ShepHyken

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

It’s almost a given that every company has some form of a customer service department. Even the smallest companies – with just one solo entrepreneur – will act as if they have a customer service department. Why do people reach out to the customer service department? Because they need help, have a question, or want to make a complaint. So, understanding that, why would a company choose to deliver an amazing customer service experience to just some of their customers and not to every customer?

Customer Service 467

Customer Service Feedback Wait times Customer Support 467

Steve DiGioia

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

…here’s 7 ways to get you started This original article was written by Steve DiGioia. You still haven’t learned how to speak up, huh? Maybe you’re just afraid of confrontation? I know, you don’t want to offend anyone, right? Don’t want to come across as too assertive or even aggressive; what’s the difference anyway? The service you provide has always lacked because of your fear of “taking charge” and not wanting to offend your customers.

Customer Service 387

Customer Service Customer Experience Personalization 387

Myra Golden Media

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

Questions are a double-edged sword for customer service professionals. You have to ask questions to get to the root of the problem, log issues, and in general, to help customers. But, often a series of questions can sound like an interview. If we aren’t careful, back to back questions can come across as an interrogation. Years ago, when I managed a small call center, I realized that my team had to ask our customers seven questions.

Call Center 360

Call Center Customer Service Customer Experience Management 360

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

Many companies seeking to improve their Customer Experience (CX) understand the importance of putting the customer at the center of everything they do. Doing it, however, flummoxes them. Not all companies have this problem though. Those that have excellent experiences, the kind that makes their brand name a household one, demonstrate actual customer-centricity in their CX.

Customer centricity 400

Customer centricity Consulting Consulting Customer Experience 400

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Contact Center

Contact Center Pipeline

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

Contact center leaders often express dissatisfaction with their current technology. They think that if they’d just implement some new technology, they’d be primed to achieve their business goals. Yet many centers have substantial opportunities to optimize efficiency and improve the customer experience by getting more out of what they already have. One of the most […].

Contact Center 357

Contact Center Technology Customer Experience Call Center 357

ShepHyken

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

It happens all the time. As a customer, you interact with good people who don’t seem to deliver great customer service. They are nice, even knowledgeable, but they don’t seem to be what I call customer focused. So, I took a few minutes to talk to several people about how they were trained. I talked to a retail salesperson, a flight attendant, and a server at a restaurant.

Customer Service 254

Customer Service Airlines Sales Management 254

Steve DiGioia

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

…no wonder why customer service is so bad – my rant! This original article was written by Steve DiGioia. We have turned into a group of inconsiderate, rude, thoughtless, disrespectful and egocentric miserable people. The worst traits of one’s personality show when presented with a “great deal” on a TV, toaster oven or pair of sneakers. Surely, Black Friday shopping brings out the worst in us.

Sales 223

Sales Personalization Customer Service Management 223

Myra Golden Media

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

I recorded this video last week for a client. It’s part of a full 16-module customer service training. As a special treat for you, I’m sharing one module from my client’s course. This video is about giving customers an experience that makes them feel good and maintains their esteem. Viewers learn 3 Keys for a Friendly Customer Experience: Never Correct a Customer, Pacing a Customer’s Sense of Urgency and Acknowledging Concern.

Customer Experience 273

Customer Experience Customer Service 273

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

We all have habits, good and bad. Few of us remember how they formed. Few of us know how to change them—especially those bad ones. However, understanding how habits develop and their influence on our behavior can be a powerful tool for tuning up our Customer Experience. The scientific definition of a habit is anytime your mind prepares you to respond in a certain way based on some environmental cues or stimuli.

Government 345

Government Consulting Consulting Customer Experience 345

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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

Contact Center Pipeline

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Remember Oscar the Grouch on “Sesame Street”? For some reason, he was our son Brendan’s favorite character. He even had an Oscar the Grouch Halloween costume! During that period, I would sometimes borrow the mask to alert the family to an emerging “grouchy” condition. The funny thing was that, once I actually put on the […].

Contact Center 357

Contact Center Management Call Center 357

Callminer

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

For all of the benefits of using marketing analytics, many companies and senior marketing executives continue to struggle with implementing marketing analytics and using analytics tools effectively.

Analytics 182

Analytics Marketing 182

ShepHyken

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

“It’s Showtime!” Those are typically the words you hear right before hitting the stage or when the cameras start to roll in the studio. However, for John Lewis , a high-end retail department store in the UK, the retail floor is the stage and the employees are the actors. John Lewis is providing 322 employees , whom they refer to as “partners,” acting lessons at The Oxford Playhouse to help “teach them the art of outstanding service.

Scripts 252

Scripts Personalization Customer Service Customer Experience 252

Fonolo

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

Since the inception of the voice channel, businesses have faced and overcome many obstacles to improve the experience for customers. Yet, this channel continues to be the bane of many customers’ existence. Are businesses not sick of hearing the same complaints over and over again? Are consumers not tired of complaining about the same things? If your call center still makes customers cringe when they dial into support, it’s time to take action.

Interactive Voice Response 194

Interactive Voice Response Call Center Contact Center Metrics 194

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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

Myra Golden Media

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

Was This Helpful? I’m asking you because my newsletter offers ideas like this all the time. If you’re not yet subscribed, sign up here.

