January, 2018

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Are You Destined To Be CEO?

Beyond Philosophy

Popular belief has long held that oldest children are responsible, high achievers. And recent social science research indicates that this trait extends to their careers. As explained in this National Public Radio report , firstborn children have the benefit of their parents’ undivided attention early in life, and that advantage can influence their development.

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Five Customer Service Must-Do’s For 2018

ShepHyken

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been reading about predictions and trends for 2018. It got me thinking about the actions we must take to be competitive. Regardless of your industry, everything has changed about the way we do business. There are some businesses that claim they’ve done things the same way for years, decades, even a century. They claim they do business just as their fathers and grandfathers did.

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This Is What You Say When a Customer Cusses At You

Myra Golden Media

I cuss. A lot. But never have I dared to cuss at a person in a customer service role. And I get rather upset about lousy customer service and still manage to talk nicely to people about any issues I encounter. Some people cuss, and yell and make threats when they are angry about customer service. This is not okay. You have to draw the line on unacceptable behavior with customers, just as I hope you do in your interpersonal relationships when people disrespect you.

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What to Expect for Contact Centers in 2018

Contact Center Pipeline

Of the most impactful priorities for contact centers in 2017, customer experience was at the top of the list. In a competitive landscape where consumers are inundated with options, delivering a seamless customer experience can be a key differentiator in building engaged, loyal customers. As we kick off 2018, businesses will continue to improve the […].

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Turn Your Contact Center Into a Profit Machine with AI

Every year, $75 billion is lost to bad customer service — and your business could be bleeding loyalty without realizing it. AI is rewriting the rules. Imagine instant answers, 24/7 self-service, faster resolutions, and skyrocketing satisfaction scores. Companies like Amazon are already cashing in, and the technology is easier than you think — plug, play, and profit.

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What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? A Definition of Artificial Intelligence, Challenges and Benefits of AI, and More

Callminer

Artificial intelligence (AI) gives machines the ability to learn from experience as they take in more data and perform tasks like humans.

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How We make Decisions – Prospect Theory

Beyond Philosophy

Prospect Theory is the name of the concept developed by Nobel-prize winning professor Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who were the “Godfathers of modern decision science.” It describes the hidden influences that exist that drive our behavior—and they aren’t what you think. Before Kahneman and Tversky’s paper on Prospect Theory, most economists felt like what drove decision-making was wealth, as in, the more wealth you had, the more options were available to you.

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The Customer Service Gap

ShepHyken

I’ve written about the customer service gap before. The first version referred to the gap between you and your competitors. You want the gap to be wide. It means you are putting yourself further ahead of your competition and picking up market share. The second version of the gap focused on narrowing the distance between you and your customers. The closer you are to your customers, and the more you are meeting their needs, the narrower the gap is between you and your customer.

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The “Feel, Felt, Found” Method for Empathy

Myra Golden Media

Today I’m going to show you how to use the Feel, Felt, Found method to express empathy to your customers. What’s great about the Feel, Felt, Found Method, is, it gives you the perfect response when you can’t give the customer exactly what they want. It helps you to be more relatable, and to foster a sense of connection with customers. The Feel, Felt, Found method is easy to use.

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Embracing Remote Work

Contact Center Pipeline

The ability to work from home continues to top the list of desired benefits for employees seeking better work-life balance. Over the past five to 10 years, technology has enabled the growth of remote work across sectors and professions, and research suggests that nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce will be working remotely by 2025 […].

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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

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PPV Customer Service Case Study: Cable Company Avoids a TKO

TechSee

In anticipation of the biggest boxing fight of the year – Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor- a major US cable company had high expectations. Pay-per-view (PPV) is one of their most lucrative revenue streams, especially when broadcasting live combat sports such as boxing, mixed martial arts and professional wrestling. The PPV fee was set at $99.95 , and based on past sales, an estimated six million homes in the US and the UK were expected to purchase access to the private telecast.

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How To Set Better Goals For Your Customer Service Team

CX Accelerator

Happy 2018, folks! Ready or not, the new year is here. And with the turn of the calendar comes everyone’s favorite annual process: goal setting! Sadly, this rite of passage is often overlooked or marginalized within customer service departments. We can become wholly focused on things like quality scores, metrics, and new technology (all of which are extremely important), but annual goals should help you get out of the day-to-day way of thinking and practice continual improvement.

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Troublesome Trends & Predictions for 2018

Beyond Philosophy

I am apprehensive about my industry. Having worked in Customer Experience since 2002, I may be too much of a purist. However, for a while now, I have been writing about the decline and dilution of the discipline of Customer Experience. From changing titles but not behavior to a poor understanding of what customers want, the trends are troublesome. My concerns only grow as we roll into 2018.

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The Power of the Last and Lasting Impression

ShepHyken

People say all the time that the first impression is important. No doubt it is. Just as important, if not even more so, is the last impression, as it leaves a lasting impression. If you’ve been following my work, this concept may be familiar to you. Recently, I tweeted about lasting impressions (follow me on Twitter @Hyken if you aren’t already doing so).

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Next-Gen Cloud Contact Centers For Dummies®

What does customer service excellence look like in 2024? According to our report with insights from CX expert Shep Hyken, customer expectations are at an all-time high, and there’s a bigger shift toward self-service and leveraging AI capabilities.

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Three Steps to Being Confident and Prepared When Talking to Employees About a Problem

Myra Golden Media

This is you. Confident and Prepared. So, my 14-year son old got contact lenses for the first time last week. He’s struggling to get the contacts in. Every morning Warren comes downstairs to my bathroom so I can help him with his technique. More than once he’s said, “I freakin’ hate contacts!” He even asked me to hold his upper eyelid up and steady for him.

