Beyond Philosophy

MAY 14, 2015

People like the convenience of self-service. More and more of your Customers believe access to self-service options is essential to their relationship with your business. Knowing this, it is critical that you plan your self-service options well. Parature is a research and advisory firm specializing in communicating service-centric best practices. Their Customer Service Success Blog reported some interesting stats to consider about Customer’s self-service options, including: By 2017, Only 1/3 of

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Self service Best practices Customer Experience Call Center 402

Contact Center Pipeline

MAY 11, 2015

We love to conduct technology strategy projects and have shared how important we think those are for contact centers. We emphasize alignment of technology strategy with operations and business goals. But how do you build a strategic plan when each day brings a new direction from leadership, a new challenge from external forces, or internally-driven […].

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Contact Center Technology Call Center Management 162

Customers That Stick

MAY 22, 2015

We wish that changing a customer service culture could be like turning a Jet Ski®. We slam the steering handles hard to the side, the Jet Ski® turns around almost on a dime, and within moments, we are speeding the other way at full speed. Sure, the turn is tough, and the sudden motion jerks both body and watercraft hard, but for a short, intense effort we are rewarded with a quick and complete turnaround.

Customer Service 156

Customer Service Customer centricity Call Center Accountability 156

Bill Quiseng

MAY 18, 2015

This week’s guest post is from Rhonda Basler , director of Customer Engagement at Hallmark Business Connections. I have been a longtime fan of her blog so I’m honored that she is sharing her customer experience insight here. I am convinced that if you commit to following consistently these five essentials, you will Deliver the World’s Best Customer Experience. .

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Customer advocacy Customer Care Customer Experience Customer retention 156

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Joe Rawlinson

MAY 13, 2015

Managing a brand on social media, marketers should remember that every criticism offers an opportunity for growth and improvement. Remember the famous story of the pizza chain Domino’s, which enjoyed one of the largest quarterly store sale jumps ever by actively responding to customer negative feedback? Running profiles on social media, it’s inevitable that you’ll receive public and private messages from irritated or annoyed customers, so it’s in your best interest to lea

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Beyond Philosophy

MAY 20, 2015

Lately, there has been a fair amount of productive dialogue as to whether service and experience are the same thing, i.e. a rose by any other name. It’s pretty well understood that service is a component of overall experiential value delivery. Sometimes it is differentiating, and offers consumers definite benefits – such as practiced by companies like Zappos, Wegmans, Ritz Carlton, Rackspace, Southwest Airlines, Trader Joe’s, Amazon, Baptist Health Care, and Zane’s Cycles – and sometimes it is j

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Airlines Wait times Self service Enterprise 400

Fonolo

MAY 7, 2015

UPDATED FEBRUARY 2020: The call center is an extremely stressful work environment. Simply knowing how to run a call center isn’t enough for success. Not for the weak at heart, only some call center managers have the grace, tenacity, and skills to handle the extreme pressures of the contact center manager’s job. Those with this special ability often create an experience that pleases customers and agents, without exceeding their budgets; a truly remarkable feat.

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Call Center Management Contact Center Coaching 126

Customers That Stick

MAY 13, 2015

In the Temkin Group’s 2015 Experience Ratings Industry Snapshots, Internet Service Providers were ranked last out of 20 different industries. It’s no surprise; few people love their cable or phone provider, and among the least beloved is Comcast. Comcast announced recently that it will be putting a massive effort behind changing its customer service.

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Customer Service Wireless Customer centricity Banking 146

Contact Center Pipeline

MAY 29, 2015

Our top blog post in May focused on an age-old challenge for many contact centers—schedule adherence—and offered tips for creating a culture that promotes good attendance. Other hot topics for the past month included a WFM excel trick for counting days, findings from our recent Contact Center Training Poll, advice for empowering agents, and the […].

