As much as businesses rely on the internet for marketing, brand awareness and e-commerce, it can make or break a business’s reputation overnight, especially when it comes to online reviews. For example, 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, but fake …

Mike Bourke, SVP & GM Workforce Optimization
Scheduling in the Gig Economy
In 50 cities across the U.S., Amazon is supplementing their USPS deliveries at times of peak demand using drivers contracting directly with Amazon in a program called Amazon Flex. Tapping for-hire drivers, each batch of deliveries is essentially a “gig” in the quickly growing trend …
Robotic Process Automation – The Tip of the Iceberg
In a world of Alexa, iRobot and self-driving vehicles, we should be surprised if robots did not make their way into the contact center. With about 70% of contact center expense being human labor, that huge cost is a natural target for most enterprises. If …
Choose the Right Speech Analytics Technology
In my last blog, we talked about the huge gulf between the value of speech analytics and the actual use of speech analytics in contact centers. The penetration rate is only about 15%, but it is growing at a rapid 20% CAGR because historical barriers …
Optimizing the Workforce in an Era of Digital Employees
Many recent studies show that today’s consumers prefer self-service to live agent service – but, let’s face it, there will always be those situations where live agent assistance is required to resolve a particularly sticky or complex issue. Without a doubt, self-service via a web …
The Other Side of Customer Journey Analytics
Customer Journey Analytics is one of the hottest topics of discussion among those of us leading the quest to deliver the best possible customer experience. It’s a bit of a mix of high impact revelations made possible by a new way of thinking and lofty …
Aspect Receives Frost & Sullivan’s 2016 Global Workforce Optimization Solutions Company of the Year Award
Aspect has long been known for its industry leading Workforce Management solutions, but until recently, other components of the Workforce Optimization (WFO) portfolio had a much lower profile. For the past year and a half, we’ve been hard at work enhancing our WFO feature set and …
The Role of the Agent in the Gig Economy
The term “Gig Economy” (often called the “on-demand economy” or “access economy”) describes an increasingly common mode of employment popularized by companies like Uber and Lyft, in which temporary positions are the norm and organizations utilize independent contractors for short term engagements.
In the contact center, …
Aspect EQ WFO 8.2: A Major New Release of WFO Software from Aspect
Aspect is announcing the general availability of Aspect EQ Workforce Optimization 8.2, with many important new features such as gamification, high accuracy forecasting of labor in non-voice channels and much tighter integration among WFO components. Aspect EQ WFO 8.2, which includes WFM, Performance Management, Quality …
Are You Thinking Win-Win in Your Contact Center?
Many enterprises fall into the habit of treating their contact centers like zero-sum games. When the focus is on cost, it’s easy to miss the possibilities afforded by a more humanistic approach to the agent environment. In a recent report from Forrester, Ian Jacobs reminds …