Category: Customer Experience

There’s a desire to celebrate our “authentic” self.

But perhaps our considered self, the one that shows up when we’re doing our best to be consistent, generous and professional–that’s our authentic self. And the voice that slips out when we’re tired, stressed or busy is simply an incomplete and lesser version of who we actually are.

We’re the sum total of the interactions we choose to create and the changes we contribute.

World CX Summit – Asia digitally congregated some of the distinguished speakers in the Customer Experience ecosystem, while global technology leaders showcased their CX solutions in the presence of more than 200 pre-qualified delegates across Asia. CX visionaries shed light on key areas of CEM including tech trends and opportunities in CX, MarTech & Data…
The post The Third Global Edition of World CX Summit Brought Unending Possibilities of CEM to the Forefront appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

The impact of 2020 was far-reaching, especially for sales and marketing teams. With business and consumer spending habits having dramatically changed due to uncertainty, as we move forward into 2021, how can businesses overcome this challenge, especially in the wake of three national lockdowns, a furlough scheme, and a general lack of organisational spending? One…
The post Thriving in 2021: the Top Trends for Sales and Marketing Leaders appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Certainty: Resolute in the face of criticism and implacable when confronting evidence to the contrary. ‘Never in doubt’ is more important than being right. The need to prove strength and consistency often ties us into knots, particularly in a world with new information and insight arriving so often.

Accuracy: Aware that the sum total of our current assertions is a measure of our wisdom, which means that disproven hypotheses should be abandoned as soon as the truth is made clear. The scientific method is a process, not a lab coat or a textbook. Changing one’s point of view is a virtue, not a flaw.

It seems clear that for just about anything that we can measure, if it really matters, accuracy is a better trait than certainty. And yet our instincts and our media cycles seem to push us toward certainty instead.

When a customer makes a purchase, the baton is passed to the delivery service to complete the final leg. When in reality, the CX team’s race has just begun. The post-purchase experience is the most critical stage of the entire customer journey, yet many brands are still grappling with how to get it right. In…
The post The customer experience is getting bulldozed by the ‘last mile’. Here’s how brands can make it stop appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Has anyone seen a decline in foot traffic due to COVID?
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Running an effective call center is all about resolving customer issues in a timely fashion.
One of the best Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to reflect this is Average Speed of Answer (ASA). In this guide, we’ll walk you through the basics of ASA, why it’s important, and how to calculate it.
How to Overcome Challenges with Your Call Center MetricsHow to Overcome Challenges with Your Call Center Metrics

