It’s been a long long time since I’ve been this excited for a movie. I have fond memories of hitting the local theater back in 1993 and being awestruck for the entire experience. Even today, the top notch special effects in Jurassic Park hold up against recent films. That is quite a feat. However, dinosaurs had their time and extinction was their fate. How can you avoid this for your contact center? Continue reading “Jurassic World opens this weekend! Avoiding Extinction in your Contact Center”
Get All Agents on the Same Page: Use Scripts to Access Your Issue Tracking System
We’ve looked at Q-Suite’s script builder before and how easy and flexible it can be for creating agent scripts. While the script feature is typically used to build the proper flow for the agent-customer interaction, which may involve data gathering by the agent, it can be used in in different ways. Let’s explore how we can use the script builder to merge agent scripting and issue tracking on the same page. Continue reading “Get All Agents on the Same Page: Use Scripts to Access Your Issue Tracking System”
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”
Hot Leads, High Performance
Someone is really interested in your product. They’ve filled out the form on the web site and clicked “Contact Me”. They’re still thinking about you. Now, who do you have call them? It’s a lot like pizza. When it’s hot and fresh at just the right time, it’s a magical experience.
Continue reading “Hot Leads, High Performance”
Running the Beachfront Call Center
In 2004, we had a client with a call center in Northern New Brunswick. For a dozen seats, he required thousands of dollars in telephony equipment, including the Pika board required to wire in the multiple incoming telephone channels, CTI server and a server to manage the leads and agent interaction. A few years later, and after a downturn in the economy, he was able to repurpose the equipment. He moved it to his basement, kept a few call center seats there, and used DSL to connect to a SIP provider. If he were to start today, he wouldn’t need the telephony card, the servers, and the wiring. He could start in his basement, using the Cloud, and only move to an outside office when his growth demanded. Continue reading “Running the Beachfront Call Center”
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”
What To Do Before Someone Lets The Smoke Out of Your Server
The client was worried because one of the Asterisk servers had gone down without any notice at all. The overseer process on the other Asterisk server had noticed, and had taken over as the active server. The disruption was minimal. Agents were at work. But the client wanted to know what had happened, and what we could do to prevent the issue in the first place. After 30 minutes of poring over logs, digging around, and contacting the colo, we discovered that a tech had decided to swap out the power bar connected to that server. There was no notice, and not even a courtesy three-finger salute. Continue reading “What To Do Before Someone Lets The Smoke Out of Your Server”
Four Keys To Soft Phone Delight
A colleague once visited a client site, and found their server room to be a nightmare. Among other things, they had insisted their telco give them a PRI connection due to the improved reliability they thought they’d get. They had also decided to use a PRI to SIP connection in the server room to allow the flexibility of moving the telphony connection from one server to another if needed. When Justin got there, he found a SIP to PRI device on the telco side, and a PRI to SIP device connecting in to Asterisk. Continue reading “Four Keys To Soft Phone Delight”
Open or Closed Relationship: Which One is Right for You?
Open source software has come a long way in the last few decades. What was once just a mash of code lying around that lacked features and actual usefulness and usability, can now be full-fledged solutions for individuals and companies alike. Is an open source based software solution right for you or your contact center though? Let’s compare a few points of interest. Continue reading “Open or Closed Relationship: Which One is Right for You?”