How to Successfully Become an Omnichannel

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2017 TOOLKIT How to Successfully Become an Omnichannel Contact Center

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About This Toolkit As interactions expand into new channels, there is mounting pressure for organizations to deliver an integrated and seamless customer experience (CX) to competitively differentiate themselves. Delivering a great product at a value driven price is important but possible to replicate. Companies wishing to gain competitive advantage need to look to providing excellent service to set themselves apart. The expansion of service into chat, SMS, social, and other channels is happening more frequently, and executives acknowledge that there aren’t any signs that the velocity of this change will decrease. The introduction of these new channels is causing many contact center leaders (perhaps not unlike yourself) to stress out, lose sleep, and grow concerned, as their existing tools and resources are ineffective at pulling the customer’s experience into one comprehensive place. This leads to poor customer experiences, frustrated and discouraged agents, and a complicated and complex environment that wastes time, money, and resources. Successfully delivering an omnichannel experience requires a thoughtful and calculated approach to understanding, deploying, and measuring its impact on and value to the organization. ICMI and NICE inContact have partnered on this toolkit to provide contact center leaders with some of the fundamental resources that they’ll need to successfully deploy omnichannel service in their contact centers.

In this toolkit, we’ll explore:  How to recognize and measure the expected benefits of delivering omnichannel service and how to identify the positive impacts on the organization.  A framework that enables organizations to effectively determine the best blend of channels to offer.  Tips for maximizing the frontline productivity and ensuring that your agents are able to deliver on their intended purpose.  The impact of omnichannel service on common contact center metrics and ways to determine which metrics will be the most and least effective at measuring success.  The benefits and pitfalls of benchmarking omnichannel service, including an important lesson on how the most successful organizations approach benchmarks and trends.

ICMI Toolkit: How to Successfully Become an Omnichannel Contact Center

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Calculating the Benefits of Omnichannel Service

Omnichannel service initiatives create huge opportunities for contact centers if they effectively measure, guide, and enhance service. Done correctly, these results can transform the center into a strategic advisor and customer consultant to the rest of the organization and transition the contact center from constant firefighting into a preventative, proactive mode of service.

Omnichannel means seamless experience for customers and agents (a) across channels in a single contact (elevation within a session) and (b) across contacts in multiple sessions. When you support agents and customers in this way, you will lower customer effort, increase Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and support First Contact Resolution (FCR). This focus on an excellent omnichannel experience would positively and noticeably increase the impact of service on the organization's bottom line. Customers are demanding a seamless, integrated transactional and service experience. The benefits of successfully delivering a rich, personalized omnichannel customer experience are felt across multiple parts of the organization.

Potential Positive Impacts of Omnichannel Service Increase CSAT rates: In an ICMI study of the key drivers of customer dissatisfaction, three primary issues came to light: 1. The agent was unable to assist or resolve an issue 2. The customer experiences a long hold or delay in response 3. The agent gives the customer the wrong answer  ased on these insights, it’s clear that customer satisfaction can be sustained or B improved when agents effectively and accurately assist the customer in a timely manner. For these reasons, equipping agents with a true omnichannel solution will improve their ability to positively affect customer satisfaction by providing full insight into the customer journey, the agility to elevate conversations by adding one or more interaction channels to an ongoing customer session when necessary, and the ability to handle multiple customers across multiple channels concurrently.

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Calculating the Benefits of Omnichannel Service

Retain more customers through effective problem avoidance/management: Frighteningly, ICMI research indicates that very few organizations have effectively connected the customer experience across multiple channels and touchpoints. This disconnected experience is a major problem that’s often cited as a point of customer frustration and contention. Avoiding customer problems prevents damage to loyalty. When a customer experiences a problem, that results in, on average, a 20% decrease in loyalty. A decrease in loyalty increases the risk of losing the customer, which in turn could decrease the customer’s lifetime value. If, however, you assume that an increase in customer loyalty would also increase customer lifetime value, you could infer that the revenue impact of avoiding five problems could be equal to earning one new customer. Enhance revenue opportunities from positive word of mouth (WOM): A bad experience usually causes two to four times as much negative WOM as a good experience. Great service can foster positive WOM, which reduces your marketing expenses. When you demonstrate its impact, marketing is far more likely to work with you to invest in service channels to foster positive WOM.

