Customer Service

Does Your IVR Really Save You Money? As the original self-service tool, IVR technology has long been a cost savings mechanism. Unfortunately, many organizations today don’t realize that their antiquated IVR solution is actually driving up contact center costs because the options are so limited and the containment rate is so low. So, what can...

In the last post, I talked about the Big Buckets. One bucket holds transactional (self-service) events. One contains interactional (live-agent) events. And the third is home to the hybrids: events that are both transactional and interactional. That third bucket—let’s call it the blended bucket—could soon be the biggest bucket as more and more companies adopt...

The First Step in Planning Your Self-Service Investment Planning your self-service investments means making decisions across multiple disciplines. USAN, in association with ContactBabel, has just published a nearly 200-page report on that topic—50 charts deep, covering all the critical topics that make up today’s self-service investment strategy. Those topics include transitioning to self-service, evaluating ROI,...

The other day my errands turned into one omnichannel adventure after another. My experience offers three examples of how companies in three different industries improved my customer experience with their omnichannel solutions. Pick Up Prescriptions My first stop was my pharmacy. The pharmacy sent me a text telling me that a prescription had been automatically...

There is a widely believed superstition that an omnichannel investment is expensive, complex and disruptive. Central to this myth are twin villains: the first is Rip and the second, Replace. Their shared mission: drive up omnichannel costs to the point where it’s an unjustifiable investment, with slow payback and weak ROI. Rip and Replace is...