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Schedule adherence Contact Center Agent Empowerment Call Center 100

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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

Joe Rawlinson

MAY 13, 2015

Managing a brand on social media, marketers should remember that every criticism offers an opportunity for growth and improvement. Remember the famous story of the pizza chain Domino’s, which enjoyed one of the largest quarterly store sale jumps ever by actively responding to customer negative feedback? Running profiles on social media, it’s inevitable that you’ll receive public and private messages from irritated or annoyed customers, so it’s in your best interest to lea

Feedback 128

Feedback Marketing Sales Personalization 128

Win the Customer

MAY 4, 2015

We’re all heard the saying ‘The customer is always right’, but is that true? Well, it can’t be true because in fact the customer can often be wrong. However, what IS true is that ‘The customer is always the customer’; and regardless of the fact that he might be blatantly wrong, he is still your […].

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Customer Service Customer Experience Management 145

Beyond Philosophy

MAY 21, 2015

Chipotle just announced they removed all the ingredients from their menu items that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In a two-year process prompted by consumers’ growing concerns about the safety of long-term consumption of GMOs, Chipotle’s leadership feels this is about transparency and trust as much as health. Two years ago, the fast-casual chain revealed that GMOs permeated their menu, advising diners wishing to avoid them to order the pork carnitas, sour cream, and guacamole.

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Customer Experience 390

HGS

MAY 27, 2015

The Contact Center Evolution: 5 Focus Areas to Move from Vanilla to Value. Posted by Matthew Vallance. Contact centers have undergone significant transformation in the past few years, driven largely by the shift from voice to digital and omni-channel customer service. This continual channel shift has also influenced the nature and complexity of services being delivered.

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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

Customers That Stick

MAY 26, 2015

Customer service in the real world sometimes comes down to a negotiation. When you have an issue to resolve, often you and your organization are trying to find a way to make the customer happy without giving away the store and the customer (usually) is trying to get what she feels is fair. While I don’t think negotiation is the best framework for viewing these situations , the underlying dynamic can be remarkably similar.

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Customer Service Accountability Personalization 143

Contact Center Pipeline

MAY 28, 2015

As with practically all improvement activities, an engaged staff starts with the right hires. Passion is a requirement, but it needs to be driven by the type of success that the contact center environment can support. Those with a passion for external rewards and working on their own schedule will not likely be as successful […].

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Contact Center Call Center 100

ijgolding

MAY 25, 2015

I often have to remind myself that I am in a privileged position in my chosen profession. I am privileged because a multitude of organisations welcome me in to their inner sanctum to help them in their quest to become more customer centric. This enables me to continue my path on a never ending journey of insight and learning. As people we never stop learning and being able to see, feel and touch Customer Experience in its many stages of evolution is an amazing honour.

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Customer Experience Customer centricity Technology Analytics 120

Win the Customer

MAY 5, 2015

Anticipating needs, learning about the customer and listening to your employees are all keys to customer service success. Are you ready to take your customer service from reactive to proactive? Providing exceptional customer service goes beyond reducing call center wait times or diffusing conflicts with angry customers. If you’re ready to improve your customer service, […].

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Customer Service Wait times Call Center Technology 141

Speaker: Keith Kmett, Principal CX Advisor at Medallia

Join Keith Kmett, Principal CX Advisor, in this new webinar that will focus on: Understanding CX Orchestration Fundamentals: Gain a solid understanding of what CX orchestration is, its significance in the customer experience landscape, and how it plays a crucial role in shaping customer journeys. This includes the key concepts, strategies, and best practices involved in CX orchestration. 🔑 Connection to Customer Journey Maps: How to effectively integrate customer journey mapping into the

Journey mapping

Beyond Philosophy

MAY 19, 2015

Having a great Customer Experience is no accident. Companies that excel in providing a great Customer Experience engaged in lots of deliberate designs to make their experience what it is today. Most importantly, those that are most successful have a special focus on the hidden experience, the emotional and subconscious parts of the experience that affect the behavior of their Customers.

