Category: Customer Experience

“If I could just find someone to handle all the sales, I could get back to work.”

“Do you know someone who can do all of the investments, accounting, taxes and strategies around money?”

“Why do I have to spend time managing people, I want to get back to creating.”

I hear this from busy creative entrepreneurs, soloists and creators often.

If someone who cared as much as they did, but was focused and good at something like accounting or sales or management could just join in, life would be so much better.

A consigliere!

A proven partner who is not only trustworthy and skilled, but works cheap and is available to work at the scale of a small team’s operations. Someone able to work full time, or at least focus their full energy, the way you do.

Well, when you put it that way, it’s pretty clear why this is a tough role to fill.

If that superstar salesperson is so good, why on Earth would they want to drop everything and work to build your fledgling operation? Part of being a superstar salesperson is being smart about what you sell–and most of the time, that means picking things that are easier, more obvious and at a larger scale.

The same goes for the money folks. Money is money, and if you’re good at managing it, managing more of it is probably on your agenda.

There are two takeaways from these sobering truths:

It probably doesn’t pay to spend a lot of your day wishing someone magical will take over for you. If it’s important, you might need to get good at it.
The person you eventually find to work on these tasks is most likely to be like you, someone who is learning and growing as they go. They’re on their way to being a superstar, but they’re not there yet. You can get there together.

Craig Reed, General Manager of Cross-Border at Avalara, discusses some of the ways cross-border tax compliance could impact customer experience over the festive period and how retailers can avoid it happening.  According to eMarketer, global e-commerce had a record year in 2020 by growing 26% to $4.2 trillion. For most retailers, online revenues peak during the festive period were up more…
The post Why tax could have a huge impact on cross-border customer experience? appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

It’s tempting to believe that powerful people and organizations are conspiring in secret to cause mysterious or unfair events to occur. The conspiracies supposedly involve dozens of people working across many time zones in complete secrecy.

That’s truly unlikely. Unlikely because cooperation of this sort is hard to find, especially among the powerful, and because it’s essentially impossible to keep it a secret.

What’s actually happening, right in front of us, all the time, is that systems are causing uncoordinated actions to occur. When banks, for example, create a cycle of more debt and higher interest rates for students, they didn’t need to have a secret meeting to pull that off. All they did was act within the system that they’ve built for themselves. When companies race offshore to pay ever less in taxes, no one coordinated that. It was a ratchet, a system that rewarded a race to the bottom. And even though the NCAA is an organized entity, it’s the system that has driven up the pay of college head coaches, not a secret conspiracy.

If we’d like the world to work better, more fairly and with more of a long-term view, we have to identify the systems that push participants to do the opposite. And then we need to consistently and persistently work to change the incentives that cause the entities in those systems to act the way they do.

The following analysis explains how Apple Store serves as the perfect website model, so you can implement these principles on your own ecommerce business as well based on an analysis of the reasons the Apple Store creates such a “wow” experience for its customers – most of these reasons are directly related to customer service: 7 Ways the Apple Store Serves as the Perfect Business Model
Instant appeal Intelligent high-value layout​ A personal, concierge feel​ Filtering and customized solutions ​Convenience​ ​Stellar customer service Personalized follow up

submitted by /u/thumbsdrivesmecrazy [link] [comments]

Things decay.

We know precisely how many yoctoseconds it takes for half of a given amount of Hydrogen-7 to transform into ordinary hydrogen. And we know how old old things are because Carbon-14 loses half its mass every 5,700 years.

But ideas and cultural impact have a half-life as well.

Einstein wrote a paper 120 years ago that is still being discussed. It certainly had more of a cultural/scientific impact when it first arrived, but it lasted.

To Kill a Mockingbird has more cultural relevance today than a bestseller like The Bridges of Madison County, even though both were bestsellers at their peak. There are ten-year-old posts on this blog that still get a lot of traffic, and ones from a few weeks ago that are unlikely to be seen much in the future.

When marketers or leaders or artists show up to the culture with an idea, the immediate goal is to find traction and to change things. But the choice of medium, message and persistence have a lot to do with how long that impact will last.

Of the half a billion tweets that are tweeted every day on Twitter, perhaps a handful have a half-life of a year or more. Most fade away in a few yoctoseconds.

On the other hand, a peer-reviewed scientific paper probably has a higher average half-life. Darwin is still going strong.

Over the last few decades, there’s been a relentless move toward the yoctosecond–more ideas, lasting a shorter and shorter amount of time.

I’m not sure that we benefit from that, and if there’s a mismatch between how much work and focus an idea requires and it’s half-life, you’re likely to be disappointed.

Plan accordingly.

Our colleagues from Awards International are unstoppable on their mission of hosting the largest, and most impactful CX Awards on the planet. This time, they surprised us by announcing the first-ever US Customer Experience Awards.   🎉 The Customer Experience Magazine team is here to support our colleagues each step along the way. Therefore, with this short overview, we summarized all you…
The post The first-ever USCX Awards are open for entries appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

This is my book of the year.

It delivers on so many things that we want a book to do–it could never be replicated by a website or even a film.

The audiobook is even better… It’s engaging, powerful and resonates really deeply.

Mann has given us a deeply researched narrative, a book that will change the way you see just about everything in the natural world and its relationship with humanity. It’s about an epic struggle and mostly, about our future.

It seems to be about two obscure characters of the 20th century, but it’s not. It’s about each of us and the tools we can choose to bring with us to the future. I found myself switching camps every few minutes.

I am taking notes on every page, and I mention the book in most of the conversations I have.

Definitely a fine use of your time and attention. I’m glad books like this persist in a world that’s in too much of a hurry to get the tldr.

