Category: Customer Experience

Design thinking was a thing ten years ago. Today, some of us might think it is a buzzword that doesn’t really contribute much to the overall service or product improvements. Unfortunately, rapid prototyping and ‘post it notes everywhere’ made some of us wrongly assume that design thinking is a rigid six-step methodology with no real…
The post The top 5 design thinking certificates exploring links between society and business appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Hustle harder.

Run more ads.

Spam people.

Interrupt.

Make the logo bigger.

Post again.

Post again.

Add more blurbs.

Push the press release to irrelevant people.

Do one more ad.

Use AI to create faux intimacy.

Get the word out.

Burn trust.

Get more attention.

In the last forty years, the amount of promotion has gone up exponentially. At the same time, the success of promoted content, products and services hasn’t increased at all.

That’s because the secret isn’t to focus on your promo.

The secret is to create something that those you serve want to tell others about.

When other people do your promo, it’s not promo. It’s passion and sharing and generosity in community.

Better is better than louder.

Happy Friday! ‘This week in CX’ brings you the latest roundup of industry news. This week, we’re looking at the great results from the almighty 4 day week trials! Emplifi have also investigated the impact of customer reviews, and there’s new research into which generations are feeling the stress at work.  Key news New breakthrough report…
The post This week in CX: 92% success rate for the 4 day week; plus Emplifi & Medallia appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Hey all, hope your doing well Im a dtc brand owner, sell unisex clothing – with a focus on community and drop culture. Im looking to start offering live shopping, would love to hear the groups thoughts, whos the best provider and if anyone has tried it,what have your results been. submitted by /u/Remarkable-Pay-7441 [link] [comments]

After 2022, it’s hard to tell for sure.

And going forward, public life is going to be even more rumor-driven than it is now.

Any video, any voiceover, any photograph–we can’t be sure. If YouTube or the Wayback Machine shows us that it happened after 2022, bring some doubt. AI and digital cools can produce a perfect voiceover, edit a video, forge a document…

There have always been forces at work that prize disrupting our civic systems. But thanks to AI and digital deepfakes, it’s significantly easier to create and spread a story that simply didn’t happen. A speech that was never given, an interview that never occurred.

Before mass media, every citizen only had the experiences they saw firsthand–and the rumors. Sometimes they were true, often, not so much.

The ease with which someone can invent and spread lies is going to take most of us by surprise. It’s going to require an entirely new posture for understanding the world around us.

Every day is April Fools from now on, let’s not get fooled.

Could we change our minds?

When was the last time new information caused you to walk away from an idea you were confident in?

It gets harder and harder to do, and more and more important.

The on-going contact center conversion to SIP trunking technology has been an industry success story. Why? For starters, using SIP technology to enable voice and video calls, messaging, and data transmission saves money: up to 50% more, according to Gartner analysts.
And SIP trunking is super-flexible; it makes it easy for contact centers to add advanced features like speech analytics, Web Call-Backs (formerly Visual IVR), and conversation scheduling from third-party vendors. It’s the right solution for many, but there are questions to be answered before you know whether SIP trunking is right for your contact center.
What is SIP Trunking?
Before we go any further, it’s important to understand what a trunk — and, more specifically, a SIP trunk — is. In telecom, a trunk is a set of connections that serves multiple users and carries many phone calls at a time. Every call center uses trunks to carry its calls.
Think of a SIP trunk as the online version of a phone line. SIP, or session initiation protocol, is a protocol that sets up communications through voice, video, and messaging applications. A SIP-enabled trunk lets you use an internet connection instead of a traditional phone line to connect callers together.

DID YOU KNOW?:
The “trunk” in SIP trunk is a legacy term left over from the days of analog calling, when a trunk line was an actual physical bundle of phone lines connected to businesses. Because a SIP trunk delivers the same functionality, the name stuck.

What are the benefits of SIP trunking?
SIP trunking is popular for good reason. It comes with many benefits, one of the main ones being that it allows you to use the same IP-based network for multiple types of data transmission, including voice and video calls. Some other benefits include:

SIP trunking frees you from having different subscription services for voice and data.
It can lower your hardware costs, as hundreds of VoIP calls can be made using the same hardware footprint.
SIP trunking lets you build a single, solid infrastructure that scales with your business and supports your growth without requiring you to constantly add new services along the way.
Can be up to 50% cheaper than traditional telco setups and
Can easily facilitate advanced features like Web Call-Backs (formerly Visual IVR) and speech analytics.

