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Top Analysts Covering the
Contact CenterIndustry
Sponsored by:Call-Back Solutions for the Call Center
Learn More at www.fonolo.com
“ Our industry is blessed with a large and engaged analyst
community. What’s really awesome about these folks is how open
they are. Just by following their blogs and tweets, you’ll get
tremendous insight into the latest trends!
Shai BergerCo-Founder & CEO, Fonolo
Congratulations to the 21
who were selected!
1. Jon Arnold
2. Bruce Belfiore
3. Aphrodite Brinsmead
4. Dean Bubley
5. Keith Dawson
6. Lisa Durant
7. Donna Fluss
8. Paul Greenberg
9. Ian Jacobs
10. Nancy Jamison
11. Drew Kraus
12. Irwin Lazar
13. Kate Leggett
14. Michael Maoz
15. Sheila McGee-Smith
16. Dave Michels
17. Dan Miller
18. Blair Pleasant
19. Art Rosenberg
20. Art Schoeller
21. Paul Stockford
* Listed in alphabetical order
Top Contact Center Analysts
Jon ArnoldIndependent Industry Analyst
Focus: UC, Call Center, SIP, & VoIP
Web: JonArnold-analyst.blogspot.ca
@arnoldjon
What customers really want is to communicate on their terms
and come away feeling that the agent is on the same page.
When agents have a full complement of UC tools to work with,
they can put customers at ease right away, regardless of how
they are getting in touch.
Recommended Reading:
• Interactions 2013 – My Takeaways and Some Music Too
• UC and the Contact Center – Addressing Customer Needs and Wants
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Bruce BelfioreCEO, BenchmarkPortal
Focus: Contact Center Benchmarking
Web: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/
@BenchmarkPortal
There are literally thousands of contact centers that are on (or over) the
cusp of needing advanced workforce management systems. Continuing
to spreadsheet your workforce needs as your center grows and
becomes more complex may seem like a thrifty thing to do – but it isn’t.
Some of the best returns on investment (ROIs) from contact center
investments come from installing appropriate WFM systems.
Recommended Reading:
• When WFM Means Workforce Manna
• First Call Resolution – It’s Not Only a Quality Metric
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Aphrodite BrinsmeadSenior Analyst, Customer Engagement, Ovum
Focus: Customer Interactions, Technology, & Contact Center
Web: Ovum.com
@diteb
Salesforce is defining its position as a leader in mobile self-
service, but must also help businesses to understand how tools
such as SOS can be used alongside mobile self-service to
improve customer experiences as users shift from self-service to
agent-assisted support.
“Recommended Reading:
• Salesforce Delivers an Improved Mobile Self-Service Experience with SOS for Apps
• The Puls Smartwatch from Will.I.Am Could Revolutionize Customer Engagement
Top Contact Center Analysts
Dean BubleyFounder, Disruptive Analysis
Focus: Wireless, Mobile, Internet, & Telecom
Web: http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.co.uk/
@disruptivedean
Apple and Microsoft are perhaps delaying WebRTC (or seem a bit ambivalent), in
part because they want to cherry-pick certain voice/video use-cases for their own
branded applications, adding value to hardware devices like phones, wearables
and game consoles as well as directly monetising via their enterprise activities.
Google seems less-concerned (or perhaps less-capable) of deriving revenue
from communications products directly.
Recommended Reading:
• How Fast will WebRTC go Mainstream? And will it be "Beyond the Browser"?
• 2014 Edition - WebRTC Market Status & Forecasts Report (paid)
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Keith DawsonPractice Leader, Customer Engagement, Ovum
Focus: Contact Center Technologies & Customer Experience
Web: Ovum.com
@keithdawson
… the dark pool of customer interactions … is the tip of the
iceberg. Understanding how customers are engaging requires a
great deal more data gathering, analysis, and coordination
between service, sales, and marketing departments.
Recommended Reading:
• Customer Experience Is Getting Weird...Fast
• An Optimal-channel Interaction is Better than a Multichannel One
“
Replace hold-time with a call-back
on all channels.
In-Call Rescue Mobile Rescue Web Rescue
Call-Back Software for the Call Center
Top Contact Center Analysts
Lisa DurantResearch Analyst, Nemertes Research
Focus: Contact Center & Unified Communications
Web: www.nemertes.com/analysts/lisa-durant
@LisaEDurant
With 52% of companies using IP Automatic Call Distributors
(ACDs) and another 38% using mixed IP/TDM ACD platforms,
it’s safe to say that IP ACDs are becoming commonplace. Most
(78%) of those organizations using TDM or IP/TDM mix ACDs
plan to have fully migrated to an IP ACD by the end of 2015.