HOW TO CALCULATE THE IMPACT OF WORD OF MOUTH Word of mouth is a form of cost savings for the organization; in the customer lifetime value calculation, it’s considered to be a “negative expense.” Here’s an example. Assume an average acquisition cost of $500 for each new customer. In one year, 4,000 new customers were acquired by referrals (WOM) from 1,000 existing customers. Therefore, the total acquisition cost savings for the brand would be: 4,000 x $500 $2,000,000

new customers obtained through WOM average acquisition cost total “savings”

÷ 1000

number of existing customers who referred new customers

$2,000

cost "savings" per referred customer

This $2,000 cost saving would then be built into the appropriate year(s) of the customer lifetime value calculation.

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Calculating the Benefits of Omnichannel Service

Improve margins due to less price sensitivity: The American Express 2014 Global Service Barometer found that "three out of four (74%) consumers say they have spent more with a company because of a history of positive customer service experiences." Price sensitivity rises exponentially when problems occur, doubling on the initial occurrence and doubling again with multiple occurrences. Therefore, CFOs who desire greater margins should support investments in customer resources (channels) and other problem prevention strategies. Reduce service costs due to problem prevention: In many organizations, 30% of service contacts are preventable if the organization would have proactively communicated with customers. By integrating the customer experience through an omnichannel approach, organizations have greater insight into the customer journey and can more effectively identify and address customer needs. This approach to the customer experience enables organizations to highlight problems and pain points that can be prevented through policy or product changes or proactive customer communication. Reduce risk of legal costs, regulatory costs, and public relations disasters: Many legal, regulatory, and public relations issues began as unresolved complaints. Organizations that have leveraged multiple points of customer interaction data (such as surveys, voice of the customer, and behavioral analytics—like those captured through omnichannel platforms) are able to reduce these occurrences of complaints.

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Calculating the Benefits of Omnichannel Service

Reduce turnover among frontline staff: A primary frustration for staff (and cause of voluntary external turnover) is being unable to effectively serve customers who need help, combined with having to handle problems that could have been prevented. This happens when agents' tools and resources ineffectively pull together customer data, leaving them to navigate a complex network of systems or processes to serve the customer. Research by ICMI found that 92% of contact center leaders believe that their agent-facing systems could be more effective in helping them serve the customer. A disconnected service experience isn’t just inconvenient for the customer—it’s chipping away at agent engagement, loyalty, and performance.

HOW TO CALCULATE EMPLOYEE TURNOVER There are several ways to calculate employee turnover (attrition): Monthly Actual | Monthly Average | Annual Actual | Annual Average Take, for example, a contact center that typically has 50 filled positions. Over the course of the month, 63 different people were employed in the contact center. At the end of the month, 46 positions are filled, 4 are vacant, and a total of 17 people quit or were terminated during the month. Monthly Actual (calculated each month)

Monthly Average (calculated over the course of several months)

Total # of people lost during the month ÷ Total # of employees during the month

Average # of people lost per month ÷ Average # of employees per month

17 ÷ 63 x 100 = 2.69%

(12 ÷ 56) x 100 = 21.4%

Monthly actual attrition = 26.9%

Monthly average attrition (over X months) = 21.4%

Annual Actual (calculated each year)

Annual Average (calculated over the course of several years)

Total # of people lost during the year ÷ Total # of employees during the year

Average # of people lost last year ÷ Average # of employees per year

(86 ÷ 718) x 100 = 11.9%

(75 ÷ 724) x 100 = 10.3%

Annual actual attrition = 11.9%

Annual average attrition (over Z years) = 10.3%

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Key Steps to Determining Which Channels to Serve

When evaluating the state of omnichannel service in the contact center, a common mistake is to think in terms of channels first and strategy second. This reactive approach to implementing service channels is a key contributor to the disconnected service experience that exists in so many organizations today. Successful omnichannel service delivery happens when companies intentionally plan for the implementation of a new channel that fits into their broader strategy. Deciding which channel(s) to implement is just one part of a comprehensive plan known as a customer access strategy.

Your customer access strategy should help you formulate answers to many important questions. For example: H  ow should your contact center be organized (e.g., how should agent groups be structured)? W  hat kinds of skills and knowledge will your agents, supervisors, and managers need? How should your hiring and training practices support these requirements? W  hat system capabilities best support your strategy? Do you have what you need inhouse or will you need to build, buy, or contract for required technologies? W  hat kind of processes best support your plans? Where should existing processes be refined or restructured? C  an contact center strategy help shape the organization’s strategy (e.g., by helping to differentiate the organization’s services)? Are the organization’s overall strategy, contact center strategy and the realities of budgets and resources in alignment?

