http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog Does customer service work or is it just a way to prevent businesses doing the right thing? Sat, 12 May 2007 18:08:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've had two "great" (you'll understand the use of quotation marks later) this week. The first was whilst my dentist was finishing up a lengthy treatment - in fact he still had his fingers in my mouth - he asked when they should schedule the rest of my treatment.  I suggested ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=24 Press "#", press "000", say "operator", do nothing ... all these are examples mentioned on the gethuman website to bypass that pesky computerized system. Where has the world gone to, when we need a manual to reach a human? Or maybe we could also ask ourselves: "Do we really need ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=23 My teams preparation for our G-Force involvement got underway this week with a significant jolt!   We've started outlining some very innovative interactions using a combination of web, mobility and analytics to infuence the overall outcome in favour of the customer and showing off how we can ensure great customer service ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=22 I've taken my eye of the ball recently with my public persona, sorry if you've been expecting a couple of posts each week, I've let you down.However, in my defence I've been too busy with some internal activities that have kept my attention way too long.I'm back and I feel ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=21 When I first heard of the adoption of Avatars in customer service environments, the vision of a yellow bubble appeared in my mind saying, “It looks like you’re trying to write a letter, would you like some help?” Yes, I was thinking of the most annoying entity to ever cross ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=20 There is a growing momentum by vendors and analysts to consolidate around a concept called workforce optimization.  The notion, if you believe the hype, is that by managing workforce schedules through forecasts and scheduling you can improve the performance of the agent by scheduling training courses, get customers feedback via ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=17 If you're a follower of contact centre news then you'll have noticed this weeks Verint/Witness acquisition, er, merger of equals, ...I'm not sure which.  When companies of similar size decide to merge the "synergies" (that's business development language for what will be cut) take a lot of careful discussions and ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=16 I've recently spotted a number of web-sites that offer consumers the chance to tell companies they deal with exactly what they think of them.  Of course, the internet is littered with examples of individuals impacting company policies and how companies perceive their customers.  I was recently reading The Perfect Thing: ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=15 I've been working with a new company called Lekane for the past 12 months. A group of smart people in Finland, plus the brains behind the operation: a British guy, got together to develop a mobile client for Genesys. Using this client on a mobile device remote workers ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=14 According to the BBC a security flaw has been found in Windows Vista... I know, I know that is surprising news. ;)  But unlike other security flaws this uses the speech recognition components.  Users have already been testing this:"Some Vista users have already tested the exploit and were able to ... http://www.serviceunplugged.com/blog/?p=13