Category: Customer Experience

Who am I to walk up to someone at a party and introduce myself?

Who are you to start a new project?

Who are they to give a talk on the main stage?

Don’t raise your hand–someone else might have a better question. Don’t ship that work, it’s not ready…

There are endless excuses, comparisons and reasons to hold back.

Unless…

Unless you’re on lifeguard duty and someone is drowning. In that situation, even if you’re not the best lifeguard in the world, and even if the water isn’t the perfect temperature, and even if you don’t quite remember how to do the latest version of the cross-chest carry… you jump in the water.

Because it’s not for you. It’s for them.

Generosity unlocks doors inside of us.

Over the last few years, the retail industry has undergone many drastic changes, and therefore, so has the world of the retail contact center.
Physical retail locations have experienced mass closures while eCommerce and omni-channel shopping have exploded. If you were a brick-and-mortar-only business pre-pandemic, chances are you quickly pivoted to provide online shopping options for your customers.
Creating a Customer Service Strategy That Drives Business Growth
With web-based shopping comes technical difficulties, policy questions, system glitches, and many other issues that require real-time customer service. That’s where your retail contact center needs to shine.
Superior customer service is at the heart of every successful retail call center, but with all the new online shopping technology, providing a seamless customer experience can become quite the challenge. The best way to ensure your contact center stays on track is to develop and execute an extensive retail customer service strategy.
Not sure how? Follow these 6 steps.

FACT:
According to the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer report, 92% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a company again when they experience high-quality customer service.

1. Train your agents to be customer service obsessed.
Whether you’re introducing a new agent to your brand or retraining an established agent on some of the basics, ensuring you have a training strategy in place that focuses on customer service is a key factor in driving success. Arm agents with the knowledge that stand-out service is what your company strives for and provide them with empathy phrases they can use during customer interactions.

TIP:
Have new hires shadow your best customer service agents so they can pick up some tricks of the trade.

2. Offer an omni-channel experience for retail customers.
Don’t just be any old retail call center. Instead, set the goal of becoming the ultimate customer experience center for your shoppers. A survey conducted by Call Centre Helper found that 72% of customers believe their ideal communication channel varies depending on the context. To be successful with most of your consumers, you’ll need to offer a variety of ways they can get in touch when they require assistance. These might include:
A website contact form.
Have a Contact Us section on your website that allows customers to quickly type in their details and question. Enlist a team of agents to monitor and reply to messages.
Live chatting or chat bots.
Many contact centers require their agents to both answer calls and live chat throughout their shift. If it’s too overwhelming for your agents to do both, you also have the option of investing in AI technology that can answer customer questions online or by text message.
Social media channels. 
These days, many questions and complaints come to companies in the form of social media comments and direct messages. As these are often public, we encourage your team to answer promptly and thoroughly to prove to your audience that you know what you’re doing when it comes to customer service.

Don’t just be any old #retailcontactcenter. Instead, set the goal of becoming the ultimate #customerexperience center for your shoppers. Offer a variety of ways for customers to get in touch, including live chats and social media channels.…Click To Tweet

