customer service solutions

AI and automation are already reshaping call centers. Get your customer service organization prepared with these talent acquisition tips.

Customer service organizations use robotic process automation (RPA) as a tactical and short-term approach to digitize common agent tasks. There are two forms of RPA: unattended and attended RPA. A task can start with an agent and be supported by attended automation, which can kick off unattended RPA to complete the process. Customer service leaders […]

AI will change how organizations staff, run, and manage their customer service teams. Read Forrester's 2020 customer service predictions to learn more.

Customer service organizations turn to robotic process automation (RPA) to provide tactical and short-term fixes to digitize common, reproducible agent tasks. There are two forms of RPA: Attended mode RPA. These bots target the front office. They are invoked by agents in the flow of their work. In the case of an exception, the bot […]

In this short video, I ask a simple question with no simple answer: How can customer service organizations avoid wild swings between a focus on experience and a focus on efficiency if macroeconomic conditions deteriorate? Let me know your thoughts on what your organization is doing to avoid this oft-repeated behavior. Email me at ijacobs@forrester.com. […]

Salesforce continues its fast and furious acquisition spree by picking up ClickSoftware for $1.53 billion to beef up its field service capabilities. Field service is a rapidly growing area in CRM. Growth is fueled by the demand for: 1) differentiated customer experiences, which extends to a field worker showing up at a customer or a […]

Not all customer service vendor solutions are a good fit for your organization, and choosing the right one depends on the number of agents you have, your growth projections, your business model, the type of industry you are in, and whether you are looking for a standalone customer service solution or one that is part […]

In this short take, I discuss the lessons learned from evaluating 14 vendors for the Forrester New Wave™: Conversational AI For Customer Service, Q2 2019. Check out the video below. For more insights, Forrester clients can dig into the full evaluative research here. And if you have more questions, reach out via inquiry.

Your customers have more choice over what products to buy, where to buy them, and how to buy them. What they don’t have is time. In fact, Forrester finds that two-thirds of customers say valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service. Customer service organizations […]

Happy customer service agents mean happy customers — and happy shareholders. Engaged agents also have better job performance, are more productive, and stay in their jobs longer — which is one of the costlier factors in managing customer service operations. Customer service leaders have to balance their job demands with technology and training. They also […]

Automation and AI increasingly handle routine tasks. Customer service agents already focus on escalations and exceptions. They need a powerful workspace to empower them to understand their customer, their journey, and their context. They also need to be armed with the right knowledge and data to help solve hard problems. They need to be focused on […]

As AI Eats Jobs, Agents Are More Valued Great customer service is not just about cutting costs or making operations more efficient. Instead, it’s a systematic reinvention of established technology, data, and operations — leveraging automation, data, and agents together to exploit each of their unique strengths. Trend 1: AI upends customer service operations. Automation and AI […]

Transitioning your contact center to the cloud isn’t just for smaller businesses; it can help brands of all sizes boost agility and access to new features. In our new report, “The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Contact Centers, Q3 2018,” we identified the 11 most significant vendors in the space and evaluated them to help you select […]

Automation and AI now impact every job — including every customer service job. AI handles, with increased confidence, repetitive work, allowing customer service agents to focus on tasks of greater value to the company. And customer service robots — which we define as semi- or fully autonomous physical machines that perform services to augment humans or automate tasks — […]

For some time, the burning question has been: Will robots replace humans? While the proliferation of robotic process automation (RPA) has reduced headcount in the back office, it’s a different story for customer service and sales. In a Forrester survey, 46% of companies said sales and marketing are leading the investment in and adoption of […]

Forrester’s customer experience Forums are in their 10th year — from our first one in 2009 in New York, they’ve grown and spread to San Francisco, London, Singapore, and other cities around the world and have become yearly destinations for CX pros far and wide. CX Europe 2018 is just 12 days from now — Tuesday and Wednesday, […]

As of 2018, the market for contact center technology has fully shifted to cloud. The remaining outliers of demand are large, highly customized implementations that preserve legacy on-premises software or organizations that wish to maintain the technology inside their firewall. Agility, flexibility, and the ability to rapidly shift capacity are all key elements that AD&D […]

Great customer service helps control costs as companies squeeze out operational efficiencies. It also fuels sustainable top-line revenue growth by providing differentiated experiences that keep customers loyal to your brand. We just finished assessing 20 of the most important technologies in customer service in terms of their maturity and business value. Here are some of […]

Increasing channel diversity and automation will make interactions more complex, requiring highly skilled agents and intelligent processes to assist them. Here’s my take on five valuable use cases for AI in the contact center.