With all the chatter building around social media, data mining and analytics, it’s easy to forget that (as discussed at the Conversational Commerce Conference-C3) the telephone, IVR and contact center reps remain central to much of conversational commerce. As individuals make their journey from browser, to shopper, to customer and beyond (to frequent buyer or loyal customers), they pick up the phone to talk to an agent or representative over 70% of the time. At the same time, the leading vendors take pains to provide as many options for customers or prospects to contact them, employing outbound text messages or automated calls as “alerts” or “reminders,” as they monitor Twitter feeds or mentions on Facebook “fan pages.” In best cases, this information is made available to customer support specialists or Help Desk personnel in “real time.”

These innovations place contact center agents (both of the brick-and-mortar or “home agent” varieties) at the center of the conversations between companies and their customers at times that are crucial to promote a positive relationship. Today real-time, free-form world of customer interaction is slightly at odds with the locked down, structured world of workforce optimization (WFO) and key performance indicators that contact center managers have come to depend on.

Join me, John Hernandez of Cisco Systems, customer service strategy specialist Barry Dalton and journalist/author Emily Yellin as we delve into the issues shaping the social contact center.

Register here, and learn more about the topics we’ll be discussing as we describe the technologies that are already in service to promote better conversations between companies and their customers.

Categories: Articles

Tags: customer care, Contact Centers, conversational commerce, Webcasts