Customers

Contact types

Access (channel) alternatives

Hours of operation

Service level and response time objectives

Routing methodology

People/technology resources required

Information required

Analysis and business unit collaboration

Guidelines for deploying new services

As with corporate strategy, a customer access strategy can take many different forms, and it can be used for many different purposes, including analyzing the needs of a customer or prospective customer, or analyzing a new contact channel. The worksheet on the following pages will walk you through the process, step by step.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10 

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Key Steps to Determining Which Channels to Serve

 Step 1: Customers Determine customer and prospective customers segments or groupings (e.g., by geography, purchasing behavior, demographics, volume of business, or unique requirements) and how the organization will serve each segment. This should align with marketing segmentation and specify how the organization communicates with these customers and ensures coordination across internal business units (e.g., informing the contact center of marketing campaigns). A. Is your proposed new channel a desired contact channel for an existing customer segment? What evidence supports this desire? B. Is the proposed new channel desired by a prospective customer base? How could this channel be applied in ways that enables you to “capture” those customers? C. Are there any other new contact channels that you would recommend for either existing or prospective customer segments?

 Step 2: Contact types Anticipate and identify the major types of interactions that this customer type(s) will engage in (e.g., rate quotes, enrollment, inquiries, and technical support). Each type of interaction should be analyzed for opportunities to build customer value, enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty and improve Net Promoter Score (NPS). A. Would you attempt to narrow the purpose of the contacts in this new channel? For example, would you use it to prevent website abandons or only offer it to high-value customers? B. What types of interactions (e.g., reasons for contacting) would be handled through this new channel? Would you limit the types of questions or concerns that could be resolved in this channel?

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Key Steps to Determining Which Channels to Serve

 Step 3: Access (channel) alternatives Identify the organization’s existing communication channels (e.g., telephone, social media, mobile apps, email, IVR, chat, video, AI bots, etc.) along with corresponding telephone numbers, URLs, email addresses, social handles, and postal addresses. A. Will the proposed new channel affect current contact channels? For example, would these customer segments have otherwise called us? B. How will this new channel be positioned to customers? For example, if it was a proactive pop-up webchat, when and where would it appear? C. What features or functionality does the new channel provide that aren't yet covered by an existing channel? What value does the new channel add above and beyond the existing ones?  Step 4: Hours of operation Identify the appropriate hours of operation to support these customer segments. A. Will the new channel be offered during the same hours as the contact center's existing hours of operation? B. Will it be disabled or changed if the contact center is not meeting service levels or under other conditions? If so, which conditions?

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Key Steps to Determining Which Channels to Serve

 Step 5: Service level and response time objectives Identify the organization’s service level and response time objectives. Different objectives may be appropriate for different contact channels and customer segments. A. How would this new channel affect the contact center’s ability to meet service level objectives or other key performance metrics? B. Will contacts in this new channel be measured using the same or different objectives as existing channels of service? C. Is the accessibility expectation the same? In other words, would customers in this new channel expect to receive service faster, slower, or at the same rate as your other channels of service?

EMERGENCY SERVICES 100/0

SL OBJECTIVES THAT ARE COMPARATIVELY HIGH 90/20, 85/15, OR 90/15

SL OBJECTIVES THAT ARE COMPARATIVELY MODERATE 80/20, 80/30, OR 90/60

SL OBJECTIVES THAT ARE COMPARATIVELY LOW 80/60, 90/120, OR 80/300

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Key Steps to Determining Which Channels to Serve

 Step 6: Routing methodology How—by customer, type of contact, and access channel—each contact will be routed and distributed within the contact center. This applies to both inbound and outbound contacts. This may include details on how additional data can be captured and utilized for personalized routing. For example, leveraging technology to recognize a phone number and immediately open the associated customer record in the CRM platform. A. Where should these contacts be routed? B. Which agents can accept these contacts? How will agents be notified about these contacts (e.g., a screen pop, automatically distributed through the ACD, manually accessed in a system)? C. How would estimated wait times impact service level, sales, or potentially customer satisfaction? D. Do existing routing methodologies apply to support the new channel? E. Should this new channel receive any preferential treatment in routing?