Contact Center 256

Contact Center Customer Experience 256

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 22, 2017

Organizations love to talk about building relationships with customers. The trouble is, most of the time it feels like they’re just paying lip service to the idea. Was Wells Fargo “building relationships” when it opened all those unauthorized accounts? What about the car dealership that forces you to haggle over price to the point where you don’t even want a new car anymore?

Airlines 338

Airlines Consulting Consulting Advertising 338

Contact Center Pipeline

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

Many of this industry’s most successful leaders started out on the phones… and yet, many call centers still suffer from a reputation for being a dead-end job. True, most centers operate within a flat organizational structure, which means limited management positions and high competition for promotions. But let’s face it, call centers have not been […].

Call Center 210

Call Center Management Contact Center 210

Callminer

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

Both UK energy and water companies offer services specifically designed to support customers in vulnerable positions due to situations such as medical and mental health issues, disability, etc.

Analytics 182

Analytics 182

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

ShepHyken

NOVEMBER 22, 2017

There is a place I get my car worked on. They do a great job. The repair center’s employees are friendly and knowledgeable. The car always comes back cleaner than when it goes in for service. This is the way business should be done. The head of the service department mentioned I would be getting a survey emailed to me and asked if I would take a few minutes to complete it.

Surveys 229

Surveys Feedback Customer Service Customer Experience 229

Call Center Weekly

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

Lately, there has been great emphasis placed on customer experience, and customer journey mapping. Through insights gained, we in customer service are aware of the importance of utilizing soft skills to better enhance a customer's experience, as well as improving the level of service and support. But what insights can we learn by understanding the emotions of customers?

Customer emotions 174

Customer emotions Journey mapping Technology Marketing 174

Myra Golden Media

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Now and then someone comes along with an idea, 
and specific ways to implement that plan, that can truly
 make a difference for everyone who uses it. And that’s precisely what I’ve done with this new program: My All-New Telephone Skills Training eLearning Course

. In this online training, I teach your employees absolutely everything they need to know to deliver a warm and friendly customer experience, to control calls and pre-empt escalations.

Customer Experience 184

Customer Experience 184

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

After my wife Lorraine and I ordered dinner in a restaurant the other night, I decided to have a glass of wine. Now, where was our waiter? I looked around and realized I didn’t have a clue what he looked like. So I asked Lorraine. “Do you see our waiter?” She craned her neck and then shrugged. It seems neither of us could remember the face of the fellow who had, just moments before, told us about the night’s specials in great detail.

Consulting 334

Consulting Consulting Banking Customer Experience 334

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Peter Lavers

NOVEMBER 16, 2017

Remember when we used to talk about “channels and media”? Life was simple. Channel meant physical route to market e.g. retail, wholesale, intermediated, direct, etc. Media meant one- or two-way communications devices e.g. TV, radio, telephone, website, email, webchat, face-to-face, etc. These terms have effectively amalgamated since we started to become “multi channel”. eCommerce kicked this off on a massive scale, although the catalog and home shopping industry would say it’s been going for a l

Customer centricity 183

Customer centricity Automotive Finance Marketing 183

Callminer

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

Definition of QA Metrics Quality assurance, or QA, metrics refer to the data and facts your company uses to measure performance. Interestingly, QA metrics can vary significantly by industry, since they reflect performance as defined by that industry. For example, QA metrics for software development could measure production cycles and average costs, while QA metrics […].

Metrics 186

Metrics Best practices Call Center Analytics 186

ShepHyken

NOVEMBER 24, 2017

This week we feature an article by Brooke Harper who writes about the importance of using social media to provide great customer service. If you’re not monitoring what customers are saying about you and your company on social media, what are you waiting for?! – Shep Hyken. Are you paying attention to what your customers are saying on social media?

Customer Service 223

Customer Service B2B B2C Accountability 223

Contact Center Pipeline

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

Skills-based Routing (SBR) is a feature found on any ACD today, and it’s been around for over 30 years. It is so common, in fact, that it’s become an afterthought when purchasing a contact center phone system: Auto attendant? Check. On-hold messaging? Check. Skills-based routing? Check. Hold on a second. That checkmark next to SBR […].

Contact Center 178

Contact Center Call flow Service level Call Center 178

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

Call Center Weekly

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

How do you ensure buy-in from your team? Looking to get more skin in the game from you team? It’s time to include them from the ground up! There is a magic that happens when your team takes time to learn together. We’ve been going through “The Effortless Experience” this year and it’s been a game changer for us. We all want to apply the learning and make an impact for our customers.

Journey mapping 167

Journey mapping Gamification Contact Center Management 167

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

I have led hundreds of successful Customer Experience (CX) program successes. I have also led a couple that failed. What’s the difference between the successes and the failures? A few things, but one of the most significant is the way an organization’s culture is centered. Organizations fail to improve their CX when they lack customer-centricity. Customer-centricity requires you to put the Customer at the center of everything you do.

Customer centricity 313

Customer centricity Journey mapping Consulting Consulting 313

Myra Golden Media

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

I was trying to check in for my American Airlines flight on my phone. I was able to get one boarding pass, but not the other. After several failed attempts, I called American and explained my problem. I was transferred quickly, and the person I ended up with looked into my itinerary and then she said: “Ms. Golden, this is a system error. You’re checked in all the way through to Tulsa.

Airlines 153

Airlines Accountability Personalization Customer Service 153