This eBook, which draws on Ventana Research’s extensive benchmark research, uncovers the 8 proven benefits of modern contact center performance management systems. You’ll learn how to develop a strong business case for investing in performance management systems that track and help improve contact center performance, employee satisfaction and the customer experience, and why performance management systems are one of the top two planned analytics investments for the year ahead.

Speech analytics is a fantastic tool when it’s used properly. It has the ability to provide valuable insights into customer needs, wants and opportunities. Better yet, business insights can be quickly identified and correlated without intruding on customer communications. This sounds great – and it can be – when the potential barriers and challenges are addressed.

Whether you have 20 or 20,000 agents in your contact center, it’s essential to have one system of record that collects, consolidates, standardizes, analyzes and presents timely and actionable findings and recommendations to agents, supervisors and managers. Review the list of 35 common issues that performance management solutions address to see the many ways your customer-facing operations can benefit.

To avoid costly violations and ensure customer credibility, you need to be aware of many of the new and evolving laws, regulations, and industry standards that most profoundly affect contact centers, what you can do to avoid problems, and where to go when you need help. Regulations covered include: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA), Consent to Record, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

The contact center is becoming increasingly complex. Traditional live agents alone can’t meet the demands of today’s contact center. Fortunately, advances in artificial intelligence are offering an ideal voice self-service solution - Virtual Call Agents.

Download the complimentary benchmark research paper, authored by Chief Analyst Paul Stockford of Saddletree Research, to learn how real-time performance management enables split-second decisions from overall contact center performance down to a single customer contact. You'll discover today's most important contact center issues to measure and act upon in real-time and the highest-value metrics to share in real time with front line agents. You'll also learn why real-time performance management software is among the elite industry solutions with highest ROI impact.

Traditional quality assurance (QA), which has been primarily focused on monitoring and improving internal agent quality and compliance for the past 30 years, is now also being used to uncover valuable insights to improve business operations and customer satisfaction. The emergence of workflow automation and embedded analytics with new QA solutions are helping customer facing organizations around the world reduce the manual steps required by most traditional QA programs by 60 to 80 percent. Better yet, the latest QA solutions take you straight to what really matters – delivering insight into critical business issues and opportunities to improve customer experience and revenue outcomes. This resource guide outlines and reviews the key considerations and top ten capabilities of importance when purchasing a new, more effective QA solution.

Have you ever been blindsided by issues in your contact center? Still manually compiling data from different systems? Need timelier, more flexible reporting? If so, you’re not alone. Most contact centers are dependent upon incredibly limited reports that can’t provide the critical and timely data and alerts essential for crisis prevention and optimum performance. Fortunately, recent innovations in contact center performance management technology means that you don’t have to struggle with reporting anymore. There are now flexible, real-time and historical reporting tools that can adapt to your specific, evolving business needs. Download this groundbreaking white paper authored by renowned analyst Donna Fluss today to learn how.

Learn how to solve seven major problems faced by contact centers everyday with desktop analytics, including:
1. Measurement and analysis of first call resolution
2. More effective agent evaluations
3. Optimizing call handle time
4. Campaign analysis
5. Identification of at risk customers
6. Collections optimization and compliance
7. Achieving PCI – DSS compliance

There is immense pressure on contact centers to improve customer satisfaction while reducing internal costs. Without the right technologies and processes in place, it can be virtually impossible for contact centers to create the best possible customer service environment. Download the white paper to learn how to harness the power of unified workforce optimization solutions to get call recording, quality assurance, WFM, analytics, performance management, E-learning and customer surveying to work together to optimize contact center performance, customer satisfaction and compliance. You'll also learn how to quickly identify critical customer issues and realize process improvement opportunities across multiple communication channels - use analytics to identify high value interactions, prevalent reasons for customer calls, bottlenecks in contact center processes, and gaps in agent skills and knowledge. You'll discover proven methods for creating highly effective agent learning programs - personalize training content selection and delivery based on individual performance measures and skill gaps, prioritized by ranking of business objectives.

Traditional call center quality assurance has reached the end of its life cycle – it is too cumbersome to embrace the latest customer mindset and often contributes to customer dissatisfaction, organizational turmoil and reduced agent morale. The new, intelligent call center quality assurance systems automate workflow and rapidly identify insights into critical business and customer experience issues and opportunities. Perhaps most importantly, call center quality assurance now encompasses the entire process of doing good business throughout your contact center.

