Beyond Philosophy

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

'I’m grateful to my colleague, Richard Vanderveer, for making readers of his blog aware of an insightful report – Return on Word of Mouth, or WOM/ROI – recently issued by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). As a long-time believer in the power of word-of-mouth and brand favorability in b2b and b2c marketing ( [link] and [link] ), he deserves a sincere thank you for bringing this insightful piece of work to everyone’s attention.

Marketing 398

Marketing Advertising B2C Customer advocacy 398

Peter Lavers

FEBRUARY 18, 2015

Customer Think is a really interesting hub of guest bloggers on customer related topics (especially US writers). I’ve recently started sharing content on there and its been a positive experience with active engagement. Having been selected as Editor’s Pick for both my first two articles has of course warmed me to the site. My most recent post was an older one from this site, encouraging those implementing Customer Effort Score programmes to learn the lessons of what happened with NPS (i.e. don’t

Metrics 176

Metrics Best practices Analytics Customer effort 176

Contact Center Pipeline

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

Generally speaking, many contact centers do an excellent job of discovering and rewarding great performance. Whether through reports, monitored calls or customer satisfaction surveys, we almost always take the time to find and show appreciation for noteworthy performance. While performance recognition is important, it is different from recognizing the importance of the job role.

Contact Center 165

Contact Center Surveys Call Center 165

Customers That Stick

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

'At CTS Service Solutions, we believe one of the best ways to improve customer experiences is by making interactions ad easy as possible and by decreasing the hassle-factor. Enter live chat. Live chat contains a number of attributes that contribute to hassle-free experiences. From ease of first contact, to low-to-no hold times, to the convenience of customers interacting with service reps while performing other tasks, live chat offers an opportunity for organizations to assist customers quickly

Customer Service 157

Customer Service Customer effort Surveys Customer Experience 157

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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.

Joe Rawlinson

FEBRUARY 18, 2015

'How do you balance a limited marketing budget while still attracting new customers? Is this even possible? Ideally, you’d crack the code and be able to put a $1 into your marketing machine and get more than that dollar out in profit from sales. However, when you’re just getting started and haven’t quite figured out that magic formula, you can still attract new customers even on a limited budget.

Advertising 157

Advertising Marketing Sales 157

Win the Customer

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

'According to Google, it beats customer service in terms of average monthly search volume 380k+ to 200k. Why is experience nearly twice as popular – what’s the big deal anyway? How much cheaper is it for you to retain a customer than to acquire a new one? Why pull teeth for a testimonial from an […].

Customer Experience 145

Customer Experience Customer Service Management 145

Customers That Stick

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

'The pace of change is faster than ever before. Those in technology-based fields already understand the forces of constant change that form competitive pressures in those industries. But what about the rest of us? While the need for innovation might not be as obvious and the penalties for failing to innovate might be less drastic — even in non-tech industries, innovation is no longer optional.

Technology 143

Technology 143

Contact Center Pipeline

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

When it comes to running a contact center, it would be hard to find someone with more know-how than TIM HEIDEMANN. With a long track record of driving performance improvements in staff, operations and overall business results, Tim is one of those rare leaders who is able to successfully blend a people-focused approach with outcome-driven […].

Contact Center 100

Contact Center Call Center 100

ijgolding

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

'I am unlikely to be the first person to write an article focusing on whether or not the Customer Experience really makes a difference. I am also unlikely to be the last. On a weekly basis, Customer Experience Professionals all over the world are being challenged to demonstrate the ‘tangible’ value focusing on the Customer […].

Customer Experience 111

Customer Experience Customer centricity Customer retention Personalization 111

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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

Win the Customer

FEBRUARY 18, 2015

'Cloud services enable organizations to manage customer communities and develop customer relationships improving the overall customer experience. For decades, small businesses had a comfortable, predictable relationship with their customers. The traditional rapport goes something like this: a company offers a product or service, a customer is looking for such a product or service, the company […].

Technology 135

Technology Customer Experience Customer Service Management 135

Andrew Mcfarland

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

'How often does your company make a concerted effort to connect those doing the work, with those consuming the work-product? If the answer is “never” you are missing a valuable way to (a) connect with your customers and (b) improve your product. I recommend reading a recent HBR article which focuses on cooks and [.].

Customer Experience 107

Customer Experience Enterprise 107

Contact Center Pipeline

FEBRUARY 18, 2015

Do contact centers derive value from their analytics tools? In our 2014 Contact Center Analytics Survey, conducted by Strategic Contact and Contact Center Pipeline, we compared the goals that survey participants initially set out to achieve with how they currently use their analytics. As the figure shows, the participants’ current use of analytics aligns with […].

Contact Center 100

Contact Center Analytics Surveys Call Center 100

ClearAction

FEBRUARY 14, 2015

Loving Suppliers for Customer Experience Excellence. Is it possible to be the darling of your customers, yet the opposite to your suppliers? Does it make sense to want your customers to love you and at the same time have no intention of letting your suppliers earn the same privilege? Whether you sell to consumers or businesses, think about the logic and the consequences.

Customer Experience 88

Customer Experience Customer centricity Finance Entertainment 88

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

Win the Customer

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

'Investing in a comprehensive customer experience program enables organizations to effectively connect with their customers, enhancing service delivery and customer results. Organizing and mapping the specific touchpoints of a comprehensive customer experience journey is critical for any organization looking to get the most from customer interactions.

