CRM magazine's 2004 Service Awards: Introduction
Edited by David Myron
Cutting costs, increasing revenue, and improving customer satisfaction -- no matter what business you're in, if your company has a customer service center it's likely to be pursuing all these goals.
Fortunately, new technologies and a stabilizing economy bode well for contact center initiatives. Despite three years of negative overall growth for CRM investments, published reports show that budgets are loosening once again for IT upgrades and modernization efforts. Enhancements in voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), advanced speech recognition, and Web self-help have piqued the interest of executives looking to cut costs while improving customer satisfaction. Workforce management and optimization technologies are allowing organizations to optimize agent schedules and performance around the clock. And universal desktop applications are enabling agents to get a real-time, 360-degree view of customers to help turn a support call into a sales call.
In CRM magazine's premiere Service Awards we recognize the top customer service vendors and savvy customer companies that have yielded impressive results from their customer service IT implementations.
The Service Leaders awards recognize the top-three customer service vendors in seven categories: computer telephony integration, interactive voice response, quality monitoring, universal desktop application, Web self-help, workforce management, and workforce optimization. The leaders were selected based on weighted criteria, including market share, revenue, revenue growth, and reputation for customer satisfaction.
The Service Elite awards honor customer companies that have gained impressive returns on their customer service investments. Several factors were considered for the Service Elite awards, including return on investment, project implementation times, and overall impact on the organization.
Read on to see the vendors leading the service industry and some of the most impressive uses of customer service technologies:
2004 Service Leaders
2004 Service Elite