Category: Customer Experience

Our life is filled with projects. We invest time, effort or money, and perhaps we get a result.

It’s useful to have a portfolio of projects, because not all of them are going to work.

The 4 x 4 grid looks like this:

It might be simple, but it’s not always easy. Success doesn’t always mean money, it just means that you got what you were hoping for. And while every project fits into one of the four quadrants, there’s no right answer for any given person or any given moment..

Here are some of the traps that are worth avoiding:

All your eggs are in a low-chance basket. You’re taking a wild gamble, and it’s your dream. And you want a shortcut. The problem, of course, is that this isn’t a resilient long-term plan. Someone has to win the lottery tomorrow, but alas, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be you.

You’re hoping to come out ahead by doing something that depends on scarcity, but you’re doing it in the top right quadrant. The problem is, so is everyone else. All of a sudden, your odds just went down. It’s easy to start an Insta account, but once everyone does it, the chances of becoming a top .01% traffic generating influencer are close to zero.

You focus on only high-probability, low-value successes, even if the outcomes are not really worth your time. Getting a $3 an hour gig on a freelance site is easy, but it might not be worth it.

On the other hand, consider a portfolio of projects. Some of them have a very high likelihood of working out, and each one of these outcomes is pleasant, if not game-changing. Play often enough, though, and your persistent generosity will pay off.

And then, mix into that some of the moonshot projects that most people are afraid to take on. They’re afraid because they have equated “low chance of success” with “risky.” They’re not the same. Risky implies that failure will cost a lot. It won’t. You can thrive with this strategy because you have a portfolio, and because you realize that “unlikely” is not the same as “not worth trying.”

The best portfolios are persistent (because patience is a rare skill), they’re generous (so others root for you to succeed) and they build on each other (because then, even the ones that don’t work increase your chances for the next one to work out).

Here’s to a new year filled with possibility.

Well, that was interesting. Tragic. Heartbreaking. Painful. Difficult.
Have more people ever been happier to see a year go away? I’m posting this a few hours early just to clear the decks a bit faster.
Our attitude doesn’t have to be driven by the outside world, but sometimes, they overlap. The outside world provokes, persists and insists on changing the story we choose to tell ourselves.
And one reason we invented the calendar was to keep the outside world at bay as we reclaim agency over how we’ll choose to act–to respond instead of to react.
For those of you keeping track, 2021 is the product of the prime numbers 43 and 47. If you were looking for a reason to be optimistic, that’s as good as any.
Thanks for caring and thanks for leading.
Here’s to justice, health and peace of mind as we choose an attitude of possibility and resilience in 2021.

The most obvious benefit of using an automatic call distribution system is that it ensures maximum productivity from agents. This is then felt by the customers in several ways:
Call waiting times are shorter, reducing customer frustration
There’s a reduced need to transfer calls between departments
First call resolution rates increase, so fewer customers need to call back to get queries resolved
Customers feel empowered when they can solve their own problems through digital solutions
Customers spend less time on the phone overall
Software integration means customers don’t have to repeat their account numbers or other details multiple times on the call
All of these factors contribute to increased customer satisfaction and improved branding for the contact center. Even in cases where the ACD does not route the customer to the correct department on the first try, the overall improvement in efficiency means customers can speak to a human more quickly and get their needs addressed in a timely fashion. Full article: https://www.8×8.com/blog/automatic-call-distribution
submitted by /u/vesuvitas [link] [comments]

For many people, work consists of a series of urgencies. Set them up and knock them down. Empty the in-box, answer the boss, make the deadline.

Over the next few weeks, there may be fewer urgencies than usual. That’s the nature of coming back from a break.

What if we used the time to move system deficiencies from the “later” pile to the “it’s essential to do this right now” pile?

Improving a system returns our effort many times over.

Fix your supply chain. Dig deep into your communication rhythms. Figure out the priority list. Quit the tasks that are holding you back. Walk away from dead ends. Add rigor to your processes. Understand the difference between the things that feel urgent and those that are truly important.

None of this works if you do it temporarily. The point is to create and fix systems with finality. Identify a class of projects that your team will do instead of you and then never do them again. Reorganize your data archiving approach and then stick with it. Build a system for lifelong learning and then maintain the commitment.

In any given moment, an urgency that feels like an emergency gives us the permission to abandon our systems and simply dive in and fix it, as only we can. And this permission is precisely why we get stuck, precisely why the next urgency is likely to appear tomorrow.

Resolutions don’t work. Habits and systems can.

Most of us are so stuck on the short-cycles of urgency that it’s difficult to even imagine changing our longer-term systems.

Amazingly, this simple non-hack (in which you spend the time to actually avoid the shortcuts that have been holding you back) might be the single most effective work you do all year.

Two videos for when you might have time.
For no really good reason, I filmed this long riff about my experience with the early days of video and adventure games. Probably more 1980s game history than you wanted to know.
Rewatching them, I’m reminded of how many lucky breaks I’ve had, how often I got the benefit of the doubt and how being in the right place at the right time can change so much.
Alas, I didn’t mention many of the people who did the extraordinary work of programming, of organizational development and of believing in possibility. I’m grateful to have worked next to hundreds of people who spent years battling the odds to invent the future.

A history of Spinnaker

Prodigy and online games…

As businesses have been forced to evolve, so have the means through which they gather and utilize customer experience data. Looking to the future, businesses must ensure that, regardless of how they choose to operate, customer experience should be a top priority. With new technology emerging all the time, implementing strategies to create the best customer experience possible has never been easier and will only continue to evolve and mature as time goes on. Full article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/heikkivaananen/2020/12/17/how-2020-has-shaped-customer-experience-and-what-lies-ahead/?sh=1295395d4d8f
submitted by /u/vesuvitas [link] [comments]

It is on the most important blog.
Yours.
Even if no one but you reads it. The blog you write each day is the blog you need the most. It’s a compass and a mirror, a chance to put a stake in the ground and refine your thoughts.
And the most important post? The one you’ll write tomorrow.

then you don’t. (Not yet.)
Cleaning out the fridge after a power failure, I found three half-empty containers of anchovies. Because they magically migrate to the back of the fridge, every time I had needed some, I ended up opening a new jar, because the old ones were invisible. Not just invisible if I had looked for them, but so invisible that it never even occurred to me to look for them.
And this is even more likely to happen with the data on your hard drive. If you don’t know to look for it, if you don’t believe it’s there, it might as well be deleted.
And of course, this applies to our lost skills, confidence and experience as well.
It’s worth putting in regular effort to remind ourselves of what we’ve already got and how it has served us in the past.

“To me, customer experience is a feeling. It’s the emotions your customers undergo or navigate through or have thrust upon them by their interactions with you.” – Joey Coleman https://preview.redd.it/aflcicf6hq761.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=233703e5f2d21d13abf926f2dea7358eca028913
submitted by /u/vesuvitas [link] [comments]

One of Woodie Guthrie’s resolutions was to “Wake up and fight.”
But he wasn’t talking about being a bully. Or picking a fight at the local bar.
He was talking about changing the culture.
He was challenging himself to push back against the doubters, and even more than that, to overcome his own self-doubt.
The culture is created by all of us. It might feel as though it’s done to us, but it’s also created by us.
Wake up, stand up and fight. Make things better.