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GUEST BLOG: Demystifying Data Subject Access Requests

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One year on from the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and it is becoming clear that when it comes to Data Subject Access Requests (DSAR), organisations are confused regarding a desire to balance the rights of an individual with the needs of an organisation, John Potts (Head of DPO DSAR and Breach Support) GRCI Law, outlines the essential processes that companies must put in place to avoid falling foul of DSAR breach.

GDPR Misunderstanding

While subject access requests were in place under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), growing personal data awareness has resulted in a significant spike in DSAR activity – and there is a degree of resentment regarding the way individuals are now using these new data rights. However, whether a business feels the DSAR is justified is in the main irrelevant: it is the law. Companies have a legal requirement to comply with a DSAR within one month – or face the wrath of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and a potential enforcement action which could mean a fine, it will always impact on the reputation of the organisation.

This deadline applies for any DSAR, whether it is created internally or externally. Indeed, a significant proportion of the rise in DSARs is in support of employee grievance and tribunals. Many employment lawyers will now typically file a DSAR for the relevant period(s), as part of any case – whether it is an employee fighting dismissal or filing a complaint against a colleague. Companies, therefore, need to recognise that in such cases these individuals know exactly what information the DSAR should include, whether that is an email trail or meeting notes. Don’t fall into the trap of overlooking the DSAR simply because a tribunal is underway: the right process must be in place to respond to every DSAR irrespective of who makes the request or why.

As such, it is essential to put in place a process for immediately recognising a DSAR. Individuals can make requests via any medium, from Twitter to email and letter. Fail to respond within the deadline, for whatever reason, and the individual can raise a complaint with the ICO, which will then investigate. In addition to ensuring DSARs are not overlooked for any reason, a company also needs a smooth escalation process and at least one individual trained to respond to the DSAR.

Exemptions and Third Party Data

While the majority of DSARs are simple, organisations will face some that raise questions. The way third party data is handled, for example, can be a minefield. Many companies believe it is simply a case of going through all the relevant data and redacting any names other than that of the individual that has made the request. That is not the case.  

For example, if ten people were in a meeting and one of those makes a DSAR, there is no point redacting the names of those other nine individuals – everyone knows they were in the meeting. However, this approach cannot be applied to CCTV records, for example. An individual may accept the existence of CCTV in a nightclub, but that does not provide implicit agreement that their presence can be shared in a response to someone’s DSAR. Or take a police custody suite: even if faces are redacted, background conversations could infringe individual rights. When it comes to third party data, DSARs will have to be considered on a case by case basis, there is no blanket response.

Furthermore, there are a number of exemptions that can be applied to DSAR, including Legal Professional Privilege (LPP) for information exchanged between an individual and legal representative, as well as information relating to company finances or national security. The ICO will look at each exemption on a case by case basis and it is therefore essential to ensure each DSAR is annotated with the relevant exemption.

Conclusion

Failure to respond quickly to a DSAR is not going to automatically incur the huge fines associated with data theft. However, it is still a breach of GDPR and the ICO is not going to go easy on organisations that fail to put in place the right processes. DSARs are becoming a fact of life for every organisation; individuals know their rights and, as the rise in employee grievance inspired DSARs reveals, they are actively looking to use the new legislation to support their cause. 

For any organisation process is key: monitor all incoming communication channels for DSARs and escalate quickly, the clock starts when the company receives the request. Put in place good professional support for any complex cases that may require exemption or redaction. And, critically, think hard about data retention strategies. The whole aim of GDPR is to make companies consider their data resources and move away from storing data for the sake of it. Only retain data that is relevant and you have a lawful reason for processing put in a place a retention policy with strong methods for recording, extracting and redacting if needed. 

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GUEST BLOG: Whose data is it anyway? GDPR and the problem of data ownership

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By Tony Pepper, CEO, Egress Software

“GDPR is the new Y2K” was a phrase I heard multiple times during the first 12 months since its implementation. As the ICO continued to work through historical breaches under the Data Protection Act, there was certainly a sense that GDPR was all bark and no bite.

