Is Proactive Customer Service The New Norm?

I've recently purchased a new software application for my business. The tool has been helpful in making our team and myself more productive. There is of course a bit of a learning curve and a few areas where I've struggled to figure things out but not enough to contact the provider’s help desk or customer service line.

To my delight and surprise the software provider of this tool has reached out to me…proactively. Checking to see if they can help me in any way. They offer useful tips and suggestions to make sure we are getting the most out of the tool.

And sure enough, the approach works.

I am more engaged with the tool, taking more advantage of the features I may not have been aware of otherwise. And, I am likely to become more dependent on this tool. Ah…there is the key…customer stickiness. I am now more likely to be a long term, loyal customer who renews my subscription.

The experience is great. It makes me wonder if the proactive approach is the new norm for providing an exceptional customer experience. Is it what will be expected for customers to be wowed by the products they use rather than just somewhat satisfied or pleased?

Providing this little bit of extra attention could end up going a long ways in impacting the experience of the customer.

I also think about large contact centers who service and support thousands and thousands of customers. How might a contact center team prepare, staff and cost-justify the additional expense?  The agents making the contact will have to be well coached experts about the products or the call may backfire.  What if the customer is unhappy? Do you also provide a proactive refund and enable the agents to make that call with the customer on the line? 

The well-intended call could have implications that are very broad and complex for a large organization to digest and manage. But if this is the new normal then we will need to adapt.

Also, how will companies incorporate the proactive contact into their operations? Is it a phone call or email and how many times do we attempt to contact our busy end customer? Might a company use the opportunity to up-sell their customer on other products to help offset the expense? Or is the long-term value of the customer justification enough to take this extra step?

If your company is not engaging in proactive customer service, it may be a new strategy for your organization to consider.  The opportunities and customer retention delivering this proactive service may very well outweigh the challenges.

Source: https://blog.envisioninc.com/blog/proactive-customer-service

2023 Buyers Guide

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Workforce Management

 

1.)

Alvaria Alvaria Workforce Alvaria Workforce (formerly Aspect Workforce Management) is a high-performance contact center software solution that provides the forecasting, planning, scheduling, employee self-service and real-time agent tracking to ensure that all agents and supervisors are productive, engaged in their work and delivering an exceptional customer experience.

2.)

Alvaria Noble ShiftTrack WFM Maximize the efficiency of your contact center and meet/exceed customer expectations with workforce engagement tools that help you accurately forecast workloads, match the right resources to your needs and keep agents motivated. More than just scheduling agents and tracking shifts, Noble’s ShiftTrack WEM solutions optimize labor costs, manage capacity more effectively and improve service levels.

3.)

Calabrio Calabrio ONE Calabrio ONE offers contact centres the complete toolset to unlock the tremendous value buried within customer interaction data and use it to transform the entire business. One seamless solution combines a fully integrated workforce optimization suite with powerful voice-of-the-customer analytics tools deployed—in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid environment. Capture every customer interaction across all channels. Extract predictive and prescriptive insights. Elevate customer experiences, improve employee engagement and increase operational efficiency. Then, extend customer-centric strategies across the business to accelerate sales, drive innovation and move your business forward.

4.)	eGain Corporation eGain Solve Rated #1 by analysts and trusted by some of the biggest brands in the world, eGain Solve helps businesses design and deliver smart, connected customer journeys across social, mobile, web, and contact centers. You can sell smarter, serve better, and know more.

5.)

Eleveo Eleveo WFM Eleveo WFM was designed to simplify scheduling, forecasting and adherence for commercial contact centers with 500 agents or less. The product is easy to use for supervisors who are not WFM experts, but provides value for scheduling, shift changes, schedule adherence and supports multi-channel and multi-skill requirements. Eleveo WFM was built using open source, cloud technologies but can be installed on premise, in a hybrid environment or hosted for you in AWS.

6.)

ethosIQ, LLC BPO Optimizer ethosIQ’s Business Process Outsourcer (BPO) Optimizer allows clients to manage their vendor contact center resources without requiring manual intervention through our manufacture-agnostic data collector processes. ethosIQ collects schedule and exception data, based on your desired parameters. Collection of data is transparent and doesn’t require intervention from either you or your vendor resource. You know your needs, and now you can manage those needs effectively, efficiently and effortlessly, using ethosIQ’s BPO Optimizer!

