CX Demo

Author: Franz Malten Buemann

  • Best Video Advertising Trends for 2023

    Marketers are pushing their brand advertising with more creative video content to make a difference. Are you prepared to catch the video advertising trend? Read more: https://www.martechcube.com/best-video-advertising-trends-for-2023/ submitted by /u/MarTechCube [link] [comments]

  • 5 Newsletter Templates Ideas That Will Help You Increase Conversions

    Newsletters have become a trendy and cost-effective way for businesses to maintain consistent outreach with their subscribers and alert them of important milestones and rollouts. With an eye-catching design, easy-to-read layout, and a clear purpose, your newsletters can become more engaging for your audiences, leading to higher open rates that turn into conversions. However, the…
    The post 5 Newsletter Templates Ideas That Will Help You Increase Conversions appeared first on Benchmark Email.

  • Salesforce Integration Patterns – Making Integrations Easier

    There comes a point in every Salesforce Developer’s career where they are tasked with integrating an external system into Salesforce in some way. If you’re lucky, you can find an AppExchange solution that matches your requirements, however if you’re integrating within some niche, or have… Read More

  • Driveway will make training new employees so much easier

    submitted by /u/Downtown-Repair-805 [link] [comments]

  • Real Talk: Who leads the Martec strategy in your business? Marketing or IT? And why?

    Interested in learning who’s still leading and how this relationship is evolving across different org. submitted by /u/seanrrwilkins [link] [comments]

  • 5 Great Call Center Agent Retention Strategies

    We’ve all heard about the human touch and how important it is in the CX and call center spaces. Your customers want thoughtful and empathetic service, and that’s not something you can get from technology alone.
    So why do call centers struggle with retaining their agents? There are a lot of factors that contribute to agent turnover and attrition, and those challenges have increased even more thanks to the Great Resignation.
    So how do you retain the best skilled agents for your business? That’s what we’re here to explore. Read on to find out the best call center retention strategies to guide your efforts.
    A Quick Introduction to Call Center Retention
    Let’s begin with the basics. When we talk about call center retention, we’re referring to your business’ ability to keep the agents you’ve hired and trained. Every manager knows that new hires are extremely costly, and even more expensive to replace. With strong call center retention, you can save a lot of money on turnover down the line.
    It should come as no surprise that the call center industry experiences high turnover rates. According to QATC, the annual average turnover rate for call centers is between 30%-45%. Losing agents at this rate has a serious impact on quality of service, as skilled agents take a lot of time and resources to hire and train. Your customers are looking for knowledgeable and experienced support professionals to help them, and that is difficult to achieve with staff constantly entering and exiting your contact center.
    How to Foster Agent Engagement in Today’s Contact Center
    How to Calculate Turnover Rates
    To measure agent retention, you’ll need to calculate your team’s turnover rate. Let’s say you want to calculate your monthly turnover rate. Here’s the formula you need to figure that out:

    (# of employees who left this month) ÷ (Average number of call center agents on your team) × 100% = Turnover rate

    For instance, if your call center has an average of 100 agents, but 10 agents departed in the past month, your formula would read: (10 ÷ 100) x 100 = 10%
    Call center turnover rates should be calculated regularly. Once you have several months of data logged, you should start to see patterns emerge.
    5 Great Call Center Retention Strategies
    Ask yourself: what are the most common reasons agents leave? How can you improve your overall agent experience? Start paying attention to these factors, and you’ll be in a better position to lower your turnover rate.
    There are many factors that play into agent turnover, including negative work culture, poor hiring and onboarding experiences, not having the right tools and resources to do their job, and more. Follow these surefire strategies, and you will soon start to see improved retention for your call center.
    1. Follow best practices in hiring
    When your contact center is short-staffed, your leadership team may be tempted to rush hiring. But this can cause huge problems down the line.
    Why? Finding the right fit for your team means finding individuals who are well suited to call center work. Not everyone will rise to the challenge, so it’s important to ensure the people you hire have the right foundational skills and attributes. Otherwise, you risk losing them sooner than later.
    Here are some tips for hiring new agents:

    Create employee profiles. Before you hire anyone new, you should know what you are looking for. An employee profile will act as your roadmap during the process.
    Focus on aptitudes, not just experience. Ask interviewees about their work style, how they motivate themselves, and critical thinking.
    Ask situational questions. Agents need to be able to handle different support scenarios, so this is a fantastic way to measure their problem-solving skills.

