Search Results

• Blog Key Takeaways From Forrester’s Customer Service Executive Roundtable On Turning Challenges Into Opportunities

  June 12, 2020 | Ian Jacobs

  (Kara Hoisington, Mark Baizen, and Daniel Hong contributed to this blog.) Forrester just finished a customer service exec roundtable discussion on how companies and customer service organizations...

• Blog Plan For The Work-At-Home Contact Center You Want, Not The One You Were Forced To Build During This Pandemic

  April 21, 2020 | Ian Jacobs

  While some regions around the globe have begun to relax their shelter-in-place restrictions, many brands are still trying to nail down a coherent customer service approach that incorporates a huge...

• Blog Work-At-Home: Just The First Step In Contact Centers’ Response To COVID-19

  April 9, 2020 | Ian Jacobs

  After it received more than a dozen complaints, the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment ordered a contact center in Fort Collins, Colorado to send its employees home last week. The...

• Blog Choose The Right Global Omnichannel Contact Center Outsourcer

  March 16, 2020 | Ian Jacobs

  Contact center outsourcing is dead! Long live contact center outsourcing! A combination of brands’ moves toward true customer obsession and the advent of conversational AI and other automation such...

• Report The Forrester Wave™: Global Omnichannel Customer Service Outsourcers, Q1 2020

  The 10 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up

  March 11, 2020 | Ian Jacobs

  In our 29-criterion evaluation of global omnichannel customer service outsourcing providers, we identified the 10 most significant ones — Alorica, Atento, Concentrix, Conduent, Sitel, Sutherland,...

• Report The Impact Of Emerging Technology On Digital Experiences

  How More Than 50 Emerging Technologies Will Impact Data And Experiences For Consumers

  February 24, 2020 | Julie A. Ask, Kjell Carlsson, PhD, Jeffrey S. Hammond

  Forrester interviewed more than 150 companies across industries and technology categories to understand how more than 50 technologies will evolve over the next five to 10 years and assess their...

• Report Now Tech: Insights-Driven Business Process Outsourcing, Q1 2020

  Forrester's Overview Of 34 Insights-Driven BPO Providers

  February 14, 2020 | Leslie Joseph, Ian Jacobs

  You can use insights-driven business process outsourcing (BPO) to enhance the value of classic BPO; apply analytics, AI, and automation in the context of customer or back-office processes; and...

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  Webinar AI Predictions 2020

  A Conversation With The Analysts Who Made Them

  January 27, 2020 | Srividya Sridharan, Mike Gualtieri, Ian Jacobs

  The artificial intelligence (AI) zeitgeist today is filled with grand vision, pragmatism, hope, fear, success, failure, and everything in between. As with any megatrend, AI has captured the...

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  Webinar Predictions 2020: Customer Service

  The Year That Automation And AI Reshape Customer Service

  January 21, 2020 | Ian Jacobs, Kate Leggett, Art Schoeller

  Join us to explore the (often unexpected) impacts of AI and automation in 2020 and beyond. From remaking contact center labor models to changes in the way customer service work is done, 2020 will...

• Report Vendors Battle For The Heart Of The Contact Center

  Landscape: The Contact Centers For Customer Service Playbook

  November 15, 2019 | Kate Leggett, Art Schoeller, Ian Jacobs

  The heart of the contact center comprises a set of complex, unintegrated technologies, which firms must leverage to deliver quality service. But application development and delivery (AD&D) pros...

• Blog The Impact Of Chatbots On Your Seasonal Workforce

  November 1, 2019 | Ian Jacobs

  This blog post is part of Forrester’s Holiday 2019 retail series. In this short-take video, I discuss the impact of retailers’ automation efforts on their needs for a seasonal customer service...

• Blog Predictions 2020: AI Shakes Up Customer Service Workforce And Operations

  October 31, 2019 | Ian Jacobs

  Over the past three years, we’ve been overwhelmed with hype around AI and automation’s impact on customer service interactions. By now, we were all supposed to be regularly interacting with...

