Salesforce.com today released Salesforce Einstein, which brings artificial intelligence to its CRM offerings, enhancing areas such as customer service, sales, marketing, and commerce and providing more predictive and personalized customer experiences. (Featured on DestinationCRM.com.)
Posted September 21, 2016
Online review platform provider Trustpilot is now integrated with Zendesk, a cloud-based customer service platform provider, in an effort to empower Trustpilot clients with a wider array of customer service tools and technology. Through the integration, a review on Trustpilot automatically generates a customer service ticket in Zendesk so that agents using Zendesk can be immediately alerted and can appropriately respond to the review.
Posted September 16, 2016
West, a provider of cloud-based communication applications and services, has enhanced its Cloud Contact Center with the addition of multichannel capabilities, including support for email, web chat, and text messaging; network-based queuing; and inbound and outbound call blending.
Posted September 16, 2016
The enhancement allows contact centers to infuse Visual IVRs with data from their back-office systems.
Posted September 15, 2016
In the age of Siri, Cortana, and Echo, the idea of artificial intelligence conjures up a sense of fear not because of how it's been portrayed in science fiction, but because AI may one day pose a very real job threat across a number of professions, including customer service. AI tools can perform certain tasks faster and more efficiently than people, but a recent customer service hiccup from travel planning company Skyscanner serves as a reminder that, however powerful it is, AI won't be a catch-all tool for customer support.
Posted September 09, 2016
[24]7, a provider of customer engagement solutions, is partnering with Amdocs, a provider of customer experience software for the telecommunications industry, to deliver intelligent, personalized customer support across all service channels, including chat, email, voice, web, and mobile.
Posted September 08, 2016
Cyara Solutions yesterday released version 6.4.0 of its omnichannel discovery, testing, and monitoring platform for customer service interactions. The Cyara 6.4.0 release brings increased intelligence to Virtual Agent and enhances enterprise security and audit requirements around user logins and application usage.
Posted September 02, 2016
The transaction aims to bolster Genesys's customer experience offerings and global market presence.
Posted August 31, 2016
IP Office 10 increases security and resiliency and enhances the user experience.
Posted August 31, 2016
The acquisition is expected to help Calabrio speed up its corporate growth.
Posted August 30, 2016
In a study by equity insight and analytics provider 24/7 Wall Street and research company Zogby Analytics, Comcast was named one of the worst performers in customer service, while Amazon was named the best. More than 1,500 Americans were asked to evaluate companies across 17 industries.
Posted August 26, 2016
Verint Systems today unveiled several enhancements to its Real-Time Speech Analytics solution, which combines phonetic speech recognition and full transcription of calls with advanced language understanding.
Posted August 24, 2016
Five9, a provider of cloud-based contact center software, today launched the Summer 2016 release of its Virtual Contact Center (VCC).
Posted August 17, 2016
Genesys' app marketplace AppFoundry and developer portal DevFoundry have boasted rapid growth recently, with AppFoundry now offering more than 100 customer experience apps and DevFoundry now supporting more than 250 users. Jim Kraeutler, vice president of the innovation group at Genesys, atributes the growth to the vendor's commitment to educating partners and developers and giving them flexible tools to build solutions.
Posted August 12, 2016
inContact, a provider of cloud contact center and workforce optimization software, has partnered with HelpSocial, providers of an integration platform for customer care and social media, to bring social media customer care abilities to contact center agents using inContact's Open Cloud Platform.
Posted August 11, 2016
Air travel is hectic—hundreds of flights are cancelled and delayed throughout the country every day, and while some airlines handle these issues with ease, others send customers on an impossible journey to get reimbursed for travel nightmares. Startup AirHelp is working to eliminate some of the customer service hassle associated with air travel by handling the refund or reimbursement process for customers, even filing lawsuits when necessary.
Posted August 05, 2016
Transparency Market Research forecasts the global intelligent virtual assistant market to grow from $627.7 million in 2015 to $7.9 billion by 2024, at a 32.8 percent compound annual growth rate.
Posted August 03, 2016
As brands increasingly strive to provide self-service options for customers to solve straightforward problems quickly and efficiently, contact centers are taking on new roles, becoming an extension of the brand. Here are four reasons why customers still love—and need—contact centers.