    2. Invest in training and onboarding
    Starting a new job can be stressful all on its own. But if your new hires don’t receive the proper support to get them started on the right foot, they’ll soon begin to plan their exit.
    ASAPP research reports that 51% of respondents who received poor training felt pessimistic about their careers, leading to burnout and poor performance. Here are some tips for upgrading your training and onboarding efforts:

    Use different training styles. Not everyone learns the same way, so be sure to offer classroom learning as well as hands-on learning opportunities for your agents.
    Introduce your new hires to the team. This small but significant gesture can help your new hires feel at home with their new coworkers sooner.
    Provide ongoing training. Training should not just be for new hires. Offering regular sessions for your more experienced agents will keep them engaged and connected with their work.

    The Ultimate Guide to Call Center Training
    3. Develop a positive company culture
    From agents to managers to directors, all contact center professionals can attest to the impact company culture has on their daily work. Employees who are engaged in your culture are less likely to leave — that makes this an important part of your agent retention strategy,
    Here are just a few things you can do to improve your company culture:

    Identify existing challenges. If your current work culture isn’t where it needs to be, pinpoint the issues and develop a plan to remedy them. Trust us, these issues won’t disappear on their own!
    Check in with your managers. Your managers are the ones with the most influence over your agents’ work experience. Offer managers training on how to create a productive and positive work environment!
    Conduct culture interviews. Ensure your new hires fit in with the rest of the team by inviting them to a more casual-style interview with a few of your team members.
    Prioritize work-life balance. Offer your agents perks and benefits to support life inside and outside of work. This can include flexible work hours, recreational memberships, and more.

    FACT:
    In a Gallup poll, 75% of respondents voluntarily left a position because of their boss, not the job itself.

    4. Provide the right tools and resources
    Call center work is not exactly stress-free. While you can’t eliminate the element of pressure from customer support, you can make the agent experience more manageable and rewarding.
    Contact center software has come a long way, with tools smart enough to automate the more mundane and repetitive parts of agent work. By investing in these tools, you create a more enjoyable and engaging work experience for your agents.
    There are countless tools on the market, so we’ve listed our top categories below:

    Call-back technology. This incredible tool helps lower your call volumes while offering callers an alternative to waiting on hold. Fewer frustrated customers means happier agents!
    AI assist. Artificial intelligence is the ultimate agent assistant, automating simple and repetitive tasks so your agents can focus on more complex tasks, like supporting customers.
    Self-service tools. Like AI, self-service tools are meant to address simpler customer queries while alleviating the burden of work from your agents.

    5. Provide growth opportunities
    Did you know that lack of career development opportunities has been tied to high turnover? Your employees are looking for a future with your organization, and that includes exploring new positions and promotions.
    There are lots of ways to foster growth opportunities with your call center. Here are some strategies to get your started:

    Offer one-on-one reviews. Have managers set time aside for each agent, and give them the opportunity to provide feedback on what they hope to accomplish in their current role and beyond.
    Create a career plan. Implementing and regularly updating a career plan will help illustrate your agents’ progression towards their career goals with the company.
    Create a mentorship program. Give your veteran agents an opportunity to take the lead and mentor your newer agents. This will help them develop leadership skills for their next big opportunity!
    The post 5 Great Call Center Agent Retention Strategies first appeared on Fonolo.

  • Meet the New Salesforce Integration User License

    If you’re a Salesforce professional working with a variety of systems integrated with your Salesforce instance through an integration user, it’s likely that this is the announcement you’ve been waiting for – a dedicated user license is finally available!  In addition to the extremely popular… Read More

  • Salesforce Release 5x Free Integration User Licenses

    If you’re a Salesforce professional working with a variety of systems integrated with your Salesforce instance through an integration user, it’s likely that this is the announcement you’ve been waiting for – a dedicated user license is finally available!  In addition to the extremely popular… Read More

  • 5 Reasons to Attend Salesforce Architect Summit 2023

    The Pune Salesforce community is 4th largest in the world with around 23k+ members across developer, admin, marketers and architect roles. After the success of the first Salesforce Architect Summit in the world in 2019, the Salesforce Community in Pune is organizing the second edition… Read More

  • Ecommerce Conversion Rates Across Industries (And How to Raise Yours)

    Ecommerce conversion rates are the ultimate top-line metric for online store owners. With this data, you can see if the changes you make to your site positively or negatively impact how many visitors become customers.
    Download Now: Ecommerce Conversion Rate Calculator
    Although crucial, there’s often confusion around what’s considered a reasonable conversion rate. Before you evaluate if your ecommerce conversion rate is good or bad, you must evaluate how your performance measures against your industry’s standard.
    In this article, you’ll learn the ins and outs of ecommerce conversion rates, conversion rate benchmarks across industries, and how you can improve your results. Let’s dig in.

