tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59984085153594483232024-03-12T20:47:13.156-07:00Customer Contact eBulletinAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-71290586004162489652017-09-20T03:58:00.000-07:002017-09-20T02:37:36.205-07:00Ten Tips on Customer Service Quality Management <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vh4vwO4iSKU/WbElesgZyCI/AAAAAAAAC9I/z_wuRUKYm4k3FpZPTqw2aZy-TEbUOxOxgCLcBGAs/s1600/Rui%2BSantos%2Bphoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="199" data-original-width="199" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vh4vwO4iSKU/WbElesgZyCI/AAAAAAAAC9I/z_wuRUKYm4k3FpZPTqw2aZy-TEbUOxOxgCLcBGAs/s200/Rui%2BSantos%2Bphoto.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By Rui Santos</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>President of the Board</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Association of Portuguese <br />Customer Service Professionals</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Why is it important to know how to manage (and not just how to measure) quality?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The world is changing, changing fast. The way people communicate is changing. The way people think and reason is changing. The way people make buying decisions is changing. The reasons that drive customers to stay loyal to one company or to change to another are changing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Companies can no longer be content to have merely satisfied customers. Satisfied customers are neutral customers. Satisfied customers are customers who have no complaints. Customers with no complaints are not loyal customers. Satisfied customers are vulnerable customers. Satisfied customers leave the company as soon as the competition offers them better conditions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Companies can no longer be content to have merely satisfied customers. Companies need to convert their customers into fans. Fans who take pride in the company. Fans who are true ambassadors of the brand. Fans who are promoters of the company.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A customer is not loyal because he / she has signed a loyalty agreement. A customer is loyalty when he / she is not obliged to anything and, nevertheless, prefers to stay in the company.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The loyal customer is not the one who chooses the cheapest company. The loyal customer is the one who chooses the company that he or she trusts the most.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That said, are you sure that your company is building a fan club ... or just making sure you do not have dissatisfied customers? What instruments are you using to measure that? What tools and processes are you using to convert your customers into fans?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The new approach to Quality Management</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A new world with new requirements requires a new approach to quality management.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">First of all, it is important to clarify the difference between measuring and managing quality:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><u>Measure Quality:</u> Equalto Passive Observation. Present "what is"</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><u>Manage Quality:</u> Equal to Proactive Research. Find out "why" and “how”</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Ten points</b> that your <b>Quality Management Process </b>will have to take into consideration:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Causes and Consequences: </b>The quality management process will have to allow you to identify the root causes in the origin of the observed results. In order to identify the root causes, you will have to disaggregate all the results according to their elemental dimensions. for example, disaggregate by customer segment, by product, by service, by employee, etc.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Samples: </b>The sample size must be representative of the universes whose behaviors you intend to investigate. Learn everything you can about random samples versus stratified samples, error margins, confidence intervals, frequency, evaluation grids and survey scripts, simulation cases, etc.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Correct and Replicate: </b>It is not only the problems that must be eliminated. the quality management process should also allow you to recognize what is working very well so that it can be replicated.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Take Action: </b>The investigation should only end when you identify the corrective actions to be implemented for each improvement opportunity. Each corrective action will have to have an unequivocal owner and an implementation plan for it. The implementation of each corrective action should be closely monitored. The results obtained should be re-evaluated from a continuous improvement cycle perspective.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The Customer is the King:</b> Ensure that your Quality Management Process is powered by the quality perceived by the Customer, not just internal KPIs. Identify the best way to get your customer feedback. When is the best time to get the feedback? What is the best channel to get the feedback? What are the most power questions you should ask to get the feedback?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Meet or Exceed Expectations: </b>Make an internal reflection about what are your customer service objectives? If your goal is to meet the expectations of your customers, simply assess the degree of compliance with the predefined parameters. However, if you want to exceed expectations and surprise your customers, the quality management process will have to help you identify the basic expectations of your customers, beyond the characteristics of the products purchased or contracted services.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Personalization: </b>Customers are not all the same. On the contrary, customers are all different. It makes no sense to use the same evaluation criteria for a residential customer and a business customer, right? But it will also make no sense to use the same evaluation criteria for a customer who prefers price vs other who prefers quality. Make sure you know what is most important for each of your customer segments and measure that.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Omni-channel Experience: </b>The customer experience is no longer a single channel experience. The quality management process should allow you to evaluate the quality of service provided in each individual interaction, in each channel, as well as the perception of quality of the customer at the end of his / her entire service experience.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Multilingual and Multicultural Environment: </b>We live in a global world. Our customers are increasingly diversified and heterogeneous. Different origins. Different languages. Different accents. Different cultures. Different beliefs. Different convictions. Different values. Do not allow your quality assessment to be influenced by your frame of reference. Embrace the differences.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>360º Control Panel: </b>Make sure you present the results in a graphical and easy-to-read form. Explore the full potential of BI tools. Allow the drilldown of information, from the global vision, through the multiple possible dis-aggregations, to the corresponding corrective actions and the status of each implementation plan.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Use the information to Tell a story!</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Start with “Where we are”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Explain “Why” and “How did we get Here”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Remind “Where do we want to Go”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Tell “What do we Have to Do” > “Who will Do it and When”;Share also “What are we already doing” and “What we have already done and what were the results”</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Rui has over twenty-five years of professional experience in Omnichannel Customer Experience Management, Contact Centers, Retail Management, Customer Self Service and Quality Management. He has worked with dozens of companies to improve customer service initiatives including Adecco, Alliance Healthcare, Altitude Software, Collab, Conceptek, Contact, Continente, L'Oréal Portugal, Liberty Seguros, MetLife, Mercer, Microsoft, Staples, Vodacom (Moçambique), and many others. He is a frequent Keynote Speaker at conferences and seminars held all over the world by organizations such as APCC, Frost & Sullivan, IDC, IFE, IQPC and Jacob Fleming.</i></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-88591148194005289422017-09-20T03:52:00.000-07:002017-09-20T02:37:46.870-07:00Moving from Multi-Channel to Omni-Channel Customer Engagement: Intelligent Interaction Analytics Are the Foundation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XSC89B2ikRQ/WbEkIWOCKtI/AAAAAAAAC88/jJdaZwe0bDkLbZOVZkQdoC8f9d4idxcuQCLcBGAs/s1600/MDS%2Bphoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="398" data-original-width="398" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XSC89B2ikRQ/WbEkIWOCKtI/AAAAAAAAC88/jJdaZwe0bDkLbZOVZkQdoC8f9d4idxcuQCLcBGAs/s200/MDS%2Bphoto.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By Michael DeSalles</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Principal Analyst<br />Digital Transformation - Customer Experience</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Can the sophisticated use of analytics trump the old business advantages of geography, speed-to-market and proprietary technology? Frost & Sullivan believes that contact center insight analytics has the potential to yield significant competitive advantages: efficient and effective execution, smart decision making, understanding important customer insights and the ability to squeeze every last drop of value from business processes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Even as companies are investing heavily in digital customer engagement initiatives, the majority of contact centers are not harnessing all of the data sources available to them. However, today’s platforms utilize advanced analytical functionality to rapidly identify customer, contact center, agent, and enterprise issues, trends, insights, and much more. Current solutions analyze the data, find trends, and deliver actionable recommendations to improve business performance. The overarching goal is to deliver richer and more personalized experiences to customers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Contact center analytics makes up a group of solutions that provides managers with tactical and actionable insights and recommendations. Good analytics solutions find patterns in the data and make this information available in real-time. Change is continuous, and the plethora of new communication channels in the market is evolving at warp speed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The Growth of Digital Customer Engagement</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Empowered, Demanding Customers</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">With the rise of mobile and social technologies, customers are now more knowledgeable, empowered, and demanding than ever. Their ability to access and share information anytime, anywhere, puts them in control of their own experience. Why do we care? It’s because these “always-on” connected customers expect to do business with companies on their terms—including how, when and where they choose to interact for customer service and support. Now, the real work begins.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is therefore <i>critical </i>for customer service organizations to develop new and expanded capabilities to support a growing array of digital channels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Richer Social, Mobile and Web</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The data shows that traditional channels, particularly phone interactions, are declining in overall volume. They are also increasing in <u>complexity</u>. Here’s what it means: Consumers often prefer a “digital-first” touchpoint in contacting a brand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hence, brands that are prepared to meet these types of customer challenges have a chance to build deeper customer relationships and loyalty. Conversely, those companies that are not able to deliver risk losing customers and valuable business to rivals. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>The Move from Multi-channel to Omni-channel Experience</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frost & Sullivan defines Omni-channel as seamless and effortless, high-quality customer experiences that occur within and between contact channels. It ensures that data and context from the initial contact carries over to subsequent channels, reducing customer effort, improving the customer interaction, and enabling the business to tailor the customer journey.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To support this effort, agents in contact centers today are utilizing a wider arsenal of communication tools—voice, video, e-mail, IVR, Web chat, file sharing, and social media. Frost & Sullivan believes that traditional voice-centric call centers are morphing into Omni-channel centers of excellence. Some in the industry suggest the term, “relationship hubs”. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We currently see the leaders in the industry moving very rapidly to deploy technology and processes. Their goal is to convert traditional contact centers into true multi-channel organizations with a single view of the customer. This structure provides valuable, integrated data for both customers and agents.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The Importance of Multi-channel Analytics</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Business Discovery Must Yield Actionable Insights</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The explosive amount of user-generated content on the Web makes it extremely difficult to uncover meaningful insights that can be acted upon. In all of the chatter and massive amounts of collected data, companies are desperate to gain a complete and holistic picture of their customers’ activity in real-time. The reason is because today, most companies deliver what we refer to as “fractured” multi-channel experiences. When customers move from one channel to another, their context and history doesn’t move with them. So they have to repeat their effort or problem when they move between channels. This situation results in lower customer satisfaction, missed opportunities for upsell/cross sell and eventually customer churn.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One of the key foundational elements along this journey is having a multi-channel analytical framework that captures and analyzes customer interactions—both traditional and digital channels. Once the groundwork is established, the next step is to leverage that insight as part of your company’s operational systems. In order to deliver meaningful Omni-channel customer experiences, this would include CRM, contact center, and WFO systems.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Solution Considerations: Factors in Choosing a Best-in-Class Platform</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Is it possible? A Singular Platform for Every Customer Touch Point</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Simply put, multi-channel analytics involves data aggregation and analysis of multiple consumer communication sources. The platform choices can be overwhelming, while today’s consumers frolic in a frenzied multi-device, multi-channel environment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frost & Sullivan has assembled a number of solution considerations and pointed questions to be considered, when selecting a best-in-class contact center analytics platform:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Conclusion and Recommendations</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Providing consistently excellent customer service has become one of today’s top differentiators for enterprises across virtually every vertical market. As organizations struggle to balance customer satisfaction with the drive to increase revenue and minimize costs, they are increasingly exploring technologies and processes that help heighten the customer experience on one hand, and help uncover actionable intelligence for informed business decisions on the other.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Best Practices Recommendation Short List </i></span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><u>Recognize</u> the Multi-channel nature of customer interactions.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><u>Leverage</u> these insights for customer service, marketing, and compliance applications. This benefits all customer experience stakeholders (end user customers, agents, supervisors, QA analyst, marketing analysts, risk and compliance analyst, and executive team)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><u>Tightly integrate</u> analytics tools with the operational systems that will ultimately consume and leverage these insights </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Michael DeSalles is a Principal Analyst with the Frost & Sullivan Customer Care team for North America. In this role, he focuses on customer care outsourcing and contact center services and tracks. He monitors and analyzes emerging trends, technologies and market dynamics in the contact center industry for North America (NA). Michael regularly travels to Central and South America to help clients evaluate the viability of delivering NA call volumes to nearshore outsourcing sites, where he has developed relationships with the top twenty-five global customer care outsourcing companies.</i></span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> </i><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-12166797801889885562017-09-20T03:39:00.000-07:002017-09-20T02:36:48.068-07:00Keeping Up With Today’s Complex Customers: Highlights from the 11th Annual Customer Contact, Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By Stephen Loynd</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One of the primary themes of this year’s <b>11th Annual Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange,</b> was how digital transformation represents an era of unprecedented exponential change. How can organizations best keep up with today’s increasingly complex and fickle consumer?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Over the course of a busy three days at the Hilton Budapest in Budapest, Hungary, it became clear that automation is at the core of the changes buffeting our world. Anticipating and feeding off of today’s more demanding consumer, organizations are in the midst of shifting their focus from labor-intensive communication services to a more diversified set of platform-based, technology-driven services. Obviously, companies are aware they must anticipate the nature of an ever-more disruptive age, even as they must continue to find and retain the kind of human talent that will help them remain competitive. While tomorrow’s workforce could be radically different from what it looks like today, establishing the appropriate environment for employees can be an often confounding challenge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In essence, achieving true operational efficiency means keeping pace with what is a very fluid situation, where organizations must master the proper combination of people, process, and technology to cope with this emerging new world. To best serve customers, companies are learning that taking Big Data and forging it into small sparks of data that can be leveraged in effective ways is no minor feat. Segueing from human time to digital time will mean automating data analysis with the use of software bots that run on artificial intelligence (AI), where deep learning algorithms will help better manage customer decision journeys.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>A Keynote Focused on Change</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nicola Millard – Head of Customer Insight & Futures at BT Global Services Innovation Team – opened the event with a keynote entitled, <i>Botman versus Super Agent: The Future of the Contact Center. </i>The claim that AI and robots are about to take all our jobs? “That’s been the worry about automation for the past 200 years,” noted Millard. “But are they about to replace the contact center?”According to Millard, the issue is far more nuanced, as autonomous customers and automation alike have already radically changed the contact center in ways we seldom examine. Either way, the "Super Agent" of the future will need an array of new skills.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Thought-Provoking </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The heart of the event featured a number of breakout sessions and compelling presentations that synced well with Millard’s opening. For example, Olivier Mourrieras, Vice President Global Customer Experience at E.ON, spoke on, <i>The E.ON Advocacy Journey to Delivering Brilliant Experiences</i>. At the center of having a positive impact on customers, noted Mourrieras, is a customer centric vision. Lisa Steele, Director of Customer Contact for TUI UK&I, agreed, speaking on <i>Building a Brand Trust: The Art of Empathy and Emotional Connection.