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  • Forrester research: embracing conversational support is business-critical

    After surveying 523 customer support decision-makers, Forrester research found that embracing conversational support is business-critical. This research confirmed the companies that leverage the power of conversational support can successfully drive customer retention. Moreover, they reported an increase in customer satisfaction and business efficiency. In this article, we summarize the key research findings. The full report…
    The post Forrester research: embracing conversational support is business-critical appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

  • How Salesforce Works with iPadOS 15: The Future Portable Powerhouse

    Apple’s iPad Pro has become increasingly laptop-like over the years with versatile IO ports, powerful hardware, an incredible touch screen display, and software that is slowly (but surely) leveraging the hardware features. iPadOS 15 brings significant upgrades – an entirely new Safari experience, features that… Read More

  • How Your Call Center Can Overcome Agent Burnout

    Do your contact center agents seem tired, irritable, or emotional? While it’s easy to assume they’re having a bad day, you could be ignoring a few classic signs of employee burnout.
    Work and money are two of the most common sources of stress among adults. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this stress, with 52% of workers feeling burnt out this year.
    Anyone can experience burnout, regardless of their job title, position, and salary. However, customer support workers are at a particularly high risk of burnout, and that risk is even higher for call centers. That’s why it’s so important for businesses to practice mindfulness and take steps to support the wellbeing of their agents and other employees.
    How to Foster Agent Engagement in a Hybrid Contact Center
    What causes call center burnout?
    Stress is notoriously prevalent in call center agents. Because of this, 75% of call center agents are at risk of burnout.
    Here are some of the most common causes for agent burnout:

    Unsustainably high workload
    Emotional burden and/or abuse from customers
    Overly strict workplace policies
    Conflict with coworkers
    Lack of progression or recognition
    Lack of meaningful feedback

    Sounds stressful, right? Working long hours, receiving verbal abuse from customers, feeling snubbed by management, and not seeing any progress are enough to make an employee feel hopeless. In fact, the above reasons also contribute to high call center agent turnover.
    That’s what burnout is – a gradual feeling of hopelessness towards work, paired with exhaustion, due to unrelenting stress.
    Why Call Center Agent Engagement Matters
    8 ways to prevent and address call center burnout.
    Luckily, burnout doesn’t have to be part of your business culture. As a call center leader, it’s up to you and your management team to provide the support your team needs to do their work in a sustainable way. Here are just a few ways to do that:
    1. Advocate for work-life balance.
    Contact center managers have hard jobs. They must ensure agents are providing a consistently positive experience to all customers. To achieve this, your call center needs to prioritize work-life balance and create policies and procedures that support this.
    Begin by auditing your current employee experience and identify aspects of their work that significantly contribute to stress and burnout. Are your agents able to take their breaks during peak periods? Do their have sufficient time off between shifts to rest and recharge? By fostering a company culture that values work-life harmony, you’ll have a happier and higher-functioning staff.
    2. Invest in technology.
    Call center technology doesn’t just improve your customer experience – it also takes pressure off your agents! If your call center operation isn’t streamlined, and your agents are spending significant time on manual tasks, it adds unnecessary work to their plate.
    Invest in technology to improve your agents’ day-to-day so they can spend more time serving your customers. Cloud-based technology is especially great for remote and hybrid agents who don’t work from your physical location. This way, your agents will feel more accomplished at the end of the workday, and the risk of overwhelm during high call volume periods will be significantly lower.

    TIP:
    Voice Call-Backs can alleviate pressure off your agents during high call volume periods by offering customers a call-back option as an alternative to waiting on hold.

    3. Offer flexible scheduling.
    Shift work is an essential part of the traditional call center model. However, it can present its own set of challenges when it comes to agent engagement.
    Flexible scheduling is a great alternative approach, as it allows agents to have more control over the hours they work. Contact centers with flexible scheduling show higher levels of morale and engagement overall.
    4. Build strong inter-team relationships.
    Employee relationships in a call center are important. Strong inter-team relationships help agents form bonds and build trust, which will make a huge impact on culture and morale.
    Try planning activities as a team, scheduling regular team lunches, and investing in video chat software when necessary to connect with remote employees. By creating opportunities for staff to engage outside of daily work, you increase your chances of developing a positive and motivating work environment.
    5. Give employees autonomy.
    Offer your agents autonomy over their daily work to increase call center agent engagement. Employees enjoy work more if they have fluidity and independence in their day-to-day activities.
    Empower your agents with autonomy by giving them the proper training to support their customers. Investing in your agents’ knowledge and skills will allow them to help their customers without relying on manager approvals and escalations, eliminating unnecessary roadblocks and giving them a sense of accomplishment with each interaction.
    5 Important Strategies for Agent Engagement in 2021
    6. Support their career growth.
    As noted above, work and money are common sources of stress. So if your agents feel like they’re at a dead-end job, they are more susceptible to burnout.
    Ensure there are ample opportunities for career growth in your contact center, and help your agents plan a path towards their career goals. An internal mentorship program can give them a sense of progression as they learn and grow with your business.
    7. Provide meaningful feedback.
    Offering feedback can put your agents’ minds at ease about where they stand performance-wise. By providing consistent feedback to your agents, both positive and constructive, you give them goals to work towards while making them feel good about their strengths. Experts recommend that you give feedback in person (or through a video chat) for optimal results.