Customer Experience 122

Customer Experience Technology Management 122

PeopleMetrics

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

'I’ve written about the relationship between customer experience and brand before, but I think it’s an important topic to think about. Especially in our space. So let’s go over three reasons why I think it''s better to focus on customer experience than brand. 1. Customer experience is tangible. I’ve cobbled together a marketing career over the years, and I still couldn’t give you a solid definition of what a brand is.

Customer Experience 79

Customer Experience Banking Customer centricity Feedback 79

Contact Center Pipeline

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

We’ve all been rooting for the U.S. economy to recover, but as it improves, it’s getting harder to attract and retain agents. In an effort to put “butts in seats,” some companies hire talent who are simply not as talented as they need to be to protect the company’s brand. According to CareerBuilder, the average […].

Contact Center 100

Contact Center Call Center 100

Sampson Lee

FEBRUARY 15, 2015

'I travel around the world to deliver our global CEM certification program, attendees from over 60 countries on six continents have one thing in common: they have no difficulty sharing their own telecom nightmares, no matter where they live! The.

Customer Experience 72

Customer Experience 72

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

Win the Customer

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

'Take measures to promote consistent brand messaging and secure your portion of the competitive landscape. Your brand is who you are and what your business stands for. If your branding strategy is not uniform across the board and at every point of contact, your company will send mixed messages to its target markets. The result? […].

Marketing 110

Marketing Customer Experience 110

Joe Rawlinson

FEBRUARY 18, 2015

How do you balance a limited marketing budget while still attracting new customers? Is this even possible? Ideally, you’d crack the code and be able to put a $1 into your marketing machine and get more than that dollar out in profit from sales. However, when you’re just getting started and haven’t quite figured out that magic formula, you can still attract new customers even on a limited budget.

Advertising 60

Advertising Marketing Sales 60

Contact Center Pipeline

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

In my previous post, I offered five tips to stretch your training dollars and do more with less. The following are five more ideas that can help you make a bigger impact with training, while helping to control costs. 1. Create additional buy-in by having an executive sponsor open each training session. One of my […].

100

100

Ian Jacobs

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

Industry analysts travel--a lot. It is, therefore, no surprise that I care deeply about airlines' frequent flyer programs and track the changes to those programs as closely as baseball obsessives track star players' slugging percentages. When I want information on what these changes mean practically in my situation (Will the new loyalty program make it harder for a 75k+ elite member looking to book a companion ticket's upgrade on an alliance partner airline, for example), I typically do not turn

Social media contact 63

Social media contact Airlines Customer Support CRM 63

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

CX Journey

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

'Image courtesy of xianrendujia Today''s post is a modified version of a post I originally wrote for Confirmit in April 2013. In Tuesday''s post , I discussed the rationale - and preparation - for conducting stakeholder interviews before embarking on a VoC program. In today''s post, I''ll focus on what to do immediately prior to, during, and after the interviews to make sure you get the most out of the process.

Management 62

Management Customer Experience Personalization 62

ForeSee

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

'It takes a village to deliver a great customer experience. Today’s release of The ForeSee E-Government Satisfaction Index (Q4 2014) highlights the importance of consistency in customer service for government agencies and outlines steps government customer experience professionals can take to achieve customer experience excellence with today’s multichannel, multi-device citizens.

Government 51

Government Customer Experience Multichannel Benchmark 51

Genroe

FEBRUARY 18, 2015

How to predict which clients you will lose (or will spend more). Are you confident in your post-sales team’s ability to secure renewal business? If you have a “land and expand” strategy, do know when you can expand your business in a given client? We will explore these questions, example cases studies and provide some practical approaches in this informal breakfast session.

B2B 45

B2B SaaS Consulting Consulting 45

Customer Interactions

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

'Recently, representatives from Baylor University talked with Athletic Business Magazine about how real-time video surveillance has helped to ensure a great game-day experience for Big 12 football fans at Baylor’s all-new McLane Stadium. I invite you to read the full text of the resulting article below: When the Baylor University Bears kicked off against SMU on the afternoon of Aug. 31, 2014, they did more than kick off another winning Big 12 football season.

Construction 30

Construction Coaching Consulting Consulting 30

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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

CX Journey

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

'Image courtesy of HZ University of Applied Sciences Today''s post is a modified version of a post I originally wrote for Confirmit in April 2013. What is a stakeholder? And why should I engage with or interview one? According to Investopedia , a stakeholder is. A party that has an interest in an enterprise or project. The primary stakeholders in a typical corporation are its investors, employees, customers, and suppliers.

Journey mapping 62

Journey mapping Government Customer centricity Enterprise 62

Brad Cleveland Blog

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

Here’s a quotation worth discussing with your team. “Manufacturers are struggling all over the place to call themselves a manufacturer, when in reality there’s a firm in Korea, China, India copying their product with incredible detail. Today, what you have to be is not only an extraordinary manufacturer, but the differentiator in the world.

Marketing 21

Marketing Contact Center Call Center Customer Experience 21

Beyond Philosophy

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

'A study of over 3000 people discovered that men and women have yet another difference: the way they process emotions. According to researchers, this means that they remember different things about an experience. Knowing that the memory of the experience is what makes a Customer return, every organization should adapt their experience to appeal differently to the gender of the Customer.

Customer Experience 417

Customer Experience Accountability Management 417