Four features of contact center evolution

Contact center evolution is explored through four key features, identifying how contact centers have changed through the past, present and future. Call centers were created to provide an efficient way for customers to contact a company when they have questions regarding its products and services.

During the past 40 years, call centers have evolved tremendously becoming contact centers; today's capabilities weren't on the radar even 10 years ago. Who can imagine what a contact center will look like in another 10 years? Here we take a look at contact center evolution by examining where contact centers were, where contact centers are and where contact centers are going in the following key areas:

1. Technology

Where contact centers were. Contact centers used separate on-premises-based systems, each performing specific functions. Organizations were responsible for integrating their Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) with a separate workforce management system with a separate call recording system. Each system had its own licensing requirements, and all systems had to be integrated seamlessly to function properly. Especially when problems arose, working with multiple vendors was not an easy task.

2. Communications channels

Where contact centers were. For some time, the only way to reach out to a contact center was by making a phone call or sending a letter. ACD technology was new and did an effective job of routing calls to agents. Mail involved a host of problems, including illegible handwriting as well as letters being misplaced (sometimes purposely -- remember finding stacks of letters in agents' desk drawers?) and never being processed.

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4 Important Reasons to Conduct Online Surveys

Remember the days when you used to get paper surveys in the mail seeking your input on a company’s product or service? Yeah, me neither.

In all seriousness, traditional paper surveys are on the decline as online surveys surge forward to take their place. In the past, marketers were forced to use print or telephone surveys to get the data they needed. Now, we have the internet. Think about how much easier it is to collect data when all you need to do is distribute a link. That’s a heck of a lot simpler than printing hundreds of surveys, tracking down the addresses of your respondents, mailing them, and then hoping that your recipients actually have the motivation to send them back. So what are the benefits of these newfangled online surveys, and what do b2b companies stand to gain by doing them?

Collect Data…In Real-Time

The purpose of doing an online survey is to collect data, as with any traditional survey. If you stumble across a topic that you want to do research on — whether it’s market research for your product or survey, or research into industry trends — you’ve found an opportunity to conduct a survey. The great thing about online surveys is that you can roll them out in almost no time at all. And once those results start flooding in, you can see real-time answers to your questions the second respondents hit the submit button.

Learn from Your Results

Surveys are great for collecting customer input about your product or service. Send one out every few months to gauge customer satisfaction, inquire into new feature ideas, learn how customers are using your product or service, and record any general feedback. The key is to take what you learn and put it into practice. Customers will be happy to see their input being put to good use.

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Web Real Time Communication Market - Advance Technology s to Watch Out for Near Future

Web Real Time Communication Market: Segmentation

Web RTC market is broadly segmented on the basis of type, solution and geography. On the basis of type, the web RTC market can be segmented into software and services whereas, on the basis of solution it can be segmented as video calling solutions, voice solutions, messaging solutions and file sharing solutions. The software segment of the market provides software which have web RTC functionality whereas service segment provides the technology and API to integrate web RTC in their existing websites.

Moreover, in terms of geographies, the global Web RTC market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America regions. Web RTC technology show its strong presence in North America as technological advancements and heavy investments are made by the players of this region. Asia–Pacific and Europe are also adopting web RTC significantly due to tremendous growth seen in usage of web based applications.

Web Real Time Communication Market: Key Players

The major participants in the web RTC market include companies such as Google Incorporation, Mozilla Corporation, Cisco Systems Inc., Opera Software ASA, TokBox, Twilio, Alcatel-Lucent S.A., Voxeo Corporation, American Telephone & Telegraph Corporation and Avaya Inc.

The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types and applications.

What Is a Survey and When Should You Use One? | Psychology Research

A survey is a data collection tool used to gather information about individuals. Surveys are commonly used in psychology research to collect self-report data from study participants. A survey may focus on factual information about individuals, or it might aim to obtain the opinions of the survey takers. Surveys are one of the most commonly used research tools and can be utilized to collect data and describe naturally occurring phenomena that exist in the real-world.

How Are Surveys Used in Psychology Research?

A survey can be used to investigate the characteristics, behaviors, or opinions of a group of people.

A survey can be administered in a couple of different ways. In one method known as a structured interview, the researcher asks each participant the questions. In the other method known as a questionnaire, the participant fills out the survey on his or her own.

Surveys are generally standardized to ensure that they have reliability and validity. Standardization is also important so that the results can be generalized to the larger population.