    TIP:
    Ask your agents how you can best support them with a call center agent engagement survey.

    8. Encourage physical fitness and wellness.
    Exercise and healthy eating contribute to improving mental health. This isn’t an opinion – it’s science! Help your agents with their wellness efforts by allowing flexible breaks for physical activity, even for agents working from home. Offering gym memberships, wellness plans, and other resources and services are also great options.The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

  • A coaching paradox

    At the top tier of just about any sort of endeavor, you’ll find that the performers have coaches.

    Pianists, orators and athletes all have coaches. In fact, it would be weird if we heard of someone on stage or on the field who didn’t have one.

    And yet, in the world of business, they’re seen as the exception.

    Part of the reason is that work feels like an extension of something we’ve been doing our whole lives. Figure skating isn’t like school, but showing up at work seems to be. “I’ve got this,” is a badge of honor.

    And part of the reason is that a few coaches have made claims that stretch belief, and we’re not actually sure what they do. It doesn’t help that there’s no easy way to identify what sort of coach we need or what we’re going to get…

    It turns out that the people with the potential to benefit the most from a coach are often the most hesitant precisely because of what coaching involves.

    Talking about our challenges. Setting goals. Acknowledging that we can get better. Eagerly seeking responsibility…

    And yet we avert our eyes and hesitate. It might be because having a coach might be interpreted as a sign of weakness. And what if we acknowledge our challenges but fail to overcome them? It could be that we don’t want to cause change to happen, or that we’re worried that we will.

    One company I admire believes in coaches so much that they’ve put several on staff, ensuring that their leadership all benefit from one. But mostly, it’s something we have to pay for ourselves.

    And so, paying for a coach, for something that’s hard to measure, which might be socially awkward, to get better at something that feels normal—combine that with a hesitancy to ask for help—it’s a wonder anyone has a coach.

    The paradox is that the very things that hold us back are the reasons we need a coach in the first place.

    [Email subscribers! I just learned that my email provider had a very glitchy weekend, but hopefully they’re back on track and this is in your inbox. You can always find the latest version of all the posts at seths.blog

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  • Gratitude is the ultimate employee reward

    Maintaining an engaged workforce with an adequate employee reward has been more important than ever over the last 18 months. Businesses have been under immense pressure to keep the doors open. In amongst the turmoil, it’s easy to forget that employees too were navigating the impact of COVID on their personal and professional lives. Their…
    The post Gratitude is the ultimate employee reward appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

  • Salesforce Experience Cloud: What I Wish I’d Known Before Our Implementation

    Salesforce Experience Cloud is a great product that provides companies the ability to collaborate with their employees, customers, and partners. If your company is looking to implement Experience Cloud (formerly ‘Community Cloud) in the future, you should ensure that you have enough time to fully… Read More

  • What technologies do you use?

    Hi guys, I’m trying to understand what are the top technologies across functions. I created this survey to get some insights into what’s driving the post pandemic workplace. Here’s the survey link. Please check it out. If not, let me know in the comments on what you think:)
    submitted by /u/Longjumping-Sir8608 [link] [comments]

  • What Is Email Throttling and How Does It Affect Email Marketing

    Email deliverability is one of the most critical factors for a successful email marketing strategy. After all, if your emails don’t even make it to the inbox, then they can’t inspire the action you want from your recipients. In this blog post, we’ll cover what email throttling is and how to avoid it.  What’s Email…
    The post What Is Email Throttling and How Does It Affect Email Marketing appeared first on Benchmark Email.

  • Advanced digital marketing is more efficient and way cheaper than any current marketing techniques

    Are current marketing agencies and techniques really efficient? I mean when you think about the expenses and fees you pay these agencies while taking into consideration the slow campaign execution due to human bandwidth limits you realize that you are missing on a lot of opportunities, you realize that it’s not really worth all that money. You will eventually have to rely on blockchain based digital marketing platforms like Ojamu that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms that would outperform humans in execution, speed, accuracy and overall digital marketing campaign success. Such platforms are stepping stones leading to a more efficient and user driven market.
    submitted by /u/Araballin [link] [comments]

  • 5 Ways to Add a Personal Touch to Your Sales Email

    In a lot of ways, technology has made it easier to reach potential customers. Automated email marketing allows you to speak to an entire database of contacts with just the touch of a button. And while email has proven to be significantly more efficient at converting customers than social media, your potential customers’ inboxes are getting fuller every day. 

