Day 3: Shaq Takes Center Stage The final day arrived, and after the 2013 NICE Customer Excellence Awards were presented, the audience enthusiastically welcomed Shaquille O’Neil (Shaq) to the stage. It was Even Bigger, Better than Last Time! I’m just back from my second NICE Interactions global customer conference. MORE

Technically speaking when a customer subscribes to your service, they perform the initial investment. They are investing in your service because it meets a need, solves a pain, gets a job done, or all of the above. On the surface, their investment is monetary in nature – monthly recurring revenue. But a customer’s investment in your service goes beyond a monthly financial transaction. MORE

Organizations that intend to deliver an exceptional customer experience must first understand what the customer experiences at every touch-point and, most importantly, this needs to be articulated by the customers themselves. It is tempting to shortcut the process by adopting simply an internal viewpoint of the customer experience as representative of the actual customer experience. This doesn’t quite provide the mirror that needs to be held up within organizations. MORE

Customer support and customer service have been around for decades. These were the necessary evils of the traditional sector – the old-model reactive break/fix cost center – to resolve problems resulting from breaks and service interruptions. The misconception with SaaS is that there is no longer a need for a team of this nature in today’s organization. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. MORE

Reducing customer acquisition cost (CAC) is critical to the success of any SaaS business. A recent blog post by Lincoln Murphy, The SaaS Myth and Misguided Optimization , introduced the concept of SaaS CAC Efficiency – in a nutshell, it’s not so much a metric but a new SaaS CAC point of view. Optimizing CAC is not just about paying less for a customer it’s about shortening the payback period. MORE

There are actually 5-I’s in your customer success team. You can build your team around them, share them with other departments in your organization and even improve upon them – they are that good. So what are the 5-I’s and how did I become part of TEAM? Interaction. Interaction occurs within a team, across departments, with competitors, with partners and most importantly between customers and prospects. All of which can have an influence on your interaction with a customer. MORE

Happy holidays! Thank you for having helped us to create the next generation of mobile-ready online survey software. Articles MORE

A powerful insight into improving trial conversion struck me while I was watching the great PBS series Mr Selfridge recently. It stars Jeremy Pivin as Harry Selfridge, the founder of London’s famous Selfridges department store. As his vision and strategy came to life, it slowly became clear to me that Selfridge’s was designed to be a perpetual conversion machine. From the layout of the store (why is perfume always by the front door?) MORE

What Really Happens with a Manual Process. Hooray! Four qualified and enthusiastic customer success managers have been recruited. The VP is well aware of the business goals – reduce churn, grow the lifetime value of every customer, and maybe even improving conversions sits with this organization. So you start by assigning a list of customer accounts to each customer success manager. These are the customers you are responsible for.” MORE

That’s when it’s back to the lab again, He better go capture the moment, And hope it don’t pass him by. Lose Yourself , Eminem. Competitive Advantage isn’t Sustainable. Power has shifted from vendors to customers. Using everyday digital technology, customers have ready access to information, people and resources. These empowered customers have higher expectations and lower loyalty than just a few years ago. MORE

To learn more about NICE’s public safety solutions, join us at Interactions 2013, the industry’s leading customer conference. Pundits have long debated the root causes of crime and how to combat it, such as investing in education, early intervention, and programs to reduce unemployment. Those may be successful strategies from a social perspective, but what about technology? Can technology also be a safe-city enabler? MORE

The Southern Ontario Customer Success Meetup group was officially launched to great success last night. Over 30 customer success practitioners and SaaS executives convened to hear Paul Philp share Lessons Learned in Customer Success. The presentation included insights collected from over 150 interviews with leading SaaS companies. Even before the presentation began attendees started sharing the challenges they face in their customer success roles and organizations. MORE

Customer service leadership is clearly having a strategy for customer experience and bringing out excellence in others to carry out the service vision. Customer Service Customer Experience Excellence Leadership Management Vision MORE

Wishing a very Merry Christmas to customer service and call center agents around the world. Peace, joy, and happiness to you and your loved ones. To all of you staffing the 24x7x365 customer service and technical support call centers around the world, who sacrifice to continue your mission of exceptional customer experiences, I want to […]. Customer Service MORE

