Category: Customer Experience

Good ideas feel early.

And late ideas are acclaimed by most of the reviewers with opinions that don’t actually matter.

Part of our challenge is that the lousy ideas get a very similar pre-launch response as the great ones.

If you wait until the market is telling you exactly what it wants, you’re almost certainly too late.

On the other hand, if you can find the resources to stick it out through the trough of skepticism, you’ll be around to discover if your idea was any good or not. The best shortcut is the long way forward.

Here’s an article on why customer empathy matters, and how AI and voice AI can be used to create a more empathetic customer experience: https://hyperia.net/blog/using-voice-ai-to-create-an-empathetic-customer-experience
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A little while after Indra Nooyi was named the CEO of PepsiCo, she traveled home to India to visit her mother. The morning after she arrived, piles of visitors began pouring into her mothers’ home. They walked past Nooyi and straight to her mom where they congratulated her on her daughter’s accomplishment. They praised her for her ability to raise a daughter who would become CEO.  This, Nooyi reflected, made sense. Her mother and late father’s guidance were responsible for so much of who she would become, and of her success.
As a result of that experience, Nooyi decided that all of the mothers and fathers of her executives reporting to her deserved the same praise. “It occurred to me that I had never thanked the parents of my executives for the gift of their child to PepsiCo,” she recounted in an interview.  So, after that trip, Nooyi initiated a practice that she continues today.  She personally writes letters to the parents of her top 400 executives describing how the values they instilled benefit PepsiCo, saying “Thank you for the gift of your child to our company.”
Find & Hire People Who Align With Your Company Values
The power of what Indra Nooyi does, and the power of all beloved companies, is that they find people whose upbringing and values align to what they want their company to stand for.  And then they enable them to bring that version of themselves to work.  For Nooyi, those letters of thanks came naturally—a result of hiring leaders who share company values.
Selecting who will, and will not, become members of these companies is job number one.  Wegmans, the beloved grocery store on the eastern seaboard of the United States, actually slows down its growth to enable them to find people who fit their core values.  The Container Store, a mainstay on Forbe’s “Best Companies to Work For” treatise, only hires 3% of all employees who apply.
But after that, the focus is to help them to prosper.  To enable them to achieve, and be true to how they were raised.  Isadore Sharp, the founder and CEO of The Four Seasons Hotels states that: It is our work to give people “a sense of purpose and the courage to believe in themselves.”

Selecting who will, and will not, become members of these companies is job number one. Click To Tweet

Show Humanity at Work
Our humanity—our “humanness”—now more than ever, needs to show through in how we do business with customers and each other. With the stratospheric increase in high tech solutions to ‘take care’ of customers, the need for high touch has also escalated. Technology alone will not solve everything.  Customers need a healthy dose of both. They need a blend of high tech to enable high touch, as I discussed with a recent guest on my livestream, Deborah Westphal, author of a book on this subject entitled Convergence.
Yes, an app can let you know the arrival time of your repairman, but it is the man and his handshake and how he cares for your home as he walks in that shows the kind of mother he’s got.  Yes, you can book your ticket online, but it’s the gate agent’s concern in making your connection that shows if she’s been honored—so she can honor you.  Yes, you can pick up your rental car without even talking to a human, but a smile from that guy or gal checking you out can improve that experience.  And they give you comfort, when given the authority to let it slide if your car return is a few minutes late.
High tech without a human connection may make interactions more efficient, but it’s important to know when to blend humanity and caring into customer experiences.
More Resources on This Topic

Hire People Who Will Make Your Company Unforgettable: A Case Study
Daily Huddle: Is Hiring Your Most Important Decision?
Revamp Your Employee Experience By Rethinking Your Hiring Methods
The Process of CX Hiring and Transformation at Volkswagen Group Australia
Why Good Customer Experience Starts With Your Internal Culture

This blog post is excerpted and adapted from Would You Do That To Your Mother? 
Learn more about the book and find out where to order »
The post Start with Hiring People Who Show Humanity at Work appeared first on Customer Bliss.

