Customer Service Reps

Retailers are operating in an increasingly unforgiving environment. Shoppers expect fast, personalized, and consistent service, while retail organizations are stretched thin by staffing shortages, rising costs, and ongoing supply chain volatility. In an on-demand culture, even minor service breakdowns — an unanswered question, a long wait, an out-of-stock item — can cause today’s transactional shopper…

If technology matures at a pace closer to dog years than human, then we’ve already witnessed a century of conversational intelligence since Siri first appeared on our iPhones 15 years ago. As ChatGPT and a constellation of other large language models (LLMs) continue to evolve at an exponential speed and scale, legacy interactive voice response…

When import thresholds shifted this summer, enterprise retailers faced sudden operational disruptions. Packages that previously entered the country duty-free began incurring tariffs and extra fees, leading to shipment delays, canceled orders, and frustrated customers. For large customer service teams, these changes meant responding to a surge of inquiries while maintaining accuracy, clarity and empathy. Events…

Retailers have leaned heavily on artificial intelligence and automation to streamline operations and reduce costs. That efficiency is important, but it isn’t enough to earn and keep customer loyalty. One survey found 70 percent of consumers are willing to leave a brand after just two negative experiences. A harsher reality? Twenty-four percent said they would…

Shoppers are used to opening their wallets during Black Friday, Amazon Prime Day, and the annual or semi-annual sales they’ve come to know. However, amid looming tariffs and ongoing economic uncertainty, shoppers are making changes to their usual patterns. In fact, 83 percent expect to adjust their shopping habits due to tariffs, according to a…

Retailers today face relentless pressure to meet rising customer expectations while managing shrinking margins. In this environment, the contact center is a strategic engine for brand differentiation and loyalty where every interaction is compared with the customer’s last best conversation. And the key to unlocking its full potential lies in how retailers harness contact center…

A call center is vital to an organization’s relationship with its customers. For many businesses, it serves as the primary touchpoint for customer interactions. As such, optimizing your call center’s efficiency, accessibility and reliability is critical to delivering exceptional customer experiences. However, modern customer service extends far beyond traditional phone calls. While the term “call…

Imagine a customer support agent who never sleeps, learns faster than any employee, and can juggle dozens of complex tasks at once. Sounds like science fiction, right? It’s not. Welcome to the world of agentic artificial intelligence — a new frontier in retail innovation. AI was a major theme at the NRF Big Show this…

Just when retailers thought they knew what consumers wanted in their interactions with customer service, artificial intelligence (AI) has moved the goalposts. A survey by Vonage found that 75 percent of consumers are comfortable with AI-powered customer support in retail — among the highest acceptance rates across industries, second only to gaming (80 percent). This…

The burnout crisis in retail is creating a ripple effect across the industry. As employees struggle under mounting job expectations and opt to leave, retailers are facing $19 billion in annual turnover costs. Business leaders and managers are now asking: How can organizations break this cycle? This question is particularly urgent in contact centers, where…