Then its first anniversary was quickly followed by the ICO issuing intentions to fine British Airways an incredible £183.39m and Marriot nearly £100m. With this move, the ICO reminded CISOs and their boards that they are indeed operating in a new era of data protection and compliance, and GDPR moved back up the agenda once more. 

Yet despite this, we don’t go a day without a new breach hitting the headlines – and the impacts are only getting more significant. The latest ‘Cost of a Data Breach’ report from Ponemon and IBM shows the average cost has increased 1.5 per cent to $3.92m. 

Stemming this tide is the problem all CISOs are working to solve – but if measures to date have had limited impact, where should they look next to achieve this? A clear understanding of why data breaches are happening is the logical place to start, however when employees are involved, this is never a straightforward issue. 

Understanding the ‘why’ around data breaches 

Much analysis has been carried out into the types and frequency of data breaches, but there has been little focus on why they are happening. When considering cyberattacks and malicious data breaches, we can quickly attribute motivations to factors such as financial gain (including ransom), political affiliations, competition and sabotage, or emotions (for example, anger). To most people, the link between these motivations and subsequent actions make sense, much in the same way that physical theft might do. 

When we consider non-malicious insider data breaches caused by staff, the problem becomes layered with complexity that’s difficult to untangle and resolve. Yet only when we understand more clearly the why behind these breaches, can we reduce their likelihood and impact. 

At Egress, we looked into this topic with independent research company Opinion Matters. Our survey of over 500 CIOs and IT leaders in the US and UK found that nearly all of them (95 per cent) are concerned by insider threat and most believe employees have put data at risk in the last 12 months either accidentally (79 per cent) or maliciously (61 per cent).

We also surveyed over 4,000 employees and found that they paint a very different picture: 92 per cent said they have not accidentally leaked data in the last year, while 91 per cent said they had not intentionally leaked data. 

Such a contrast clearly demonstrates that to some degree, employees are either unwilling to admit to causing data breaches or unaware that they have caused one.  

The issue of unknowingly causing data breaches is a nuanced discussion. It’s not simply a case of, say, never becoming aware that they’ve emailed sensitive data to the wrong person; it also includes whether employees feel like they have a right to the data in the first place, and therefore by removing it from a secure environment, they don’t realise that they’ve caused a breach – for example, exfiltrating customer lists when moving onto a new company. 

Our research found that almost one-in-three employees (29 per cent) believe they have ownership over the data they have worked on for a company and that 60 per cent don’t believe the organisation has exclusive ownership over the data.  Interestingly, those aged 16 – 24 were actually less likely to think the organisation has exclusive ownership (33 per cent), while those aged over 65 were more likely to think so (51 per cent).

The problem of ethics and ownership

Awareness and education are a favourite starting point for tackling non-malicious insider breaches. A solid foundation of cybersecurity awareness does help to reduce negligent or inadvertent instances by championing good practices. Employees can also be challenged and re-educated on the subject of data ownership, for example explaining what needs to remain with the organisation when they leave. These educational measures should also be highly targeted to the current workforce age ranges within individual organisations. In a time where digital natives, such as millennials and Generation Z, have grown up with prevalent sharing on social media and a sense of ownership around what they produce, this problem is likely to be exacerbated in these employees. 

Yet education alone won’t turn the tide of data breaches, as it can’t prevent reckless behaviour or be able to stop all inadvertent breaches – after all, people are always going to make mistakes!

How technology can reduce breaches

When respondents who acknowledged to causing a data breach were asked how this happened, our research found that accidental leaks were caused by: rushing and making mistakes (48 per cent), working in a high-pressure environment (30 per cent), and tiredness (29 per cent). Two of the top causes of intentional breaches were not having the tools required to share data securely (55 per cent) and taking data to a new job (23 per cent).

This insight helps us to understand the role technology needs to play in preventing data breaches. Advances in machine learning and graph data base technologies have made it possible to identify when people are about to accidentally or intentionally leak data – warning users and administrators in real-time that a breach is occurring, and even preventing the release of certain data altogether.

