Cyara Blog

We’re all consumers of health insurance, and we’ve all gone through open enrollment. Every year we face a limited window in which we have to review options and make selections for the coming year. I don’t know about you, but I’m perpetually busy. And, truth be told, this tends to be a task I push out to the last minute. So, like so many others, I end up scrambling to get questions answered so I can complete my selections. To get answers, I pick up the phone and dial the toll-free number for my current or prospective health insurer. 

This is a make it or break it moment in terms of my relationship with my health insurance provider. If the published number does not connect, was no longer valid, or worse of all connected to a completely different company, I would not be pleased. And as my colleagues can tell you, you don’t want to poke the bear. 

Part of our work in the Domain Consulting team is to advise Cyara customers on their Agile/DevOps journeys. Through this process, we've identified a path to DevOps in the contact center that I'd like to explore in more detail.

In this first post of a three-part series, I will talk about putting in the guard rails with design-driven assurance. In part two, I'll talk about how to accelerate the delivery of value whether you're doing an automated deployment or configuration of off-the-shelf contact center software, or implementing cloud contact center software. In part three, I'll cover ways to reduce the cost of failure, whether through building solutions with testing and monitoring in mind, automated deployment and configuration, or using test data in production. 

For CX leaders who are in the trenches day-to-day, you know that paying careful attention upfront in the design stage can make or break the efficacy of your CX testing, and of course, ultimately the success of your CX. I’ve captured some best practices to keep in mind, start to finish — based on my years of experience as a developer myself, from working side-by-side with many Cyara customers and from a panel discussion I recently hosted with Cyara customers. 

I founded McIntosh & Associates to help businesses improve their customer experience by improving the performance of their contact center. We apply a data-driven approach to identify opportunities for improving contact center performance, and customer satisfaction. 

One of the thorniest issues we encounter is voice quality. It’s obvious that good voice quality is an important factor in delivering a great customer experience. Good voice quality is expected by your customers and its absence will result in significant dissatisfaction and negatively impact your NPS results.

The fact is, there can be many kinds of defects in software. Organizations are constantly working to minimize those defects. But to minimize any sort of defect most effectively, organizations need to look to the source. Most people think software defects come out of development because that is where the design is brought to life. But, is development truly the main source of software defects?

Businesses are increasingly operating in a global economy, and are looking to test and monitor their customer experience in countries around the world. In order to do this effectively and efficiently, you need the ability to dial numbers locally for the purposes of testing and monitoring. While of course you can dial numbers internationally, there are some limitations.

In our work with Cyara customers, the Domain Consulting team has found that many organizations are struggling with maintaining alignment between and within their business and IT teams while working to increase the speed of their deployments. This point was reinforced during an Agile-focused panel at Cyara Xchange 2018 and also in conversations I had throughout the event. 

In my last post, I talked about ways to get business and IT working from the same CX agenda. In this post, I'd like to talk some more about organizational alignment between the business and technology sides, as it is key. I will examine how maintaining alignment requires prioritization, feedback loops, and coordination.

I love Nashville. Over the years I’ve been to Nashville for three conferences, all at the Opryland Hotel. If you’ve never stayed at the Opryland Hotel, you’re in for a real treat — it’s like being in a terrarium. Enclosed, lush green grounds with winding paths. Why, there’s even an indoor boat ride!

The answer is, it depends. The cost of a SEV1 depends on many factors including when the error is discovered and how difficult it is to diagnose and repair. But first, what is a SEV1?

At Cyara Xchange 2018 in March, I had the great privilege of hearing a presentation by two experts on performance testing of CX applications: Pete Dhadwar of Royal Bank of Canada and Chandra Golla of Cyara. In this blog post, I will share a few of their pearls of wisdom.