Sytel lives day by day at the coalface of contact center software design.
We take on the hard tasks that many other companies balk at. We invent from the ground up, working to bring you the best contact center software solutions to the toughest challenges, resulting in world-class, best-of-breed contact center software.
With this blog, we aim to educate, illuminate and also challenge the contact center industry. Expect us to talk about contact center technology, but technology is just a means to an end. What matters ultimately is the quality of the service that technology can provide for customers. So expect the blog to be wide-ranging. And expect us to shed new light on received contact center industry wisdom.
You may not agree with everything we say. Great! Informed debate lies at the heart of innovation. So feel free to give us your feedback and if you argue your case well, we may post your ideas on the blog.
Enjoy!
Some of the Sytel Bloggers from over the years…
5 Operational Benefits of the CCaaS Subscription Model
Considering moving to CCaaS? We look at the operational benefits of the CCaaS subscription model and how moving can set you up for the ... Read on
7 Financial Benefits of the CCaaS Subscription Model
For the contact center industry, the CCaaS subscription model just makes sense – organisations now have more choice, more agility and ... Read on
4 Strategies to Lower Customer Wait Times
According to most surveys, what do consumers hate most about calling a company contact center? You guessed it! Here's how to enhance ... Read on
Predictive Dialers – The Measurement that Matters Most
Did you ever hear the story about predictive gain? Hands up, please, those who know what it means. Read on
CCaaS for Enterprise – Is it Time to Jump?
A guide to choosing CCaaS for enterprise that delivers performance at scale Read on
The Enterprise ACD as a Cloud Service: Facing the Challenge
Sytel's CTO Garry Pearson shares his extensive contact center software architecting experience in this in-depth article about the ... Read on
Is Your CCaaS Platform Architecture Fit for Purpose?
In his article for the No Jitter website, Sytel’s CEO Michael McKinlay draws an insightful analogy between buying a house and software ... Read on
Moving to Cloud-Based CCaaS – 5 Must-Haves
There are lots of challenges and upsides in moving to cloud-based CCaaS; for both service providers and end users. Here is a checklist ... Read on
4 Persistent CX Fails and How to Fix Them
With customers now in the driving seat, and with the rich technology that is currently available, we ask: why are so many customer ... Read on
The Enterprise CCaaS Challenge: Architecting for the Cloud
Sytel CEO Michael McKinlay wrote an article, kindly published at No Jitter recently, asking ‘Is there a workable enterprise CCaaS solution?’ Read on
The Evolution Of The Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)
With the varied mix of voice, digital and video sessions between agents and customers, we say goodbye to the ACD and hello to the ... Read on
A Day in the Life of an Oyster Catcher
It's not always about contact center software development, you know! So we present to you a tale, written by one of our management ... Read on
The Road Ahead – 5 Challenges for Contact Center Software in 2022
Whether you are a CCaaS provider or an end user, the keyword when adopting a contact center software platform with longevity in ... Read on
Do You Know What Your Predictive Dialer is Doing?