The use of this technology can not only reduce the likelihood of a data breach but also significantly reduce the impacts should a breach occur. The ‘Cost of a Data Breach’ study shows that use of security technologies such as encryption and DLP were associated with lower-than-average data breach costs. In particular, encryption had the greatest impact, lowering the cost by $360,000 on average. What’s more, security automation that leveraged technologies like machine learning and analytics on average reduced the cost of a data breach by an impressive $2.5m.

Not another Y2K

For those of us operating in cybersecurity on a daily basis, it’s impossible to be ignorant of GDPR and its impacts. This awareness inevitably dilutes the further we get from CISOs and their Security Teams, but GDPR doesn’t make this distinction: good data protection practices are non-negotiable.

As research has shown, there’s no one silver bullet to turning the tide of data breaches, particularly those caused by employees and the complexities they bring to this problem. But GDPR has emphatically proven it is not another Y2K – and CISOs need to keep educating and equipping employees to prevent non-compliance. To do this, CISOs need to address the motivations and problems staff have when sharing data – and when they don’t have confidence that people will make the right decisions, they need to look to the latest technologies to do this on their behalf.

GUEST BLOG: Creating an environment that motivates millennials

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By Nazma Quarban, Chief Revenue Officer, Cognism

By 2025, 75% of the global workforce will be made up of millennials; a shift that businesses need to prepare for in order to attract and retain workers.

Forget about the misconceptions, millennial employees can be just as hardworking, spirited and loyal as any other generation; it’s all about how you motivate them. 

As the race is on to captivate their attention, many companies are asking the same question: how can you harness the skill and determination of millennials and create a culture that inspires them to succeed? Cognism’s Chief Revenue Officer, Nazma Quarban, looks at how companies can foster a culture where millennials can thrive and talent is retained. 

  1. Become a mentor

Traditionally, the manager-employee relationship has been centred around achieving the objectives of the business or department. However, managing purely based on performance won’t work with millennials; in order to see the whole picture, companies need to move their focus to development. 

From fostering an open-door policy to setting up regular one to one meetings to discuss both personal and work-related issues, managers should always put personal growth first. Casual conversations can lead to feelings of trust and by becoming a mentor that acknowledges the employee’s strengths, employees become empowered to make their own decisions. It is only then that they will truly learn for themselves.

2. Pave the way for a future 

91% of millennials consider the opportunity for rapid career progression as one of the most important aspects of a job. Ultimately, they want to know that if they work hard, they will reap the rewards. So, making sure encouragement and benefits such as salary and remuneration are in place is key to increased productivity and performance. 

If space is created for people to step up, they will do so. Putting a progression plan in place from the start is the best way to make a millennial employee feel that you, as an employer, prioritise their career growth and advancement. And job titles really do matter; for motivated millennials, a job title reflects their status and success. Giving them a taste of authority will give them a sense of purpose which could help drive company success. 

3. Cultivate a culture 

Millennials want an environment that lets them thrive, but how can companies make this happen? With many millennials fresh out of university, replicating the university environment in the workplace through socialising and collaboration is a great way to engage them.

Creating a business unit which doesn’t feel isolated from other departments and doesn’t have any members of the management team locked behind glass doors, is the first step. Once this roadblock is removed, the workplace feels immediately more inclusive. Solving the problem of diversity through regular collaboration will help build a supportive environment that millennials want to be a part of.

4. Celebrate success

Millennials respond well to a celebratory culture; this shouldn’t just be limited to business success, but inclusive of both team and individual success too. Celebrating milestones such as a great customer review, when a contract is signed, or even their triumphs outside work will give millennials the positive reinforcement to keep achieving. 

One way this works is through company socials and entertainment. Assigning a dedicated budget to host regular activities at work will help blur the line between work and play. Whether it’s team lunches, beer and pizza evenings or even an annual trip away, when people enjoy what they do and who they do it with, they will feel like they have a sense of purpose. 

5. Champion transparency 

Millennials expect transparency and are willing to be transparent in return. Being open and honest in both communications and conduct will go a long way in winning the hearts of millennials. Opening up these conversations and creating an inclusive environment will make them feel a level of value and respect whereby they can impact actual change. 

