June, 2018

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Why We Compromise. Are Your Customers Expected To?

Beyond Philosophy

When I need work done at the house, I always get three quotes. I never go with the highest or the lowest, but instead, I choose the one in the middle. This shortcut, called Extremeness Aversion, helps me make an important decision—and it helps your customers make buying decisions, too. We discussed Extremeness Aversion on our podcast earlier this month.

Sales 360
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8 Interview Questions to Help You Hire for Emotional Intelligence In Customer Service Roles

Myra Golden Media

Too many hiring managers focus on candidates’ work history when filling customer service roles. They get excited when they read that the candidate has six-plus years working in customer service. But past work in customer service is not a reliable indicator of future success in serving your customers. To consistency deliver the best possible customer interactions, you need to hire for emotional intelligence —hiring people with empathy, friendliness, and connection, and then train those peop

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Guest Blog: Things to Consider Before Buying a Live Chat Software

ShepHyken

This week we feature an article by Jason Grills who discusses the importance of integrating an effective customer support system and how to decide upon live chat software for your organization. – Shep Hyken. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” – Bill Gates , Microsoft Founder. Every business aims to delight their customers.

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Conversations with Your Customers: Tone is Everything!

Callminer

Research is making it clear that when it comes to business interactions, tone matters. And if you’re not taking advantage of these insights in your contact center, you might be left behind.

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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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Insights from the SWPP Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award Nominees

Contact Center Pipeline

The 2018 SWPP Annual Conference in Nashville kicked off on Sunday, June 3rd. I love the all-WFM-all-the-time format of this conference. Every break, every lunch, and every session is devoted to forecasting, scheduling, real-time adherence, staffing models, power-of-one, net staff, Erlang… and this goes on for three days. I can’t wait to get out on […].

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How To Harness Customers Unseen Behavior

Beyond Philosophy

Each of us has a time when we decide and a time when we act. Once we act, we pass the point of no return on our decision. In other words, once we take action on a decision, we are less likely to change our decision—even when we run into challenges. It’s all a matter of mindset. The Rubicon model is a psychological principle that distinguishes our decision-making method or deliberative mindset from our execution course or implementation mindset.

Wireless 360
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Free Call Control Online Training

Myra Golden Media

Studies show the average business call lasts 2 minutes longer than it needs to. Customer service employees struggle with call control for a variety of reasons, including they don’t want to be rude to the customer, they aren’t sure how to move to closure or because the customer is rambling or angry. Using the principles of harmony, assertiveness and leading from the martial art Aikido, Myra walks your employees through the steps to politely and confidently control conversations.

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Your Brand is Defined by the Sum of All Your Customer Interactions

ShepHyken

What does a good customer experience look like at your company? What does good customer service look like? Ask everyone on your team and listen to the answers. Will they be the same, or different? It will be interesting to see if your team recognizes the difference between experience and service. Many people don’t understand the difference between customer experience and customer service, but does it really matter.

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The Machine Learning Okey Dokey Hypothesis

Callminer

We’re always looking for new ways to incorporate machine learning into speech analytics. I ended up with some interesting findings that really show the power of machine learning.

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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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Are You a Customer Service Hero, Villain or Problem Solver?

Steve DiGioia

…here’s 3 skills every customer service actor must have This original article was written by Steve DiGioia. Ah, the life of a call center agent. A cushy job, right? You do nothing more than talk to customers on the phone and punch some information into a keypad. Sounds cool, sign me up! But wait a minute, there’s more…much more. You get to sit in a cramped cubicle wearing a scratchy headset and stare at a screen for 8 hours a day.

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Contact Center Future Shock: Channels May Become Part of Our Past

CX Global Media

While meeting with Brad Cleveland at the Contact Center Expo in Orlando we explored a bit of the future of what’s to come in contact centers. For some, what we explored in the realm of channels is going to be somewhat of a shock. But for us to be customer-centric and relationship focused, continuing to manage in a channel-centric manner has to finally be declared as a company-centric approach.

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Is Your Price Right? Here?s How To Check

Beyond Philosophy

Pricing is fundamental to your business. It also has an enormous influence on Customer Experience outcomes. You should understand Mental Accounting as it pertains to customer behavior before you set the price and before you ruin how your customers feel about your experience. This was a great topic of discussion in our recent podcast. So, What is Mental Accounting?

Airlines 360
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This One Tip Will Instantly Make You Sound Friendlier On the Phone With Customers

Myra Golden Media

One of the easiest ways to make your conversations with customers more conversational, and friendly, is to speak in complete sentences. It is so familiar to hear interactions like this: Last name? First name? Zip code? It’s undoubtedly efficient to ask customers questions in this manner. However, it’s not the friendliest approach. In this article, I’ll talk to you about instantly improving your ability to connect with customers and sound friendly by just speaking in complete sentences.

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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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Five Ways to Disrupt Your Competition with Customer Service

ShepHyken

The concept of disruption is interesting. If you ask most business people to name a company that is known for being a disrupter, you’ll hear answers like Amazon, Uber and Walmart. Walmart disrupted local businesses when they came into a community. Uber disrupted the taxi-cab industry. And, Amazon started out disrupting bookstores and eventually moved on to disrupting the entire retail world.

