Category: Customer Experience

Happy Friday! ‘This week in CX’ brings you the latest roundup of industry news. This week, we’re looking at new AI implementations by Google and Freshworks, and what they mean for the customer moving forward. There’s also new research into the consumer view on product quality during the financial crisis, and how unified commerce is being…
The post This week in CX: what can AI solutions actually do for customer service?; plus Zebra Technologies & Tesco appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

There are lots of books on creating cooking, photography, writing and music. But they can’t possibly help you do better until you see and taste and appreciate what you’re trying to create.

If you think what you’re serving is good, but others don’t, more recipes aren’t going to help.

That’s why so much type is poorly set, so many self-published books look the way they do, so many restaurants are merely good and so much long-tail music is easily skipped and forgettable.

There are two steps to begin:

Show us an example of someone else’s work that you believe is good. A book cover that feels professional, a jazz riff that inspires, a pasta dish that’s unforgettable.

Then make a version of it. Not a copy, but something that rhymes.

If you can’t do that, it’s probably not a matter of technique. It’s about being in sync with what other people aspire to engage with.

The rules are pretty consistent:

The easier it is to create and save a video or other file, the more likely it is to be lost or corrupted

The more important the data is, the more likely it is you’ll notice when it gets lost

The harder it is to replace, the more frustrating it will be

We’re all creators now. Podcasting, videoing, photographing, spreadsheeting… and we’re building a foundation of valuable data as we go.

The software companies that produce the tools we use push their engineers in many ways, but not to create resilient storage systems that are sure to honor the effort and care you put into creating your data. They want you to believe that they will effortlessly and seamlessly maintain all the data you trust to them, but they actually spend most of their time focused on other things that they deem more commercially important.

That’s because convenient, viral or flashy are generally more profitable than resilient and reliable.

When a conferencing app lost a video I worked really hard to record, I realized that trusting them was my first mistake. If there’s a one in a thousand chance that a file is going to be corrupted or simply lost, storing it in two places or recording it simultaneously in two systems lowers your chances of failure to one in a million. I will never trust them again, and you shouldn’t either.

Forewarned should be sufficient. Assume that the software company doesn’t care nearly as much about your work, your memories or your reputation as you do.

All successful cultural change (books, movies, public health), has a super-simple two-step loop:

AWARENESSTENSION–>Loop<–

It’s easy to focus on awareness. Get the word out. Hype. Promo.

I think that’s a mistake.

Because awareness without tension is useless.

The tension is like pulling back a rubber band.

WHY would someone who becomes aware take action?

Is the action to buy the book? To change one’s diet? To vote?

And then the third step, so important it’s often ignored, is:

Why would the person who became aware and then experienced the tension and release… tell someone else?

So, to recap:

Tell 10 people.

Create tension among the 10 so they take action.

The action causes each of them to tell 10 people.

Hello r/customerexperience community! We are hosting our monthly CX Ops meeting this Thursday. We’d love to have you join us. This month we’re discussing a hot topic in 2023: A Forrester study recently found that 1 in 5 CX programs will be nixed in 2023, demand intrinsic proof, or ROI on CX – some saying CX teams might disappear that can’t show numbers. We will evaluate how to understand where you are with your current strengths: ROC quadrants. This is a view on tools you can use within your organization, understanding where you are with your data and experiences, and how to build off of them. We will discuss where you can go next. We hope to see you there! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cx-roc-quadrants-where-can-you-next-win-with-cx-ops-tickets-510237804007 submitted by /u/jncreative [link] [comments]

SIP and VoIP are two acronyms often used by call center managers who sort of know what they mean, but also sort of… don’t.  Fair enough! Acronyms abound in the call center universe. It can be very tricky to navigate the intricacies of call center management and technology, and often, the language used just makes things more confusing. 
When it comes to VoIP and SIP, the terms are often used interchangeably, but they are different, and knowing these differences can add strength to your call center processes. We’re here to help! Let us explain the ins and outs of VoIP, SIP, and SIP trunking, and demonstrate how they can complement each other in your contact center environment.
Athough we introduced this topic with the hundred dollar question (what’s the difference between SIP and VoIP?), a better question is:

How do SIP and VoIP work together, and how can my contact center benefit? 