How many senior managers, responsible for their contact centre operations, actually know what their predictive dialer is doing? Read on
UK Petrol Crisis: Life Imitates Art
The UK petrol crisis is pretty much an exact parallel with the predictive dialer pacing problem. Are you a game theorist, a modeller ... Read on
The Joy of CX: One Prospect’s Tale
A visitor at Sytel HQ recently talked about their experiences with a variety of companies around the world, as a new customer. Do any ... Read on
Automating your Outreach
In today’s complicated multimedia and multisession landscape, the execution of your outreach strategy needs an intelligent, automated ... Read on
The Nature of ACDs
It used to be that the ACD did one job; distributing calls in queues to agents. As the contact center industry evolved, so did the job ... Read on
The Changing Role of the Contact Center Supervisor
Supervisors are slowly moving away from manual management of technology and adapting their skills to become Team Leaders, focusing on ... Read on
Designing for the Cloud – Challenge #6 – Mitigating Failure
The universal law of communications is that things go wrong. Every formal signalling protocol has this fact built into its design. But ... Read on
Some Sensible Thoughts About Customer Journeys
Most of us have a pretty good idea what a good customer journey is, but what happens when a contact center is driven by cost control ... Read on
The Persistence of Memes
As we move into 2021 and the contact center world gets to grip with the realities of a home-based workforce and the changing nature of ... Read on
Designing for the Cloud – Challenge #5 – Designing for Scale
Designing for scale is the holy grail of cloud contact center design. We take a look at the different approaches to the problem & the ... Read on
Omnichannel, Customer Journeys And Contact Center Performance
In this mega blog, we are going to look at omnichannel's health and relevance. And if it is in a mortal state, what comes next and ... Read on
Getting The Best From Conversational AI
Whether you are using conversational AI for voice or text chat, there are two big challenges that you face in the real world. Read on
Designing for the Cloud – Challenge #4 – Footprint Cost
A cloud-based contact center running the full range of services has many other components that generate large compute and storage ... Read on
Is Omnichannel Dead?
Omnichannel first showed its face when software vendors for contact centers started deploying digital channels such as chat and email. ... Read on
Does Sytel’s Cloud Architecture Support Containers?
We all know the customer is always right and the expected answer is ‘Heck Yes!’ but frankly, we try to avoid containers like the plague. Read on
Conversational AI and a New Role for Predictive Dialing
The age of the bot and conversational AI brings new challenges in terms of how contact centers engage with potential customers. Here's ... Read on
Designing for the Cloud – Challenge #3 – Ease and Speed of Troubleshooting
How to make management of a functionally rich cloud contact center platform… well, manageable Read on
Connecting Home Workers to Business Applications
If you need your agents to work from home and want them interfacing with your business applications, then you need to have them ... Read on
Designing for the Cloud – Challenge #2 – Ease of Provisioning
SIP infrastructure for a cloud service provider is multi-faceted and its key functionality is complex, but Sytel enables service ... Read on
Safeguarding Your Contact Business
Compliance with outbound contact regulation is a given, but it is often made more difficult by layer upon layer of legislation. To ... Read on
Designing for the Cloud – Challenge #1 – Extensibility
How do you provide a framework for this that is easy to use and mitigates the effects of misconfiguration and third-party integrations ... Read on
Designing for the Cloud – 6 Major Challenges
Developing a feature-rich contact center platform for the cloud has its challenges! At Sytel, our journey has taught us a lot - from ... Read on
Do You Know Your Predictive Gain?
Many users are still buying predictive dialers without looking under the cover. If you really care about getting the best performance ... Read on
Does the Customer Really Know Best?
Software suppliers like ourselves often need to practice proactive development; we need to think, plan and act ahead, reaching well ... Read on
Moving to the Cloud – 5 Features You Should Expect
There has never been a better time to move a contact center to the cloud. But not all cloud contact center platforms are created ... Read on
Mining Relationship History
When two friends talk they will subconsciously reference all the moments they have shared. If an agent speaking to a customer can ... Read on
Using AI to Better Direct Customers
By asking open questions, a robot can identify the reason for the call and then either handle the call itself or transfer the call to ... Read on
Agents and Customers Fall in Love
There are two battles currently going on in the contact center. Here we discuss these battles and how they can result in harmony both ... Read on
Agent Optimization and the Customer Experience
This month is a monster blog. And for a change we look at how Sytel addresses two of the most important issues in the contact center. Enjoy! Read on
Joined-Up Systems, Joined-Up Journeys
Great architecture is key. A solution that can maintain state for all agents and sessions, that can scale easily to handle thousands ... Read on
The Reality of Failure-Proof Systems in the Cloud
How often does the server/virtualisation stack fail? We take some examples from our own experience and identify 3 things you can do to ... Read on
Is your Chat Messaging System Fit for Purpose?