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Coming Soon to a Contact Center Near You!

Contact Center Pipeline

The landscape for engaging with customers is changing fast. Consumers expect hyper-personalization—and they want a choice of ways to communicate with the companies with which they do business. Bots, asynchronous messaging, augmented reality and machine learning are at the doorstep of the contact center, too, modifying the customer journey and putting pressure on traditional businesses […].

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Why Customer Service Training Is Essential

Customers That Stick

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Forget About the Wow. What Should You Fix NOW?

360Connext

Customer experience repair and improvement can be completely overwhelming! There are so many areas to tackle. Those surveys don’t develop and send themselves. Then you simply must understand the journey by undertaking a robust customer journey mapping process. And of course, don’t forget to educate the executives and employees throughout your organization!

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The Ultimate Blueprint for an AI-First Contact Center

Start building the AI workforce of the future with our comprehensive guide to creating an AI-first contact center. Learn how Conversational and Generative AI can transform traditional operations into scalable, efficient, and customer-centric experiences. What is AI-First? Transition from outdated, human-first strategies to an AI-driven approach that enhances customer engagement and operational efficiency.

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Why Must Leaders and Their Companies Now Give More Attention (and Resources) to EX?

Beyond Philosophy

Michael Lowenstein, Ph.D., CMC Thought Leadership Principal, Beyond Philosophy. By EX, of course, we mean employee experience. Customer experience optimization has, for some time, been the stated goal of many enterprises around the world. Where the role of employees in meeting that goal is concerned, however, there has been a tacit belief that the equation “happy employees = happy customers” works.

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The 25 Dollar Mistake

ShepHyken

I recently planned a small two-day meeting for about 25 people. This was the second year for this meeting. The previous year we had stayed at a hotel that did a magnificent job of taking care of us. After that meeting, I talked to our sales rep and mentioned that if they repeated the contract we signed for that first year, we would most likely come back.

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I spend three hours every week working “on” my business. Do you?

Myra Golden Media

I spent this afternoon in my Strategic Block. My Strategic Block, the best idea I took from the book, 12 Week Year by Brian P. Morgan and Michael Lennington, is for me to spend three hours every week “on” my business. It’s three uninterrupted hours of me doing something to improve my business. Today that three-hour block was spent listening to a business audiobook on my Alexa Echo.

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Onward and Upward… Or So the Saying Goes

Contact Center Pipeline

According to thefreedictionary.com, “onward and upward” is an expression that is defined as “something that you say in order to encourage someone to forget an unpleasant experience or failure and to think about the future instead.” Ah, the future! It is always the place at which, when we arrive, everything will be all right. Or […].

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The Ultimate Contact Center Buyers Guide: A Crucial Decision

Harness the True Power of your Contact Center In today’s fast-paced business environment, selecting the right contact center solution is critical for enhancing customer experience, improving operational efficiency, and optimizing costs. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the essential factors to consider when choosing a contact center software that aligns with your business needs.

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"Follow the Leader", Featuring Errol Allen

Call Center Weekly

Why is it important for customer service leaders to spend time on the front line? It is my opinion that leaders should regularly (monthly) schedule time with their front-line employees. Doing so can have a major impact within an organization. Here a several reasons why I feel it’s important to spend time on the front line. 1. Enlightenment – In today’s business environment, managing by the numbers seems to be the way to go.

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In Our Connected World, What If Empathy Is Learning?

Aspect

By Thom Markham. Observing a group of students conversing deeply as a team, checking resources on a Chromebook, presenting solutions to a problem in a project, or responding to open ended questions, you might ask yourself: What the heck is going on? Is this learning? In times past, this was an easy question to answer. Traditional, recognizable elements of education, such as lectures, worksheets, spelling tests, writing, and standardized tests were prominent.

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Getting Company Culture and Operations Right, and Keeping Them Right: What It Really Means to Be Stakeholder-Centric This Labor Day

Beyond Philosophy

Michael Lowenstein, Ph.D., CMC Thought Leadership Principal, Beyond Philosophy. A recent article on corporate customer-centricity by a prominent market research firm made the case for this type of culture as “the most effective way to meet customers’ changing needs.” The article’s author, though, quoted a study his company had conducted, saying that fewer than half of the CX professionals included felt that their colleagues shared this belief.

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of January 29, 2018

ShepHyken

Each week I read a number of customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too. Customer Service Report 2018 by Olga Kolodynska, Justyna Polaczyk, Malgorzata Buksinska and Lukasz Labedzki. (LiveChat) The report contains key customer service findings from 2017 and trends for 2018.

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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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7 Things You Can Say to Gain Control with Challenging Customers

Myra Golden Media

If you find it difficult to get your customer to stop telling you the story of just how inconvenienced they were, or are, and to stop rambling on about the problem, it’s likely because the customer is stuck in the past. You’re going to have to reframe the issue in the customer’s mind. That is, you must strategically move your customer out of a past problem to a focus on the present so that you can offer a solution.

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6 Common Sense Practices to Share with Work-at-Home Agents

Contact Center Pipeline

After more than 20 years in the on-demand contact center industry, I’ve come across some great work-from-home practices. And a few not-so-good ones, too. Whatever the workstyle or workspace, an agent needs to be efficient and productive. While remote work from home is free range, it isn’t a free-for-all. Routine and discipline are required to […].

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What Are the Elements of Good Strategic Planning?

Call Center Weekly

By Dea Harrington From the article series, Strategy for the Real World Ask anyone for the definition of “strategy” and you will most assuredly get a myriad of subjective definitions. To keep us on the same page, here is a brief (and subjective) primer. Strategy (high level) is the plan developed by organization leaders to enhance the health and growth of the entity.