New York SBDC Research Network

Obtained from:   MarketingProfs At many companies, the frontline of customer experience—the contact center—isn't meeting customer expectations. Although brands are adopting new technologies to better interact with customers and understand their wants and needs, the answer to delivering the right experience may be simpler than that. At the very core of customer experience is human interaction, so to truly see return on customer experience investments, brands should invest in their most valuable assets: agents in the contact center. According to  new research  from Calabrio, customer demands are increasingly complex, the number of inquiries are swelling to new levels, and agents feel ill-equipped to solve the ever-growing list of customer requests. There's a lot riding on agent interactions, and the lack of support has many representatives feeling stressed out, abandoned, and stuck in a pressure cooker of expectation. The effects of a burned out contact center workforce...

Employment at small businesses increased in March at the highest rate in over two years, according to payroll figures from Intuit. Intuit’s Small Business Employment Index indicated that small business employment increased by 0.3 percent in March, while monthly compensation and the number of hours worked also increased. Intuit estimated that small business employment grew at an annual growth rate of 3.8 percent. The figures are based on small businesses with fewer than 20 employees that use Intuit Online Payroll. Another payroll provider, ADP, also reported an increase in small business hiring in March, but SurePayroll saw a slight decline. “This is the strongest small business employment report we have had in a long time,” said Susan Woodward, the economist who worked with Intuit to create the index. “Yet at the same time, the hiring rate has remained flat at just above five percent since May 2009. This indicates that small firm employees are staying with their current employers...