Ted Fortezzo

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Ted Fortezzo

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Ted Fortezzo is a Director of Customer Communications Management at CSG International. He is passionate about business-to-consumer communications and in helping his clients achieve better CX, AX, UX, and DX.

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The Changing Landscape – Contact Center Operations after COVID19

Ted Fortezzo, Panelist - Recorded Session

Contact Center Operations, especially centers run by major enterprises and BPO’s have traditionally been firmly anchored in the “bricks and mortar” model and have maintained large Contact Center facilities across the United States and throughout the world to provide voice, email, chat and social media support services.

While many have deployed virtual home-based agents as part of their workforce, these groups have been smaller teams and represent a small percentage of the overall Contact Center operation. In recent years some enterprises and BPO’s have emerged with fully virtual, purpose-built Contact Centers designed specifically to remotely recruit, train and operate. Others have deployed hybrid models incorporating a mostly home-based workforce with a smaller “bricks and mortar” presence.

Since March 2020, Contact Centers across the world have been forced to almost instantly deploy all teams and agents to a completely virtual model. Hear from industry experts, how this is impacting the Contact Center industry and what their predictions are for what will come next.

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Map a Path to Better Customer Experiences

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MAP A PATH TO BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES Posted on November 12, 2019 Businesses think they’re doing everything right. They’re connecting.. →

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Map a Path to Better Customer Experiences Map a Path to Better Customer Experiences

by CSG Insights Team

MAP A PATH TO BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCESPosted on November 12, 2019Businesses think they’re doing everything right. They’re connecting ...

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0 Article-Article jplist-topic-CSG jplist-topic-Ted-Fortezzo jplist-topic-Insights jplist-topic-Customer-Experience jplist-topic-CX jplist-topic-Contact-Center 0 361202 361202 MAP A PATH TO BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCESPosted on November 12, 2019Businesses think they’re doing everything right. They’re connecting with customers on nine or ten different channels, most of which are digital. They’re answering customer questions on social media and sending surveys over text messaging. In their eyes, they’ve got every individual communication channel under control.But in reality, they don’t see their communication channels the way their customers do. That’s because customers don’t think about a business in different departments or channels. They see a business’ presence across channels as one singular entity, where they’ll get consistent information and responses no matter who they contact or how they contact them.And customer expectations are high—almost 90 percent of customers think businesses need to do more to provide a seamless experience, and 75 percent expect a consistent experience wherever they engage with businesses.With an average of 190 CRM categories, 10 communication channels, and five departments interacting with customers, inconsistent communications are inevitable. But it can be avoided if businesses put themselves in their customers’ shoes, and start mapping out their customer journeys.TAKING A JOURNEY McKinsey defines customer journey mapping as “paying attention to the complete, end-to-end experience customers have with a company from their perspective.” While businesses have mastered individual interactions that center around a specific scenario, like billing or customer service, there’s still room to go in providing an end-to-end experience.For instance, McKinsey documented a communication company’s onboarding journey, which spanned three months and an average of nine phone calls, a technician home visit and numerous web interactions. At each of these touchpoints, customers had an average satisfaction rating of 90 percent.But the journey as a whole? Just 40 percent.If each touchpoint isn’t connected to the next one, and customer data isn’t maintained across channels and interactions, it results in a haphazard journey. With journey mapping, companies can make sure they deliver consistent communication experiences. They can drill down into different stages of the customer lifecycle (i.e. new sign up, get help) and figure out which sequence of interactions moves customers from one stage to the next—and also delights the customer.THE NEXT STEPSTo build accurate journey maps, companies must predict the steps a customer may take on that journey.They must determine which care/sales channels are used, what their customer personas are, and what products and services are offered to those customers. Stakeholders across the business will need to collaborate to gather this information. This can (and should) be covered in meetings and an audit of existing systems and experiences.Once this information has been gathered, the next step is to map out common customer scenarios for each, such as Buy, Get Help or Pay. While each journey overall may be the same, the channels of delivery and personalized messaging for each customer may be different.Journeys must be designed to deliver the same messages on different channels, to provide a personalized but standardized experience to each customer. Using pre-mapped journeys based on industry best practices can eliminate the guesswork, incorporate multiple channels, and reduce the time it takes to map an experience from start to finish.Businesses are already halfway there by offering the channels that customers want to use. The next step is to orchestrate those channels so they’re part of a consistent customer journey.Want to learn more about designing great customer journeys? Download the journey mapping ebook to learn how. CSGCSG Insights TeamView Original Source: https://www.csgi.com/insights/map-a-path-to-better-customer-experiences/

Map a Path to Better Customer Experiences

Article

MAP A PATH TO BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCESPosted on November 12, 2019Businesses think they’re doing everything right. They’re connecting with ...

