8x8

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Whether you’re heading to a new restaurant on the other side of town or taking a road trip across the country, a GPS helps get you there. Gone are the days of combing through maps, taking notes and picking what you think is the best route—only to be blindsided by traffic delays and detours. But a GPS needs precise guidance before starting out. You wouldn’t want to get halfway to Springfield, Missouri when you intended to go to Springfield, Massachusetts.

Analytics 85

Analytics Contact Center Metrics Quality management 85

Contact Center Pipeline

FEBRUARY 19, 2019

The contact center environment can be hectic—you probably have don’t have much time or patience for a third-party outsourcer telling you how to “transform” your call center operations. Right? You’re thinking: “Give me a break. I’m hard-pressed just to staff the third shift, much less transform it.” I get it, having run brick-and-mortar call centers […].

Contact Center 153

Contact Center outsourcing Call Center Employee engagement 153

Beyond Philosophy

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

Customer Experience as an industry is at a crossroads. As I have written before , the results that we should be seeing are not there. It’s time to put up or shut up. If we as an industry do not turn it around, we might see our budgets and headcounts reassigned somewhere else. In our recent podcast, we had a guest Bob Thompson, CEO of Customer Think Corp., an independent research and publishing firm focused on customer-centric business management and the founder and editor-in-chief of CustomerTh

Customer Experience 385

Customer Experience Journey mapping Customer centricity Surveys 385

ShepHyken

FEBRUARY 13, 2019

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. This is the day where we send our spouses, partners, and loved ones a gift. Often it is out of obligation. I have plenty of friends who tell me if they don’t get their spouse some flowers and a card, they will pay for it. So we feel obligated to express our love and appreciation to those close to us. I’ve written several articles about this before, and my favorite one is called The Valentine Obligation.

Personalization 319

Personalization Customer Service 319

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Contact Center

CX Global Media

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

I’m cursed. Are you? For years I fell into a trap that I see many in the contact center industry fall in to. It’s the trap of managing workflow for efficiency. I need to be careful not to manage queues of interactions because that’s how it’s always been done. My reality check is to remember, those are people in queue. Not efficiency metrics or channels to be managed.

Contact Center 270

Contact Center B2C Coaching Call Center 270

CX Accelerator

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

Last week, Brittany Naylor (Vice President of Customer Support for Service Direct) queued up a wonderful topic in our CX Accelerator slack channel. It was "Next Issue Avoidance" and how support leaders are bringing this critical concept to life. For those not familiar, the idea of "Next Issue Avoidance" was introduced as part of "The Effortless Experience " in 2011.

Contact Center 206

Contact Center B2C B2B Metrics 206

Callminer

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

Using artificial intelligence to evaluate and understand past contact center conversations shows businesses what to expect and gives them the opportunity to be proactive in the future.

Customer Experience 182

Customer Experience Contact Center 182

Beyond Philosophy

FEBRUARY 19, 2019

Organizations cannot afford to be operationally driven. A Customer Experience focus is a necessity of survival in today’s hyper-competitive and disrupted retail market. That said, not every organization realizes this fact yet, which I find disappointing. I was talking to the C-Suite of a retailer (who shall remain nameless) about Customer Experience.

Benchmark 356

Benchmark Marketing Customer Experience Consulting 356

ShepHyken

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure and honor of being the keynote presentation for River Valley Bank, soon to be Incredible Bank , as they merge the names of their brick-and-mortar banks and their online bank. I love that word, incredible , almost as much as my favorite word, amazing. If someone told you the customer service at a bank was incredible, you would only think positive things.

Banking 298

Banking Customer Service Customer Experience Personalization 298

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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.

Analytics

CX Global Media

FEBRUARY 28, 2019

Flexibility is often an innocently misunderstood element in the contact center technology evaluation criteria. Afterall, unless you’re evaluating and implementing a wide-array of contact center technology as part of your everyday job, it’s just impossible to keep up with. But you can’t ignore this issue, or else you’ll be tearing apart and ripping out your new technology as quickly as you’ve put it in.

Contact Center 250

Contact Center Coaching Call Center Technology 250

Myra Golden Media

FEBRUARY 4, 2019

Inflammatory words and an aggressive tone heat up an interaction like an oven heats up a room. The five biggest mistakes I see customer service professionals make when talking to upset customers are: Aggressive tone – A direct or authoritative tone will quickly lead to an escalation in aggression or to a supervisor. Making threats – Spitting off, “Calm down or I can’t help you” will assuredly not make a customer calm down.

Customer Service 252

Customer Service Customer Experience Management Call Center 252

Steve DiGioia

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

While celebrating my daughter’s 20th birthday at a local steak restaurant – yes, the chicken finger & fries meals are a thing of the past, I was reminded that great service and experience doesn’t happen by accident. There must be a series of steps planned for and actions taken to allow for great service. Here is my list of 5 things you need to know about great service.

Sales 212

Sales Customer Service Management 212

Callminer

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Not every contact center is set up to make it easy to be a true problem solver and provider of excellent customer service.

Contact Center 207

Contact Center Customer Service 207

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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.

Contact Center

Beyond Philosophy

FEBRUARY 22, 2019

There is a big challenge when measuring customer emotions as you are asking customers how they felt in an experience, as this is done retrospectively, a while after they had the experience. Many times, Customers don’t remember how they felt or, for several reasons, they don’t want to tell you. Using technology, you can now measure customer’s emotions in real time!