7.)

Lieber & Associates Technology Consulting Services Lieber & Associates provides consulting services to select, contract for, test, implement, and optimize workforce management systems. It's technology consultants have worked with all major systems and many smaller ones. Counsel is informed by several decades of WFM experience.

8.)

MFE International Agyletime Cloud Workforce Management Agyletime is an enterprise grade true Cloud WFM and t is channel agnostic . Its ease to Use , easier onboarding, forecasting and better scheduling. You can integrate to CRMs such as SFDC, Zendesk, ServiceNow and others and to telephony systems such as AVAYA, CISCO, Genesys and other cloud telephony systems ; to independent Chat systems to aggregate data for WFM omnichannel forecasting, scheduling, optimisation and reporting.

9.)

OpsTel Services SPEED & PLUS The SPEED solution solves for service level issues while cost optimizing the environment with automation. Provides an enhanced way to speed up & optimize invoking temporary agent skills configuration changes into the contact center environment. Speed allows you to schedule both future changes & temporary changes that auto-revert back to the original state when scheduled time expires. Speed features: *Automated / Scheduled Temporary Agent Skills Configuration Management *Immediate Temporary or Reoccurring Schedule Skills Configuration Changes *Easy to Use/Operations Administration Focused *Descriptive Monitoring Activity Dashboard *Detailed “End to End’ Audit Trail and Perfor... (read more)The SPEED solution solves for service level issues while cost optimizing the environment with automation. Provides an enhanced way to speed up & optimize invoking temporary agent skills configuration changes into the contact center environment. Speed allows you to schedule both future changes & temporary changes that auto-revert back to the original state when scheduled time expires. Speed features: *Automated / Scheduled Temporary Agent Skills Configuration Management *Immediate Temporary or Reoccurring Schedule Skills Configuration Changes *Easy to Use/Operations Administration Focused *Descriptive Monitoring Activity Dashboard *Detailed “End to End’ Audit Trail and Performance Monitoring & PLUS provides a single interface, where operations teams no longer have to rely on HR, IT or any other organization to administer agent profile data across multiple technologies in the contact center. The PLUS solution allows for simplified provisioning & maintenance of agent profile data reducing processing time from days, weeks or months in LESS THAN 10 MINUTES! The PLUS features: *Agent Provisioning Cycle Time Reduced from Days/Weeks to 10 Minutes or Less *Fully Automated Agent Onboarding / Updating / Maintaining / and Offboarding of Agent Profiles (Identity, Access, Utilization) *Overlays and Enhances Existing Contact Center Solution Set *Enables Operations Staff to Maintain all Aspects of Managing an Agent’s Profile through “Single Pane of Glass” *Supports Multi-Faceted Agent Profile Attribute Configuration Requirements; e.g. Union Rules, Seniority Dates, Etc. *Detailed Agent Profile Audit Trails

10.)

Phonestat Phonestat Track staff performance, capture meaningful feedback and deliver quality customer experiences using Phonestat. Our cloud based solution allows you to create simple scorecards to provide instant feedback and training to your staff. There are powerful integrations to source interactions from anywhere and an open API to allow you to build your own.

11.)	Vads VADS Workforce Management VADS Workforme Magaement is a smart tools that gives connectivity to the workers while working remotely. An intelligent workforce management system that aims to improve operation efficiency with the end goal to provide first.

12.)

QPC Ltd. QPC WFM - Calabrio/Teleopti Specialism QPC has a long and successful history of delivering tried and tested innovative workforce management systems, and the training and consultancy needed to ensure organisations can leverage the customer service and operational efficiency benefits workforce management principles and automated workforce management systems can deliver.

13.)

Simucall limited Assessment of Contact centre job applicants Pay As You Go remote assessment tool for contact centre job applicants. NO set up or registration fee and NO minimum use contract Assess your applicants ability to listen to a caller, recognise the important pieces of information and record them into a logging system swiftly and accurately under pressure. Full management dashboard Pay per completed assessment (no charge if abandoned or not taken by the deadline you set) Choice of assessment environments - including Insurance claims, Financial transactions, Emergency service calls, Utility defect report and IT Helpdesk Variety of UK accents used by callers (of different ages and genders) You retain control of all communication with the applicants

 

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