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Close your eyes, lightly fall asleep and recall this exact dream…. You are a business owner. Your business relies on calling, maybe you have a call center, do you? Your agents provide excellent customer service, thus your customers are happy to be your customers. Nice, right? Let me tell you. It doesn’t have to be a dream. There is an actual way to make sure the service your agents provide is on-point and your customers’ level of satisfaction is top.
In 2007, I moved to the United Kingdom. This amazing life adventure opened my eyes to cultures, languages, and opportunities I had never experienced in America. Upon arrival, it was clear my American English was not going to cut it in the UK. I immediately started hearing words I didn’t understand, and I’m sure my word choices created some confusion.
The financial industry is unique for many reasons. Among the primary differentiators is the substantial amount of regulations that have been put in place to protect consumers seeking financial services. One of the fundamental responsibilities of any financial services provider is to avoid potentially risky activities and to ensure that there is regulatory compliance at every level, including the customer-facing contact center.
“Smile and the world smiles with you.” That is part of a longer quote attributed to Stanley Gordon West. It became the topic of conversation while on a New York subway with my daughter, Alex, when I noticed her smile at someone who, in turn, smiled back. I complimented her on the small but kind gesture, and it started a great conversation about life and customer service.
In 2025, contact centers aren’t just changing—they’re being rebuilt by AI. This no-fluff, executive-ready guide shows you how to capitalize on the transformation. Inside: proven ROI calculators, workforce optimization tactics, deflection strategies, and a 90-day AI deployment plan. Built for CIOs, COOs, CX leaders, and contact center strategists, it goes beyond buzzwords into play-by-play implementation.
Brands are everywhere. Everybody feels like they understand what brands are. However, when we ask the fundamental questions of “What is a brand?” and “What does that mean?”, there’s a surprising amount of variation in opinion. Branding is a critical topic in Customer Experience. We discussed where branding and Customer Experience interact and prioritize in a recent podcast.
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Customer Contact Central brings together the best content for Contact Center and Customer Service professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
1. Label the Employee’s Emotional Reaction. When you merely label what you think your employee is feeling, you show your understanding while at the same time expressing empathy. Labeling is just naming what you observe. Don’t judge or harp on the issue. Here’s what labeling looks like. “It sounds like you disagree with my perception of you coming across as terse.” “It seems like you feel this expectation is unfair.” Most employees respond to successful l
As I lay in bed, coughing and sneezing from a cold, dreading even going to the kitchen for a glass of water because of aches and pains from my unseen tormentor, I’m comforted knowing, “boy, I’m sure glad I didn’t have to go to work today”. But what if I did? How would I be able to serve my customers with these rotten cold symptoms? That’s the question every service provider must answer on those days when we’re not at our best.
In the increasingly crowded business landscape, there are a few specific focuses that organizations can invest in to give themselves a boost in attention and customer loyalty. Customer experience (CX) is an area that can provide both this increased attention and help maintain customer loyalty—that is, when CX is done the right way. In fact, […].
Getting Service Right with Guest Jeff Toister. Taking Care of Your Employees So They Take Care of Customers. Shep Hyken interviews Jeff Toister. They discuss his book, Getting Service Right: Overcoming the Hidden Obstacles to Outstanding Customer Service , and Jeff offers immediately applicable advice on how to improve your customer service. In Shep’s Opening Monologue… He discusses the importance of caring for your employees so they can better care for your customers.
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.
If you give people the option to shop somewhere that only had a few choices or another venue with a wide selection, people almost always go for the larger selection. However, sorting through options can feel overwhelming. Too many choices in your Customer Experience are a terrible thing. Of course, too little choice is not great either. We discussed the issues with too many options in a recent podcast and what you can do to make customer’s decisions easier in your Customer Experience.
Your communication ability, leadership strengths, ambition, and people skills got you this promotion. Now comes the hard part – dealing with conflict, giving feedback, toxic employees, and managing your time. You can’t lead your company in delivering exceptional customer experiences if you don’t get first the people management down.
By Diana Aviles I’ve chatted with speech analysts from all walks of life. They speak many languages and are versed in different speech analytics solutions. Despite the fact there are some differences in approaches, we can all agree on the one thing, we consistently struggle to get our organizations to understand: you still need to listen to the calls.