A great customer experience is one that seamlessly integrates real-time self-service technology backed by experts who can resolve breakdowns to the process. Business MORE

These labels have gradually started appearing at IFSEC over the past several years, but 2013 was undoubtedly the year the concept came of age. During the many years I have attended the IFSEC exhibition in the UK, I have seen the fanfare of many new innovations in security technology. MORE

Top 10 Technological Contact Center Trends Cloud: Cloud-based infrastructure is the fastest growing area in the call center industry, which DMG predicts will almost double between 2013 and 2015. Smartphones: Global smartphone shipments are expected to jump this year by 25% according to Digitimes Research, By 2015, IDC expects more US consumers will access the internet through smartphones than PC’s. MORE

UPDATED JANUARY 2020. Lowering call abandonment in contact centers is what we do. It’s a primary benefit of our call-back software (and we’re proud of it) so you’ll forgive us for making this piece detailed… a round-up of what we’ll be covering today so you can skip the bits you already know. How to Reduce Abandonment Rates in Your Contact Center. What’s an abandoned call? Use data to why your abandon rate is high. MORE

I hope everyone’s summer is off to an amazing start. This is such a fun time of year isn’t it? Longer days, kids playing outside, BBQ’s, bonfire’s and even music sounds a little sweeter sitting in the fresh air. What a week! Met with three amazing companies, all with completely different social media needs. The first was interested in strategies to drive more engagement and then more effectively report and quantify the value of those interactions. MORE

Hope you all have fun plans lined up for the 4th, I can’t wait to spend a few long weekends in northern Michigan later in July and August. Last thing I want you to do is stay inside and read this blog on your laptop so kick those shoes off, put your feet up, grab a cold one and pull up No Fluff Social Media on the tablet out on the patio! Last week I blogged about my new favorite company, Uber. They reinvented taxi service, you should check them out! MORE

Next week November 18th-21st, Dreamforce, the largest software conference in the world, along with our amazing customers and partners take over the city of San Francisco. And I’m excited to be a part of it! Marissa Mayer from Yahoo and Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook are both keynoting this year’s conference. I can’t wait to use their insights on women leading technology companies and share them with my little Sophia Rose. MORE

Throughout the Dreamforce conference Nov. 18-21st in San Francisco there will be certain themes commanding a lot of attention. One of those themes is Social Customer Care. I’m fortunate enough to be helping facilitate a session on that very topic Monday, November 18th at 12pm PST at the Westin St. Francis called Social Customer Service – The Basic Building Blocks. I’ll be presenting along with Matt Staub ( [link] ) an expert in the field of social care. MORE

Now any company, anywhere can instantly create and distribute visually-rich, mobile-optimized, online surveys that work perfectly on smartphones. Articles MORE

Being a Customer Experience (CX) professional and having studied and practiced the art and the science of this wonderful CX discipline for over nine years now, (all within one organization) I pause to reflect on what the net result is of all the hard and dedicated work that we CX professionals have accomplished thus far and what we are yet to accomplish. MORE

Good morning everyone, how was your week? Hope everyone learned something new and feels good about their contribution at home and at work. You have my sincere thanks for deciding to click on this blog post! Do me a favor, stop and think about the most beautiful place you have ever laid eyes on. I’ve been extremely fortunate to travel to some nice places in my life. MORE

Happy Monday morning everyone! Throw away those Monday morning blues, it’s going to be a great week. I had a fantastic weekend but it almost turned disastrous! I love it when I can tell real life customer service stories here on my blog. Thanks for visiting this week. My daughter Sophia Rose turned 5 years old. We did the typical summer barbeque, with about 40 of our closest friends and family. Sophia prefers cookies over cake so my wife Staci ordered 2 cookie cakes from our local Kroger. MORE

What’s fun and exciting this week? My last post on “How Kroger Ruined, Then Saved My Daughter’s Birthday” was the third most popular post of all time here on No Fluff Social Media. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read it. I often write about how big companies can improve their customer care in social media and I got to thinking perhaps some of you would be interested to know how to complain or ask a question of those brands on Facebook or Twitter. MORE

I like pizza. I think I’m among a majority of people who do. And, pizza I would say is as much a commodity as coffee—although people certainly have their preferences and favorites for sure. While I’m not here to debate the nutritional merits of pizza, I will admit that I have this craving I must satisfy every couple of weeks. Therefore, pizza has been a regular element of my diet. I don’t share this very readily or very often with my nutritionist. MORE