VoIP, SIP, and SIP Trunking 
Let’s start with some definitions.  
What is VoIP?
VoIP is an acronym for voice over internet protocol and, in some ways, that says it all. A VoIP call is an internet-powered voice call, and a popular alternative to the good old-fashioned landline phone call. 
What is SIP?
SIP, or session initiation protocol, is different but closely related to most VoIP applications. SIP is a network signalling protocol for setting up, maintaining, or ending communications sessions, which can include (but is not limited to) VoIP calls. SIP also facilitates other types of communications over the Internet, including multimedia messages like video calls, texts, and photo sharing.  
What about SIP trunking?
And where does the term “trunking” come in? In the before-Internet days, a trunk referred to a telephone line that served multiple customers, instead of one telephone line for one customer. Similarly, SIP trunking allows for shared access to a telecommunications network by multiple users. It’s common to think of a SIP trunk as a bundle of phone lines, but in fact, it’s really a single (virtual) connection with the capacity to host many simultaneous calls.  
 

What are the Differences? 
When considering VoIP and SIP trunking technology, there are a few key differences that illustrate how they work, and more importantly, how they work together: 
As we’ve mentioned, VoIP services offer only one type of communication: voice calls over the internet. SIP, on the other hand, is more versatile and can handle multiple types of sessions, including VoIP or voice calls, video calls, text messages, and more 
The vast majority of providers offer SIP to enable peer-to-peer VoIP calls and PSTN interconnection. SIP is the most popular protocol in the VoIP suite used by carriers today. Its ubiquity offers many advantages to its users, including easier implementation and reliable compatibility with many systems. 

FACT:
Flexibility and convenience for your customer should be top priority to help boost your customer satisfaction scores. Fonolo Voice Call-Backs empower your customers by giving them the option to “press 1” for a call-back. Fonolo will then wait in queue for the customer and they will receive a call-back once it’s their turn.  

What are the Benefits of using VoIP and SIP Trunking Together? 
SIP and VoIP work great together and there are a number of reasons why they’re such a popular combination in the modern contact center.  

Both systems provide cost savings to contact centers over traditional PSTN systems. 
Customers can choose voice, video, or other channels with a SIP-enabled call center. 
SIP-enabled VoIP calls scale with your business easily to accommodate growth. 
You can reduce or eliminate hardware costs with the ability to deploy either system in a software-based environment. 
They easily integrate with your other systems and vendors.
The post SIP Trunking vs VoIP: What’s the Difference? first appeared on Fonolo.

If the thing of the moment is the answer to every single question, you might be in a bubble. If, regardless of the problem, the answer is crypto, homeopathy, or the internet, or perhaps GPT, essential oils or decarbonization, it’s possible we’re taking an easy way out. A new technology or approach could be the answer to a bunch of questions, but not all of them.

The bubble might be just us, ignoring everything outside our comfort zone or incentive range.

Or it could be widespread, the culture carried away with the one thing that changes everything.

Everything is going to change, it always does, but nuance matters. Nuance requires patience, insight and awareness of the details. Sometimes it’s easier to just be in a bubble.

Customer journeys, no matter how closely we try to track them and orchestrate them, are different and unique in every case. One of the best ways to understand this closer is with a customer journey matrix framework. The frameworks support digital journey orchestration and automation software. This resource was originally created by Harvard Business Review in the…
The post Customer journey matrix frameworks – the best method for planning a successful CX appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

The modern era of technology and computerisation has made us neglect the human intellect and emotions. AI is evolving – and seemingly unchecked. Its supporters highlight promising advancements in customer service, data processing, and decision-making. On the other hand, detractors are quick to point out the wide-ranging effects of job loss and the concern that…
The post Boost your “Digital” CX by bridging the gap between AI and EQ appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Retailers face significant challenges today as they strive to remain competitive. They are grappling with macroeconomic forces such as inflation, labour shortages, rising wages, and the cost-of-living crisis. These pressures are compounded by the decline in brick-and-mortar operations and the increasing digitisation of shopping. With rising consumer expectations, retailers must find ways to adapt to…
The post Reinventing retail experiences with Conversational AI appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.