Beyond Philosophy

MARCH 22, 2017

To be honest, I’m not lovin’ McDonald’s food! However, I’m lovin’ their plans to overhaul their Customer Experience to regain the 500 million lost customer visits. McDonald’s plan to upgrade to the “Experience of the Future “ has much to teach us all about how to adapt to the changing expectations of today’s discerning (and demanding) customers. McDonald’s rolls out the new experience to 2,500 U.S. locations by fourth quarter 2017.

Entertainment 319

Entertainment Consulting Consulting Customer Experience 319

Callminer

MARCH 20, 2017

Managing call centers today involves much more than scheduling agents to staff the phone lines. Working as a call center agent is a stressful endeavor, and it’s up to you as a manager to cultivate a positive working atmosphere, foster a sense of ownership, and motivate your team to succeed. Of course, technology advances now […]. The post 100 Call Center Management Tips: Expert Insights and Advice for Hiring and Training Call Center Agents, Motivating and Engaging Your Team, Workforce Mana

Call Center 260

Call Center Metrics Management Technology 260

ShepHyken

MARCH 24, 2017

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post my colleague, Manuel Grenacher, writes about how using bots can help manage and improve the customer experience. Used properly, I believe bots can be an customer service excellent tool. – Shep Hyken. Booking an appointment—say, a plane ticket—used to be so easy. Just pick up the phone, dial a number, and speak to a friendly person on the other end to arrange everything.

Customer Experience 228

Customer Experience Airlines Chatbots Personalization 228

Contact Center Pipeline

MARCH 23, 2017

Feedback is one of the most powerful motivators in a high-performing culture, says Mackenzie Kyle, author of The Performance Principle: A Practical Guide to Understanding Motivation in the Modern Workplace. “We expect people to come to work and engage in activities that are not clearly related to any particular big-picture outcome,” he says. “We give […].

Feedback 100

Feedback Personalization Employee engagement Contact Center 100

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Cut complexity and boost efficiency while empowering your customers with Nextiva's unified communications platform. Nextiva streamlines workflows and centralizes customer interactions, all while simplifying business collaboration, increasing productivity, and reducing employee burnout.

Peter Lavers

MARCH 19, 2017

Peter Lavers’ blog on the “3 behavioral mind-sets for accurate content personalization” has been published on IBM #ThinkMarketing. Read it here. Tweet to @PeterLavers. The post “3 behavioral mind-sets for accurate content personalization” blog published on #ThinkMarketing appeared first on Think CX.

Personalization 100

Personalization 100

ShepHyken

MARCH 22, 2017

Congratulations to Squaremouth , who just won a Gold Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year – for the fourth time! (For those that don’t know, the Stevie is an international business award that recognizes top performing organizations in several categories including customer service.) Squaremouth is an online travel insurance company that compares travel insurance products from every major provider in the United States.

Customer Service 220

Customer Service Engineering Sales Marketing 220

Contact Center Pipeline

MARCH 22, 2017

Omnichannel is everywhere—vendor marketing, analyst articles, conference sessions, client wish lists. While touted as a new concept, it doesn’t seem all that different from the multimedia routing and reporting (MMRR) that have been around for years and have been so difficult to achieve. Most ACD agent interfaces allow for managing contacts in all media by […].

Technology 100

Technology Marketing Management CRM 100

Win the Customer

MARCH 20, 2017

The cost of poor customer service is going up, rising from $41 billion lost in 2013 to $62 billion in 2015 , according to research reported by NewVoiceMedia. The cloud service company reports customer experience is the key differentiator in driving retention and acquisition, as companies that thrill customers at every touchpoint of the buyer journey are the ones most likely to keep customers around.

Customer Experience 111

Customer Experience Analytics Surveys Personalization 111

Callminer

MARCH 22, 2017

It is safe to say that it’s now well past the time to call ‘omnichannel’ just a buzzword.

Customer Experience 182

Customer Experience 182

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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

ShepHyken

MARCH 21, 2017

Diana Oreck on How to Be a Customer Service Rock Star. What lessons can we learn from rock stars in the world of customer service and customer experience, like Ritz-Carlton? Shep Hyken interviews award-winning training and development expert, international consultant and speaker, former VP of Ritz-Carlton Leadership and current Executive VP of Owner Experience at NetJets, Diana Oreck, about the traits that make for good customer service.

Consulting 202

Consulting Consulting Employee engagement Customer Service 202

Contact Center Pipeline

MARCH 21, 2017

Customers want the ability to decide when and how they will communicate with your company. That’s old news, isn’t it? It is more like: Customers expect the ability to choose when and how they will communicate with you. And with the customer expecting near real-time communication, using web chat capabilities is a terrific option for […].

Contact Center 100

Contact Center Call Center Technology Customer Experience 100

CustomerGauge

MARCH 20, 2017

Believe it or not, not everyone is a promoter of their own Net Promoter System®. In our 2016 NPS Benchmarks Study, we found that an astounding 49% were not promoters of their own NPS® program. This is just one of the many reasons that some Net Promoter programs fail. But, there are many other NPS […]. The post 5 Reasons Why Net Promoter Programs Fail appeared first on CustomerGauge.

Benchmark 91

Benchmark Best practices 91

Amity

MARCH 22, 2017

Who doesn't love a good TED Talk? Customer Success isn't just about Customer Success, it's about skills, learning, growth, people, and much more. Here are some TED Talks that might not appear to be directly related with the stuff you do on a day-to-day basis, but that will inspire you and help you get even better at Customer Success. Learning Empathy as a Skill.

Management 94

Management Personalization 94

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.

