Beyond Philosophy

JULY 17, 2017

In our customer experience consultancy, we spend a lot of time educating people about the components of a great customer experience. Some companies get it and they’re creating an emotional connection that brings them loyal fans. But many others look to technology. If customers just had a gadget that could do more or electronic kiosks they could play with in the store, or a virtual reality app – well, then the customer experience would be great.

Technology 331

Technology Consulting Consulting Customer emotions 331

Taylor Reach Group

JULY 17, 2017

By: JD Fairweather. How pervasive is the impending impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the customer experience (CX)? Well, to join a discussion on the topic, I’d be willing to traverse a room full of telemarketers pitching the latest timeshare deals in Orlando. And it would be worth it, as there are just so many possibilities to explore when pondering the ultimate takeover of the Contact Center by androids.

Customer Experience 251

Customer Experience Telemarketing Entertainment Contact Center 251

ShepHyken

JULY 19, 2017

I just returned from Influence 2017 , the annual conference put on by the National Speakers Association. My friend and one of the world’s authorities on trust, David Horsager was one of the amazing keynote speakers. He shared an excellent customer service example that can be summed up this way: Trust your customers and they will trust you. The quick version of the story is this: A farmer owns a fruit and vegetable stand where his customers pay on the honor system.

Customer Service 268

Customer Service Management Customer Experience 268

Peter Lavers

JULY 17, 2017

This blog coincides with the 10 th anniversary of the first signs of the Credit Crunch, which has impacted and continues to affect all our lives. Readers in their mid-thirties and under may not have experienced anything in their professional lives that hasn’t had an ‘austerity’ cloud hanging over it, and I’m sure that a lot will be written in the coming days, weeks, and months to mark the sad occasion.

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Customer Experience Customer centricity Management Automotive 182

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Beyond Philosophy

JULY 19, 2017

Taking care of your best customers is an age-old concept. It has lasted all these years because it works. Loyalty programs are one of many ways you can do this for these top priority people. When it comes to loyalty programs, you cannot forget certain vital features, and according to a recent report, one of them is easier than you think. Per the 2017 Colloquy Loyalty Census, there are 3.8 billion memberships for loyalty programs.

Consulting 292

Consulting Consulting Customer Experience Metrics 292

ShepHyken

JULY 21, 2017

This week we feature an article by Jason Grills about how to use live chat agents properly in order to delight your customers. I believe that as a quick first line of support, live chat is a great alternative. – Shep Hyken. The implementation of live chat software is an easy task to achieve. The important thing to understand is that it is only a tool.

Customer Support 229

Customer Support Chatbots Personalization Education 229

Call Center Weekly

JULY 21, 2017

By: Sean Hawkins As customer service professionals, we can all sympathize with the monotonous routine of call center agents. Log in to assist the customers, then log out and go to lunch and/or break. This is repeated a few more times before going home. In between this time, they answer the same calls, follow the same script, and receive the same complaints.

Contact Center 143

Contact Center Employee engagement Metrics Government 143

CX Global Media

JULY 20, 2017

10 Steps to a Better Agent Career Path. The high energy and the feeling of ‘making a difference’ are all highly attractive components for many choosing to work in the contact center industry. But it can become unattractive for people that want to continue to grow and build their skills. It may seem like a dead-end job. To retain these important people, contact centers must have a better agent career path that is worth following.

Contact Center 136

Contact Center Coaching Morale Call Center 136

Myra Golden Media

JULY 18, 2017

My first job was at Kmart. I was 16. It was at Kmart that I learned that customers could be difficult. Customers could get so upset they’d cuss, make threats, and demand to speak to a manger. It was at Kmart that I learned how not to handle a difficult customer. This lesson came through the courtesy of my friend, Beverly Johnson. One Thursday evening, Beverly, just 17, was put in charge because management in our area was gone for the day.