    We’ve reached the point where most consumers can smell a sales email a mile away and will delete it within seconds. They expect that if they open it, they’ll be subjected to blanket messaging, “talking at you” verbiage, and generic content. Usually, they’re right. One-size-fits-all emails are not helping your business, and they may actually be hurting it. 
    As a salesperson, you understand that getting to know your customers and building relationships with them is still the best way to close a deal. While more and more relationships are being forged from behind a screen, the need to create a connection is more important than ever. The question becomes, how can you leverage the power of technology and build a relationship with your customer?
    Adding a personal touch to your emails will set you apart from your competitors and help you stand out in a sea of sameness. A few minutes of research and personalization can create an entirely new playing field for you. There are a number of ways to achieve this with your sales emails, but before we discuss those, let’s get into some of the benefits of adding a personal touch.
    Benefits of Personalization
    Imagine if you walked into a car dealership and were greeted by a robot who referred to you as “Dear Customer” and determined which car was best for you (and everyone else) before asking you what you were looking for. You’d probably run — not walk — out of that dealership. 
    Yet, we do that every day with generic sales emails. 
    Adding a personal touch to your emails will help you:
    Build Rapport
    Personalized emails allow you to connect with your potential customers and see them as actual people. That connection will encourage them to do business with you and stay loyal to you. 
    Build Trust 
    Consumers want to feel like you understand their pain. A generic email blast, sent out to hundreds or thousands of people, doesn’t target their individual struggles. However, seeing a personalized email that addresses their specific challenges and offers hope of a solution builds their trust in your brand. 
    Make Customers Feel Like You’re Speaking to Them
    Every industry has its own lingo for the problems they solve. Unfortunately, this isn’t necessarily the verbiage that will resonate with a potential customer. Getting to know your consumers better and then using personalization helps you speak directly to them. 
    Keep Customers Happy
    By and large, customers are less receptive to and flat-out irritated by emails that aren’t personalized — and the last thing you want to do in a sales email is irritate your audience. Providing customization and personalization makes consumers happy, so always try to find ways to incorporate those kinds of elements. 
    Improve Open, Sales, and Conversion Rates
    When consumers know that you understand their problems and reliably send relevant content, they come to feel personally connected to your company — a feeling that makes them more inclined to open your emails and, in turn, do business with you. 
    Ideas for Personalization
    There are a number of different approaches when it comes to adding a personal touch to your sales emails. Here are some of the most effective ones. 
    1. Start with a strong template. 
    It may sound counterintuitive, but beginning with a template will free up your time to do your research on your potential customers. Remember, this is just a starting point. You’ll be customizing sections and altering words to fit your audience. You can find a variety of sales email templates from Hubspot to help you get started.
    2. Send them content they actually want.
    Sending your potential (and existing) customers content is an excellent way to stay top-of-mind and establish yourself as a thought leader in your space. However, no one wants to be inundated with information that they don’t find necessary or applicable. Base the content you send off what your customers actually want. 
    Icebreaker by UpContent is an integration application that allows you to re-engage your prospects when the conversation has died down. By sending them third-party content that has already been curated by your team, you can jumpstart the conversation and continue the relationship. This content is relevant to your organization and to your customer and already approved for distribution. 
    3. Personalize offers and product recommendations.
    It might go without saying, but every customer is unique, and their problems require at least somewhat individualized solutions. As you learn more about your customers, use this information to make personalized recommendations that fit their needs rather than yours. 
    4. Show appreciation. 
    Sales emails shouldn’t just be about sales. Once you’ve established a relationship with a customer, you need to cultivate it. Send them a welcome email when they become a customer, celebrate milestones in their life and in your relationship, and wish them a happy birthday. These emails keep you fresh in their minds without being intrusive or annoying. 
    5. Put an end to cold calling.
    There are very few salespeople in the world that actually enjoy making a cold call. Those that do know that you need to create a connection early on by starting a conversation about something other than the product you’re selling. 
    The same goes for emails. Reaching out to people in your database — even if they’ve signed up for a free offer — is pretty much still cold calling. Co-Pilot is an app that integrates conversation starters such as local weather, local news, and upcoming local holidays into your contact records. This provides you with a starting point to break the ice and personalize your emails to create a better connection. 
    Whether you utilize the technology available to you or not, real human connection will always be the best sales tactic. Connecting with potential and existing customers will allow you to build rapport, build trust, and make your customers feel appreciated so they keep coming back. Adding a personal touch to your sales emails is easy and essential to creating loyal, happy customers.