The Customer Experience Makeover: And the Winner Is...

The Customer Experience Makeover: And the Winner Is...

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC  |  December 03, 2014

Everybody loves a Cinderella story – and the journey involved to get from basic to beautiful. That’s why makeover shows have become a television staple. Recognizing the universal appeal of this kind of thing, Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert)  recently staged the Customer Experience Makeover: Contact Center Style contest.

“We launched the Customer Experience Makeover contest by looking for contact centers that were delivering less than optimal service because they had fallen behind in the technology and tools used by their agents,” explains Tim Passios (News - Alert), vice president of solutions marketing for Interactive Intelligence. “One of the cool things about it is that, even globally, everybody was familiar with these makeover shows so people understood what we were doing.”

Interactive Intelligence launched the Customer Experience Makeover: Contact Center Style contest as a fun way to cut through the clutter and do something unique that could both enable the lucky winner to have a great experience, and enable other organizations to benefit by following along in the process to see what could be accomplished with the latest tools and technologies.

The contest, which invited companies to submit applications about their contact center environments and why they were good candidates for a makeover, launched in March.

After evaluating the applicants based on factors such as age and type of technology, contact center size, and how open they were to making changes that Interactive Intelligence believed would yield positive results, the field was narrowed from 84 applicants to a handful of finalists.

Ultimately, Interactive Intelligence selected fundraising software company BidPal as the winner. BidPal was officially announced as the winner the first week of June at the Interactive Intelligence INTERACTIONS 2014 customer and partner conference.

As the winner, BidPal is receiving cloud-based contact center technology from Interactive Intelligence. It’s also receiving related technology, equipment and training from the company’s contest sponsors.

“BidPal considered itself an innovative, fast-moving company with average contact center technology,” Passios explains. “New contact center technology can help it more effectively manage spikes in call volume during busy auction nights, while giving it better insight into performance through functionality such as quality monitoring.”

The new technology can also provide more advanced functionality. “With options for workforce optimization, speech analytics and more, BidPal’s new contact center solution can help it even more dramatically improve customer service and increase efficiencies,” Passios adds.

The following complementary technology, equipment and services from contest sponsors will add additional value: gateways and related infrastructure from AudioCodes (News - Alert); do-not-call list compliance capabilities from Contact Center Compliance; contact center and best practice consulting services from ICMI; headsets fromPlantronics; desktop phones from Polycom (News - Alert); and CRM software from Zendesk.

Interactive Intelligence welcomes other companies to bring their capabilities to the mix as well. If you’d like to contribute a product or service to the Customer Experience Makeover effort, email [email protected].

BidPal’s makeover journey is being documented by a video team and will be shared every step of the way for others to follow. The first video clips are available now at CustomerExperienceMakeover.com.

“Following the recession there was a realization that customers really are the most valuable assets organizations have – more important than money in the bank, than employees, than anything,” Passios notes. “As a result, more companies have turned a laser-sharp focus on the customer experience and the technologies that support it.

“Launching our contest now is ideal because we can show just how much of an impact innovative contact center technology can have on the customer experience – and all backed by documentation that other contact centers can benefit from,” Passios concludes.




Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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