Aria Solutions

MARCH 31, 2020

As we’ve come to know that understanding our customers and meeting their needs is one of the key building blocks for this new decade, it has also become one of the most competitive areas in business. Two-thirds of businesses surveyed report that they compete mainly on customer experience. The global call center market is predicted to grow to $481 billion by 2024 , propelled by the need for businesses to deliver customer-focused services.

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Contact Center Agent burnout Self service Chatbots 62

Myra Golden Media

APRIL 2, 2020

In 1999 everybody was worried about Y2K. Will our computers boot up? Can we pay our employees? Will cars start? Do we have enough toilet paper? I managed a global call center during the Y2K fear, and my company spent a full twelve months contingency planning for everything that could potentially fail when the calendar flipped over to the new millennium.

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Call Center Service level Feedback Customer Experience 177

Nicereply

APRIL 3, 2020

Tough conversations are a part of life and in business, it’s no different. But tough customer conversations can be just that – tough. In customer service, you’re bound to come across a difficult situation or two. People have bad days, get confused, and things go wrong. Angry, difficult and dissatisfied customers aren’t necessarily a reflection on how well your business is run (because people are, well, people).

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Morale Customer Support Customer retention Personalization 101

ShepHyken

APRIL 3, 2020

This week we feature an article by Nikunj Dudhdat, a digital marketing executive at SoftwareSuggest. He discusses the overall value that a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can bring to your business. Customers nowadays do not lack for options when it comes to buying any product or getting a service. This makes for a very strong competitive environment among the businesses.

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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.

Beyond Philosophy

MARCH 31, 2020

Just over a decade ago, just as the world was coming out of the deepest recession since the Greatest Depression, we carried out significant research across the globe with the largest container shipping company in the world. We repeated the research a year later when the economy was in full speed recovery mode and while some key drivers remained the same we found a noticeable and consistent change in every model we ran.

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Airlines Healthcare Government Self service 500

Callminer

MARCH 30, 2020

Managing a call center caught up in the uncertainty of a worldwide pandemic is no small feat. However, there are a number of important guidelines and tips you can keep in mind to help ease your center’s workforce into remote working and mitigate contagion risks. Remote contact center operations have been around for some time now, but the need for such operational approaches has been magnified by the growing threat of Covid-19 and the heightened importance of social distancing policies to c

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ShepHyken

APRIL 1, 2020

Back in my high school and college days I worked at a gas station. We were a self-service station, so our role was that of cashier more than anything else. One very cold morning I noticed an elderly woman drive into the station. She was probably 80 years old. When I say it was a cold morning, I mean it was record-breaking cold. I walked out to her car and asked if I could fill her tank with gas for her so she could stay in her warm car.

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Beyond Philosophy

APRIL 2, 2020

Apple has an excellent experience. We could all learn a lot from how they approach business as usual to facilitate customer-driven growth. Why do I like Apple’s experience? Before I answer, I should have my guitar. I am just kidding. No one wants that. What we do want is to know how to facilitate customer-driven growth. Apple is an excellent example of how to do this.

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Contact Center Pipeline

MARCH 31, 2020

What a difference a month can make. In February, we were looking at topics like growth and development, aligning strategy and technology, and tools for delivering an exceptional customer experience. We’ve now entered the strange new reality of the COVID-19 era. Our Top 5 most-read posts for March reflect the staffing challenges that contact centers […].

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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

Steve DiGioia

MARCH 30, 2020

The actions of leaders should focus on common-sense decisions. A good “business-sense”, extensive life experience, having a good judge of character, and the ability to see-through-the-fog towards the intended goal will help most people make the “right” call as needed – when needed. As I’ve mentioned before, I’d rather act and make decisions based on the facts at hand than sit idle and wait for some arbitrary sign of approval later.

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Morale Personalization Customer Service 222

Myra Golden Media

MARCH 28, 2020

Are you interested in making and donating masks for Covid-19? Here are some resources to get you started. [link]. [link].

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Customer Experience 256

ShepHyken

MARCH 31, 2020

The Customer is Your Bottom Line. Creating Purpose for Your Employees and Your Business. Shep Hyken interviews Horst Schulze. They discuss his book, Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise , and strategies for hiring the right team, building the right service vision and delivering an unparalleled customer experience.

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Morale Consulting Consulting Marketing 161

Contact Center Pipeline

APRIL 3, 2020

I hope our April issue finds you safe and well. You may have seen Mr. Rogers’ quote that is so applicable for our times: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are […].

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Contact Center Call Center 264

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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

Callminer

MARCH 29, 2020

Read these tips and best practices for remote contact center managers and agents as businesses move to work-from-home workforces.

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Best practices Contact Center Call Center Management 182

Myra Golden Media

APRIL 3, 2020

Keep remote employees’ skills sharp with our customized, engaging, live virtual training. We start with a video conference to learn about your challenges and goals. Once we agree on your training content, we set a date for live virtual training that includes breakout rooms, online hand-raising, polling questions, and PDF workbooks. Plus, we record the training and hand it over to you to use as you wish.

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Customer Service Customer Experience 177

Beyond Philosophy

MARCH 28, 2020

What You Should Learn from Apple’s Outstanding Experience. I am a huge fan of Apple products. If there were already a waiting list for the next iPhone, I would be on it. For me, buying Apple products is emotional, intuitive, and automatic—all the things a brands needs to foster customer-driven growth. Apple is excellent at incorporating principles of behavioral economics and psychology that are hugely influential on customer behavior in all the right ways.

