Sat.Oct 14, 2017 - Fri.Oct 20, 2017

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When Customer Service Creates Customer Validation

ShepHyken

Many people think of customer service as a department. If you’ve been following me, you’ll know my belief is that customer service is a philosophy , not a department. It should be embraced by every employee, regardless of their job and how long they’ve been there. With that said, the focus on this topic is on what many consider to be the customer service and support department – the people who have contact and interaction with the customer.

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Customers Are Irrational – Deal With It!

Beyond Philosophy

Why do we design rational Customer Experiences when people are irrational? Rational experience designs are born of the notion that we are logical beings. However, emotions, not logic, drive our behavior, particularly as customers. Nevertheless, moments in an experience betray the fact that many organizations ignore the role emotions play in Customer Experience outcomes.

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Trending Sources

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Mastering the “Fine Art” of Conversation in a Digital World

Contact Center Pipeline

The idiom “fine art” (first half of the 1800s) is defined in the “American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms” as “something requiring highly developed techniques and skills.” Conversation certainly qualifies as “fine art.” Unfortunately, it appears that the fine art of conversation is at risk in today’s digital world. I have been reading the book, “Reclaiming […].

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22 Call Center Technology Leaders Reveal the #1 Mistake Companies Make When It Comes to Purchasing Speech Analytics Software

Callminer

Purchasing speech analytics software is a major investment for both enterprises and SMBs alike. Like all major technology investments, purchasing speech analytics software comes with a bit of pre-planning and analysis. You need to determine how your company can best leverage this technology to ensure compliance, enhance customer service, support agents and reps, and get […].

Analytics 215
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The 2023 Verint Experience Index: Retail

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

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5 Top Customer Service Articles for the Week of October 16, 2017

ShepHyken

Each week I read a number of customer service articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too. Engage Your Front Line To Increase Your Bottom Line by Beth Benjamin and Emma Sopadjieva. (Forbes) Your frontline employees often know what’s wrong in your company before you do.

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Scheduling Tip: How to Treat Night and Graveyard Shifts

Contact Center Pipeline

There might be a sticky situation buried in the way you have to treat day, night and graveyard shifts. Night shifts might pay a little higher than day shifts, and graveyard (overnight) shifts might pay even higher than the night shifts. This extra money is a matter of agreement between the employer and the employee, […].

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5 Reasons Why Chatbots Fail

CX Global Media

There’s five common reasons as to why your chatbots fail to live up to promises. If your chatbots are not living up to promises, don’t give up. It’s time to get smart. Chatbot is the most complex area of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is also the area where solutions may vastly differ from one to the next. You might have heard of a chatbot not living up to expectations or you’ve experienced it yourself.

Chatbots 166
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Customer Segmentation in the Cognitive Age

Peter Lavers

Segmentation is well established in Marketing and CRM as a way to systematically subdivide a market or a customer base into discrete groups that have different needs or require distinct treatments. The basic objectives of segmentation are not rocket science – better targeting and/or better service – and yet the means of achieving these seem to be becoming ever-more complex.

Analytics 173
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"Follow the Leader" Featuring Todd Hixson

Call Center Weekly

What are some forecasting best practices that you utilize? Here's a quick tip for each area of forecasting. And yes, make sure you include all four! Volume: Clean anomalies. This includes high abandons (look at redials). Remember too, if you are going to be understaffed, you will abandon again - forecast the inverse! AHT: Include glide path impact for new hires.

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Strategic CX: A Deep Dive into Voice of the Customer Insights for Clarity

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.

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Engaged Employees = Happy Customers

Contact Center Pipeline

Employee engagement is more than just a buzzword. Successful customer service organizations create a culture that encourages it. Engaged employees are more enthusiastic about their contribution to the business and, ultimately, increase the level and consistency of service provided to their clients. Senior executives, as a result, are increasingly targeting employee engagement as a significant […].

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Amazing Business Radio: James Dodkins

ShepHyken

James Dodkins on Putting the Employee First, the Customer Second. It is common belief that the customer’s needs should always come first, but what if employees’ needs were put first in order to ensure customer satisfaction? Shep Hyken interviews James Dodkins who shares his ideas on what a company looks like when the employees are made top priority, so that in return they can be best prepared to treat customers as their main focus.

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4 MORE Call Center Reports Worth Your Time

Fonolo

Last month we shared 4 Call Center Reports Worth Your Time. Hope you’ve read them all because here comes the next batch! A top mission of the Fonolo blog has always been to help you stay informed with the fast-moving contact center industry. As always, we’re grateful to the authors (and sponsors that back them) for the hard work that goes in to producing this content.

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An Effective Approach to Employee Development

Call Center Weekly

By Sean Hawkins Employee development is very important to me. As a leader, it is my obligation to create a culture that aids in the personal and professional growth of my staff. In my career, I've had the opportunity of starting training and development programs with two companies. I have also utilized alternative training methods with regularity. Whenever I am asked how to implement an employee development program, my answer is always the same, “begin at the beginning”!

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SME Relationships: Proven Solutions for Seamless Collaboration and Success

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!

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5 Expert Tips for Customer Service Recovery

CSM Magazine

Service recovery is a necessity in every organization regardless of the niche of business. Good customer service involves preparing and planning service issues the organization faces. No matter how impeccable the products or services of an organization are, there will always be some unavoidable customer services issues that your company may be facing.

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Customer-Centric Netflix Wins Big in the Most Surprising Way

360Connext

Netflix recently made news with their amazingly funny and warm cease and desist letter to fans of the show Stranger Things. While the intent of the letter was still clear, and technically a request from the legal team, the tone of the letter is what got people talking. It’s the most customer-centric thing you might read today! “Even lawyers have a sense of humor.” This refrain gained a lot of traction quickly!