Coaching 136

Coaching Management Personalization Customer Experience 136

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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

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Aspect

JULY 17, 2017

A few weeks ago, I was heading home in a car with two of my friends. Oblivious to the hustle of the commute and barely attentive to the idle chatter, I was zoned back into the moment when my friends started talking about artificial intelligence. “ Artificial intelligence is the next big thing. We are going to lose our jobs.” One of them quipped. She then added how she was looking forward to it.

Entertainment 132

Entertainment Personalization Technology Customer Service 132

Call Center Weekly

JULY 18, 2017

By Julie Fredrickson Whether you have a few employees occasionally working at home, or an entire staff working remotely, there are some extreme management techniques that can kill your employees’ productivity. Managing Out of Fear If you have a good employee who is performing well, and meeting their requirements, you are doing well. Constantly checking up, interrogating, or otherwise showing you do not trust them to do their job will decrease their productivity, morale, and performance.

Morale 120

Morale Employee engagement outsourcing Coaching 120

Victor Midgley

JULY 17, 2017

The cause for stress in the call center seems obvious and yet very little is done about it. Either naivety, ignorance or plain voracity keeps form useful changes from happening. Recent studies reveal that 83% of call center agents are highly stressed with their job. Over my 20 plus years of consulting call centers all … Continue reading "5 PROVOKING REASONS WHY CALL CENTER AGENTS STRESS".

Call Center 120

Call Center Consulting Consulting call center professionals 120

Contact Center Pipeline

JULY 20, 2017

The “School of Hard Knocks” is an idiom that means the (sometimes painful) education one gets from life’s usually negative experiences. It is contrasted with formal education and was coined by Elbert Hubbard in a piece he wrote about himself for Cosmopolitan in 1902. Let’s face it. Whatever other degrees one might possess, a degree […].

Education 127

Education Contact Center Call Center 127

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

JULY 18, 2017

Mason Duchatschek on the Internet Boogeyman, and What to Do When You Encounter Him. What should you do when someone posts a negative review about your company or your products or services? Shep Hyken interviews keynote speaker and author Mason Duchatschek on steps you can take to protect your online reputation. First Up: Shep Hyken’s opening comments focus on why it is important for any business, not just a retail or online business, to protect their online reputation.

B2B 139

B2B Engineering Consulting Consulting 139

Steve DiGioia

JULY 17, 2017

please use the correct words This original article was written by Steve DiGioia. Respect. We all want it, need it and deserve it. But when we use words that have “no meaning” we carelessly speak with disrespect to our customers. Why do we continually refer to “everyone” as a guy? Over the course of my training career I have constantly said “words have meaning”.

Customer Service 102

Customer Service 102

CustomerGauge

JULY 20, 2017

The technology industry has been continuously disrupting and leading markets when it comes to innovations and customer experience. Companies like Apple, Dropbox, Cisco, HPE Software and Veeam Software have served as real examples to other businesses for customer-centricity and above all business growth. When it comes to customer loyalty and retention, the technology sector scores an […].

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Benchmark Technology Customer centricity Marketing 99

Contact Center Pipeline

JULY 19, 2017

In the B2B world, where businesses tend to compete on price, DAT Solutions stands out as a shining example of a service-oriented company that prides itself on delivering value to customers. “Customers for Life” has been a core value at DAT more than 20 years. More than just words—it is the foundation upon which the […].

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B2B Customer retention Contact Center Call Center 100

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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Andrew Mcfarland

JULY 18, 2017

Although the tempting answer to the question of when to grow your customer success team is “when you have more customers” a better approach is to grow the team before you have more customers. By grow I mean improve the.

