Big question: How should text-based communication work alongside voice for customer service? In the dark ages, the only answer to this was email, in its own silo, and a call center, in its own silo. Then real-time chat came along. And then messaging, powered by massive platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, made an appearance. Meanwhile, driving in its own lane, is good ‘ol SMS.
For now, you can find companies trying any or all of these strategies. You can read success stories in each. But, at some point, it’s likely that one of these channels will become the dominant companion to voice. By that I mean it will have enough critical mass that it’s just assumed by consumers that any large company will offer it, in the way we assume any large company has a toll-free number and an email address.
Contact center software and CRM software have been on a slow collision course for decades. It’s not hard to understand why: They both deal with customer communication so the boundary was destined to get blurry. Now that both worlds are increasingly cloud-based, the collision is accelerating.
As we transition into autumn, it’s easy for us in customer service to lose the steam, energy, and focus we coveted during the rejuvenating days of summer. This is certainly not ideal given that the late fall and early winter months are some the busiest for call centers and contact centers in many the vertical: Black Friday, Super Saturday, and most of the days book-ending December 25th see a dramatic upsurge in customer support requests, which accompanies a similarly dramatic upsurge in shopping on these days.
Customer experience is fast becoming the leading reason why customers choose your brand. Convenience, simplicity, and putting the customer first has a tremendous impact on whether or not you maintain a loyal following, or lose out to the competition. In this age of technology, where the experience is constantly changing and being updated, it’s important for CX leaders to stay in the know, and discuss what’s happening in this space. LinkedIn Groups give top business professionals the ability to follow the trends and conversations going on in their industry, while also sharing relevant content with peers.
Last week Network World published an article called 
Is the call center destined to be just a CRM feature? Or is it the other way around? Which is the cart and which is the horse?
There has been speculation for many years about Salesforce introducing its own call center. The argument is that Salesforce drove the conversion of CRM to a cloud-delivered service and, now that call centers have also crossed the cloud chasm, it’s a logical expansion path for Salesforce.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions continue to grow in popularity, having benefited from a wave of new technologies. For example, in recent years cloud computing has made CRM less expensive.
