StraightTalk

An Agile Cisco is an innovative Cisco

At Cisco’s recent contact center analyst conference, executives from its Collaboration Technology Group gave insight into the success of the company’s current product segmentation mix, and the thinking behind some of its market movements.

Nuance and [24]7 revisit the design of customer self-service and IVR

Two vendors in the IVR space recently announced innovative responses to the changing self-service technology landscape: Nuance, with its voice-directed Nina IVR, and [24]7 with its analytics-based predictive Visual Speech for mobile interfaces.

Genesys steps into analytics with Utopy acquisition

Genesys has announced that it will acquire the speech analytics and workforce optimization (WFO) specialist Utopy. It plans to integrate Utopy’s analytics capabilities with its own call routing and WFO suite.

Salesforce tackles the social customer service experience

Salesforce offers businesses that want to embark on social customer service projects a powerful range of options via its Service Cloud. The enhancements to it unveiled at Dreamforce are welcome, particularly Chatter Communities.

Customers avoid “shiny objects” in favor of contact channels that work

Despite the increasing attention enterprises are paying to expanding the array of possible customer contact channels, Ovum’s data indicates that customers tend to rely on tried-and-true contact modes. Notably, there is little variation in the pattern of contact among different age groups. Customers, whether Boomers, Millennials or something in-between, favor contact channels that show results over channels that are novel.

A mobile customer care strategy requires accountable ownership to succeed

Providing mobile access for customers is a popular initiative in many organizations today, but the ability to translate momentum into the development of customer care capabilities varies widely based on organizational dynamics (politics) and the focus for mobile strategy within an enterprise.

CallMiner’s analytics upgrade emphasizes agent performance

CallMiner’s latest release of Eureka is billed as making it easier for front-line managers and customer-facing agents to automatically view information that is relevant to their individual performances. Closer coordination between analytics and agent performance can help enterprises enhance the overall customer experience they offer.

Nexidia accelerates the shift to cloud-based contact center analytics

Nexidia's latest offerings will likely accelerate competitive pressures to integrate multiple forms of data into contact center analytics, and to push deployments of those technologies into the cloud.

Interactive Intelligence tackles mobile customer care

Interactive Intelligence is releasing a new software platform, Interaction Mobilizer, to bridge the gap between contact centers and the mobile customer base. This is a positive step for both enterprises and customers.

A first look at the “new” Genesys

Genesys' first analyst conference since departing Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) revealed a company with a keen understanding of the more complex customer interactions that are about to transform contact center service delivery.