customer service solutions

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.

I recently went to Verint’s Engage18 conference, held in Dallas from May 14 to 17. It’s not a big conference; it was attended by about 1,500 people who use one or more of the company’s customer service products: workforce engagement, self-service, voice of the customer, and fraud and compliance. What it lacks in size, it makes […]

I recently went to Verint’s Engage18 conference, held in Dallas from May 14 to 17. It’s not a big conference; it was attended by about 1,500 people who use one or more of the company’s customer service products: workforce engagement, self-service, voice of the customer, and fraud and compliance. What it lacks in size, it makes […]

I attended ServiceNow’s Knowledge18 conference, held in Las Vegas on May 7–10. It’s a well-attended conference, by 18,000 people who use one or more of the company’s cloud service management, HR, security, and customer service products, which are all built on an enterprise-grade platform. At the conference, there was a lot of emotion spent talking […]

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. This year, I see 3 broad customer service trends that organizations must consider as they fundamentally […]

In the age of the customer, consumers have more information, more choices, more access, and more power. But they don’t have more time. That’s why the companies that attract, win and retain customers focus on delivering the tenets of great experiences: make it easy, make it effective, and build an emotional connection. But, customer service […]

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) has permeated across the enterprise giving hopes of amping up automation, enriching insights, streamlining processes, augmenting workers, and in many ways making our lives as consumers, employees, and customers a whole lot better. Senior management salivates over the exponential gains AI is supposed to deliver to their business. Kumbayah […]

Customers use an exploding number of communication channels to interact with a company, moving between them dependent on their context and preferences. They also use several channels at the same time – like web and phone – if it makes sense to do so. We know that customers use self service as a first point […]

AI will change the nature of work. Look at the rise of driverless cars and ridesharing — two services that are fueled by AI. Customer service for these services is going to look much different than it does now. AI today is still in its infancy; AI applications span discrete capabilities, all of which are […]

AI improves the economics and capabilities of everything around us. Amazon and Netflix recommend products based on our history, Yahoo and Facebook tag photos, Waze and Google get us to our destination more effectively, Lyft and Uber precisely communicate arrival times of our drivers. Consumers are starting to expect intelligent experiences – personal, contextual to […]

Your customers just want an accurate, relevant, and complete answer to their question upon first contact so they can get back to what they were doing before the issue arose. Our data backs this up: 53% of US online adults are likely to abandon their online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to […]

Customers demand accurate, relevant, and complete answers to their questions upon first contact – served up as painlessly as possible –  so they can get back to what they were doing before the issue arose. Forrester data backs this up: In our December 2015 “Customer Lifecycle Survey,” we found that 53% of customers are likely […]

It’s a no-brainer that good customer service experiences boost satisfaction, loyalty, and can influence top line revenue. Good service — whether it’s to answer a customer’s question prior to purchase, or help a customer resolve an issue post-purchase should be easy, effective, and strive to create an emotional bond between the customer and the company. […]

I recently wrapped up my third evaluation of customer loyalty vendors, and the market has evolved slightly since 2013. First, the lines between loyalty technology and services are fading: vendors that were traditionally considered service providers continue to productize and improve their technology platforms, and pure-play loyalty technology platform providers are shoring up their professional […]