3. Support agents every step of the way.  
The happier your agents are, the more calm and friendly they’ll be during customer interactions. Management should be available to support agents throughout their day, every day. Set up one-on-one chats to celebrate successes and discuss opportunities for growth, check in with employees whose numbers are slipping, and help agents avoid burnout by providing sufficient time for breaks and meals.
5 Tips to Prevent Call Center Agent Burnout Before it Begins
4. Invest in the right technology for your retail contact center.
When it comes to providing support, you should also consider investing in technology that can help alleviate stress from an agent’s day. Conversation Scheduling simultaneously smooths out call spikes for agents and empowers your customers to talk when it suits their schedule best—a true win/win.
5. Make scaling your business a breeze.  
As we saw during the first wave of lockdowns in 2020, contact centers need to be able to scale up at a moment’s notice. Cloud-based technology like Fonolo provides the capacity you need to increase your size quickly or scale back if there’s a temporary lull in demand. If your lines are too busy for customers to reach you, it leaves a bad impression and impacts overall customer satisfaction.
6. Monitor KPIs that are most helpful for tracking retail customer service success.  
Tracking these specific key performance indicators (KPIs) can help you determine the success rate of your customer service strategy and where there’s room for improvement:
First-Call Resolution (FCR) rate.
FCR shows the percentage of customer issues resolved in just one call. The higher the rate, the better the customer experience.
Average Time in Queue (ATQ).
When customers spend less time waiting, they’ll be less agitated once they get on the line with an agent. Aim for a low ATQ.
Net Promoter Score (NPS). 
Your NPS indicates customer loyalty. A high NPS means customers are receiving impressive service and therefore more likely to spread the word to their networks.
Customer Satisfaction (CSat). 
If your CSat survey scores are high, keep up the great work! Your customers are happy campers.
How to Create a Call Center Performance ReportThe post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

It might come as a surprise that business and organizational anthropology are garnering significant attention in today’s corporate environments. Forrester’s report on ‘The future of CX’ from 2019, named anthropology as a core discipline shaping the path of CX, while giants like Google, Microsoft and Facebook became desperate to hire in-house cultural anthropologists. One of…
The post Business and organizational anthropology: understanding humans from the inside out appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Who among us hasn’t wondered at some point if that slew of tests ordered for ourselves or our loved ones was necessary? Or worried about the effect of repeated scans or the cost? Or if we really need that medication?  More important, in the increasing complexity of healthcare, who doesn’t yearn for more conversation about why tests are ordered, and their impact in the near and short term?  We aren’t always made aware up front of the pros and cons of the test, the risks, and alternatives.
Then there is the shock as the cost of those tests hit us. This is the banking equivalent of surprise fees or fine print—except it’s with our health, not our bank account. As one of the highest expenditures over time in our lifetime, patients should have an informed say in decision making with healthcare providers. And should be given time to have those conversations with physicians.
Mayo Clinic Decided to Invest Their Time Guiding and Informing Patients
To support those conversations, the Choosing Wisely® Initiative of the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation in partnership with Consumer Reports was established. Its recommendations created by clinicians and 70 professional associations encourage trusting and transparent conversations that result in a plan for care that is: supported by evidence, not duplicative of other tests or procedures, have the lowest risks for harm, and are truly necessary.  These conversations should also prepare patients for their cost impact.
A 2017 Minnesota Department of Health report review of tests, ordered by physicians in the state in 2014, validates the need for such conversations. Its results showed that $54.9 million was low value medical services, such as unnecessary imaging with the first complaint of low back pain, unnecessary x-rays for simple headaches, or cervical screening for women younger than 21, among others. Moreover, $9.3 million of those expenses were out-of-pockets costs to patients.
Actively Guiding Patients on Their Choices
“We used to think that more is better—more health care equals more health.… That’s not actually true,” Dr. Rozalina McCoy from Mayo Clinic in Rochester who worked on the health department report said. With patients consuming more information on the Internet or directly from advertisement, what may sound like a request for a service or a test is actually a desire for guidance.
To have these conversations requires health care providers being enabled to take the time to have them with patients.  These conversations are strongly advocated for across the entire Mayo Clinic System, among many others in the United States.
The Choosing Wisely conversation guides patients and physicians to discuss

Do I really need this test or procedure?
What are the risks and side effects?
Are there simpler, safer options?
What happens if I don’t do anything?
How much does it cost, and will my insurance pay for it?

“What’s needed is a culture change for doctors and patients,” MCoy said, since unnecessary care creates a potential for harm. “It’s about improving the quality and quantity of life for my patients.”

