Tech needed to improve service

Customer service, as delivered through the contact centre, currently suffers from an overall lack of commitment to the customer service representative in the form of tools, training and compensation, reports CIOL.

Companies need to redouble their efforts in this area and extend the customer Web site, add multiple communications channels, and plan carefully to improve agent performance through the introduction of new technologies.

These views extend the prognosis by IT research major Gartner on the future of contact centres in a CIO consideration list.

BenchmarkPortal, an independent research firm specialising in contact centre best practices, has published a report showing how contact centres can protect existing investments, while making a phased migration to all-in-one communications software suite solutions, according to Business Wire.

The report, titled 'Technology adoption strategies for all-in-one contact centre solutions,' builds on previous research that demonstrates total annualised costs for all-in-one communications software suites can be less than half that of multipoint solutions following acquisition.

“Our first two studies in this report series revealed the operational benefits - including significant cost savings - of all-in-one contact centre solutions,” says Dr Jon Anton, report co-author and adjunct professor at Purdue University.

Loyalty Lab, provider of on-demand loyalty and CRM for consumer brands, has released its Free Trial programme, according to PR Newswire.

The Free Trial provides a 'try before you buy' option on any of Loyalty Lab's products to qualified companies for up to 90 days.

Marketers will have the opportunity to use their own data in any system, including e-mail, segmentation, loyalty programs, ad hoc reporting, OLAP analysis, and data visualisation.