Category: Customer Experience

That’s how you know that they’re not obvious.
When smart, committed people disagree about the answer to a question, you’ve found a question worth pursuing and a discussion worth having.

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Did you know that the average organisation analyses just 2 per cent of all customer interactions and it’s mostly for random checks? It’s become common knowledge that acquiring a new customer costs 25 times more than keeping an existing one. Yet, companies are still not utilising the data that’s provided by existing customers to calculate…
The post The Secret Behind ROI on CX: Harnessing the Power of Data appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

As new lockdowns come into effect, remote working is becoming more widespread again. Offices have been instructed to close in order to manage the spread of the virus. While some workers jumped at the opportunity to go back into offices when they re-opened, many UK employees who found remote working to be beneficial have been…
The post Why Workwear is Important for Remote Employees appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

When hiring new talent, it’s easy to get caught up in qualifications and work experience. However, customer service professionals need more than smarts to be successful — especially when working in a contact center.
Empathy is one of the hottest topics in the industry right now, with the pandemic revealing how important genuine human connections are. This skill isn’t something you can immediately identify in a resume and cover letter, and it’s definitely not something your candidates can take a course in.

Empathy is one of the hottest topics in the industry right now, with the pandemic revealing how important genuine human connections are. #CustomerServiceClick To Tweet

We did some digging on the best indicators of high EQ so you can narrow down your next superstar hire!
The Difference Between EQ and IQ
The terms “IQ” and “EQ” get thrown around a lot, especially in the workplace. IQ stands for “Intelligence Quotient,” which typically indicates academic intelligence. On the flip side, EQ stands for “Emotional Quotient” and refers to one’s ability to identify, evaluate, and manage their own emotions, as well as those around them.
Both of these scores are important when measuring employee performance. However, according to Business World, IQ only covers 10-25%of the equation, meaning EQ is responsible for around 75% of a person’s ability to succeed in the workplace. It’s also an excellent indicator of someone’s leadership skills and ability to work in a team.
Why EQ is Important for Customer Support Agents
If EQ is a strong indicator of a person’s ability to succeed in the workplace, it’s even more true for customer service professionals. After all, EQ is directly rooted in one’s social-emotional skills.
The Perfect Call Center Agent Does Exist
Customer support is about more than just solving problems. A huge part of this role is the ability to tune into the customer’s feelings and support them emotionally. The pandemic cemented this fact as customer support agents across the world dealt with overwhelming call volumes, many from distressed individuals looking for a human connection during the lockdown.
Your customers want that human interaction — if they didn’t, they’d be dealing with chatbots and emails. But the voice channel remains the most popular form of support for businesses. It’s more important than ever to invest in hiring and training agents to be more compassionate so they can build lasting relationships for your company.
How to Identify EQ Qualities in a Candidate
Now that we’ve established the importance of EQ in contact center agents, the question remains: how do I find the right talent?
1. Read their cover letter
The cover letter is one of the earliest touchpoints where you can get to know a candidate. It’s much more telling than a resume when it comes to evaluating EQ. Remember, you can teach technical skills, but you can’t teach social-emotional skills!
2. Pay attention to how they treat others
Don’t just take the candidate’s behavior in the interview at face value. How did they treat the receptionist who greeted them at the door? The custodian they passed in the hallway? The way they treat other people in ordinary settings can speak volumes.
10 Huge Mistakes Your Call Center Agents Are Making Right Now
3. Evaluate their listening skills
One important quality in a contact center agent is their ability to listen to a customer, remain engaged, and provide helpful answers. During the interview, pay attention to how they answer the questions. Are their answers thoughtful? Do they indicate that they’re in tune with your experience?
4. Ask behavioral interview questions
Behavioral interview questions are among the best ways to get a sense of how a candidate responds to different and often challenging scenarios. You may choose to ask them about a time they disagreed with someone and how they addressed the situation, or how they’ve handled irate customers in previous roles. Be prepared to use follow-up questions to delve into their mental process and understand their unique perspective!
The post Why You Should Hire Agents Based on EQ Not IQ first appeared on Fonolo.

It might not be autumn where you live, but the iconography of the large orange pumpkin travels around the world.

People carve faces into them, stick a candle inside and use them to ward off the darkness.

Perhaps we could consider writing on one instead. Inscribing all the things we’re grateful for, all the people who show up in our lives. We could highlight our heroes, our friends, the selfless people who show up for the community instead of simply looking for a shortcut… We could even remind ourselves of the systems, situations and dynamics that we take for granted.

Seeing that pumpkin every day is a great way to remind myself of how extraordinarily lucky I am. Even when it seems as though the news is an unending litany of selfishness and tragedy, it’s possible to find someone who made a difference.

Thank you for caring, for showing up and especially, for leading.

Hi CX lovers Hello Gatsby lovers, I wanted to let you know that we recently launched DXPReport.com, a weekly newsletter focusing on the Digital Experience Platform industry. Delivering a better customer experience is pretty much the driving force behind innovation in the DXP space, so we will be covering CX news, trends and opinions from time to time. You can see edition #1 here (we’re sending out edition #4 on Monday 30th November): https://preview.mailerlite.com/m9k8r2 We’d love you to join us. Feedback and suggestions are also very welcome!
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Up until now, annual strategies for the busiest shopping period of the year have been set in stone, agreed months in advance. But in 2020, many retailers have been forced to concentrate on merely staying afloat as they grapple with the effects of the pandemic, often taking a massive financial hit. In the UK, consumer spending…
The post Customer Service Strategy Needs to Be Ready for the Holiday Season – Here’s What Has to Change appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Ideas are like that.

The successful editor, curator or entrepreneur doesn’t go hunting ideas to kill them, but to celebrate them, identify them and dance with them.

And a brutal, all-out frontal attack won’t work. It’s not about raising a ton of money or insisting that the world supply you with only the good ideas. Quibi failed because of the hubris of believing that the ideas could be conjured on a schedule. And countless middlemen have struggled with the dead-end of only wanting to embrace the good ideas, which are often impossible to distinguish from the others at a distance.

Sometimes, you need to look more closely, to reconsider or to circle around again.

And sometimes we go butterfly hunting and find nothing at all.

Fred Hills, who published fifty New York Times bestsellers (including my first one) died a few weeks ago. He took the quest literally, and used to go butterfly hunting with Nabakov. His belief in my book was matched by the trust he offered me and so many authors to find our voice and share it.

Chris Meyer was another butterfly hunter, patiently connecting, leading and challenging, turning on lights in a way that made everyone in the room see the possibilities that lay just ahead.

The ideas are there. It might take patience to nurture them.

[HT to Lisa DiMona.]

Millennial and Generation Z technology and communication preferences require customer service to move beyond omnichannel. And that’s just what we need to do to catch up to modern consumer behavior and expectations. Companies looking to truly differentiate and compete on experience must stay ahead of the curve — and the consumer. With that in mind, here are five trends we’re seeing at UJET that will be shaping customer experience (CX) for years to come.
Embeddable Experiences
Embracing the Remote Consumer
CX to Drive Digital Maturity
Data Privacy and Unification
Level-Setting AI Expectations
Full article: https://www.nojitter.com/contact-center-customer-experience/contact-center-modernization-5-cx-trends-2021
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