On October 28, 2010, the Payment Card Industry Standards Council made a major update to the PCI Data Security Standard. PCI DSS version 2.0 went effective on January 1, 2011. Organizations that do not take action this year to ensure compliance with these new requirements could face costly fines. You'll learn how the new PCI DSS requirements will affect your organization, important PCI DSS requirements that impact call recording and quality monitoring, six alternatives for preventing recording and storing of sensitive credit card authentication data and much more!

Given the high number of activities and volume of data collected in contact centers today, getting to the root cause of problems and taking corrective actions can often be a daunting task. More specific to business content than performance analytics and less expensive and easier to implement and manage than speech analytics, Business Optimization Analytics is the latest innovation in technologies for the monitoring and improvement of contact center operations, business performance, and customer experience.

The Quality Assurance (QA) process for most contact centers has been a cumbersome undertaking for three decades. Now, there is a better way – the next generation of QA solutions is here. Utilizing workflow automation and analytics, they can reduce the manual steps required by most QA applications by 60 to 80 percent while ensuring the voice of the customer (VOC) is still heard.

Given the high number of activities and volume of data collected in contact centers today, getting to the root cause of problems and taking corrective actions can often be a daunting task. More specific to business content than performance analytics and less expensive and easier to implement and manage than speech analytics, VPI Fact Finder is the latest innovation in technologies for the monitoring and improvement of contact center operations, business performance, and customer experience.

No other contact center measure has as much impact on enterprise performance as First Contact Resolution (FCR). Improved FCR rates often result in significantly reduced operating costs, increased opportunities to sell, and improved employee and customer satisfaction and loyalty. But as many have found, FCR isn't always so easy to track and improve. The good news is that new, affordable analytics tools are making the quest for FCR much easier.

As the premier provider of call recording and workforce optimization solutions, VPI is pleased to offer you the following white paper on call recording regulations, call recording laws by state and solutions for ensuring compliance. Some of the many regulations covered include Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), Truth in Lending Act (TILA) among many others!

Now more than ever, contact center managers and executives need to be proactive in helping their organizations accomplish strategic and tactical goals, but with so much data available there's a tendency to rely upon the tried and true call center metrics that everyone tracks. Successful managers know the call center metrics that matter, understand contact center metrics best practices, and utilize proactive technologies that enable them to monitor call center measures to identify and optimize rather than wait and react.

In today's highly competitive and rapidly evolving marketplace, it's crucial to equip agents with the appropriate skills to respond to customers effectively and efficiently. E-learning and coaching tools are proven to help contact centers mitigate agent churn, reduce staffing shortages and improve performance. This brand new white paper provides proven best practices and groundbreaking techniques for deploying e-learning and coaching solutions in the contact center.

Regardless of where you are on your journey to implementing an effective Quality Assurance program, the new APCO NENA ANSI-approved standard for Quality Assurance and Improvement (QA/QI) offers a fresh perspective on making it better for everyone at your agency. Cognizant of NG 9-1-1 transition underway, it draws from contributions of expert practitioners. Learn about recommendations, practical tips and helpful software tools in this e-book that are based on hands-on experience of those agencies that already perfected smart ways of doing QA.

Learn about the 10 key questions you'll want to ask vendors when evaluating recording system that will support your transition to Next Generation 9-1-1 multimedia communications.

The trend towards consolidation of local and regional Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) centers is here to stay, driven by multiple powerful factors - economics, better efficiency, Next Generation 9-1-1, obsolescence of the current technology, disaster planning, access to expertise and more. Download this resource guide to learn why a well-designed Quality Assurance (QA/QI) program is critical to a successful consolidation and key considerations for selecting the right centralized communications recording, QA and E-learning technologies.

The development of Next Generation 9-1-1 and soon–to–be introduced Quality Assurance (QA) standards are raising the bar for the quality of service required from public safety agencies. Quality of service is impacted by both the performance of employees and the processes in use. Periodic, systematic quality evaluation of emergency contact center communications can provide invaluable transparency to everyone involved and expose inadequacies in both employee and process areas.

