En-Contact Directory of Customer Service and Experience. 5th edition

Will AI make it possible to improve and personalise remote customer service and personalised reception in shops? Or can it already do so? Is telemarketing, which is celebrating its 67th anniversary, close to palliative care?
Malpaso-RCM, publisher of the well-known magazine En-Contact, the independent CRM and customer experience fanzine, will be bringing out two useful books for professionals in charge of digital, acquisition and customer experience before the end of 2024.

67 years on, does telemarketing have a future, and if so, in what countries and at what cost?
Why no one picks up the phone any more’, was the headline in the respected newspaper The Atlantic in 2019, describing with precision a phenomenon that has largely compromised the economic efficiency of telephone canvassing and telesales: prospects, who are over-solicited, harassed they say, no longer pick up the phone, and GenZ even less so. If we add to this worldwide phenomenon the numerous regulations governing telemarketing, the do-not-call list, Bloctel and the Naegelen law, it's easy to understand the concern of acquisition specialists: the number of contacts made per hour and per agent has fallen by 45% in two years. As a result, the cost of acquiring a customer by telephone has risen sharply. Yet this is the channel that continues to dominate in terms of volume in the energy, fibre and energy renovation sectors.

After more than two years' work and research in the USA, France and French-speaking Switzerland, Manuel Jacquinet, a recognised specialist in this sector, will be publishing the first illustrated history of cold calling, with the support of one of the leading companies in the field: Manifone.

Published end of November 2024, price incl. VAT: 30 euros

En-Contact directory of customer service and experience. 5th edition. 
In December, the same publisher (who also publishes En-Contact) will be publishing the 5th edition of the Bottin du service et de l'expérience client. A sort of Michelin Guide to 900 French service providers, publishers and consultants specialising in everything that improves customer service, reception and hospitality, with or without AI. Klark, for example, what does it do and what is it worth in terms of responding to your customers, since the AFRC did not include this ‘best generative AI tool for optimising your customer service’ in its start-ups of the year?

Qualtrics, which was found to be complicit in election fraud a few years ago, is used by Fnac-Darty for its satisfaction questionnaires, why? Does Qualimétrie have any serious competitors when it comes to delegating mystery shoppers?

At the same time, Le Bottin will be proposing an attempt to select the 24 personalities and researchers who are driving forward the subject of customer experience and its digitalisation. As far as the new categories are concerned, the RCS specialists have obviously been approached, since this replacement for SMS is going to change the game, in our view. As well as Speech Analytics publishers, such as Callity, the French company that is leading the way in this category in terms of effectiveness, according to its customers. Is Feedae, launched in the autumn by the founders of Callofsuccess, capable of becoming a serious alternative? Le Bottin, ask for the directory :).

Out in December, with issue 134 of En-Contact. En Contact can be ordered separately