Posted July 29, 2016
The acquisition will unite Nuance's IVR solutions and TouchCommerce's "omnichannel" offerings under a common umbrella. (Featured on DestinationCRM.com.
Posted July 21, 2016
Verint Systems yesterday launched Verint Robotic Process Automation, a set of advanced capabilities to automate, manage, and execute time-consuming, manual, and repetitive business processes, such as customer address changes, claims processing, billing, underwriting, and other high-volume tasks.
Posted July 20, 2016
Zendesk has launched Automatic Answers, a feature powered by machine learning to help customers solve their inquiries without having to go through contact center agents. Companies can embed the technology right into their Web sites or mobile apps.
Posted July 13, 2016
As Twitter continues to struggle and analysts start to speculate about a possible sale, the company is continuing to roll out features dedicated to the social customer service space. One new tool is designed to let consumers know when a brand is most active based on how quickly it responds to tweets and messages. Another is an updated Featured Tweet capability, which enables brands to pinpoint specific tweets that will remain fixed at the top of their feeds for other users to see immediately.
Posted July 08, 2016
The latest release of NICE's recording platform provides deeper business insights across channels, including chat and Skype for Business.
Posted July 08, 2016
eLoyalty, part of TeleTech Technology, has released version 10.6.3 of its Cisco-Powered Hosted Collaboration Solution/Contact Center as a Service (HCS/CCaaS) cloud offering. This is the second major release of the product, which uses the Cisco Unified Contact Center for Enterprise (UCCE) as its base, for 2016.
Posted July 06, 2016
inContact, a provider of cloud contact center and workforce optimization software, has introduced the second major release of Customer Interaction Cloud for 2016, version 16.2. Updates include new capabilities across key components of its unified solution, including omnichannel routing, workforce optimization, analytics, Voice as a Service, and Open Cloud Platform.
Posted June 29, 2016
Xerox has announced plans to split into two companies, with one portion remaining as Xerox and the other becoming Conduent, a business process outsourcing company that will offer solutions for customer service as well as other areas.
Posted June 24, 2016
At its SugarCon annual user conference on Wednesday, SugarCRM introduced an intelligent virtual assistant named Candace and Sugar Intelligence, a service that will combine data from external sources with company CRM data to provide a single view of the customer. (Featured on DestinationCRM.com.)
Posted June 17, 2016
Larry Augustin says that CRM has to move from a "system of record to a system of engagement." Also, SugarCRM announces an enhanced partnership with IBM and an integration with 3CLogic. (Featured on DestinationCRM.com.)
Posted June 15, 2016
Helpshift's cofounder and CEO, Abinash Tripathy, maintains that omnichannel service is not the answer to customers' growing expectations. As customers increasingly expect faster, more efficient support, the need for more sophisticated self-service support and support through artificial intelligence will grow. With $23 million in funding, Helpshift plans to continue improving its in-app messaging customer service tool by making it more proactive.
Posted June 13, 2016
Following years of investment in cloud technologies and more than 1,000 active cloud deployments, Verint Systems yesterday officially announced that its entire Customer Engagement Optimization portfolio is now available for cloud deployment.
Posted June 07, 2016
At his company's Interactions user conference today, Interactive Intelligence Group Founder and CEO Don Brown laid to rest the rumors that his company was going to sunset its Customer Interaction Center (CIC) solution in favor of PureCloud, its cloud-based contact center suite running entirely on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.
Posted June 06, 2016
In an industry often criticized for poor customer satisfaction, T-Mobile rose to the top, beating out competitors AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. On ACSI's 100-point scale, T-Mobile earned 74 points while Verizon and AT&T both earned 71. Though the victory margin is slim, T-Mobile's improvement is noteworthy—the carrier's score grew by 4 points. Sprint was the most-improved carrier, raising its score from 65 to 70 this year, but the company fell behind its three primary competitors overall.
Posted June 03, 2016
To deliver a more seamless cross-device experience for customers, Salesforce.com has introduced Snap-In SDKs for the Web and for mobile devices. The debut of snap-in functionality enables users to quickly add tools such as Cases, Knowledge, Live Chat, SOS, and Tap-to-Call to their mobile and Web apps.
Posted May 27, 2016
WASHINGTON -- Only 3 percent of all companies can start a customer interaction on one channel and seamlessly move to another channel, while still maintaining all the context of the previous interactions, Kate Leggett, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, reported during her morning keynote to open the third day of the Customer Service Experience conference.
