December, 2017

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Amazing! The Feelings That Drive An Economy Might Surprise You!

Beyond Philosophy

Consumer confidence is a funny thing. It is little more than a feeling, and yet it drives millions of dollars in business—especially around this time of year. A recent JLL Retail survey revealed that consumer confidence is high, making the outlook for the holiday season holly jolly. Now, to be fair, Consumer Confidence is the aggregate for 5,000 U.S. households’ feelings.

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4 Things Every Employee Needs to Consider with Vacation Time

Myra Golden Media

Today I delivered a customer service workshop in Chicago. When we broke for lunch, three of the attendees invited me to a vegan bistro. Of course, I was thrilled to join them! Over lunch, one of the ladies told me, “I almost never take my vacation time. I prefer just to cash out and get a lump sum payment.” The mother in me couldn’t keep quiet.

Banking 299
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Technology and Digital Media Driving Consumer Experience- ‘What was’ Versus ‘What is’ of Customer Service

Call Center Weekly

By Rinku Basu Over the past few years, customer services have been taken to astonishingly new heights. ‘Meeting expectation’ is no good anymore, surpassing expectation is the only modus operandi for existence. To our advantage, with the advent of digital technologies and social media, reaching out to the consumer market and creating a positive brand experience has become less strenuous.

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Complaining Customers Aren’t Looking for Excuses

ShepHyken

The other night, I was out with some friends. We were at a well-known place, listening to music and relaxing. One of my friends said she wanted something chocolate, so she ordered a piece of chocolate cake. A few minutes later it arrived, and she took her first bite. You could tell by looking at her facial expression that she was not happy. She said it tasted very dry.

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The Contact Center Manager’s Guide to AI

Step-by-step instructions on how to use AI for growth in your contact center Learn how AI can transform your contact center operations. In this ebook, dig into the different AI technologies, then see how each can help automate tasks, streamline service, and turn your contact center from a cost center to a profit house. Plus, we’ll give you practical tips on choosing the right AI tools, getting them up and running, and measuring their impact.

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Social Customer Service… Then and Now

Contact Center Pipeline

Social customer service has come a long way since I first wrote about it in Pipeline eight years ago (“The Impact of Word of Mouth in the Web 2.0 World,” June 2009). There have been huge leaps forward in awareness, mindset and technology, despite some lingering challenges that businesses as yet have failed to address […].

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UK Scores Fall Whilst U.S. Rise – What’s The Problem?

Beyond Philosophy

Every time I go back to the UK I feel like I took a step back in time. The Customer Experiences I have in the UK are not as good as I have in the USA, now there is evidence to back this up. Per the 8th annual “ Customer Experience Excellence Study” published by KPMG Nunwood, shows that Customer Experience in the UK is lagging. Ten-thousand respondents ranked brands’ Customer Experience based on six categories.

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This is How You Communicate Empathy to Customers

Myra Golden Media

There are four attributes of empathy, and I teach each of these characteristics in my Empathy eLearning course. One of the characteristics is, communicate your understanding. When your customer is upset, or frustrated, you could communicate your understanding this way: “I realize you’re upset. I’d like to take a minute to talk about what I think happened, and then answer any questions you might have.”.

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Customer Service Changes its Face. The Journey Will Never Be the Same.

Call Center Weekly

By Anna Sabryan We in customer service know how important our role is. Many companies compete to have the best service, and periodically innovate to catch up with ongoing changes. Customer service, at times, changes at a rapid pace. Customer service via social media used to be a very important part of online activities. However today, many intelligent assistants, or bots, can deliver many services.

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One Thing that Can Make Your Business an Even Better Place to Work

ShepHyken

For many years, I’ve shared the concept I call the One Thing Question. The idea is to ask a customer, “What’s one thing you can think of that would make doing business with us better?”. I love this question because it’s all about how a company can improve in virtually any area. Some customers might suggest product improvements. Some might suggest a way to improve the system.

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Frost Radar: Voice of Customer Analytics, 2024

Understanding and improving your customer experience (CX) can have a massive impact on your bottom line. Choosing the right voice of customers (VoC) solution is a critical step to elevating CX. Frost & Sullivan researched more than 50 leading VoC vendors, analyzing both their “innovation index” and “growth index” to independently select the top 10 performers in each of these categories.