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TOP 124 Salesforce Influencers of 2017

Mindtouch

Thousands have asked for it, many have tried to get on it, but few have made the final cut. Announcing the TOP 124 Salesforce Influencers of 2017 (both listical and digital asset provided below). It’s no mystery that the Salesforce ecosystem is not only large, but extremely complex. That is why whittling down the TOP Salesforce Influencers is no easy task, though one of the most valuable assets to have if trying to understand Salesforce capabilities.

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7 Things That Will Keep Employees Loyal, Happy and Returning to the Job

Call Center Weekly

By Jessica Menapace Care Personally It is important for me to be sure that my employees know that I care about them personally. When employees feel and know that they are not just a number, or a body in seat doing a job, it creates a feeling of worth. When you genuinely care about them inside and outside of work, you will gain commitment, and not just compliance of the processes you are putting in place.

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Contact Center Dialers Demystified

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.

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How to measure a call center’s quality

Ansafone

Are You Measuring these Top Contact Center KPI’s? For call center managers, metrics monitoring is all in a day’s work, from first call resolution to average handle time, agent absenteeism and much more. With all of the key performance indicators (KPI’s) to choose from, however, it can be difficult to know which are the most important and where to begin.

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The importance of security and GDPR to the digital customer experience

Eptica

Date: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 The importance of security and GDPR to the digital customer experience. Published on: October 18, 2017. Author: Pascal Gauvrit Thanks to the rise of digital channels, brands now possess large amounts of personal data on their customers. Often this is used to provide a better, more personalized service that better meets consumer needs.

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How Modern Family Shows the Value of Modern IVR

Aspect

The other day I was nursing a cold and bi nge watching Modern Family re-runs. One of the episodes from season 2, titled Unplugged, originally aired in 2010 but its plot is still extremely relevant when it comes to consumer engagement and interactive voice response (IVR). We find Phil (father), Claire (mother) and the kids trying to improve their communication skills by giving up their electronic devices, including mobile phones, laptops, etc.

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Customer-Centric Netflix Wins Big in the Most Surprising Way

360Connext

Netflix recently made news with their amazingly funny and warm cease and desist letter to fans of the show Stranger Things. While the intent of the letter was still clear, and technically a request from the legal team, the tone of the letter is what got people talking. It’s the most customer-centric thing you might read today! “Even lawyers have a sense of humor.” This refrain gained a lot of traction quickly!

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The Open CCaaS Advantage Report

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.

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Where Customer Support and Customer Success Goals Overlap

Kayako

It should never be customer success vs customer service. Yet, somehow these departments have been separated. They’ve been separated to showcase customer success as being this proactive, product-driven, revenue generating machine, and left the support department sitting around feeling like a reactive cost center. Maybe that’s down to the leaders of success teams wanting to gather all the valuable pieces of the customer relationship as theirs?

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Incentive Programs for Service Agents: A Pre-Implementation Checklist

Customer Service Life

Photo Credit: Nevit Dilmen via CC License. This article was originally published on CustomerThink on September 14,2017 as my regular Advisor column. Click here to read the original. As a contact center leader, I’ve tried it all when it comes to motivating agents. I’ve done gift cards, bagels, pizza parties, games, leaderboards, and trophies all in an effort to get my team to go above and beyond in their work.

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Aspect CEC Benchmark – Early Results In

Aspect

It feels like just yesterday we were standing on stage in Orlando announcing the 1 st annual Aspect Contact Center Benchmark (if you missed it here’s the press release ). We are now 5 months into our 2 nd year of collecting data from our customers and prospects and have some early insights and trends to share. We are again focusing on five areas we believe are critical to enable a thriving customer experience center: agent engagement, agent roles and responsibilities, customer experience, work

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The 10 Essential Abilities of a Service Excellence Workforce

Up Your Service

The world of work has changed. Every person must continuously add value, not only to the work itself, but to the experience our customers have with our work. How well we do at creating and increasing this value this makes the difference between future success and failure. In my recent blog, Redefining Service for the New World of Work , I described how jobs are changing and why stepping up through service is the key to customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and business success.

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Customer Experience Management: Optimizing Your Strategy for Financial Success

Speaker: Diane Magers, Founder and Chief Experience Officer at Experience Catalysts

In the world of business, connecting the dots from experience to financial impact is an essential skill. Transforming customer engagement, Voice of Customer (VoC) insights, and Journey Maps into tangible financial outcomes poses a significant challenge for most organizations. To gain buy-in from the C-Suite and key stakeholders, it’s crucial to illustrate how Experience Management translates into clear, measurable business results.

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Why the “Fire Fast” Mantra is Lazy

Andrew Mcfarland

The concept of fast firing is flawed (or at best, half the story). An article about Uber’s beleaguered former CEO and his firing philosophy struck me as symptomatic of their problems (too fast and loose). His energy and enthusiasm in.

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Creating a Post-Sales Process for Customer Success

Amity

Customer Success teams interact with many cross-functional departments, building and maintaining relationships from Support to Account Management. But few relationships have more impact on future customer success than the one between Customer Success and Sales. At no time is coordination and collaboration between these two teams more critical than immediately following a sale, when Customer Success is tasked with making the vision sold a reality.

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The Key to Happy Agents in the Contact Center

Aspect

A few years ago, I started hearing the phrase, and seeing it pop up on kitchen trinkets like tea towels and coffee mugs: “Happy wife, happy life.” I won’t go into details on why this phrase drives me crazy but I think it does make for a good contact center illustration. Happy agents, happy customers. It isn’t catchy but you get the point. You could even extend it to say: happy agents, happy customers, happy stakeholders.