Steve DiGioia

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

…here’s 7 ways to get you started This original article was written by Steve DiGioia. You still haven’t learned how to speak up, huh? Maybe you’re just afraid of confrontation? I know, you don’t want to offend anyone, right? Don’t want to come across as too assertive or even aggressive; what’s the difference anyway? The service you provide has always lacked because of your fear of “taking charge” and not wanting to offend your customers.

Customer Service 387

Customer Service Customer Experience Personalization 387

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

After my wife Lorraine and I ordered dinner in a restaurant the other night, I decided to have a glass of wine. Now, where was our waiter? I looked around and realized I didn’t have a clue what he looked like. So I asked Lorraine. “Do you see our waiter?” She craned her neck and then shrugged. It seems neither of us could remember the face of the fellow who had, just moments before, told us about the night’s specials in great detail.

Consulting 334

Consulting Consulting Banking Customer Experience 334

Myra Golden Media

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

I recorded this video last week for a client. It’s part of a full 16-module customer service training. As a special treat for you, I’m sharing one module from my client’s course. This video is about giving customers an experience that makes them feel good and maintains their esteem. Viewers learn 3 Keys for a Friendly Customer Experience: Never Correct a Customer, Pacing a Customer’s Sense of Urgency and Acknowledging Concern.

Customer Experience 273

Customer Experience Customer Service 273

Callminer

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Net Promoter Scores are touted as valuable tools for customer satisfaction and improving experience. But relying on this data alone fails to paint the full picture that today’s contact centers need.

Surveys 254

Surveys Contact Center 254

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ShepHyken

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

One of my colleagues in the speaking business, Bob Wendover, sent in this amazing story – and it’s not amazing in a good way. For years, the cable industry has unfortunately been one of those industries that finds itself in the bottom echelon of customer service rankings. While I believe the industry is making an effort to do better, and some companies are definitely becoming more customer-focused, it’s this kind of story that makes me wonder if they are going about it the right way.

Wait times 206

Wait times Accountability Customer Service Personalization 206

Myra Golden Media

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Now and then someone comes along with an idea, 
and specific ways to implement that plan, that can truly
 make a difference for everyone who uses it. And that’s precisely what I’ve done with this new program: My All-New Telephone Skills Training eLearning Course

. In this online training, I teach your employees absolutely everything they need to know to deliver a warm and friendly customer experience, to control calls and pre-empt escalations.

Customer Experience 184

Customer Experience 184

Peter Lavers

NOVEMBER 16, 2017

Remember when we used to talk about “channels and media”? Life was simple. Channel meant physical route to market e.g. retail, wholesale, intermediated, direct, etc. Media meant one- or two-way communications devices e.g. TV, radio, telephone, website, email, webchat, face-to-face, etc. These terms have effectively amalgamated since we started to become “multi channel”. eCommerce kicked this off on a massive scale, although the catalog and home shopping industry would say it’s been going for a l

Customer centricity 183

Customer centricity Automotive Finance Marketing 183

ShepHyken

NOVEMBER 17, 2017

This week we feature an article by Megan Wenzl about the importance of online reviews to your business and customer engagement. Asking your customers to post online reviews shows that you have confidence that you will take care of your customers by delivering a great customer service experience and taking care of any problems that may arise – in such a way that will earn you a glowing online review. – Shep Hyken.

Advertising 202

Advertising Feedback Customer Experience Customer Service 202

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Michael Lowenstein, Ph.D., CMC Thought Leadership Principal, Beyond Philosophy. Richard Branson and Herb Kelleher never studied HR theory or staff management principles. That said, they’ve proven to be pretty good at it. Both understand (in the case of Sir Richard at Virgin Group) and understood (in the case of Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines) the value of putting people and customers first, HR practice second.

Airlines 218

Airlines Consulting Consulting Enterprise 218

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Reports of the death of in-store shopping have been greatly exaggerated. This year’s retail survey found that more than 60 percent of consumers start and end their journey by visiting a store. Retail customers value price above everything, but the importance of other factors varies for different brands. In-store shopping is valued highly by grocery and home improvement customers Technology retail customers place less importance on in-store experiences – for them it only ranks sixth Digital exper

Surveys

Call Center Weekly

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

By Sean Hawkins If you want your staff to be engaged, they must first be involved! I constantly seek opportunities to allow people to work and grow in areas other than their current role. We often talk about removing silos between departments, yet many employees remain siloed in their roles. That should not be the case. 1. Get them involved On a daily basis, I am given a suggestion of some sort.