What is ASA?
ASA is a call center metric indicating the average amount of time it takes for your staff to answer calls over a specific time period.
This includes the amount of time callers wait on hold, but it does not include the time it takes for callers to navigate through the IVR.
Why is ASA Important?
Your ASA rate reflects how successful your customer service and call center operations are. A low score can lead to poor customer satisfaction, reduced agent satisfaction, high abandonment rates, as well as the following:
Long Handle Times
Upset customers who are kept waiting will be sure to express their grievances. Even a simple exchange of “what took so long?” can take up precious minutes before you can even address their issue. The longer you’re on the phone, the fewer customers you can serve — trust us, the minutes add up.
Low Efficiency
Naturally, long handle times will impact the quality of service you provide to your customers. The fewer problems you’re able to address, the more frustrated your customers will become. This can lead to call abandonment; and once they hang up the phone, it’s much more difficult to recover their faith in your support team.
Disrupting Management
Long wait times leave customers with the impression that your call center agents are incompetent. This can result in more callers requesting to speak to management. If you find this is a common challenge, consider providing additional training so your agents are better equipped to handle those types of interactions to limit the number of escalated calls.
Increased Costs
And of course, there’s the bottom line. Callers waiting in queue doesn’t just affect your efficiency — it also costs your business money. In fact, 61% of consumers say they have stopped transacting with a business after a poor service experience.
8 Simple Ways to Improve Agent Performance in the Call Center
How Do You Calculate ASA?
When measuring ASA, it’s all about the total wait time for answered calls vs. total number of answered calls. Using these metrics, call centers can improve their service, increasing their success rate and effectiveness. Call centers that track ASA and other KPIs have the ability to provide superior service to clients, thus in turn benefitting both parties.
How ASA Impacts Other Call Center Metrics
You can save money and increase customer satisfaction by actively managing your ASA. This will positively impact your employees as well. When call center agents don’t have a huge queue to work through, they are less likely to be stressed and will in turn provide better service. A good customer service organization is only as good as the employees they retain.
You’ll also be less likely to have customers abandoning calls only to call back later in the day for the same issue. Remember, you want your team to increase their first-call resolution (FCR) rate as time goes on.
Tips to Lower ASA in Your Call Center
Looking for ways to lower your ASA? Here are some of the top tips to consider for your call-center service:
Improve Call Forecasting
Managing call volume and expectations is key. It sets clear expectations for your management and staff, and will have a huge impact in reducing ASA.
Manage Your Workforce
Make sure that the right agents with the right skills are working exactly when they are needed. This is imperative when working to reduce average speed of answer in the call center.
Prioritize Continuous Training
Set aside time for additional training. Offer your team lunch and learns sessions and/or helpful articles or data to encourage development. In order to reduce average speed of answer in the call center, agents must have the skills necessary to effectively meet callers’ needs.
Lowering ASA rates is key for any manager in a call center. Track these metrics so you can leverage the best performance practices from your employees while improving customer service quality and customer satisfaction.
The Only Call Center Agent Performance Metrics You’ll Ever NeedThe post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

The public markets can offer a company quite a bit: Cash right now. Liquidity for the future. A currency to help recruiting and retention.
And public companies come with a giant caveat: They are owned by people (the shareholders) who might sell out at any moment. And new ones can take their place in an instant.
This flexible ownership is part of the attraction of the stock market, but it also means that you can’t count on the people and institutions that own your organization taking a long-term view. (Long-term for them might even be a week in the future).
As a result, the others that the organization seeks to serve: The environment, their customers, the employees, the culture… often lose out. Because thanks to Milton Friedman’s mythology, the primacy of the shareholder (the one who drives the stock price, the very stock price that drives management) means that every time these companies seek to serve one of their other constituents, they have to do a sort of dance, explaining to shareholders why, after all, really and truly, what they’re actually doing is serving the shareholders. Not just serving them, serving them right now.
And, thanks to the short-term interests of many people who trade stocks, there’s pressure to own shares that go up the most today, not a company you’re proud to own for the long run.
Sometimes, the enlightened and powerful leadership of a company is able to ignore the whining of the shareholders. If you don’t like where this bus is going, sell!
But over time, that resolve often fades. I saw this first hand at Yahoo. When everyone who works for you and around you is watching the stock price, it’s hard to decide to do the right thing.
If you want to run an organization you’re proud of, choose your ownership as carefully as you choose your employees.

It’s clear that automation is becoming a mainstay at organizations across industries. Gartner predicted that 90% of large organizations globally will adopt RPA in some form by 2022 and will triple the capacity of their existing RPA portfolios through 2024. Business leaders and business advisors said the benefits RPA delivers are driving that growth. However, they also said there are potential disadvantages to using RPA, particularly when organizations are not thoughtful or strategic about the automation projects they undertake. Those leaders shared the following list of the advantages and disadvantages of RPA for CIOs and other IT leaders to consider. 8 Advantages of RPA:
Efficiency gains
Reduction in errors
Increased agility
Better use of people power
Increased employee engagement
Improved customer satisfaction
Standardization of processes
Business continuity support
Full article: https://searchcio.techtarget.com/feature/What-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-RPA
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Last year CX professionals rated their organisations’ maturity as: 39% Foundation, 48% Practiced, and 13% Leading. In an environment where CX focus has increased (and is set to continue) has this evolved or is CX maturity dangerously stagnating? Ipsos MORI and Awards International are in the middle of collecting feedback for their second CX Voices…
The post CX Global Voices 2021: Have Your Say On Big CX Questions appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.