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In the meantime, Stephen Loynd, Analyst at Frost & Sullivan, offered a thematic complement to Millard’s overview, examining how technology trends from artificial intelligence (AI) to augmented reality, Big Data, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are impacting our world in striking new ways. This is a time when companies are changing the way we communicate even as they discover new ways to create value for customers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Clearly, the challenges facing our organizations can be vexing. For example, it is no easy task to manage disparate data and knowledge in the context of legacy technology systems, and to leverage Big Data for process innovation, and to master data and analytics in searching for the true root cause of customer-related issues. As Loynd explained, technology is imbedding itself into everything, influencing and disrupting our lives in profound ways. But which systems and strategies are needed to support and manage all the data coming at us in this era of immersive techno-consumerism and the high customer expectations that come with it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Within the next few years the exponential growth of digitization and machine learning will fundamentally change how businesses create value, satisfy customers, and outperform competitors. The IoT in particular is creating a data-centric, self-optimizing world of immersive experiences. But there are obvious challenges when it comes to making sense of the oceans of data washing over our world.One example of how new tools and techniques are being implemented to understand and serve customers is Salesforce’s new Service Cloud Einstein, which uses an “Intelligent Supervisor” to classify information and automatically route data in real-time, and deploys wave analytics to identify issues at scale.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The event also featured interactive panels. One particularly interesting one was entitled, Aligning Voice of the Customer (VoC) & Voice of the Employee (VoE) with Business Objectives. A group of four experts confronted some surprisingly hard questions such as – what are some of the success factors for organizations’ journeys from pragmatic to sophisticated VoC strategies? How are companies turning VoC data into actionable insights that improve their businesses? All the panelists agreed that too many businesses sit back and wait for customer reactions to products and services, rather than anticipating specific customer preferences through proactive research. Clearly, listening closely to what customers want and don’t want, and then acting on that data, is the more strategic approach. Yet even that latter method remains a challenge to implement – from identifying the essential parts of the customer journey, to avoiding implementations of technology solutions that leave companies more paralyzed than informed. A number of participants from the audience offered suggestions on how they've mastered the process of implementing VoC in their organizations, how they’ve captured the VoC, and some of their best practices for operationalizing the VoE.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Site Tour at Emirates Airlines</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The end of the three days featured a comprehensive site tour of Emirates Airlines’ impressive contact center. For many, the in-depth review reinforced the fact that we’re living in an era of digitization and machine learning that is impacting everything around us. Conversation hummed with speculation that companies that don’t feel a sense of urgency; that are not anticipating how technology will affect their businesses, may well face a reckoning in the form of disruptive change.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">More than ever, the success of organizations will be dependent on their ability to keep pace with technological change. The need to become agile and digitally connected is nothing short of urgent. The absence of a robust and agile technological infrastructure will inevitably result in failure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At the same time, by utilizing varied methods of analysis, organizations are creating seamless connections that build lifetime customer value, brand recognition, and most important of all, relationships with clients. Still, when it comes to engaging with customers, companies would be wise to keep in mind the importance of maintaining the“human-touch”; recruiting and retaining the right talent has never been so important as it is in today’s ever changing world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At the end of the event, companies seemed determined to pursue a few key action items:</span></div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Increase digital strategies of customer engagement to better serve the new kind of knowledgeable and demanding customer that emerging</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Offer seamless customer decision journeys through the use of emerging digital channels</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Be prepared to manage in a world characterized by chaos and complexity</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Create strategies that turn data into a tool that best serves the customer</span></li>
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Stephen Loynd is a noted Digital Analyst and Speaker who has led Frost & Sullivan’s Global Customer Contact programs for over five years. Stephen brings a deep understanding and expertise in the digital transformation landscape to clients and colleagues alike. Previously, Stephen was Director, Vertical Market Strategies at Stream Global Services, a business process outsource (BPO) service provider and Global Program Manager, Services Group at IDC, a global provider of market intelligence. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLoynd</span></i><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-10247855263913947022017-09-20T01:57:00.000-07:002017-09-20T02:36:30.516-07:00Information, Insight, and Analytics Drive Customer Loyalty!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tLhVS_cA6W4/WbEG3vQZkxI/AAAAAAAAC8E/TlWziVK4sCkuMrRBRyWDEh1rv83-Kxf_wCLcBGAs/s1600/Muise_photo_2017.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="340" height="176" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tLhVS_cA6W4/WbEG3vQZkxI/AAAAAAAAC8E/TlWziVK4sCkuMrRBRyWDEh1rv83-Kxf_wCLcBGAs/s200/Muise_photo_2017.jpeg" width="200" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By Carolyn Muise</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Vice President</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Chief Customer Office</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Voice of the Customer </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Analytics and Intelligence</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dell</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Carolyn Muise will be presenting the opening keynote, <i>Driving the Organization’s Strategy via Actionable Voice of the Customer </i>at <b>Customer Contact West: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange </b>in Huntington Beach, California this October. Here, she provides a framework for some of the insights she will share.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Big data is a big deal </b>and you need to take notice if you expect to win the hearts and wallets of your customers in the coming years and create customers for life! You need to have a business strategy that leverages Voice of Customer insight to develop solutions and services <b>that create customer intimacy </b>and deliver a more consistent, personalized experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The future of business</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Whether you are a business that has been around hundreds of years or just in the last decade, there is transformation going on where more and more companies are transforming their business models through the use of technology and Big Data. We call this transformation and the end result, the digital business. More and more of what customers touch and experience is not the brick and mortar aspect of traditional business, but the technology, the apps, the interfaces. This could be the thermostat that knows when you’re away, a car that can drive itself, and contact lens that control blood sugar, a fitness band that measures activity level or drones that deliver our groceries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“What does customer intimacy look like in the future of digital business?” To those of us not born in the era of social media, “digital business” as a term sounds impersonal and robotic, however, on the contrary, it is a HUGE opportunity to create intimacy in a way that is consistent, repeatable, and completely personalized.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Hypothesis</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To unlock customer intimacy, you need a 3-pronged strategy and vision:</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">1) Technology </b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">– enabling technology</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">2) Business Processes and Enterprise Governance -</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> formal, embedded processes are enabling us to provide value to customers and other parts of the organization. These processes have allowed us to achieve scale to support the shift to “data democratization” and enterprise-wide transparency. Governance provides transparency and accelerates time to data value.</span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dQIsnqiuPE0/WbEKU8TDrnI/AAAAAAAAC8Y/grtrGrAGwN4IHpAsHBpzSGWMCu0BqSOSACLcBGAs/s1600/002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="876" data-original-width="1474" height="233" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dQIsnqiuPE0/WbEKU8TDrnI/AAAAAAAAC8Y/grtrGrAGwN4IHpAsHBpzSGWMCu0BqSOSACLcBGAs/s400/002.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">3) Employee Engagement </b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">– Defines how our employees interact and serve our customers. It’s about how to get your internal teams to buy-in to the strategy, trust, and utilize the data to accelerate time to value It’s also about understanding the expectations of your customers – to design your products and service around their lifestyles, which continue to evolve.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>In summary,</b> our strategy to deliver optimal customer experience and develop customers for life is based on the following key focus areas:</span><br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Deliver <b>high impact programs for customers</b> that drive deeper, more profitable engagement</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Give customers a powerful voice by being the hub for <b>customer data and intelligence </b>across company</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Fix systemic issues </b>to make it easier to do business with Dell</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Foster a <b>culture </b>that thinks and, more importantly, acts customer first</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Be the leader in business imperatives that <b>matter to customers </b>and <b>team </b>members</span></li>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pw46DYUaeCo/WbEKrA6IYhI/AAAAAAAAC8g/am1zsn-x25gN3pRfew-NU9m0dG72qf2QQCLcBGAs/s1600/004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="896" data-original-width="1600" height="220" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pw46DYUaeCo/WbEKrA6IYhI/AAAAAAAAC8g/am1zsn-x25gN3pRfew-NU9m0dG72qf2QQCLcBGAs/s400/004.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Carolyn Muise </b>leads the Chief Customer Office, Analytics and Intelligence platform at Dell EMC. In this role, she leads Dell in leveraging big data and customer sentiment, proactively driving continuous improvements in technology, process, and information management and employee engagement that enable them to drive optimal customer experience. </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Previously, she led EMC’s Total Customer Experience Program with revenues of $24.5 billion and 60,000 people worldwide. In this role, Carolyn had operational responsibility for engagement with EMC’s customers, partners, and employees to drive quality, innovation and continuous improvement into its products, services and business operations. Under her leadership, EMC’s Total Customer Experience program has been recognized by the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) for its Innovation in Customer Commitment, Temkin Group for Customer Experience Excellence and Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) for Customer Experience Impact. Find her on Twitter @camuise4</i></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-85077187105796456112017-09-20T01:54:00.000-07:002017-09-20T02:37:19.045-07:00Guidelines for Implementing Relevant KPI’s and Delivering a First-Class Customer Experience<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JfI4MaCsPUk/WbZOMApCPmI/AAAAAAAAC9Y/zKGfMSd0dnkHrlctC-k5tke1RaIcKINNwCLcBGAs/s1600/FF4C6429%2B2%2BOlivier%2Bphoto.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1161" height="165" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JfI4MaCsPUk/WbZOMApCPmI/AAAAAAAAC9Y/zKGfMSd0dnkHrlctC-k5tke1RaIcKINNwCLcBGAs/s200/FF4C6429%2B2%2BOlivier%2Bphoto.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By Olivier Mourrieras</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Former Vice President <br />Global Customer Experience</i></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />E.ON</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Customer experience practitioners: how do you pick the right set of metrics and construct a performance system that delivers exceptional customer impact?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Based on the twelve years I have spent driving customer experience improvement, I would answer this question by applying the following two-pronged approach: As your company transforms to provide a differentiated experience to your customers, the right set of relevant KPIs should be picked so that you track progress from the current to the intended experience, while providing what matters most to your customers. Then anchor those metrics in your company governance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For step 1, pick your KPI’s « outside-in » and get cross-business endorsement on what you will monitor on an on-going basis. Prioritizing metrics should come naturally from a solid understanding of what moments matter most to your customers, what drives behavior and what channel they choose. This means mapping all your customer interactions on what we call the customer journey. Customer journey mapping has to be carried out cross-functionally and needs to be formally signed off and endorsed by all key business stakeholders, including a set of customers too. At a higher level, key customer journeys are quite similar cross industries: I become aware, I join, I buy, I use, I pay, I renew, I leave. Not all journeys will influence customer outcomes such as advocacy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is of critical importance to understand your company’s key customer drivers and how the customer journey influences them so that actions can be prioritized accordingly. All touch points within the journeys should be measured using a mix of descriptive, perception and outcome metrics and prioritized based on their level of importance to customers. They should also be connected to underlying operational processes. This way you link your customer outcomes, customer insights and metrics (the « outside-in » view) to important internal indicators, and their owners. For these indicators to matter and form part of the operating cycles, they need to be part of objectives and incentives, connect visibly to business outcomes and be celebrated and communicated to drive positive momentum. Bringing process owners closer to customers to bring the KPI’s to life will also anchor the metrics in the DNA of your company. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Customer journeys are not static, as customer needs and company offerings and brands evolve. It’s also important to establish appropriate timing for reviewing customer journeys, you want to avoid doing so too frequently, to avoid disrupting focus on the actions</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For step 2, make sure the metrics are governed appropriately and and are supported by the executive team. This will help to drive actions and progress. Once the cause-effect relationship is established from operational KPIs to touchpoint metrics, to journey metrics and customer outcomes, an operating rhythm needs to be designed to drive all customer experience initiatives bottom up and top down. Such a system should operate like a pyramid with frequent operational and touchpoint reviews as the foundation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Additionally, monthly customer journey reviews act as the transmission in the middle, supplanting monthly or quarterly customer advocacy reviews led and owned by the Managing Director or Chief Executive Officer of the business unit. The strength of the sponsorship spine will hold the pyramid together. That strength is however, highly dependent on the continuous linkage to business and company outcomes. Ideally, every point of strategic NPS gain (for instance) should have a value equivalent. For example: 1 million dollar per 1 point NPS gain per year. The KPIs (and actions linked to them) lying underneath in the pyramid can then be prioritized based on a clear understanding of the drivers, the influence on the strategic NPS and the value generated. Better yet, you can allocate budgets on that basis. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Rigor, discipline and persistence in driving the right KPIs and in running these forums will deliver outcomes and close the gap between the current and e desired customer experience. I have found that asking the following questions helps improve focus and boost delivery: </span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What is the/your NPS score?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What is driving the score?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What are the operational metrics supporting these drivers?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What are you doing to influence these drivers?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">How are you tracking progress?</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Overall, following these steps can mean a very large scope of work over an extended period.So, it is advisable to start small, deliver proof points and expand sustainably with the support of your sponsor and key stakeholders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Olivier Mourrieras is a customer experience professional and customer-centric change leader. He is the founder of CXImpact, a Customer Experience advisory and consultancy company, where he guides C-Suite and senior customer experience clients in building a customer-driven growth engine, helping them to make their customers a strategic priority and delivering transformational change in customer experience.</i></span><br />
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<i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">He has led change plans delivering customer experience improvements in companies with over 60,000 colleagues and millions of customers. He spent 11 years shaping and delivering market leading customer experience strategies starting at Orange with a focus on B2B globally and then at E.ON addressing both B2B and B2C markets internationally. With a background in customer operations, Olivier brings a very practical and energizing touch to his approach. He provides particular expertise in defining customer centric visions, and translating them into customer impact.</i><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-30778113385020369152017-06-13T07:43:00.002-07:002017-06-16T01:09:14.766-07:00A Data-Driven Approach to Re-Engineering Your Call Center<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><br />By Ed Ariel</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Vice President, Customer Service</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ezCater</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Many changes have been made over the years in the name of making things easier for the customer: Questions and Answers (Q&A) became Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs),which then morphed into Self Help (no initials, doomed for failure). But did those changes really help the customer? There is a lot of talk nowadays about re-engineering the call center to take better advantage of technology. You can make small changes for the sake of jumping on the bandwagon, or you can take a data and customer-driven approach that positively impacts your organization and your customers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At ezCater, we are insanely focused on being insanely helpful to our customers at every touch point. When we discuss implementing a new technology, the critical question is always ‘why?’ Whenever introduce a new technology unless it maintains (at a lower cost) or improves (1) the level of service or (2) the experience for the customer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Many companies implement re-engineering plans with the primary goalof reducing costs. Reducing costs without improving the customer experience may provide a short-term benefit, but if customers do not receive the level of service they expect, they will eventually stop using your service. In that case, short-term gains will be quickly wiped out bya lower customer lifetime value.If you try to offset departures by acquiring customers at a faster rate, you may then end up with another costly repercussion: higher customer acquisition costs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is not to say that reducing costsis always detrimental. Show me a call center without customer chat or a work force management tool and I will show you a call center with some easy opportunities for improvements to the customer experience as well as cost reductions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To determine if a new technology will also enhance customer experience, look to the data. This data should come from two main sources:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Your frontline service staff</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Conversations with multiple vendors and new technology users</span></li>