Giving them the opportunity to innovate and pursue their personal interests in the professional setting is one way companies can keep things fresh and provide them with the opportunity to get involved in the way the business is run. After all, you never know what hidden talents might transform your business. 

Conclusion 

Business owners need to realise that it’s no longer about what millennials can bring to the company, but what the company can bring to millennials. Working with millennials needn’t be an obstacle. If organisations invest in them as people and not employees, they will create a happier team, which is inevitably more effective and motivated and set up to succeed every time. Engage with millennials in the right way and there are no limits to what can be achieved. 

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GUEST BLOG: Four questions organisations need to ask after a cyber attack

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Cyber attacks are inevitable, but it’s how an organisation deals with them that can make or break their business. Have they got all the answers, and do they fully understand the implications? Can they be sure the attack won’t happen again?

Swift and comprehensive incident response is a critical step to ensuring the future security of a business and protecting its reputation. It’s not enough to be aware that an attack is taking (or has taken) place. There are four key questions organisations need to be able to answer following a cyber security breach – if a single answer is missing, the security team won’t have the full picture, leaving the business vulnerable to impending attacks. Not having this level of insight can also damage an organisation’s relationships with suppliers and affect customer confidence, as it means the business itself is not in control of the situation.

Andy Pearch, Head of IA Services at CORVID, outlines four questions all organisations must be able to answer after a cyber attack.

1. How and where did the security breach take place?

The first step of an effective incident response strategy is to identify how the attackers got in. Quite simply, if an organisation misses this first crucial step, attackers will exploit the same vulnerability for future cyber attacks. Guesswork won’t cut it – any security professional can hypothesise that “it was probably an email”, but security teams need clear evidence so they can fully analyse all aspects of the problem and devise an appropriate solution. 

2. What information was accessed?

Understanding specifically what information was accessed by the attacker is paramount to knowing what impact the attack will have on the organisation. Identifying which departments were targeted or what types of information might have been stolen isn’t good enough; organisations need to be able to articulate exactly which files were accessed and when. Headlines about attackers stealing information are common, but just as importantly, you need to know the scope of the information they’ve seen, as well as the information they’ve taken. Not only will this inform the next steps that need to be taken, and shed light on which parts of the business will be affected, but it will also enable the organisation to remain compliant with legal obligations, for example, identifying if a data breach needs to be reported under GDPR.

3. How can systems be recovered quickly?

Organisations will understandably want to get their IT estate back to normal as soon as possible to minimise damage to their business, service and reputation. If the compromise method is identified and analysed correctly, IT systems can be remediated in seconds, meaning users and business operations can continue without downtime for recovery.

4. How do you prevent it from happening again?

Knowing the IT estate has been compromised is useless without taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is all about spotting the unusual activity that indicates a potential breach. If a user is accessing files they would never usually touch, sending unexpected emails or reaching out to a new domain, for example, such activity should prompt a review. The problem for most companies, however, is they lack not only the tools to enable such detection, but also the time and skills to undertake thorough analysis to determine whether it is a breach or a false positive.

A managed approach not only takes the burden away from businesses, but also enables every company to benefit from the pool of knowledge built up as a result of detecting and remediating attacks on businesses across the board. With MDR, every incident detected is investigated and, if it’s a breach, managed. That means shutting down the attack’s communication channel to prevent the adversary communicating with the compromised host, and identifying any compromised asset which can then be remediated.

Shifting security thinking

Clearly, GDPR has raised awareness that the risks associated with a cyber attack are not only financial, as hackers are actively seeking to access information. Security plans, therefore, must also consider data confidentiality, integrity and availability. But it is also essential to accept the fundamental shift in security thinking – protection is not a viable option given today’s threat landscape. When hackers are using the same tactics and tools as bona fide users, rapid detection and remediation must be the priority.

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AI: It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new way of customer support and engagement

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With headlines stating that AI will be ‘the death of the contact centre’, it’s understandable that Contact Centre Managers might feel like the world is against them. 

