October 10, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Green Contact Center The EPA tells us that data centers and corporate data servers in the US ate up 60 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2006. That works out to a jaw-dropping $4.5 billion annually. Contact centers contribute their share of IT infrastructure through dedicated application servers, routers, and telecom gear. While the electric bill is part of the cost of running a contact center, a deeper understanding of where your dollars are being spent can reduce energy inefficiencies and improve the environment. More >> Permalink | Comment Now >>
September 26, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Interactive Mobile Video Travelogue On Tuesday, T-Mobile and Google went public with the first ever open-source mobile phone. The G1 may not have the tech bling of the Apple iPhone (no multi-touch yet), but its openness should accelerate an e-store's worth of incredible apps. Can great consumer-friendly interactive video software be too far behind? Futuristic mobile IVVR technology is already in consumers' hands, but you'll need your passport stamped to see this technology in action. More >> Permalink | Comments (2)
September 15, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Universal Contact Center Software The shiny new Chrome browser has been deservedly praised for its sleek design and its Web 2.0-ness. Technology watchers have pointed out that Google’s Chrome brings browsers ever closer to becoming a universal platform on which web-based applications will rule and computing is done in the cloud. Network or cloud computing is also an ideal environment for virtual contact centers and remote agent workers.
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September 04, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Best of the Web Relax. The economy is doing better than expected and technology spending seems to be holding its own. Sounds like a good time for a quick rundown of three interesting web sites.
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August 28, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Why Doesn’t Every Contact Center Do This? Speech recognition makes everything better. Add speech-based input to vanilla calendaring, to-do lists and note taking, and you have a great office productivity tool. Turn this into a service available on cell phones, and you have the makings of an exciting start-up or two. Several of these services can transcribe voicemails and on-the-go voice memos that are then emailed. Great idea. Here’s one that’s even better: transcribing and emailing agent conversations back to the customer.
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August 19, 2008 | Author: Andy Green The Pop-Tart Factor It’s well known that Walmart keeps a massive amount of data on customer purchases. Walmart is also a leader in analyzing that data. Before Hurricane Ivan hit in 2004, intuition might have suggested that Walmart’s Florida stores should stock up on generators and bottled water. But the IT gurus crunched the numbers and discovered that…Pop-Tarts were most likely to sell out. Some of the same techniques used by Walmart have bottom-line benefits for customer-agent interactions. More >> Permalink | Comments (2)
August 01, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Voice, Web, Mobile Entering data with most cell phone keypads is a quick path to finger cramping—iPhone and Blackberry users excluded. Speech recognition and search engine technology should therefore be the right ingredients for a potent application in the mobile world. One neat app I recently spotted sends a condensed Web page response to a voice query, eliminating long-winded IVR menus. It’s a glimpse into what’s ahead for contact center interactions. More >> Permalink | Comment Now >>
July 17, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Back to Cost Displacement Basics Easiest cost-saving measure to justify: replacing a manual process with a computerized system. Next easiest: upgrading software and hardware to increase scalability and performance. While it’s generally understood (with one notable objection!) that IT investments boost productivity, you won’t need complicated ROI models to justify remote agent software for your contact center.
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July 10, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Crowd vs. Agent One of the underpinnings of crowdsourcing – the reason why it has triggered a thundering herd of start-ups – is the power of the crowd to take on tasks not well suited for computerization. Another fascinating aspect of crowdsourcing is that it can also beat the computer on its home turf of number crunching and data analysis. More >> Permalink | Comments (2)
June 26, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Customer Service Economics I took a peek at the US technology spending numbers for 1Q08. Not to worry, it’s ahead about 7% from last year at this time. Overall, analysts predict annual information communications technology spending will expand around 4% year-to-year, down from 2007. Not a great performance, but, as you may have heard, we are in a slowdown. More >> Permalink | Comment Now >>
June 18, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Taming Contact Center Variability, Part 1 Most discussions on variability start from the unpleasant fact that we have to live with randomness. We want uniformity for business efficiency, but the world throws us variation.
In the contact center, variability comes into play at every step of the interaction—when customers call or make contact, what they ask for, and how effectively agents deliver services. While we can’t eliminate variation, there are ways to manage it.
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June 09, 2008 | Author: Andy Green FYI: iPhone 3G At today’s WWDC event, Apple made good on its promise. They’ve closed the deal on delivering a 3G version of iPhone with GPS. A more detailed live-post of the event can be found here. The takeaways: spiffy location-based services, continuing follow through on push-based, more enterprise apps, and a 3G chip that will support high-speed access just about anywhere in the world.