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Key Steps to Determining Which Channels to Serve

 Step 7: People/technology resources required The agents or systems required for each customer segment and contact type. A. Who will handle the new contact channel? Are specialized skills or training required for this channel or type of contact? In omnichannel contact centers, the following are often successful options: • A true (blended) omnichannel team (perhaps a subset of "top" agents where having multiple skills across channels is a career move) •  Experts by channel or cluster of channels (for example, voice vs. digital, real-time [voice, chat, social] vs. delayed response [email, mail, tickets, work items]) B. Are specialized tools or technology required for this channel or contact type? C. Will these contacts be tracked differently than other channels or contact type?

CONSIDERATIONS FOR BLENDED VS. SPECIALIZED AGENTS Blended (Omnichannel)

Specialized

result of an agents ability to handle more complex interactions across multiple channels. o Training time will increase as a result of requiring expanded knowledge and skills. o An enhanced focus on quality is required, as time to proficiency and the likelihood of error increase with the larger scope of expertise. o Organizations must consider the impact of the work on an agent’s cognitive load and balance realistic ability with the desired level of efficiency.

a specific channel or contact type will have lower occupancy and a more erratic service level than omnichannel agent groups. o The planning process grows in complexity with the introduction of diversified agent skillset groups based on channel or contact type, which increases the likelihood of lower forecast accuracy. o With specialized groups, you increase the probability that customer contacts will not get handled by the intended agent group, which increases transfer rates and decreases first contact resolution.

o Average handle times will increase as a

o Smaller agent groups that are based on

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Key Steps to Determining Which Channels to Serve

 Step 8: Information required Capture the information about customer, products, and services agents and customers need to complete the contact and the information that must be captured during contacts. This includes legal or regulatory privacy or reporting requirements. A. What information do agents need to complete these contacts? Will this information be pushed to them, or will they need to pull it from an existing system? If so, where? B. How does what happens in the new channel integrate into the customer’s history? Is there context on these interactions, or will the information be siloed and disconnected from other channels of service? C. Do specific legal or regulatory requirements apply to this channel or contact types?

REPORTING CONSIDERATIONS There are many types of reporting considerations in an omnichannel environment and it’s important to understand how one solution reports compared to the next. Here are two examples: Average Handle Time (AHT): When the agent is navigating multiple channels, is AHT calculated based on the total interaction handling time or does it provide per-channel insights for a deeper dive on how their time is spent? In addition, does the solution provide insight on when and where agents are elevating contacts to another channel? Omnichannel solutions should have the ability to tie the “parent” (original channel of contact) to the "child" or "children" (that is, any channels that were added on to the original interaction, turning the interaction into omnichannel session handling). This is a key business insight that can enable contact center leaders to track the most common contact types and channels that require elevation. Agent Utilization: Does the system recognize when an agent is handling concurrent interactions and calculate their utilization beyond 100%, or does it conceal when agents assist customers simultaneously?

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Key Steps to Determining Which Channels to Serve

 Step 9: Analysis and business unit collaboration Identify how the information captured and produced during contacts will be used to better understand customers and to improve products, services, and processes, especially those related to the focus of the customer access strategy. How will you measure the major performance objectives and the contact center's contributions? A. How will the success of the new channel initiative be measured? B. What are the key metrics (overall and individual) associated with these contacts? C. What information generated by this channel or contact type is valuable to other business units?

 Step 10: Guidelines for deploying new services The plan should outline a framework for deploying new services, including technology architecture (corporate standards and technology migration plans) and investment guidelines (priorities for operational and capital expenditures, if required). This step should also describe who would keep the customer access strategy current as services evolve (e.g., who has overall responsibility, how often the plan will be updated, who has ownership of individual components). A. What are the respective roles of IT, workforce management, marketing, and the contact center in implementing the technology and processes to support the new channel? B. What are the factors or guidelines that will be used to evaluate the benefits/drawbacks of new channels? C. Will the program be piloted? What outcomes will indicate we should move forward (e.g., cost/revenue ratios, effects on other channels, staffing costs, fit within overall strategy)?

