I'm one of those people who watches the Super Bowl just for the commercials. At $3.5 million for a 30-second spot in this year's Super Bowl, you have to assume that only the best of the best will be present. Given the sheer volume of eyeballs on those ads, you have to anticipate that the companies will receive an influx of calls, tweets, emails, etc., not long after their ads air. (In fact, with the number of ads that have been leaked this year, they're probably already seeing them.)    Read more»

If you've ever wondered what cloud computing is, or how it (and inContact) can improve your contact center's profitability and operations, we've laid it all out for you in a two minute, thirty-one second video. Sit back and enjoy!

As they say, good news bears repeating. We don't often do this on this blog, but I wanted to share some great news with all of our loyal blog readers, and the easiest way to do that was to repost a press release we issued this morning in its entirety. This is a great time for inContact, and our positioning in the DMG Hosted Contact Center Infrastructure Report is additional validation of our market leadership.   Read more»

I've long been fascinated by the move toward Work From Home (WFH) agents in the contact center industry. It just seems to make sense - lower costs for contact center operators and a happier work environment for contact center agents.

As I've talked with successful contact center managers/operators who are utilizing the WFH model, I've seen some trends toward leveraging WFH not only for the "usual" reasons (lower costs, happier agents) but for overall improved results / incentives in the contact center. I wanted to share with you the ways that some forward thinking contact centers are using the model:   Read more»

We had a great response to Wednesday's blog with our Top 10 list from the Early Morning Show at ICUC 2011. I thought I'd dig back into the archives and share the Top 10 list from ICUC 2010. The great thing about it is that lists like these hold up quite well over time. Today we have "Top 10 Best Excuses for Agents Being Late or Absent to Work".   Read more»

Every year at our inContact User Conference (ICUC) we have a really fun general session called The Early Morning Show. It's a talk show style show featuring the usual fare of talk shows - celebrity guests, games, and, of course, a Top 10 list. I'd like to share with you the Top 10 list we featured at ICUC 2011 as a bit of a holiday gift.

Top 10 Things Call Center Agents Wish They Had

10. Voice automated polygraph

9. Ability to "fire" callers   Read more»

Every now and again you get to be a part of something that's truly great. I've had such an opportunity this year as I've had the pleasure to work with Frost & Sullivan as they put together their "Premise Vs. Hosted Contact Center: Total Cost of Ownership Analysis". The report analyzes and compares the TCO of the general hosted and premise markets for contact centers. Much like listening to albums of your favorite band for years, and finally seeing a live show, I had the pleasure of hearing Ashwin Iyer, Global Director of the Contact Center Practice at Frost & Sullivan, present on the study recently.

Ashwin began his presentation by stating that most contact centers today are tasked with three primary goals:

• Reduce customer service / support costs
• Improve customer satisfaction
• Increase revenue

Holiday shoppers seem to come in many forms - there are the Black Friday shoppers (way to scary for me), the early shoppers (one Facebook friend had all of her presents purchased and wrapped before Halloween), the "hit every store in a 100 mile radius shoppers" and the online shoppers. I fall into the last category. I love the Internet.   Read more»

As I've been daydreaming of pumpkin pie and turkey lately, I've also found myself reflecting back on the many things in my life I'm thankful for.  My actual "thankful" list is much longer than there is room for here on this blog so I'm sticking with just a few of my top items...

My fabulous colleagues - We have a great bunch of people working here at inContact, all of whom are dedicated to driving great customer experiences for our customers. We work hard and we play hard, and in the end, have a lot of fun together. (And if you want to join our amazing team, you can check out our job openings here.)   Read more»

It's common knowledge that gaining and sustaining a competitive advantage today requires a top-notch customer experience. The breadth of the customer experience across all touch-points can make this seem like a daunting task. As a result, many business leaders feel overwhelmed by the prospect of reengineering the customer experience and do nothing—or focus on one siloed element of the customer experience, missing the opportunity to deliver real impact.

We are bringing together three amazing industry thought leaders to discuss what decision makers should do to begin building a unique, relevant customer experience in a webinar on Nov. 30, including:

• Martha Rogers, Founding Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group
• Sarah McElwee, Vice President of Response Services, DATACORE Marketing
• Mariann McDonagh, Chief Marketing Officer, inContact

Our presenters will discuss how to:   Read more»