Contact center management
Contact center management puts the customer at the center of every decision. Measuring time-to-answer, hold times and response quality are all key metrics, as are customer satisfaction and retention.
Top Stories
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Tip
05 Oct 2022
10 tips to enhance and promote self-service platforms
Self-service platforms should be visible to customers, emphasized across all touchpoints and meet customers' needs. These tips can help enhance and promote self-service. Continue Reading
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Tip
03 May 2022
Best practices for initiating chatbot-to-human handoff
Contact centers perform a balancing act between AI and human agents. Support teams must train bots on chatbot-to-human handoffs and design AI aware of customer frustration. Continue Reading
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News
21 Oct 2019
SAP launches Qualtrics CoreXM customer research tools
SAP renames Qualtrics Research Core Qualtrics CoreXM and adds AI, enterprise analytics, dashboard tools and admin controls for data access. Continue Reading
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News
18 Oct 2019
Microsoft CDP pricing might prove attractive to midsize retailers
With entry-level pricing of $1,500 a month, the new Microsoft CDP could attract midsize retailers. Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Oct 2019
These are the ABCs of marketing in the digital age
Audience understanding, behavior analysis, marketing convergence and accessible design are the ABCs of marketing in the digital age, according to Microsoft's Purna Virji. Continue Reading
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Feature
16 Oct 2019
Salesforce Einstein Vision sinks teeth into shark recognition
Using drones and a modified version of Salesforce's Einstein Vision, marine biologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, can track and identify great white sharks. Continue Reading
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News
14 Oct 2019
Adobe's Marketo-Magento staff merger reveals midmarket push
Adobe positions itself for the midmarket in the year following the acquisitions of marketing automation platform Marketo and e-commerce platform Magento. Continue Reading
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Tip
11 Oct 2019
A strong CX technology spending plan can bring big returns
The telephone won't cut it anymore. Customers expect digital services, and businesses need to think about spending more to update CX technology. It pays off in the long run. Continue Reading
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Feature
10 Oct 2019
Gen Z marketing strategies can benefit from new technology
Gen Z expects companies to be on the cutting edge of CX tech. New technology can help companies keep up with these demands, without having to spend a fortune on strategy or software. Continue Reading
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News
10 Oct 2019
Calabrio rolls out contact center self-scheduling technology
The new technology aims to enable flexibility in scheduling for contact center agents and to reduce managers' workloads in monitoring and requests handling. Continue Reading
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News
10 Oct 2019
Salesforce Lightning Order Management boosts e-commerce
Salesforce extends Customer 360 capabilities with a bundle of APIs to help users manage and track e-commerce orders and provide more detail to the customer as orders are picked, packed and shipped. Continue Reading
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News
08 Oct 2019
New website helps identify use cases for Salesforce AI
Einstein's Guide to AI Use Cases is designed to help people identify use cases and Salesforce products for AI in different industries by determining which KPI is most important. Continue Reading
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Tip
07 Oct 2019
How experience-based differentiation can be a CX fast track
CX is a top priority within organizations, but successful adoption can take time. A framework called experience-based differentiation can help businesses speed up the process. Continue Reading
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News
03 Oct 2019
Zendesk Sell apps marketplace extends Sunshine CRM platform
Zendesk's Sunshine CRM gets an apps marketplace built on its Sell sales force automation platform, adapted from the 2018 acquisition of FutureSimple's Base. Continue Reading
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Feature
01 Oct 2019
Field service providers drive CX, engagement, retention
Manuel Grenacher, general manager of SAP Service Cloud, offers tips for using CX best practices to improve the lives of both field service providers and the people they service. Continue Reading
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Feature
01 Oct 2019
Customer engagement fuels retail success
Down, but not out? It's a fitting description for the current state of traditional retail stores. But there are many ways retailers can still win against online competition. Continue Reading
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News
26 Sep 2019
New Salesforce clouds focus on manufacturing, consumer goods
Following the success of the Health Cloud, Salesforce is releasing new industry-specific cloud services for the manufacturing and consumer goods sectors. Continue Reading
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News
24 Sep 2019
Microsoft challenges Amazon with Dynamics 365 Commerce