‘Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom’ Roger Bacon It was long argued that language is not just a medium of communication but the structure throughout we come to be. CXM believes language has an important role to play in CX, especially considering the new technology improvements. With today’s increment of digital solutions, we…
The post Sanas launches world’s first real-time accent translation technology appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

The Customer Engagement Company™, announced the expansion of the digital-first capabilities of its cloud platform through the acquisition of Conversocial. With this expansion, Verint’s market-leading conversational AI provides brands the ability to orchestrate customer journeys with a connected experience across their channels of choice. The acquisition will expand Verint’s robust support for digital customer engagement with connections to most of the commonly used messaging channels, including Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, and more. Conversocial helps leading brands such as Google, Sephora, British Airways, and Hertz build and scale relationships via the personal touch and convenience of social messaging. Source: https://www.verint.com/press-room/2021-press-releases/verint-is-expanding-its-cloud-platform-capabilities-to-help-brands-accelerate-digital-first-customer-engagement/
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Somewhere, perhaps nearby, it went well.

A family gathering happened and all the details were right.

A project launched on Kickstarter and it succeeded.

A person was hired and they were a good choice.

The terms and conditions were updated, and no mistakes were made…

It’s easy to use our indispensability as fuel. Fuel to speak up and contribute. That’s important. But it’s also possible for that same instinct to backfire, and for it us to believe that if we don’t do it, it won’t get done right.

That’s unlikely.

To be powerful, a medium needs two things:

The ability to reach people who take action
The ability for someone in charge to change what those people see and hear and do

The telephone reaches a lot of people, but AT&T has very little power because they have no influence over who makes phone calls.

Lots of people have Sony TVs, but it’s Netflix that has the cultural power because they decide which shows are promoted on the start screen.

People in the music business are flummoxed by the number of new acts that are showing up out of nowhere and becoming hits on TikTok. They’re talking about how powerful this company is.

But it’s not. It’s simply reporting on what people are doing, not actively causing it.

The folks with the power are the anonymous engineers, tweaking algorithms without clear awareness of what the impact might be.

Google and Amazon used to invite authors to come speak, at the author’s expense. The implied promise was that they’re so powerful, access to their people was priceless. But the algorithm writers weren’t in the room. You ended up spending time with people who pretended they had influence, but were more like weatherpeople, not weather makers.

Reporting the weather is different from creating the weather.

There are still cultural weather makers, but they might not be the people we think they are.

I’d like Gmail to be smart enough to automatically skip the spam folder for any mail that’s coming from someone I just wrote to.
I’d like my Apple calendar to know that I never, ever schedule meetings at 3:30 am and to guess that I mean PM. And I’d like it to not only know what time I typed in, but to not make me hit an extra button every single time to change the time from the default.
I’d like Final Cut Pro to allow me to watch the video I’m editing at a faster speed, the way all modern video playback permits these days. It would save hours and it’s got to be easy to implement.
I wish Fedex had phone service like they used to, and that UPS would make it easy for me to let the driver know where packages go, even (especially) since driver turnover is so high.
I’d like Netflix to offer much smarter sort mechanisms for discovery.
It would be great if Google stopped acting like an evil overlord when it comes to search, discovery and their relentless obliteration of providers they decide are competitors.
I have 80 more, but what’s the point, really? Without adversarial interoperability, monopolists don’t listen.
They don’t have to.

Soon after the invention of the wagon, someone was able to move logs around much more easily. And shortly after that, someone had a wagon run over their leg. Wagons were used to deliver food but they also were put to use hauling weapons around.

The cyber-optimists believe that the wheel of technology turns towards progress, perfecting our life a bit more each day. In which prior century would you rather live?

The cyber-pessimists view technological change as a threat, to be examined daily and guarded against with vigilance.

Neither default position is defensible or sustainable.

Technological change doesn’t always make things better. It often comes with significant side effects and costs. And yet, thanks for the vigilance and hard work of some folks, technology also has a long track record of making us safer, healthier and even happier.

The cyber-realist sees both and is focused on being careful about systemic change and lock-in, especially for cultural and organizational changes that are hard to walk away from.