Consistently delivering an exceptional customer experience requires creating employee engagement and culture that cultivates positive service actions. Culture Customer Experience Management Employee Engagement Good Reads Recommended MORE

Courtesy of www.AnnieLennox.com. You can travel the world and the seven seas, everybody’s looking for customer-centric cultures. Some customers want to use you. None of them want to get used by you. Some of them want to abuse you. None of them want to be abused. Thanks to Annie Lennox, of the Eurythmics, for getting me to think about customer-centric cultures in a way that we all can relate to. MORE

Customer service management software and CRM focuses on providing more efficient ways to unify business activities to carry out more effective customer service actions contributing to a better service experience. Technology is helping businesses face many of the challenges they face as they try to maintain or build market share. One of the most helpful […]. Customer Service MORE

To learn more about NICE’s situation management solutions, join us at Interactions 2013, the industry’s leading customer conference. The one thing that comes up time and time again is the need for more PSIM education. Frost & Sullivan first identified a PSIM education gap in its June 2012 report on the global PSIM market. Coincidently, the report came out just a few weeks after my first PSIM workshop. MORE

UPDATED: January 2020. The best way for a call center to stand out as a leader is through the customer experience. It’s no surprise that an exceptional experience leads to more satisfied consumers, who continue to spend more money. Most callers will begin subconsciously rating their customer experience from the beginning of the interaction, regardless of the channel; phone, web, social media, or mobile app. MORE

Our initial beta launch occurred in July 2013 and our engaged community has provided dozens of suggestions, comments and ideas that we have used to continually improve and evolve our product. The last 12 months have been an intense and exhilarating ride! Since Amity’s inception in July of 2012, we’ve talked to countless customer success teams, launched a private beta, sponsored two successful Customer Success Meetup events, and worked hard to continually evolve our service. MORE

The customer success cat is out of the bag. There can be no doubt about the direct correlation between customer success and the long-term success of SaaS companies. There are calculations and strategies , analyst research , reports and findings , and numerous compelling blog posts – enough supporting evidence to motivate even the most skeptical C-suite. MORE

Even a cold, snowy winter night could not keep the crowd away! Last night, the heroes of the Customer Success Meetup met for their second event. The buzz from the first meetup had definitely circulated. Over the past few months, the group membership swelled to 80 members. The room was flush with both “regulars” and new faces. From the enthusiastic discussion, we continue to hear that – despite best intentions – customer success is still very much in its infancy. MORE

Prospects invest a great deal of time researching the right solution. For some, it’s easier because they’ve got a hot tip on a must-have service – and if that’s your service then you’ve been working really hard at customer success! Throughout the evaluation process, a number of solutions (likely your competitors) are being considered, a few individuals from different departments are weighing in ( the average decision group consists of 5.4 MORE

You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl. The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat. – Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. In the late 1950s, as the construction of his first theme park neared completion, Walt Disney was asked what excited him most about Disneyland. His answer is profound and even more relevant for today. The park is alive. It’s a living, breathing thing. MORE

To learn more about NICE’s situation management solution, join us at Interactions 2013, the industry’s leading customer conference. When a company invests in a solution such as PSIM the obvious reason is to improve security. But when’s the last time you heard “improved security” mentioned as a source of ROI? Yet, the potential ROI from security improvements can far outweigh any operational cost savings from PSIM. MORE

As a Bank of America (B of A) customer over the last 15 plus years, [and having arrived here more as the result of acquisition than by choice] I have been a loyal customer in the sense that I have stayed and have not migrated to another banking institution. Call me a creature of habit, but nothing has yet driven me to defect from B of A. Like Starbucks, my personal choice when I desire a cup of coffee, they are everywhere I go and they are consistent if nothing else. MORE

Is Your Marketing Organization Ready to Change its MO? Gary Katz. It can sometimes be difficult to determine whether your company is ready to implement Marketing Operations. As described in 7 Deadly Sins of Marketing (previous blog post), Marketing Operations (MO) is an emerging discipline with the potential to significantly increase performance and accountability in complex marketing organizations. MORE