Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported, which means we earn commissions from links on Digital. Commissions do not affect our editorial evaluations or opinions. There are many call center solutions to choose from, so to narrow things down, we’ve gone ahead and read all the case studies, the customer reviews, the product specifications, and the fine print. Here are the best call center software solutions for 2024. Featured Partners Advertisement Featured Partners pay us for placement on our site. When you sign up for one of them using our links, we get paid a small percentage at no co ..read more

Can ChatGPT reliably perform call center sentiment analysis? The short answer is yes, with some caveats.  This article covers the key steps involved in using large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT-4 to gain insights into customer emotions and satisfaction levels from call transcripts. You’ll learn how to transcribe your calls, prepare your data, and utilize ChatGPT for analysis. Why AI Pairs Well With Call Center Sentiment Analysis Call center sentiment analysis is about understanding how your customers feel when they talk to your team. This smart approach looks at what’s said (and som ..read more

Cold calling is one of those underrated skills that keeps evolving with the times, and this leads to a lot of outdated tips that are only partially true or even downright false.  Thankfully, modern cold calling is not that complicated to understand, and it continues to be a tool that, if done right, can lead to a significant boost in both sales and your company’s bottom line.  Conversely, applying certain techniques that have gone from best to worst practices can lead to frustration on both ends of a cold call, often resulting in customer mistrust and feelings of demotivation and ine ..read more

Long hold times are one of the biggest sources of frustration for contact center callers. Excessive queuing leads to abandoned calls, poor customer experience, and can even impact sales and loyalty.  If your call center is plagued by high queue times, it’s crucial to identify and address the root causes. In this article, we’ll explore five common reasons behind lengthy queues and provide actionable fixes to help you reduce wait times and improve caller satisfaction. 1. Outdated Phone Menus Have you ever called a business only to be met with a maze of menu options that don’t quite fit what ..read more

Call groups can play a critical role in call centers that consistently experience high call volumes, though the benefits they bring and the best times to use them are often misunderstood.  First of all, a call group—which is sometimes called a ring group—brings multiple phone lines or extensions together to handle incoming calls collectively. This is done to provide a more efficient distribution of calls among team members, ensuring that incoming calls are both answered quickly and routed smoothly to the right person or department. A call group is often confused with a hunt group, which i ..read more

Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) is a network technology for routing and packet forwarding in private, wide-area network (WAN) connections. It is a switching mechanism that uses labels to decide the shortest possible path instead of the usual network address.  In general, these labels are more effective for directing data through paths than traditional internet protocols—which use long, less efficient network addresses when moving data from one internet node to another.   MPLS has some good aspects, but it actually falls short when it comes to fulfilling today’s dynamic netw ..read more

Many businesses rely on Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems for their customer service calls. While IVR can be an extremely powerful tool for managing your call queue and improving customer satisfaction, it’s not a set-and-forget kind of system. Regular IVR testing is essential to make sure your system is working properly and doesn’t have any security issues. The last thing you want is for your IVR system to end up causing your customers to become frustrated because they can’t navigate it easily or because they keep getting routed to the wrong place. Of course, if unscrupulous people are ..read more

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems have transformed how businesses interact with their customers. This technology enables customers to make payments securely and efficiently at their leisure, and it also benefits businesses by significantly increasing their containment rates. A high containment rate means that more customer interactions are resolved within the IVR system itself. This reduces the need for direct agent involvement, which in turn reduces labor costs and the time associated with manual payment collections. This also allows customer service representatives to focus on more co ..read more

Contact center workforce optimization (WFO) is the process of making any given contact center agent’s work higher performing and more efficient. The components of contact center WFO include: WFM (Workforce Management): forecasting and scheduling your agents’ workload to make sure staffing levels are adequate QM (Quality Management): monitoring and evaluating your agents’ performance and identifying which areas they can improve on Together, WFM and QM combine to create a solution that benefits contact centers of all sizes and specialties. Let’s learn more about the advantages of workforce opt ..read more

A queue callback system offers callers the option to request a return call from an agent instead of waiting on hold. This saves customers time and helps you make your call center operations smoother and more efficient. Queue callbacks are also known as automated callbacks, virtual holds, or callback queues. Most often, they are part of an interactive voice response system (IVR) and they work based on conditions you pre-define, such as the number of calls in the queue. Let’s take a closer look at the reasons why some customers enjoy and others dislike queue callback. The Beauty of the Queue Cal ..read more