Microsoft broadens Dynamics 365 retail apps suite by introducing an e-commerce platform, as well as tools to track product data and intermingle physical and online retail data. Continue Reading
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News
24 Sep 2019
Salesforce rolls out new security add-on for Quip
The new security add-on, called Quip Shield, offers encryption and customization capabilities tailored to companies' specific security and compliance needs. Continue Reading
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Feature
23 Sep 2019
Martech strategy, Agile marketing are trends to follow
As the marketing model changes, businesses can adopt thousands of different marketing technologies to better reach customers and improve customer experience. Continue Reading
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Tip
19 Sep 2019
Businesses can achieve 360-degree customer view using AI
AI can be a powerful tool to analyze large amounts of customer data and improve CX. Here are some areas in which AI can be of assistance in your organization. Continue Reading
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News
18 Sep 2019
Oracle CDP moves beyond marketing data
As digital advertising and marketing leaders dig in on the importance of the CDP, others aren't so sure they need yet another tool to support and secure customer data. Continue Reading
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News
18 Sep 2019
Salesforce search about to get smarter with Einstein AI
Salesforce will add Einstein AI to its cloud search functionality in hopes of better assessing context, personalization and reducing false hits for end-user queries. Continue Reading
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Answer
17 Sep 2019
How can customer relationship metrics benefit CX?
Companies often look at customer relationship metrics to determine how customers feel about a brand. Here are examples of how to obtain and use information to qualify customer relationships. Continue Reading
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News
17 Sep 2019
Oracle CX Unity goes live, adds voice to digital assistant
As Oracle CX Unity arrives, analysts debate whether it will be an upsell to current Oracle customers, or a challenger to Adobe, Salesforce and SAP CX platforms. Continue Reading
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News
16 Sep 2019
Nectar launches Customer Experience Assurance platform
The new product includes features like auto-discovery and real-time alerting intended to enable contact center teams to test and discover network issues in a timely manner. Continue Reading
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Tip
13 Sep 2019
4 customer data collection best practices to follow
Building a good customer data collection strategy can be difficult. These tips explain how to collect data and how to use it to improve customer experience. Continue Reading
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News
12 Sep 2019
Oracle CDP coming in CX Unity, along with video cloud
Oracle goes after Adobe and other CX platform vendors with new CDP-oriented sales, marketing, e-commerce and service hub, and adds a video platform to CX Unity. Continue Reading
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Feature
12 Sep 2019
Upselling customers adds ROI gold to contact center channels
AI, analytics and customer service technologies can predict behavior and secure brand loyalty, but generating impulse buys adds a new ROI wrinkle to the evolving contact center. Continue Reading
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News
11 Sep 2019
Security, management updates made to LogMeIn Bold360
LogMeIn has updated the search optimizer, monitor view and workload organization features in its live agent and chat bot customer engagement and AI software platform Bold360. Continue Reading
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Feature
11 Sep 2019
How business messaging benefits customer experience
Who wants to call a company and wait on hold? Or, worse, send an email and wait for a response? Business messaging can avoid these hang-ups and help brands improve all stages of CX. Continue Reading
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News
11 Sep 2019
Adobe brings graph database to customer journey touchpoints
With a graph database to track touchpoints from different devices -- and a Photoshop-esque interface -- Adobe Customer Journey Analytics avails data science tools to marketers. Continue Reading
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Tip
10 Sep 2019
4 ways customer feedback benefits marketing strategies
Leela Srinivasan of SurveyMonkey offered tips on using customer feedback data to inform enterprise marketing strategy during a session at Inbound 2019. Continue Reading
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News
06 Sep 2019
HubSpot Marketplace updated to get free CRM users to buy apps
HubSpot introduces new features to marketing automation and CRM platform, and revamps its apps marketplace in hopes of driving revenue from newfound free-CRM customers. Continue Reading
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Tip
06 Sep 2019
Humor in marketing can engage, retain customers
Humor can be a powerful marketing weapon -- when used correctly. Here are some tips and examples that businesses can use to better connect with customers. Continue Reading
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Tip
04 Sep 2019
The difference between autodialers and predictive dialers
