/ Articles by Kristen Bialik

As a small or midsize business (SMB) owner, it can be hard to keep track of the latest essential business technology. Are your competitors farther ahead than you on must-have or emerging software?

Help desk work is challenging—agents are tasked with solving a rapid stream of customer problems and they need software that will help them, not get in their way.

Customer experience (CX) is so expansive and wide-ranging that it can be difficult to know where to focus your optimization efforts. We recently covered three essential markers of customer experience maturity within organizations: customer personas, customer journey maps, and customer insight programs. A strong CX program built on these initiatives will allow you to see issues within the customer experience and better prioritize needed improvements.

You’ve researched the best software for your organization and made your top choice. Now you just need to present your selection and get leadership to sign-off on the decision before purchase.

It can take two years (24 months), on average, for a small to midsize business to go through the software-buying process. That's a lot of time to devote to a software search, especially when your time could be better spent growing your business.

Customer experience (CX) needs to be an essential part of your business plan to stay competitive. About seven in 10 customer experience management professionals (67%) say their organizations are already competing mostly or entirely on CX, according to a recent Gartner survey. By two years from now, nearly nine in 10 CX managers (86%) expect to mostly or entirely compete on the basis of CX. (Full article available to Gartner clients.)

Organizations adopt new software to solve a problem. For that to happen, you need to find the right software to meet your needs. Yet a change in software will affect many people at your organization, not just the direct users. So it's important to get feedback while searching for the right product.

Call centers suffer from high employee turnover rates. The mean annual attrition rate for U.S. contact centers was 31% in 2018, and those surveyed say hiring the wrong type of person for the job was the No. 1 reason for their attrition.

All businesses like to imagine their customers are having pain-free experiences. But sadly, that's not the reality. About half (45%) of U.S. customers say they had at least one negative customer experience (CX) in the past 12 months, according to a recent Capterra survey.