AI-driven technology is not new, in fact people been talking about it since the summer conference at Dartmouth College in 1956, where the attendees became leaders of AI research.With predictions of an AI-first world since 1956, why is that AI-powered technology is causing more and more confusion, hype and fear this decade with trending headlines stating that robots will take over our jobs, causing concern about the long-term impact of AI on the employees?

Well firstly, it’s this shorthand referral to AI that is causing a lot of confusion, hype and fear around this subject.Like computing, it’s hard to distinguish between classifications for AI, the broad term, used to describe the ‘smart’ human-like capability within software such as machine learning, natural language processing, robotics and computational intelligence, which all refer to a wide variety of algorithms and methodologies under AI.

So where does AI fit into the contact centre?

Businesses can no longer afford to rely on archaic siloed channels for customer support and experience. As consumers grow more and more comfortable with messaging, AI applications offer the contact centre some dramatic benefits that stretches way beyond customer support.AI can play a vital role in making better business decisions, many of them positively impacting the customer.

Many brands understand that their customers will expect support across multiple digital channels, regardless of business hours and that site search, static FAQs and info@ email options have become archaic.Businesses must be ‘present’ on their customers’ preferred support channels and respond swiftly, no matter the means customers use to get in touch.

Investing in AI might sound like a daunting task, but it is imperative in our evermore competitive world where businesses need to win the CX war to remain relevant and profitable. For AI to introduce new value and break fresh ground, strategists must take an innovative approach to CX and consider its impact beyond its novelty.

Smallsteps are key to preparing for the ever changing CX landscape.The light in this confusing artificially intelligent world of darkness are that there are ‘modest’ AI-powered solutions that can translate into cost savings, increased productivity and improved customer experience with minimal demands on IT resources.

Commonly known as Natural Language Understanding (NLU) – a machine algorithm to process and analyse large amounts of natural language data to ‘understand’ natural language – it’s easy to underrate the powerful impact this science can have on business processes and the contact centre.

Although human language is extremely complex, full of contextual rules and nuances that we take for granted, the advances in Natural Language Processing today means the complex processing of the NLP system’s back-end is effortlessly encased within a user-friendly interface without requiring users to have technical expertise.

NLU is a supreme AI engine particularly when it’s integrated into services such as conversational Virtual Agents (chatbots), dynamic FAQ self-service, Intelligent Web Form and agent assistance in the contact centre through channels such as Live Chat. can be key to deflecting calls, reducing costs and improving customer satisfaction. Consequently, market movements are already showing strong signs of businesses within a variety of sectors moving towards this type of AI technology to remain applicable and competitive.

How NLU makes sense in the contact centre

NLU can offer a lot more to the modern-day contact centre. As a toe in water into the world of artificial intelligence, when integrated with unstructured data – such as handwritten documents or notes by contact centre agents, text messages, photos and videos – AI-driven NLU can add considerable gains in workplace efficiency.

A contact centre knowledge-base integrated with AI-driven NLU can automate the processes of searching, modifying, and rating knowledge-articles, which could be any of the above-mentioned examples not only saving time in having to manually find information, but a dramatic increase in contact centre productivity. 

It enables new or temporary agents to serve customers almost instantly with reduced training times and access to instant, correct and consistent information over the phone, during a live chat or through email. NLU algorithms often can contextualise information to find mentions of subjects even when the relevant keywords are absent. 

Gartner predicted that in 2019, 20 percent of user interactions with smartphones will take place via virtual personal assistants.

The truth is they were not far off. Advances in text analysis and natural language processing has grown the list of queries that can be answered, and tasks resolved without human interaction. And since 2016, the popularity of using NLU in the form of chatbots to drive sales, qualify leads or to provide customer support, have had analysts forecast that conversational commerce will automate up to 85% of customer interactions by 2020.

Smartphones have changed the way in which people communicate and engage with each other. Messaging apps and social media are driving the exponential growth in the intelligent assistant landscape because it feels intimate and personal, encouraging customer transactions such as buying a product, present targeted promotions and product recommendations based on the customer’s enquiry, profile and history incorporating real-time analytics and business reporting. Bots are unmediated in a way that most digital interface still entirely fails at. 

