Category: Customer Experience

The winners of the International Business Excellence Awards 2020 have been revealed yesterday at the Live Online event, celebrating teams and individuals for the outstanding work done by businesses worldwide. Finalists were competing to secure Gold, Silver and Bronze titles across 10 categories, with one Overall Winner also named for their high score at the event, with…
The post International Business Excellence Awards 2020: Meet the Winners appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Just about everyone over the age of fifteen, anywhere in the world, engages in the market in some way. We need things and we buy them.

That’s not what shopping is.

Shopping is the act of imagining what you might want. It’s the thrilling but risky exchange of money for something that you’ve never purchased before. Something that might be better than you hope, but it might not.

In some communities, shopping is so foreign and risky that it simply doesn’t happen.

Shopping is a cultural activity, with styles and approaches varying depending on who you are and where you live.

Shopping releases chemicals in our brain. In many cases, particularly with luxury goods, it’s this emotional shift that we’re actually paying for, not the thing we’re buying.

The trillion-dollar industries that are based on shopping as a sport (as distinguished from buying what we need) are relatively new, but have been around long enough that many of us take them for granted–normal activities that appear to have always been around.

Money is a story. Your story is probably different from everyone else’s. Our relationship with debt, savings and earning money is extraordinarily complex. Consumer credit has turned from a convenience and useful bridge into, for many people, a trap.

Gift cards, garage sales and self-storage units start to reveal just how many layers we’ve built up around our commitment to shopping.

In small doses, for many people, shopping can produce happiness. But it doesn’t usually scale.

More stuff might not be the substitute for the things that we truly want.

With Christmas markets and Santa’s Grottos cancelled in many cities, it may seem as though traditional Christmas preparations are losing much of their sparkle and cheer this year. As a consequence, savvy retailers are looking for new ways to engage with shoppers online throughout the crucial Christmas trading season. John Lewis certainly deserves praise for…
The post What Christmas Shoppers are Looking for This Festive Season appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

If you thought you could automate the voice channel out of the contact center, you’ve got another thing coming.
The present and future of the contact center is voice. Ignore this advice at your (CSAT rating’s) peril.

Discover all the latest contact center trends:
Read Contact Center Trends 2021

For many years, tech companies waged war on the lowly telephone contact agent. And for a while, it looked like they would win. But this year, contact center executives were shown just how crucial the voice channel is in a digital world.
The Voice Channel is a Crucial Connection in a Virtual World
As millions of people transitioned to sheltering-in-place, many picked up the phone to reach out for customer support. Those that had pushed it to the sidelines suffered the most.
Average hold times shot up to days — and sometimes weeks — as millions picked up the phone to ask, “Where the hell is my toilet paper delivery?” “Is my flight really canceled?” and other critical lockdown-related issues.
One trend we expect to see blossom over the next five years is the (re)growth of audio channels. And the return of the voice channel in a big way.
How to Improve Customer Perception
That’s in stark contrast to our prediction that SMS usage would grow in 2020. But there’s a good reason for that.
Why RCS Text Messaging Didn’t Explode in 2020
It made sense that adding rich media to SMS would increase their utility. But the rollout has been all but forgotten in the last 12 months. And we suspect that it will never quite land.
We missed two major influences last year:
1. TELCOs are getting ‘FAANGed’
First, Facebook, Apple, and Google are (quietly) at war with the TELCOs. They have no reason to let users leave their ecosystems and return to the incumbent communications giants of yesteryear. This battle between TELCOs & FAAANG will delay and limit the effectiveness of RCS rollouts.
2. Texting takes a lot of effort/attention
Second, we’ve noticed an increase in the use of recorded voice messages (via WhatsApp, iMessage, etc).

Discover all the latest trends:
Contact Center Trends 2021

This makes a lot of sense: It’s easier and quicker—and has more bandwidth—than a text message. And that’s part of the larger trend towards audio channels.
Audio Media is back BIG TIME
Did you know that the radio is the next big thing? It sounds crazy, but the media channel that started it all is back in vogue. Don’t believe me? What’s your favorite podcast?
The podcasting industry topped $1billion in 2020 and is still growing around 20% a year. And that’s not counting audiobooks or listening to YouTube videos in the background.
Besides the personal voice-recording we mentioned earlier, audio-only social media is making a splash this year. There are already dozens of audio-first social platforms (Audlist, HearMeOut, Listen, Riffr, Clubhouse, QuarantineChat, Rodeo, Chalk, Cappuccino, Clyp). And that’s just the ones we’ve heard about.