With patients consuming more information on the Internet or directly from advertisement, what may sound like a request for a service or a test is actually a desire for guidance. Click To Tweet

Using Design to Improve Patient Communications
New startups are disrupting the healthcare space, and they are leading the way to better patient communications. For instance, fertility clinic group Kindbody uses their custom-built patient portal to consistently communicate to their patients about their Summary of Benefit and Coverage, right after their first appointment. Doctors send detailed notes via the portal following each set of tests. And nurses send follow-up messages to phone calls via the portal, so that the information is conveyed in a convenient way for the patient.
Kindbody has been recognized for its usage of design as a way to improve the customer experience and address the kinds of gaps in communication that customers have historically experienced in the healthcare space.
Whether you’re an old brand or a new one, there is so much we can improve when truly put the customer at the center of our decision-making.

Want more case studies? Pick up a copy of my latest book, Would You Do That To Your Mother? Get more impactful brand examples, activities, and insights in the book.
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The post Choose to Chat: How to Improve Healthcare Through Conversations with Patients appeared first on Customer Bliss.

Research from Google has found that people are 40% likely to spend more than planned when they identify the shopping experience as personalised. However, personalisation in a simple sense is no longer enough. Most of us now expect brands to deliver hyper-personalised experiences. This means meeting our specific needs across every channel and adapting changes…
The post Delivering hyper-personalisation through a CX transformation roadmap appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Resistance often shows up insisting that it can predict the future.

The voice in our head, the one that knows everything, also knows that you will be rejected, that the work will be misunderstood, that you’ll end up shamed.

Not just the voice, but the circle around us can do this as well if we choose to listen. Wearing the hat of the ardent supporter, they will try to protect you by predicting the demise of that next thing you were pinning your hopes on.

And it’s easy (and tempting) to give them credit for soothsaying because they know so many other things. They (“we” if we count the voice) know all about the failures and disappointments of the past. They know all about the hard work and all about how others have stumbled. And so, of course, they must also know about the future.

A lesson from a koan is really valuable here. Voices that purport to know the future–whether they are psychics, astrologers, family or the noise in our head–are pretty effective when it’s vague enough, but terrible when it comes to specifics. That’s because when it’s vague, we complete the story on our own, creating our own fact patterns after things happen.

The simple question to ask the oracle is: I have a handful of beans. How many are there?

As much as we might want an oracle, there aren’t any. What we need, it turns out, are supporters who trust us and have our back.

Employee experience (EX) has been changed irrevocably due to the pandemic. Remote working has boosted productivity and allowed employees to avoid long, busy commutes. On the other hand, we also saw employees missing the benefits of in-person meetings and general social interactions in the office.   To get the best of both working worlds, many employers…
The post Global workplace report 2021: what do employees expect from the hybrid workplace? appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

It’s definitely a regular pastime of mine, and one of my favorite games. I usually play solo with the Word Master app.

The structure of the game rewards knowledge of really short words like qi and aa, but the exciting part happens when you find a seven-letter word…

The hack that would work if you’re playing in real life, with other people and actual tiles: On every turn, each player is allowed to turn one of the letters in their rack over and treat it as a blank, which could be any letter of the alphabet.

Suddenly, possibilities multiply! The number of 7 letter bingo words explodes. Instead of wrestling with 7 dependent variables, you have 6 and a wildcard.

The metaphor, as you’ve already guessed, is that every day we may have a chance to turn over one of our ‘letters’ and make it into something else, if we are brave enough.

The circumstances are heavy indeed. Systems work hard to maintain the status quo.

The teacher is doing the best they can. But the principal and the board and the regents and the parents…

The board member got elected with great intentions. But the state and the unions and the parents…

The textbook publishers want to do better, but the boards and…

You get the idea.

The circumstances conspire to put us under them.

The option is to start small, as small as possible. Small enough to work, big enough to put you on the hook. Build something that works.

And then, the challenging task begins: Get someone else to do it too.

As online shopping continues to grow in popularity, brands must respond and ramp up their cybersecurity measures to protect their online consumer base from cyberattacks. Mimecast’s recent Brand Trust Report found that 79% of the respondents have received a phishing email in the past. While most are well-versed with spotting a suspicious email, over 46%…
The post Guide for avoiding online shopping scams this Black Friday appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.