Have you ever contacted a customer service center and been passed from pillar to post, repeating your situation over and over again to different people in different departments? Many have, and it is this experience that respondents to ClickFox's Consumer Tipping Points survey found the most frustrating.

Over four in ten (41%) chose 'having to speak with multiple agents, and starting over every time' as the most frustrating customer service experience far exceeding the numbers who cited 'rude and inexperienced representatives' (13%) or 'being kept on hold for long periods of time' (9.3%).

The results reveal the importance of first contact resolution as a performance metric - the more effort a customer needs to expend to complete a customer service interaction the higher the cost to the business and the lower the loyalty to the brand, says ClickFox.

HCL Workforce Solutions' consultants are recording record scores on their Customer Quality Assurance Feedback Reports this quarter, according to HCL's latest internal research, compiled as part of their commitment to quality management certification.

HCL Head of Compliance Jackie Knowles says the satisfaction scores, which topped 93%, are indicative of the organisation's hard-line focus on standards, transparency and the high calibre of staff.

Over the last six months, HCL has been going through a reengineering process, with compliance and security sitting at the top of our agenda. Internally, we are driving quality management systems in the business to ensure that our policies and procedures sit at the heart of our business. We take these processes very seriously and we pride ourselves on our levels of customer service.

Centim, an integrated customer feedback and sentiment analysis solution, is available in South Africa through a partnership between Consulta Research and Clarabridge Inc.

Described as a first for South Africa, it allows businesses to gain customer insights not only from their existing stored data but also from real-time customer responses in call centres, social media (such as Twitter and Facebook platforms) and various customer feedback systems.

Traditionally, online customer reviews and social media feedback (known as unstructured data), which come from disparate sources, are challenging to categorise and analyse effectively for organisational decision-making.

Loyaltyworks, a leader in providing business incentive programs and employee recognition programs, is proud to announce the launch of their new HR application – The RewardTrax Total Recognition Suite.

The Total Recognition Suite helps companies improve their levels of recognition and engagement in their employee recognition programs and their business incentive programs, which are both major contributors to a company’s recognition culture. This suite is the latest addition to RewardTrax, Loyaltyworks’ Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that is the backbone of all their incentive and recognition programs.

At TM Forum Management World today, Aito Technologies, the leading provider of customer experience analytics (CEA) for communications service providers (CSP), announced that it has been selected by Clarity as part of its solution for one of the largest telecommunications groups in Asia, providing a comprehensive range of mobile communication services to a combined base of over 180 million subscribers.

Earlier this year, Clarity was awarded the contract to be the prime business partner, systems integrator and customer experience management solution provider to the Asia wide group of operators. Under this agreement, Aito CEA was selected to help the mobile operators in the group to gain a better understanding of the customer lifecycle and deliver a superior customer experience. Specifically, Aito CEA will provide cross-correlation, root cause analysis and troubleshooting capabilities.

Tony Garcia, Clarity's Chief Commercial Officer said: The choice of Aito CEA helps us to deliver state-of-the-art customer experience management to our customer that facilitates excellent business decision making and traceable ROI measurement.