Some people don't know that a predictive dialer is a type of autodialer. There are, in fact, five broad categories of autodialers contact centers need to know about. Continue Reading
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Feature
03 Sep 2019
Organizations reap benefits of mobile CRM apps
Salesforce now offers organizations such as Cornell University the ability to render CRM systems as apps, making it easy to manage students and faculty at a number of colleges. Continue Reading
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News
30 Aug 2019
CleverTap, Phiture launch customer engagement analytics framework
AIC framework for customer experience analytics, developed in collaboration between CleverTap and Phiture, promises to give marketers actionable insight and improve CX. Continue Reading
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Answer
28 Aug 2019
Learn how to build a Salesforce app in 4 steps
Salesforce users can follow these steps to create sophisticated codeless apps that integrate the Next Best Action feature using the Lightning App Builder. Continue Reading
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News
28 Aug 2019
RollWorks updates its account-based marketing platform
New RollWorks features include account suggestions, Salesforce syncing and account groups to better align sales and marketing teams' efforts for potential customers. Continue Reading
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Tip
28 Aug 2019
8 live chat best practices for organizations to consider
Organizations find that live chat can be a means to improve customer experience -- when implemented correctly. Here are some best practices to put into action. Continue Reading
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Feature
27 Aug 2019
SAP CX tools evolve in the face of data privacy, AI
'Experience data' from Qualtrics will help SAP boost its customer experience offerings. The company is also considering how AI can help and where privacy concerns fit into the CX landscape. Continue Reading
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News
27 Aug 2019
Cisco to acquire CloudCherry for contact center CX
Cisco plans to integrate CloudCherry's customer experience software with its contact center offerings. The acquisition is expected to occur by the end of October. Continue Reading
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News
22 Aug 2019
SAP Product Content Hub underpins CX initiatives in C/4HANA
SAP SaaS tool integrates AI, APIs for pushing updated product content to e-commerce sites. It also gives sales, marketing and service teams using C/4HANA access to the content. Continue Reading
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News
21 Aug 2019
Salesforce DNSSEC project aims to boost site security, speed, uptime
Salesforce, which juggles multiple DNS providers to serve customers while complying with global data-privacy regulations, spearheads new DNS models to enable deeper encryption. Continue Reading
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News
19 Aug 2019
LivePerson Inc. adds new capabilities to Maven AI
Maven AI's updates are aimed at enabling new conversational commerce use cases. The new capabilities include Maven Assist, Maven AI-Powered Routing and Maven Developer APIs. Continue Reading
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Tip
19 Aug 2019
5 digital customer experience technologies for a winning strategy
A strong digital CX strategy can help improve customer experience, drive revenue and reduce costs. Evaluate these five pillars to help you along your journey. Continue Reading
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Tip
19 Aug 2019
10 things to know about Google Cloud Contact Center AI
Google has partnered with more than 90 different companies to roll out its contact center AI. This article lists 10 important things you need to know about the program. Continue Reading
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Feature
16 Aug 2019
To predict customer buying behavior, stop, look, listen, analyze
Determining customer wants and needs to devise personalization strategies based on that data takes advanced technologies and the old-fashioned direct approach. Continue Reading
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Feature
16 Aug 2019
Customer personalization relies on tools, tactics, metrics
Measuring the success of personalized engagements across multiple channels and making adjustments can help improve CX, differentiate offerings and increase sales. Continue Reading
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News
16 Aug 2019
Marketing, sales tighten in LinkedIn Sales Navigator features update
Lead lists and content-sharing features added to LinkedIn Sales Navigator give frontline salespeople more leads -- and more tools to engage them. Continue Reading
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News
15 Aug 2019
Metadata.io updates boost marketing personalization, automation
Updates to Metadata's AI marketing platform include new usability features and improved automation to bolster its marketing personalization to target new and existing clients. Continue Reading
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News
15 Aug 2019
Salesforce-SNHU partnership helps students earn college credit
A new partnership between Salesforce and Southern New Hampshire University enables students to earn college credit by completing guided learning modules through Trailhead. Continue Reading
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Answer
14 Aug 2019
Digital CX vs. customer experience: What's the difference?
