It’s hard to get clear, objective data about the overall state of self-service technology. Case studies about specific projects are plentiful, but, as the saying goes, “the plural of anecdote is not data.” In addition, you always have to account for bias in that reporting: Vendors are going to highlight the data that makes their technology look good. Projects that succeed will be touted, and projects that fail get buried quietly.
If we want hard answers, we have to get a little more clever. Data released last week allows us to do just that.
Today’s demanding consumers have high expectations when it comes to the call center experience. 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 
One industry report that we always anticipate at this time of year is the annual “Contact Center Decision Maker’s Guide” from ContactBabel. The 9th edition of the report weighs in at a massive 300-pages with tables and graphs examining every aspect of the contact center world. Topics include WFM, headsets, agent recruiting, voice biometrics, and more.
For decades, the phone call was the dominant choice for getting customer service from a company (at least, if you couldn’t walk in their door). The emergence of email, and then the web, started to change the role of the phone call. That change accelerated dramatically in recent years as new channels appeared in rapid succession: Twitter, Facebook, online chat, mobile apps, SMS.
