Redefining the boundaries of human engagement
Technology has evolved to the point where it can transform human engagement. There have been astonishing advances in technology. On the medical frontier, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can predict health issues before they become long-term...
Merchants joins UN Global Compact
Business process outsourcing (BPO) provider and customer experience partner, Merchants, has become South Africa's first BPO to join the United Nations Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative. "We are excited about this new step in our...
Digital-first contact centres position BFSI organisations for a new era of customer service
With constantly changing customer behaviour and expectations, today's customer journey can be complex, spanning many different points of contact across various engagement channels. By Dorotea Vatavuk, senior customer success executive at Infobip However, for many...
Dis-Chem chooses Clickatell’s Chat Commerce platform
Clickatell has been selected by Dis-Chem Pharmacies to enable WhatsApp as its customer communication channel to engage with its customers. Dis-Chem customers can now quickly and easily access various services through WhatsApp by sending "Hi" to 0860 347 243. The easy...
Virtual agents can be a win for SA’s BPO sector
South Africa's business process outsourcing (BPO) sector has built its reputation on the quality of its people. Our contact centre agents are some of the best in the world, offering warm, efficient customer service experiences via voice channels. Ryan Falkenberg,...
The pandemic changed everything: Where next for CX and contact centres?
There's a direct correlation between excellent customer service and business growth. We've seen in the last year how customer expectations can change rapidly, sparking a scramble for organisations to adjust their customer service offerings and CX strategy accordingly...
Translating context: the power of the human voice
The human voice can become the organisation's most valuable asset - understanding it, interpreting it and using it to transform communication, collaboration and business insights. As customers increasingly learn to vote with their feet in competitive markets, it has...
This is what you need to know about specialist chatbots
Chatbots as we know them are evolving. The generic bot found on many websites isn't fit for many of the purposes it's been deployed for. But now, chatbots are specialising to better meet the variety of roles they can fill - if correctly programmed. By Ryan Falkenberg,...
Value at the heart of chatbot personalisation
How many peppers would Peter have picked if the chatbot had called him by name? Wynand Smit, CEO of Inovo looks at how personal means business. Personalisation has become a value proposition. Or, as McKinsey calls it, a 'force multiplier' in its Next in...
Customer experience leads trends for 2022
Anyone who wasn't on board for the great tech boom in 2020 and 2021 would almost certainly have found themselves regretting their choices, as digital transformation continues to gain momentum in 2022. But "experience is everything" in the year ahead. By Nic...
Shifting analytical gear in the contact centre
In the past, speech analytics solutions were an expensive, often out of reach investment for most contact centres. They were usually only accessible by larger contact centres with at least 300 seats and cost upwards of R2-million to implement. Today, this paradigm has...
What does the future hold for customer and contact centres?
The future is murky and challenging but there are some clear trends emerging when it comes to customer experience and the evolution of the contact centre, writes Rod Jones, industry analyst and Callbi brand ambassador. The contact centre conversation. It's not one the...