In the days of push campaigns agents were trained and well briefed. Nowadays it seems little attempt is made to connect with corporate ... Read on
The Challenge of CX
Customers can face challenges when trying to contact you. Let them contact you however they choose and turn their problem in to a ... Read on
Brazilian Call Centers in Transition
Brazil fell off the cliff with bad outbound practices but is now focused on recovery. Read on
Cloud Contact Center Solutions – A Maturing Market
A fully functioning cloud contact center requires not only having the correct architecture but also services designed to best use the ... Read on
Cloud Contact Center Solutions – Early Innovation
The concept of a contact center in the cloud is great, however reality shows there are some real challenges associated with this. Read on
The Magic of Scripter
A potted history of Sytel’s Scripter product and how it continues to grow and evolve. Read on
Pull Marketing
Social marketing is one of the newer forms of pull marketing. People trust information when it comes recommended in some way by ... Read on
Push vs Pull and The Impact On CX
To deliver a good CX call centers need to smarten up their pulling power and temper their bot activities. Read on
Celebrating Our 100th Blog
Celebrating our 100th blog! Some of the Sytel bloggers gave their thoughts on the key changes they see happening in the industry. Read on
The Onward March of Internet of Things (IoT)
The Internet of Things (IoT) is being touted as becoming ubiquitous and the panacea for all known ills. Unfortunately, such a utopia ... Read on
Scripting For The Grown-Up Cloud Contact Center
This blog includes a shopping list of requirements that is applicable to both on premise and cloud solutions. Read on
Tearing Down The Silos
Organizations need to tear down the silos and create a unified system, one where agents can handle communications regardless of type, ... Read on
The Changing Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Landscape
The emergence of cloud players in speech recognition, notably Google and Amazon, brings about new applications for speech in the ... Read on
Video Calling Is Here
WebRTC makes it possible for customers to communicate with contact centers with video calls and younger generations are making it ... Read on
Combating The Decline In Answered Calls
Organizations are starting to utilize social media to identify prospects and target them with specific messages using different media ... Read on
The Changing Face of Customer Service
Websites are the shop windows for most companies. Chatbots, AI and WebRTC allow customers to develop a good relationship with ... Read on
How Sytel Approaches Development
Constant improvement and innovation is a necessary way of life in our industry. Find out how Sytel approaches development. Read on
Do Your Media Channels Blend Seamlessly?
When SLAs are breached agents need to be deployed accordingly, but what happens when the channels are handling different media channels? Read on
How Do You Cope When Everyone Calls At The Same Time?
Avoid giving customers a poor experience, provide them with a soft landing and alternative ways to communicate with you. Read on
Will Robots Take Over?
Can AI handle everything? Or, are there some instances where only a human will do? Read on
Video Calling: The Ultimate Trust-Builder
Showing your face can be a great way to build trust. However, there are some key points to take into consideration before you start. Read on
Video Calling
Video calling is definitely coming. The technological challenges and cultural barriers are disappearing and the benefits are already ... Read on
The Changing Shape Of The Contact Center Supply Chain
Things have changed considerably with contact center technology. As a result, the way in which procurement is carried out also needs ... Read on
Apps vs Chatbots
As apps become more sophisticated so do some of their negative points. Whereas Chatbots are becoming more important for contact centers. Read on
All About Regulation
As regulators scratch their heads as how to prevent abuse and establish markets that work for both consumers and businesses, there are ... Read on
Managing Emails Within Your Contact Center
Email may not be new or exciting but customers like it and use it heavily, so make sure it is given the priority it deserves. Read on
The Rise Of The Machines
What is the future for contact center agents? Will they become redundant? Hardly! If anything, the contact center agent will have a ... Read on
5 Tips For Great Chat Reporting
If you can't measure it, you can't manage it - these 5 tips on chat reporting will help to deliver useful measurements. Read on
I Fought To Keep My Dialer – Thank Goodness I Failed!