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June 03, 2008 | Author: Andy Green One more thing….location If the rumors hold true, then the new iPhone will be sprouting a GPS antenna. Location information is already available in a crude form on the iPhone, and many other cell phones have GPS chips.
But with all the excitement surrounding iPhone 2.0, there is renewed interest in location-based applications and services. There are obvious advantages to having precise geo-coordinates in emergency, medical, and public safety oriented contact centers. But there’s another application of location data that makes sense. More >> Permalink | Comments (3)
May 23, 2008 | Author: Andy Green VoIP Ascendance Remember VoIP? It’s the fundamental technology behind many of the interesting contact center applications we’ve been writing about. An analyst report confirms a trend we all knew was happening in theory - digital connections from VoIP service providers are rapidly replacing consumer phone lines. Since 2005, cable and Internet providers added almost 15 million new subscribers. What does this mean for contact centers?
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May 16, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Does iPhone give video critical mass? At a recent gathering with my Gen-Y nieces and nephews, I realized I was on the far side of the mobile video adoption curve. They were very comfortable using their laptops and mobile devices to view movies and music clips and engage in two-way video chats with friends and family. It’s becoming clearer to me that some of video’s acceptance issues will be solved actuarially. In the meantime, the expected launch of a 3G version of the iPhone in June may just sway—I’m not saying it’s a tipping point!—more consumers to video. This will have direct implications for contact centers. More >> Permalink | Comment Now >>
May 06, 2008 | Author: Andy Green During the Slowdown It’s Wise to Build Up Customer Service
With the economic speedometer stuck somewhere between slowdown and recession, businesses are concerned about a replay of the dot-com bust in 2001. This time, history will take a different path. According to analysts, technology spending for 2008 is expected to grow at a rate of 4%. It’s official: we are living in the New Economy where IT investment drives productivity both in the contact center and across the enterprise. More >> Permalink | Comment Now >>
April 30, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Best of the Web During my Web journeys over the last few months, I’ve been inspired by many interesting sites. Too many, in fact, to cover in the course of my blogging. Rather than hold back any longer, I'm launching a "Best of the Web" post to cover great sites that are currently on the top of my favorites list. Enjoy! More >> Permalink | Comment Now >>
April 23, 2008 | Author: Andy Green A Short History of Self-Service An interesting crystal-ball piece in Time Magazine dedicated one of its “10 Ideas That Are Changing the World” to customer service. Or, to be more exact, its demise. Time writer Barbara Kiviat makes the case for automated self-service replacing human interactions with news of impressive advances, including a completely automated airport check-in system. Supermarkets (yet again) play a role in the story. The origins of the current self-service revolution dates back to an early 20th century Memphis-based grocery store. More >> Permalink | Comments (2)
March 28, 2008 | Author: Andy Green iPhone Gets its MBA In case you weren’t at Apple’s press conference for the iPhone 2.0 announcement, engadget was there to blog the major points. iPhone 2.0 is really a software upgrade, but an important one. Third-party developers now get a shot at creating software with the same SDK used internally by Apple. Oh, and one more thing – there are enterprise applications.
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March 14, 2008 | Author: Andy Green In Search of the .400 Agent We’re delighted when we have a great customer-agent experience and left questioning our faith in humankind when we don’t. Coaching, training and metrics monitoring can all help boost agent performance. But is there a price to pay for improving agent behavior? Contact center managers should look to major league baseball and its experience shaping batting averages for an answer.