Posted May 26, 2016
WASHINGTON — Sir Francis Bacon is often credited with the phrase "knowledge is power." Eric McKirdy, global customer care manager at Ask.com and today's keynote speaker at the Customer Service Experience conference, can be credited with saying that "knowledge is not power unless it is accompanied by action."
Posted May 25, 2016
WASHINGTON — Disney excels at customer service, and the reason is that the company, in crafting every customer experience, looks at everything through the eyes of the customer, Dennis Snow, president of Snow & Associates and a former member of the leadership team at Walt Disney World, told attendees at the CRM Evolution, Customer Service Experience, and SpeechTEK conferences during his opening keynote Monday morning.
Posted May 24, 2016
NICE Systems yesterday entered a definitive agreement to acquire inContact, a provider of cloud contact center technology, for $940 million. The deal brings together NICE's workforce optimization and analytics solutions with inContact's advanced contact center cloud offerings.
Posted May 19, 2016
Research released today by the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) and Lionbridge Technologies found that most contact centers are not prepared to handle the increase in customer contacts in languages other than English.
Posted May 13, 2016
A recent Gallup poll found that when both their customers and employees are engaged, companies see a 240 percent increase in performance-related outcomes, which goes to show that customer service "really matters," said Brad Cleveland, cofounder and senior adviser of the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), during the opening keynote of the ICMI Contact Center Expo.
Posted May 12, 2016
The former Disney leadership team member urges organizations to focus on improving their customer experiences.
Posted May 11, 2016
Messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat are becoming increasingly popular among consumers, and as the platforms introduce tools for companies, they are also becoming a route for customer support. Live chat has become quite popular as well, with companies deploying proprietary chat or implementing chat solutions from vendors such as Zendesk. But messaging apps and live chat tools have limitations from a customer service standpoint. That's why newcomer LiveNinja just secured $2 million to continue developing a hybrid tool that brings together the best of both.
Posted May 06, 2016
Cyara today launched its Virtual Agent for Desktop, a solution for testing how efficiently contact center agents can interact with the myriad of systems and apps that reside on their desktops.
Posted May 04, 2016
Effective self-service functionality can make a company's customer experience stand out, and solid search capabilities play a key role in ensuring that customers quickly find the resources they need. With the introduction of Coveo's new Sitecore native search app, Coveo for Sitecore Pro Cloud Edition (as well as an on-premises version of the same tool), companies can add context to customers' searches and improve the relevance of the content that is returned in a search.
Posted April 29, 2016
Based on feedback it has received from its customers, B2B customer support and help desk software provider TeamSupport has added Customer Families as part of the spring release of its support platform and upgraded its ScreenView screen recording software to support WebRTC.
Posted April 27, 2016
Interactions, a provider of speech and natural language technology, and Arise Virtual Solutions, a provider of work-from-home agent business process outsourcing (BPO) services, have partnered to expand the delivery of conversational virtual assistant solutions for customer care.
Posted April 22, 2016
Social customer service software and services provider LiveWorld today launched the Conversation Management Platform, a cloud-based solution to help companies manage customer conversations across social media and messaging apps in real time.
Posted April 19, 2016
At its developer conference this week, Facebook introduced bots on Messenger, an automated response system for customer support and other e-commerce interactions. The chatbots are powered by Messenger's updated Send and Receive API, which enables the platform to not only support text, but also other types of content such as images and links. Call-to-action buttons will also be available on the updated platform, according to Facebook.
Posted April 15, 2016
Pegasystems today announced its acquisition of OpenSpan, a provider of robotic process automation (RPA) and workforce analytics software, bringing together robotics, analytics, and case management to enable more productive contact center employees.
Posted April 12, 2016
After relying on email customer support for six years, Uber is ditching the channel in favor of in-app self-service. As the company expands globally, email is proving to be an unsustainable support route, especially in countries such as India where email is not widely available. The redesigned help function within the app will now replace email and will tackle the most common questions and concerns that riders and drivers have, including giving riders easy access to passenger ratings.
Posted April 08, 2016
WorkFlex's agent self-scheduling empowerment tool is expanded beyond hours and days to the type of work performed during the day.
Posted April 05, 2016