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Your Frontline Service Staff</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The best companies hire the best people and utilize those people to improve their service. There is no better way to collect data on features that your customers arerequesting or features that will improve the service experience than from a highly skilled and motivated support team.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Your support people have the most direct interactions with your customers. They hear what your customers like and don’t like, and, maybe most importantly, how your service compares to competitors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Set the expectation that staff should be acting oncustomer feedback as early as the interview process. The goal of continuous improvement from your service team should be reinforced throughout training and used as an ongoing evaluation metric. The best members of the service team are the people who listen to the customer, probe for additional information, and present well-thought ideas to the management team.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Conversations with Multiple Vendors and New Technology Users </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There is usually a push to move fast once your company has decided to make improvements. This is rarely recommended. The best next step is to start collecting more data. This data will generally fall into three areas:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Measure what you are trying to improve.</b> Is it length of interactions with a customer, how long an agent takes to complete a task, the level of satisfaction achieved by a customer Figure out what your goal is and how to articulate it. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Talk to existing partners and industry contacts. </b>The easiest data to collect is from your existing vendor partners. Who do they use to solve this issue or, even better, who do their partners use to solve this issue?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Talk to the solution providers (even if this is internal). </b>This is your opportunity to ask the hard questions: “We see that you, Company B, and Company Care the industry leaders. What makes you the best choice?” This is a logical question that will immediately give you a list of the differentiating factors for each vendor and quickly eliminate options that will not accomplish your goals.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The process you follow to re-engineer your call center is critical. Once you identify opportunities for improvement, gather as much data as possible from multiple sources, even though it can be a slow process. In the end, the data will reveal better solutions and allow you to focus on the most impactful changes – even if sometimes that data will tell you that no change is necessary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Ed brings more than 20 years of experience building, implementing and managing comprehensive customer service and business process improvement programs and teams. Ed has a winning record of simultaneously boosting customer satisfaction and company profitability by building and directing great teams and equipping them with top-notch technology. Ed has held leadership roles in customer service, operations and risk management at Fidelity Investment Systems Company, TNCI Operating Company and AT&T. Ed holds an M.B.A. from Bentley University and a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst.</i></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-35826980031749509772017-06-09T06:28:00.003-07:002017-06-15T06:44:49.764-07:00Intuit Site Tour Insights:The Customer Care Team is the Real Talent<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><br /><br /><br /><br />By Patricia Jacoby</b>
<br /><i>Publications Editor</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Recently, Customer Engagement Leadership Council members and select <b>Customer Contact West: A Frost & Sullivan MindXchange </b>event attendees had the opportunity to tour Intuit’s innovative Customer Contact Center in Tucson, Arizona. Intuit is a business and financial software company that develops and sells financial, accounting and tax preparation software and related services for small businesses, accountants and individuals.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KTjDx3ndmBY/WTqi2Lb895I/AAAAAAAACxg/2yr_5e7-eLkvlNaqo_eK-WNS4NH6fJyxACLcB/s1600/NEW.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="627" height="246" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KTjDx3ndmBY/WTqi2Lb895I/AAAAAAAACxg/2yr_5e7-eLkvlNaqo_eK-WNS4NH6fJyxACLcB/s400/NEW.jpg" width="400" /></a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Intuit has numerous teams generating customer insights that are fed back into their core product teams to eliminate customer pain in their offerings. The organization also has top-notch teams that do frontline care and sales. This interactive site tour showcased Intuit’s people, call center philosophy and dynamic capabilities.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As the physical tour concluded, a group of customer contact industry leaders gathered with hosts Don Yager, <i>Director, Learning, Development, & Quality/Tucson Site Business Leader </i>and Jeffrey Laird, <i>Director, Awesome Help and Service, </i>to explore Intuit’s organizational culture, location, products and more. Here are highlights and key take-aways from their informed discussion:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Intuit Customers Prefer Video</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The first insight shared by Don Yager was on the use of video in the contact center. Intuit had learned that their customers preferred video over other communication channels by more than 20%.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The hosts observed that this was true across all generational lines (not just the millennials, for example) and although they had not yet determined a specific reason why this was true, they planned to continue testing, as is their modus operandi. Intuit stressed the importance of ongoing testing for these kinds of issues and channel questions. Perhaps the fact that Intuit customers of all ages preferred video augurs an age of the technology leading the generations, not the generations leading the technology choices.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Next, the hosts discussed bringing customers into a lab setting to help design Intuit’s mobile User Interface, or UI. They explained how Intuit tested for colors, back-drops and other key components of the customer experience, leading to many “aha” moments, such as the strong customer preference for video.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another site tour participant asked whether different agent characteristics were required to work with video. The Intuit executive expressed that the most important characteristic was a professional attitude, and that once they got over the initial newness, most agents liked working with video. He did add however, that their agents were not strictly required to be on video, and that if a CS representative was particularly uncomfortable with video, they would find other ways for them to contribute.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The Brand Is King</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The discussion moved to the importance of brand management and building the brand, especially as it relates to customer-facing contact center employees. Specifically, one of the touring executives asked how the contact center represented Intuit’s core values. The Intuit executives present expressed that their organization offered intrinsic benefits such as giving every employee 32 hours a year to pursue a passion, and that egalitarian brand values were modeled from the top down, with minimal levels and an overall Intuit style of transparency across the organization that included the contact center.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Further, Don Yager explained that Intuit contact center employees were valued as not only a key part of the organization and it’s branding, but were considered perhaps the most important part of the organization due to their product knowledge and constant interaction with customers. This was clearly summed up when one of the Intuit tour guides stated that the “front line are the experts” and underscored that they know more than any project manager or engineer. Finally, he noted that the customer care team is regarded as the real talent. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When one of the customer contact executives inquired about the role of demographics in the Intuit contact center, Intuit indicated that they did not currently approach customer care based on demographics, though that is something they plan to observe and test going forward.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Leveraging “Styles of Influence” for Better Teamwork</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The conversation then moved to “Styles of Influence” (SOI) a key training and assessment tool used at Intuit. This measurement tool helps individuals and their co-workers understand key behaviors. Once certain behavioral drivers are determined, this information can be utilized to help others to understand and work with a given style. Style is assessed across cognitive, relational, goal and detail scales. At Intuit, everyone’s SOI is listed in an online directory and SOI’s are used to help identify individual and team strengths and opportunities too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Circling back to the brand discussion, one of the final questions asked pertained to how the brand was reflected in Intuit’s external communications. Tour guides Don Yager and Jeffrey Laird both referenced that Intuit’s branding is carried throughout software experience design and partner sites as well.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Finally, it was noted that Intuit’s senior management recently gave the green light for internal funding to improve Intuit’s infrastructure, including their call center, the heart of customer engagement for this organization and for so many others.</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-23224938096650252362017-06-06T08:05:00.001-07:002017-06-12T05:17:55.510-07:00Digital Innovation with a Soul<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><br /><br /><br />By Hilary Hahn</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Vice President, Employee Experience, Culture & Client Strategy</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><br /><br /><br />It has been said recently that “experience is the new brand.” According to a recent study, by the year 2020 <b>customer experience will overtake price and product </b>as the key brand differentiator.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Our team believes this, and therefore we take the customer approach that <b>“service is the new marketing.”</b> In today’s world, consumers buy products that they expect will </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">simply work, and when they don’t, consumers expect that they will be able to fix the problem by self-help or google; if and when that fails, they reach out to the brand for <b>service and support</b>. This is a defining moment. Sometimes it is the only interaction that occurs between a brand and their consumer. So, service matters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Our ability to consistently solve complex problems for customers, and to also anticipate their future support needs and solve for these as well, is a highly valuable capability that comes at a relatively high cost. Brands want to engage effortlessly and effectively, yet how do they budget for the high volume of customer needs? One of the best ways is to understand why customers contact them. Looking at these big-bucket trends will </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">most often identify lower-value work that does not require a human being to solve. There is no question that low-value, high-volume, repeat interactions can be accomplished with lower-cost digital solutions. Enter the BOT.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But here is our question: while my email in-box is bombarded every day by companies requesting my time to discuss how their new chat-bots, voice-bots, and messaging-apps are poised to take over the way business interacts and supports customers, there are very few companies who are putting a human experience into the digital ones.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One of our team’s cornerstone values is to be human. We make it our business to bring our humanity and empathy with us every day, because ultimately, we know we are supporting people, not just the products they use. Equally, we believe there is a need to build bots with artificial learning capabilities that are grounded in human empathy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It was a giddy moment upon checking in at The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas recently, when I was handed a second plastic key card and informed that this was “Rose”. The black card read:“I AM THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION YOU NEVER ASKED.”On the back of the card I was invited to text my inquiries to a phone number.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I ran to my room determined to ask ROSE all the questions about Vegas that I always wanted to know but were afraid to ask! While I will not share the answers here, I will share the experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Applause to Simon Petigrew and team who are behind this product/service launch, especially because they have created Rose with an appropriately sexy, chatbot-persona. For example,“she” will send you an emoji lip kiss if you have thanked her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Some of her responses are also sassy, i.e., <b>“it’s been a pleasure to have you push my buttons. xoxo.”</b> They have some quirks to work out as the responses to actual questions seem to come in rapid fire, feeling robotic versus human, but they are working on the delivery, and the AI bot is in its early learning phase. I am definitely looking forward to my next visit to The Cosmopolitan to see how ROSE is evolving.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Regarding new technology for the contact center, we are fortunate to have engaged with someone whom I believe is part genius, part artist, and part mad scientist!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>He has put a human face on artificial intelligence injecting emotional intelligence into the equation. Why? Because when humans interact, we want to get "feedback."</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There are a slew of companies offering machine-learning bots today, but none that look, learn and respond in a truly human way yet. This company is building an AI model that is different, not only because of how human “he or she” looks, but primarily because </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">of facial expression. This machine infuses the interactions with a wrinkled nose, a concerned look, a raised eyebrow. And at the right moment, a compassionate smile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As the creator, Mark Sagar, says, <b>“the face is the mirror of the brain.”</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We are excited to think about ways that this technology can transform the customer experience. Our aim is to improve customer retention and loyalty, with a goal to reduce the future need for assisted care with every customer interaction. This involves digital innovation with-a-soul, as much as it requires the cognitive skills that humans offer to solve complex interactions. We are focused on both.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The future is already here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Hilary Hahn excels in building long-term strategic client relationships by operationalizing stakeholder strategy, and uniquely creating customer-experience consultant partnerships. She was brought into Frontier Communications to develop a lean-startup customer experience concept, that grew from greenfield to $100M annual revenue in 3 years. She helped develop a culture of high engagement that is being leveraged across the Frontier customer service organization, building an inside-out employee-centric approach to generate high customer feedback results. She is a strong believer that human-to-human interactions will remain in servicing for high-value cognitive work, and is an AI enthusiast when empathy is attached to the solution.<br /><br />Hilary has been a speaker at numerous industry conferences and can be found<br />publishing and posting opinion surrounding Customer Experience. Follow her at<br /><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilarystrausshahn">https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilarystrausshahn</a> and on Twitter @HilaryHahnNow</i> </span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-21915201137606402132017-05-30T06:23:00.002-07:002017-06-15T02:27:03.605-07:00Moving Toward an Omni Channel Customer Experience:Key Insights from the 13th Annual Customer Contact East: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>By Juan Manuel Gonzalez</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Research Director - Connected <br />Work & Customer Care Industries</i> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The <b>13th Annual Customer Contact East: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange </b>event took place in Fort Lauderdale during the last days of April and featured informative sessions, individual meetings, and lot of networking for industry experts. The following highlights are just a sampling of several ideas and topics discussed during the presentation of my Bostonian colleague, Stephen Loynd.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Presentation:</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Customer Engagement & Data Analytics in a World of </i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Exponential Change</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frost & Sullivan </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Global Program Director, </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Stephen Loynd, explored how technology is imbedding itself into everything, influencing and disrupting our lives in profound ways. Technology is so pervasive and moving so fast that it is altering both business and society. Certainly, this is a time of incredible change. We are experiencing the largest transformation since the end of the Second World War; after the automation of production and the creation of self-driving cars the automation of society is next. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frost & Sullivan conceptualizes the radical change happening in our world as a swarm of new technologies. Everything from new business models to disruptive technologies is making an impact across business functions, industries and geographies. Each outer ring turns and brushes against the one below it, like tectonic plates.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nothing less than a new world is emerging, offering immersive technologies and customer experiences. We are immediately frustrated with people and brands incapable of supporting our digital habits and expectations. To achieve a real-time operational tempo, companies must evolve from ‘human time’ to ‘digital time.’ The result: smarter decisions that enable businesses to operate like never before. One of the biggest challenges enterprises face today is upgrading core IT systems that frequently comprise legacy systems incapable of supporting digital time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Also, our adoption of digital technologies produces oceans of data that are changing the competitive landscape. The amount of data we produce doubles every year. In other words: in 2016 we produced as much data as in the entire history of humankind through 2015. These contain information that reveals how we think and feel. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As digital interactions proliferate, so also does the volume of real-time data and required analysis. Most people are already at their limit of coping with the deluge of data, so we must now digitally augment our capabilities to handle the massive increases in the volume, speed and the complexity of it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, how to deal with this inhuman complexity? In fact, so inhuman, that perhaps it would be better to not have a human, but a bot. Bots are designed and programmed to react in a prescribed way to data inputs. Data is fed into the artificial intelligence (AI) system within the bot, and the bot responds and takes actions as programmed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But, add machine and deep learning, and the bot can learn and make decisions faster and better every nanosecond. A bot can take all possible data inputs needed to analyze and make the best decisions as deep learning systems find patterns and hidden meanings. The more data that it can access and analyze, the more accurately it can predict outcomes. In other words, these software robots (or ‘bots’) can be developed to analyze vast quantities of data, make decisions based on codified decision trees that humans design, and then act on in milliseconds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And so times are changing, consumers as well. Are companies changing fast enough to keep up? Can they deliver a holistic, unified Customer Experience? This is the great question.