    For example, suppose 30 out of 1,000 visitors to your online shop made purchases.
    To calculate your ecommerce CVR, take the total number of people who completed checkout (30) and divide that by the total number of site visitors in the same time frame (1,000). In this case, your ecommerce CVR would be 30/1000 = 0.03 = 3%.

    Today, many ecommerce retailers sell across multiple platforms. You’ll need to aggregate your site visits and conversions in one place.
    You can leverage a tracking spreadsheet or find a technology solution to keep a pulse on your performance across platforms.
    We’ve put together a free ecommerce conversion rate tracker that you can download here, along with an ecommerce marketing and sales plan template in our Ecommerce Planning Kit.
    Featured Resource: Ecommerce Conversion Rate Tracker

    Why is your ecommerce conversion rate important?
    Your ecommerce conversion rate is crucial to the success of your online shop.
    For example, you could bring in 50,000 views per month to your website through ads. If the user experience on your website is poor or your product descriptions aren’t effectively communicating value, you might only end up with a small percentage of that traffic converting into customers.
    Ecommerce CVR is also a valuable metric to track over time to see how the improvements you’re making to your website, product categorizations, product descriptions, checkout process, or any other aspects of your online store are actually impacting your business’s bottom line.
    What’s a good ecommerce conversion rate?
    Don’t compare your ecommerce CVR to an overall benchmark that aggregates CVRs across industries. CVRs vary wildly across ecommerce sectors. Try to find conversion rates for your category or industry to use as a benchmark.
    Looking at numbers isn’t all you need to do. Conduct a cost-benefit analysis and ensure that you make more money than you spend by selling your products online. From there, focus your time on optimizing your site beyond where it currently stands.
    If you have one category of items with an excellent conversion rate, you can also aim to bring all categories up to that standard. With that approach, you can count on the CVR benchmark reflecting your specific target persona, not anyone else’s.
    If you’re starting from scratch, see below for industry-specific benchmarks backed by recent research.
    Ecommerce Conversion Rate Benchmarks by Industry
    The numbers below come from IRP Commerce, which constantly collects data across many industries and ShippyPro. The numbers were most recently updated in December 2022.

    Agriculture: 0.62% – 1.41%
    Arts and Crafts: 3.84% – 4.07%
    Baby and Child: 0.87% – 1.43%
    Cars and Motorcycling: 1.35% – 0.65%
    Electrical and Commercial Equipment: 2.49% – 1.31%
    Fashion, Clothing, and Accessories: 1.01% – 2.20%
    Food and Drink: 1.00% – 2.01%
    Health and Wellbeing: 1.87% – 4.20%
    Home Accessories and Giftware: 1.55% – 2.34%
    Kitchen and Home Appliances: 1.72% – 3.00%
    Pet Care: 2.53% – 2.20%
    Sports and Recreation: 1.18 – 1.62%