With an intelligent bot handling high volume, frequently asked questions, your contact centre agents can focus on resolving complex customer issues. Additionally, due to working in the most efficient way possible, bots can handle spikes in customer contact to digital platforms, while dramatically decreasing the volume of physical calls which makes it easier to stay on top of demand and to record interactions on a CRM system or for analytics and training. Given its scalability, a bot implementation is a cost-effective opportunity for business improvement. An affordable, intelligent point of contact that can efficiently respond to an unlimited number of queries with relevant information, any day, any time.

Self-serving answers when customers need assistance across desktop, mobile and social channels is not a new concept anymore. This is not news to enterprises either and most will have incorporated – or are looking to integrate – a powerful intelligent FAQ system into their customer service/experience strategy. And although there appears to be an AI-uncertainty among business leaders, small steps need to be taken towards implementing AI to not get left behind.

NLU’s adaptability and usability make it an ideal first AI step for businesses of all kinds, generating quick win efficiencies in the short run, and more importantly preparing them for more complex AI solutions in the future. Are you ready to take the next step towards AI that can deliver quick-win business results?

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Practical steps to streamline processes, enhance customer experience and reduce costs

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Ember are delivering an exclusive seminar where our experts will be exploring proven techniques for process optimisationand sharing examples of how our clients have delivered enhanced customer experiences, reduced costs and improved ROI. 

Read More…

GUEST BLOG: What is Customer Experience?

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Peter Tetlow, Client Solutions Director, Ventrica

The contact centre industry is continually evolving. A few years ago we were in the Customer Management industry. Now we have evolved to be in the Customer Experience industry.

On the face of it, this rebranding of the industry shows that we look at things from the customer’s point of view rather than simply trying to manage them as if they are a nuisance. However, do we really understand what the customer experience is and how to improve it?

A starting point is to look at what experts say. Forrester defines Customer Experience as “how customers perceive their interactions with your company.” This is correct in as far as it goes, but only tells half the story. As with most things, we tend to look internally as an industry and assume that the customer experience is all about us and the type of interaction a customer has when contacting the company.

However, ask any customer. Customer experience starts long before they pick up the phone or start a chat session. For a manufacturing company, the experience starts when the customer researches and then purchases the product. Their experience continues when they set the product up and try to understand the instructions; it continues when they register it and use it.

Customers need help from the start to set up their new product and get it working or indeed they may get many months or years use from the product before they have an issue and they need support. Only then, when they need help, will they contact the company. Their experience at this stage can make or break the relationship because the customer won’t necessarily remember the fact that something has gone wrong, but they will remember how the problem is dealt with.

The critical part that is missing from the definition above is an understanding that the customer experience starts long before they try and make contact with a contact centre. As customer experience professionals, we need to be able to influence the full end to end experience, not just when a customer contacts us. In many ways, that is locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Advisors understand customer issues because they are in the privileged position of speaking (or chatting) with customers. The majority of the issues identified will be outside the contact centre’s direct span of control, but this knowledge is a source of invaluable information and insight. For example, if customers call in because product instructions are not clear, only the contact centre will know this within the organisation. If customers talk about multiple and confusing correspondence received, again, the contact centre is probably the only team aware of this and the impact it has on the customer.

Contact centres and retail stores if appropriate, need to be at the centre of the organisation and become the insight and analytics hub, collating and analysing insight gained, to drive improvements. Because this insight comes direct from customers, capitalising on it is the optimal way to improve the customer experience, leading to higher satisfaction, more loyal customers, reduced contacts, reduced costs and product insight.

This will require a change of mindset for many organisations who may see the contact centre as a necessary evil, within which to minimise spending as much as possible, rather than a business critical function that helps to inform and drive product development, product management and marketing amongst many other teams. Ultimately, the contact centre is a strategic asset rather than a simple cost centre but to use it as such requires a deep understanding of the end to end customer experience.

Befriending The Robot: How To Build Meaningful Relationships Using AI

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It goes without saying that implementing automation in the contact centre improves customer service efficiency, but how does it affect the quality of your company’s customer relationships?