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Brands today can not only react to customers as they make purchasing decisions but also actively shape those decision journeys. A set of technologies is underpinning this change, allowing companies to design and continuously optimize decision journeys. More important, companies today can use journeys to deliver value to both the customer and the brand. Companies that do this well can radically compress the consideration and evaluation phases—and in some cases even eliminate them—during the purchase process and catapult a consumer right to the loyalty phase of the relationship. The journey itself is becoming the defining source of competitive advantage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Digital leaders will be those organizations that use business analytics to offer deep insights into customer behaviors, wants and needs, develop new products and services, and ultimately innovate and exploit new business opportunities. Today, algorithms know pretty well what we do, what we think and how we feel—possibly even better than our friends and family or even ourselves. The more that is known about us, the less likely our choices are to be free and not predetermined by others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The industry is moving toward omni-channel CX – where the Customer Experience is consistent, seamless, and effortless – whether the customer is interacting with the same channel, or moving between channels. Therein lays the next set of opportunities, but also challenges, for most companies. The key to delivering a seamless Customer Experience lies in omni-channel marketing. Effective omni-channel marketing is about taking control of customer interactions by integrating data from all channels (such as the Web, social media, mobile Web, mobile apps, display and search), devices (such as laptops, tablets, smartphones and desktops), and functional applications (such as customer relationship management and content marketing platforms).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion:</b> <i>Automation & Analytics are keys, but humans are irreplaceable</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Automation is a productivity tool, not a replacement, for humans. Automation tools are only effective if leveraged intelligently – by humans.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Or as Beth Comstock, <i>Vice Chairman,</i> <i>GE,</i> explains: “Exponential leaders use technology to their advantage, combining the power of computing and data with human leadership. They must develop collaborations between people and machines, between artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the people operating in their company, their customers and their executives. Teams that don’t do this will be left behind.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Juan Manuel González serves as Research Director within Frost & Sullivan's Digital Transformation business unit. He focuses on Contact Centers, Business Process Outsourcing and Unified Communications and Collaboration Solutions areas. González has over 11 years of experience in the industry, and his know-how lies in managing strategic consulting projects and regional market intelligence studies in the Enterprise Communications field, as well as monitoring emerging trends, technologies and market dynamics.</i></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-39100224863650330652017-02-06T07:04:00.000-08:002017-02-07T00:41:49.332-08:00Is Your Omnichannel Strategy Customer-Centric or Self-Centric? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>By Raj Sivasubramanian </b><br /><i>Director of Customer Experience Services</i> <br />Verint Systems<br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Omnichannel is an area where many organizations have been investing time and money over the last few years. By enabling seamless communication across online and offline channels, omnichannel strategies should equally benefit both companies and their customers. However, a common mistake many organizations make is taking a self-centric approach to the omnichannel versus a customer-centric one. They build their strategy around internal interests like targeted marketing or reducing contact center costs, and fail to consider the customer perspective. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Consider a recent self-centric omnichannel example from this past holiday season. One of the most sought after holiday items was Nintendo’s NES Classic Edition – a miniature version of Nintendo’s original video game console. Supply was limited as Nintendo underestimated demand for this retro device. I really wanted one for my daughter (and my own nostalgia) and prepared for the morning of its release. I checked online stock at several retailers and noticed one particular retailer had a store with more stock than others. This store was an hour away and while other options were closer, the quantity of stock was significant enough to warrant the longer drive as availability dwindled at closer stores. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On the drive down, I used the retailer’s app to continue to check stock and all looked good. However, once I got to the store, I was disappointed to learn the device sold out several hours earlier. I showed a store manager the app indicating stock was available and was told “those things are never accurate and don’t get updated in real-time.” As I was leaving—disgruntled about wasting over an hour of my time—I received a notification through that same retailer’s app about the latest deals on other electronics items in that store. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What I learned was the retailer wanted me to use its app to get me into the store. Once I was there, its omnichannel approach sent me a targeted ad. The problem with this is that it only served the retailer’s interests and not mine—and, it didn’t care enough to inquire about my in-store experience. Needless to say… I haven’t been back. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another common, self-centric example of omnichannel is found in customer support, where organizations now provide service through a variety of channels: phone, email, chat, SMS, social media, mobile app, etc. In theory, this should create a better service experience by allowing customers to use the channel they prefer. However, it backfires for self-centric organizations that focus purely on cost-saving aspects. These organizations “offer” every channel, but make their more internally-preferred channels easier to find. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There is nothing more frustrating to me than being unable to locate a customer support phone number when I need it. A close second is attempting to resolve an issue through an online channel, failing to do so, struggling to reach a live agent, and then having to start over once I am able to finally connect with someone. A recent study points out that most customers still prefer human customer service interactions over digital alternatives, and aren’t fans of the companies that avoid posting contact numbers for service and support on their websites. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It doesn’t have to be a zero sum game between a company’s internal interests and the customer experience. The most customer-centric organizations are able to use omnichannel to drive revenue and lower costs, while also delivering a better customer experience. How do they do it? It’s actually pretty simple. They view every decision they make through their customers’ eyes and <i>listen </i>to their customers. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What leading organizations have in common is their commitment to engaging with customers. They capture feedback from customers across all of their channels which allows them to better tailor their omnichannel approach to the individual needs of their customers. They know what channels their customers prefer to use, are driving great experiences and which need improvement. As a result, they are able to realize all of the great benefits of omnichannel, while still delighting their customers. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If the retailer in the example above had asked for my feedback about my experience, not only would I have been more likely to return, but it also would have discovered an easily fixable issue with its omnichannel experience that was likely frustrating other customers as well. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Is your omnichannel strategy customer-centric or self-centric? If you’re not capturing feedback from customers across all of your channels, your approach may be more self-centric than you realize. Take that first step toward creating customer-centric experiences by listening to your customers. It may be the start of something amazing. <br /> </span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Raj Sivasubramanian is a Director of Customer Experience Consulting Services for Verint Systems. Prior to his current role, Raj was at eBay where he focused on enhancing Voice of Customer programs by driving a shift from just trending metrics to delivering actionable insights used to improve the customer experience. </span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Raj has worked across multiple industries in a variety of sales, marketing, consulting, and customer experience roles and the one constant throughout his career has been his passion for delivering great customer experiences. Raj is a frequent conference speaker and advisor on the topic of customer-centricity, metrics, and customer feedback. Raj holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.</span></i></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-26563294165992913542017-02-02T04:41:00.000-08:002017-02-10T00:45:35.644-08:00CUSTOMER SERVICE EXCELLENCE RECOGNITION PROGRAM DETAILS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Why a recognition program for customer service excellence?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Digital transformation of customer experiences is a major strategic initiative for B2C and B2B organizations across industries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Frost & Sullivan Research and Growth Consulting practices have identified <b>five
key areas in which best-in-class brands continue to raise the bar for
highly personalized and effortless customer experiences. They are:</b><br /><br /><b>1. Omni-Channel Customer Experience<br />2. Artificial Intelligence<br />3. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Web Customer Experience</span><br />4. Social Media Customer Engagement<br />5. Customer Engagement Analytics</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Who is Eligible for Nomination?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Any company that is engaged in the goal of delivering a superior customer experience is encouraged to nominate itself for accomplishments in any or multiple categories. Particular attention will be given to companies whose achievements have enabled them to set themselves apart from their competitors and that have delivered compelling value to their customers and the enterprise as a whole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By
recognizing companies who are breaking new ground in customer service
excellence, we aim to create a forum for celebrating and sharing best
practices in the world of customer service. Winners will also be honored
at the annual Frost & Sullivan Customer Contact West, Executive
MindXchange in October 2017.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For more information, please contact Matthew McSweegan at <br />516-255-3812, or email him at Matthew.McSweegan@frost.com. <br />Or visit www.frost.com/recognition</span></span><br /><br /> </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-71044304796757584522017-02-02T04:24:00.000-08:002017-02-07T00:46:07.264-08:00Your Employees: Your Key to Success!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>By Trudy Croxton</b><br /><i>Manager of Client Success, Post-Acute Care</i><br />Relias Learning</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As most companies understand, the cost of retaining customers is quite a bit less than the cost of acquiring them. Some estimates put the cost of acquiring a customer at five times more than the costs associated with retaining a customer. With this in mind, companies are always looking for new and better ways to improve customer engagement in an effort to retain customers permanently. In my opinion, the solution is right in front of you: <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">y</span>our employees. Finding the employees who are the best fit for your organization’s culture, and then investing in them, is the key. Employees are the most important tool any organization has to improve customer engagement and retention. <br /><br />First, you must determine what the ideal “employee fit” is for your organization. A good place to start in determining the right fit is by evaluating your company’s mission statement and then choosing those desired characteristics and traits from this established framework to create a hiring profile. Basing a hiring profile on your company’s mission statement will further help you to select potential employees who should naturally exhibit the desired behavior, which in turn will improve customer loyalty. A good Best Practice is to show existing employees what your company’s characteristics and traits look like in action. For example, if “passion” is one of your core values, give them specific examples of how a Sales Representative, Implementation Consultant or Client Success Manager might demonstrate that on the job. <br /><br />A customer’s loyalty is directly tied to the trust they place in your company and this is built through each interaction they have with your employees. To effectively build trust, an employee needs to demonstrate to the customer that they have their best interest at heart and will deliver on promises. Furthermore, an employee’s honesty and authenticity needs to be visible in all interactions. A few ways for employees to show they are putting their customers first is to take a proactive approach. This can be accomplished by giving the customer a “heads up” if the company’s website will be down due to maintenance, announcing mistakes before the customer discovers them, asking customers for feedback and offering multi-channel customer service outlets in the form of online chat, email and telephone. <br /><br />Employees also build trust by delivering on promises in a timely manner. For example, with respect to sales they must deliver on their promises and see that all customer expectations are met or exceeded throughout the sales cycle. Your company can make it a customer service standard to have employees return all email and phone calls within 24 hours. If an issue needs to be escalated, the customer should be given status updates on a regular basis so that they are not initiating the communication. If a customer has to reach out to you first with a problem, that can become a major issue. <br /><br />All customer service staff should be trained to use the same language, thereby creating a unified front. The customer will then learn how to better communicate their own needs by using the same vocabulary as your employees. Implement customer service training to include how to handle challenging customers, critical conversations and emotional hijacking. Consider implementing a recovery process to address a service failure. Another Best Practice is to create a recovery process which will empower employees to resolve a customer’s issue quickly. If you don’t have a recovery process in place, ask a few of your top performers to compose one. <br /><br />Employees who effectively exhibit traits of honesty and authenticity will help the company to more effectively earn their customer’s trust. Customers expect honest communication so be sure employees don’t "gloss over" the truth or give them vague answers. If the answer to a customer’s request is “no,” instruct employees to give them other alternatives wherever possible. Educate your staff on how to promote these types of conversations by creating a script and regularly conducting role playing exercises. Also, teach them how to take ownership of a problem without laying blame on the customer or another company representative. Additionally, employees should never over-promise with respect to what your product can do, or pitch a customer an unnecessary add-on. <br /><br />Authenticity means not giving your customers canned messages. Nothing will make an upset customer even angrier than the perception that they have received an insincere apology from a member of your company. When a customer is upset, for whatever reason, they want to be heard and they want to know that an employee sincerely cares about their problem and will help them find a solution. Empathy is a large part of being authentic. Some ways to promote empathy include inviting customers to share their experiences by participating in staff meetings or conferences. Another way to do this is to, have staff members use a product they are selling themselves, thereby becoming even more familiar with its strengths and weaknesses.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another great way to establish a more personal relationship with customers is to send them a birthday card or work anniversary card, a funny cartoon or a pertinent LinkedIn article. Employees might also send their Enterprise Level customers a questionnaire to complete, featuring such personal questions as what their favorite sports teams are, their hobbies, their favorite place to vacation or what they like best about their job? These questionnaires should give your employees enough details about a given customer to enable them to initiate and better control the conversation.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />Lastly, you should train your employees to be able to catch potential problems before they become “pain points” for your customer. Brainstorm about ways that your support team can become more proactive with your customer base. Another approach to consider is connecting with customers via social media, a monthly newsletter or regular conference calls. The newsletter can contain both employee and customer spotlights. <br /><br />If you want to retain your customers indefinitely, it is important for them to realize how much your company values your relationship with them. Hiring the right employee and teaching them how to build trust and loyalty with customers is of the utmost importance in today's business world. Investing in your employees and offering them top notch training opportunities ultimately shows your customer that you care and that you are providing them with world class service. Properly applied, this formula is sure to bring your company continued success. <br /><br /><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Trudy Croxton is Manager of Client Success at Relias Learning, an e-learning company offering training to the healthcare industry. Previously, she was Executive Director, Sunrise of Cary and Heritage Woods Senior Living Community. Her passion is growing and developing people and she believes that this is the cornerstone for any successful business.</span> </i></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-32352913744328537612017-02-02T04:21:00.001-08:002017-02-07T00:40:32.756-08:00Five Key Customer Engagement Strategies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>By Cippy Seidler</b><br /><i>Director, Consumer Care Center </i><br />Banner Health</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Today’s customers have more ways than ever to purchase services or shop for products. There are also many ways to gain new customers, but the more challenging piece of the puzzle is to engage customers and make them feel like they are a part of your community. To help you meet these goals, I’d like to share my top five customer engagement and community-building strategies:<br /><br /><b>1. Leverage your Contact Center</b><br /><br />In many cases, the contact center is the front door of your organization. This initial experience can determine if the customer makes a purchase or moves forward with your company. It is your first opportunity to engage with your customer. Sharing insights from your contact center with others in the company allows for the customer’s thoughts, concerns and feelings to be heard. <br /><br />One way to share your customer insights is to create a panel where agents provide information on hot customer topics or customer concerns. Few people in your organization are on the pulse more than the contact center agents, yet how much do you ask for or use that information? My organization does surveys to see if the customer enjoyed the agents and had a pleasant and fulfilling experience, which is a critical performance metric, but this needs to be accompanied by the agent experience information. The agents have mountains of information about your customers, your products and the experience. That can be culled through call recordings and data management. A veteran agent however, can tell you a great deal more than you can ever get from the data. The key is to ask for or provide a forum where the agents can share. <br /><br />One of my favorite contact center experiences involved a company that had quarterly meetings in a casual setting between senior executives and a representative agent panel just to talk about what the agents were hearing. This was a powerful opportunity for leadership to learn first-hand about the types of feedback the agents were receiving. <br /><br /><b>2. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Be willing to listen to complaints</span></b><br /><br />Yep, this one hasn’t changed in the last 30 years! Not listening to your customers or interrupting your customers is a way to actively disengage your customers. They have many choices and that can quickly drive them away. It is surprising just how many times a customer challenge can be resolved simply by listening. Sometimes it is a case of allowing the customer to vent, no matter how long that takes. Listening takes effort and concentration. It also takes some time, so allow your agents or customer service reps the time without “over metric managing” to complete the interaction. That little extra time pays for itself in the end with first call resolution, minimizing additional follow up needs, less angry social media rants etc.… These types of interactions are not limited to the phone or in-person. More and more are exclusively happening on social channels so you must be prepared to listen wherever the customer is “speaking.”<br /><br /><b>3. Invite your customers to your social community</b><br /><br />Social Media is an amazing gift that companies have been given. The key is taking advantage of it. Most companies today know the importance of responding to customer posts but there are still many who are missing the vast opportunities that Social Media groups provide. Why not start on-line groups about products or services that are relevant to many of your customers? <br /><br />Allow your customers to participate in groups on Facebook or Google, for example. It seems frightening at first to invite this kind of open discourse but as the groups mature and more customers join, the feedback will be more actionable and helpful for your company and your customers. <br /><br />No matter what industry you are in, customers will provide you with information that you can take action on immediately as well: Customers sharing information about a defective product or a company store with understaffed return lanes, the clinic with the most responsive and timely call backs, the customer service rep who was consistently rude, or the agent that provided empathy and caring when handling a delicate situation. This is a way that customers can provide feedback directly to you. There are not many engagement tools more powerful than that. You can help control where that feedback comes from by creating forums for them to share. Customers want to feel good about their purchase or service and the easiest way to engage them in this arena is to ask them for their feedback and allow them to be a part of your community.<br /><br /><b>4. Find out about your customers</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />No one does this better than Amazon since they seem to know what you want before you actually know you want it, but many smaller companies can use basic analytics programs to understand how and when customers are shopping or using their services. Be sure to tie information together whenever possible. <br /><br />One of the easiest and least expensive ways to engage your customers is by asking them. I was recently at a new dentist’s office. After the basic information was gathered, they asked me about what times of day and day of the week that I preferred to come in. Since I didn’t have another appointment to schedule, I asked if that was important and they said that they input that information to ensure that they are servicing customers when they need it and when it’s most convenient for them. (I’m in!) They also followed up with a brief survey about my experience, which allowed me to provide feedback. I felt that they were truly interested in me as a customer and in my opinion. I am much more engaged with the office than I would have been had they not asked for my thoughts and I am also more likely to return.<br /><br /><b>5. Make your content worthwhile</b><br /><br />Customers become engaged when they have an opportunity to learn about the product they purchased. For instance, when I bought a new brand of phone, I went to the company website to learn about tips to enhance my user experience. Accordingly, make sure that your web content is robust and connects your customer to your organization more fully. For example, if your customer purchases new tires from you, your website could share tips for lengthening tire life or the hours of local free air pressure checks. If you’re in healthcare, and someone does a search for an obstetrician referral, why not present them with content related to the topic such as OB tours available in their area or a local educational session you are doing on childbirth?<br /><br />There is an old service saying that to keep a customer demands as much skill as to win one. Engaging the customer in your business, making them part of your community and listening to their feedback are a few ways to add value to your customer experience and keep them coming back.<br /><br /><i>Cippy Seidler is an enthusiastic and engaged leader focused on providing a high-level customer experience through employee engagement and a commitment to excellence. In the span of 29 years, Cippy has served in leadership positions with retail organizations such as Liz Claiborne, Allen-Edmonds, and Zayre with a specialized focus on front-end customer engagement and retention, employee training and sales development. <br /><br />Currently a Director of the Consumer Care Center with Banner Health, one of the largest, nonprofit health care systems in the country, she is responsible for driving performance across multiple service lines. As a certified Change Agent, Cippy is an advocate for change and is involved in leading and implementing change. Cippy's business philosophy is to embrace every challenge as an opportunity, approach it with enthusiasm, an open mind and a desire to make a positive difference. </i><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-81520498270734439282016-11-14T02:29:00.000-08:002016-11-14T02:29:00.900-08:00Using Big Data Text Analysis to Determine Profitability Drivers – How to Measure and Manage the Customer Experience in the 21st Century<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Professor Phil Klaus</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>International University of Monaco</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">INSEEC Research Center</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Managers around the globe recognize the importance of customer experience (CX) measurement and management as the ultimate success driver for their business.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yet, a major problem is that despite an understanding of the importance of customer relationships to a company’s success and an enthusiastic embrace of customer experience management, many managers do not have a good understanding of what customer experience management entails, nor do they know precisely what they must do to achieve success. As a matter of fact, 9 out of 10 CX programs are not profitable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That is why the introduction of a new text-analytic-based measurement is both important and timely. Businesses that recognize how complex the process of designing, managing and measuring customer experience can be are provided with a clear step-by-step approach based upon the latest research and many years of previous work dedicated to this task.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The CX meta-mining approach, incorporating the successful application of the EXQ scale, can enable executives to move faster and outperform their competitors. CX meta-mining provides a useful guide, and addresses the three most pressing questions managers face today:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Where are we currently in terms of managing and measuring customer experience? </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Where do we want to be?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And most important, how do we get there?</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>The measurement delivers the answer to these questions </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The development of CX meta-mining was driven by client needs to enrich the knowledge gained through EXQ with existing data and leverage what their customers really thought about them. By this we mean what drives their purchasing behavior, their Share-of-Category (SoC), and ultimately, businesses profitability. EXQ, the comprehensive measurement for CX, highlights these individual drivers in terms of importance. It lists which parts of your customers‘ experience drives how much money they spent with you versus your competitors, as illustrated in the example in table 1. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Table 1 EXQ Example SoC Drivers with Competitor Comparison</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">EXQ allows managers to dissect the reasons for all purchasing decisions, including your competitors. It allows you to clearly identify actionable trends, as, in the example above, the importance of the ‘human’ and ‘emotional’ factor in a perceived long-term, not just sale-based relationship. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Managers, however, often have often difficulty determining the exact meaning of, for example, ‘Your company demonstrates flexibility in dealing with me.’ CX meta-mining delivers a coherent platform allowing all team members to easily understand what a specific EXQ item means and which actions to engage in to increase SoC, and which actions to avoid to decrease SoC. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">CX meta-mining is particularly useful for analyzing already existing market research, Most existing customer experience measurements are based on static, survey tools. CX, however is dynamic in nature, requiring dynamic tools to match. The use of mobile apps to capture customer experience by using a “diary” approach is still in its infancy, but shows huge promise. This can be taken one step further by developing CX meta-mining, based upon EXQ-profitability-driver knowledge as a dynamic, multimodal measurement approach, capturing traditional ratings, text, pictures, voice and videos. The combination of EXQ and CX meta-mining gives managers the tools for their business not only to survive, but to thrive in a customer-dominated world. How does it work? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">CX meta-mining collects data – and makes sense of it – in real-time. Using techniques developed in health research a collection of ‘live’ CX data from consumers, is embedded while they are participating in their customer experience. Stated simply, CX meta-mining involves isolating relevant strings from documents, computing co-occurrence between strings at different levels, and examining the topology of the resulting network. Visual data is analyzed using basic feature extraction and labeling techniques. Survey ratings are also collected to capture CX. Importantly, this collection format allows one to cross-link all three data types for richer and finer-grained analysis of CX. For example, prominent themes extracted from the text and visual data can be linked to more focused rating questions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rather than looking for ‘hotspots’ or ‘word counts,’ CX meta-mining makes sense of what is being said and relates it to the important question ‘will this make my (existing and potential) customers buy more (and more often) from me rather than from my competitor? EXQ and meta-mining give therefore every single person in the company clear – and easy to follow – rules on what drives profitability, what it means in terms of how the customer perceives their experience, and what to do and not to do (see screenshot below). In summary, the combination of EXQ and CX meta-mining delivers the most advanced, scientifically-based tool to measure and manage a more profitable customer experience program.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Professor Phil Klaus is considered one of the leading Customer Experience and Marketing Strategy experts worldwide. He is Professor of Customer Experience at the International University of Monaco INSEEC Research Center, founder of Dr. Phil Klaus & Associates Consulting, Professor of Customer Experience and Marketing Strategy, bestselling author of “Measuring Customer Experience – How to Develop and Execute the Most Profitable Customer Experience Strategies,” and holds multiple visiting professorships around the globe. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>His award-winning research has appeared in numerous books, and a wide range of top-tier academic and managerial journals. Phil is a frequent keynote speaker at public and in-company seminars and conferences around the world. He is an experienced manager and management consultant with an active, international portfolio of Blue-Chip clients for whom he advises on customer experience strategy, profit enhancement, 'next practice,' and business development. Phil may be reached at: pklaus@monaco.edu</i></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-63636161075752559492016-11-14T02:22:00.000-08:002016-11-16T06:09:52.059-08:00You’re Invited: Exclusive Kohl’s Site Tour for Customer Contact Executives and Colleagues! Act now--Registration limited to the first 50 respondents<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Customer contact industry executives and business colleagues are cordially invited to attend a Kohl’s Site Tour on February 8, 2017 in Dallas, Texas. This informative event will feature an in-depth, behind the scenes look at a new contact center that is:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Large, open and progressive</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On the pulse of omni-channel and self-service</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Specifically designed to foster collaboration </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The day will begin with a networking breakfast at 9am, after which attendees will move on to the contact center site tour from 10am until noon. From noon until 1pm, participants will enjoy an executive roundtable luncheon featuring a recap of key tour insights and take-aways as well as a formal discussion on <b>Omni-Channel Customer Engagement</b>. Participants will benefit from peer to peer networking and idea exchanges at this timely roundtable discussion. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is a great opportunity for customer contact executives and colleagues to enjoy and learn from an up close view of Kohl's state-of-the-art customer service space, operations and philosophy. <b>The tour is open to council members and others in the customer contact industry, but will be at capacity at 50 people, so please register soon and spread the word!</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>For registration, hotel recommendations and more information, please contact Matt McSweegan at</b> matthew.mcsweegan@frost.com or 516-255-3812 for details. Or contact us at <b>events.us@frost.com</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>*Please note, may not be open to all organizations due to non-disclosure restrictions</i></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-84378605530856949882016-11-14T02:14:00.001-08:002016-11-15T00:27:53.689-08:00Six Leads for Getting Customers on Your Side<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Petra Mengelt</b><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Director, Customer Experience </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Euroloan Group Plc</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Think of this article as an intense training session where there is no PowerPoint show, instead there is an energetic woman standing right up front. With a marker in her hand and a relatively interesting drawing right behind her that makes sense only to people present. She is involving the audience, her mind jumping up and down as in a game of tennis. There are short stories flipped around, things you may actually be able to remember.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What is she saying about customers? She is a strong believer in a can do-spirit that is immediately apparent at her company, a rapidly growing international FinTech group, headquartered in Helsinki, Finland. A couple of years ago they said they were going to challenge the business; these days, they are doing it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The woman you are imagining giving you a training session is me, Petra Mengelt, a customer experience director at Euroloan Group PLC. I want to challenge the traditional online banking service and instead provide a personal, digital experience, one that customers remember and are willing to recommend. I have over fifteen years of lean management experience in the aerospace and metals industry, as well as entrepreneurship and customer service management experience in the USA and in Europe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For over a decade, I have trained hundreds of people, from entry level employees all the way to board members on how to improve their attitude. I have also tried to provide all my audiences with a broader understanding of the importance and value of working throughout the organization to achieve the same goals. Currently, I have my hands full with the group’s new financial technology company, Jolt Bank. I am creating a world class customer experience for great customers-to-be. One must be fearless as every pilot and development project confronts us with unexpected challenges with no ready answers, and there is no standard hand book of ready answers to follow. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Now, I will give you six leads into winning customers to your side. So, listen carefully. I believe that sharing our vision and listening to customer feedback carefully can spice things up. Dull is never exciting, hence the opposite. This is why customer experience success needs a recipe! And did you know, our recipe is not a secret. We encourage you to come along and bring your appetite for success.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>MOTIVATION </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Everything starts with motivation. Whatever it is that you do, do it with passion and attention to quality. If you are truly interested in something, half of what you do is purely your enthusiasm, your attitude. However, now comes the “but” part: being just casually interested in something is not enough these days. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>TRAINING</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nothing works efficiently with mediocre minds. Do not let the trends overtake you. When an enterprise has people with a known capacity level serving the customer, we must understand that each employee needs support with the best tools and training material available. As change is constant, new opportunities arrive at an increasing rate and threaten to pass left and right: unless we grab the next opportunity to make new growth, we may as well count ourselves out. How an agent, for instance, deals with a customer, with what attitude and approach, how the know-how and competence are aligned, makes the difference today. I want to see smiles even at 2am in the morning. We run in a 24/7 world for all of our customers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>DELETE BUTTON</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I work with our customers and their feedback. I tell everyone to share the information. Why? Because it may be that one little piece of information that you think is not that important, may connect things into “this makes sense now” for someone else. And, it should be relatively easy to push that delete button if you did not need to know something. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I also network across borders and throughout our business disciplines. I love to hear what’s new in international circles, form the hottest new luxury brand’s mind-set straight through to the largest European investment banks’ customer experience. Oftentimes the best ideas come to you from unexpected quarters. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>MAKING MISTAKES</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Assumptions are sometimes necessary to move forward with a project, but if those assumptions are without solid basis they will lead to mistakes and incorrect decisions. If we are afraid of making any mistakes ever, we become too careful, and that is not good either, is it? Let’s forget about titles: instead in a start up, everyone has the opportunity to lead the orchestra, be a detective, a housekeeper, a runner, a listener, and even a mother at times. Be aware and understand the little nuances in people and help them to achieve their best results. It can be quite challenging to accustom one’s self to the idea that there are no ready answers. The start-up world brings a tremendous amount of empowerment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>INVOLVING</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I am an advocate of involving all organizational layers to participate in customer experience. To understand customer centricity is not only connecting the service to customers, but making everyone at the company responsible for the result. “This is not my responsibility, I don’t know how” is something I am not willing to listen to. Instead, I challenge you to ask: “Please, teach me how!” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Customer experience is an interesting function because in the end it touches on all company functions from employees, to customers and management, to investors. Effective customer experience leadership demands a dynamic voice to communicate the journey to all affected parties. Customer experience is also about how our employees experience the work they do. Think of it as this way: when one has fun at work, and on top of that, one is also motivated, a better outcome is inevitable. Happy employees generate better ideas, that is just a fact.