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4 Contact Center AI Myths that Need Busting 4 Contact Center AI Myths that Need Busting

CSG

Many contact centers already have artificial intelligence in place with chatbots or virtual assistants. And those solutions work—in ...

eBook

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1 eBook-eBook jplist-topic-CSG jplist-topic-Ted-Fortezzo jplist-topic-Contact-Center jplist-topic-Ebook 0 361201 361201 Many contact centers already have artificial intelligence in place with chatbots or virtual assistants. And those solutions work—in today’s world. But are these solutions conversational and able to serve the customer and the company of tomorrow? To build tomorrow’s contact center, companies need to reevaluate the solutions they have in place today. Here are four common myths about existing AI solutions— and takeaways on if they are future-ready or a relic of the past.

4 Contact Center AI Myths that Need Busting

eBook

Many contact centers already have artificial intelligence in place with chatbots or virtual assistants. And those solutions work—in today’s ...

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The Agility Imperative: How Contact Centers Can.. → The Agility Imperative: How Contact Centers Can.. →

CSG

Today’s contact centers are not ready. They struggle to adapt to call spikes. They can’t track customers to anticipate their needs. At ...

White Paper

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2 White-Paper-White-Paper jplist-topic-CSG jplist-topic-White-Paper jplist-topic-Ted-Fortezzo jplist-topic-Collateral 0 361200 361200 Today’s contact centers are not ready. They struggle to adapt to call spikes. They can’t track customers to anticipate their needs. At the same time, the stakes are higher than ever in the competition over customer experience (CX), where contact centers play an increasingly pivotal role. But contact centers can rise to the occasion by taking the right steps to achieve agility in the cloud. In this white paper, you’ll learn: CX trends that require contact centers to become more agileHow businesses can migrate contact center operations to the cloud and what obstacles they can overcome in the processThree key technologies that are helping contact centers become agile

The Agility Imperative: How Contact Centers Can Adapt and Scale

White Paper

Today’s contact centers are not ready. They struggle to adapt to call spikes. They can’t track customers to anticipate their needs. At the same ...

View Content

Solving Your Toughest Business Problems Solving Your Toughest Business Problems

From 5G monetization to customer experience optimization and business ...

LEARN HOW WE’VE HELPED CUSTOMERS LIKE YOU SOLVE THEIR TOUGHEST BUSINESS PROBLEMSWhen market leaders have a problem they need solved, they ...

Overview

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3 Overview-Overview jplist-topic-Collateral jplist-topic-business-problems jplist-topic-CSG jplist-topic-Ted-Fortezzo 0 361199 361199 LEARN HOW WE’VE HELPED CUSTOMERS LIKE YOU SOLVE THEIR TOUGHEST BUSINESS PROBLEMSWhen market leaders have a problem they need solved, they come to CSG. Whether improving time to market, delivering exceptional customer experiences, launching innovative digital services or reducing costs, CSG has helped hundreds of companies solve their toughest business problems. CSG works with you every step of the way to define challenges you’re trying to solve, clarify your goals and objectives, and provide you with an end-to-end business and technical solution that will help you achieve your goalsLearn More »

Solving Your Toughest Business Problems

Overview

LEARN HOW WE’VE HELPED CUSTOMERS LIKE YOU SOLVE THEIR TOUGHEST BUSINESS PROBLEMSWhen market leaders have a problem they need solved, they come to ...

View Content

4 WAYS CONVERSATIONAL AI CAN SUPPORT YOUR CONTACT.. → 4 WAYS CONVERSATIONAL AI CAN SUPPORT YOUR CONTACT.. →

By Amy Allen from CSG

4 WAYS CONVERSATIONAL AI CAN SUPPORT YOUR CONTACT CENTERPosted on April 21, 2020Companies are embracing artificial intelligence (AI) ...