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Follow “The 3 Cs” for a Meaningful Performance Review

Contact Center Pipeline

Of all the things employees despise, end-of-year performance appraisals (PAs) are at the top of the list. The Washington Post has research to support that “basically every single person hates performance reviews.” Regardless of how we arrived here, leaders are no longer bound to the mistakes of the past. When conducted well, the end-of-year review […].

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8 Ways to Refresh Your Support Teams’ Customer Service Training – Part 2

Peter Lavers

In our new guest blogger Jason Grills ’ first instalment of this blog , he shared four great customer service training ideas that will refresh your support service and take it to a higher level. Here are the remaining four! #5 True or False Quiz. This activity is one of the best ways of improving the team spirit, especially when it comes to recently formed teams.

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Revealing the Remarkable Secret to Building Customer Loyalty

Beyond Philosophy

Do you believe it is the Customer Experience you provide that makes customers loyal? If you do, I am sorry to be the one to inform you that you are wrong. I have been a global Customer Experience consultant for fifteen years, since before Customer Experience was even a thing. As a result, I thought I knew everything there was to know about Customer Experiences.

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4 Things Customer Service Agents Can Do to Convey Empathy to Customers

Myra Golden Media

In this article I show you what empathy is using an experience with my teenage daughter, and then I deliver 4 tactical ideas you can apply right now to express empathy: Put yourself in your customer’s place, Sense the Situation From the Customer’s Perspective, Discuss What’s Upsetting the Customer, and Coming Up with Ways to Fix the Problem.

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Your Roadmap to Successful AI Implementations in the Contact Center

CX leaders are in a gold rush for AI, lured by the promise of cost savings and a revolution in service delivery. But simply deploying AI in your contact center isn't a magic bullet. There are hidden dangers that can derail your AI dreams. Recent incidents, such as the missteps of an AI chatbot deployed by Air Canada, have underscored the complexities and risks involved in leveraging AI in customer-facing roles.

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Rising to the Challenge of Exceptional Customer Service

Call Center Weekly

By Melodee Norris How easy is it to deliver exceptional customer service consistently to every customer, every time? Super simple when the customer is polite and nice, right? It is natural to mirror how we are being treated so when a customer is courteous and kind, good customer service is delivered. Once a customer becomes challenging, confrontational or rude, it can be very difficult to resist what comes natural, resulting quite often, in a poor customer experience.

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Guest Blog: Customer Service in Retail – Infographic

ShepHyken

This week we feature an article by Patrick Thuot who shares an infographic about how customer service can help the retail industry. A customer-centric approach can help any type of business succeed. – Shep Hyken. With the proliferation of the Internet and the ubiquity of smartphones, tablets, and laptops, the whole retail industry has experienced huge disruption.

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Social Customer Service: Advice from the Experts on How to Move Forward

Contact Center Pipeline

There have been significant changes in the social media world over the past eight years, for sure. New networking sites have emerged, and others have disappeared. But it’s safe to say that social media will continue to expand and evolve—and that customers will increasingly turn to social channels to get the attention of the companies […].

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What Happened To The Dining Experience We Used To Receive?

Steve DiGioia

do you still care about customer service or is it all about the money This original article was written by Steve DiGioia. Being in the hospitality business for over 20 years, I have seen some of the best and worst at their trade. But the dining experience sure has changed…. From the hardworking, studious college kid that was very driven and worked as a waiter 6-days a week to put himself through school; the gravelly-voiced divorced mom of 4 grown kids that needed to pay her bills and get her lif

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How to Optimize Call Monitoring: Automate QA and Elevate Customer Experience

Speaker: Laura Noonan, Chief Revenue Officer at CallFinder + Angie Kronlage, Director of Program Success at Working Solutions + April Wiita, Vice President of Program Success at Working Solutions

Are you still manually reviewing calls? 🤔 It's time for a change! The traditional method of manual call monitoring is no longer cutting it in today's fast-paced call center environment. Industry experts Angie Kronlage and April Wiita from Working Solutions are here to explore the power of innovative automation to revolutionize outdated call review processes!

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Revealed: The Truth About Holiday Music!

Beyond Philosophy

Are you the kind of person who hums along to “Jingle Bell Rock” in the supermarket? Does it make you want to fill your cart with cookies and egg nog? When you hear “Winter Wonderland” at the mall, do you think of sleigh rides and warm nights by the fire? Do you feel excited to start your holiday shopping? Or are you one of those who wish they’d just play something else – anything else?