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>A LITTLE FUN</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Euroloan currently renewed their five-year strategy, where they concluded that their employees should feel excited about the coming work week, already on the Sunday evening. The idea is to engage the workforce from the office staff to the top, and create an inspired and inspiring workplace, with an energy that customers can feel. I believe that I can give the European world of fintech banking a little bit of that American “great wonderful” spice: we merely need to Europeanize it first. Every customer contact is an opportunity to create an emotional trigger.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>HARD WORK</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In the end, there is no secret, it is all about hard work. Give the full one hundred percent, do not multi task and be present. And dare to say no if you cannot do it. My nine-year-old daughter, Sara, just interrupted me a few weeks back and said something that made me think. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">She said, as nicely as a child can, in a matter of a fact voice, “Mom, can you please look me in the eye when you talk to me and not play with your phone while we are trying to have a conversation?” </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Based on continuously measured customer satisfaction surveys, Euroloan has been able to build up customer experience to double digit percentages. In commonly measured surveys of satisfaction, Euroloan finds itself almost without peer in the online banking industry, posting satisfaction levels that the likes of major names in Europe would envy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Petra Mengelt is the Head of Customer Experience at Jolt Bank, an organization dedicated to identifying the real needs of customers and building trusted relationships with customers. She is passionate about involving all organizational layers to participate in the customer experience journey and believes that customer experience doesn’t function via a rigid top-down command structure; rather, greater results are achieved when one empowers employees to influence the results. She puts a high emphasis on challenging traditional banking by well done, world class digital customer experience. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Petra is also the Director of Customer Experience at Euroloan Group Plc, in Finland where she is responsible for the customer experience throughout the customer journey. She has led Euroloan Consumer Finance’s customer experience for the past five years. Prior to entering the world of financial innovation, she worked in the aerospace and metals industries in the US and Europe. She is also an entrepreneur. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Petra invites you to join her on LinkedIn and follow her on Twitter </span></i></span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b><i>@petrataan</i></b></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-46369221518733429782016-11-07T02:30:00.004-08:002016-11-08T01:45:30.225-08:00Consumer Affairs, T-Mobile and Vodafone Receive Top Honors At Customer Service Excellence Recognition Celebration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Winners of the 2016 Customer Service Excellence Program Awards announced earlier this year gathered at JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort & Spa in Tucson, AZ, for a gala breakfast awards ceremony to be recognized for their outstanding achievements. From among the winners, the program’s distinguished panel of expert judges selected Vodafone, T-Mobile and Consumers Affairs as the high achievers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Vodafone was named the High Achiever in Omni Channel Customer Engagement for excellence in current and future customer engagement capabilities in traditional and digital channels. Bobbie Bichel, Senior Manager, Customer Presales and Service, accepted on behalf of Vodafone. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In the Customer Analytics category, Consumer Affairs was named high achiever for excellence in leveraging analytics to deliver differentiated customer experiences, while driving improvements in operational KPIs for the organization. Eric Jenkins, Chief Operations Officer, accepted on behalf of Consumer Affairs. Consumer Affairs was also named the high achiever in the Web Customer Experience Category, for excellence in web self-service, chat, and integrated customer collaboration and support capabilities. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">T-Mobile was named High Achiever for excellence in social media customer service. This includes internal channels such as customer communities and support forums, as well as external channels such as Facebook and other social media sites. Michelle Mattson, Director of Social Media Care, accepted on behalf of T-Mobile. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Other Winners were also honored:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>StubHub</b> – Accepting on behalf of StubHub is Mary Hill, Manager, Customer Service and Social Media for social media excellence</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Dollar Shave Club</b> – Accepting on Behalf of Dollar Shave Club is Ken Mirch, Director of Member Services, for omni channel customer experience</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Rocana</b> – Accepting on Behalf of Rocana is Melissa Hueman, Director of Customer Success, for omni channel customer experience </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>About The Customer Service Excellence Recognition Program </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Customer Service Excellence Recognition Program, made possible through the coordination of the Frost & Sullivan Customer Engagement Digital Transformation practice, Frost & Sullivan Research Insights practice and the Frost & Sullivan Customer Contact Executive MindXchange, honors companies and individual leaders that are shaping the future of Customer Service. Honored recipients have demonstrated achievement in one or more of five categories: Omni-channel Customer Experience, Mobile Customer Care, Web Customer Experience, Social Media Customer Engagement and Customer Engagement Analytics. There are several honorees in each category, from which one Highest Achiever in each category is identified. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Companies are vetted through a rigorous two-stage evaluation process. The initial stage involves the completion of a questionnaire application. Questions posed will range from customer engagement capabilities to business outcomes. Entrants are free to apply in one or more categories, provided responses are complete for each section.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Qualifying companies will then progress to the second stage for evaluation by a judging panel consisting of experts from the industry and Frost & Sullivan research analysts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For more information about the Customer Service Excellence Recognition Program, please go to www.frost.com/recognition.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-9040907352374952282016-11-07T02:27:00.001-08:002016-11-15T00:30:41.937-08:00Decentralize Quality Assurance and Take Performance to the Next Level<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Centralized quality teams are a common organizational design strategy in the contact center industry today and have been for years. There are articles, best practices, and benchmarking that will tell you how to do it, how often to do it, and what to do with the results. But, if you ask the front line service representative what they think about it, you will often discover the pitfalls of these programs…</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Not enough calls are audited to make the score a true representation of their contribution.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The score does not align with the feedback they get from clients.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The scores feel punitive. Fear of a bad score becomes a motivator.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The coaching they receive is based on the points and the score, which isn’t adding value.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Career discussions lead to this comment…“It makes me feel like I am in a job, not a career.”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Human nature is such that people will behave in ways that conform to the audit to prevent a low score, leaving individual creativity and problem solving behind in devotion to this conformity.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Attainment of the coveted 100% score comes with little fanfare, because that is the expectation. As a result of the high score, there is no performance dialogue because the CSR did everything “right.” <i>Unfortunately, this “keep up the good work” mentality does not drive sustained and improved performance</i>.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Our advice to you… scrap the status quo and throw that form away. Your service representatives and customers will thank you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, what other approaches are there to escape the status quo? How can the process be designed to build service skills and develop staff from a customer experience perspective? How do you fund an alternative design that accomplishes these objectives?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Let’s dig in! We will oversimplify our approach a little in this article in order to make a point, but the strategy can be applied in increasingly complex organizations…in fact, it is more effective as complexity increases. For illustration purposes, let’s take a 98 seat contact center that is focused on incoming calls. The team, with support and overhead, looks like this today…</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Each manager has 18 direct reports and provides career coaching and performance management. The Quality Assurance Team (QA Team) listens to calls, completes audit sheets, provides feedback to the manager, and may provide feedback to the front line customer service representatives (CSRs).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">These arrangements, while common, produce quality scores that are not in alignment with customer satisfaction scores, net promoter scores, customer effort scores, and don’t ensure the delivery of an intended service experience. Rather, they ensure compliance to scripting, adherence to soft skill training, and create an environment that feels punitive and is focused on a number, rather than a set of behaviors that lead to results the enterprise needs to attain. <i>They don’t allow the contact center to be a strategic asset, rather they keep the status quo alive, enable stagnation, and label the center as a “necessary expense” (i.e. a target for expense reduction).</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Let’s consider an alternative organizational design with the same headcount…</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In this design, we have decentralized the Quality Assurance Team and created embedded coaching positions. The next step in the process is developing those coaches on behavioral based coaching philosophies, creating a coaching plan (discussed below), and setting new expectations on service delivery in the performance management review process. This is the beginning of creating a coaching-centric culture that will generate the following benefits…</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Coaches that build relationships with front line CSRs and create trust in the development of behaviors that drive quality. The score is no longer relevant, but by addressing the core behaviors, you get the quality by default. That quality manifests itself in customer satisfaction scores, net promoter scores, and customer effort scores, which drives value to the enterprise.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Creation of a coaching plan, which is a living document that focuses on the behaviors that are being developed currently. As behaviors change and new behaviors become the focus, the coaching plan shows the development path of a CSR throughout time and becomes a natural fit with the performance review process. The behaviors are based on core competencies that are set at the organizational level and tie directly to the goals of the contact center, as well as the goals of the enterprise.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As the organization continues to transform and focuses on continuous improvement, the coaching-centric model allows for sustainment of benefits. So often, you hear leaders talk about an improvement initiative that generated great benefits that subsequently faded away, returning the organization to a previous undesirable state. By setting best practices and utilizing your coaching network to reinforce the behaviors and standards that have been implemented, you sustain the benefits of change…and you can speed up your efforts to transform faster and better than with the previous organizational model.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">All this being said, humans still like to measure themselves…so how can we replace the quality score with something meaningful? This is where customer satisfaction scores come in. A good majority of contact centers have post-call surveys and utilize a tool that reports results at the individual CSR level. So, if a score of some type is still desired, the customer satisfaction score becomes a natural fit with the new organizational design and quality strategy. Further, by designing your post-call survey with questions about CSR satisfaction, likelihood to recommend, and overall effort expended, you can report out on CSR effectiveness, Net Promoter Score, and the Customer Effort score…three major drivers of satisfaction and loyalty for your enterprise. Additionally, if you have the ability to allow front line CSRs to listen to their own recorded calls, you can add an element of self-development to this process…making the strategy even more effective with a higher level of accountability.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But what about the old form…does it still have a purpose in the new coaching-centric organization? Here’s an idea to think about the process differently…alter the audit form and use it as a tool for the front line to provide feedback on the quality of coaching they receive. This adds a new level of accountability on the coaching layer of the organization and ensures the benefit from the investment in their development continues to be sustained. But that is another article.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">James (Jim) LeMere is Director of Integrated Client and Field Services (ICFS) in the Insurance and Annuity Client Services (IACS) Department at Northwestern Mutual. Jim is responsible for the direction and oversight of the people that service over 1.5 million calls and transactions for life insurance policies and their policy owners. Since joining IACS in May of 2014, LeMere has been charged with leading ICFS through a cultural transformation that supports Continuous Learning & Improvement (CL&I) activities and seeks a balance between process improvements and respect for people. <br /><br />Prior to coming to Northwestern Mutual, LeMere held a variety of roles within the insurance and hospitality industries. He started in the sales field with Prudential, then later moved to the home office environment in operations with Lincoln Financial Group, LeMere’s experience continued in the insurance industry at Conseco Insurance Group and in the hospitality industry at Great Wolf Resorts and has been focused on process improvement and re-engineering, while driving employee engagement, customer experience, and cost efficiency. <br /><br />Jeremy Lewandowski is an Operations Consultant focused on strategy and analytics related to blended contact centers at Northwestern Mutual. His responsibilities include contact center technology, reporting, impact analysis, staffing strategies, and best practices proliferation across the organization. </span></span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Prior to joining Northwestern Mutual, Lewandowski held a number of roles within contact center operations at the online retailer BuySeasons Inc. Starting as a Service Representative, he moved progressively into leadership roles within the contact center from workforce management to training to QA Supervisor and eventually to Operations Manager. As Operations Manager, he helped drive efficiency and improved client satisfaction for <a href="http://www.buycostumes.com/">www.Buycostumes.com</a> and <a href="http://www.celebrateexpress.com/">www.CelebrateExpress.com</a>,</span></span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><i>leading to J.D. Power customer satisfaction awards in 2011 and 2012.</i></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-16715291275291213672016-07-25T06:27:00.006-07:002016-07-25T09:01:56.629-07:00Five Best Practices for a Seamless Customer Experience<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /><br />Lisa Bullen-Austin</b><br /><i>National Director for 2-1-1 Strategic Enhancements <br />and Disaster Recovery </i><br />United Way Worldwide<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Whether your organization is focused on the federal, corporate or non-profit arena, your customers expect a seamless experience when they interact with you. Across every industry, customers and clients want to be treated with respect, intelligence and empathy….with a technological infrastructure that supports that. So, why not empower your customer service team to implement and follow these best practices for an exceptional, end-to-end customer experience?</span></span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Meet customers where they are</b> – The world of social services is complex and challenging to navigate. There are lots of eligibility requirements and criteria and acronyms. Make sure you choose your language and choice of words to meet your clients where they are. If they are new to finding help in the health and human services or social services arena, always refer to their basic need but be mindful to never assume the client knows more or knows less. Ask if they would like to provide an overview, or if they are comfortable going ahead without it. Constantly check for understanding and look for queues that indicate that they need more or less support or information.</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>No wrong door</b> – It is important to have subject matter experts and skill based routing, but it is equally as important to have some basic cross training across the business. This is helpful for unanticipated spikes in attrition and also for spikes in volume that were not forecast.. When transferring the call to the SME, make sure to share the client’s story to the new agent, use systems that allow necessary information to be transferred or accessed easily beyond the initial intake. No one likes having to repeat themselves. If someone has to repeat their story, they are left with the impression they originally entered the “wrong door.”</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Voice of the customer</b> – At the end of the day, you have a business to run or a service to provide. Your Quality Assurance scorecard needs to include things that optimize the operations, so AHT and ATT are very important. Scorecards also need to include indicators that measure the voice of the customer. Aside from the business needs, one must balance the customer needs. Did the customer feel supported and listened to or did they feel rushed off the phone? Did the agent ask permission before placing the caller on hold? Did they validate the client by paraphrasing and seeking to ensure they understood the client? Did they confirm that the client understands how you are going to help them? Most importantly, does the client have a sense of resolution or feel empowered to continue toward a resolution. Make sure to coach staff to always be in the shoes of the client at all times. </span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Data Analytics</b> – Anticipate trends and needs. There is lots of data at your fingertips and it is important to use it to your advantage. Learn and anticipate your client’s needs. Layer your data with external data sources. What does the data tell you? Do you need to look at new verticals or avenues of services? Do you need to look for new funding streams to better position your organization in meeting the needs of the clients? Most importantly your clients will appreciate you anticipating their needs and being proactive in your services to them.</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Client experience starts the moment they initiate contact</b> - Customers form their impression of service through multiple interactions with an organization. Is your IVR simple to understand and use for your client base? Is the voice recording reflective of your organization or is it mechanical? Does your technology address all your clients or is it geared only to millennials? A client’s overall satisfaction or lack of satisfaction will come from their overall experience in using your services both technology and human. Don’t focus only on the agent, focus on the technology as well. It is important to manage the overall end-to-end experience.</span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Lisa Bullen-Austin is the National Director for 2-1-1 Strategic Enhancements and Disaster Recovery at United Way Worldwide. United Way Worldwide (UWW) is the national leadership organization for the U.S. network of 1,200 state and local United Way community organizations that serve as conveners, collaborators and leaders of collective impact in their communities. For the last six years, Lisa has lead the 2-1-1 network establishing best practices, implementing KPI’s and securing nationwide opportunities on behalf of the U.S. network. As the National Director, Lisa leverages the capabilities and capacity of many 2-1-1 organizations to provide a single platform and nationwide access to those in need. <br /><br />Lisa has an extensive background in business re-engineering and over 15 years of experience designing and implementing Service Delivery Strategies in the federal, corporate and nonprofit arenas. Additionally, Lisa has 20 years’ experience in Contact Center Program Management and holds BA Degree from York University.</i></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-3079166550534616272016-07-21T08:59:00.000-07:002016-07-29T03:25:40.492-07:00Finally, a Connection Between Customer Service On Twitter And Actual ROI<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dan Gingiss</b><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Co-Host</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Focus on Customer Service Podcast</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It’s easy to understand that customer service in social media, as in any other channel, is conceptually a good idea. Assigning a quantifiable ROI to it, however, is another story. That’s what Wayne Huang, a researcher at Twitter, decided to tackle with what began as a pet project to examine that “electrifying moment of happiness” when a brand responds to a customer on Twitter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“The majority of people are not getting any responses from brands,” says Huang, which is something Twitter is trying to change. The goal of his research? “Prove out that customer service has actual value.” That value comes in the form of a significant increase in “willingness to pay” after a brand responds on Twitter – a willingness that persists even months later.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“You’re just not expecting someone to reach out and help you on a public medium like this,” says Huang. “There’s definitely something that registers deep inside people’s emotions, and they remember it and are willing to pay more for it.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">How much more are they willing to pay? $9 to airlines, on average, but if the response is super-fast – within 6 minutes – that number jumps to nearly $20. “To get responses back quickly – people remember that, because it’s just busting through expectations,” says Huang. But, he adds, “every minute really counts here” because the dollar amount falls quickly as the response time increases.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Customers who received responses from brands “felt overwhelmingly much more positive towards the brand” vs. those who did not receive a response. “Even just acknowledging someone’s tweet, even if you can’t solve it at that moment, that can really add a lot of value,” Huang notes. “When you do respond, it’s a strong social signal that [your brand] really takes customers very seriously… It takes just a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Huang’s research is important to Twitter because it also established a direct link between customer service responses and higher satisfaction with Twitter as a platform.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“We just want to get users to have more positive interactions with brands because that’s really where we think the light bulb goes off for users and they’re like, ‘Oh, this is what makes Twitter so unique and different’” from other social media platforms, Huang says.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Last year, Twitter published a playbook called Customer Service on Twitter. and Huang's colleague, Jeff Lesser, talked about it here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When asked for his advice for brands, Huang quoted Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey: “Expect the unexpected, and whenever possible, be the unexpected.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hear more from Huang’s interview with Focus on Customer Service co-hosts Dan Gingiss and Dan Moriarty. by listening to Episode 27 below:</span>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here are some of the key moments of the interview and where to find them:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">1:02 How and why Wayne decided to research customer service at Twitter</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">5:10 The paradigm shift of increasing customer expectations</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">7:57 The methodology of Wayne’s customer service study</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">13:28 How replying to Tweets can directly impact revenue</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">15:06 Why is customer service so important to Twitter?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">16:32 How response time impacts revenue potential</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">19:18 What should small businesses take from this research?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">20:54 How responding to Tweets drives higher satisfaction than other channels</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">22:56 The difference between response time and resolution time</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">24:18 Why satisfied Twitter users are twice as likely to talk about the brand with friends and family</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">25:37 What Wayne is looking forward to researching next</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">27:14 Wayne’s advice to brands given the results of his research</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">31:20 How is the customer service landscape going to change on Twitter?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If you’ve experienced great customer service on Twitter or another social channel, let me now in the comments below and I'll try to get that brand on a future episode.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Dan is a marketing and customer experience executive with a broad skill set and demonstrated success in every role. He is an elite strategic thinker leading cross-functional teams and integrating marketing and CX across multiple channels. Dan’s areas of expertise include digital marketing strategy, social media, customer service, rewards/loyalty programs and product management. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Dan Gingiss is a Marketing & Customer Experience Executive, Podcaster, and Social Customer Service Thought Leader. Follow him @dgingiss</i></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-43493377506021480012016-07-21T08:50:00.001-07:002016-07-25T09:00:57.012-07:00Reducing Customer Effort Can Help Build Value for Your Brand<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Cecelia MacLellan</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Director, Contact Center Operations</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Staples</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Reducing customer effort is critical in our age; our time has become more valuable, in many cases outweighing the need to reduce cost. Reducing your customer’s effort (perceived or actual) can build significant value for your brand.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On a recent business trip I was presented with a unique opportunity to observe customer service and in particular customer effort in action. Unfortunately the effort was mine and the service…</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here are the highlights of the scenario: 2 cancelled flights, 1 overbooked plane, a friendly contact center associate who booked me for the wrong day and 26 hours in a city which was not my destination. I missed the meetings that I flew out on Mother’s day to attend. I just wanted to go home. As a bonus, when I called my hotel to cancel my reservation and shared that I was stuck in a different city the attendant’s response was – “It’s after 6 pm so you’ll have to pay for the night, you have to call before 6 to cancel.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Next day at the airport, I took my ticket to the attendant who let me know that I was in fact not booked for tonight’s flight but rather rebooked for tomorrow’s 6:00 pm. After looking into my file she shared with me, smiling conspiratorially, that someone was getting a note on their file for <i>that mistake</i>. Being in the CS industry I said “I’m sure it was an oversight”, no she told me, he had you booked in business class – and that’s a NO NO. What I heard in my head was <i>“Who cares that you were booked on the wrong day, I caught someone giving away leg room and a hot towel!”</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Seeing her as my only hope to get home I asked to be put on the next available flight. I waited while she called her supervisor. <i>Keep in mind there is a counter and 2 feet separating us at this point. </i>The conversation sounds like this “I have a customer here, and she <b><i>says</i></b> <i>that she asked for the flight this evening but was booked for tomorrow, hmm OK, Thanks.</i>”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>The attendant then moved forward 6 inches, I guess because I couldn’t hear her behind the invisible wall of <b>Talking to my Supervisor </b>and tells me “You are just lucky that my supervisor is in a good mood.” I didn’t really feel lucky at that moment.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As service professionals we hope that that we can be continuously learning. <i>Here is what I learned from the experience:</i></span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Focus on the basics - Business Class would have been great, but I didn’t want to be wowed, I wanted to get to where I was going. </i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Make me feel valued - I wouldn’t be at your counter or on your phone if everything went as planned. I don’t want to do extra work so please don’t make me feel I’m putting you out by asking for help.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Let me know you heard me - The hotel reminded me to let the customer know you’ve listened, that you want my business. I would have liked the fee waived, but that wasn’t why I was calling. Empathize.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Present alternatives - If you “can’t” solve my problem the way that I want, present alternatives in a positive way, say no if you need too but please, don’t make me feel that it’s my fault (even if it was). </i></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Regardless of your industry or channel, following these four simple lessons will help to reduce effort for your customer and create a “stickiness” that low prices or quality products alone will not do.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Cecelia MacLellan began her career at Mediapro Teleservices as Director of Sales. Since then she has successfully navigated the customer service landscape in progressive roles as Senior Customer Contact Manager, Staples, Director, Customer Care, Staples Business Advantage and most recently as Director, Contact Center Operations, Staples Business Advantage.</span></i><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-86565073170953448932016-07-20T09:17:00.001-07:002016-07-22T06:12:51.728-07:00Customer Contact, East: Executive MindXchange Chronicles Excerpt Strategic Thinkers Only: A Forum for Seasoned Customer Contact Executives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Moderated by Mary Tucker </b></span><br />
<i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Chief Executive Officer and Founder </i><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">UPIC Health</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>SESSION ABSTRACT</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Where are contact centers going as the digital age eliminates the need to interact with a live person – or has it, really? Is disruption possible in the contact center space – where millions are employed around the world – and if yes, what does human disruption look like? Do contact centers complement digital technology, compete against it, or should they be the drivers of its design, development and adoption? Once the great white way of economies of scale, the time is now to rethink and redefine the contact center as not only Customer Service Channels but Brand Communication Centers of Exceptions Management! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>KEY TAKE-AWAYS</b></span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Insights on how to broaden organizational thinking to recognize the power of consolidated communications </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Best practices for developing service strategies supporting ever evolving end user demographic mix </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Success factors in organizational infrastructures supporting cultures of change, embracing of technology and supporting its development</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>OVERVIEW</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Pressing Issues Facing Participants</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">How to engage executive management?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Care center – cost versus sales and how to integrate?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Team organizational structure</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Where does end to end customer experience start and stop?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Training and communication of change</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Steps to becoming an omni channel enterprise and how to navigate the change?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">How to ensure consistently good customer experience in every contact</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Cultural change management – particularly with M & A</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Speed vs. quality</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Forecasting for seasonality</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Engagement at the front line</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Employee experience and tools workflows</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Maintaining knowledge in complex environments</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>TAKE-AWAY </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Two key issues:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">1. Engagement Conundrum</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Executive</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frontline Leadership</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frontline Staff</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">All staff – around customer experience</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2. Team Organizational Structures</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frontline roles are becoming more complex</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Digital age brings intense environments of change </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Overwhelm sets in – frontline managers responsible for “too much”</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>BEST PRACTICE </b></span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Energize organization by putting Executive Leadership on the frontline for an hour (or 30 minutes or a day – however much they are willing to give)</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Collect insights/surprises and communicate staff wide</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Create culture of transparency and communication aligned with the shared frontline experience</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Develop idea portal with reward/incentives for new ideas to elevate customer experience – commit to implementing and measuring impact </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Rethink job titles – does “Agent” mean anything anymore? What title reflects the true job function?”</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Apply creativity – if what they do looks more like a liaison, draft titles that reflect the function. Engage team in developing responsibilities and measurements.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Rethink the role of frontline manager – including dispensing with them altogether</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Elevate skill requirements and salary of frontline to include self- management (i.e. maybe they are ultimately User Experience Specialists over Customer Service Agents….invest in understanding the details of their jobs)</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If size of organization mandates point of contact communication by business unit, title the role “Frontline Representative” that rotates among the team.</span></li>
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<ul style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Recognize “Time” is not as meaningful a measurement anymore – seek ways to measure end user “value” (Note: be aware of survey fatigue) including both internal and external points of view.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Embrace “Customer Service is not a Channel – it’s an INTENTION”</span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="margin-left: 40px;"><ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Model that intention across all business units – internal departments in service to each other ensures collective service to customers.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>FINAL THOUGHT</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Front line customer service staff have among the toughest jobs in any industry – they are expected to be the brand voice, first (and often last) points of contact through all channels, they have to answer for other business unit’s challenges (or failures) and provide insights into consumer behavior. They use multiple systems to resolve issues and have more performance measurements than any other job in any other industry. They also usually have low wages and no voice in strategy development and tactical deployment!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Think about ways to address the above. Think about making the contact center job a sought after role. Pay equitably and reduce front line management. Make a commitment to trust the team; toss them a problem to solve and test it out. Give the front line a seat at the table – often they are the only ones who have the 360 degree view of what’s going on. Don’t fear disruption – encourage it! If your front line is on board with you, everything else falls into place.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-56489427954556917762016-07-20T08:06:00.000-07:002016-07-26T09:35:34.658-07:00Disruption and Techno-Consumerism: Highlights from the 10th Annual Customer Contact 2016, Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Stephen Loynd </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Global Program Director<br />Digital Transformation Practice </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frost & Sullivan</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The <b>10th Annual Customer Contact, Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive Mind<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">X</span>change</b> event took place in Athens, Greece this past June and featured formal sessions, individual meetings, and informal networking sessions. The following highlights are just a sampling of the many ideas and emerging practices discussed there.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Keynote: Disruptive Customer Care – The Competitive Differentiator in a World of New and Evolving Business Models (ie, Change or Die!)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The event kicked-off with moderator Stefan Osthaus introducing Customer Engagement business strategist, author, and speaker Martin Hill-Wilson, founder of Brainfood Consulting. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hill-Wilson started off by asking the audience, ”Why should we care what the future looks like? Why does this matter? The answer is important. Simply put, we don’t want to end up in a “fragmented future.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On the contrary, as organizations, we need to be able to describe our possible futures and connect to them. We need to be good story-tellers so that employees connect to a compelling narrative. Hill-Wilson emphasized that offering a great Customer Experience means pleasing both customers and employees. People need interesting jobs that are challenging, so that it feels like it matters. It’s incredibly important to have context as human beings, it’s about “more context, less content.” All the while, “we need velocity and adaptability”!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But this is all easier said than done when few organizations actually keep pace with evolving customer behaviors and patterns in employee engagement. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hill-Wilson offered the following key take-aways:</span><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In a world of “perpetual beta,” the strategy of investing in occasional technology and competency refreshes falls short of delivering differentiated customer experiences </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nobody’s really got their head around mobile customer service and mobile CX</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When it comes to “Omnichannel in an app”, the impacts of Messenger on our space may be significant (in Asia, WeChat already has a payment system, and is a whole universe built into an app)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When it comes to new tools such as the Amazon Echo, we’re working toward a world where “it is just there”, but the question remains: "In reality, are our organizations moving fast enough to keep up? Do our teams work in real time or in historic time? According to Hill-Wilson, “None of us have analytics working real-time in the contact center space.”