Rembrandt & MBO, leading corporate finance advisors backed by Rabobank, wanted to give their users the ability to instantly find highly relevant, consolidated customer information — including communication histories, similar and related information. Learn why they turned to Coveo for Salesforce to inject this critical customer- and case-related knowledge from anywhere into their Salesforce UI and how the technology has given them a competitive edge.

The measure of success (or failure) of a contact center is simply the sum of the performances of each of its agents. In order to improve agent performance a contact center must find a way to affect and sustain change in the behavior of every agent, on every call. CallMiner Eureka Speech Analytics gives call centers the complete, consumable picture they need in order to positively and quickly effect change in the performance of their agents – while continuously measuring progress towards their overall goals.

A parable in the information technology industry is that the velocity of technology change enables breakthrough advances every three years. This is now true with the onset of In-Network Analytics. Using the pristine quality of VOC captured directly in the Telco network, the enterprise now has an opportunity to inexpensively and simply make conversational analytics available in real-time from a data source that is native, uncompressed and speaker separated. Whether employing an in-sourced contact center model, utilizing BPO’s for outsourcing or the combination of both, the enterprise will now be conducting VOC analysis from an intelligence layer that is utterly comprehensive and provides complete consistency and transparency.

Resolving a customer’s needs within the first contact is widely accepted as one of the most important measures of success in contact centers today and it has a powerful, positive effect on both financial and performance metrics. Not only does first contact resolution reduce costs and increase service levels by cutting down on the number of customer contacts, it is one of the primary drivers for improved customer satisfaction, increased retention, and higher revenues. According to DMG Consulting, “too many companies struggle to realize the full benefits of their FCR initiatives because they do not know how to convert the findings into action.” This paper will discuss how contact analytics can be used to accurately measure FCR and how those insights can be used to improve business processes.

As companies continue to evolve their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategies to attract and maintain customers, the contact center has emerged as an important strategic asset. The agents staffing these centers have a direct impact on customer acquisition and satisfaction. In order to continue providing excellent service, more companies are turning to advanced analytics to ensure that their contact centers are performing at a high level.

In addition, market leaders are using insights from customer interactions to uncover sales, marketing, and operational improvement opportunities that touch every branch of the business. Contact analytics is now being leveraged to provide more than just performance feedback to front line employees; the intelligence mined from customer interactions is driving continuous process improvement throughout the entire organization.

"Honey, we need to talk".

As a customer service executive, how do you get the most out of your contact center outsourcing relationships? Here are a few questions to consider:

- Are your outsourcing relationships structured to create strategic impact beyond cost savings and efficiency improvements?

- Are your service providers expanding their delivery capabilities to collaboratively meet your evolving requirements?

- Do you work collaboratively with your service provider to help grow each other’s business?

Outsourcing as a tactic is much more commonplace today, and there’s a lot of "tuition value" gained from past outsourcing experiences – some positive and some not. Early adopters of outsourcing have already realized most cost savings and process efficiencies. They are now seeking to build partnerships that influence brand perception, maximize value delivered to end-consumers, and contribute to top-line growth.

In order to assist enterprises in maximizing the value from their contact center outsourcing relationships, TELUS International partnered with the Everest Group to create this report. Based on interviews with executives at leading US-based companies, this report:

- Examines 8 key habits of sub-optimal outsourcing relationships

- Outlines a 5-step plan for structuring strategic partnerships

- Provides key recommendations for optimizing your outsourcing portfolio

The concept of a stationary work environment is rapidly disappearing: today employees want — and need — to be mobile. A consumer-led revolution is driving rapid developments in mobile technology. While people are mobile, it is critical for the success of the enterprise that they not be isolated. The ability to continue collaborative conversations with colleagues, customers and partners must not be compromised.
As users adopt multiple mobile devices, they develop personal preferences in terms of devices and applications. Furthermore, the line between work and home lives is blurring and “bring your own device (BYOD)” to work is rapidly becoming the norm. The challenge for enterprises is to determine how they can support users’ preferences while safeguarding company assets.
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has solutions that work with each of the leading mobile platforms to provide maximum openness while maintaining full security. With these solutions, an enterprise can allow its employees to create their own personal cloud of applications and services regardless of the devices they prefer to use.

Increasing agility and automation in the data center to optimize application delivery requires a complete, end-to-end, coordinated virtual infrastructure. this infrastructure will allow applications and the physical network to collaborate, thereby providing a high quality experience for users and enabling optimization of resources. The ideal solution should follow a Software Defined Networking (SDN) approach. This will allow it to bridge the gap between the network world and the newly virtualized compute world by defining a framework that uses standardized interfaces between applications and networks. Likewise, it should be flexible enough to leverage multiple methods, including openflow, to provide direct access to all virtual and physical objects in the data center and enable manipulation of the forwarding plane of physical and virtual network devices, such as switches and routers.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE STRATEGY FOR THE NEW MOBILE ECONOMY.
Customer experience is now at the core of mobile business success. But growing churn, complexity and expectations are making it difficult for service providers to deliver an experience that can stand out from the competition, satisfy customers and boost profitability.

To improve the mobile customer experience, service providers need to understand and address it from the customer’s perspective. Service providers must address each specific challenge as part of a larger customer experience vision. The point product approach of the past — addressing a single specific challenge without consideration for a broader, end-to-end solution — is no longer sustainable. It may even be detrimental to efforts to improve customer care, operational efficiencies and personalization. This calls for a complete, end-to-end
view that spans every customer, device, application, service and network. With a holistic approach that incorporates key capabilities like device activation, comprehensive customer care, big data analytics and Wi-Fi offloading, service providers can turn customer experience into a differentiator that secures the loyalty of existing customers and pulls customers away from competitors.

ENABLING A SEAMLESS EVOLUTION TO HETEROGENEOUS NETWORKS.
The transition to higher capacity 3G and 4G/LTE networks and the introduction of small cells are the strategic tools that mobile network operators (MNOs) have at their disposal to keep pace with rapidly increasing mobile service demand. Small cells introduce new backhaul challenges because their optimal placement means that they will be deployed on street furniture, inside heavily populated buildings and on the sides of buildings. Leveraging existing macro cell sites to reach these small cell locations is an attractive approach to solve the challenges associated with small cell backhaul. This approach will introduce macro cell backhaul scaling challenges, including the scaling of bandwidth supported over scarce microwave spectrum that backhauls the majority of macro cells today. The Alcatel-Lucent Packet Microwave Mobile Backhaul solution addresses these challenges and allows for an efficient transition to heterogeneous networks.