This has been a great week for insights on how contact center solutions can help improve the customer experience as well as a number of industry developments aimed at broadening the touchpoints of agents and ways to make them more efficient and effective.
On the first front I highly recommend a paper done by Blair Pleasant, president and principal analyst at COMMfusion LLC, and Tim Passios, senior director of Solutions Marketing at Interactive Intelligence. Entitled, “A Realistic Look at Social Media and the Contact Center,” it covers how and why integration of social media is important for organizations seeking better engagement with their customers.
Best practices was also the focus of ContactCenterSolutions Contributor, Tracey Schelmetic in her Editor’s Choice feature, “Is Improperly Used CRM Dragging Your Customer Support Down?“ Tracey also contributed another must read piece on blending and its importance for contact center quality.
A tip of the hat goes to Enghouse Interactive who garnered four awards from TMC's Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine.
In industry news CRM, mobile and social media integration grabbed the headlines:
Agent comfort and effectiveness were enhanced with the introduction by VXI of its new headphone, the UC ProSet, which incorporates several features for ease and fashion of contact center users.
As it the custom here, I would also like to draw your attention to other resources of community interest that can be accessed through the links on the community home page. This includes the Interactive Intelligence podcast on its “Ditch the Frustration Campaign,” and three new white papers: “Consolidating Infrastructures: IT's New Call to Business, “ “The Value of a Combined Solution for Enterprise IP Telephony and Customer Care,” and “Building Customer Centricity through Expertise-Based Interactions.”