When most people list their top complaint regarding contact centers, it usually has something to do with the wait time. Call center queues are notoriously long. Even though today’s wait times are much shorter than they once were, today’s customers are also less likely to stand for waiting for an agent to connect – and therefore more likely to abandon the call altogether before that connection is ever made.

Are you wondering what can be done to cut down on your call center’s wait times? Trying to find options for your call center queues to make them a little less dreadful for consumers and a little more worth the wait? What about an option that replaces the need to wait altogether? 

Here, we’ll look at a few of your options – and how they can benefit your contact center and your consumers!

Enhanced Speech to Text Technology

Speech is the cornerstone of the contact center as we know it. Call centers make their business out of listening to their customers speak and responding accordingly, so it only makes sense that some of today’s biggest developments and most important advancements in the world of contact center technology would involve speech.

Call center speech recognition is changing the way contact centers interact with consumers, the way data is analyzed – even the way companies understand their customers. Here, we examine how this technology is evolving – and how it has become a driving force for the evolution of interactions between consumers and customer service agencies around the world.

Minimizing Information Repetition with Smarter Technology

When you’re running a small business that finds itself in need of a contact center to field consumer calls, you may run into issues with scaling the solutions available through many companies to fit your needs. There simply aren’t as many call center solutions for small business as there are for larger ones, especially given that the contact center was originally born of necessity for calls coming into large businesses or being deployed by equally large companies.

If you need a call center solution that fits the size of your business but you're not sure where to start, read on. We’ll show you how to find what you need now and what it means to scale it to your changing requirements as your company grows moving forward!

Are you hoping to improve the health of your call center’s budget this year? Many business owners begin the year with lofty goals to improve their financial situation but by the time winter starts to wrap up, that hope starts to fade. It can be hard to know where to start, especially when you work in an industry that is as seemingly straight forward as that of call center customer service!

Thankfully, there is one big way to shape up and slim down your budget, all while providing better customer service in your call center. By addressing consumer calls quicker and more efficiently, you can reduce your call center cost per call, saving your center money in the long run!

Are you looking to overhaul your call center in 2019? Perhaps you’re just getting started in the industry, or you’re looking to start a second, third, or further number of centers to add onto an already-profitable venture – but you want to know which strategies you can use to ensure the biggest possible gains from that investment.

Here are a few ways that experts in the industry recommend to maximize the return on both your investment of time and the financial investment in your facility and to create the successful contact center you’re hoping for. (Hint: it starts from the ground up!)

The State of the Union Address is one that Americans watch for information and opinions on the way our country is progressing as assessed by our leadership. This annual assessment is given as a service of our government to keep the people informed and is important for our growth as a united nation.

Any successful business can learn something from the regularity of and the importance with which the State of the Union is regarded – and your call center is no different. Regular assessment is one of the best ways to ensure you’re providing a great call center customer experience and meeting your goals every year.

Do you provide your staff with the tools they need to address their goals regularly and work toward a better, more united future as a team? Here are a few tips for doing exactly that:

Most of us are familiar with the idea of long hold times in contact centers. It’s an idea that is well-known and widely abhorred by most consumers. The concept of sitting on hold for minutes or even hours waiting for service is not always an exaggeration, it is an unfortunate reality in many facilities – and one that universally creates frustration and dissatisfaction in consumers.

What kind of problems do long hold times cause in contact centers? How can you sidestep these issues in your facility and continue to provide excellent service while also maintaining productivity and efficiency? Here’s more of what you need to know about the problem of long waits and how to cut them down to almost nothing in your center:

For those who have worked in the call center industry for more than a few years, the changes each new year brings are both exciting and interesting. While short-term progress often seems to tick by without much change at all, the span of a year can bring big transformations to your contact center.

This is especially true when it comes to call center technology. Those who have managed or even worked in call centers for many years can tell newer employees that this is the single fastest-changing aspect of the field. Because technology is always updating and always improving, its impact on your call center is always evolving.

Here are some of the ways that call center technology and the call center itself are changing in the coming year – and how to be on the right side of these changes.

An Important Part of Call Center Quality Assurance

The average call center deals with hundreds of thousands of pieces of information daily. While the processing of all this information is spread between dozens or even hundreds of individual agents and management members, it can still be very difficult to ensure quality and consistency.

Making sure the processing and utilization of this information are conducted properly is critically important to the success of the modern call center. Thankfully, there is technology available today that speeds and eases the process of collecting and using this information. One of the most important ways this information is gathered and used is through dual channel recording. Here, we’ll examine just how important this technology is to today’s contact center and the assurance of quality therein.

For those who work in the world of call or contact centers, the term ‘turnover” is a common one. However, many of the same people who hear this term thrown around every day don’t fully understand what it means – or how it impacts business in the modern contact center.

Here’s more of what you need to know about call center turnover and how it relates to your facility – as well as how to lessen its impact on your business this year: