ShepHyken

JULY 14, 2025

Each week, I read many customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comments about each article and would like to hear what you think too. A Million Customer Conversations with AI Agents Yielded This Surprising Lesson by Vala Afshar (ZDNET) Salesforce began with a restricted rollout and targeted content, allowing us to learn quickly, iterate, and enhance the system.

Customer Service 180

Customer Service Entertainment Chatbots Best practices 180

Callminer

JULY 14, 2025

Every customer interaction shapes perception, loyalty, and bottom-line results. This article breaks down why agent performance matters, some potential challenges, and strategies for better outcomes.

182

182

ShepHyken

JULY 8, 2025

Earlier this year, I wrote a Forbes article celebrating the 50th anniversary of the famous Nordstrom story in which a man wanted to return a set of used tires – even though Nordstrom never even sold tires. That fact didn’t stop the employee from giving the customer a refund. Right or wrong, that story is still talked about 50 years later! I’ve mentioned this story in the past, and the point is that stories like these become legends inside an organization, and if the brand is lucky, they may e

Airlines 236

Airlines Coaching Customer Service Customer Experience 236

CCNG

JULY 9, 2025

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool for businesses to understand and improve customer experience, but omnichannel interactions pose challenges. Customer journey mapping emerged as a way to visualize the steps customers take when interacting with the brand, but there’s a lot more to it than just using personas to plot touch points. Journey mapping examines the connective tissue that ties customer experience to a brand’s employees, processes and operations.

Journey mapping 195

Journey mapping Customer Experience First call resolution Contact Center 195

Advertisement

The AI era isn’t coming—it’s here. But over 70% of AI projects fail before they scale. Why? No strategy. No alignment. No ROI. We worked with a $50M company that wasted a year and half their budget chasing AI pilots with no payoff. Sound familiar? That’s where our four-step transformation system comes in: Assess, Strategize, Execute, Scale. We help you cut through the hype, find what actually moves the needle, and build a roadmap that delivers results.

Contact Center Pipeline

JULY 10, 2025

The contact center agent’s job is uniquely demanding. Agents juggle rigid schedules, repetitive tasks, and interactions with frustrated or anxious customers. This makes the job stressful, leading to burnout and chronic attrition that disrupts operations, increases costs, and which damages the customer experience (CX).

Agent burnout 130

Agent burnout Contact Center Customer Experience Analytics 130

AWS Machine Learning

JULY 10, 2025

Rocket Companies is a Detroit-based FinTech company with a mission to “Help Everyone Home.” Although known to many as a mortgage lender, Rocket’s mission extends to the entire home ownership journey from finding the perfect home, purchasing, financing, and using your home equity. Rocket has grown by making the complex simple, empowering clients to navigate the home ownership journey through intuitive, technology-driven solutions.

APIs 103

APIs Finance Personalization Self service 103

Callminer

JULY 9, 2025

CallMiner's, Bruce McMahon, shares key product updates from Q2 2025. He looks at data privacy enhancements, CallMiner RealTime updates, the acquisition of VOCALLS, and more.

140

140

Contact Center Pipeline

JULY 9, 2025

To successfully engage with customers – and deliver to them loyalty and delight-and-revenue-driving excellent customer experiences (CXs) – you need to speak their language. Both figuratively – as in avoiding jargon, using their terms, and above all listening to what they are saying – but also literally.

Customer Experience 130

Customer Experience 130

Steve DiGioia

JULY 8, 2025

If you’re working a job in California right now, or planning to, you may be missing out on hundreds of dollars each month — simply because you don’t know the latest wage laws. In 2025, California isn’t just raising the bar — it’s setting new records when it comes to protecting workers’ pay. But here’s the twist: where you live, and even where you flip burgers , could make your hourly rate shoot past $20 an hour.

Finance 130

Finance 130

Speaker: Brendan Sweeney, VP of Global Sales and David Phelan, Account Executive

In a world where buyers are more informed and objections are more nuanced, confidence isn't optional—it’s a competitive advantage. In high-stakes conversations, knowing how to handle pushback can make or break the deal. Join industry experts Brendan Sweeney and David Phelan for a behind-the-scenes look at how teams are transforming sales coaching with real-time feedback, objection-handling role plays, and pre-call preparation that actually sticks.

Coaching

Quiq

JULY 8, 2025

Large language models hold a lot of power to improve your customer experience and make your agents more effective, but they won’t do you much good if you don’t have a way to actually access them. This is where application programming interfaces (APIs) come into play. If you want to leverage LLMs, you’ll either have to build one in-house, use an AI API deployment to interact with an external model, or go with a customer-centric AI for CX platform.

APIs 87

APIs Customer centricity Engineering industry standards 87

PeopleMetrics

JULY 8, 2025

You’ve designed your NPS survey. You’re asking the right customers, at the right time, in the right way. But what do you do with the results? Too many teams stop at reporting the NPS score. They miss the real point: the NPS score is only the signal, the “why” behind the score is what drives real action. If you want to move up the curve, from Foundational to Mature and eventually Elite, you need to capture, analyze, and share the NPS insights from your customers.

Feedback 71

Feedback Banking B2B SaaS 71

AWS Machine Learning

JULY 8, 2025

Today, we’re excited to announce a significant improvement to the developer experience of Amazon Bedrock : API keys. API keys provide quick access to the Amazon Bedrock APIs, streamlining the authentication process so that developers can focus on building rather than configuration. CamelAI is an open-source, modular framework for building intelligent multi-agent systems for data generation, world simulation, and task automation.

APIs 143

APIs Enterprise Engineering Scripts 143

Contact Center Pipeline

JULY 15, 2025

Cold calling has long been a cornerstone of sales, which, in turn, is the foundation of the customer experience (CX), demanding persistence, adaptability, and the ability to quickly form connections with potential clients. Women, in particular, often demonstrate strengths that can make them exceptionally good at this role.

Sales 130

Sales Customer Experience Outbound sales 130

Advertiser: ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo customers aren’t just selling — they’re winning. Revenue teams using our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform grew pipeline by 32%, increased deal sizes by 40%, and booked 55% more meetings. Download this report to see what 11,000+ customers say about our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform and how it impacts their bottom line. The data speaks for itself!

Marketing

Ansafone

JULY 15, 2025

Even in the most routine interactions, how a business handles customer inquiries can make or break the relationship. One of the most common frustrations customers face is being bounced from one representative to another. These unnecessary transfers are more than just an inconvenience. They can significantly erode trust, increase frustration, and negatively affect the customer experience.

62

62

Steve DiGioia

JULY 8, 2025

If you’re earning minimum wage in 2025, your paycheck could already be bigger — and if it’s not, your employer may be behind the curve. This year, millions of American workers are getting a legally mandated raise, thanks to widespread changes in state and local minimum wage laws. But not everyone is seeing more money — and whether you’re getting a raise depends entirely on where you work, what you do, and even who you work for.

Healthcare 130

Healthcare Finance 130

PeopleMetrics

JULY 15, 2025

You’ve done the NPS work most companies never finish. You’re asking the right customers the right questions , sharing what you learn , and closing the loop with people when things go wrong. But here’s the real secret that separates a Mature NPS program from an Elite one: you don’t stop with the fix; you use your Promoters to grow! Most Companies Miss This Completely A Promoter just told you, “I’d recommend you to someone else.

62

62

AWS Machine Learning

JULY 11, 2025

In Part 1 of this series, we explored how Amazon’s Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce (WWRR) organization built the Returns & ReCommerce Data Assist (RRDA)—a generative AI solution that transforms natural language questions into validated SQL queries using Amazon Bedrock Agents. Although this capability improves data access for technical users, the WWRR organization’s journey toward truly democratized data doesn’t end there.

APIs 108

APIs Metrics Engineering Analytics 108

Advertisement

What does customer service excellence look like in 2024? According to our report with insights from CX expert Shep Hyken, customer expectations are at an all-time high, and there’s a bigger shift toward self-service and leveraging AI capabilities.

Cloud contact

SQM Group

JULY 15, 2025

Ready to enhance your call center's efficiency? Explore the top 10 productivity metrics that help you balance speed and quality for a better customer experience!

62

62

Customer Think

JULY 11, 2025

For 76 years, Medtronic has continuously transformed the global health landscape by building a culture that puts purpose, precision, and patients at the core.

Employee engagement 77

Employee engagement Customer Experience 77

Steve DiGioia

JULY 8, 2025

Millions of low-income Americans are gearing up for one of the biggest online sales of the year — Amazon Prime Day 2025, happening July 9–10. But if you’re one of the nearly 42 million people receiving SNAP benefits and wondering whether you can join in on the savings using your EBT card, here’s the good news: you can — but there’s a catch. What You Can Buy with EBT on Amazon Amazon now accepts EBT cards for SNAP-eligible purchases — and that includes grocery items you can buy online, even durin

Government 130

Government Accountability Sales Marketing 130

PeopleMetrics

JULY 11, 2025

You’ve asked your customers the right questions. You know your score. You understand the “why.” You’re sharing what you learn with your teams. You have now gone from foundational to mature. So, what’s next? How do you move into the “elite” category of NPS programs? If you want your NPS program to actually drive loyalty (not just measure it) you have to close the loop.

Telecommunications 62

Telecommunications B2C Morale B2B 62

Advertisement

Start building the AI workforce of the future with our comprehensive guide to creating an AI-first contact center. Learn how Conversational and Generative AI can transform traditional operations into scalable, efficient, and customer-centric experiences. What is AI-First? Transition from outdated, human-first strategies to an AI-driven approach that enhances customer engagement and operational efficiency.

Contact Center

AWS Machine Learning

JULY 10, 2025

The rapid growth of generative AI technology has been a catalyst for business productivity growth, creating new opportunities for greater efficiency, enhanced customer service experiences, and more successful customer outcomes. Today’s generative AI advances are helping existing technologies achieve their long-promised potential. For example, voice-first applications have been gaining traction across industries for years—from customer service to education to personal voice assistants and agents.

APIs 90

APIs Transportation Education Technology 90

CX Journey

JULY 9, 2025

Employee Experience is a business imperative, not an HR project. For too long, employee experience (EX) has been treated as a peripheral concern: an HR project, a culture initiative, or a morale booster. That mindset is not only outdated – it’s expensive. In today’s highly competitive, talent-constrained, and AI-disrupted world, EX is a strategic lever that touches everything, including productivity, customer experience, innovation, retention, and brand reputation.

Government 87

Government Finance Journey mapping Employee engagement 87

Ansafone

JULY 14, 2025

Delivering exceptional customer service starts with a solid foundation. Whether you’re launching a new contact center or looking to improve an existing one, this guide offers actionable insights to help you build, manage, and optimize your call center operations. Introduction to Call Center Excellence Call center guidelines are essential for creating consistency, clarity, and efficiency in contact center operations.

Call Center 62

Call Center Morale Best practices Coaching 62

Steve DiGioia

JULY 8, 2025

If you’re a retiree expecting your Social Security payment today, Wednesday, July 9, you’re not alone — and you may be wondering exactly how much money should be landing in your account. With cost-of-living adjustments pushing benefits higher in 2025, this month’s checks are bigger than ever. But here’s the thing: not everyone will receive the same amount — and if you’re not careful, you might not even realize if you’re being shortchanged.

Banking 130

Banking Accountability Finance 130

Advertisement

IT teams are under pressure to do more with less. AI isn’t just hype—it’s already helping lean IT teams cut support volume by up to 60%, reduce cloud waste, and eliminate risk from their stack. In this executive playbook, you'll learn how mid-sized companies are deploying AI to automate tier-1 tickets, predict outages, optimize SaaS spend, and secure infrastructure without hiring a bigger team.

SaaS

PeopleMetrics

JULY 10, 2025

By now, you’ve built a solid NPS foundation: you’re asking the right customers, at the right time, with a survey designed to give you more than just a number. You’ve done the work to dig into the “why” behind your NPS score. But there’s a common place where even good programs stall out: sharing the results inside your company in a way that people trust, understand, and want to act on.

Telecommunications 62

Telecommunications B2B Banking Feedback 62

AWS Machine Learning

JULY 9, 2025

Businesses often face challenges in managing and deriving value from their data. According to McKinsey , 78% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function (as of 2024), showing the growing importance of AI solutions in business. Additionally, 21% of organizations using generative AI have fundamentally redesigned their workflows, showing how AI is transforming business operations.

APIs 102

APIs Analytics Engineering Benchmark 102

Global Response

JULY 10, 2025

Read Time: 7 minutes Table of Contents Introduction Customer expectations are constantly evolving and changing, and that goes extra for niche markets. With these trends always growing and shifting, it’s all the more important to provide personalized service that meets your customers’ precise needs. Business process outsourcing (BPO) is one of the most effective ways to adapt to the times and continue to provide high-quality personalized care, even when you’re working in a speci

Marketing 62

Marketing outsourcing Healthcare Business Process Outsourcing 62