Entertainment 159

Entertainment Feedback Government Contact Center 159

Myra Golden Media

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

I was trying to check in for my American Airlines flight on my phone. I was able to get one boarding pass, but not the other. After several failed attempts, I called American and explained my problem. I was transferred quickly, and the person I ended up with looked into my itinerary and then she said: “Ms. Golden, this is a system error. You’re checked in all the way through to Tulsa.

Airlines 153

Airlines Accountability Personalization Customer Service 153

ShepHyken

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Turn One-Time Purchasers Into Lifelong Customers. Shep Hyken Interviews Joey Coleman, Author of “Never Lose a Customer Again”. How would you like to never lose a customer again? Award-winning speaker Joey Coleman shares the secrets behind not only gaining new customers, but also how to make them customers for life. He shares his 100 Days principle, and discusses his new book “Never Lose a Customer Again.”.

Customer Experience 185

Customer Experience Sales Customer Service Personalization 185

Contact Center Pipeline

NOVEMBER 16, 2017

Mentorship is enjoying a resurgence in popularity, thanks largely to millennials and social networking. Mentoring is actually an age-old development concept with references reaching back as far as Ancient Greece and Homer’s Odyssey. As a learning technique, it has lasted the test of time due primarily to its effectiveness. Millennials, in particular, value having a […].

Contact Center 157

Contact Center Call Center 157

Speaker: Nicholas Zeisler, CX Strategist & Fractional CXO

The first step in a successful Customer Experience endeavor (or for that matter, any business proposition) is to find out what’s wrong. If you can’t identify it, you can’t fix it! 💡 That’s where the Voice of the Customer (VoC) comes in. Today, far too many brands do VoC simply because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do; that’s what all their competitors do.

Customer Experience

TechSee

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

“Gareth! Coffee! Now!” On a cold mid-winter morning in 2030, I’m snarling at Gareth as the robot scans my espresso-maker. His chest screen displays details about the internal adjustments he’s about to make, adjustments that his display told me to make weeks ago. “You realize this going to delay me by at least five minutes,” I complain.

Engineering 154

Engineering Technical Support Call Center Technology 154

Call Center Weekly

NOVEMBER 17, 2017

By Dea Harrington Intro Recently I read an article by Brad Cleveland that proposed ten things that senior leaders should know about contact center operations. His message was that a basic understanding of what centers do and how they work is an absolute necessity if senior management is going to effectively support and guide this increasingly complex business unit.

Call Center 136

Call Center Education Contact Center Consulting 136

Lumoa

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

On 14 November 2016, exactly one year ago, Lumoame Oy was registered in Helsinki. This year has been an amazing journey for us and we wanted to share this important moment with you. No surprise, the main discussion topic at #LumoaAnniversary was Customer Experience. We celebrated our first year with our supporters, friends, and customers. Customers have been at the center of all our operations since the very beginning.

Feedback 121

Feedback Metrics Customer Experience Technology 121

Contact Center Pipeline

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

With the Thanksgiving holiday around the corner and other holidays approaching, I expect retailers, product and other service providers to solicit consumer feedback via surveys. According to an ICMI infographic that we collaborated on titled, “The 4 Phases to Achieving Customer Delight,” the four phases are: Chaos—e.g., 1 out of 5 contact centers are overwhelmed […].

Feedback 133

Feedback Contact Center Surveys Call Center 133

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

💢 Do you find yourself stuck in never-ending review cycles? Are you wondering if your Subject Matter Expert actually got that last review request? Are you having trouble trying to decipher impractical or conflicting feedback? 💢 If any of these scenarios sounds familiar, you may benefit from a crash course on managing SME relationships!

Feedback

Peter Lavers

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

In this guest blog our friend and Associate Paul Laughlin considers which are the most important skills needed by analysts or data scientists. It’s an interesting question to ponder. It is tempting to fall back on technical basics, like statistical knowledge & software or coding skills. But most graduate data scientists or experienced analysts will be screened for those at recruitment.

