Customer Service Life Updates – February 2020

Happy (belated) New Year! 2019 was a great year and as we’ve done in the past, I want to take a few moments to share some articles and accolades we’ve been a part of. I’ll keep this one short and sweet.

Articles

• The Greatest Avenger of the CX Universe – If you were going to hire a character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to spearhead the customer experience effort in your organization, who would it be? This article features incredible contributions from the CX Accelerator community. Without spoiling the entire article, Captain America ended up getting the job.
• 3 Ways to Bridge the Gap From Training to Proficient Customer Service – Early in my career in customer service we had a ticketing system with a “QA” feature and every email new agents composed had to be approved before sending. While this feature doesn’t exist in most popular ticketing system, it doesn’t diminish the need to help new agents go from the training classroom to proficiency. Check out this article with some fresh ideas on the topic.
• 4 Good Reasons to Kill Email-Based Customer Support – In this column on CustomerThink I share reasons why some companies are doing away with email as a customer service channel in favor of other options. Is email support still alive for your company or are other channels taking its place?
• Beyond “buy 10 get one free”: What is customer loyalty? – In this article on the Zendesk blog, read how CX experts define customer loyalty and how companies can gain it.
• Best Uses of AI in Customer Service – AI will continue to be an area of intrigue in 2020. In this article on the Navedas blog, I discussed the importance of using AI to help contact center agents more efficiently resolve customer issues rather than focusing solely on chatbots.
• VLog for National Customer Service Week – I love this week in October each year as we celebrate the incredible folks working in customer service. Check out this video message I recorded for the International Customer Service Association.
• 30 Customer Experience Experts: Here’s What To Expect In 2020 – Dan Gingiss compiled a wonderful collection of opinions from CX expects in this Forbes article. Especially intriguing is the list of companies the experts thought had the best customer experience. Which companies get your vote?
• CX 2020: Jeremy Watkin Weighs in on the Changing Landscape of MarTech – In this article on the GreenRope blog I shared some of my current thoughts on the world of customer experience.

Accolades

Now for the handful of accolades we have been honored to receive. Here’s the list:

• ProcedureFlow Top 30 Contact Center Influencers – June 2019
• Unymira Top 20 CX Influencers to Follow in 2019 – Sept 2019
• Panviva Most Influential CX Leaders of 2019
• Cloud Cherry Top 12 CX Champ Winners – November 2019
• ICMI Top 50 Thought Leaders to Follow on Twitter – January 2020
• CustomerThink Names 10 Global Thought Leaders as Advisors for 2020

It’s always an honor to be recognized on these lists. I hope you will take the time to view them and follow the others people listed. For those in customer service and customer experience, these are people I learn from daily and you can too.

Finally, 2020 is already shaping up to be a fantastic year. Thanks for continuing to read this blog. Be sure to continue to follow my column on CustomerThink and my work as a Product Marketing Manager at 8×8.