“Calls may be recorded for quality assurance or training purposes.”
If you’ve called a utility company, insurer, bank, TV provider or a host of other organizations, it’s a very familiar phrase. For the best-run contact centers, however, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s possible for contact centers. This post will dig deeper into the topic.
Call recording Historically, call recording and its associated storage was complex and expensive. That’s changed today, where call recording software is typically integrated into contact center applications, and the cost of storing calls has dropped to the level where many companies now simply record every call coming into – and going out of – their organizations.
Call recording offers a wide range of opportunities. In the case of a dispute, for example, you have evidence—just replay exactly what happened to learn who said what. You can also use good calls and poor calls to train contact center agents on best practices and ho..

Imagine you're booked on an 11 a.m. flight for a business meeting the next day and the flight is cancelled. You call the airline to book a new flight.
Now imagine two different ways that the airline's representative can respond to your call:
Answer A: “Well, I can get you on another flight to your destination that leaves tomorrow morning at 9:30, but let me check if there's an earlier option. Ah! I can get you on a 7:30 flight tonight. Would you like me to book that for you?”
Answer B: “I can rebook you on the 7:30 flight tonight.”
Even though each answer describes the same action by the airline, chances are that Answer A would leave you feeling a little better than Answer B. This is an example of how behavioral economics can be used in customer service.
The science behind the emotion and customer satisfaction Why does Answer A sound better? Two reasons. The representative first established an unattractive option – the flight the next day – and then gave you one tha..

Email. It doesn’t matter if you love it or hate it because most of us can’t live without it. The average email user receives hundreds of emails per day. In fact, how many emails are in your inbox right now? Probably tens or hundreds that you haven’t read—and probably won’t ever read.
By 2018, businesses will send and receive 140 billion emails a day, according to a report by Radicati.
Most of us can only dream of getting caught up on emails, much less getting to inbox zero. If you’re not familiar the term, check out this definition of inbox zero from productivity expert Merlin Mann who coined the phrase:
“It’s about how to reclaim your email, your atten­tion, and your life. That ‘zero?’ It’s not how many mes­sages are in your inbox—it’s how much of your own brain is in that inbox. Especially when you don’t want it to be. That’s it.” —Merlin Mann
Mann noticed that when people treat their email inbox as a “to-do” list, then productivity decreases at an alarming rate. His goal was t..

Businesses of all sizes are facing a world that has never been more interconnected – and to succeed in this global landscape, a company needs to know that their customer base is not just around the corner, but around the world.
As the geographical footprint of your business grows, it becomes more and more critical for all of your employees to be able to connect and collaborate easily with each other, and provide the best customer experience, no matter their location.
Most legacy business communications systems aren’t built for today’s globally distributed workforces. IT departments struggle to support disparate regional PBX systems, have to negotiate and deal with different local service providers, and setting up new locations or users can be a serious drain of time and resources.
With every location different from the next, the result is usually inconsistent features, functionality and quality of service for both employees and customers. Business communication systems need to keep ..

In businesses and organizations across the world, rooms once humming with wires, black boxes and blinking lights now sit empty. In a lonely phone closet, there’s only dust, a single lonely terminal, or perhaps a foosball table where IT pros can let off steam.
The cloud – and more specifically, cloud hosted communications – is the source of the transformation, which has fundamentally changed the IT landscape. Some IT pros have embraced it. Some are working on migrating to hosted PBX systems over time. And others, through choice or necessity, are sticking with an on-premises PBX approach.
Read on to find out why some IT pros are shopping for game tables to go in empty server rooms while others are untangling wires and watching blinking lights—and which cases make the most sense for each approach.
Cloud Communications for Dummies: Download your complimentary copy > Budgeting for hosted PBX vs on-premises PBX systems How are we going to pay for this? It’s the question on every IT pro’s ..

Last week, we took a look at practical applications of DECT technology in the fast-paced and highly mobile healthcare industry. Today, let’s turn our focus to the benefits of SIP-DECT in the customer-service oriented hospitality landscape.
Consider the example of a hotel. Hotels have a lot of moving pieces, to say the least. Visitors interact with a variety of hotel staff, from the receptionist that checks them in, to the concierge that provides them directions, to the housekeeper that cleans their rooms. How do you keep all these moving pieces connected? How can their communications infrastructure empower them to do their jobs more effectively?
Freedom of Mobility SIP-DECT keeps all employees reachable no matter where they are in a hotel, motel or other hospitality premises, including hallways and outdoor areas. As users roam, SIP-DECT facilitates a seamless handover between radio cells to provide a seamless connection. To provide limitless mobility on the property, Mitel SIP-DECT h..

Recently at Mitel Next Paris, the demo booth for MiVoice Business 8.0 and the new MiVoice 6900 IP Phone series was one of the busiest. Mitel partners and customers were delighted to see this investment in one of the most popular telephony systems on the market.
Pairing mobile and desk phone The mobile connect feature on the 6900 series generated the most interest. As many people now have Bluetooth in their cars, the concept of doing an initial pairing of a mobile phone then automatically having it connect whenever in range is well understood. By bringing that functionality to the desk phone, a whole new level of productivity and convenience emerges.
Just imagine coming into the office and never having to take your mobile out of your bag or jacket—if a call comes in on the mobile, it automatically appears on the desk phone.

Watch the MiVoice 6900 Video
Hotdesking with 6900 series IP phones Automatic syncing of mobile phone contacts to the desk phone is also a great time-saver – and ..

Every field services company wants to serve customers well, so you're likely to schedule appointments quickly and make sure your tech arrives on time. And while you hope that the matter is resolved on your first visit, you may expect a service call to take a second trip before it's fixed. After all, the tech has to figure out what's going on, assess the problem and see if the parts are on the truck, etc.
If that describes your approach, I've got bad news. You're emphasizing the wrong standards. Customers care more about getting the job done right the first time than anything else.
In fact, a report from the Aberdeen Group suggests that the biggest complaints customers have is that the repair didn't get fixed the first time (61%), with fewer complaining about waiting to get an appointment (51%) or the technician showing up on time (41%).
In other words, your customer service will stand out from the competition more if you get the job done right the firs..

Mobile communications systems provide healthcare workers in environments such as hospitals, long-term care facilities, and retirement homes the required freedom to move about the premises and provide care for their patients without restrictions. While such mobility is a necessity, constant availability is essential in these settings, where emergencies are common and fast response is crucial. Every second counts to a doctor, nurse or technician, and their means of communication must be equally responsive and reliable.
Using radio base stations and wireless DECT handsets to provide a scalable range of mobility, Mitel SIP-DECT offers advanced functionality tailored to the specialized and stringent requirements of the healthcare industry.
Powerful Reliability Hospital staff cannot afford gaps in communication from technology interference or infrastructure failure. DECT technology uses a reserved frequency band to avoid disturbances from other radio networks and deliver uninterrupted serv..

Last Week in Business Communications is a weekly post where we cover some of the notable articles and happenings in the business communication world from the week before. Check back each Monday for your news fix.
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