy, but one area that stood out from both was the momentum of the smartphone revolution.

This past year we also saw powerful studies on the direction of the call center (e.g. the American Express Customer Service study which I wrote about here). When you combine that data with the data from Meeker and Blodget, the picture is clearer than ever: The smartphone is the biggest thing to happen to the call center since the dial tone.

Continue reading →

60% of Customers Ditch a Company With Poor Phone Customer Service

By Daniela Puzzo on December 6, 2012

Reply

Whip your call center into shape! With 2012 coming to a close it’s time to step back and take a look at your call center. A fresh outlook combined with a few simple solutions can make a tremendous impact on customer retention and employee efficiency.

6/10 Customers have ditched a company because its telephone customer service has been so bad.

Source: www.callcenterhelper.com

Continue reading →

SIP is Seeping Into Call Centers – and Making an Impact

By Shai Berger on December 4, 2012

Reply

According to Contact Babel‘s 2011 US Decision Maker’s Guide, a majority of call center operations are fully or partially IP-enabled. Over the last few years, that has allowed SIP adoption to reach a tipping point.

For most organizations, SIP comes along by default with a call center upgrade (like moving up to Avaya Aura). For others, SIP is part of a telecom cost reduction strategy. Regardless of how it got through the door, SIP has the power to do much more than just be a part of the unseen plumbing.

A SIP-enabled call center can:

Add 3rd Party Enhancements (like speech analytics)
Call-attach data (that actually works)
Advance Visual IVR interfaces for web and mobile

While these enhancements are possible without SIP, SIP makes deployment much easier. I’ve elaborated below on how these benefit the call center operation.

Continue reading →

Webinar Preview: 3 Ways to Boost Your Call Center + Allstream Guest Speaker

By Daniela Puzzo on November 28, 2012

Reply

With 2012 coming to a close it’s time to step back and take a look at your call center. A fresh outlook combined with a few simple solutions can make a tremendous impact on customer retention and employee efficiency.

Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re in the industry and are seeking out effective ways to make a change. Your mandate involves finding solutions to these problems – solutions you may not have or know of.

Block your calendar on December 6th at 2pm ET as we discuss 3 Ways to Boost Your Call Center. You can be an active participant and ask questions or simply watch and listen, it’s up to you.

Continue reading →