This month we welcome a guest contribution from an experienced telecoms manager, who has worked with several different predictive dialers. Read on
In Defense Of IVR
Badly designed IVR call flows give IVR a bad rap. We put forward a defence. Read on
5 Key Points To Get Right In Reporting
Contact centers are awash with data. Here is our take on some fundamental points on how best to manage that data. Read on
Considerations In The Cloud
The cloud has created a revolution in the way applications are provided to businesses both large and small. Read on
Use Of Dialers Around The World
On a recent world tour we had a chance to see how different countries have been coping with changing trends. Read on
Keeping It Simple Again
Maintaining effectiveness of both queues for individual agents and the overall campaign brings challenges. Read on
Keeping Things Simple
Managing campaigns and setting up work queues; contact centers need to be mindful of the personal touch. Read on
WebRTC Can Bring Joy To The Agent
WebRTC opens up options further for contact centers to employ the right agents who may be more nomadic. Read on
WebRTC Can Bring Joy To The Organisation
With WebRTC the agent can have detailed information about the customer's call before before a single word is spoken. Read on
WebRTC Can Bring Joy To The Customer
Clicking a WebRTC link can quickly connect customers to agents who already know specifics about the call. Read on
What Does Software Development Have In Common With The All Blacks?
Winning in business is a tough game; we've drawn some parallels between the lessons applied by the All Blacks and those required to be ... Read on
Hosted Architecture
Hosted architecture options for contact centers appear to be currently divided between either multi-instance or multi-tenant. But ... Read on
As Carriers Move Away From ISDN To SIP
Carriers are starting to move away from ISDN in favour of SIP. Read on
Smartphones Taking Over As Contact Device Of Choice
Make sure your customers can do what they want using their smartphones. Read on
Impact Of Self Service On The Contact Center
Times have changed; the majority of customers try to self serve their own solutions before ringing in to a contact center. Read on
Challenging Agents
Use technology to enable agents to become more effective and build their own portfolio of customers. Read on
Permission-Based Marketing
Ensure your customers continue their permission for you to market them. Read on
Where Do You Want To Go Today? We Thank You Microsoft For That Gem.
The Microsoft slogan still resonates today, but now there are added complications. Read on
Joined-Up Vs Silos
Some silos exist for valid reasons but others are costly and cause both customer and agent frustration. Read on
Agent Management – Single Skill or Multi Skill? The ongoing debate
We all know that agent turnover is high in call centers. Is multi media providing a solution to this problem? Read on
Making SIP Your Standard
So SIP is now mainstream. What of the claims about increased flexibility and lower costs? Well, in many cases it has been a ... Read on
Mobile Apps And Contact Centers
Mobile apps are commonplace these days. But for businesses offering a mobile app, how joined up is it with their contact center, and ... Read on
Speed Vs Quality – Keeping Your Balance
A successful contact center sets and maintains an appropriate balance of speed and quality objectives, appropriate to their business ... Read on
Multichannel, Multimedia, Omnichannel, Universal Queue – Eh?