While similar, digital CX and customer experience are different. The former focuses on digital communication tool experiences, while the latter is the overall brand perception. Continue Reading
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Feature
13 Aug 2019
Princess Cruises puts real-time customer experience into action
The Ocean Medallion provides real-time CX to passengers on Princess Cruises. The technology enables vacationers to automatically open stateroom doors, locate companions and more. Continue Reading
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News
12 Aug 2019
Conversica AI platform receives upgrades for productivity
Conversica's AI platform, Conversica AVA.ai, received upgrades that are intended to personalize communication with customers and improve productivity. Continue Reading
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Guide
12 Aug 2019
Customer data management tools shape personalization, boost CX
In this guide, learn about the many tools, including customer data platforms, that collect and analyze data from disparate sources and provide a single, 360-degree customer view. Continue Reading
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News
09 Aug 2019
PromoteIQ acquisition diversifies Microsoft Advertising platform
Microsoft expands its advertising platform to vendor marketing with the PromoteIQ acquisition. Continue Reading
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News
09 Aug 2019
Planned $1.35B Salesforce ClickSoftware buy beefs up field service
Salesforce's ClickSoftware acquisition is aimed at improving Salesforce's field service management offering against SAP and Oracle. Continue Reading
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Tip
09 Aug 2019
5 Gen Z marketing trends for businesses to consider
Those born after 1995 are driving trends online for themselves and older generations. These shared experiences are important for marketers to understand. Here are some tips. Continue Reading
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News
06 Aug 2019
Twilio Conversations, SendGrid Ads broaden cloud CX platform
Twilio extends its customer communications platform to support MMS, SMS and WhatsApp chat, as well as to support ad campaigns for Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Continue Reading
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News
06 Aug 2019
Force Marketing introduces platform for personalized marketing
Drive by Force Marketing is a personalized marketing video platform for car dealerships to increase engagement with returning and prospective customers. Continue Reading
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News
06 Aug 2019
CX product changes on tap at Salesforce, LogMeIn, Adobe
CX products to watch for the rest of 2019: Adobe's planned CDP offering, Salesforce features from the Tableau acquisition and LogMeIn's AI-powered agent-assist tools. Continue Reading
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Tip
05 Aug 2019
7 ways to improve your retail sales
Retailers, especially traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, need to throw caution to the wind and follow these seven tips to spur sales and provide remarkable retail. Continue Reading
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News
31 Jul 2019
Adobe Experience Platform adds features for data scientists
New Adobe analytics features Query Service and Data Science Workspace are generally available on the Adobe Experience Platform after being announced in beta almost a year ago. Continue Reading
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Podcast
31 Jul 2019
How a punk rocker would go about simplifying CX
When the tech stack and measurement metrics overcomplicate CX, destroy it like a punk rocker, U.K. author Adrian Swinscoe suggests in this 'Pipeline' podcast interview. Continue Reading
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Answer
26 Jul 2019
How do customer service and customer success differ?