Analytics 100

Analytics Banking Consulting Consulting 100

Call Center Weekly

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

By Jessica Menapace On Sunday our Senior Manager of Training and Development, John Kusinski, sends out "Leadership Reflections" to everyone on the leadership team of our organization. I get bogged down with the hustle and bustle of call center management, but I do my best to read them. When I do read them, I find myself in deep thought about my growth and development, and it empowers and reenergizes me for the week.

Coaching 136

Coaching Call Center Management 136

Provide Support

NOVEMBER 16, 2017

Customer service and marketing can intensify and strengthen each other. Customer service and marketing are often seen as completely different processes by most companies. Strategies for each of the process are planned independently; employees of these departments take separate trainings and sometimes work in different buildings or even countries. Indeed, differences are obvious – marketing is about getting new clients while customer service is about making them happy.

Marketing 108

Marketing Customer Service 108

Contact Center Pipeline

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

In contact centers, the first 90 days is known as the critical make-or-break period for new agents. New-hires can quickly be overwhelmed with information about systems, processes, policies and procedures. Add to that the stress of interacting with customers when you’re still learning the ropes and it’s easy to see why so many new-hires exit […].

Contact Center 127

Contact Center Call Center 127

Dive into the realm of contact center dialers with our infographic! Explore the various types – Preview, Predictive, Automatic, and Progressive Dialers – and unravel their roles in boosting call center performance.

Contact Center

Inbenta

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

How did people find answers before the internet? Even those of us old enough to remember a life pre-web struggle to recall how we did our homework, checked for correct spellings or even resisted the urge to ask those questions we wouldn’t dare ask aloud without the relative safety of a search engine like Google. And yet humans somehow managed to exist before the World Wide Web was created in 1989.

Engineering 109

Engineering Chatbots Self service Virtual Agent 109

Fonolo

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

The customer service profession is known for high turnover rates and agent burnout, however, some professionals greatly excel in this line of work, and show tremendous aptitude for delivering excellent customer care. Perhaps you’re a customer service rep who thrives in the workplace, and are thinking to yourself, “Do I have what it takes to grow in this profession?

Customer Service 100

Customer Service Agent burnout Best practices Call Center 100

Customer Service Life

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

This article was originally published on CustomerThink.com as part of my regular advisor column on October 13, 2017. Click here to read the original along with other terrific articles. In a previous role, I remember when we switched our sign up from an opt-in model to opt-out. This change led to many calls from surprised customers, sometimes months down the road, who didn’t realize we were going to automatically bill their credit card.

Accountability 95

Accountability Feedback Surveys Contact Center 95

Aspect

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

The contact center industry is currently undergoing a period of rapid transformation brought about by the convergence of changing consumer expectations and disruptive technology. In order to remain competitive, it is vital that you keep pace. But measuring progress is not quite as simple as it once was, and it can be difficult for any contact center leader to know whether or not their team is successfully adapting or headed towards peril.

Contact Center 94

Contact Center Analytics Benchmark Interactive Voice Response 94

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Over the next 12 months, what do you think will have the biggest impact on your CX automation efforts? When asked the same question, only 10% of CX leaders surveyed by Verint chose telephony. It’s no longer the engagement channel leading CCaaS conversations. The customer engagement challenges facing organizations have changed – so a new approach is needed.

Self service

ijgolding

NOVEMBER 12, 2017

Allow me to start this post by asking a question. What happens when two Customer Experience Professionals visit a restaurant together for the first time? . Whilst this is not the opening line to a bad joke, I can already anticipate your ‘snorting’ and ‘chuckling’ from here! ‘A right royal pain in the butt’, is most likely to be the response that immediately springs to mind.

Engineering 91

Engineering Banking Customer Experience Customer retention 91

Fonolo

NOVEMBER 16, 2017

The call center can be a great resource for getting questions answered, but it’s typically not the most enjoyable experience. This is especially true because of the many different channels that give customers instant gratification – thus increasing the expectations for customer service. But that doesn’t mean the phone channel isn’t still a popular medium.

Contact Center 100

Contact Center Abandon rate Call Center Wait times 100

Influitive

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

As we get closer to Advocamp 2017 (this Dec. 6-8 in San Francisco), the excitement is building around our amazing lineup of presenters. Advocamp is the biggest customer experience, engagement & advocacy event of the year, uniting hundreds of marketing, sales, and CS leaders from across the world. We’re thrilled to highlight some of the.

Marketing 85

Marketing Sales Customer Experience B2B 85