These buzzwords all describe the same basic concept. The question here is: do these terms actually mean something useful, or are they ... Read on
Contact Queues Without Walls
The omnichannel/ multimedia/ multichannel approach has significant advantages in terms of keeping agent efficiency and customer ... Read on
Measuring Agent Effectiveness
To deliver the best value for the organisation and the highest satisfaction for customers, agents must be effective. But how do you ... Read on
Measuring Agent Productivity In A Multi-Channel World
Supervisors must monitor a range of KPIs to measure agent performance and productivity. But use of email, chat, SMS, etc throws up ... Read on
Dissecting The Customer Effort Score (CES)
The Customer Effort Score (CES) has been found to be an accurate indicator of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Here we look at what ... Read on
Measuring Success In The Contact Center
A key process for growth in any business is that of measuring success against target. The challenge is to distill the vast sea of data ... Read on
SIP – The Challenge Of Virtualisation Management
With the rise of virtual machines (VMs) comes a responsibility to manage resources, especially for real-time, high-priority activities ... Read on
SIP – The Challenge Of Voice Delay
This blog looks at the causes of delay in calls that travel fully or partially over SIP networks, and what can be done to minimise it. Read on
SIP – The Challenge Of Voice Break-Up
Voice communication is still a large part of a contact center’s business. To maintain quality, how do you give voice traffic VIP ... Read on
Fine-Tuning Your SIP Infrastructure
Sytel has considerable experience in configuring SIP services for a range of markets. Based on this, here are 3 potential issues that ... Read on
Voice Is Still King – Multimedia In The Contact Center
There is no denying that multimedia has a place in the contact center. But when the dust settles, voice will still be king for many ... Read on
Outbound Calling – Past, Present And Future – Part 3
Given the experience of predictive dialer regulation in the UK and US, what should regulators and contact centers in other countries do? Read on
Outbound Calling – Past, Present And Future – Part 2
How have UK and US telemarketeers responded to dialing rules and Do Not Call legislation? And what does this mean for countries that ... Read on
Outbound Calling – Past, Present And Future – Part 1
This blog looks at the regulations for predictive dialers in the UK and US have achieved and what lessons other countries can draw from them. Read on
Times Up! Call Center Practices That Are Past Their ‘Sell By’ Date
A reflection on 5 call center practices that are past their 'sell by' date, or, if you like, where there is room for improvement over ... Read on
The Future Of Network Answering Machine Detection
Answering Machine Detection (AMD) remains a hot topic in the UK. Sytel has been taking the technical lead on a working party to define ... Read on
Smart Call Routing For Smarter Customer Service
In order to route an incoming call so as to achieve the fastest resolution/ greatest satisfaction, in the shortest time, involving the ... Read on
IVR Design – Best Practice
IVR should enable users to help themselves, or route users to the right agent. But largely because of bad design, many people’s ... Read on
Hosted IP PBX In The Cloud
Why take any contact center service from the cloud? Because you benefit from a high-end feature set without the hassle of purchasing ... Read on
Cross-Cultural Customer Service
Great customer engagement is a product of a thorough understanding not only of the customer’s values and needs, but also of their culture. Read on
Predictive Dialing Under Regulation – All Pain, Little Gain
Virtually no predictive dialers were designed to deliver good performance under Ofcom/ FTC rules for abandoned calls. This blog ... Read on
How To Juggle With 4 Balls (And A Chainsaw) – Part 2
The tools that enable continual evaluation, training and improvement are standard for voice-only interactions, but how about web chat, ... Read on
5 Signposts On The Road To VoIP
Taking the plunge from TDM to IP can be a daunting prospect. Here are 5 often overlooked signposts to save a lot of headache and ... Read on
What Is A ‘Universal Queue’? (And Is It A Good Thing?)
There are many definitions out there for the term 'universal queue'. They all sound great but are very agent-centric. Here we call for ... Read on
High Availability – Seeing The Bigger Picture
Some vendors' claims for very high uptime - maybe 99.999% - refer to software only. But for cloud-based contact centers, the vast ... Read on
Drinking From The Fire Hose – The Challenge Of ‘Big Data’ In The Contact Center
Data produced by virtual/ cloud-based contact centers has the potential to grow massively in a short time, and is virtually unlimited. ... Read on
The Pain Of Separation – Call Flow Scripting For IVR And Live Agents
By and large, call center scripting tools are built either for IVR only, or for agent scripts only, and are entirely separate ... Read on
Closed Vs. Open – 2 Roads To Market
Most companies fit into one of two camps; closed architecture (promoting 'own brand' only) or open architecture (offering APIs to ... Read on
Network Answering Machine Detection – Myth Or Reality?