Customer Experience

ShepHyken

MARCH 20, 2017

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. No More Nonpologies: Apologize to Customers Like You Mean It by Leslie O’Flahavan. (HDI) Sometimes, when things go wrong, when you are to blame for a problem, or when a customer is rightfully aggrieved, all you can offer is an apology, so you really must learn to do it right.

Customer Service 189

Customer Service Scripts Customer Care Sales 189

ClearAction

MARCH 21, 2017

3 Ultimate Factors of Business Performance Lynn Hunsaker. Is customer engagement, artificial intelligence, digital marketing, predictive analytics, big data, or some other “shiny object” the key to driving business performance? Certainly all of these endeavors can make a difference in revenue growth. Yet there is a bigger picture: none of these is standalone in what’s required to sustain revenue growth, and they may or may not be big influencers of profit growth.

Benchmark 88

Benchmark Customer centricity Marketing Big data 88

GetFeedback

MARCH 24, 2017

On the Salesforce Marketing Cloudcast, GetFeedback CMO Kraig Swensrud explains why marketers should lead the charge on customer experience initiatives.

Marketing 78

Marketing Customer Experience 78

Kayako

MARCH 21, 2017

In the age of disloyalty , it’s easy for your customer to jump ship from one subscription business or ecommerce store to another. How do you make a customer feel respected and gain their trust? Customer trust is a reciprocal behavior to what they receive. Trust comes when you understand your customer’s needs, respect them, and offer relevant service.

Education 84

Education Best practices Feedback Personalization 84

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

aircall

MARCH 24, 2017

This article is part one of a two-part series on customer journey mapping. This first article will highlight the necessity of the practice. Customer journey mapping is a tool to holistically improve your customer experience and your bottom line. The companion article will detail ways to develop a practical and efficient customer journey map. What is customer journey mapping?

Journey mapping 75

Journey mapping Customer retention Marketing Advertising 75

ClearAction

MARCH 21, 2017

3 Ultimate Factors of Business Performance Lynn Hunsaker. Is customer engagement, artificial intelligence, digital marketing, predictive analytics, big data, or some other “shiny object” the key to driving business performance? Certainly all of these endeavors can make a difference in revenue growth. Yet there is a bigger picture: none of these is standalone in what’s required to sustain revenue growth, and they may or may not be big influencers of profit growth.

Benchmark 69

Benchmark Customer centricity Big data Marketing 69

GetFeedback

MARCH 20, 2017

Customer experience (CX) is a term we're hearing a lot about these days. But what does it really mean, and how is it different from customer service?

Customer Experience 78

Customer Experience Customer Service 78

Rudy Vidal Consulting

MARCH 20, 2017

A few days ago, my friend Joan went to a natural-food market. It’s recently been in the news for over-weighing customers’ purchases and so, overcharging them. Joan found lentils were on sale for $1.99 and scooped up two pounds. At checkout, however, the cashier rang them up at $2.49. When Joan protested, the cashier said $2.49 was the price in the system, and there was nothing she could do.

Sales 72

Sales Management Marketing 72

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

CustomerGauge

MARCH 24, 2017

Every so often you come across a company that you would want to work for, not only for what they make, do or sell, but because of the vision they hold and the people they employ. For me, Areas USA is that company and team. This month I was invited, along with our Customer Success Manager, Andrew […]. The post NPS® Leadership Excellence at Areas USA appeared first on CustomerGauge.

Management 60

Management 60

AskNicely

MARCH 22, 2017

You have finally got a pitch meeting with investors. They stare over the table at you, and ask “So, how do we know you can keep the revenue coming in?”. You are prepared with all your figures for the last four quarters, your costs, revenue breakdowns, market sizes. In the second after they ask, you realise. It’s all retrospective. It says what you did, it doesn’t (and can’t) give any guarantees about the future.

Metrics 60

Metrics Engineering Surveys Marketing 60

ijgolding

MARCH 20, 2017

In this, my exclusive column for CustomerThink, I continue to explore in detail my perspective on seven ‘tips’ that will enable any organisation to become genuinely customer centric. It is important to stress that the ‘tips’ are in no particular order – tip number four is no less important than tip number one – although all the tips are connected to each other in some way.

Customer Experience 65

Customer Experience Customer centricity Enterprise Employee engagement 65

Provide Support

MARCH 23, 2017

10 Signs of a Company That Really Cares About Customers. Did you know that there’s such a thing as International Clients’ Day ? Although I’ve been in customer service for more than a decade, I first learned of it last week through a special offer email that I got in my inbox. Do you happen to hear about it too? Whether or not, the fact is that this informal holiday has not been around for that long.

Customer Service 68

Customer Service Customer Care 68

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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.

Self service

Topdown

MARCH 21, 2017

Here’s an interesting Forbes article on customer experience (CX) by Shep Hyken ( @Hyken ): Moving from Omni-Channel to a Channel-less Experience. I really like this forward-looking vision of channel-less CX. Right now, companies are scrambling around trying to support and link together customer communications happening in multiple channels, and they typically react to emerging new channels slowly and awkwardly, if at all.

Customer Experience 63

Customer Experience 63

Influitive

MARCH 24, 2017

Measuring the value of branded communities has always been difficult. Community managers are often forced to fall back on the savings they generate for customer support teams, rather than reporting on the revenue they generate for the company. Even worse, these communities consistently fail to live up to expectations on both sides of the screen.

B2B 65

B2B Customer Support Management Metrics 65

GetFeedback

MARCH 24, 2017

On the Salesforce Marketing Cloudcast, GetFeedback CMO Kraig Swensrud explains why marketers should lead the charge on customer experience initiatives.

Marketing 60

Marketing Customer Experience 60