Customer self-service
Customer self-service platforms save time and money for both the customer and the brand -- when implemented thoughtfully. Learn about the latest strategies in deploying chatbots and other self-service tools.
Top Stories
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Tip
14 Nov 2022
Business benefits of a customer self-service strategy
Self-service channels can save organizations money while improving CX -- if done right. Explore these benefits and tips to keep in mind when building a self-service strategy. Continue Reading
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Tip
28 Oct 2022
How to create the right self-service content for customers
Organizations should provide useful content to customers to help them solve problems without contacting customer service. Effective content gives customers answers quickly. Continue Reading
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Answer
30 Sep 2022
Why is customer self-service important for contact centers?
The advancement of conversational AI coupled with customers' growing desire for empowerment has made self-service channels critical for contact centers. Continue Reading
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News
29 Dec 2021
AI is the game-changer needed in customer service
The holiday season is a busy time for call center agents. However, problems in the CX industry are leading organizations to turn to machine learning for optimization. Continue Reading
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Feature
02 Dec 2021
10 customer service best practices to follow
As customer service evolves into a multidimensional force, agent training and experience, performance analysis, virtual assistance, customer sentiment and net promoter scores rule. Continue Reading
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Feature
24 Nov 2021
The future of customer service: 12 trends to watch
Advanced technologies continue to shape customer service goals to streamline digital workflows, increase positive experiences, lower agent turnover and improve contact center ROI. Continue Reading
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Feature
22 Nov 2021
Cisco customer experience manager: What makes good tech CX
Cisco users buy its hardware and apps through partners, mostly. Cisco's customer experience architect discusses how the company forges customer relationships. Continue Reading
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Report
28 Jun 2021
15 essential contact center software features
Looking for the best contact center software features? We review some of the most useful capabilities including data reporting, speech analytics, routing methods and AI. Continue Reading
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News
12 May 2021
Oracle CX adds subscription management, 3-D ad measurement
Oracle adds deeper subscription support for B2C and B2B users to its CX platform, as users look to tie renewals, billing and self-service to commerce revenue. Continue Reading
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News
04 May 2021
Pegasystems enhances customer service, CX workflows
Pegasystems users get access to long-awaited Process Fabric automation tool, as well as new vertical-specific customer service tools and AI for interactive voice response. Continue Reading
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News
19 Apr 2021
Salesforce Digital 360 for Industries adds developer tools
Salesforce Digital 360 for Industries releases developer tools, templates and guides for users to build e-commerce storefronts, webpages and portals on its vertical-specific clouds. Continue Reading
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News
16 Mar 2021
ServiceMax releases Engage field service management app
ServiceMax Engage app gives users' customers a snapshot of their service contract benefits, and gives users vital updates for asset managements of property in the field. Continue Reading
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Tip
29 Jan 2021
5 ways to improve a customer self-service strategy
In today's digital world, self-service options are a must to inform, engage and retain customers. Here are some ways businesses can improve those self-service options. Continue Reading
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News
12 Jan 2021
Pegasystems acquires Qurious.io for Pega Customer Service
Pegasystems acquires Qurious.io for its customer service-oriented AI, natural language processing and self-service automation tools. Continue Reading
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News
23 Dec 2020
Salesforce's acquisitions lead CX tech buying spree in 2020
Most CX vendors acquired new companies to enhance their platforms, none bigger than Salesforce buying Slack. Facebook's Kustomer buy might be the most intriguing. Continue Reading
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Tip
20 Nov 2020
8 customer service metrics to measure call center success
Measuring call center metrics and KPIs benefits organizations by showing where issues occur. Average handle time, service level and cost per call are a few metrics to start with. Continue Reading
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News
10 Nov 2020
Zendesk, WhatsApp cozy up with co-development partnership
Zendesk and WhatsApp team up to break bottlenecks in customer service conversations over Facebook messaging apps -- including Instagram -- by building it into Zendesk Support. Continue Reading
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News
29 Oct 2020
Oracle CX targets communications industry with new apps
Oracle moves into vertical-specific digital experience customizations, starting with Oracle Digital Experience for Communications, with more to come. Continue Reading
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News
20 Oct 2020
Salesforce Work.com gets customer, employee experience tools
Salesforce continues to build out Work.com as a place for broadcasting pandemic-specific employee and customer communications, as well as to enable remote work. Continue Reading
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Feature
08 Oct 2020
Call center customer experience ROI is more about metrics
When measuring contact center ROI, don't get caught up in dollar signs. Focus on CX metrics, including the length of customer calls, wait times and net promoter scores. Continue Reading
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News
