What’s your strategy for retaining staff? It’s a fair question, given that 71% of customer service agents have considered leaving their job in the past six months. That figure, coming from recent research published in a new Salesforce survey, will make unsettling reading for businesses hoping that staffing challenges were largely fueled by COVID and… Read more

We don’t think it would be going out on a limb to say that customers think interactive voice responses (IVRs) need a reboot. In fact, a recent survey reported more than half of customers said exactly that when questioned about their experiences with automated services across a range of organizations. One bad experience can go… Read more

A “perfect storm” of challenges facing the IRS is overwhelming switchboards and causing delays for those claiming annual tax refunds. As staff brace themselves for the new filing season to open next Monday (January 24), taxpayers are being warned by the US Treasury to anticipate delays in processing and returns—and to be prepared for longer-than-usual… Read more

As healthcare services continue to labor under the strain of nursing shortages, providers are telling us they’re looking for new ways to lighten the load on remaining staff. A perfect storm of COVID, combined with already existing stress points, means staffing levels are set to remain at the top of the agenda for hospitals and… Read more

It may be a new year but the turbulent times roiling contact centers aren’t going away anytime soon. Healthcare, utilities, insurance providers and others are still handling fallout from 2021’s unprecedented number of weather and climate-related disasters. And, as we get our heads around the fact that this really is our third year of a… Read more

How do you create the best conversational virtual agent on the market? The answer may surprise you. It’s the attention to details. Gridspace CEO and co-founder Evan Macmillan has been an entrepreneur most of his life. But before first grade, he was a software tester. “One of my earliest activities at home was testing QA… Read more

Conversations are the nuts and bolts of human communication. Yet we’re still exploring precisely how they work and how to gain maximum value from them. Conversation analysis straddles the academic disciplines of sociology, psychology and linguistics, with research continuing to yield insights into the patterns and infrastructure of human dialogue. Since Gridspace artificial intelligence (AI)… Read more

Shedding light on dark data is key to staying ahead. Are you ready for when your business hits the next bump in the road? Unavoidable problems, peak time surges and annual promotions all put pressure on your call center agents, costing time and money and often hitting customer trust. We work with some of the… Read more

Long wait times to get through to some airline call centers is fueling frustration for travelers eager to take advantage of relaxations in COVID travel restrictions, according to a report in The New York Times. When Southwest Airlines canceled around 2,000 flights over one weekend recently, travel writer Heather Murphy spotted customer angst seemed to… Read more

Fact. Businesses spend billions every year handling calls from their customers. Fact two. Besides being expensive for your company, too many of these calls result in unnecessary frustration and annoyance for your customers. Put yourself in their place. Long wait on hold? Laborious identification procedures? Connected to someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about?… Read more

Empathy probably isn’t something that most people associate with business success. Customer loyalty. Competitive differentiation. Revenue growth. These are core business strategies with benefits companies readily understand. But empathy is key to a positive customer experience. Today’s consumers have indicated that they will pay a 16% premium for a great customer experience.1 Additionally, 85% of… Read more

The days of a single consumer channel are long gone. Today, the customer journey is defined by an omnichannel shopping experience that allows consumers to choose when, how, and how often they interact with companies. But an omnichannel experience isn’t just about creating a more convenient shopping experience by meeting customers where they are—it’s also… Read more