Category: Customer Experience

Customer patience levels are at an all-time low right now, which is why Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs are more vital than ever for the success of the modern contact center.
Put yourself in the customer’s shoes for a moment, and consider this situation:
You received an instant message from a friend on Instagram. You continue to have a conversation and exchange valuable information in the span of two minutes. 
Later that day, you’re on hold with a contact center, trying to resolve an issue with a flight you booked. As time passes, your patience wears thin. You look at the clock, and despite your brewing frustration, you realize it’s only been five minutes. 
Social media and the era of convenience have shortened our patience levels to such an extent that even five minutes is too long to wait. This rings true for every single customer that calls your contact center. 
Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs offer an effective, user-friendly solution to handling peaks in call volume, shortening long hold times, and even reducing the stress of your agents. 
But how can you optimize Voice Call-Backs to reach your call center’s highest potential? Our Ultimate Call–Back Tactical Handbook will tell you everything you need to know, but we’ve put together a shortlist of tips to get you started. 

READ THE FULL GUIDE:
The Ultimate Call-Back Tactical Handbook
(It’s 100% free, we promise.)

Helpful Call-Back Terminology
You can better describe and understand the call-back process and experience with these terms:

Offer Rate: Number of callers offered a call-back
Take-Up Rate: Number of callers that accept a call-back
Time-Till-Offer: The amount of time a customer waits in a queue before accepting a call-back

Tip #1: Offer the call-back at the right time.
Call-backs offer customers a great deal of autonomy. Naturally, they’d choose the option immediately if they had the chance. But if you offer a call-back right away, you risk exceeding a reasonable take-up rate, which can empty your queue and create a backlog of call-backs. 
Our advice? Offer the call-back later in the IVR process. Your time-till-offer should be between 2-3 minutes. This way, customers who don’t mind waiting will stay on hold, splitting the call-back queue and hold queue proportionately. 
Learn more with our How and When to Offer Call-Backs Guide.

FACT:
The best time-till-offer for a call-back is 2-3 minutes into a customer’s hold time.

Tip #2: Customize your voice-call backs.
Take advantage of every possible opportunity to enhance customer experience, including through call-backs. Instead of a one-size-fits-all call-back common in various call center technology platforms, Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs let you customize the functionality every step of the way. 
Customize the following to match your brand image and voice:

Website call-back widget
Call queue message
SMS notifications

Why? Personalization is proven to increase sales, improve customer loyalty, and enhance the customer experience that surpasses your competitors!
Tip #3: Communicate with customers using SMS notify.
Your customers will opt for a call-back to avoid waiting on hold. But what happens if the call-back takes several hours? Customers will experience a whole different kind of waiting game, and feel like their perceived autonomy through the call-back has disappeared. 
That’s why Fonolo offers SMS Notify, an excellent way to keep your customers engaged and informed as they wait for a call-back. SMS Notify lets you send callers custom SMS notifications at any point in the call-back process. Here are some general SMS notifications to share with your customers:

“Confirm” notifications to confirm a call-back request with a customer
“Update” notifications to inform customers of their spot in the queue and estimated time till they receive a call-back
“Wrap-Up” notifications to thank customers for choosing a call-back after their issue is resolved

Feel free to customize the message with your branding, including with a signature, emoji, or tagline. 
Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs come with SMS Notify, the best way to customize communications with your customers throughout the call-back process #CallCenterTechnology #CommunicationClick To Tweet
Tip #4: Streamline internal communication.
Call-backs aren’t just for customers. You can use them to streamline internal communication as well. Use them to:

Let employees request call-backs from the team when needed, and
Contact employees from other divisions through the portal if they aren’t able to take a phone call. 

DID YOU KNOW:
Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs help improve intra-company communication as well.

Tip #5: Use data-rich reporting to catch issues and develop a call-back strategy.
Our Voice Call-Backs include an advanced analytics package that helps you set up automatic reports with rich data on:

Real-time call-back activity
The number of calls in the queue on average
Call-back performance
Historic statistics for comparison

But contact centers are busy. You might not always have time to examine reports quickly enough to catch or forecast major issues. That’s why Fonolo’s team analyzes them for you, and alerts you to any issues as soon as we detect them. With these alerts, you can feel empowered to adjust your custom notifications and message timing.

READ THE FULL GUIDE:
The Ultimate Call-Back Tactical Handbook
(It’s 100% free, we promise.)
The post The Call-Back Tactical Handbook: 6 Ways to Optimize Call Back Software first appeared on Fonolo.

Who invented the smartphone?

Well, certainly Alexander Graham Bell and Antonio Meucci and Edison and Tesla had something to do with it. And the folks at Fairchild. And Palm and Cisco and General Magic and countless others.

When we insist on waiting until it’s done before we share it, we walk away from the most important component of innovation.

Reassurance always runs out. Reassurance implies that the only reason to go forward is because it’s certain to work. Reassurance is futile.

Encouragement means that someone sees us, understands us and believes in us. Even (especially) when things don’t turn out as we hoped.

Encouragement lasts. Encouragement is self-fueling and self-fulfilling.

CXM is intrigued by the idea of companies “breaking up” with their poor-fit customers, instead of the other way around. Therefore, when this report came across our digital desks, we knew we had to share it.  Gartner, Inc reveals that by 2025, 75% of companies will “break up” with poor-fit customers as the cost of…
The post New research by Gartner says that 75% of companies will “break up” with poor-fit customers    appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

In response to the grassroots movements of #BLM, #MeToo and by the exposure of pronounced and increasing equity gaps during the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are allocating ever-increasing budgets to diversity-related initiatives. Already in 2002, MIT Sloan School of Management found that $8 billion is spent each year on diversity training alone in corporate America. In…
The post Diversity initiatives to increase business performance appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

I had the opportunity to first meet Gemma Colby during the webinar hosted by Awards International in December 2021. Together with three other CX leaders, Dejan Markovic, Gabriela Ciupitu, and Laura Tengerdi, Gemma talked about her success as the Head of Customer Experience at Yell. Gemma’s excellence and persistence led her to win the gold…
The post Standing out in CX as a woman: a conversation with Gemma Colby appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

I have developed a Checklist app to help you incentivise your website visitors to complete tasks and accordingly be rewarded. You can lead them to follow you on Facebook, Social Media, signup for an account or even watch a video through a checklist on your website and track each step! Visitors can claim rewards such as discount coupons, unlockables and other rewards. Since I am just launching, I’m willing to give it for absolutely free to the first 5 people to DM me. submitted by /u/Ornery-Discount2701 [link] [comments]

When a client, a boss or an employee makes a special request, it’s okay to get a little bent out of shape. It might cost you extra time or money, it might be a hassle, it might not be deserved.

And then you can say no.

But if you say yes, then it pays to be in it. 100%.

If you’re not, your yes was worthless. It ceases to be a favor if it comes with grumbling.

Holding a grudge means that our hands are too full to do our best work.

It’s tragically easy to think of news stories about AI (artificial intelligence) gone awry. Even a cursory Google search yields horrifying examples like the disastrous attempt at using an algorithmic substitute for A-level exams in the UK or Amazon Rekognition’s false matching of American Congressmen and women (disproportionately people of colour in Congress) with criminal…
The post Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI): emerging AI trend to watch in 2022 appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Zoom has become a staple for many businesses, and here at CXM, it is no different. Therefore, when we received the news that last week, Zoom Video Communications, Inc.  announced Zoom Contact Centre, we got intrigued. Will their approach to customer support be revolutionising for real? Let’s explore together with this short overview.   What is…
The post How Zoom’s new omnichannel contact centre will set a new standard in CX  appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.