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Employee engagement Analytics Banking Customer Experience 370

HGS

MAY 27, 2015

Posted by Matthew Vallance Contact centers have undergone significant transformation in the past few years, driven largely by the shift from voice to digital and omni-channel [.]. The post The Contact Center Evolution: 5 Focus Areas to Move from Vanilla to Value appeared first on Team HGS Blog.

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PeopleMetrics

MAY 30, 2015

The mechanisms of business can be overwhelming. Even the simplest problems can splinter into energy-sapping challenges—rife with internal hurdles like politics, communication problems, or lack of support. In customer experience management , those challenges can threaten how we relate to customers as people. In our embrace of data points—armed with our head-down, hurdle-jumping mindset—we can turn our noble cause into an awful lot of work.

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Best practices Customer Experience Journey mapping Feedback 120

Contact Center Pipeline

MAY 26, 2015

How do you dispel the cost center image and focus your top-level executives’ attention on the value that great service provides? That has been a long-time challenge for many contact center leaders. The answer may lie in the information that you’re sharing with senior execs. “The main reason why executives are not tuned in to […].

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Contact Center Call Center 100

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

ijgolding

MAY 7, 2015

I get to experience many wonderful things plying my trade around the world. I often have to pinch myself as a reminder that the things I am seeing, touching, hearing, and smelling are real and that they are actually happening to me! Since I became an independent Customer Experience Practitioner in 2012, I have rigorously ensured that I am described as a specialist in my role – not an expert – a specialist.

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Customer Experience Customer centricity Personalization Employee engagement 114

Win the Customer

MAY 11, 2015

Whether it’s on social media, website content, or on a forum, make sure that anything that comes from your brand is expressive, personable and consistent with your established beliefs. From love to business, trust and gaining one’s loyalty matters. Although there’s no magic formula to building a trusting relationship online, there are a couple of […].

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Personalization Technology Customer Experience 141

Beyond Philosophy

MAY 22, 2015

Last week the UK elected a new government. All the polls leading up to the election said it would be a Hung Parliament, i.e. no one political party would be the outright winner/have a majority. On election night the Conservatives won a majority—a great shock to everybody! So why did people say they were going to vote one way and then change their mind?

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Government Marketing Customer Experience 363

Up Your Service

MAY 13, 2015

When you cannot deliver the service you promised to your customer, what do you do? Let’s face it. We all have days when we disappoint customers for various reasons. It could be a team member calling in sick, the internet goes down, bad weather strikes, an unexpected traffic delay occurs, and so on. We may not always prevent such situations, but we can always do something about them!

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Personalization Management 111

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Technology

PeopleMetrics

MAY 12, 2015

Customer experience darling Zappos recently reported 210 of its employees have resigned. That’s about 14% of their workforce. The exodus stems from an ultimatum issued by CEO Tony Hsieh early this past April. That number might seem shocking at first glance, but in terms of employee engagement strategy , it’s not so bad. A Call to Arms. Let’s back up a bit, and talk a little more about that ultimatum.

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Employee engagement Customer centricity Engineering Customer Experience 107

Contact Center Pipeline

MAY 20, 2015

Poor attendance is one of the top reasons for termination in a contact center. According to Benchmark Portal, the average adherence to schedule rate is 89%. Sadly, this means that, for every 10 scheduled agents, one is not working. With industry numbers like this, we can either throw in the towel or accept the status […].

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Benchmark Contact Center Call Center 100

Provide Support

MAY 12, 2015

Today’s customer service involves more than a conversation face-to-face or on the phone. Email, live chat and social media have become important channels for consumers to engage with brands and seek for customer support. No matter how customer service is given to consumers, soft skills are essential for a successful customer service interaction. In fact, soft skills are even more significant than technical skills as at the end of the day what your customers will remember is how they felt about y

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Customer Service Customer Support Best practices 108