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Four Benefits of Switching Your Contact Center Agent Software to WebRTC

Some view WebRTC as a technology with a lot of potential that has not yet been fulfilled, but the opposite is true. You just need to know where to look in order to find WebRTC in use. One such hidden area where WebRTC is making inroads is the contact center: While you may not even know it, your most recent call to a contact center might have been picked up in a browser using WebRTC.

Why exactly are contact centers thinking of, evaluating and even switching to using WebRTC for the agents in the contact center? There are many reasons, but the biggest one of them all is the process we see happening everywhere else - technology and the internet are redefining whole industries. Contact centers are rapidly changing, moving towards becoming omnichannel machines where customers can skip across channels while the context of their interactions is maintained. This is not always the case. I had my own share of broken interactions across channels - getting it right isn’t easy.

What are the benefits of such a move? What do contact centers gain out of this transition to using WebRTC for their agents instead of VoIP clients or physical desk phones? Here are four such benefits.

Reduce TCO

In a contact center, there are two main vendors: the CRM vendor and the call center vendor. One offers the database of customer interactions while the other is in charge of taking calls from customers. Modern CRMs today have their front-facing UI for the agents residing in the web browsers using HTML5. Modern call centers use VoIP to run in the enterprise LAN. The two vendors in the contact center are now looking at this new technology called WebRTC - the CRM vendor and the call center vendor. What is each of them seeing and how are they going to cope with this new technology?.

The CRM vendors run in the web, so the Web part in WebRTC appeals to them. The call center vendors handle Real Time Communications, so the RTC part in WebRTC appeal to them. When both of these vendor types make an attempt to fuze WebRTC into their product - who’s going to win the hearts of potential customers?

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Podcast: How WebRTC is Changing the Game in Contact Centers for Customers and Companies

Improved interactions with customers and greater internal efficiency has always been the promise of WebRTC and with the standard solidifying and Microsoft and Apple getting on board, businesses are now really starting to take advantage of it.  In this insightful podcast interview with Xander Dumaine, Senior Software Engineer at Interactive Intelligence, we get into the details of where WebRTC is headed, the benefits to businesses and customers and why Interactive Intelligence has moved quickly to deploy their Contact Center solution as a WebRTC native application.  

He discuss market demand for WebRTC, how businesses and customers benefit from WebRTC applications and the types of capabilities WebRTC can deliver (no download screen sharing, video collaboration with contact center agents, etc.) that have never been feasible before.  If you are looking to leverage WebRTC to improve internal contact center operations and improve the customer experience, this podcast is a must listen.

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Bridging the gap between WebRTC, VoIP and phones

The WebRTC protocol has shown great promise for integrating telephony capabilities into modern enterprise applications. But challenges remain.

The WebRTC protocol promises to make it easier for enterprise developers to roll out applications that bridge call centers as well as voice notification and public switched telephone network (PSTN) services. Additionally, the WebRTC project provides browsers and mobile applications with real-time communications capabilities via simple APIs, and is a great choice for implementing the call center side of the apps. WebRTC is essentially a set of JavaScript APIs baked into browsers that let developers build applications in order to enable users to make browser-to-browser calls without external plug-ins.

"It's undeniable that the WebRTC protocol is disrupting the Voice over IP (VoIP) industry and redefining what communicating means," said Sacha Nacar, developer community manager at Voxbone, which sells local phone numbers around the world that link to SIP) endpoints. WebRTC enables secure real-time communications applications in the browser without requiring any plug-in or fancy equipment on the client side. In significant ways, WebRTC and SIP overlap in function. But to more fully understand the issue, developers need to consider other important parts of the communications process like signaling or being able to connect a wide range of devices.

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Importance of Customer Satisfaction Survey

Customer satisfaction surveys are used by small business owners to gauge how the company is perceived by the patrons they service. Organizing a survey is the first step in assessing customer reaction to your products or services. Following through by making needed improvements helps to ensure your future growth and success. You can set up a survey on your website, hire a survey company or give your customers questionnaires to return in person or electronically. Whether you offer a reward, such as a coupon for a free product, or customers complete your survey without prompting, be prepared to discover information that can require anything from a mere tweak in company policy to a complete change in your operating paradigm.

Enhance Successful Strategies

Customer satisfaction surveys ask questions about various areas, including customer service, employee knowledge or helpfulness and the policies and procedures of your business. Inquiring about a recent return may tell you that customers are happy with your policy and will buy from you again because you back up your products. As a result, tout your return policy on your website and in ads. In addition, asking customers how they heard about your company can reveal if your marketing strategies are working as you predicted. If you target middle-aged mothers, you may find that you're attracting them and a younger demographic. Adding marketing campaigns to include both age groups may result in an increase in business.