Public safety emergency communications have never been on the threshold of greater change than they are today. PSAPs, both large and small, are now preparing for Next Generation 9-1-1 to keep up with the rapidly evolving world of mobile, multimedia and IP communications. Register to download this eye–opening resource guide discusses what you need to look for in a new recording and quality assurance system to meet the challenges arising from Next Generation 9-1-1.

Emergency communications have never been on the threshold of greater change than they are today. Navigating in a complex world of tracking, recording, evaluating, and training on interactions in today's increasingly complex communication centers requires much more insight than ever before. This ground-breaking guide discusses the areas that public safety organizations need to focus upon in preparation for the many changes and challenges that lie ahead.

The Ventana Research 2015 Value Index for Workforce Optimization is an unbiased, fact-based index designed to help organizations assess, validate and improve their Workforce Optimization investments and technology. Built on Ventana Research’s foundation of 12 years of business and technology research, this is the first such industry undertaking to assess the value of software designed specifically for enabling Workforce Optimization.

Learn dozens of best practices for getting the right staff on board, training them well, and reviewing their customer conversations to ensure each interaction delivers value. The Quality and Training Connection (QATC), an industry association devoted to these critical functions in today’s contact center, has been surveying hundreds contact center quality assurance (QA) and training professionals for 5 years on a wide variety of topics. This 77 page report is a compilation of those surveys with detailed commentary on the results.

“The Inner Circle Guide to Customer Contact Analytics” is a detailed and realistic analysis of the many benefits of speech and multi-channel analytics, as well as the technology, implementation best practices, ROI model building, expected results, speech analytics software comparison and market landscape. Through understanding the content of vast volumes of interactions, the level of actionable insight that analytics can unlock is unprecedented. The report also features actual and potential end-users asking tough questions to solution providers about the reality of using speech analytics software.

Always designed to serve customers, the call center is now committed to satisfying them. In order to honor that commitment, organizations must calibrate their call center operations with the notion of customer satisfaction. It is within this customer-centric landscape that Call Center IQ issues its annual Executive Report on Call Center Performance, Operations and Technology. Constructed with call center benchmarking data from CCIQ’s annual Call Center Performance and Operations survey and colored with insights from several thought leaders, the report unpacks and assesses the state of call center operations.

See why Frost & Sullivan are convinced that VPI VirtualSource virtual call agent solution provides the best answer to two of the most vexing problems facing contact center managers.

Read the report reprint to learn more about 13 of 14 product categories that VPI's recording, QA and workforce optimization solutions ranked first in DMG Consulting's 2012 Product and Market Report.

The latest report from the National Association of Call Centers (NACC) shows a very optimistic outlook for the call center industry. Learn about benchmark research and the latest trends in call recording, quality monitoring, speech analytics, performance analytics and E-learning.

Download this complimentary 35 page report executive summary to learn which contact center quality management and liability call recording technologies help call center managers achieve their primary goals, key contact center quality management and liability recording technology trends altering the direction of contact centers, How to take your contact center quality management program to the next level and increase productivity while enhancing the customer experience and agent satisfaction and many more call center quality management skills!

See the results of Saddletree Research's benchmark research on the many uses and benefits of real-time contact center performance management. Learn how real-time performance management enables split-second decisions from overall contact center performance down to a single customer contact. You’ll learn today's most important contact center issues to measure and act upon in real-time and the highest-value metrics to share in real time with front line agents and managers. Discover why real-time performance management software is among the elite industry solutions with highest ROI impact.

Analytics can help you transform your contact center’s quality assurance (QA) program from mere internal compliance monitoring to a business value generating engine. Analytics and workflow automation can help you reduce the manual steps required by most traditional QA programs by 60 to 80 percent. Better yet, they take you straight to what really matters – delivering insight into critical business issues and opportunities to improve customer experience and revenue outcomes. Attend this informative session to learn how to get more value from your QA program by using analytics to classify and assign interactions for review based on their business value.

Traditional touch tone and speech IVRs have failed because they try to take customers down a linear path. Learn how conversational virtual call agents powered by artificial intelligence can help you successfully automate a much broader range of your inbound and outbound call types for just one-fifth of the cost of a human agent and achieve much higher call completion and customer satisfaction rates than traditional speech IVRs. You’ll also learn how several world-class organizations are already using cloud-based virtual call agents to lower costs, improve customer experience and gain a strong competitive advantage. You'll also learn about how easy it is to get started successfully automating your calls with VPI's Risk Free 30-Day Trial.