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8 Ways to Refresh Your Support Teams’ Customer Service Training – Part 1

Peter Lavers

This is the first instalment of a 2-part blog from our new guest blogger Jason Grills – welcome Jason! No matter what type of business you run, apart from quality product or service, you will also need a reliable and efficient support service to retain your customers in the long term. It is your main way to communicate with both potential and loyal customers.

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Contact Center Executive Priorities for 2018

CX Global Media

Coaching is the #1 agent experience focus for 2018. Yahoo! At least it is as stated in CCW’s Executive Report Contact Center Priorities for 2018. I am thrilled to see the importance of people development being a lead focus for 2018. I am just praying that this year we will not see many of the people development intentions fade or never come to fruition like I’ve seen happen in the past.

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Amazing Business Radio: Terry Cain & Steve Church

ShepHyken

Create a Culture Where Employees Come First. Shep Hyken Interviews Terry Cain and Steve Church, Co-authors of “The Pinwheel”. How would you like to create a culture and working environment that is better for your employees, which in turn is better for your customers? Shep Hyken sits down with not just one but two guests, Terry Cain and Steve Church.

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Reimagine Your Communications With A Unified Platform

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

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Joy to the World… 10 Wishes for 2018!

Contact Center Pipeline

Happy Holidays! I am taking some idiom liberties in this last month of 2017. “Joy to the World” isn’t exactly an idiom, but it will do to frame my year-end message of JOY and extend my wishes for the contact center world. For the holiday and beyond, I have 10 wishes for contact center professionals […].

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Come Join My Telephone Skills Online Training

Myra Golden Media

How did 2017 go for you? Employees still struggling with how to control calls with unreasonable customers? Your customer experience still not where you know it needs to be? Still trying to get your people to convey empathy? I know. The struggle is real. The real question is: how will you gear up to make 2018 better? Let me give your people the tactics, skills, and inspiration they need so they can deliver experiences that make you feel proud.

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Nudges: Make Sure Yours Work!

Beyond Philosophy

Small changes, or nudges, having a big impact on people’s behavior is one that everyone in the behavioral economic community supports and heralds as the latest great idea. However, this great idea isn’t working for everyone. In particular, nudges don’t seem to be making much headway in medication compliance. When a patient doesn’t take their medicine properly, doctors call it “noncompliance.

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Listening to Customers Tells You Everything You Need to Know… - Transforming the Customer Experience

Kristina Evey

LISTEN to your Customers. Listening. We all know how to do it… but few know how to do it well … and it could be driving your customers away if you don’t do it well. Listen well and you’ll increase sales and customer loyalty. Even though communication involves two parts – speaking and listening – I believe that listening is actually 2/3 of successful communication.

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Strategic CX: A Deep Dive into Voice of the Customer Insights for Clarity

Speaker: Nicholas Zeisler, CX Strategist & Fractional CXO

The first step in a successful Customer Experience endeavor (or for that matter, any business proposition) is to find out what’s wrong. If you can’t identify it, you can’t fix it! 💡 That’s where the Voice of the Customer (VoC) comes in. Today, far too many brands do VoC simply because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do; that’s what all their competitors do.

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Learn the truth behind different chatbot technologies

CX Global Media

There are 3 different generations of chatbot technology found in contact centers, websites, or in an APP experience. Learning about the different chatbot technologies will help you to avoid making uninformed decision that lead to bad chatbot performance and poor customer experiences. You can always find yourself on the right path if you are ready to answer these 3 questions for your executives.

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Guest Blog: Customer Communication: Bots are Nice, But Humans are Better

ShepHyken

This week we feature an article by Stephanie Jones about the importance of human interaction in the customer service world. While bots are helpful in many ways, the human touch is still so imperative, and so craved by the customer. – Shep Hyken. Robots are cool. I watched “The Jetson’s” as a kid and was obsessed with all the tasks robots handled. George could get showered and dressed with one robot.

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Sennheiser Technology Supports Contact Center Employees with Special Hearing Needs

Contact Center Pipeline

Contact Center managers and business owners who have invested in sophisticated unified communications networks typically understand the urgency of maintaining a skilled, consistent and well-seasoned staff to use these networks. Businesses owners should therefore do whatever is necessary to draw superior talent from a wide pool of knowledgeable workers—and to keep those talented agents long-term—in […].