Sytel's contribution to the latest controversy over Network AMD, and some background on how we got here. Read on
Keeping Cloud Services On Tap
How do providers of high availability cloud-based or hosted contact center services prevent failure and disaster from becoming loss of ... Read on
Can You Spare A Minute?
As delivery of cloud computing services threatens to become a way of life, it is timely to look at where vendors like ourselves should ... Read on
How To Juggle With 4 Balls (And A Chainsaw) – Part 1
To keep the customer happy a contact center must manage voice, email, web chat, video, text (and others) successfully. Here we look at ... Read on
“Press *0 To Hear The Options Agai…”
IVR systems can be both difficult to design and set up, and difficult to manage and update, resulting in low usability and user ... Read on
5 Must-Haves For Great Call Center Reporting
Call center managers should be armed with the crucial information that allows them to make the best business decisions. Here are 5 ... Read on
Top 5 Myths Of Outbound Calling
Here are the top 5 misconceptions about how predictive dialers actually work, along with some suggestions for better practice. Read on
Waking Up To Silent Calls
As Turkey considers the impact of silent calls produced by predictive dialers, we point out some lessons that can be learned from the ... Read on
The Shifting Sands Of Social Media
As the sands of social media shift at a fairly bewildering rate, prepare for an avalanche of social media analytics tools. But ... Read on
The Great Answering Machine Debate
Tape-based answering machines have long been displaced by digital technology, rendering many answering machine detection (AMD) ... Read on
Beyond First Call Resolution
First call resolution has become the Holy Grail of customer service in recent years. But how has the advent of other media channels ... Read on
Joined-Up Customer Service
Customers expect first-class service, no matter what the channel of contact. To earn the label 'first-class', we believe customer ... Read on
SaaS Cloud Computing And Smart Phones
Most of us use SaaS every hour of the day. If the hosted call center services model follows anything like the trajectory of the ... Read on
Flying A Plane Without Fear
The needs of a call center supervisor are similar to those of a pilot in thick fog. In order to fly without fear of disaster, he must ... Read on
Don’t Let Snow Get You Down!
How well is your contact center set up to cope with the disruption of the winter season? Now is the time to review your technology ... Read on
Technical Support – Can You Help Me?
When contact center software and hardware fails, what level of technical support and customer service do you expect? Read on
Mapping A Migration To IP
No call center in the world wants to be left out of the multimedia IP revolution. This blog maps a viable and graceful migration path ... Read on
The Evolution Of The New Agent Desktop
This month’s blog looks at the current and forthcoming challenges faced by contact centers at the agent desktop, and outlines a way ... Read on
Seven Tips For Hosted Contact Center Success
What makes a successful hosted contact center operation? If you are considering becoming a hosted call center supplier, consider these ... Read on
Is Your Customer Service Joined Up?
How should your technology be empowering your CSRs to deliver top class customer service? Here's a list of 10 must-haves. Read on
Next Generation Networks, Brought To You By The Call Center?
Could it be that the future of networking is currently being trialed in call centers across the world? Read on
Predictive Dialers and Call Progress Detection
Watch out for predictive dialer vendors claiming over 90% (sometimes over 95%) detection rates for answering machines. This is not ... Read on
Future-Proof Software Development?
In the software development business, 'change is inevitable, change is constant'. So how do you manage sustainable software ... Read on
Unified Communications In The Contact Center – Part Two
The contact center industry should be asking its UC vendor community for detail on how their technology can provide solutions to ... Read on
VoIP – Hosted AND Premise-Based?
If current trends are anything to go by, premise-based installations are losing favour and we are headed for hosted and cloud-based ... Read on
Unified Communications In The Contact Center – Part One
Unified communications has substantial business benefits for the contact center. But how do you separate the actual benefits from the ... Read on
Benchmarking Your Predictive Dialer
Hands up who’s bought a predictive dialer on the basis of a manufacturer’s claims, without getting independent verification of ... Read on