Customer Care

Talk to any customer care or CRM industry vendor today and you’ll probably hear how they are enhancing their offerings with bots. If you’re like many people, your first reaction may be negative. But communicating with a machine may not be as bad as you think. Bots are a trend in customer…

Walk into a party early and suddenly realize that it’s only you and Bill Gates in the room. Congratulations – on average, you are a billionaire! This logical twist underscores how averages can be misleading indicators – how using averages can lead to some poor conclusions. However, Bill Gates and yo…

Customer interaction is getting personal. As a consumer, I want the best possible service I can get. In just the last few years, I have seen service move from being a phone call with a representative to interactive voice response (IVR) systems to email or live online chat. These are great alternativ…

Do you have customers who come to your website, but are unable to find what they need? Do your contact center agents have to try to explain over the phone how to find something on the website? Or verbally walk customers through forms and processes? What if your agents could guide customers directly…

We’re all bombarded with opinions and predictions from so-called experts. But who do you trust? I believe it’s important to have a strong track record if you want people to take you seriously. Last year, I made five predictions about the Customer Care industry for 2016. You can read abou…

Today I’m pleased to announce general availability of Cisco’s next-generation software for contact centers operating in the age of digitization. This release establishes a platform offering a Connected Digital Experience. As a result, companies can deliver contextual, continuous, and cap…

Fun at work? For me, it’s making stuff customers need. I admit that I have long been a skeptic of the “Fun at Work” movement. It’s not that I don’t like to have fun at work, but “the movement” seemed so shamelessly upbeat and forced. This fun was not natural for me. I was vigorously nodding my head…

Some of the most iconic characters in movies and television haven’t even been human. For example, most people don’t realize the name of the robot on Lost in Space was actually G.U.N.T.H.E.R, short for “General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Robot.” Far from contrived movie props (apologies to…

Anyone remember The Jetsons or Jetson’s reruns?  I loved Rosie, the Jetson’s robot assistant.  I dreamed of having Rosie clean my room and bring me snacks.    While I don’t have Rosie yet as my personal assistant, it is clear that electronic robots (“bots”) are playing a bigger role in how we collab…