• Report Predictions 2020: Customer Service

  Automation Remakes The Contact Center Organization

  October 31, 2019 | Ian Jacobs, Art Schoeller, Kate Leggett

  We've survived the hype storm around chatbots . . . barely. 2020 will mark the beginning of the concrete alterations that AI beyond chatbots will make to customer service and contact center groups....

• Report Predictions 2020: Artificial Intelligence

  It's Time To Turn The Artificial Into Reality (Checks)

  October 30, 2019 | Srividya Sridharan, Mike Gualtieri, J. P. Gownder

  The urgency to reap the benefits of AI is real. As is the opportunity. Companies are seeking tangible value via cost savings, revenue growth, new products, or customer experiences. But there is no...

• Report The Future Of Work: You Must Change How You Hire Customer Service Agents

  Workforce Transformation Must Come Before Automation

  September 30, 2019 | Kate Leggett, Ian Jacobs

  As customer service organizations grow more complex, the day-to-day work of a contact center agent will change. Automation will tackle simple, repetitive tasks; agents will need different skills to...

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  Webinar The Essentials Of Voice, 2019

  September 24, 2019 | Julie A. Ask, Ian Jacobs, Jennifer Wise

  Firms place too much cognitive load on consumers in the context of digital experiences. Conversational interfaces offer one opportunity to lighten this load by allowing consumers to use natural...

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  Webinar The Essentials Of Chat, 2019

  September 17, 2019 | Julie A. Ask, Ian Jacobs, Jennifer Wise

  Firms place too much cognitive load on consumers in the context of digital experiences. Conversational interfaces offer one opportunity to lighten this load by allowing consumers to use natural...

• Report Five Lessons From The Forrester New Wave™: Conversational AI For Customer Service, Q2 2019

  These New Technologies Require Novel Approaches To Purchasing Enterprise Software

  September 16, 2019 | Ian Jacobs

  Earlier this year, Forrester evaluated 14 different conversational AI for customer service solutions. During that research, we identified five key lessons that brands considering such technologies...

• Blog A Recession Looms — How Will You Keep Experience In Focus?

  September 11, 2019 | Ian Jacobs

  In this short video, I ask a simple question with no simple answer: How can customer service organizations avoid wild swings between a focus on experience and a focus on efficiency if macroeconomic...

• Report Gauge Your Customer Service Maturity

  Assessment: The Contact Centers For Customer Service Playbook

  August 27, 2019 | Kate Leggett, Ian Jacobs

  An explosion of channels, new technologies like artificial intelligence, and increasingly demanding consumers challenge organizations to reshape their service approach in the age of the customer....

• Report Consumers Want Convenience, Not Conversations

  Conversational Interfaces Struggle To Deliver Contextual Convenience

  August 21, 2019 | Julie A. Ask, Ian Jacobs

  Consumers want convenience and choice — not conversational interfaces. However, a fear of being left behind still impels digital business leaders to build them. And nearly three-fourths of those...

• Report Choose The Right Customer Service Solution For Your Business

  Tools And Technology: The Contact Centers For Customer Service Playbook

  July 12, 2019 | Ian Jacobs, Kate Leggett

  Delivering a differentiated customer experience (CX) requires the right technologies, processes, and organizational structures. Therefore, application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals...

• Report FAQ: Enhance Your Contact Center With Home-Based Customer Service Agents

  As The Gig Model Gains Ground, Work-From-Home Customer Service Agent Programs Become The New Normal

  July 2, 2019 | Art Schoeller, Ian Jacobs

  What does a successful work-from-home customer service agent program look like? How do you measure success and ensure continuous improvement? In this brief, we answer the most common questions from...

• Blog Cut Through The Chatbot Hype To Find The Right Conversational AI Solution For You

  June 26, 2019 | Ian Jacobs

  In this short take, I discuss the lessons learned from evaluating 14 vendors for the Forrester New Wave: Conversational AI For Customer Service, Q2 2019. Check out the video below. For more...

• Report FAQ: How To Measure Chat Quality Management

  Identify Your Goals And Measure What Matters

  June 11, 2019 | Ian Jacobs, Kate Leggett

  What are brands doing around chat quality management (QM)? What are they measuring? How are they scoring? Is it any different from quality management for other customer service channels? In this...