"This question has to be answered twofold. On the one hand, discussions regarding service excellence have definitely multiplied during the last months. Fostered by some interesting insights (just to mention the DIN norm regarding service excellence which has been published in 2011), we have had many occasions to discuss what is beyond quality.
Apart from that, of course, the digital world is rapidly widening its influence. I have discussed the relevance of social services and other web-related business ideas and models quite often over the last months.
"

"The ability to listen into more conversations through social media and then to react in ways that better support the consumer."

"Better recruitment and management"

"The use of social media has been a topic that has been discussed at length during 2011. As a vehicle for the dissemination of information (i.e. during disasters) social media has been very useful but I feel at this time no one has really worked out to use the medium to generate sales and service. Most organisations are monitoring social media to better understand their customers and to deal with any negative comments but as yet they have not been able to use the channel proactively. I’m not sure if social media is just a passing fad but maybe in the future we will be using it to generate sales and service, we just don’t know how."

"Contact Centers Management along with effective People's management. The new technology effectiveness for the centers.I believe the contact centers operations run on people, technology and the stability in the business and growth afterwards.Being the face of the organisation, the contact centers should"

"As I’ve said previously, the social enterprise has changed the conversation in 2011 and will continue to do so into 2012. Salesforce.com is leading the shift to the social enterprise, helping companies leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies to put customers at the heart of their business. For many organizations, that shift begins with customer service, as businesses engage with their customers where they are now – on social networks and mobile devices."

"How to improve performance while managing costs. We must inovate from a technology perspective to lower contact ratio and handle time"

"The debate between the merits of on premise, hosted and cloud technology. My views are that each model has merit and value to a specific segment. Increasingly the value of cloud will take over more of the on-premise and hosted models - with on premise always maintaining a market share."

"I think the move towards home agents really jumped forward in 2011. It's been on everyone's radar conceptually for a long time. But now we're seeing it as a funded initiative if not a critical priority. This is a great thing for the industry, as it really opens the talent pool and I think you'll see huge improvements in quality. We're already helping companies select home agents, and the difference it makes for the business is tremendous."

"This is a fantastic question because there have been so many great conversation topics in 2011, but the one that sticks out in my head the most is the rise of 'employee engagement'. I can't think of anything else that is more important in managing people (or anything that has sky-rocketed to the foreground of most industry conversations). 2011 was the 'Year of Engagement' at my organisation where we took several initiatives to the next level with some very positive results."