Best practices 79

Best practices 79

Customer Experience Matters

JULY 21, 2017

After an inspiring weekend at the 2017 World Congress of Positive Psychology in Montreal, I decided to take a look at some of our data that connects positive psychology with customer experience. I started by examining the question: Does the innate happiness of a consumer influence how she perceives her experiences with companies? The answer is yes! I analyzed the happiness of consumers (based on the degree to which they agree with the statement “ I am typically happy “) and the Temki

Customer Experience 75

Customer Experience 75

CafeX

JULY 18, 2017

According to the 2016 US State of Enterprise Work Report , the amount of time office workers spend doing their primary job duties decreased in 2016, from 46% to 39%. So what’s going on? Shouldn’t we all be more productive than ever before with all our team collaboration software tools? Maybe that’s the problem - we have too many.

Enterprise 76

Enterprise 76

ShepHyken

JULY 17, 2017

Each week I read a number of customer service and experience 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. How Enterprise Chatbots Platforms Will Change Customer Service by Murray Newlands. (Business2Community) The key to good customer care is making your customer’s experience with your brand seamless, easy, and great.

Customer Service 75

Customer Service Chatbots Government Customer centricity 75

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

Aspect

JULY 18, 2017

SMS has become the most effective tool for businesses to communicate with their customers because of its ease-of-use, convenience and reach. Over 6 billion texts are sent every day and 97% of Americans use text at least once a day. SMS enables customers to stay in their comfort zone as they interact with a business. It can be used to push valuable information and content to encourage customers to take action or interact, instead of leaving it up to them to initiate a conversation.

Advertising 75

Advertising Customer Support Surveys Accountability 75

CSM Magazine

JULY 17, 2017

At the heart of every business is a great customer service team, always striving to deliver an exceptional service to their clients with the goal of turning a first-time customer experience into repeat business. Richard Branson truly is the face of customer service. He believes that if you keep your employees happy, they will, in turn, take care of your customers.

Customer Service 77

Customer Service Upselling Engineering Personalization 77

Up Your Service

JULY 17, 2017

Service education leads to creative thinking and practical action. This action produces new and greater service value. What happens in effective service education? 1. A new understanding of service value. Service education shifts a person’s point of view and enables her. to truly see the world from the customer’s perspective. This is. achieved by applying fundamental service principles to observe. and appreciate the customer’s experience from an outside-in perspective.

Education 75

Education Personalization Management Employee engagement 75

AskNicely

JULY 19, 2017

What is it that holds the internet up? Once you get past Facebook and Twitter and sports results and your company’s website, what’s underneath? What’s down in the engine room, powering the whole thing? What’s down in the basement, supporting the entire structure? Cat videos. That’s right. Cat videos. Those cute, little, furry procrastination machines, larking about with balls of wool, tumbling about on carpets, or in barns, or in all manner of delightful surrounding

Surveys 60

Surveys Feedback Engineering Personalization 60

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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.

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Provide Support

JULY 20, 2017

12 Worst Things to Say to Angry Customers. It’s no secret that customer service employees have to deal with angry customers nearly about 80% of the time. In this digital age only a few people will call your support to inquire about a product or service when most of the answers can be easily found online. While you obviously can’t control problems caused by malfunctioning products or service errors, you can control how you respond to complaining customers.

Customer Service 69

Customer Service Best practices Contact Center 69

Customer Relationship Metrics

JULY 19, 2017

Where’s the fun in Customer Satisfaction Surveys? That’s correct…WTF? The fun is when you know how to avoid the pitfalls that so many people fall into. If you know how to avoid them, it can be a lot of fun being able to use the information you capture to make your life better. When you are in customer service and customers and employees are satisfied…you feel satisfied.

Surveys 65

Surveys Contact Center Customer centricity Marketing 65

Up Your Service

JULY 17, 2017

This blog post assumes that YOU, as a leader, understand the importance of building a service culture and your role in making it happen. If you are not sure, I strongly suggest you read this and this first. Businesses and communities for years have developed countless theories and ‘best practices’ to either Get Employees Who Care (Service Recruitment – Building Block #3) or to Get Employees To Care (Rewards and Recognition – Building Block #5).

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Best practices Management Customer Service Employee engagement 75