The Real-Time Contact Center: Strategies, Tactics, and Technologies for Building a Profitable Service and Sales Operation

"To get a competitive edge in a world of commoditized service, companies have to convert their reactive, cost-oriented contact centers into predictive, engaged, revenue-generating, real-time profit centers. A real-time contact center provides an outstanding customer experience, enhances loyalty, increases sales, reduces expenses, and streamlines information flow between the center and the company at large -- all of which adds up to substantial bottom-line improvement. The Real-Time Contact Center is a practical guide to building a service infrastructure that will simultaneously exceed your customers' expectations, and build revenues. This timely book will help you: Establish the business case for transforming your contact center into a real-time profit center. * Sort through the technologies and systems that enable real-time contact centers, and learn the best ways to use them. * Build profitable relationships with sales and marketing. * Strengthen your self-service applications to improve their efficiency and to reduce dependence on service representatives, enabling significant cost reductions. * Hire, train, and motivate staff to keep your contact center at the top of its game. * Make smart, ethical decisions regarding offshore outsourcing. The book is packed with step-by-step implementation plans for migrating from your current model to the real-time contact center, and offers a complete package of winning strategies, practical guidelines, and best practices. Each chapter includes self-assessment checklists for use by all the crucial players in your contact environment. The Real-Time Contact Center analyzes the business trends that are driving change in the contact center market, and provides vendor names and a market overview of key call center technology, systems, and applications. The book also discusses how to optimize management and processes to ensure your people are well positioned to deliver extraordinary service with every interaction. Most importantly, The Real-Time Contact Center will show you how to make this crucial transformation without disrupting your current service initiatives. With the powerful tools and practical recommendations in this book, you will transfer quickly and seamlessly to a world-class contact center that's designed to generate substantial revenue, delight your customers, reduce expenses, and make your organization the envy of its industry."