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.
Today’s contact centers face a daunting challenge. The explosion in connected devices and the prevalence of online shopping mean that millions of products are now shipped daily, With online commerce projected to pass the $3 trillion mark in 2019. And with 51% of Americans now preferring to shop online, the pressure on customer support operations is about to increase exponentially.
One of our Shepard Letter subscribers, who asked to remain anonymous, recently shared a story worth telling. To protect him from the backlash he’s concerned about, we’ll change his name to “protect the innocent,” as the saying goes, just in case someone from his company reads this. So, we’ll just refer to him as Bob. As part of his onboarding process, Bob was put through customer service training.
What Customer Emotions Drive the Most Value. 15 years ago, in Munich, I was asked a question I couldn’t answer when presenting to an insurance company. The person asking understood what I was saying about evoking the proper emotions in a Customer Experience. No, he wanted to know how much money he would get back by investing in my idea. I didn’t know.
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.
I got my first management title when I was twenty-six years old. The person I’d beat out for the position had been with the company 26 years, and in one hiring decision, this woman, who wanted my job, become my direct report. She’d been with the company since before I was in kindergarten. And now I was her boss. Nobody said my new management job would be easy.
Businesses are facing ever-increasing risks of fraud and cybercrime. Every day brings more reports of security breaches and compromised customer data. Cybercriminals are clever and quick to find new ways to steal customers’ and employees’ personally identifiable information, which can be used to commit fraudulent activities ranging from spamming to accessing online accounts to extortion. […].
In the highly competitive telecom industry, customer experience is a critical factor in building and maintaining a competitive advantage. A recent report by Forrester takes this concept one step further by proving that improving customer experience in telecoms delivers a boost to all KPIs. Drive Revenue with Great Customer Experience 2017 indicates that after the auto industry and upscale hotels, telecoms has the third highest potential for increasing revenue by improving CX.
This week we feature an article by Irina Kirnos who writes about how chatbots are customer experience tools that are changing the way that companies interact with their customers. Chatbots are more than just automated FAQ answer generators. These virtual customer experience tools are transforming the way that companies interact with their customers in the contact center environment.
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.
Whenever I talk about Customer Experience with audiences, I begin by explaining that customers do not buy things rationally. Customers buy things emotionally and then justify the purchase with logic. Irrationality and data don’t mix. However, there are ways that people’s irrational behavior reveals a rational pattern in the data. Let’s take a look at actionable insights about people’s irrational behavior as customers and the importance of the human touch in a digital transformation.
Last week I shared my 3-Step De-escalation strategy at a Salesforce Trailblazers conference in Minneapolis. You know you’re creating value in a presentation when people start taking photos of your slides, Q & A is endless, and when your Twitter feed is aflutter with comments, compliments, and questions. I gave the audience my 3-Step De-escalation Strategy: Recognize, Reframe, Resolve.
Building powerful and engaging customer experiences through the contact center requires several important ingredients—just-in-time and in-context analytics, artificial intelligence for self-service and after-contact work, seamless omnichannel options for customers, and fair, accurate scheduling. But one of the most critical components are the contact center agents themselves.
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.
We at ProProfs bring to our readers a thought-provoking conversation we had with Shep Hyken , the Customer Service and Experience Expert. He is the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. A bestselling author featured on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, he has been inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement in the speaking profession.
Surprise and delight is a great customer service concept. Or is it? The concept behind surprise and delight is to surprise the customer with a level of experience that they weren’t expecting. Obviously, it should be a positive experience. Otherwise, the concept would be called surprise and disappoint. Nobody wants that! A while back, I interviewed Matt Dixon on Amazing Business Radio about the wonderful book he co-authored with Nick Toman called The Effortless Experience , where they cover the s
Brands have already begun using facial recognition technology in their Customer Experience. Walmart and KFC use facial recognition technology. Passengers on Delta check in for flights in the Atlanta airport using facial recognition. Even my phone password is my face. Technology also exists that captures customers’ authentic emotion measurement using facial recognition software.
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