Customer Service Solutions
Customer service can make or break any customer relationship. Read tips on finding and implementing the right customer service solutions for your firm.
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Blog
Brands Bear (Some) Blame For Conditions At Outsourcers
Between really bad press (here and here) and bankruptcy (here), large contact center outsourcers have seen a rough last few months. Bad press for outsourcers spells trouble for and affects the brands that contract with them: Consumers will react regardless of whether the news comes from the company itself or up the supply chain. Negative […]
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Blog
Facebook Looks To Monetize Messaging By Acquiring Kustomer And Extending Into Customer Service
Facebook announced its intention to acquire Kustomer for $1 billion, adding digital customer service to its portfolio. Why the focus on customer service? It’s because customers hold the power in interactions with companies. Customers demand easy, effective service that values their time and provides them with personal experiences that are in context of their actions. They increasingly use self-service and digital channels to interact with […]
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Predictions 2021 Hub
Explore our blog posts, videos, guides, and other resources to understand the dynamics that will shape 2021.
Blog
Predictions 2021: It’s All About Empathy, Digital, And Virtualizing Customer Care
The purpose of customer service is no longer just to alleviate run-of-the-mill inconveniences; it is to provide fundamental and necessary services for consumers devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn how customer service will evolve in 2021.
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Blog
Extend The Life Of Your Chatbots By Looking Beyond The Holiday Season
Let’s just get it out of the way at the start of this blog: COVID-19 has remade retail and has forced a rapid shift toward digital customer service interactions. And now the holidays are nigh, and e-commerce seems to be the order of the day (or the “plague year”). To help with this rush of […]
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Blog
Knowledge Management Solutions Are Powerful, But Choosing The Right One Is Hard
Since the start of the pandemic, customer service organizations are doubling down on their investments in knowledge management because these solutions: Empower customer service agents to deliver successful outcomes. One of the top three drivers of customer service success is agent knowledge. The early days of knowledge management focused on streamlining access to curated content. […]
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Blog
How To Make Customer Service More Digital
Phone experiences are increasingly becoming suboptimal as more and more customer service journeys begin before customers pick up the phone. This is because most companies deploy their communication channels in silos, which means that: (1) Agents have no knowledge of the customer’s prior digital interactions and (2) they cannot easily understand a customer’s prior actions […]
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Blog
Digital-First Customer Service Solutions Deliver Highly Automated Service
There is no single customer service solution that is ideal for all sizes of organizations, all industries, or all business models. For example, many companies selling and supporting higher-value, considered purchases have complex customer service processes that require collaboration between the account and customer service organization. Each customer interaction is also an opportunity to nurture […]
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Blog
Digital-First Customer Service Solutions Emerge As Their Own Software Category
More customers are using self-service as a first point of contact during the pandemic. Learn how companies are working to improve the experience.
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Blog
Key Takeaways From Forrester’s Customer Service Executive Roundtable On Turning Challenges Into Opportunities
Twenty-two customer service executives shared their victories and challenges during the coronavirus pandemic. Read key takeaways from this conversation about customer service during COVID-19.
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Blog
How To Successfully Add RPA To Customer Service Operations
More and more customer service organizations turn to robotic process automation (RPA) to make agents more effective. The technology offloads repeatable tasks from agents, enforces compliance to process and policy, and allows agents to focus on work that matters. Yet contact centers often don’t see the initial ROI of RPA play out as they scale […]
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Blog
Create Meaningful Measurement, Not A Mess Of Metrics
Before we drown in dashboard dystopia, let’s swing the pendulum back to create meaningful metrics and measurement that will move your business forward and at the same time drive the outcomes that your customers want. At Forrester’s Customer Experience North America virtual event on June 16–18, we have an entire track dedicated to meaningful measurement where we’ll explore how both CX professionals and marketers can up their measurement game across six dimensions.
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Blog
Work-At-Home: Just The First Step In Contact Centers’ Response To COVID-19
Learn why now is the right time for brands to move to a work-at-home model for contact center agents.
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Blog
RPA Helps Contact Centers Deliver Better Customer Experiences
RPA (robotic process automation) is a tactical, short-term fix to digitize common, reproducible agent tasks in the contact center. It’s an easy overlay to your existing technology ecosystem and extends the life of the contact center applications. Forrester data shows that over 44% of organizations are already using RPA. There are two forms of RPA. […]
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Podcast
AI + Customer Service: Transformation Starts From Within
Will contact centers soon be whittled down to a single all-knowing chatbot? Sorry, not quite. But AI will remake customer service, starting from the outside in. Discover the contact center of the future on this week’s What It Means with Principal Analyst Ian Jacobs.
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Blog
The Three Megatrends For Customer Service In 2020
As AI and automation move deeper into customer service, new areas will be impacted including staffing, processes, and culture.
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Blog
The Future Of Contact Center Work: How To Source New Agent Talent
AI and automation are already reshaping call centers. Get your customer service organization prepared with these talent acquisition tips.
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Blog
RPA Impacts Employee And Customer Experiences — And That’s A Big Deal
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 […]
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Blog
Predictions 2020: AI Shakes Up Customer Service Workforce And Operations
AI will change how organizations staff, run, and manage their customer service teams. Read Forrester's 2020 customer service predictions to learn more.
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Blog
Use RPA To Make Customer Service Agents More Effective
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 […]
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Blog
A Recession Looms — How Will You Keep Experience In Focus?
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. […]
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