    1. Put explainer videos on your product pages.
    It can be challenging to get a sense of sizing, fit, and material quality from photos. Video tends to demonstrate more detail. Add videos that show your product from various angles and allow people to see them in action.
    You’ll also want to account for the increasing number of people who prefer to consume video over text.
    2. Give your visitors a clearer set of product images.
    There’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to look at the small details of the item you’re considering buying online only to find out that you can’t zoom in.
    Your ecommerce site should include images of your product from different angles and allow prospective buyers to zoom in on the product images. Doing so allows these potential customers to have a more accurate sense of your product before purchase.
    3. Tighten your copy.
    Ensure your product descriptions are grammatically correct, easy to understand, and properly structured. It’s vital to keep your ideal buyer in mind as you write your product description.
    In some cases, retailers may have a couple of identical products that are differentiated only by size. While the product specifications should reflect the different product dimensions, it’s okay to leave the copy describing the product’s use as is.
    On the other hand, if you’re selling something like body care products, you might write an entirely new copy to describe who each product is suitable for, the different sensory elements of the product, and the look and feel of each.
    At a baseline, always include product measurements, material specifications, warranty information, and any other information that would be crucial for buying your product. With this information, you won’t lose a prospective customer who is wondering about a key detail.
    4. Add a chat feature to your website.
    You simply can’t answer every question that anyone will ever have in your product description. However, since you want to do everything you can to convince someone to buy your product while they’re already on your site, consider chat as another avenue.
    Chat can be a powerful tool for bridging the gap between your product descriptions and the information an individual needs to buy.
    Customers can ask questions about your brand, shipping policies, and anything else non-product-specific without leaving the web page of the product they’re close to buying.
    5. Test different call-to-action (CTA) placements, options, and wording.
    Altering your CTAs is a classic method of optimizing a website’s conversion rate. Switching up the copy within your CTAs, the options people have for the next place they can go, or the prominence of those CTAs can be low-effort, high-impact ways to encourage people to buy.
    Studies have found that while the majority of CTA tests don’t produce statistically significant results, the ones that do create enormous impact, with on-page conversion lifts averaging 49%.
    You won’t know what conversion rates you’ll see until you start experimenting with each little aspect of your site.
    6. Add social proof with stellar customer reviews.
    It’s becoming increasingly easy for companies with cheap, low-quality products to deliver comparable on-site experiences and images. This convinces buyers that their products are the same as the others in the market, just less expensive.
    However, the one element that’s hard to fake is customer reviews. Allow your customers to leave reviews of your products to prove their quality. If you’ve got great reviews, consider moving them higher on the product pages. Social proof can positively impact prospective customers’ buying decisions.
    If you don’t have a solution that allows customers to leave reviews automatically, collect quotes from people who’ve bought from you before. Add several to each of your product descriptions.
    Remember that you can always run A/B tests by tweaking your testimonial’s design and placement. You’ll soon find out what works best.
    7. Offer free shipping.
    We’ll admit that offering free shipping isn’t the cheapest option. However, the ROI can be enormous. Many people choose to go to a local store when it’s significantly cheaper to drive 15 minutes than pay $5-10 for shipping.
    Free shipping reduces the perceived barriers to ordering something online. That means that you likely end up with more people making purchases. The revenue from those additional customers may compensate for the losses incurred by paying for their shipping.
    You can also set a minimum purchase amount before free shipping applies to an order. You’ll incentivize your customers to spend a little more on products to avoid paying the shipping costs.
    8. Tweak your checkout process.
    You can make dozens of small changes to the user experience of your checkout process. Two of our favorites are eliminating unnecessary fields and adding a progress bar.
    While collecting additional information about your buyers during the checkout process is tempting, additional questions lengthen the amount of time it takes to buy. Many people might not be that patient.
    Progress bars can have two advantages.

    First, they can reduce buyers’ concern that they don’t have the time to complete the checkout process at the moment.
    Second, they give people a sense of accomplishment after each step they’ve completed, building positive momentum toward completing their purchase.

    9. Allow guest checkout.
    Allowing people to create an account makes sense for repeat buyers. But if you require people to make an account to make their first purchase, you may lose potential customers. Additionally, some people are averse to saving personal information online.
    Trustpilot reports that requiring account creation at checkout is the second-biggest reason why people abandon carts, coming in just below having to pay for shipping.
    Those who become repeat buyers will create an account eventually if they feel comfortable saving their information. In the meantime, don’t add extra steps to the checkout process for people ready to buy.
    10. Add additional payment options.
    A study from the Merchant Payments Ecosystem revealed that 50% of consumers would end a transaction if they couldn’t find their preferred payment method.
    Consider running a survey to understand your customers’ preferred payment methods and add the one that’s most convenient for them.
    By meeting your customers where they are, you’re potentially removing a nuisance (i.e., walking to another room to get a different credit card) or a complete blocker (i.e., not having access to any of the available payment methods). You’ll also create an easier user experience.
    Improve your conversion rates.
    By tracking relevant website metrics, you can discover what your current conversion rate is.
    Find the right tools to help optimize your conversion rate. Then, experiment to see what yields results.