Insights Blog
Prepaid Card Regulations Cloud Future in New Jersey
April 24th, 2012
As a business leader, how would you rate your organization’s ability slam on the brakes and turn sharply in response to a disruption in the market? Recent developments in New Jersey have forced some key players in the prepaid card industry to do just that. This is a perfect example of why agility pays. According to an article in the April issue of paybefore.com , the ... more >
How to Build an Effective Customer Loyalty Program
March 27th, 2012
Struggling to increase margins in his business, an executive contemplated hiring a customer reward consultant who was a specialist at crafting programs designed to improve customer loyalty. “How do you know which customer loyalty program is the most effective?” asked the Executive. “That’s easy,” replied the Consultant. “It’s the one with the most generous rewards, the steepest discounts, and the stickiest stream of special offers.” “I don’t think ... more >
Prepaid Card Profitability Teeters on Just One Phone Call
March 6th, 2012
Never underestimate the importance of just one customer interaction. In the prepaid card industry, just one phone call can be the difference between earning a profit and suffering a loss on a customer’s prepaid card. It comes down to this: Agent means loss, Self-service means profit If just one additional call from a customer gets routed to a contact center agent, the program manager will take a ... more >
When Goals Collide: How Tellme’s New Ownership Creates Conflict
February 13th, 2012
In case you missed it last week, the future of customer service may have suffered a setback. A change of ownership for Tellme planted seeds of conflict that will soon grow to affect over two billion customer self-service calls per year. Tellme provides hosted IVR services to large banks, airlines, and other enterprises who must deal with millions of inbound calls from consumers. Tellme is in ... more >
Does Your Call Center Cost Reduction Strategy Include Continuous Improvement?
December 2nd, 2011
Never underestimate the power of cumulative, recurring cost savings. Even tiny improvements that affect contact center operations may seem deceptively small—but over time they’ll add up to a lot more than you think. For example, our continuous improvement practice recently recommended a change to a client’s IVR system that will result in an automation rate increase of a fraction of one percent. The higher automation rate ... more >
Invest Wisely: Know the Business Value of your IVR
November 15th, 2011
As an executive responsible for the performance of your contact center, there is a lot riding on your decisions. The contact center investments you choose to fund have material impact on your P&L, the risk profile of your business, and your brand. Prioritizing which projects to fund is a complex and challenging exercise that easily can be overrun with the opinions of all those involved ... more >
Airline industry reaps benefits of automation – including higher customer satisfaction
November 2nd, 2011
This bit of good news from the airline industry may surprise you. Even though travelers got hit with fare increases and new “junk” fees, customer satisfaction in the airline industry has risen for the second consecutive year. In 2011, passengers expressed the highest levels of satisfaction with the check-in and reservation processes since 2006. The airlines must be doing something right. Automation = Convenience and Speed Check ... more >
Dangerous Assumption: My IVR System Is Optimized
October 31st, 2011
Every day we talk to business leaders who are making a dangerous and expensive assumption about the IVR systems they use to support their contact center operations. They believe they’re fully optimized. Many of these enterprises have considerable experience with this self-service channel, and their IVR performance hasn’t improved for years- so why not assume further improvements are next to impossible? But most of the ... more >
Market Trend: How Important is Customer Experience to Contact Center Executives?
October 28th, 2011
New report provides market overview Do you know where Customer Experience ranks among the big and important trends in the hosted contact center market? Our friends at Frost and Sullivan just released a report, North American Hosted Contact Center Markets, that recognizes a very encouraging trend. The report considers a wide swath of the contact center market, including IVR, ACD, outbound and proactive customer contact, customer ... more >
How will Netflix executives know if they made the right call?
August 27th, 2011
Consider Netflix, which announced a new pricing structure last month that caused a virtual uproar. Many of their customers were used to having a choice between watching streaming video on demand or DVDs shipped by Netflix to their homes the old fashioned way. But the new pricing strongly encourages streaming video and discourages mailing DVDs back and forth. This caused quite a stir because it ... more >
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About the Insights Blog
Engage with our executives to explore challenges and opportunities that affect your business results. Share insights on business decisions that affect contact automation, customer self-service, and your bottom line.
