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Quality Wines are the Opposites of Callers in Queue

Quality wines. That term can mean a different thing to different people. Some folks may consider a sub-$100 bottle of wine as not being a quality bottle. Some people may consider quality to be simply something they can drink easily without wanting to wretch at the flavour. One thing is almost an absolute though when it comes to wine: They get better with age. Callers who are waiting in your IVR queues, however, are the exact opposite.

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Four Simple Ways to Annoy Your Callers

Bad IVR makes for Angry Customer

Yesterday, the Indosoft blog posted an article on how to turn your call center ACD into a time machine. It listed ten things you can do to make sure time passes as easily as possible for your callers. When it was being written, I thought it was a comprehensive look at the biggest issues you can face when settting up your IVR.

Then I called my cell phone provider. Continue reading “Four Simple Ways to Annoy Your Callers”

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10 Ways to Control Time in the Call Center ACD

Phones and time itself under your control

Shocking fact: Your callers don’t enjoy waiting to speak to an agent.

Sometimes it’s not the actual amount of time waiting, though. It’s the perception of time.

Everyone’s experienced the perception of time issue. You’re sitting in a meeting, and you look at the clock. After what seems like hours, you see it’s only been a few minutes. You get home from work. You finally have a chance to that thing you wanted to do. You start doing it, then after 10 minutes you look at the clock and an hour has passed. Continue reading “10 Ways to Control Time in the Call Center ACD”

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Why is no one answering? A few reasons why outbound dialing can be frustrating

We tend to get this type of question more that we should. To an inexperienced user, this symptom seems like a system issue, where more often than not, it’s a simple misunderstanding of the system’s capability. Let’s take a look at a few of the most common reasons why people aren’t answering your outbound contact center calls.

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Introducing our new API

Still Life of an Electrical Wall Outlet Overloaded with Wires and Cables

As you may have seen already, we’re about to release a major new version of our call centre software. One of the major changes we have made is that we have completely replaced the API for 2nd and 3rd party developers.

As Q-Suite is over 16 years old, technology has evolved along with it. Looking back on old call centre technologies can make us feel nostalgic, but we shouldn’t be feeling nostalgic when looking at our current API set. This is why we decided to replace our multiple API sets with a single one that can be accessed over different technologies.

Our 6.0 API can be accessed over a websocket, REST, or STOMP connection with the same command set. These will replace our .NET libraries, XML over HTTP, and proprietary binary protocol APIs.

As an example, let’s take a look at the API call that’s used to log in. We send the command with the username and password and a unique token for the request.

{
 "api": "authenticate",
 "version": "1",
 "token": "71c0ac12-9b3a-11e4-9898-74d435e8439b",
 "hostname": "127.0.0.1",
 "username": "test",
 "password": "test"
 }

The server then returns the response:

{
 "api": "authenticate",
 "version": 1,
 "timestamp": "2015-05-20T17:33:10.812Z",
 "microseconds": 90000,
 "token": "71c0ac12-9b3a-11e4-9898-74d435e8439b",
 "success": true,
 "data": {
     "userId": 11,
     "authKey": "19407819-be9b-4fec-9339-d97845019b33"
     }
 }

While we’ll still be supporting our old APIs on our 5.X platform for the time being, we believe the transition to the new one will worthwhile as it will open up many new features and provide a much more consistent way of interfacing with our software.

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Large and In Charge: Tips for Call Center Capacity Planning

You have a successful contact center in operation and things are going well. The site isn’t having any issues with call quality, database latency, or agent portal usage. It’s a wonderful thing. You have a new client coming on board and all of a sudden, you need four times the capacity and throughput that your site currently handles and handles well. While the new business is certainly welcomed, how can you expand, efficiently and effectively, to meet these new requirements for your contact center? Continue reading “Large and In Charge: Tips for Call Center Capacity Planning”

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Hold it steady! Hold it steady! It’s good! How to use Hold in your Call Center

Another year and another Super Bowl has passed us by. With all the hoopla that comes from the two weeks between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl itself, talking about quarterbacks-this and defences-that, it’s not really surprising that the guys responsible for holding the footballs in place for their kickers get next to no attention. Even though this role is highly overlooked, it can be amazingly crucial to the outcome of a game. Good or even great holds that result in points for the team are par for the course. However, a botched hold can ultimately end a team’s season and perhaps even their chance to take home the Vince Lombardi trophy. We’ve seen these before with Tony Romo in real-life and with Ray Finkle in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for a hilariously fictional take on the situation. The bottom line here is that holding is very important and let’s have a look at how this can be done in a proper manner.

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Super Bowl 50 is Coming! Effectively Handling Volume Spikes in your Contact Center ACD

 It’s that time of year again. Super Bowl Sunday is this weekend. Regardless of which teams happen to be playing in the big game, the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers in this case, it is must-see TV. People watch for various reasons. They want to watch the game itself, they just care about the commercials and the halftime show, or they just want an excuse to hang out with friends on a Sunday night. Whatever your reasoning for watching the Super Bowl, the bottom line is that millions and millions of people tune in who normally would not be tuning in if it were any given Sunday. With the most-watched sporting event worldwide looming on the horizon, let’s have a look at how you can handle volume spikes in your contact center ACD.

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