New research commissioned by Treasure Data reveals that only 26% of the content UK consumers currently receive from brands is relevant, and just 35% say that the content makes them click through.   Of the 2,000 adults surveyed, young people aged 18-34 were most likely to believe they’ve divulged more personal information since the pandemic (28%). Accordingly, 44% of respondents said they expected…
The post Only 26% of the content UK customers currently receive from brands is relevant appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Rockstar agents aren’t born great…they’re made. Sure, if you’re hiring correctly, your contact center will be filled to the brim with the right personalities and work ethics for success—but being surrounded by the best call center agents means effective training, constant support, and strategic goal setting.

GET YOUR FREE SCORECARD TEMPLATE
Performance Evaluation Scorecard for the Contact Center
(It only takes 60 seconds!)

All contact center managers know that the job entails so much more than just scheduling a team and watching them work. Managers act as the team’s support system, training resource, knowledge bank, and biggest motivator. It’s a bit of a daunting job, but there are a variety of ways management tasks can be streamlined while keeping agents engaged in their work.
One way to approach this is by using our Contact Center Agent Scorecard to evaluate agent performance — it gives managers a simplified way to track agent success and also sets agents up with an overview of their performance that will lead to better results.
How to Foster Agent Engagement in a Hybrid Contact Center
The value of proper agent performance evaluations.
One of the easiest ways to identify potential improvements for contact center processes is to track key performance indicators (KPIs). When you track numbers, certain insights about areas for improvement quickly come into view.
The same goes for your agent performance. If you have a thorough understanding of their numbers, their areas of strength and weakness are made quite clear, especially when you can see the numbers all in one place, on one scorecard.

FACT:
According to research from Statista, the majority of employees surveyed believed learning and development is important to career success (76% of Gen Z’s, 61% of Millennials, and 56% of Gen X’s).

5 best practices for effective agent evaluation.
Before we get into the details of the Agent Performance Scorecard, there are some best practices for agent evaluation that you should keep in mind:
1. Always maintain a positive attitude during an agent review.
No matter the results on an agent’s scorecard, it’s important to keep spirits high and find at least one piece of positive feedback. Overly negative reviews become defeating fast and may cause the agent to burn out or feel like their steps to success are too overwhelming to actually accomplish.
How to Evaluate Call Center Agent Performance
2. Schedule reviews regularly and well in advance.
To ensure agents know when their reviews are, schedule them in batches and on the same cadence. You might decide to meet bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly depending on how many agents you’re responsible for.
3. Tap into technology to track specific KPIs.
Some of the agent scoring we’ve included on the scorecard is subjective, but many of the other KPIs require smart tracking to be measured properly. The Fonolo Portal puts real time insights and analytics at your fingertips so you know where your contact center and agents stand.
DID YOU KNOW? Call-back technology is a great way to lower abandonments and raise customer satisfaction by allowing them to bypass long hold times.
4. Make sure call monitoring is on your to-do list.
In order to determine the quality and overall helpfulness of your agents’ calls, you’ll need to either listen to recordings or use call monitoring technology to tune in while they’re chatting in real time. Either way, be sure to listen for a proper greeting, thorough personalization throughout the call, empathetic phrases, and whether or not the issue was resolved.
5. Ask each agent to have a self-assessment prepared for your meeting. 
You can choose to create a template for this one or simply ask agents to write on a piece of paper. When agents assess themselves, you’ll get a better idea of why they may be succeeding or having difficulty in certain areas. Also, holding people accountable for their own growth helps to keep agents feeling engaged throughout the process.
Consider asking these questions for the self-assessment:

What are you doing well in your role?
Where do you feel you could improve?
What is one goal you’d like to achieve over the next month?
What steps will you take to reach this goal?
Is there anything you feel you need from your manager or the company in order to grow in your role?

Agent Engagement Will Be Critical for Contact Centers in 2022

Get to know the Agent Performance Scorecard terms.  

First call resolution (FCR).
The percentage of customers who end up calling the contact center more than once to resolve their issue.
Average speed to answer (ASA).
The average time it takes for a customer to get through to an agent.
Abandon rate.
The number of callers who hang up while waiting in the queue.
Average handle time (AHT).
The average amount of time it takes for an agent to resolve a call.
Average hold time.
The average amount of time a customer waits in the queue.
Customer satisfaction ratings.
A score determined by customer satisfaction (CSat) surveys.
Schedule adherence. 
How well an agent follows their schedule, including start times, end times, and break times.
Call quality. 
A score with the number of your choosing based on the quality of an agent’s calls from greeting to conclusion. This score can be determined through attentive call monitoring.
How to use the Scorecard.
We’ve divided our scorecard into two distinct sections. The first is where you’re able to track the key metrics for the contact center as a whole. The second are scores and specifics for the individual agent. Having call center metrics written down in one place allows you to quickly compare the overall team’s performance with the individual agent’s performance.
Fill out both sections before your meeting with an agent and rate their overall performance out of 10. When you meet, walk them through the first two sections so they can see where the team stands and compare that to their own numbers.
Next, have them walk you through their self-assessment. Start filling in the written portion of the score card with them, noting positive feedback and opportunities for improvement. The goals section is integral to seeing growth in your agent. Feel free to work towards more than one goal at a time if the agent wishes to do so.

GET YOUR FREE SCORECARD TEMPLATE
Performance Evaluation Scorecard for the Contact Center
(It only takes 60 seconds!)
The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

Welcome to CXM’s Top CX Stars nomination form. In this year’s edition, we need your help to nominate* someone you deem worthy of this achievement.   The CXM’s Top CX Stars will rank top 50 CX professionals and top 50 CX influencers, the names you should watch and follow in 2022.   Fill in the form to…
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