Tripped up on the difference between customer service and customer success? In short, service is reactive and success is proactive, but both aim to solve problems for the customer. Continue Reading
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Feature
26 Jul 2019
Businesses use AI to improve customer experience
Chatbots, virtual agents, computer vision and other AI-related technologies on display at a recent tech conference are being used to improve customer experience. Continue Reading
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Guide
25 Jul 2019
Customer service technologies revolutionize CX engagements
This Essential Guide examines the strategic and multidimensional role customer service and its technologies now play in personalized customer experiences over multiple channels. Continue Reading
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News
25 Jul 2019
Increases expected from new Microsoft Dynamics 365 pricing
Microsoft's move to a la carte pricing for Dynamics 365 could lead to higher costs for some customers. The new pricing plan takes effect Oct. 1. Continue Reading
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Tip
24 Jul 2019
Customer success strategies stoke CRM engagement
Salesforce and other CRM providers use active customer service to increase customer engagement, solve concerns, train users and -- eventually -- bring in repeat business. Continue Reading
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News
24 Jul 2019
Salesforce Essentials adds direct messaging channels, telephony
Salesforce expands its small-business offering with tools to facilitate customer conversations on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, YouTube and web chat. Continue Reading
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Tip
17 Jul 2019
Customer service vs. customer experience: What's the difference?
Customer service is an age-old concept, but where does it fit into the customer experience? Here's how the two are different and where they intersect. Continue Reading
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Feature
16 Jul 2019
Customers stay connected with Talkdesk 100% uptime SLA
Talkdesk customer Cognosante sees 50% cost savings after switching to the vendor's contact center software and, so far, has seen no interruptions in service. Continue Reading
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Tip
16 Jul 2019
3 call routing methods to consider in your contact center
Contact center call routing methods include next-available agent, skill-based and predictive; however, each strategy has pros and cons. Learn what is best for your business. Continue Reading
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Tip
15 Jul 2019
Consumer behavior analytics makes the unpredictable predictable
With AI's arsenal of machine learning, deep learning and NLP, consumer analytics can take some of the unpredictability out of predicting buying patterns and up conversion rates. Continue Reading
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News
15 Jul 2019
TechSee Smart uses AI vision to aid contact center support
TechSee Smart aids live agents in contact centers by using AI and deep learning to analyze customer product images, identify issues and guide customers through the resolution process. Continue Reading
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Tip
10 Jul 2019
Businesses use AR/VR in CRM to boost customer experience
Businesses are using augmented reality -- and its cousin virtual reality -- in applications across many industries. Where CRM is concerned, AR/VR may represent a big leap forward. Continue Reading
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News
09 Jul 2019
Nintex Sign powered by Adobe available for SharePoint users
With this update, SharePoint 2013, 2016 and 2019 enterprise users have access to Nintex Sign powered by Adobe Sign for native e-signatures, in addition to other Nintex Sign updates. Continue Reading
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Tip
08 Jul 2019
The right leader, team crucial for digital CX strategy success
Having the right team in place can ensure digital CX success. Here are some leadership and team roles that organizations should consider when creating a plan. Continue Reading
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Feature
03 Jul 2019
Contact center AI: Agents may be training their replacements
The goal for software developers training sophisticated agent-assist AI tools for contact center software platforms could be 'superbots' far smarter than today's chatbots. Continue Reading
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News
03 Jul 2019
CloudEngage updates personalization platform, chat feature
The new generation includes upgrades to its segmentation capabilities. CloudEngage's chat product has also been upgraded to save visitor details for personalization. Continue Reading
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Feature
01 Jul 2019
Autonomous, self-service technology can't replace human touch
Self-service and autonomous technology can be found in any number of businesses, including hospitals, restaurants and retail -- but they are not a substitute for human interaction. Continue Reading
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News
27 Jun 2019
Verizon CX boss: Bots slash costs, but humans build brand loyalty
CX automation can build speed and process efficiency. But, a Verizon consumer survey reveals, brands that continue staffing call centers with humans build better relationships. Continue Reading