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Construction Consulting Consulting Customer Experience 150

ShepHyken

MARCH 30, 2020

Each week I read a number of customer service and customer experience articles from various 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. Maintaining Your Team’s Morale And Productivity During COVID-19 by Denise Graziano. (Chief Executive) The challenges posed to business by the novel coronavirus are unprecedented, but CEOs can help keep spirits up with these tips.

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Customer Service Morale Marketing Best practices 200

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

TechSee

MARCH 31, 2020

Ensuring business continuity and the safety of employees and customers is top of mind for companies delivering essential services across industries such as utilities, medical technology and telecommunications. These are lifelines for millions of people and in field service, COVID-19 represents a unique challenge. With so many people currently at home – whether on a voluntary or mandatory basis – customers are likely to experience more issues than usual and need far more support.

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Telecommunications Enterprise outsourcing Surveys 145

Aspect

MARCH 30, 2020

Last week I discussed that Business Continuity for both Aspect as well as our customers has taken on a whole new dimension. Better yet, we have learned that the term “business continuity” has become an assumed deliverable by all companies. The true measurement of success is really whether your company has Technology Continuity as well as Workforce Continuity.

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Government Contact Center Education Consulting 153

ProProfs Blog

APRIL 3, 2020

With the constantly increasing expectations of customers, providing 24/7 support is no more a choice. Instead, it has become a need of the hour, indispensable to survive the intense competition existing in the business ecosystem. Unlike a decade ago, when customers were willing to wait for brands to act on their requests, modern-day customers lack such patience.

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Taylor Reach Group

APRIL 1, 2020

by JD Fairweather. If you asked any contact center manager two months ago about their business continuity plan, they’d likely opine on their facility’s readiness to address just about any emergency scenario. These same managers have seen their expertise and resolve put to the test in recent weeks due to COVID-19. And with effects of the virus being felt worldwide, contact center leaders are scrambling to support higher-than-projected call volumes in the wake of an ever-increasing risk of higher

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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

Fonolo

MARCH 30, 2020

Managing a contact center team is a challenge at the best of times. If your contact center hasn’t been driven remote by the pandemic, it will likely feel the impact soon — so prepare to go remote now. Besides the obvious technical issues, this presents to those still working on legacy systems, employees are getting more and more worried for their health , pointing the contact center conditions as perfect for transmission of the virus.

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Aspect

APRIL 2, 2020

Is it time to question your assumptions about the signals and signs you use to manage your staff ? . The promise of work at home, or work anywhere, sometimes called “ smart working ,” is that employee s can work where they please, when needed, when the company and its customers require. The evaluation of a “ smart work ” employee then needs to shift to rating the impact of their work, the achievement of their goals and the quality of work output rather than other methods.

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contact center workforce Morale Contact Center Surveys 129

Transparent BPO

APRIL 3, 2020

Preface. Over the past two weeks, Transparent BPO has undertaken a serious initiative — to deploy 850 brick and mortar contact center agents to a work-from-home (WFH) environment. This was no small task, and I am beyond proud of how our company responded to the business impact caused by the pandemic and the amount of work and urgency that went into the rollout.

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Contact Center outsourcing Transportation Government 120

ProProfs Blog

APRIL 3, 2020

Can you imagine the mindset of customers who are satisfied with a business? After a negative experience, certain emotions come to the forefront, which can be-Frustration, disappointment, and disrespect. The impact of these emotional outbursts is immediately seen on a brand’s sales and performance. Let us understand what does the word satisfaction implies for a brand?

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Surveys Feedback APIs Customer Support 103

Speaker: Steve Pappas, Chief Strategist, Startup and Early Stage Growth Advisor, Keynote Speaker, CX Podcaster

As businesses strive for success in an increasingly digitized world, delivering an exceptional customer experience has become paramount. To meet this demand, enterprises are embracing innovative approaches that captivate customers and fuel their loyalty. 💥 Enter conversational AI - an absolute game-changer (if done right) in redefining CX norms.

Contact Center

UJET

APRIL 1, 2020

The world has gone digital. From on-demand food delivery, e-commerce purchases, telehealth, and more, customers are looking for great digital experiences that not only mirror the experiences of speaking with someone face-to-face or visiting a brick and mortar location, but that goes above and beyond. The reality is, with many consumers now staying at home, digital support requests are increasing and the need to provide streamlined support that can not just resolve issues in a timely manner, but

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Totango

APRIL 3, 2020

At Totango, we’re about success. Your customers’ and your own. So, now that everybody’s working remotely, we asked around our virtual office for suggestions of how to be more successful conducting business at home. Our team shared the ideas used in their own homes to make their workday, work better! . Start a Morning Ritual . “Take a few minutes each day to get ready—whatever that means for you—to get into the mindset for work.

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Talkdesk

APRIL 1, 2020

In my previous blog , I stressed the importance of using cloud technology to quickly move call center agents to a safe, work-at-home environment, to continue support for their customers during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. In this blog, I explore the challenges and pitfalls of a common alternative tactic many companies are employing to enable remote agents: using Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections to their legacy on-premises phone system.

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