Those little yellow characters from the Despicable Me movies are getting their own stand alone film and it’s out this weekend. If you are like me, you find them absolutely hilarious and chuckle every time you see them do anything, so the film should be highly entertaining I would think. They can go a little off the rails at times if you don’t keep them under control and the same behavior has a possibility of occurring at your contact center, with less than hysterical results. Here are a few tools you can use to help limit those events in the contact center. Continue reading “Keeping Minions Under Control: Quality Monitoring Tools for Your Contact Center ACD”
Common Sense and the Contact Center ACD
Here are a quick hitters about common sense and the contact center ACD:
- If you feel like you must use a virtual server, please don’t configure the virtual device to have more resources than the actual physical server. Just because it’s virtual doesn’t magically transform your 8GB physical server into three 32GB virtual devices.
- Network latency is going to happen if you decide that routing calls from Manilla to Los Angeles to London to Manilla is a good idea. Just because it is VoIP does not mean that data all of sudden gets transmitted instantly, just like normal old internet traffic does not get transmitted instantly.
- If your hosted platform gives you minimum and recommended specifications for your servers and you opt for the minimum, do not be surprised when certain services are not performing in a desired fashion. If you decide that an Asterisk server only needs the minimum requirements, which will handle X amount of calls, do not be shocked when X+1 calls will cause problems.
I would like to think that these are quite obvious, however, they appear not to be. We talked last week about how to avoid extinction for your contact center. Having common sense can go a long way in making sure that doesn’t happen.
Progressing Through Destiny’s House of Wolves at My Own Pace: Take the Same Approach for Your Contact Center Leads
Destiny’s disc (I still like physical media for games if I can help it) has been the exclusive tenant of my PS4’s disc drive since launching on September 9th, 2014. I’ve been through the campaign, completed Nightfalls, the Vault of Glass, and Crota’s End many times. The latest expansion, House of Wolves, dropped May 19th, and I am completely enjoying my time there. I’m mostly a casual player, so I don’t get bent out of shape if I fail to reach the max level on my characters (I do have a 34 Hunter though) or I don’t get all the best gear as quickly as possible. I’ll get there at some point. However I’ve already seen threads and forum posts pop up from the hardcore players who have already maxed out all 3 characters and now they are asking the question ‘What else is left for me to do?’ This can apply to how your contact leads are dialed. Let’s have a look. Continue reading “Progressing Through Destiny’s House of Wolves at My Own Pace: Take the Same Approach for Your Contact Center Leads”
Farewell David Letterman! Retiring (Your Leads) Can Be a Good Thing
David Letterman had a pretty spectacular career as a late night talk show host. He started his late night gig at NBC in 1982 and ended his storied career this week over on CBS. That’s 33 years of being on late night television. Impressive. However, sometimes you just have to call it quits and retire. Contact center leads can also be gracefully retired and there can be a few reasons as to why your contact center would want to follow this route. Continue reading “Farewell David Letterman! Retiring (Your Leads) Can Be a Good Thing”
Timeout! Sports, Kids, and Contact Centers
Timeouts in the sporting world are almost always used in an effective manner. Sure there’s the odd time where it turns into an amazing disaster (Chris Webber in the 1993 NCAA Finals comes to mind), but for the most part, they are used as methods to take a breather, either to get your players rested for a final push down the stretch or to get a break from getting overwhelmed by the opposing team. In terms of kids, timeouts are administered when a child needs a break, either from misbehaving or being overstimulated. How can we apply timeouts in our contact center? Let’s have a look at a few of the ways the Q-Suite can use these. Continue reading “Timeout! Sports, Kids, and Contact Centers”
Apple Watch or Samsung Gear? Get More Mobile!
Smart watches and wearable technology aren’t entirely new, however I’m sure that there are millions of people eagerly awaiting the release date of the Apple Watch. The Samsung Gear has been in the wild for a bit already, but there’s always going to be that dividing line of Apple/non-Apple users, so now both sides will have options. How can we relate this to a call center? Continue reading “Apple Watch or Samsung Gear? Get More Mobile!”
Why are my calls disconnecting? I’m not in an elevator!
We ran into a bit of a troubleshooting situation fairly recently. A few different clients were reporting that calls were disconnecting. Not only were calls disconnecting, but they were disconnecting at reproducible durations. Right away, given the nature of the drops, we can rule out normal every day occurrences, like horrible cell phone reception or driving through a tunnel. Continue reading “Why are my calls disconnecting? I’m not in an elevator!”
Voicemail in the Call Center ACD
We are going to talk a bit about voicemail in this post. Whether you like or dislike voicemail as a whole, I think we can agree that it is a fairly important medium for communication. Personally, I am not a huge fan of leaving and/or checking voicemail, but I may very well be in the minority. Let us go over some of the ways to configure and use voicemail in the Q-Suite. Continue reading “Voicemail in the Call Center ACD”
Transfer Types in the Call Center ACD
In a previous post, I talked about call transfers in the contact center. I am going to expand on this topic, and am going to discuss the types of transfers that can be done in the Q-Suite. These types are a little different than the other ones and describe a bit more about the destination target of the transfer. Continue reading “Transfer Types in the Call Center ACD”
Automated Queue Callbacks in the Call Center ACD
When making a call into a call center ACD, it’s almost inevitable that you will end up waiting in a queue, while some form of hold music and/or periodic message plays until you eventually get connected to a live agent. With wait times being unpredictable at the best of times, being able to signal to the ACD that ‘Hey I’d actually like you to call me back when an agent is available instead of waiting for who knows how long here in this queue’ is a very solid option for people who do not want to sit around on hold. The ability for a caller to trigger this type of event is a standard, out-of-the-box feature of the Q-Suite. Continue reading “Automated Queue Callbacks in the Call Center ACD”