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Top WebRTC use cases for contact centers

While many enterprises ought to explore their own WebRTC use cases, contact centers are leading the way in adoption of the browser-based technology.

This year, the contact center is the clear winner of WebRTC adoption. Within contact centers, four different WebRTC use cases generally emerge:

1. Web customer to agent:

Also known as click-to-talk. A widget is added to a website, enabling interaction between customers from the website to an agent in the contact center.

2. Customer to Web agent:

Where the customer uses a non-WebRTC channel to access the contact center, and the agent uses the browser and WebRTC to answer the call.

3. Web agent to customer:

Where a salesperson contacts a customer, prospect or partner directly from the customer relationship management (CRM) system without picking up the phone.

4. Agent to Web surfer:

A Web surfer on the website is targeted based on his or her relevance.

The above WebRTC use cases are ordered by the popularity of the vendors offering them. But arguably the most popular and successful WebRTC archetype today is the second one: customer to Web agent. Why is that?

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How will WebRTC development evolve in the coming year?

WebRTC development is expected to see significant progress, including new media flows and video codec support. Check out these six key areas that should see noteworthy upgrades.

WebRTC development is an evolving ecosystem of browser-based communications, driven mainly by browser vendors. Based on the vendors' roadmaps, we can expect to see several areas of progress in the coming year.

1. Video codecs:

WebRTC browser implementations will support a range of codecs. H.264 will be available in all WebRTC-supported browsers, like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, by the end of the year. The VP8 codec will be available as well, though slightly later on Microsoft Edge. The VP9 codec will be available in Chrome and Firefox.

2. New media flows:

MediaRecorder has been implemented in Chrome and Firefox and allows local recording of media in the browser. MediaStream relay capabilities enable running a small-scale media server inside the browser.

3. Object real-time communications:

ORTC-related APIs and capabilities will continue to trickle into WebRTC browser implementations. This means the tension between WebRTC and ORTC should ebb, especially now that Microsoft plans to support WebRTC 1.0 in Edge. It also means that new features and capabilities might not be added to the SDP layer of WebRTC but introduced via the object model defined in ORTC.

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The contact center and customer service – road to business success

The role of contact centers (for service) and customer service departments is shifting towards the center of the organization and value creation. Customer engagement, the customer experience, frictionless interactions and case handling, customer service quality overall and the changing expectations of customers have created an unprecedented momentum for change.

Digital technologies, the need to differentiate, urgent cost efficiencies and customer behavior have added to this momentum in which the customer experience is becoming increasingly important.

The key role and changing face of customer service – and thus of customer service departments and contact centers – isn’t new. However, in recent years there have been many changes and evolutions leading to current transformations.

In 2010, Joseph Jaffe published his famous customer service manifesto, emphasizing how customer service has become the new marketing and is not just about service in the traditional sense anymore. In 2008, Pete Blackshaw published “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today’s Consumer-Driven World”, emphasizing what had become clear in previous years: in this consumer-driven and connected world things were changing. And many years before that and before the advent of social, the crucial role of the customer experience, and along with it, customer service (which is not the same) for the future growth of businesses was emphasized by several experts.

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What’s the Question – The Importance of Conducting a Survey

There’s an old saying, “if you want to know, just ask,” which could easily lead to the choice of conducting a survey to find out information.  Survey research, however, is not as simple as asking questions. First, one must determine what information is to be gathered, which leads to deciding which questions to ask; how to ask them; and of whom.  In this blog, we will discuss when conducting a survey is appropriate, offer some tips on survey deign and on how to incorporate survey results into Public Relations and Marketing activities.

Surveys are generally conducted for one of three reasons:  to describe a population, to explain behavior or attitudes, or to explore or discover new, relevant topics. Therefore, the first step is to establish the goal of the survey such as finding more about users, their perception of the product or, their needs, Then the topic can be further narrowed to possible questions regarding who are potential users, how existing customers feel about cloud migration or what are the most pertinent issues when deciding to migrate applications to the cloud.  Once we have decided on the goals, we can then decide on who would be the best people to survey. One needs to be aware of biases of certain groups, such as those of people attending a tradeshow, stopping by your booth and agreeing to take part in the survey.

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