The depersonalising experience of being funnelled down an automated IVR can leave customers feeling undervalued, especially if they have to repeat information given in the queue when their call is finally connected to an agent.

Eliminating Frustration

By implementing AI within your contact centre, the often frustrating routing process can be transformed into a streamlined system that enhances the level of personalisation that your customers receive.

With Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities integrated into your IVR, customers’ answers to automated questions within the queue can be transcribed using speech-to-text functionality, recorded, and presented to agents before the call is taken. This enables a smoother process, through reducing repetition, and allowing agents to focus on providing exceptional customer service, without having to spend time looking up customer data.

Immediate Satisfaction

We live in a digital world, where information is instantly and readily available online, with most everyday problems being solved with a quick internet search. So, when it comes to answering simple enquiries, it pays to be able to provide a service that can give your customers immediate satisfaction.

Chatbots, NLP and Image Recognition technologies can all be employed to automate requests for information, resolving non-complex issues without the need for an agent, and satisfying customer queries as soon as they are received.

Building Relationships

Automatically resolving simple enquiries through AI frees up your agents to provide a more supported and specialised service to those who need it most. Whether it be priority customers, vulnerable callers or those with more difficult or complex queries, employing AI gives your agents the time to craft meaningful, human relationships that lead to loyalty.

Empowering agents by providing them with more time to focus on the quality of each interaction, and to develop their soft skills, helps to transform complaint-resolution scenarios into positive, relationship-building experiences.

Content Guru’s cutting-edge AI package, brain®, offers NLP, Chatbot and Image Recognition capabilities to help revolutionize your contact centre, and build meaningful customer relationships with every interaction.

Find out more about how Content Guru’s AI offering can enhance your customer experience here: https://bit.ly/2HpT4eF

Find out more about Content Guru here: https://www.contentguru.com/

Giosg Interaction Designer makes it easy for everyone to build and publish interactive content

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Online customer engagement software provider Giosg introduces Interaction Designer, a new tool that enables companies to easily create and publish interactive content without coding.

Users can build different interactive elements to engage and reach out to their website visitors or customers.

“In such a dynamic and fast-paced world in order to succeed,  businesses should be able to serve and help their online visitors or customers fast. This is why I am very excited to offer our customers the opportunity to build and deliver different interactions in real time”, said Ville Rissanen, CEO at Giosg. 

With giosg Interaction Designer, customers are able to design banners, questionnaires, polls, surveys or build their own button-based chatbots – predefined set of button options that guides a user in the right direction for a right answer.

“Interaction Designer provides us with so many different ways to build our interactions. It takes only a few minutes for me to create a button-based chatbot to help my customers find the car they are looking for”, said Matti Sahi, Customer Insight Specialist at K-Caara. 

To learn more about Interaction Designer, visit giosg.

About Giosg:

Giosg offers businesses digital tools for diverse, personalised and creative ways to interact with their online visitors and customers. By combining data, AI technology, and human engagement, we help our customers create meaningful interactions, serve more efficiently and grow their business.

Centralized or de-centralized WFM: 5 ways to strike the perfect balance

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New business models and organizational change have put the debate over centralized versus decentralized workforce planning back on the table. Kanogo Njuru at Teleopti advocates a balanced approach using Workforce Management (WFM) technology to blend all types of service organizations…

In the past, workforce planning was often managed by local teams out in the field.  However, as technology has progressed to automate many of the traditionally time-consuming forecasting and scheduling processes, more and more organizations have seen the advantages of centralized planning.  Contact centers in particular have enjoyed the benefits technology brings when addressing critical long-term strategic challenges, while optimizing workforce management and end-to-end processes for improved productivity, staff satisfaction, customer service and financial control.  

It is also a trend that is not necessarily limited to the contact center world and the same debate over centralized versus decentralized planning can apply to all sorts of service models for example in retail, cleaning services and hospitality. In all instances the aim is to improve customer and employee satisfaction and boost profitability through optimized, automated forecasting and scheduling.  