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February 28, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Crowd Control: Crowdsourcing the Enterprise
Not everything can be automated. Sorry, it’s just not possible. We expect contact center agents, not a software application , to sort out a misplaced delivery order. There’s an interesting computing trend called crowdsourcing that taps into the unique skills of real people. Turning the human-versus-computer relationship on its head, crowdsourcing uses software to organize human problem solvers to take on tasks too difficult for silicon. Think of it as an on-demand contact center that matches customers with a virtual expert community. More >> Permalink | Comment Now >> | TrackBack (0)
February 01, 2008 | Author: Andy Green No Questions Asked With no questions asked, Amazon replaced a $500 PlayStation 3 that New York Times business writer Joe Nocera had purchased as a Christmas present for his son. Tracing the package from the Amazon site, Nocera realized his gift had been delivered and signed for by a neighbor in his apartment building. But the package was misplaced and eventually stolen. He called Amazon’s customer service number, pleaded for mercy, and to his surprise, the agent agreed to send Nocera another one. More >> Permalink | Comments (3)
January 17, 2008 | Author: Andy Green Lessons from the Supermarket Aisle
No one likes waiting in line. Call centers are rightly focused on the staffing levels needed to achieve a low average speed of answer. Is there a way to tackle the waiting problem and improve the customer experience that doesn’t involve additional agent resources? Supermarkets are a good place to look for answers. More >> Permalink | Comments (3)
December 27, 2007 | Author: Andy Green iPhone: Most Underreported Phone of 2007 Sure the iPhone received lots of attention. Consumers lined up to buy it. It could do amazing tricks. But did we all miss the real story about the iPhone? The iPhone is a great business tool. More >> Permalink | Comments (2)
December 13, 2007 | Author: Andy Green Contact Center 2.0 Marketing and brand strategist Idris Mootee connects the dots between knowledge workers, Enterprise 2.0, and innovation. The new "open enterprise" is also changing traditional (and one-sided) customer support into a collaborative eco-system. Through wikis, forums, blogs, and social bookmarking, customers are beginning to shape their interactions with businesses. More >> Permalink | Comments (1)
December 05, 2007 | Author: Andy Green Fast Forward to Blended Reality Contact Center After the post on Second Life and virtual reality contact centers, my expectation was there’d likely be relevant industry news, but not anytime soon. Wrong. In an article in the New York Times, a Cambridge-based company now lets users navigate through 3D cityscapes of New York and Boston, rendered with special video cameras. More interesting: you can walk through the interiors of selected stores. It’s called blended reality, combining virtual reality and video representation of real-world scenes. Interactivity is not available yet, but it’s clearly the next step. Could the following scenario become reality next year (or next month)? Customer views video of his favorite book store from his home computer or iPhone. He navigates to cooking aisle, clicks on a book, peeks inside, and then clicks again for help. A window then pops up with a real-time video connection to a salesperson. More >> Permalink | Comment Now >>
NeoAndy Habilis—my avatar—examining digital cameras at the Circuit City store in Second Life. Products are linked to URLs at Circuit City’s web site.
Bored with the social networking in Web 2.0? Try escaping to Second Life. Your avatar can walk around the digital neighborhood, visit and chat with avatar friends, and shop in specialty stores. Does Second Life’s immersive virtual world hold the key to the future of the contact center? More >> Permalink | Comments (2)
A recent report from a non-profit economic consulting group is raising a few eyebrows in Silicon Valley and other high-tech centers. Buried Treasure: New York City’s Hidden Technology Sector makes a bold claim. Based on U.S. Census data from 2004, the report concludes that New York City supports over 165,000 high-technology workers. If you factor in the NYC metropolitan area, then high-technology employment (over 600,000) exceeds that of tech hubs San Jose, Boston, and Los Angeles. More >> Permalink | Comment Now >>
September 27, 2007 | Author: Andy Green Humans Matter, Even for Web 3.0 These days, it almost seems that the Web is smarter and more knowledgeable than any human – obtaining new information and skills all the time. And if Web prognosticators are right, as we move past Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, we'll be able to pinpoint information through more natural queries. More >> Permalink | Comments (2)
About Andy
Andy Green is Global Managing Editor at Avaya. A seasoned technology writer, Andy was a senior editor at CMP Media's Communications Convergence Magazine, where he covered the early days of Voice-over-IP. He has written about telecommunications topics for market research firms, high-tech companies, and B2B publications. Prior to Avaya, he was a marketing writer for Numara Software, a leading maker of help desk software. Andy is a former software developer with degrees in mathematics and computer science.
In The Wrap-Up, Andy will be your guide to all things contact center. The Wrap-Up is news with context, perspectives, real-world advice, and, we hope, a starting point on your journey through the blogosphere. You can reach Andy at wrapup@avaya.com.
With the economic speedometer 
Not everything can be automated. Sorry, it’s just not possible. We expect contact center agents, not a software application , to sort out a 
No one likes waiting in line. Call centers are rightly focused on the staffing levels needed to achieve a low average speed of answer. Is there a way to tackle the waiting problem and improve the customer experience that doesn’t involve additional agent resources? Supermarkets are a good place to look for answers. 
