8 Tips for Aligning Sales and Service

Today, businesses have a wealth of terrific choices when it comes to applications and platforms for both sales and service, including commercial products from software vendors, as well as applications that have been built in-house. Many businesses have tackled optimizing their sales process with cloud software at one point in time, and the tools for the customer support department at another. The result? Silos in process and technology that often create disconnected customer experiences because businesses lack the 360-degree view they need of each individual customer to deliver the kind of experience that customers expect.

When considering a cloud platform as your next solution to connect sales and service, you need to find a platform that serves both business and IT interests: both sides are essential in keeping your customers happy. To find the right fit, you must keep in mind a variety of factors.

1. Trust

As with any technology, security, availability, and performance are essential factors when choosing a cloud provider. Ensure that the cloud solution you choose is built around a robust and flexible security architecture. Speak with providers about how they will protect your data and give you visibility into system performance and security.

2. Customer Success

When choosing a cloud platform, find one that prioritizes your own success. Your cloud provider should offer robust training, success services, and community resources to ensure you’re making the most of your investment.

3. Innovation

Cloud computing has gained critical mass in the marketplace, which means it’s easier than ever to find a cloud platform solution. But this doesn’t mean you should just go with anyone – choose a cloud provider that’s market-tested and delivers innovation often, future-proofing the technology and your investment.

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Good practice in the conduct and reporting of survey research

Survey research is sometimes regarded as an easy research approach. However, as with any other research approach and method, it is easy to conduct a survey of poor quality rather than one of high quality and real value. This paper provides a checklist of good practice in the conduct and reporting of survey research. Its purpose is to assist the novice researcher to produce survey work to a high standard, meaning a standard at which the results will be regarded as credible. The paper first provides an overview of the approach and then guides the reader step-by-step through the processes of data collection, data analysis, and reporting. It is not intended to provide a manual of how to conduct a survey, but rather to identify common pitfalls and oversights to be avoided by researchers if their work is to be valid and credible.

Advantages and disadvantages of survey research

Advantages:

The research produces data based on real-world observations (empirical data).

The breadth of coverage of many people or events means that it is more likely than some other approaches to obtain data based on a representative sample, and can therefore be generalizable to a population.

Surveys can produce a large amount of data in a short time for a fairly low cost. Researchers can therefore set a finite time-span for a project, which can assist in planning and delivering end results.

Disadvantages:

The significance of the data can become neglected if the researcher focuses too much on the range of coverage to the exclusion of an adequate account of the implications of those data for relevant issues, problems, or theories.

The data that are produced are likely to lack details or depth on the topic being investigated.

Securing a high response rate to a survey can be hard to control, particularly when it is carried out by post, but is also difficult when the survey is carried out face-to-face or over the telephone.

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5 ways cloud telephony is powering growing businesses

Microsoft has listed cloud telephony as one of the four technology trends that have the potential to shape businesses. Cloud telephony is emerging as a major enabler of new business trends for both established businesses and startups- as somewhat of a magic solution that intersects service and scale. And this is precisely the reason why cloud telephony is a boon for growing businesses. For a business in the growth phase, reliability and scale are the two most important factors. That is what cloud telephony promises. When reliability and scale are taken care of, it is easy for the business to focus on it’s core competence without having to worry about infrastructure to power customer conversation.

Here the prime reasons why cloud telephony is the best way to power growing businesses:

Customer support infrastructure is taken care

In a growing business, addressing customer grievances to grow the tribe of happy customers is one of the most important tasks. Location, unavailability of agents, missing calls due to lines being busy, solving multiple issues, etc. are things that every business struggles with. Cloud telephony makes call management infinitely easier. The infrastructure is taken care of. There will no need to worry about issues like lines being down, unavailability of phone lines, untraceable missed calls etc. There is no need to invest in manpower or technology to ensure these factors don’t impact the performance of the support team.

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To VoIP or not to VoIP−is that the question?

How we got here

Telephones communicate by way of copper wires. At least, that’s how it started, and there are still quite a few copper-connected telephones. When I first used a home phone many years ago, the phone cord was wired into a wall jack with screw terminals, and if anything went wrong we had to call the phone company to have it fixed. Portability came years later when the phone company made square 4-pronged plugs and jacks (that only they could install) to allow users to move the phone from one room to another. Modular plugs like we know today followed.

It wasn’t until the 1980’s that I first saw a “digital” PBX telephone. The first ones weren’t what we would call digital now; they were hybrid phones with one pair that carried analog voice and an accompanying signaling pair. Digital sets did finally follow. An AT&T account rep told me once that the Nortel telephones weren’t digital because digital sets had to use four wires. At the time, AT&T digital phones used pins 1, 2, 3, & 6 just like Ethernet. I never understood the logic behind that engineering decision.

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Meet NovaMedia, our multimedia system for contact centers, receptions and / or telecommuting, with which your customers can communicate with your company through phone calls, voice and web chat, or from a mobile application, click here.