The flexibility of SIP is one of its biggest advantages. Because it is a standardized protocol that can enable voice, video, and messaging data, external vendors can interact with your call center platform without requiring any custom development. This frees the contact center from being stuck with the onboard options that come with their contact center software and lets them integrate the specialized software, like Voice Call-Backs, that best suits their needs.

Is SIP the same as VoIP?
SIP and VoIP, or voice over internet protocol, make a great team, but they are not the same thing. Instead, SIP is one of the most widely used protocols to implement VoIP. VoIP itself is a suite of technologies and protocols that enables voice data to be sent over the internet, while SIP works more in the background, and is used to set up and end VoIP calls.

FACT:
SIP can be used to enable communications in a variety of media, not just voice.

SIP or PSTN?
The more traditional way of carrying phone lines is the public switched telephone network, or PSTN. While both have their own advantages, SIP beats out PSTN when talking out total volume of calls that can be handled. In particular, unlike traditional PSTN technologies such as ISDN or T1, there are no defined hardware channel limitations on a SIP trunk. SIP requires data capacity rather than physical channels, meaning it can scale to meet your needs as required.
Essential Technology for the Virtual Contact Center
Does a SIP trunk change the customer’s experience?
No! SIP trunk phone systems work very well when they are used with appropriate internet bandwidth and your callers should expect the same great calling experience as traditional PSTN. If you are experiencing lagging or choppy audio, there may be congestion or lowered speeds on the internet service used for your SIP trunk. Your SIP provider can advise you on the expected bandwidth consumption needed to support your call volume.
Good to Know: Glossary of Related Terms
There’s a good deal of technical language that emerges when you dive into the world of SIP trunks. We thought it might be helpful to offer up some textbook definitions of related terms that aren’t quite as familiar as your KPIs. Knowledge is power! (And if nothing else, you can impress your friends or maybe win obscure categories on Jeopardy! with this glossary of telco terms related to SIP trunking.)
A Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is a private telephone system within an enterprise that can handle calls between local, in-system numbers, while also enabling users to call out through external phone lines.
Session Border Controller (SBC) is a network element that compliments SIP and is involved in ensuring the security, connectivity, and service quality of calls.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) allows callers to interact with computer-based phone systems through voice and by pressing number keys.
An Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is a technology that distributes calls to agents within an organization, based on customizable parameters such as the caller’s telephone number or their responses to the IVR.
The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) provides infrastructure and services for public telecommunication. The PSTN encompasses the world’s telephone systems, and includes phone lines, fiber optic cables, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables. By connecting networks to each other and using a single numbering protocol, telephones around the world can call each other through the PSTN.
Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a group of technologies that uses internet connections to make and receive voice calls.The post What is SIP Trunking: Your Questions Answered first appeared on Fonolo.

Perhaps your wedding package includes a cake. It’s paid for, better eat it.

Even if you’re allergic to wheat.

Perhaps the amusement park includes as many rides as you like, even if you’re feeling sick or have had quite enough for today.

The thing about included is that it’s free. But the other thing is that you can say no.

No might be better than free.

We often use words like “beautiful” or “stunning” or “perfect” when we actually mean “popular” or “pleasant.”

Every day is beautiful in its own way. But the weather yesterday was pleasant.

Hit songs are hits. But they’re rarely perfect.

I’m a big fan of pleasant. And I often like things that are popular. Pleasant and popular are convenient, easy and riskless.

The extraordinary, on the other hand, is often difficult. It can create change, challenge our perceptions and feel risky, all at once. Creating things that are beautiful is a choice and a quest, and most of the time, we’re simply seeking pleasant on our way to being popular.

If we care enough to make it beautiful, we shouldn’t be willing to settle for pleasant.

In a culture fascinated by attitude, gloss and performance, it’s easy to believe that adopting an affect is precisely what you need to make a difference.

In fact, the persistent, generous work that happens when no one is looking is what actually makes a difference.

Looking the part (or simply acting like it) isn’t nearly as important as the change we actually make.