Recommended Reading:
• The IP Contact Center Goes Mainstream (free registration)
• Multitasking Employees are Changing Unified Communication and Collaboration (free
registration)
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Donna FlussPresident, DMG Consulting LLC
Focus: Contact Center, Back-Office, Analytics
Web: http://www.dmgconsult.com/
@DMGConsultLLC
The outbound market is undergoing a renaissance. Outbound dialers
are being replaced with a new generation of robust omnichannel
customer engagement solutions. These outbound solution suites are
capable of driving intelligent, personalized, relevant, and regulatory-
compliant multichannel and cross-channel communications that are
having a positive impact on profitability.
Recommended Reading:
• Virtual Queuing Product Report (from 2011, but still worth reading - requires registration)
• Outbound Solutions Engage Customers and Enhance Relationships
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Paul GreenbergPresident, The 56 Group, CRM and SCRM Author
Focus: CRM, Social CRM, & Customer Service
Web: http://the56group.typepad.com/
@pgreenbe
Customer's voices, amplified by social media, now trump even the
cleverest of marketing. Combine that with a massive surge towards
subscription and freemium models, increasing saturation of digital
marketing channels, increased competition and decreasing customer
loyalty, and you have the recipe for an era where users, not brands,
wield unprecedented power.
Recommended Reading:
• CRM Watchlist 2014 Winners
• The Era of the Entitled Customer: A Recipe for Creating Amazing Customer Experiences
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Ian JacobsSenior Analyst, Forrester
Focus: Customer Experience Technologies
Web: https://www.forrester.com/Ian-Jacobs
@iangjacobs
Although the contact center was born and raised in the telephony world, it looks
to be spending its dotage trying to handle consumers’ growing preferences for
communication channels such as web chat, SMS, social media, email, and
eventually video. For contact center pros, these digital channels present a
particularly thorny problem because… marketing and strategy teams have staked
their claim to ‘owning’ many of these emerging channels, despite the fact that
customer service requests come in via these channels in ever-increasing
volumes.
Recommended Reading:
• Market Overview: Workforce Optimization Solutions (subscribers only)
• In Customer Service, the Fundamental Things Apply
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Nancy JamisonPrincipal Analyst, Frost and Sullivan
Focus: Contact Center, Speech Tech, & Social Media
Web: www.frost.com
@nancyjami
Customers are dictating the transformation of contact centers
and companies are responding by stepping up from a multi-
channel approach to omni-channel engagement, which is vital to
seamlessly interact with customers from channel to channel
without loss of interoperability or history.
Recommended Reading:
• Scalability and an Omni-Channel Experience Precipitates Interest in Hosted Solutions
• Frost & Sullivan Applauds Interactive Intelligence's R&D- and Marketing-Driven Rapid
Growth in the Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions Market
“
Ring! A happy caller is
connected.
Customer dials in,
hears option to “Press
1 for a call-back.”
Customer relaxes while
Fonolo waits on hold.
Fonolo’s cloud-based solution easily hooks into your existing call center
infrastructure, with minimal impact to your business processes.
Adding Call-Backs the Easy Way
Top Contact Center Analysts
Drew KrausResearch VP, Gartner
Focus: Call Center Infrastructure & Cloud-Based Solutions
Web: www.gartner.com/AnalystBiography
@Gartner_inc
In 2010, only 5% of organizations took advantage of
social/collaborative customer action to improve service
processes; however, customer demand and heightened business
awareness is making this a top issue…
Recommended Reading:
• The CRM Perspective on Leveraging Digital Technologies to Create a Customer-Centric
Enterprise
• Use of Social CRM for Customer Service Will Grow Rapidly Over the Next Two Years
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Irwin LazarVP and Service Director, Nemertes Research
Focus: Unified Communications & Contact Center
Web: www.nemertes.com/analysts/irwin-lazar
@imlazar
Today we communicate with our merchants via a variety of means –
Facebook, Twitter, chat, maybe even video, in addition to voice…
Harmonization between these isolated customer engagement … as new
platforms continue to emerge ….including Moxie, Oracle’s Right Now,
and Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud compet[ing] with the more
traditional CRM vendors including Aspect, Avaya, Cisco, and Genesys.
Recommended Reading:
• Rethinking the Contact Center
• The Journey to the Genesys Cloud
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Kate LeggettVP, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Focus: Customer Service: Trends, Research, & Technology
Web: forrester.com/kate_leggett
@kateleggett
67% of US online consumers say they've had unsatisfactory service interactions
in the past 12 months… This is because companies need a variety of queuing
and routing, CRM and WFO software to support end-to-end operations -
software procured from a number of different vendors. … un-integrated
components restricts contact center managers from obtaining a full, multichannel
view of customer interactions, makes it difficult to configure more effective rules
for contact flow, and ultimately impacts the quality of service delivered.
Recommended Reading:
• Transform The Contact Center For Customer Service Excellence (free registration)
• Vendors Battle For The Heart Of The Contact Center
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Michael MaozVP, Customer Strategies, Gartner
Focus: Cloud Apps, Social Media, & Mobility
Web: blogs.gartner.com/michael_maoz/
@mimaoz
[This] is our second year of replacing that fragile raft 'Contact
Center' with the more comprehensive “Engagement Center” that
embraces social media and an increasingly mobile customer
looking for automated (yet highly intuitive and intentional)
messages from the enterprise.
