Given the themes covered in my last few posts, the topic of service levels seems very timely. During the course of recent research, the rationale around service level metrics keeps raising new questions, and it’s due time to explore them.

I’ll begin with the service level concept and who is best served by the commonly used metrics. Service level defines the target of performance, primarily in terms of contact center operations. Defining good performance and managing good performance, of course, are two different things, and this is where the challenges begin.

I’m continuing my exploration here on how social media is impacting contact centers, and a strong theme that came out in my research was listening. While social media is very much a product of today’s technologies, it speaks to the essence of human communication, and in the business world, I would argue this matters most in the contact center. Ironically, social media gives us tools to communicate more efficiently, but with so many modes at our disposal, we suffer from information overload. This makes it harder than ever to pay attention and of course, listen.

This is a topic I’ve wanted to write about for some time, and the stars have finally lined up. Actually, as my research unfolded, I have enough for at least three articles, so this post will just focus on a few key themes that hopefully will seed questions around how you’re thinking about social media.

The term multichannel covers a lot of ground, and is taking on growing significance in the contact center space. Initially, multichannel simply meant using a second mode in addition to voice. Of course, being an open-ended concept, multichannel takes on more meaning today, as contact centers routinely incorporate several modes, and we all know that more are on the way. At face value, this is a good thing, as it provides more ways to engage customers and solve their problems.