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Q&A on Best Practices and Guidelines for Purchasing Speech Analytics Webinar

Callminer

I had the pleasure of speaking on a webinar, Best Practices and Guidelines Purchasing Speech Analytics. But I wanted to share with you some of the questions, answers, and takeaways from the webinar.

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How Developing Empathy Leads to Better Customer Experiences

CX Accelerator

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. For example, we show empathy when we put ourselves in the shoes of an elderly person and give them our seat on a crowded bus. Or when we share genuine excitement with a friend who received a job promotion. Showing this type of empathy often comes naturally to us, and is ingrained in how we act in our everyday lives.

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Contact Centers Obsolete in 3 Years: Artificial Intelligence Wipes Out Industry

CX Global Media

I met with Justin Robbins at the Contact Center Expo and we shared some observations with each other on what is going on in the industry. Of course, we were unable to avoid discussing what’s going on with Artificial Intelligence in Contact Centers and what affect it is having – and may have on our industry. We started talking about all of the hype, hysteria and clickbait titles that we’ve seen and how outlandish some of them can be.

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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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Hidden CX: Why It’s Critical For Your Business

Beyond Philosophy

Businesses are in a rut. Speed, efficiency and convenience are all rational factors companies focus on when they think about customer experience. But good experience isn’t that simple. It involves more than you think. For years, research has indicated that the future of success for business is in customer experience. But recent PwC research shows that businesses have a customer experience disconnect.

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Three Proactive Things You Can Do to Pre-empt an Escalation with a Customer

Myra Golden Media

Tomorrow morning I’m headed to Phoenix to deliver a workshop at the Salesforce Trailblazers for the Future Conference. I booked an extra night at the Arizona Biltmore just because I wanted some “me time” for relaxation and reading. I do this a lot, adding a day or two on to a business trip to chill, explore, and enjoy local restaurants. Do you take time just for you?

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All Customers Are Created Equal – Just Some Are More Equal than Others

ShepHyken

In 1945 George Orwell published the literary classic, Animal Farm , which was required reading in my middle-school English class. I always remembered the line: All animals are created equal, just some animals are more equal than others. Someone recently referenced the book and this famous line, and it made me think about how customers are treated. Are all customers equal?

Airlines 247
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Improving Productivity and Collections Revenue While Mitigating Risk

Callminer

For many businesses, debt collection is an unavoidable necessity. But how can you improve your call center agent productivity while mitigating risk?

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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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Another Reason Why Japan?s Service is Hard to Beat

Steve DiGioia

…and 7 steps we can take to get there too! This original article was written by Steve DiGioia. The West Japan Railway Company has issued an official apology after one of its express trains left the platform at Notogawa station in central Japan 25 seconds early. Yes, you read that correctly; 25 seconds early. The commuter train left at 7:11:35 a.m., instead of the scheduled 7:12 a.m., on May 11, 2018.

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Bring Your 'A' Game

Call Center Weekly

I have a friend who has recently begun working remotely for a call center. It wasn’t what he really wanted to do. He has held “bigger” positions, and it was a little hard for his ego in the beginning. I am a firm believer that everyone should be required to work as a server or bartender early in their careers. After all, where else can you learn sales, customer service, and the ability to suck it up to make a paycheck?

Upselling 136
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Getting Customers To Buy From You Habitually

Beyond Philosophy

We all have habits. Some of them aren’t very good habits, either. But we have them, nonetheless. Many of them form without our awareness. We have habits as customers, too, and habits are powerful things, especially for Customer Experiences. We discussed this problem on our recent podcast, and defined habits as any time your mind prepares you to respond in a certain way based on environmental cues or stimulant.

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Everything You Need to Know About Texting with Customers

Myra Golden Media

In this video, taken from my online customer service training suite, I answer the questions I’m asked most often about what’s appropriate for business texting. We’ll look at everything from grammar in text, to emojis, to what to do if you get a prank text. Watch the short video, and use it in your own customer service training. Was This Helpful? I’m asking you because my newsletter offers ideas like this all the time.

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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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5 Top Customer Service Articles for the Week of June 25, 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. Keys To Earning Sustained Loyalty From Your Employees by Charle Brown. (Chief Executive) Having strengthened millions of relationships for brands and causes worldwide, we’ve identified five critical steps to achieve the sustained loyalty your business needs.

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CallMiner Named a Leader in AI-Fueled Speech Analytics

Callminer

Today we are excited to announce that CallMiner has been named a Leader in The Forrester New Wave™: AI-Fueled Speech Analytics Solutions, Q2 2018.

Analytics 182
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Assessing Your Outsourcing Services Maturity

HGS

Assessing Your Outsourcing Services Maturity. By Donna Martin, Senior Vice President, HGS Healthcare. In the healthcare market, there is increasing demand for outsourcing services that can bring strategic insights , optimization, and efficiencies to critical operations, particularly among health plans. These partnerships speak to the dramatic shifts in how health plans are sold and purchased today, but also to the maturity of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry itself.