The contact center stories enterprise IT leaders actually read.
Volume 341, Issue 3 · 8 articles from 5 issues
Eliminating unnecessary customer contacts must come before technology, since much inbound volume is preventable.
The author argues you cannot optimize a contact center until you eliminate unnecessary contacts, framing it as a leadership discipline issue.
A strategic framework splits contact reduction into four actions: roughly 40 percent eliminated, 30 percent simplified, 20 percent digitized or automated, and 10 percent elevated to high-value human interactions. Understanding customer intent reveals root causes like unclear billing, complex processes, or product defects rather than contact center performance.
Digital automation fails when deployed only for cost reduction rather than genuine customer benefit. Simplification often delivers the strongest ROI by reducing upstream friction, as shown by companies like Best Buy and Discover Financial Services.
The July 2026 issue spotlights AI-powered quality management and strategies to prevent agent burnout.
The July 2026 edition addresses challenges facing contact center leaders, led by agent burnout prevention through new AI-powered QM tools.
The issue covers balancing customer experience with operational metrics and shifting from reactive to proactive engagement.
Articles examine deploying AI agents at scale, telecom cost reduction, offshore BPO viability in an AI-first economy, and preventing chatbot failures with micro-GPT technology.
Additional coverage includes RCS implementation, contact center value creation, and voice AI adoption strategies.
The publication features contributions from practitioners and vendors on emerging technologies and best practices.
Contact centers must strengthen disaster response plans as cyberattacks, outages, and severe weather threats intensify.
Contact centers face escalating disaster risks, with cyberattacks now ranking as the top threat, followed by platform outages, severe weather, workforce disruption, and vendor failures.
Organizations should adopt hybrid operational models combining regional backups with remote staffing capabilities. Strong cyber resilience, AI governance, regular disaster drills, and protected remote agent infrastructure are essential.
Most organizations have basic plans but lack comprehensive end-to-end testing and adequate overflow capacity. Integrating technology safeguards, governance frameworks, and human safety measures creates sustainable business continuity.
Only about 7% of offshore business support workers fear AI will harm their roles; most see it as a productivity tool.
Only about 7% of offshore business support workers are concerned that widespread adoption of AI will negatively affect their roles, according to a survey of 2,000 offshore-based employees at services specialist Sourcefit.
Just over half (53%) said they use AI several times a week and 74% use it occasionally. Over two-thirds (68%) said AI tools increase their productivity, and 41% believe the technology will support their roles without fundamentally changing them.
The most common uses of AI among offshore staff are writing and documentation (36%), research and analysis (30%), and customer support (14%).
Contact centers must align cloud strategy with cost management and CX outcomes to maximize ROI.
Contact centers face hidden costs and inefficient workloads when adopting cloud without a clear strategy. Success requires aligning cloud investments with measurable CX metrics such as average handle time and first contact resolution rather than raw computing power.
Organizations should pursue operational efficiency by scheduling non-production downtime, eliminating unused assets, and modernizing from monolithic systems to microservices and serverless components.
A disciplined FinOps approach with governance, tagging, and cost accountability across IT, finance, and operations prevents runaway expenses and turns cloud into a strategic asset.
Four practical measures keep cloud contact center calling available: redundant connectivity, security, monitoring and patching.
Cloud contact centers offer resilience advantages but still have failure points that disrupt calling and damage customer satisfaction.
The article recommends redundant internet connectivity through multiple providers or SD-WAN, since network access is the largest single point of failure.
Second, security controls such as multifactor authentication and AI-powered threat detection protect administrative systems from attacks that take service down.
Third, continuous bandwidth and call-quality monitoring with predictive analytics catches network degradation before customers are affected.
Finally, disciplined patching reduces vulnerabilities and bugs that can cause outages even when the cloud provider itself is healthy.
Essential compliance practices for contact centers to protect customer data and meet regulatory requirements.
Contact center compliance protects customer data and organizational reputation while ensuring adherence to regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA.
The checklist covers eleven areas: securing networks, locking down workstations, authenticating customers, recording conversations, providing mandatory disclosures, adhering to privacy legislation, following TCPA rules, managing sensitive information, training employees, promoting self-service, and continuous testing and monitoring.
Organizations must embed compliance into corporate culture through technology investment, accountability, and policy adherence rather than treating checklists as mere documentation.
No Jitter covers four shifts as agentic AI moves from pilot projects into deployed customer experience workflows.
No Jitter examines how contact centers are changing as agentic AI moves from pilot projects into deployment in customer experience workflows.
The effects are visible for both customer service agents and customers rather than confined to back-office efficiency.
The article identifies four specific changes underway. It covers what human agents now do differently when agents handle first-line resolution. It also covers what customers experience when interactions are handled autonomously.
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