Category: Customer Experience

People talk about ego like it’s a bad thing. But our desire to do a good job, our self-trust, our willingness to dance with fear–these are fuel if used properly.

Egomania pushes us to ignore useful feedback, to bristle at input and to refuse to do the work to get better at our craft. It’s actually a sign of fear and weakness.

Ego strength, on the other hand, makes us eager to learn more, engage with the market and figure out what it will take to have the project actually succeed.

Managing customer relationships is necessary for every business. Whether it’s solving customer issues or answering inquiries, companies use different tools to carry out daily customer interactions. Maintaining good customer relationship is key to customer loyalty which can only bring you more of the same. In order to solve and organise customer issues in the most…
The post No More Support Tickets: How to Deliver Excellent Customer Service with Gmail appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

In this, the fourth in a five-part series on gaining and retaining clients in 2021, we spoke to Jamie Thorpe, Head of Experience Management at Ipsos, who is a long-standing member of the CX professional community having worked on the front line with clients for over 20 years designing, implementing and evolving CX with brands….
The post Gaining and Retaining Customers in 2021. Part Four: Building Relationships appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

The pandemic disrupted many contact center trends, but not all of them. Some, like the move to cloud-based contact center technology, were hastened in the last year.
Here are some of the ways call center trends around technology have changed.
3 Crucial CX Trends You Need to Know for 2021
Major Call Center Technology Trends in 2021
Ongoing tiered lockdown will establish many of the changes we saw last year, such as remote working and increasing digital enablement. There have already been rapid innovations in call center tech, which will become mainstream in 2021.
1. More secure contact center platforms
The rapid move to remote working has increased the need for more secure contact center platforms and legislation to protect customers’ data. As we saw in our State of the Contact Center report, data security is the top concern for contact center managers next year.
2. More omnichannel workstations
Our report also found that omnichannel contact center workstations are now being deployed at the same rate as voice-only workstations. Consumers already expect to be able to move between channels at different points on their customer journey.
3 Crucial CX Trends You Need to Know for 2021
And as companies look for ways to match increasing call volume with decreasing resources, omnichannel stations that allow customer support reps to move across channels will become increasingly popular.
3. More AI-powered assistants for agents
Although AI-powered assistants for customers aren’t a viable alternative to real call center agents yet, it can play an important role. The true role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is to improve the customer experience from the agent side, by providing advanced analytics and predictions.

As companies look for ways to match increasing call volume with decreasing resources, omnichannel stations that allow reps to move across channels will become ever popular. #cxtrends #cctrtrendsClick To Tweet

An increasing number of ingenious knowledge management and machine learning systems will help contact center agents get to the right answer faster. As FCR becomes a bigger priority, this kind of technology will take off.
4. Advanced call-backs and virtual queuing technology
Managing high call volume will continue to be a significant challenge for contact center managers in the coming years. Innovative ways to defer calls until later are in high demand.
While virtual queuing technology and call-backs have been around for a long time, they’re only starting to become a mainstream call center technology. That’s partly due to the pandemic and partly due to their development.
6 Secrets for Boosting Customer Satisfaction in the Contact Center
Advanced call-back features like Conversation Scheduling can help contact center managers manage high call volume by deferring calls to quieter times. This method is far more useful than just holding their place in the queue.
5. Voice-to-message technology
One exciting technology we came across was voice-to-message technology for the call center. This smart method of deferring calls to other communication channels introduces some friction into the customer experience but increases FCR and reduces resource-load.
Improving Operational Efficiency in the Contact Center
Customers are given the option to leave a voice message and have an agent contact them later with an answer. Their voicemail is transcribed into text and sent to an appropriate support agent. The agent then finds a solution and responds to the customer via email, transitioning them from the voice channel naturally.
6. More agent performance and monitoring technology
With hybrid-style contact centers likely to be the norm going forwards, contact center managers will be looking for technology that helps them monitor and analyze agent performance.
Although detailed monitoring has a sinister tone, it’s vital for a thriving contact center and doesn’t have to be intrusive when done correctly.
How to Improve Call Center Agent Performance
Aside from driving KPIs, the increasing focus on agent satisfaction and mental health will bring many new and innovative call center tools. Many of these will also include employee mental health monitoring and gamification technology.
Driving the Major Contact Center Technology Trends 2021
The demand for more secure, better integrated, smarter technology in support of remote contact center teams will shape the industry in the next year and for many years to come. Increased call volume and agent attrition will also shape call center technology trends for many years to come.
The Smart Contact Center Manager’s Guide to Managing High Call Volume
The rapid change and development of solutions to mitigate them will also likely spawn some new technologies that we haven’t even conceived of yet. It’s an exciting time for contact center technology.The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

The votes have been ratified and we’re pleased to announce CX Stars Top 100 Professionals and Top 50 Influencers! The competition was fierce and the comradery palpable as the entrants for this year’s CX Stars took to social media to promote not only themselves, but their colleagues and fellow CXers, too. The Customer Experience industry…
The post Here are the CX Stars of 2021 appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Quick! Get on Myspace, it’s where all the good stuff is.

Wait! Better build your following on Facebook. It’s a land rush and once you amass enough followers… And Pinterest. Definitely.

What’s your Twitter handle? Will you be live tweeting the presentations at SXSW?

Let’s get your show on Quibi… Build an Insta and a Finsta…

Did you see how much they’re making on Substack?! Blogs are dead.

The urgent advice usually ends with “blogs are dead.”

Like Groundhog Day, we keep repeating the same pattern.

Any platform that’s reasonably open has a long tail. That means that a few people get most of the traffic and most people get very little. If there’s money involved, that’s definitely what happens.

(that’s 124, with no zeroes, as the median)Statistically, whatever you build online isn’t going to get a lot of traffic. There are no magic shortcuts in open systems, because the short head depends on scarcity.

By the time you show up to chase the cool kids, it’s probably too late to guarantee a sinecure.

What’s the alternative?

Publish. Consistently. With patience. Own your assets. Don’t let a middleman be your landlord. Yell at Google for blocking your emails and hope it’ll work eventually. Continually push for RSS and an open web. With patience.

Getting picked is great, when it works. Someone needs to be in the spotlight and it might as well be you.

In the meantime, catch your breath, show up and contribute.

It all adds up.

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Know your team’s skills so you can act on them. Push agents in the areas they are inclined to grow and encourage greater autonomy. Empower them to use their strengths to care for customers without needing to hold your hand. This empowerment will inspire and motivate your agents to perform more efficiently. https://preview.redd.it/mteqskeh8we61.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=aeaa822ccc255cef76074be1da1ac59535885e49
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Number 1 Simon Johnson General Manager, Sales Leader and Growth Expert: UK and Ireland, Freshworks Inc. Simon is a seasoned sales professional at Freshworks. Simon is a data-driven, dynamic, personable (and fun!) leader, with 17 years of proven success in leading business and sales teams within fast-growth tech companies. He specialises in building and evolving…
The post CX Stars 2021: Top 10 CX Professionals appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

In 2020, the customer experience landscape changed dramatically with most businesses across the planet having to, at the drop of a hat, change the way they engage with their customers and their employees. Fast forward almost an entire year and digital customer and employee experiences have evolved, and those evolutions are here to stay! These…
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