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Three years ago Gartner reported that by 2018, more than 50% of organizations would implement significant changes in their efforts to improve the customer experience. In other words, the battle for delivering the best experience was predicted to become even fiercer.
My thoughts? Gartner was bang on: We see more and more companies trying to improve their customer experience efforts (just look at the awards we gave out last year), and doing so will only become more critical.
The customer experience has grown to be one of the leading determinants of customer satisfaction in the contact center. A recent study by Dimension Data shows that 82% of companies recognize the customer experience as a competitive differentiator, and 77.5% recognize it as the most important strategic performance measure.
With the sheer number of individuals talking about the customer experience, it can be hard to find great thought leaders, and as a CX manager it’s important for you to know who the most influential people in the space are. That’s why each year Fonolo sets out to determine the top thought leaders in the industry, so companies can learn from the best.
Congratulations to these 15 analysts who were selected because of their highly regarded knowledge of the customer experience. Continue reading
Last week Avaya held their executive partner forum, the most exclusive event for Avaya partners, In San Diego, California. This high-level event was hosted for top partners´ senior executives, top-tier media, and industry analysts. It featured productive business sessions, networking activities and presentations held by Avaya senior leaders.
As an Avaya partner, we always have our ear to the ground, eager to see what they will announce and share with the community. We didn’t get to attend in person, but because many of the analysts were live tweeting throughout the event, we got to follow along pretty closely. Here are the major themes that were covered, in the words of the analysts’ own tweets.
This year’s Enterprise Connect conference was a whirlwind of sessions, demos and announcements. There was also an abundance of big reveals from major vendors including Cisco (re-launching its UC endeavor as “Spark”), Interactive Intelligence (announcing PureCloud Collaborate), Microsoft (unveiling Skype for Business) and Avaya (announcing a new call center partnership with Google).
I wrote up my top takeaways on trends related to call centers a couple weeks ago, you can read that here. Many industry analysts did the same and, now that the dust has settled, I’ve assembled the top posts here for easy reference. Continue reading
Striving for call center greatness seems simple enough – keep a constant outlook on the industry trends and changes that lead to better performance. Unfortunately, it’s harder than it sounds. Managers and executives are inundated with recommendations, but lack clear direction on which processes and technologies to change first.
Continue reading
Last week we published a list of top analysts covering the contact center space. Those folks are a terrific resource for following the rapidly evolving call center industry. In the same spirit, we are publishing a list of top analysts covering the topics of customer service / customer experience.
These topics have a lot of overlap, since a finely-tuned call center is essential for delivering a good customer experience. There is so much overlap that, in fact, some of these analysts could have gone on either list. We did our best to segment them appropriately.
Here is the list, in alphabetical order.
Below you’ll see a short profile of each analyst including title, area of focus, representative quote and recommended reading. If you think we’ve forgotten anyone, please let us know in the comments. Continue reading
The call center is headed for major disruption. From smartphones to social media to the cloud, there are epic forces coming together to change an industry that has been relatively stagnant for the past decade. Since the call center is at its heart, the broader field of customer service will also be drastically impacted.
If you care about this topic, we sourced the top 12 analysts you should follow (in alphabetical order):
