As part of keeping up with the industry, we follow publicly-traded companies for which the call center is a significant component of their business. Earnings time has come around again, so let’s see what can be discerned about the near term future of the sector. Given that this is just a blog post, consider it a casual review, focusing just on companies with recent interesting news.
This quarter we’ll look at Avaya (with cloud revenue growing quickly), Twilio (with its first profitable quarter), RingCentral (with strong revenue growth) and 8×8 (with the first quarter after a product refresh).
*Phew* Can we sit down for a brief moment? We’re a little tired these days, a fatigue borne of constantly staying in the know.
Google made a major announcement at their “Cloud Next” event with the launch of 
The headlines were cranked up to eleven:
How will technology change customer service? A common answer to this question is, “Improvements in automation and self-service will erode the importance for call centers and the human agents in them.” That answer gets reinforced every time you read an announcement from a company touting success of a new automation project. It also gets strengthened by the marketing efforts of all the vendors selling self-serve technology. However, if we adjust for recency bias and profit motive, can we still be sure this trend is real? It’s a question too important for casual conclusions.
If you’re deeply invested in the customer service industry, you already know this one fact: June will be an exciting, educational month thanks to the 19th Annual Customer Contact Week, held this year from June 18-22 at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Known as Call Center Week since its inception in 1999, the annual event has rebranded as Customer Contact Week in 2018, in acknowledgement of omni-channel technologies improving customer experiences in the industry as a whole.
A surefire way to fall out of favor with a customer is to leave them on hold for more than a few minutes. (For proof, head over to 