18 Sep 2020
Oracle CX upgrades focus on field service, contact center
Oracle adds self-service features, field tech tools and call center capabilities to its CX stack in response to customers' business needs in pandemic. Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Sep 2020
Knowledge bases benefit customer service, call center training
Knowledge bases provide call center agents with training documents and answers to frequently asked questions as they continue to work from home, handling high call volumes. Continue Reading
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News
15 May 2020
Talkdesk adds virtual agents, rebrands CCaaS suite as CX Cloud
Talkdesk refocuses it CCaaS suite on customer experience by adding 20 features, including virtual agents and remote work features for contact center agents. Continue Reading
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News
08 May 2020
Pega adds unified messaging to customer case management
Pega Customer Service Unified Messaging Edition, built from last year's In The Chat acquisition, adds omnichannel messaging to the company's customer support cloud platform. Continue Reading
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News
07 May 2020
Salesforce Lightning App Builder adds low-code forms features
Salesforce Lighting App Builder will include oft-requested low-code features for building complex forms that previously required developer coding to create and update. Continue Reading
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News
05 May 2020
ServiceNow CSM navigates pandemic, partners with Adobe
ServiceNow connects its Customer Service Management environment to Adobe Experience Manager to improve support experience through deeper personalization. Continue Reading
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News
06 Apr 2020
Pivot to remote call centers difficult for some; others roll with it
Remote contact center tech easily supports agents working from home, experts say. It's the culture of each team that determines success in the current national health crisis. Continue Reading
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News
24 Mar 2020
Zendesk Relater primes customers for remote call center work
Zendesk focuses on fledgling Sunshine and Sell CRM platforms, as well as helping its well-established customer service base switch to remote call center work. Continue Reading
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News
11 Mar 2020
ServiceNow Orlando update adds tools for human and virtual agents
ServiceNow Orlando update and new partnerships builds on strategy of reaching into new verticals such as telecommunications and banking. Continue Reading
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News
06 Mar 2020
Amazon chatbots to employ neural networks for CX
Amazon tests neural network bots to help site customers and human agents more quickly identify answers to refund and order-cancellation questions. Continue Reading
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Tip
19 Feb 2020
Best practices for using AI-enabled self-service
AI in customer self-service is right behind robotic process automation in terms of growth. Here are some best practices to implement the technology in your organization. Continue Reading
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News
30 Oct 2019
Public sector's customer experience strategies analyzed, ranked
Some U.S. government agencies use technology to earn high marks for CX. Others need improvement in areas that corporate marketing teams can learn from. 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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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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News
14 Aug 2019
Updates to Infor Concierge aim to improve customer access
With updates to Infor Concierge, the vendor intends to improve customer access to Infor ERP services and products to expedite the problem-solving process. 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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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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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
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
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
07 Jun 2019
Companies entrust CX to customer service chatbots, but only so far
Depending on the vertical, chatbots can relieve human agents of simple, repetitive customer-support tasks. But brands await smarter tech to fully trust them with CX. Continue Reading
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News
05 Jun 2019
LogMeIn Bold360 CX tool adds AI features for bots, human agents
LogMeIn bundled together Bold360 customer service tools as a single CX platform underpinned by its AI technology by rebranding some pieces and introducing some others. Continue Reading
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Podcast
21 May 2019
Replacing contact center platforms poses big dilemma
CX expert Scott Sachs discusses the various dilemmas posed by migrating legacy on-premises contact center platforms to the cloud. Continue Reading
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Tip
20 May 2019
6 live chat benefits to consider in a CX strategy
Live chat enables customers to solve problems quickly and agents to multitask, but it also can be difficult to implement well and requires synchronous communication. Continue Reading
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News
08 May 2019
Einstein Analytics for Financial Services enhances banking CX
Salesforce's new analytics tools for financial services follow AI advancements from IBM Watson and Acquia upgrading customer experiences in retail banking and wealth management. Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Apr 2019
AI customer self-service platforms show analytical maturity
AI-enabled self-service platforms graduate from traditional customer support activities to more sophisticated methods of analyzing data on customer wants, needs and behavior. Continue Reading
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Answer
04 Apr 2019
How do you determine the right point for chatbot-human handoff?
Customer experience can be adversely affected when chatbots don't transfer the call to a live agent at the right time. Here are some guidelines and best practices for initiating that handoff. Continue Reading