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News
27 Jun 2019
8x8 Contact Center launches as a stand-alone CCaaS offering
8x8 Contact Center is a stand-alone, cloud-based contact-center-as-a-service offering, aimed at organizations that feel restricted by legacy contact center infrastructure. Continue Reading
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Feature
26 Jun 2019
Uber mall kiosks act as brick-and-mortar storefronts
Uber uses digital mall kiosks as storefronts to recruit drivers, and an integrated video conferencing app enables users to interact with remote agents. Continue Reading
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Feature
25 Jun 2019
Enosix CMO, who branded SAP Leonardo, talks martech strategy
Shawn Reynolds, the former architect of SAP's Leonardo AI brand, moves to SAP-Salesforce integrator Enosix. He discusses marketing strategy in this age of overwhelming martech choices. Continue Reading
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News
25 Jun 2019
New upgrades added to Ujet customer service platform
Ujet has added a handful of new features, such as workforce management, quality management and CRM to its Customer Support Platform. Continue Reading
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Feature
24 Jun 2019
The evolution of call centers to experience centers
The call center has evolved over the years, moving from phone-based systems to multichannel contact centers. The next move is toward a customer experience center. Continue Reading
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News
21 Jun 2019
Salesforce Customer 360 promises will be clearer in 2020
Salesforce expects to show off what customers are doing with Customer 360 at its next Connections conference in 2020, along with some new integrations. Continue Reading
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Tip
21 Jun 2019
Best practices for creating chatbot scripts
The rules of good chatbot scripting are similar to those of application coding. Here are some best practices to creating a chatbot that users will approve. Continue Reading
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News
20 Jun 2019
Ada looks to improve chatbot handoff with AI-powered Ada Glass
To improve chatbot customer experience, Ada introduced Glass to its platform. Ada Glass connects customers with live agents directly within Ada's interface, according to the vendor. Continue Reading
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News
20 Jun 2019
Assist acquisition advances Conversocial chatbot service
Conversocial had rudimentary chatbots before acquiring Assist earlier this year, but now can deploy chatbots to take on more sophisticated customer engagements. Continue Reading
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News
19 Jun 2019
Helpshift launches omnichannel communication platform
Connected Customer Conversations is an omnichannel communication platform where a customer's information follows them from channel to channel for customer support. Continue Reading
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News
19 Jun 2019
Target glitch pits e-commerce vs. POS customer experience
Big-box retailer Target's checkout outage showed how e-commerce systems can fill in when POS systems fail. They're not quite ready to supplant POS -- but they're getting there. Continue Reading
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News
18 Jun 2019
Salesforce teases new CDP features ahead of fall release
Salesforce gives details about the makeup of its Customer 360 integration platform and features of the customer data platform that it plans to release this fall. Continue Reading
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News
17 Jun 2019
CoreMedia launches omnichannel content creation platform
CoreMedia Content Cloud-Marketing Connector enables omnichannel content creation. It also gives customers access to CoreMedia Content Cloud content management capabilities. Continue Reading
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News
17 Jun 2019
Deloitte's Heat launches Heat AI for trend predictions
Heat's AI-based advertising platform uses algorithms to gather and analyze customer data and then predict social trends up to 72 hours before they peak, according to the vendor. Continue Reading
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News
17 Jun 2019
Oracle and Adobe CDP war heats up, Salesforce close behind
The customer data platform market continues to simmer as large vendors such as Oracle, Adobe, SAP and Salesforce rush to catch up to smaller, more nimble CDP competitors. Continue Reading
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Answer
13 Jun 2019
What are the most effective uses of AI in marketing automation?
AI is beneficial in many marketing automation processes. Organizations use the technology in chatbots, personalization, voice and visual search, frequency optimization and more. Continue Reading
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News
13 Jun 2019
Zendesk Duet ties sales, service platforms together
Zendesk courts enterprise customers with a chatbot SDK that extends self-service tech into internationally popular chat apps, while Duet bundles Zendesk Support and Sell platforms. Continue Reading
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News
13 Jun 2019
Selligent Marketing Cloud partners with Genesys for CX growth
Selligent paired its CX suite with Genesys Customer Experience Platform to improve customer experience by providing organizations with a full view of the customer journey. Continue Reading