Customer emotions 312

Customer emotions Consulting Consulting Surveys 312

ShepHyken

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

I’m honored to be the keynote speaker later this year at Office Pride , a franchisor of commercial cleaning service companies. All of the franchisees will be attending their annual meeting to network and learn about the latest and greatest opportunities happening in their industry. My job is to talk to them about customer service. As part of my homework, Todd Hopkins, their CEO, shared the Office Pride Culture book.

Accountability 289

Accountability Customer Service 289

CX Global Media

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

80% of contact center agents leave because of their relationship with their immediate supervisor. But with all relationships, it’s much better to give first – so that you shall receive. Follow these tips for building a better relationship with your Supervisor. She’ll likely love you for it! Your Supervisor today is like that elementary school teacher that you are still in touch with and will most likely be in touch with for the rest of your life.

Coaching 220

Coaching Contact Center Call Center Personalization 220

Myra Golden Media

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

If you say “because” when you’re telling a customer something, you’ll significantly increase the chance that they’ll accept your word as final. Here’s Why Saying “Because” Works. Research by psychologist Ellen Langer found that saying “because,” and then tossing out a reason as insignificant as a discarded rubber band, got people to agree.

Personalization 246

Personalization Customer Service Management Call Center 246

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!

Customer Experience

Convoso

FEBRUARY 8, 2019

VSA searched for a single contact center platform that would eliminate the inefficiencies created by using various CRM systems and dialer capabilities not at all suited for a unique client this company needed to support. With the existing systems, VSA would have been developing manual and time-consuming work-around processes.

CRM 175

CRM Contact Center Customer Experience 175

Contact Center Pipeline

FEBRUARY 7, 2019

Ready, willing and able is a self-explanatory idiom that describes an enthusiastic, well-prepared and eager response to change. Changes are abundant as we continue to move from 20th century approaches to the 21st in contact center management, infrastructure and technology. All indicators are contact centers must get serious about digital readiness that supports access to […].

Contact Center 170

Contact Center Technology Management Call Center 170

Beyond Philosophy

FEBRUARY 8, 2019

Organizations do not have the luxury of focusing solely on operations these days. Over the past decade, retail as an industry has changed. To survive, retailers must put the customer at the center of everything they do. That said, not everyone believes it yet. <!–more–> Not so long ago, I was having a conversation in the C-Suite of a company about Customer Experience.

Consulting 291

Consulting Consulting Marketing Customer Experience 291

ShepHyken

FEBRUARY 22, 2019

This week we feature an article by Stacy Sherman who reminds us that brands must not compete on price alone and shares a great story to illustrate this point from Stacy’s Pita Chips. – Shep Hyken. My obsession for Customer Experience (CX) started when I received a package in the mail on a random afternoon. I was not anticipating the delivery of a large box with a label that said, “ To Stacy, From Stacy.

B2C 282

B2C B2B Customer centricity Employee engagement 282

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Peter Lavers

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

What were the key themes coming out of my coverage of February’s IBM’s showcase global conference Think 2019 in San Francisco? I was delighted to be invited by IBM Watson to Think 2019 in my role as an IBM Futurist. Think is IBM’s flagship conference designed to deliver all the technical training, strategic expertise, and impactful lessons that a company needs to compete in today’s changing world.

Customer centricity 167

Customer centricity Technology Marketing Customer Experience 167

TechSee

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

If 2018 was a year when customer experience professionals came under intense pressure to map out tangible results from heavy investment, 2019 is shaping up to be the year when next generation customer experience will deliver on the promise of a wide range of new technologies. Three key drivers are at the core of this. ROI is fundamental, as C-suite executives at leading service providers demand measurable returns from their outlay.

Customer Experience 173

Customer Experience B2B Upselling SaaS 173

Callminer

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

Read three things I think your call center could do to drive higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Call Center 182

Call Center 182

Contact Center Pipeline

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

As an initial point of contact with your brand, customer service reps must be able to provide an excellent customer experience and resolve problems fairly and efficiently while showing empathy to every caller. It’s clear that a positive attitude is paramount in customer service, but not just for the benefit of the customer. It’s also […].

Customer Service 153

Customer Service Customer Experience Contact Center Call Center 153

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.

Customer Experience

Beyond Philosophy

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Beyond Philosophy won an award named one of the Best Management Consultancy Firms in the UK, by the Financial Times (FT). This was voted on by clients and peers, we couldn’t be more honored or proud. This bonus episode podcast explores how you can take your idea and turn it into an Financial Times Award-Winning consultancy, too. We share our 10-Step Plan for Success and ask our listeners, what would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Consulting 276

Consulting Consulting Benchmark Marketing 276

ShepHyken

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

When it comes to taking care of customers, sometimes people go a little further than expected. When asked why, they often say, “It was the right thing to do.” There’s no incentive other than the desire to care for someone else. In a sense, that is what customer service is about. While we may be paid to do a job, sometimes doing something that is not required – and therefore not expected – is what the next level of a good customer service experience is all about.

Customer Service 276

Customer Service Customer Care 276

GetFeedback

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

Companies frequently designate customer experience (CX) as the most exciting opportunity for their business, according to the Digital Marketing Trends Report. Successful customer experience strategies will lead to greater customer satisfaction, higher revenue, and diminished customer churn. Indeed, American Express research shows that a better experience is worth a higher cost for 60% of customers.

Customer Experience 128

Customer Experience Customer advocacy Feedback Coaching 128