Over the years, seismic shifts in business have had a transformational impact on people.  Mergers and acquisitions have brought uncertainty along with fluid internal staff structures while the rise of e-commerce has turned old ways of working on their head.  How do organizations change the corporate culture to adapt to the new world order? How do they find, manage and keep good talent?  How do they bring together thousands of full or part-time employees at head office locations or at remote virtual contact centers around the world and of course take into account home workers?  What is the best way to forecast and schedule effectively?  All these questions have renewed the debate around centralized versus decentralized workforce planning.

Some organizations take a conscious decision not to centralize all their Workforce Management (WFM) processes at once, if at all, regarding it to be counter-productive.  There is the commonly held belief that centralized planning takes power away from local people, leading to a sense of loss of control and a demoralized workforce.  Then, there is the pragmatic approach.  Planners often share a special relationship with their local teams and they truly understand what their staff want and how they work best hence the old saying – if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Other companies may choose to centralize certain functions like payroll but decentralize others such as HR and recruitment.  Whichever WFM model organizations choose to adopt, good communication is essential to overcome mistrust and feelings of fear. By combining a sound communications strategy with technology, a balance between reducing unnecessary costs, while also promoting consistency and higher standards of operations, customer service and workforce satisfaction can be achieved.  

5 ways to strike the perfect balance with WFM

Fortunately, the latest WFM solutions are highly flexible and offer speed and agility to support the needs of today’s multi-channel customer experience (CX) operations and other service organizations.  Being cloud-based, they eliminate the need for expensive hardware and large in-house IT departments, are fast to implement, easy to scale and simple to use.  Let’s take a closer look at five key benefits: 

1.       One single solution – can support a whole network of planners and brings consistency to a variety of centralized and decentralized WFM processes – from forecasting and scheduling enough staff to manage changing customer requirements to keeping track of employee sickness, personal schedules and team preferences.  Even if different planning teams operate in different locations, the deployment of one solution makes it easy to connect the dots, bringing together the various elements involved in successful workforce planning such as staff information, employee requests and forecasting while accelerating the transfer of important workforce data to accommodate specific special projects or marketing campaigns.  What it more, using one WFM platform opens the door to centralized planning in the future and makes the transition a smooth and seamless one. 

2.       High levels of scalability – support both centralized and decentralized workforce planning through agile forecasting and scheduling that adapts to changing customer and business requirements and by helping to create effective skills matrices that identify and deploy the best talent.  The latest WFM solutions can flex up to accommodate a growing network of different planning teams in different locations or they can provide end-to-end visibility and superior management of organization-wide workforce planning activities from a central point. 

3.       Self-service for choice – whether an organization adopts a centralized or decentralized workforce planning model, the addition of self-service empowers employees to  control their working lives, to view their schedules and those of their colleagues, request shift swaps or book time off at the click of the mouse or by using their mobile devices. 

4.       Fairness and transparency through automation – consistency and greater visibility of WFM processes both in smaller, decentralized planning teams and in centralized departments that plan for thousands of staff across the organization is made possible through automation.  Transparency and openness create a sense of fairness that appeals to staff while satisfying organizations with a strong Union or Works Council presence.  Managers have the information they need to ensure all employees take it in turns to do the more unpopular shifts and plan vacation time equitably while employees have total visibility of each other’s schedules and time off through self-service functionality. 

5.       Effective Change Management – certain customers like Germany’s biggest online retailer OTTO, cite the strategic impact that WFM technology has on actively advancing corporate change management programs.  The flexibility, transparency and collaborative nature of today’s WFM technology has helped OTTO to strike a good balance between achieving high productivity levels (1,600 agents working 2 million shifts and 4,500 shift rotations – handling over 24 million enquiries per year!) and transferring the program’s core values of empowerment and fairness into 15 virtual contact centers. What is more, they have achieved this through a mixture of centralized and decentralized workforce planning methods across the company.

Centralized? Decentralized?  Does it really matter? What really matters is striking the balance between operational or business efficiency and promoting a collaborative framework that leads to engaged employees and satisfied customers.

It’s time to welcome WFM technology as the catalyst for change.