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Even IVR is changing – the old version meant audio, but the new version is more visual on a smartphone that scrolls options. It’s being rolled out in the UK now. After all, “72% of 18-25 year-olds in the UK find it easier to express emotions visually.”</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hill-Wilson also offered some key action items for organizations:</span><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Conjure up a mission no one wants to miss! Make it engaging</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Use non-threatening change language – “doing things differently” is a moderated way to express the idea that change is essential</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Free the spirit – ask and listen”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Pay customers to spend time in the contact center – “outside-in questioning”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Invite bids for innovation budgets</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Make “test, learn, embed” your practice</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Presentation: Game Changing Technologies on the Horizon</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frost & Sullivan Analyst Stephen Loynd then explored how we’re living in a time of incredible change. Nothing less than a new world is emerging. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He noted that At Davos this year, they talked about “the Fourth Industrial Revolution” – meaning that technology and data is imbedded in everything, influencing our lives. Technology is so pervasive and moving so fast that it is disrupting both business and society. Or as AOL founder Steve Case explains in a new book – we are entering a new paradigm called “The Third Wave” of the Internet: a period in which entrepreneurs will transform major “real world” sectors like health, education, transportation, energy, and food—and in the process change the way we live our daily lives.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frost & Sullivan conceptualizes the radical change happening in our world as a swarm of new technologies. Everything from new business models to disruptive technologies are making an impact across industries and across geographies. Technology is entering every aspect of our lives, it truly is immersive (many are referring to it as the Internet of Things, or the IoT). It truly is disruptive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Consider that the IoT is creating a data-centric, self-optimizing world. And the fastest growing market is the Consumer Market (Home, Car, Wearables). Just think about the ramifications of the “Echo”, a screen-less, voice-controlled household computer built by Amazon. The Echo offers profound possibilities, and the longer people use it, the more they seem to need it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And it keeps getting better – which brings us to the concept of Exponential Technological change:</span><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The idea of Exponential Technological change was formally described as the “Singularity” in 1993 by Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist and science fiction writer, who posited that accelerating technological change would inevitably lead to machine intelligence that would match and then surpass human intelligence. In his original essay, Dr. Vinge suggested that the point in time at which machines attained superhuman intelligence would happen sometime between 2005 and 2030.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The notion of the “Singularity” is predicated on Moore’s Law, the 1965 observation by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, that the number of transistors that can be etched onto a sliver of silicon doubles at roughly two year intervals. This has fostered the notion of “Exponential Change,” in which technology advances slowly at first and then with increasing rapidity with each succeeding technological generation.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Add to this what engineer, entrepreneur, and chairman of the X Prize Foundation (and author of the book, <i>Abundance: the Future is Better Than You Think</i>) Peter Diamandis likes to point out as the most important development this decade that no one is talking about: global population and the growing number of Internet users. By 2020, up to five billion people will be coming online – five billion new consumers – and that is a low estimate. Diamandis points out that we’re adding five billion new minds to the global conversation; as a result, the next five years will mean we are entering “the most epic era of innovation in history.”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Diamandis may be onto something as far as accelerating innovation goes. After all, Google’s artificially intelligent Go-playing computer system – AlphaGo – recently claimed victory in its historic match with Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol after winning a third straight game in this best-of-five series. Just think – over the last twenty-five years, machines have beaten the top humans at checkers and chess and Othello and Scrabble and Jeopardy; but this is the first time an artificially intelligent system has topped one of the very best at Go, which is exponentially more complex than chess and requires an added level of intuition.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So why does this all matter? Because clearly, we’re living in a world of rapid change – of immersive techno-consumerism – which means a world of higher customer expectations. Understanding today’s consumer in a time of techno-consumerism means understanding the fact that he or she shifts personas over time. Those personas can change based on the situation. And so it’s about understanding where the consumer is now, in real-time, and then being able to act on that information --what we recently called “Digital Halos” & the “Internet of Me”.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In essence, the relationship between people and technology is being reinvented. Artificial Intelligence and ever improving consumer technologies – from Amazon’s Echo to Facebook’s chatbots – are fundamentally changing consumer expectations. Today’s shoppers expect immersive experiences that fire their imaginations. Shoppers are spending money on doing things as much as on buying things. And if experiences, not things, make today’s smartphone-armed generations happy, then it’s a whole new paradigm.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ultimately, times are changing, and consumers are changing. So it’s important to ask whether or not companies are changing fast enough to keep up. Are companies going to be able to keep pace with Exponential Change and deliver a truly holistic, unified Customer Experience going forward? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Events like the <b>10th Annual Customer Contact 2016, Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive Mind<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">X</span>change,</b> are important because they can help us employ more strategic ways of thinking, and ask important questions about the macro and micro trends that will change businesses and customers going forward, and apply these insights and take-aways at our own organizations.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Indeed, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">participants</span> of the event in Athens were urged to not only take their networking seriously, but to take away at least one “must-do” follow-up item from the event. The group was encouraged to continue exchanging ideas throughout the year and beyond. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Stephen Loynd, currently Global Program Director, Digital Transformation Practice, at Frost & Sullivan, is a Thought Leader and Global Sourcing Professional with a wide range of experience in the customer contact industry. Stephen came to Frost & Sullivan from global BPO provider Stream Global Services, where he focused on go-to-market strategies for specific vertical markets, and also led efforts in competitive intelligence. Prior to that, Stephen spent close to seven years at market intelligence firm IDC as the Global Program Manager of their Contact Center practice. As a leader on the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) team, he offered expertise on contact center and CRM industry trends and opportunities worldwide and published research including competitive landscapes and forecast and analyses. </i></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-23033568009071938722016-05-13T06:23:00.000-07:002016-05-13T02:58:24.096-07:00Delivering Insanely Helpful Customer Service <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /><br />By Ed Ariel</b><br /><i>Vice President<br />Customer Service</i><br />ezCater<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Customer acquisition and customer retention are two sides of a coin that, if done properly, can lead to organizational success. Traditionally, customer acquisition has been the domain of the marketing and sales departments. Customer retention can live anywhere from that same marketing group, a churn department, the revenue retention team, or even a small team within the customer service department.<br /><br />To show true retention results and to reduce costs, successful companies need to use customer retention tactics in every customer service experience. <br /><br />At ezCater, we define customer service as successfully anticipating the customer's needs and making their lives easier. That’s right. The goal is not to make only their experience with ezCater easier. The goal is to make their actual lives easier. You will notice I didn’t say that we “Wow the Customer” or that ezCater’s goal is to offer “World Class Customer Service.” These industry buzzwords sound great, but do not offer enough specifics to drive the right action.<br /><br />At ezCater, we take two primary approaches to create a lasting relationship with our customers:</span></span><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We use automation to replace activities that were previously the responsibility of the customer </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Or, when automation doesn’t work, we encourage our team to be “insanely helpful” in everything they do</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><b>Using Automation to Replace Customer Activities</b><br /><br />ezCater is the only nationwide marketplace for business catering. When our customers are looking for catering options for their business meetings, training sessions, or business events, ezCater provides nationwide choices through our website. <br /><br />Previously, if a business had a catering need, they were faced with a time-consuming process: try to find a caterer, place the order, contact the caterer for any changes, confirm the order the day before or day of, and then work with the caterer on any issues that arise.<br /><br />ezCater automates most of that process. A little under half of orders placed through our website are 100% automated. As ezCater has grown, we have been able to increase the percentage of orders that are 100% automated.<br /><br />We’ve managed to automate many elements of the ordering process, including sending the order to the caterer, getting confirmation of order acceptance, making changes to the order, and receiving a confirmation the day of the order. This saves time and makes the ordering process easier for both the customer AND the caterer.<br /><br /><b>Being “Insanely Helpful” When Automation Doesn’t Work</b><br /><br />When manual customer service intervention is needed, we keep our core principles in mind. The actions we take at this point must anticipate the customers’ needs and make their lives easier. If a caterer tells us that they can’t fulfill a specific item, we get the available replacement options and call the customer with those choices. If a caterer tells us the delivery truck has broken down and they can’t deliver an order at all, we find two or three different caterers, confirm they can do a last minute order, and contact the customer with the alternative options. Without ezCater, the customer would need to take time to research these issues themselves. ezCater anticipates the customers’ needs and makes their lives easier.<br /><br />In these non-automated cases, we take the opportunity to build the relationship with the customer. Our customer service agents are the best in their field and they are comfortable spending a brief portion of the call establishing a relationship with the customer. We are there to help the customer, we love doing it, and we want the customer to know.<br /><br /><b>Does Transforming the Customer’s Journey Give ezCater A Competitive Advantage?</b><br /><br />Does it ever!<br /><br />Once a customer experiences our refined and improved customer journey, he’s hooked. Among customers that have used our service at least three times, the re-order rate is well above the industry average.<br /><br />We encourage our customers to rate and review the caterer after every order and then use this data as part of our caterer rankings on the website. <br /><br />We also ask our customers to rate ezCater on Trustpilot, a third-party review site. <br /><br />Almost 87% of the <a href="https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.ezcater.com" target="_blank">ezCater Trustpilot reviews</a> are five stars and 98% of our Trustpilot reviews are four or five stars. Many of these reviews point to our “insanely helpful” customer service as a differentiator. <br /><br />ezCater has created a competitive advantage in the area of customer satisfaction and customer retention by ensuring that every feature we introduce, every change we make, and every employee we hire is focused on maintaining our core values. We keep our focus on building the customer relationship, using automation whenever possible, and delivering “insanely helpful” customer service. Everything we do is in service of making our customers’ daily jobs easier and improving their lives—and that has given us a huge competitive advantage as we continue to rapidly grow.<br /><br /><i>Ed is a Customer Service Expert with over 20 years of success driving profits, quality and customer satisfaction to record levels. His background includes customer focused leadership roles at Fidelity Investments and AT&T overseeing multiple teams and projects designed to improve efficiencies and add value to customers. </i></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15468820141554569214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5998408515359448323.post-61360425612585785742016-05-13T06:06:00.000-07:002016-05-13T03:00:23.695-07:00How To Create An Innovation-Based Service Culture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /><br /><br /><br />By Martin Hill-Wilson</b><br /><i>Founder</i><br />Brainfood Consulting<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />It’s a truism that we live in a world of change. Within customer service there is a never ending conveyor belt of new things to digest. For instance, at an event I recently attended, a Director of Global Contact Centres shared that his team had been presented with over 800 change items to absorb over just the last twelve months!<br /><br />When I think about the most disruptive technology for contact centres, my current vote goes to a product which is a mash up of some powerful, maturing technologies such as natural language, machine to machine learning, semantic search and predictive analytics with extra spoonfuls of AI pixie dust to boost performance.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This tech is already in play. It’s what the self service mandate has been crying out for. In some sectors, up to 45% of live interaction has been transferred to Intelligent Assistants. In other cases, it’s been used to initiate a customer interaction before dynamically transferring caller and their collected information to a live advisor for more complex discussion.<br /><br />With that in mind, I’ve been asking audiences recently to consider what this means. How many staff are you going to need after downsizing? What will this mean for the space you currently occupy? What’s the new operating model? Where will you reinvest the savings? Tough questions to answer against a background of relative stability in the core contact centre model over the last 25-30 years.<br /><br /><i>The facts suggest contact centres are just as prone to being disrupted as the organisations they serve. </i>If so then an important question has to be asked: How are you going to survive when your industry’s version of a fintech disrupter comes knocking on your door?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><b>If Anyone’s Going To Disrupt, It’s Going To Be Me!</b><br /><br />My answer is to take your medicine early and get into the game of disrupting your own service organisation. However, this time professionalise your approach. Here are some pointers.<br /><br />I know from three years of taking teams through the P&Q Challenge that the current command and control culture that underpins the efficiency agenda within contact centres smothers creativity by encouraging conformance. I also know there is an almost instant response from front line teams as soon as the leash is removed and they are invited to become co-creators in the greater mission of achieving service excellence.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />They hear the customer voice every day. Why has that not been a prime source of innovation over the years? One of the answers is that we hold very narrow views about what a productive person does during their working day. <br />Adobe has recently rediscovered this latent creativity. They launched Kickbox to empower all employees to become innovators. It works like this. </span></span><br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Any employee can request one and managers cannot veto a request</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Recipients are sent a red box containing an innovation 'toolkit': a chocolate bar, a $10 Starbucks card, Post-it notes, a notebook, a step-by-step innovation manual and a pre-paid credit card with $1,000 to spend as they wish (no receipts are required)</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Recipients are challenged to use the toolkit to help them present an innovation idea to senior colleagues. After trials that proved the ROI, in January 2015 Adobe made Kickbox public, enabling anyone to download the materials for free.</span></span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This new face of employee engagement moves everything up a notch. 3M has been doing it for years of course. We have Post-its as a result. Google famously allows individuals time to innovate using their own agendas. <br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If we tend to have our best ideas in the shower or during a walk or run, how can we trigger this creativity for the reinvention of customer service? To answer that, we need to be prepared to disrupt what we assume are the ‘untouchables’ in the customer service environment. The way that time is used. The way we use information. The organisation of the working environment. The goals that we set.<br /><br /><b>Let the Force Be With You</b><br /><br />I’ve just read a fascinating interview with Hilary Scarlett who translates the latest neuroscience into change management tactics. She makes a lot of great points. Many of which I’ve learned over the years as a practitioner, but it’s great to see them validated.<br /><br />She rightly says that top down change triggers a survival response which starves the thinking and feeling part of our brains. This makes us distracted and unproductive. We all know how weird we are after being excluded from a meeting. We start to worry despite the fact that when we are included it’s often boring and all we want to do is escape!<br /><br />So, in tune with my own instincts, she is a big fan of co-creation. Let everyone get involved as early as possible. Shaping decisions helps us feel in control and remain part of the tribe rather than becoming a fearful outsider. It is also interesting that she notes the negative impact words such as transformation and change have on us. Fight/flight takes over. Instead talk about doing things differently.<br /> <br />She also makes important points about the psychology of success. We like to win. And do so frequently since it boosts self esteem and motivation. Short sprints really work so maybe there is something in the current fascination for agile behaviour! <br /><br />This also implies that if we encourage people to innovate we need to reframe those outcomes. Some will work, some won’t. Some for now, maybe some for later. None of them however are failures. Everything learned has a value in the world of innovation. <br /><br /><b>Parting Thoughts</b><br /><br />So, get a head of the curve and start to challenge your own service organisation to see its future through new eyes. Unleash the innovative spirit you are currently blocking and help people nurture their creative instincts with tangible ways to innovative as Adobe’s Kickbox showed. <br /><br />Consider the tips that Hilary Scarlett makes about how to establish the right culture to nurture innovation. I think she’s on the money.<br /> <br /><i>Martin Hill-Wilson is a customer engagement and post-silo business strategist. He is also an author, international keynote speaker and chair. Working under his own brand, Brainfood Consulting, he delivers a range of master classes and interventions. Current topics include empowered service cultures, omni-channel design, automation and self service, proactive service models, mobile and social customer service. All targeted at delivering disruptive service innovation. </i></span></span></div>
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