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Tips to Maximize Agent Productivity in an Omnichannel Environment

Maximizing agent productivity is consistently in the list of top five contact center challenges. Fortunately, there are some practical and easy-to-implement tips for organizations that aspire to deliver an omnichannel experience. E  mpower agents to make the decisions necessary to provide the best customer experience. ICMI research finds that only 1 in 4 contact center agents are empowered to make such choices. Omnichannel organizations arm their frontline with robust insights and comprehensive customer data—their agents are empowered to do whatever it takes to best serve the customer. M  ake training a priority. Implementing new technologies or channels of service can often be perceived as the cure to an organization’s woes, but you cannot effectively leverage those things without comprehensive and ongoing user training. In addition, you need to make sure your agents have access to all resources and tools that help them to optimally handle the contacts that fall into their skills set. D  on’t cut corners on systems and processes. The number-one contributor to agent dissatisfaction is having ineffective tools and resources. Agents want to effectively serve their customers, but when the systems they use are broken, complicated, and cumbersome, they experience significant dips in productivity. If companies truly want to deliver great customer experiences and have engaged, productive employees, then they can’t tie their agents' hands when it comes to the tools they need to get the job done. L ead by example. Whether you realize or believe it or not, your employees are watching your every move and looking to you as their benchmark for performance. Do you have any biases, fears, or frustrations related to your organization's omnichannel experience? If so, it’s your responsibility to own, address, and overcome them yourself before you can expect the same from those you lead. Embrace the possibilities of omnichannel and leverage it to amplify your contact center’s strategic value and ability to deliver service that is superior to your competition. Wherever you lead, your team will follow.

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What to Expect: The Impact of Omnichannel on Your Key Performance Indicators

According to ICMI research, the shifts in customer expectations and how organizations approach the delivery of service will affect many common contact center metrics in new and different ways. In some cases, popular metrics are seen as less and less effective in helping leaders manage the contact center. In others, metrics are evolving in meaning, and what was once a negative indicator may now be a sign of positive improvement.

The least effective metrics for managing the omnichannel contact center: ABANDONMENT FROM QUEUE OR SHOPPING CART Without knowing why people are abandoning, contact centers find that they’re limited in their ability to affect change by focusing on abandonment. Leading organizations instead focus on achieving service level or response time to understand accessibility, rather than fixating on abandonment as the priority. COST PER CONTACT Outside of the contact center, it’s easy to believe that cost per contact is a good indicator of performance, but increasingly this is not the case. In fact, pursuing a decrease in a general cost per contact is misguided, as the cost per contact is rising for many agentassisted contacts. This may sound alarming, but there’s a good chance that it’s not actually cause for alarm. As more and more interactions move into self-service and automation, it’s pulling simple and repetitive tasks out of agents' workloads. This leaves only the more complex and complicated interactions for agent assistance, which are often a higher cost per contact as compared to the simple and repetitive tasks. Overall, however, the contact center’s cost of service should decrease with the effective implementation and utilization of self-service and automation. AVERAGE HANDLE TIME (AHT) AHT is an important metric for forecasting and planning in the contact center, but it shouldn’t be a leading metric of agent productivity or customer satisfaction. In fact, AHT is shown to increase in omnichannel session handling environments due to the increased complexity of the contacts coming to live agents. The increases in AHT should balance out overall, however, as first contact resolution increases and the incidence of repeat contacts decreases.

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What to Expect: The Impact of Omnichannel on Your Key Performance Indicators

The best metrics for managing the omnichannel contact center: QUALITY MONITORING Quality is a critical focus in the omnichannel contact center. These organizations have invested in integrating all of their customer data into a unified record that equips their agents with the insight and resources to fully understand the customer. For agents who have a 360° customer view, the number-one thing that they can control is the quality of that interaction. How well are agents’ leveraging their comprehensive knowledge to deliver on the customers’ expectations and the brands service promise? CUSTOMER SATISFACTION When it comes to competitive advantage, customer experience outweighs both price and product. Some of the key points of delivering an omnichannel service experience include simplifying the customer experience, eradicating disconnects between service channels, and ensuring a full understanding of who our customers are, where they’ve been, and where they need to go next. To understand their satisfaction with these efforts, it’s important to connect with them through surveys, focus groups, or other methods for collecting and understanding customer satisfaction. FIRST CONTACT RESOLUTION An investment in omnichannel is, in many ways, also an investment in first contact resolution. A common driver of repeat, or additional, contacts stems from the disconnected experience in a pre-omnichannel contact center. By integrating channels and connecting the customer experience, contact centers find that they’re more effective at “getting it right the first time” for their customers. CUSTOMER EFFORT Research by Gartner (CEB) finds customer effort to be a strong predictor of loyalty. This corroborates ICMI research that found that 82% of consumers say that number-one factor in a great customer service experience is having their issue resolved quickly (think easy). Customer effort is entirely a matter of customer perception, which is why a true omnichannel experience is essential. Nothing screams unnecessary effort like a customer navigating a siloed organization.