Last year, COVID-19 shifted many call center environments to new models. Nation-wide lockdowns forced many call center companies to either shut down or adapt to a work-from-home model.
Despite the pandemic, one thing is certain. Call centers provide a vital service to customers worldwide. An overwhelming majority (76%) of customers prefer phone communication with customer service representatives, as it often provides an immediate solution compared with live chat, email, and social media channels.
The call center environment evolved to a few different forms after COVID-19. Here we’ll go through the three common environments, how COVID-19 altered and continues to alter them, and how to optimize each environment to improve agent productivity, customer experience, and profits.
How to Foster Agent Engagement in a Hybrid Contact Center
Physical call center environments.
A physical call center environment, also known as a traditional call center, has dedicated employee workstations within one or multiple floors of an office building. Employee workstations look like a row of semi-boxed-off cubicles, with a desk, chair, computer, and phone. Physical call center environments are often noisy and tense, but agents connect with each other and build closer relationships.
Call centers that kept their physical offices still experienced certain changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the rise of certain variants, companies must maintain safety protocols including mask-wearing and social distancing, perhaps by having limited agents in the office at a time, or by creating more space between workstations.
The economic downturn caused by the pandemic is expected to result in more job loss. Call centers may look to reduce costs either by laying off employees or transitioning to work-from-home models to save on rent fees.
If you’re working with a physical call center environment, make the best of it. To optimize your physical call center environment, do the following:

Invest in comfortable chairs and improved ventilation.
Promote flexibility by offering your agents the option to choose their hours or work from home some days.
Take advantage of the opportunity for collaboration by encouraging group projects and scheduling fun with call center agent engagement games.
Update your call center technology to ensure your agents are productive and prepared, and to reduce IT support costs.
Invest in Voice Call-Back software and Visual IVR to save on operational costs in light of still making office rent or mortgage payments.

TIP:
Engage your agents with call center agent engagement games.

Remote call center environments.
Remote call center environments existed even before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many call centers saw work-from-home as part of their work strategy, but not their entire strategy.
Work from home for a call center looks like individuals providing customer support with company tools and products from their own homes. Agents communicate through online platforms and via phone but miss out on the in-person community that’s unique to a physical call center environment. Many call center managers find it challenging to maintain a sense of community and manage agent productivity in a work-from-home model.
Despite its challenges, remote work is becoming a new reality for most call center agents after the pandemic. Many call centers discovered an over-investment in office facilities – by transitioning to the work-from-home model, companies were able to save big on rent costs and real estate. Plus, with new advancements in cloud-based technology, it’s become a lot easier to manage agents with the right strategy in place.
If your call center has switched to a fully remote work model, optimize your environment with these tips:

Build culture and community through regular video communication.
Schedule regular meetings between management and agents.
Provide evidence-based feedback through call center metrics and call monitoring, to employees when discussing performance and productivity.
Promote community by finding virtual opportunities to connect, like virtual lunch dates.
Take the time to invest in call center cloud-based technology to maximize agent productivity at home, since you have more room in your budget from reduced rent costs.

DID YOU KNOW?
76% of customers prefer phone communication with customer service representatives?

Hybrid call center environments.
Hybrid call center environments are a mix of physical and remote workspaces. Often seen as the future of work amidst the nearing pandemic recovery, hybrid work models provide team members with the freedom to split their work time between the office and home.
Hybrid work environments usually promote more collaboration in the office, as office time is dedicated to in-person presentations, meetings, and other initiatives that benefit from some face-to-face communication.
To optimize your hybrid call center environment, consider the following tips:

Schedule office days for meetings and teamwork, where the most collaboration can take place.
Communicate expectations clearly and frequently to your agents, so they know exactly what’s expected when they’re working from home or the office.
Provide up-to-date call center software and technology to minimize delays and inefficiencies due to technical issues.

Conclusion.
No matter your call center environment, you always have opportunities to engage your agents, track progress, update software, and communicate clearly. The future of work looks like more hybrid call center environments, which offers cost-saving benefits for call center executives.The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.