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4 Article-Article jplist-topic-CSG jplist-topic-Conversational-AI jplist-topic-Contact-Center 0 361198 361198 4 WAYS CONVERSATIONAL AI CAN SUPPORT YOUR CONTACT CENTERPosted on April 21, 2020Companies are embracing artificial intelligence (AI) technology in a variety of settings, but one part of the business—the contact center—is receiving extra AI investment. The contact center AI market is projected to reach a compound annual growth rate of 23 percent by 2024.Businesses are implementing new technology to help relieve various pressures on their contact centers. They need to scale to sustain increasing inbound communications, and to maintain consistent messaging and quality across communication channels. They need to support a shift from on-premise to remote work. And they need to deliver a great customer experience (CX) while reducing costs.Conversational AI can help address all of these pressures. Conversational AI is a technology that listens, understands and responds to humans in a way that mimics natural conversation. It can be deployed across the enterprise in many forms, such as a virtual assistant (similar to Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa) that provides customer service over the phone, or IT support over chat. Conversational AI also integrates with a business’s back-end data, like customer profiles and billing, to provide its customers personalized answers.With these and other capabilities, conversational AI is much more versatile and powerful than the chatbots that have flooded the communications market in recent years.Here are some ways businesses can leverage a conversational AI platform to reduce contact center costs and boost efficiency in both the short and long term.HANDLING VOLUME SPIKESContact centers often rely on workforce management tools to help them schedule customer service representative (CSR) shifts according to predicted call volumes. But an unforeseen event, like a crisis or a service outage, can render staffing models useless while call queues grow. It’s during these times when the customer’s ability to self-serve makes a major difference in call containment.When deployed in the IVR system, conversational AI engages callers and provides them with answers to more complicated questions than the typical chatbot does. Conversational AI also assists customers at scale: the system is effective whether 10 or 10,000 customers are using it at a time, and it can help flatten call spikes driven by billing questions, account status updates or company policy changes.Placing a virtual assistant on the frontline takes care of a larger group of customers, who are also happier not having to wait in the call queue for the service they need.EMPOWERING CUSTOMERS THROUGH SELF-SERVICEGartner research found that 40 percent of live volume could be resolved through self-service channels. Businesses can relieve pressure on their contact centers by bolstering self-service channels with conversational AI.An AI-driven platform can assist customers in a variety of settings, from a voice-activated kiosk in their physical locations to a chat box in their online store. The same AI logic that powers the virtual assistant in the IVR can assist customers across other channels, which ensures they deliver consistent information and messaging.Giving customers more robust self-service channels is a win-win, not only reducing call volumes but also delivering a better CX with the fast, convenient resolution.TRAINING AND ASSISTING AGENTS ON CALLSWhen CSR teams are dispersed, working from home rather than side by side in a physical office, it’s more difficult to train them effectively and consistently. At the same time, contact centers are trying to cover growing call volumes by staffing up and onboarding new CSRs as quickly as possible.This is where another conversational AI use case—training support—comes into play. A conversational AI can listen in on a call in the background and, based on key terms or questions mentioned in the conversation, populate the CSR’s screen in real time with relevant knowledge base information. It can also give the CSR on-screen prompts on what to say or what required disclaimers to give the customer.With this automated guidance on calls, contact centers can shift time away from training CSRs and toward training the AI logic that delivers all of them consistent information.PREPARING FOR THE FUTUREA conversational AI platform, when applied to the IVR, can boost customer satisfaction and contact center KPIs in a short time. Once the AI is fully trained and integrated with the enterprise’s APIs, that’s when the contact center realizes its true value. The platform adapts to changes in the business’s offerings, processes, APIs and data with minimal manual adjustments, expanding the customer’s ability to self-serve through the platform over time.Conversational AI helps create a more agile contact center, which quickly adapts to keep wait times short, channel switching seamless and interactions personalized under even unforeseen circumstances.You can read more about conversational AI and other transformative solutions in our white paper on creating the agile contact center. AMY ALLENDigital Transformation | Conversational AI — Product ManagementView Original Source: https://www.csgi.com/insights/4-ways-conversational-ai-can-support-your-contact-center/

4 WAYS CONVERSATIONAL AI CAN SUPPORT YOUR CONTACT CENTER

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4 WAYS CONVERSATIONAL AI CAN SUPPORT YOUR CONTACT CENTERPosted on April 21, 2020Companies are embracing artificial intelligence (AI) technology in a ...

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