As voice-enabled technology improves and text-to-voice rendering gets more human, the audio channel will regain its place at the head of the media family’s table. #cctr #cctrtrends #voicechannel Click To Tweet

The sister of Snapchat’s founder has even launched an audio-porn site. And we all know that once porn gets on a platform, that platform usually takes off pretty quickly.
As voice-enabled technology and devices improve, and text-to-voice rendering gets more human, the audio channel will regain its place at the head of the media family’s table.
A Voice is the Human Connection People Crave
The other place we will see a return to voice is the contact center.
Email, bots, social media, and live chat all have their place in the experience hub of the future. They’re cheaper than voice and often all that a user wants. But it’s dangerous to delude ourselves into thinking that we can replace the voice channel altogether.

Discover all the latest trends:
Download Contact Center Trends 2021

A phone call doesn’t require as much attention; You can do something else at the same time. I can’t count the number of times I’ve forgotten I was waiting for a response on a live chat and got cut off, only to have to start again. Sometimes, I would just call them instead of going through the live chat process.
Finally, lockdown showed that people want a human connection — all the companies that tried to ‘bot’ people out suffered big time. There’s no substitute for a human voice when you have a complicated problem.
In an increasingly digital world, humans will continue to seek out a human connection. And the companies that embrace this — instead of rebuffing it — will reap the benefits in the next year.
The post Why the Voice Channel Will Crush Omnichannel Next Year first appeared on Fonolo.

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At enlightened companies, leaders are smart enough to ask, “how do we make things better for our customers?” They realize that this simple ratchet leads to loyalty, word of mouth and more customers.
At monopolies or companies that seek to act like them, the question is, “how do we make things better for us?”

REM was one of the most respected indy rock bands. You’d think that a group that somehow managed to thread the needle between whatever authentic means to them and huge popular success could walk away from traditional measures of who’s up and who’s not…
In a long-ago Rolling Stone article, lead singer Michael Stipe said that he had never heard a song from Mariah Carey and in fact had just learned how to say her name. There’s a difference between focusing on your lane and denigrating the others in your field.
In the same article, bandmate Michael Mills expresses disappointment that even though they recorded at Prince’s studio in Minneapolis, he never stopped by to say hello or even invite them to the party on Friday.
Turtles all the way down, turtles all the way up.
High school persists.
It’s possible to use the status hierarchy as a sort of fuel, a way to motivate yourself to push a little harder. But it is also possible, and far more resilient, to use connection and possibility as fuel as well.
The best lesson of high school might be that everyone has a noise in their heads, everyone feels uncomfortable and everyone would appreciate a little kindness and respect.

If Harper Lee had written To Kill a Mockingbird today, there’s no doubt that the salesforce and the marketers would have pushed for a catchier title, probably with better SEO.

And it’s hard to imagine that Waiting for Godot would have ever been performed on Broadway.

On a similar note: What would happen if instead of taking elements out of our work in order to make the product cheaper, we put things in instead? What if we made it better?

It’s tempting to race to the bottom. The problem is that you might win, and then you’ll have to stay there. Worse, you might try and come in second, accomplishing not much of anything.

Linkbait is a trap, because it brings you attention you actually don’t want.

The alternative is to be idiosyncratic, specific and worth the effort and expense. What would happen if you made something important, breathtaking or wonderful? The race to the top is not only more satisfying, it’s also more likely to work.

And then you get to live there. Doing work you’re proud of, without excuses.

Over time, marketing experts realized that if a customer had a great initial experience with the business, they’d be more inclined to return. Customer experience has thus become one of the most vital metrics for ensuring that consumers are happy with a company. Unfortunately, not all businesses are gifted at creating excellent experiences for their buyers. Below, 15 experts from Forbes Communications Council offer their best advice that can help a company develop a much-improved customer experience.
Focus On Customer Journey Mapping Have A Well-Planned Execution Process Adapt And Extend Your CX Have A Client-Centric Culture Make Your CX Delightful Set Up Key Metrics And Monitor Them Leverage Surveys, Reviews Ensure Quick Response Times Combine Technology And Human Expertise Don’t Define Success On Your Terms Stay Human And Relatable Leverage Conversational AI Focus On Digital Experience Offer A Personalized Experience Have A Strong Retention Program
​ Full article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2020/11/20/how-to-improve-your-companys-cx-strategies-15-top-tips/?sh=33c60d253c54
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Customer experience is about brands demonstrating their commitment to prioritising and anticipating the problems of the customers. They are taking the onus to provide a solution to the customers. One of the frequent problems that most customers face while purchasing online is the whole complexity of the ‘return’ process. Agile brands are managing this by…
The post The Greatest Brands are the Ones that Take ‘Onus’ of Customer Experience appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.