Contact Centers

With the busiest retail season of the year behind us, it’s the perfect time to assess performance and reflect on opportunities to improve and ensure an even more successful holiday season in 2018. The holidays always bring with them the highest ticket volume, as customers reach out to businesses with a flurry of questions around returns, password…

For consumers, the most wonderful time of the year is here. For retailers, it’s the busiest time — and customer service plays a vital role in the sales process. Contact centers are the backbone of any customer service strategy, and this is never more important than during the holiday season. Having an effective contact center…

The holiday shopping season is upon us, and its year-over-year transformation cannot be overstated. Twenty years ago, the ramp up to Black Friday looked vastly different than it does today — Cyber Monday didn’t even exist! — and that's entirely due to the ever-evolving technologies that are shaping our digital landscape and market demands. For…

Online sales continue to grow as a proportion of overall retail sales, and returns are growing at an even faster rate. With the holiday peak season upon us, retailers will need to focus more than ever on handling returns in ways that avoid alienating their customers — and consequently losing future sales. Given the rising…

My previous post outlined how consumer behaviors are changing and technology is creating new expectations. While these should be welcome developments, they're posing major challenges to retailers. That post also explained why an omnichannel-enabled contact center is a critical part of the solution. In this article, I detail how omnichannel will help retailers positively impact both…

As consumers partake in the busiest time of the year for shopping, retailers everywhere will be wondering how they can maximize their share of wallet. While the spending is still happening, the foundation is already in place that will determine how those buying decisions will be made over the next few weeks. Consumers are increasingly…

Many frontline customer service reps are judged on how quickly they can get a customer off the phone, a metric we've repeatedly pointed out leads to customers’ issues going unresolved. But the folks at Zappos.com apparently aren't as clock-minded, with one record-setting call crossing the nine-hour mark. In fact, that endurance test of a phone call was closer to 10 hours, clocking in at nine hours and 37 minutes.

Amazon.com said it plans to open a new 70,000 square-foot customer service facility in Winchester, Ky., near Lexington. Amazon said it will invest more than $20.7 million and create more than 550 full-time and 600 seasonal jobs by 2017 at the facility, which will provide customer service and technical support. The retailer said the Winchester customer service center is expected to open in late summer and will be based at a temporary location until the permanent facility opens in 2013.

Yesterday we showed you the companies with the worst customer service, according to STELLAService. Find out which companies made the "elite" list with outstanding customer service.

Some companies pamper shoppers with swift and attentive customer service. At other places, you can't find anyone who has a clue about how to resolve your complaint.