Learn how you can now automate a much broader range of your call types for just one-fifth of the cost of a human agent and achieve much higher call completion and customer satisfaction rates than traditional speech IVRs and even some human agents. You’ll also learn how several world-class organizations are already using conversational virtual agents to lower costs, improve customer experience and gain a strong competitive advantage.

Join APCO Institute Adjunct Instructor Lori VanGilder and QA specialist Patrick Botz from VPI to learn how to implement an effective QA/QI program that combines the automated selection of priority calls for review, in addition to randomly selected calls to provide a well-rounded assessment of the performance of each telecommunicator. You'll learn how to design objective QA evaluation forms for evaluating critical call and incident types and deliver timely Coaching feedback to telecommunicators to dramatically improve the qualify of your communications.

Learn how PowerSouth Energy Cooperative modernized its communications center and boosted liability and quality control with a state-of-the-art IP dispatch and communications recording solution.  You also learn from experts at Avtec and VPI about the compelling advantages of an IP infrastructure for emergency communications, best practices for disaster recovery, and proven strategies for future-ready recording and Quality Assurance of your communications.

Hospitals and other healthcare providers, as well as insurance companies, rely on accurate and timely communication to save lives, run smoothly and enhance patients’ health. But how do you know if your contact center is fulfilling its part of that equation? In this podcast, Mohan Nair will discuss:

• The increased focus on the contact center as an integral player in healthcare reform
• How the right quality monitoring and analytics tools can improve the patient experience, boost your CMS quality and performance ratings, cut costs, enhance privacy and improve compliance reporting
• Staffing your healthcare contact center for quality
• How First Contact Resolution (FCR) metrics are driving improvements across the entire organization

Finally, you’ll walk away from this podcast with two recommendations you can implement today to improve your contact center’s quality, performance and customer experience.

In this podcast, Patrick Botz, VP of Workforce Optimization sits down with Doug Green from Telecom Reseller to discuss advances in contact center performance reporting. You'll learn how unified contact center reporting:

• Provides a unified view of multiple data sources and sites including Avaya, Cisco, Aspect and many other ACD and dialers, CRM, QA, WFM and ticketing systems, as well as internal databases.
• Graphically presents your metrics in real time in the form of Web-based reports, dashboards, scorecards and desktop tickers.
• Alerts you to potential problems and opportunities in your contact center.

In the highly regulated and complex energy and utilities sector, the contact center is often the unsung, but most visible, hero. Frequently overlooked as a strategic player in the past, the contact center is finally being noted by utility providers as critical to overall company success. In this podcast, Mohan Nair will discuss:

• Emerging trends in recruitment and training of contact center agents
• The benefits of implementing quality monitoring and individual mentoring in a utilities environment
• Why utility providers must ensure that communication, training and quality monitoring are always among top priorities

Finally, you’ll walk away from this podcast with two recommendations you can implement this year to greatly improve the compliance, quality and performance of your contact center operations.

Financial services providers are doing a delicate balancing act these days: complying with requirements for more transparency and lower costs versus the need to provide outstanding customer service. While challenging, there are companies who are able to achieve this balance and are rebuilding the trust and relationships that may have been damaged during the recession. In this podcast, Mohan Nair will discuss:

• The critical role the contact center is playing in rebuilding the reputation of the financial services industry
• Important trends to watch
• Examples of innovative financial organizations that are balancing compliance and minimizing security breaches while delivering outstanding customer experiences
• Tips for staffing and training your outsourced contact center to reduce attrition

Finally, you’ll walk away from this podcast with two recommendations you can implement this year to greatly improve the compliance, quality and performance of your contact center operations.

Organizations turn to outsourced contact center services to lower operational costs and increase the number of agents they can access at a given time. But often, critical quality control measures are reduced or removed altogether in the cost reduction effort. To ensure productivity, quality and a customer satisfaction, Mohan Nair will discuss:

• Critical metrics that must be included in contracts with Outsourced Service Provider
• The importance of selecting a provider that will build and strengthen your brand over one that just saves you money
• Why analyzing and acting on real-time performance metrics is more effective than relying on historical trends and data
• Tips for staffing and training your outsourced contact center to reduce attrition