In last year’s Oscar-nominated movie, “Hidden Figures,” one of the main characters confronts the arrival of a mainframe IBM computer. As a NASA mathematician in the early years of the space program, she astutely realizes the machine could put her out of a job very quickly unless she adapts – and learns how to get more from it.
Today, IT professionals reading headlines about the future of work face similar concerns. Technology – artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation, especially – could potentially reshape entire lines of work. While manufacturing jobs have already been impacted, even white-collar jobs seem to be on the line, including accounting and legal services. But what about IT? How will these technologies reshape the IT team of the future?
For all professionals, the good news is that automation is more likely to impact individual activities, says McKinsey Global Institute. Just 5% of occupations are candidates for full automation. The rest are likely to be onl..

Digital transformation and rapid technology adoption are competitive differentiators for today's businesses, accelerating the pace of growth. By leveraging communications in everything they do, businesses can make decisions faster and improve operational efficiency.
An omni-channel communications approach is key — putting the choice of communicating by voice, SMS, chat or social media squarely in the hands of the user. All of this depends heavily on the performance of the cloud-hosted unified communications (UC) networks that create the foundation for digital transformation. Even the best technology won't be successful if delivered on an unreliable network (see related post, “Secret to Digital Transformation Is Strong Foundation”).
We offer five tips to ready your network for stellar digital transformation performance.
Tip No. 1: Monitor everything Typically, when there's a network problem, finding its source is the most time-consuming part of the IT professional&#039..

We’ve all heard the terms “big data,” “Internet of Things,” and “artificial intelligence” making their way into business over the past few years. But as 2018 approaches, these technologies continue to become even more prominent. What’s more, they’re opening new doors for companies when it comes to customer interactions.
For example, a recent Forrester report predicts the combination of big data, IoT and AI not only will give businesses access to more data, but also allow them to gain better insights through deeper and more mature data analysis. Per the report, while two years ago “only 51 percent of data and analytics decision-makers said that they were able to easily obtain data and analyze it without the help of technology, Forrester expects this figure to rise to around 66 percent in 2017.”
With that, it’s not surprising to learn analysts are expecting more than a 300 percent increase investment in AI this year – all with the goal of helping businesses to retrieve more data, condu..

It’s no secret that today, businesses can’t rely on once-traditional marketing tactics to engage their customers. As people increasingly live through their mobile devices, researching products and services and making purchasing decisions in real time, companies must respond by adapting their approach to fit with these live interactions.
For a business to succeed, its customers “require unique, personalized responses in real time that transcend traditional marketing and span channels and devices,” SAS concludes in a report that examines how companies can adapt to this new world.
Already, many are already diving head first into this real-time experience, presenting customers with personalized offers based on their purchase and browser history. Yet greater up-sell opportunities are still available. Cloud communications plays a key role in unlocking this next level in optimizing real-time interactions.
The micro-moments One strategy is to take advantage of “moments of now,” which go bey..

Consumer technologies are making their way into the workplace, and it has become all-but impossible for executives and IT departments to stop the surge.
While consumerization isn’t without its challenges, there are significant benefits to rolling out and supporting such technologies in the enterprise. For example, if B2B businesses want to find and retain top talent – particularly Millennials – they need to face the challenge head-on and have a plan for integrating the right applications.
Gartner sees consumerization as the key to creating a digital workplace, and a must for competitive organizations. The firm calls it “a business strategy to boost employee agility and engagement through a more consumerized work environment.”
While each workplace is unique, successful ones share certain qualities when it comes to their digital initiatives. For example, employees across all departments are encouraged to voice their opinions around technology needs and stay involved throughout the ado..

Cold calling presents one of the steepest challenges contact centers face. Industry experts put the conversion rate at just 1 percent to 2 percent. That means agents usually make more than 100 calls before they reach someone who’s just willing to talk to them. That equals a lot of time and a lot of rejection.
How can you change this? Think about adding some warmth to the equation.
All too often, mass marketing campaigns – including calls and emails – are true to their name. They lack personalization and are based on a standard script. Their calls often end with a swift click by the recipient or an email deleted before it’s read.
Warm up the tone of your outbound efforts and success rates can increase. Here are some tips to get your outbound call center ready to reach out with a personal touch.
Make the script your own Scripts are a great tool for cold calls, but they only get you so far. It’s painfully obvious when a script is being read. So have agents practice the script and ..

No matter what they need or where they are, consumers increasingly use the “computer in their pocket” to find answers, connect with businesses and generally solve problems. It’s not surprising, then, that mobile has become the operating system of choice: In March, Android surpassed Windows in worldwide internet usage market share, according to CIO magazine.
For businesses, the real significance of this trend is that it changes expectations for customer service. A new customer paradigm is emerging out of consumers’ deepening devotion to mobile devices. Customer service has evolved into customer experience. If businesses want to thrive in this new marketplace, they must embrace this shift and create a new digital journey for their customers.
Recent research from McKinsey reaffirms the rising expectations of digital customers. More than 75 percent of online customers expect help within five minutes and place as much value on online reviews as they do on personal recommendations. As a ..

The most successful brands have adopted a set of human-like personality traits to help them build stronger bonds with customers, convey values, and differentiate from competitors. By infusing their brand personality into marketing and sales, they earn customer loyalty and grow their business.
In the contact center, brand personality often shapes outbound marketing scripts. But what about email? After all, it’s still the primary channel for business communications, and its reign appears far from over. The number of emails sent and received per day is expected to grow at a rate of 4.6 percent to nearly 258 billion in 2020, according to the Radicati Group.
Clearly, email can be a powerful conduit for expressing brand personality, but are you using it to its fullest potential? One often overlooked feature is the email signature. By ensuring your brand personality is infused into contact center email signatures, you can take advantage of volume and create a unique opportunity to engage cu..

Whenever it’s time to roll out a new tool or process, organizations can be certain of one thing: resistance. It’s one of the greatest—and most common—barriers to achieving full user adoption of your new communications technology. Persuading employees to embrace and even advocate for change is vital. That’s why many IT teams turn to the one group in the organizational structure that’s expert in influencing others: Corporate Communications.
This team—especially those who focus on internal messaging—has the experience you need to cultivate excitement for organizational changes, mobilize internal advocates and motivate employees to embrace new behaviors. They have an extensive set of tools to break down resistance and nudge employees in the direction the company needs them to go.
To help you have transition more smoothly when implementing a new communications tool or system, here are three corporate communications practices that are most effective at managing change across the organizati..

In this four-part series, Matthew Clare discusses four technical mistakes companies make when building their customer experience strategies, and how your business can avoid them. In Part 4 Matthew addresses some of the mistakes businesses make when planning for the future.

From the Video Hi, I'm Matt Clare, product manager for Mitel's contact center portfolio. Today I'm going to finish up our blog series by talking to you a little bit about some of the technical mistakes that businesses make when mapping out a new contact center implementation or further developing their customer experience strategy. In our last video, we looked at common mistakes around your customer, internal, and technology touch-points.
In this final video in our series we'll look specifically at the future considerations that companies often fail to take in to account and need to be considering as part of their overall customer experience strategy.
The first thing I want to touch on today i..