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What to Expect: The Impact of Omnichannel on Your Key Performance Indicators

Are there omnichannel benchmarks? When it comes to omnichannel metrics, contact center directors and managers desperately want good information. They want to know where they stand, what customers expect, what they must do to deliver great service, and which changes are cost-effective and will best meet customer needs. They want facts upon which to base sound decisions. But could it be that too many contact center professionals are overemphasizing the value of finding out what everyone else is doing, rather than developing and working toward the best objectives for their own organizations? If so, it’s not hard to understand why. An ever-changing economic and regulatory environment—along with dramatic developments in social, mobile, and other new forms of access—has led to shifts in strategy and operational objectives at many organizations. The changes have quickly rendered industry surveys obsolete and left managers without a sufficient “gut” sense.

What's the norm for FCR?

How many channels should we offer?

What's the ideal cost per contact?

Is our average handle time too high?

What's the right service level?

It's easy to become obsessed with mass comparison. What are others doing? Most inquiries about industry benchmarks or standards are really a way of asking about the objectives that should be set. But an industry benchmark tells you what others, on average, are doing. At a time where channels are proliferating, mobile and social are changing expectations, and customer sentiment is mixed at best, we need to raise the bar—not lock it where our competitors and the public perceive it to be now.

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What to Expect: The Impact of Omnichannel on Your Key Performance Indicators

“Why is it so hard for organizations to understand what Tony [Hsieh] did with customer service at Zappos? … He insisted that the operators be trained and rewarded to take their time and actually be human, to connect and make a difference instead of merely processing the incoming. People hear this, see the billion dollars in goodwill that was created, nod their heads and then go back to running an ‘efficient’ call center.” —Seth Godin (2013) There’s no alternative to your team thinking through your organization’s unique brand and approach, both to identify the right questions and the answers that work. That effort inherently puts renewed importance on contact center dynamics and how they work. Maybe your first call resolution rate is lower than what similar organizations say they are achieving. You may be among the minority of centers measuring the rate rigorously enough for it to be meaningful. Similarly, your service level objective may be lower than those for comparable organizations. But, it could also be the result of siloed systems and a disconnected experience. Don’t let bad processes or a lack of integration be the root cause. Instead, benchmark FCR rates pre- and post-omnichannel integration. The results will illuminate both your quick wins and opportunities for improvement. If you discover that you’re seeing sub-par FCR rates because contacts are requiring follow-up activities, there are a number of ways to alleviate this in an omnichannel environment. This could include:  Adding elevation to the interaction, thus moving the contact to the best channel for completion.  Modifying the type of channel(s) that the organization utilizes for various contact drivers.  Empowering the agent with access to whatever information was missing that prevented the contact from getting resolved in one step.

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What to Expect: The Impact of Omnichannel on Your Key Performance Indicators

The bottom line: Sound decision-making must always win out over trying to emulate industry norms. Don’t mistake so-called standards for easy answers to your organization’s most important questions. An important lesson that has emerged from our work with contact centers of all shapes and sizes over the years is that outstanding centers—those making the most significant contributions to their organizations’ success—did not achieve exemplary levels of performance by acquiring benchmark reports and imitating what they found. More often than not, they bucked the trend. By all means, do your homework. And, yes, that can and should include staying in the know on what’s happening across our profession. But go much further. Think about your organization’s brand promise and what that means to the services you provide. Learn all you can about the process of establishing contact center objectives and how variables are interrelated. Develop a solid customer access strategy and tie it in with your organization’s overall strategic objectives. Set supporting objectives that make sense for you. Then, be bold and step out of the crowd! This is a time of change and development in our profession, and we need leadership, not just mass comparison and imitation. That’s what will elevate the role of customer interaction, and earn contact centers the support and strategic roles they should have.

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About ICMI ICMI is the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals— from frontline agents to executives—who wish to improve customer experiences and increase efficiencies at every level of the contact center. Since 1985, ICMI has helped more than 50,000 organizations in 167 countries through training, events, consulting, and informational resources. ICMI’s experienced and dedicated team of industry insiders, trainers, and consultants are committed to helping you raise the strategic value of your contact center, optimize your operations, and improve your customer service. ICMI is a part of UBM plc (ubm.com), a global events-led marketing services and communications company.

About NICE inContact NICE inContact is the cloud contact center software leader, with the most complete, easiest and most reliable solution to help organizations achieve their customer experience goals. inContact continuously innovates in the cloud and is the only provider to offer a complete solution that includes the customer interaction cloud, an expert service model and the broadest partner ecosystem.

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