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What do a puzzle, a flashlight and a trophy have to do with Performance Management in a Contact Center?

Agents are the most critical resource in a contact center and yet the hardest to retain as evident with high attrition rates. As per the NiCE ICMI survey 25% of agents left the company in the past 12 months; 20% of agents left the contact center but stayed within the company; and 18% of agents changed positions in the contact center. Investing in AX has risen as one of the top priorities contact center leaders are undertaking to engage, motivate and most importantly retain agents.

This holiday shopping season promises to be the biggest one yet for people to shop over mobile phones from home, their cars and even from within retail stores.

You need to invest in digital channels in order to keep pace with the way your customers are communicating today. But, how do you justify the investment other than to say that you know that is what your customers prefer? How do you tie it to financial gains or operational improvements to get a proven ROI?

Optimization is one of those buzzy words that gets thrown around a lot in the contact center industry. According to the all-knowing Merriam-Webster, optimization is the “act, process, or methodology of making something as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible.” So to state the obvious – workforce optimization from a software perspective are those solutions that directly improve and upscale the productivity, efficiency and quality output of your agents.

As a liberal arts major in college, there is nothing I like better than invoking the spirit of The Bard (Shakespeare) in my writing. My title borrows from one of my favorite of his comedies, As You Like It. At a high level, I believe cloud contact center applications using artificial intelligence allow companies to deliver the kind of customer experience their customers want – not one dictated by the constraints of hardware-based, inflexible applications.

Valvoline, Inc. had identified a significant service issue that ran counter to the company’s brand standards, Quick. Easy. Trusted. What’s more, this issue was having widespread impact: both in the stores and on the phone, it was negatively affecting customers’ and employees’ experiences, as well as hurting performance and service standards.