Recommended Reading:
• Weak Mobile Customer Service Is Harming Customer Engagement (paid)
• Behind the Magic of the CRM Customer Engagement Center MQ, 2014
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Sheila McGee-SmithPresident and Principal Analyst, McGee-Smith Analytics
Focus: Contact Center & Enterprise Communications
Web: www.mcgeesmith.com
@mcgeesmith
Creating a better customer experience is not just about providing
context to an agent--heck, a screen-pop can do that. Better
customer experience is about understanding what is going on
with the customer and having a rules engine that can trigger
different ways to resolve the customer concern.
Recommended Reading:
• The Blurring Line Between CRM and Contact Center Software
• CMO Andy Cunningham's Mission: Make Avaya Cool
“
Fonolo Success Story
“We were able to deploy Fonolo in just
15 days…we saw an immediate
impact on our abandonment rate…
on our busiest days it was
down 33%.”
Watch the video: Read the case study:
Top Contact Center Analysts
Dave MichelsPresident, TalkingPointz
Focus: Cloud Services, SMB Voice, & Unified Communications
Web: http://www.talkingpointz.com
@davemichels
Modern communications are much less about features, and
much more about flexibility. Applications are, of course, still
critically important, but they should be evaluated from a toolbox
perspective because what you think you need today almost
certainly is not what you will need tomorrow.
“Recommended Reading:
• Business Models Disrupted by the Cloud
• Moving to the Cloud Means Offloading Risk
• Apps with a Voice
Top Contact Center Analysts
Dan MillerSenior Analyst & Founder, Opus Research
Focus: Conversational Commerce & Voice Biometrics
Web: OpusResearch.net
@dnm54
Customers equate ‘service quality’ with quick resolution of their
problems by a live agent. If they are put on hold, confronted with
confusing options or delivered to an individual who is not up-to-
speed with their requirements, they think less of your company
and its brand.
Recommended Reading:
• Aspect Mobility Suite Debuts to Support Intelligent Assistance Across Multiple Channels
• How Hyatt Hotels Delivers Intuitive Customer Service with an Intelligent Assistant (video)
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Blair PleasantPricipal Analyst, Commfusion
Focus: Call Center, Unified Communications, & Collaboration
Web: www.commfusion.com
@blairplez
Social channels are by their nature public, and interactions over social media can
be viewed by anyone and everyone. A poor customer service experience can be
viewed by hundreds, or thousands of people. Finding the right agents with the
right skills to interact with customers in this public forum is essential. Where
possible, social customer care interactions should be handled by specialized
social customer agents who are specially trained and skilled for social media.
Recommended Reading:
• Why We Need True MultiChannel Contact Centers
• Revisiting Social Customer Care
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Art RosenbergPrincipal Analyst, The Unified-View
Focus: Call Center, Voicemail, & Unified Communications
Web: http://www.ucstrategies.com/
@artrosenberg
As much as business communications are still in a state of transition from legacy,
location-based telephony just between people to new, mobile, multimodal
interactions between people and self-service online apps, there is a need to
accommodate both old and new forms of accessing live assistance. The key to
customer satisfaction is not necessarily just to reduce the actual wait time, but
also to let the customer do other things before it is time to interact with a live
person, commonly known as “virtual queuing” with callbacks.
Recommended Reading:
• Users Need UC Choice in “Mobile App” Interfaces
• WebRTC “Click-for assistance” Will Pay Off For Customer Satisfaction
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Art SchoellerPrincipal Analyst, Forrester Research
Focus: Unified Communications & Call Center Technology
Web: Forrester.com
@forrester
[UC deployments] fail because users can ignore you and you
lose the benefits … You have to establish and [invest] in a
change-management program.
Recommended Reading:
• Build An Outside-In Contact Center Road Map (subscribers only)
• Mind The Gap When Organizing To Support Contact Center Applications (subscribers
only)
“
Top Contact Center Analysts
Paul StockfordOwner, Saddletree Research
Focus: Contact center, CRM, & Social Media
Web: www.saddletreeresearch.com
@paulstockford
Omnichannel customer engagement means the customer’s entire
journey is tracked across channels in order to create a consistent,
optimized experience... The net result is a comprehensive view of the
customer journey from end-to-end…Given the evolution of customer
preferences and expectations…omnichannel is no longer a contact
center option, it’s a necessity.
Recommended Reading:
• Contact Center Mobility from the Inside Out
• Customer Experience Metrics, Cloud Delivery Drive WFM Demand
• The Omnichannel Evolution: Driving Customer Experience Optimization
“
The Executive Guide to
Improving 6 Call Center Metrics
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Measuring and improving call center metrics can be a pain
point for executives. Download our free guide to help you
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What’s Inside:
• Customer Satisfaction
• Service Level
• First Call Resolution
• Average Handle Time
• Plus so Much More! Download Now
