Category: Customer Experience

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We spent the last couple of months asking influencers and industry leaders how they thought the pandemic had impacted customer service.
One recurring theme was that of agent satisfaction.
Our research for The State of the Contact Center 2020 Report indicates that the change to remote work, along with increasing public scrutiny and growing corporate EQ, will cement Agent Satisfaction as the ‘Master KPI’ on which all other metrics depend.

Download the full industry report FREE:
The State of the Contact Center 2020 

Here’s why it’s time to rethink your contact center — and make agent satisfaction a top priority.
Agents Were Our Virtual Frontline
From the start of shelter in place, contact agents were placed in the same category as healthcare workers — they were frontline heroes of the pandemic.
And it wasn’t just the public who realized the importance of their contact centers.
“The first surprise was how many CX professionals got laid off at the outset of the pandemic – and then how quickly they were hired elsewhere. Suddenly, customer insights became the golden ticket!”— Annette Franz, CEO at CXJourney Inc., Keynote Speaker and Official Forbes Coach
We were all intimately aware of the importance of customer service — and the frustration of long hold times and poor service.
“One lasting impact of the pandemic will be “immediacy.” The need to be available to engage at whatever time and in whichever channel the customer chooses.”— Peter Lavers, CX & Customer Service Expert, Founder of ThinkCX
That ‘immediacy’ has now been achieved by many brands. And that affects all of us.
“Painless experiences with brands in any industry set a bar for consumer expectations about what is technically possible and shine a harsh light on experiences that fall short.”— Kristyn Emenecker, Executive Leader — Marketing, Strategy, Product, CX

Download the full industry report FREE:
The State of the Contact Center 2020 

We Were All Forced to be More Empathetic
One word we repeatedly heard during our research was “empathy.” This deeper emotional trend drove the changing perception of contact centers.
Support agents were — sometimes literally — a lifeline for isolated, lonely, afraid customers.
“Given their anxiety and angst about their own personal situations outside of work, contact center agents moved from the service principle of ‘Think like the Customer’ to ‘Be the Customer.’ They are responding with genuine empathy and care because they feel as worried and concerned as their customers do about this pandemic and its impact. That awareness will stick with them hereafter.”— Bill Quiseng
CX Expert, Speaker & Consultant
Everyone was forced into a situation where they had a bad customer experience once a week or more.
“Contact center agents had to up their listening and their empathy beyond what they had ever faced before. I predict that all the leaders, managers, team leaders, and agents will look back and realize how much they grew from the empathy and compassion they gave and how it helped their customers; their fellow human beings.”— Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, Author of Leading Morale, Customer Service & Leadership Consultant
The increasing public awareness about health and hygiene has changed how customers expect companies to treat their staff.
Customers appreciated contact center employees more for working through despite the risks. They condemned companies that didn’t take their employees’ health and safety seriously. And companies like McDonald’s, that could have stayed open but didn’t, were applauded for putting people before profits.
“Customers are savvier about health, safety and employee treatment. Brands will have to find ways to not only talk about their values but show how they live them. Younger generations are showing this as a primary driver for their decisions, so this trend will continue well into 2021.”— Jeannie Walters, CX Expert & Speaker, CEO of Experience Investigators

Download the full industry report FREE:
The State of the Contact Center 2020 

Agent Attrition is a Growing Problem
The puzzle’s final piece is an omnipresent trend in the contact center world: agent attrition. Our State of the Contact Center 2020 report found that agent attrition continued to increase in the last year.
“Not only are agent attrition levels worryingly high and growing, but the cost associated with finding new agents and developing initiatives to keep them is also climbing. This creates a disturbing situation for contact centers, considering the impact that the vicious cycle of agent churn has on customer experience.”— Peter Ryan, Snr. Advisor, Ryan Strategic Advisory
Contact center executives are aware of the problems and expenses associated with high agent turnover. But they’ve struggled to do anything about it.
Investment in agent hiring, training, and retention is now a top priority for contact center executives. And it needs to be. In the past, there were always more fresh college students in the hiring pipeline to fill seats.
But it’s getting increasingly harder to find the emotionally intelligent and committed workers needed to perform in the modern contact center.
The gig economy has been looming over contact centers for years. And the move to remote working has created the — previously lacking — infrastructure to do it properly and securely.

Download the full industry report FREE:
The State of the Contact Center 2020 

Call Center Agents Are A Long Way from Satisfied
The systemic change will force employers to reassess how they look at employee satisfaction because agents have had a taste for what could be.
Recent attempts to bring a ‘gig’ economy to the contact center missed the reason people take on these jobs — freedom and flexibility.
Tech companies are already solving many WfH problems and will solve many more in the coming months — and take advantage of a new, large market. The ones that get agent satisfaction right will be the winners and stand to make a LOT of money.
“The most significant trend is the move to remote work and a better quality of life for contact center workers. When contact center employees can effectively and happily work from home, customers will reap those benefits.”— Evan Kirstel, B2B Tech & Marketing Consultant
The post 3 Reasons Why Agent Satisfaction is the New Customer Satisfaction first appeared on Fonolo.

“When you serve the customer better, they always return on your investment.” – Kara Parlin ​ https://preview.redd.it/sz4k07biumw51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=cbbfd0e014215b0586bca77b37f7e89380c88575
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37% of companies say they’re investing in customer experience because they’re losing business to their competitors. Source: Acquia ​ https://preview.redd.it/1cowfrz0kfw51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=92d5a8b71c02f53bf81cfe07ee6566448773127c
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The global pandemic set the stage for something many of us weren’t ready to deal with on any level. Stay-at-home orders and quarantines tested people’s limits, requiring them to adapt to a new way of life. According to one survey, at least 35 percent of employers have noticed an increase in mental health support because of their employees’ social isolation and economic anxiety. With so many people feeling overwhelmed and worried about what happens next, it’s critical to understand that consumers now expect a customer experience that is genuine, seamless, and memorable. Full Article: https://www.vonage.com.ph/about-us/vonage-stories/customer-experience-moving-forward/
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The concept of unified communications entails the unification of communication channels within a single management platform. This will often include voice calls, text messaging, instant messaging, email, video calling, video conferencing, and so on. Unified Communications can also be integrated with other workplace processes to streamline operations. Full Article: https://www.business2community.com/communications/how-unified-communications-can-improve-customer-and-employee-experience-02348846
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The post UJET Unveils Next-Gen Virtual Agent Solutions appeared first on UJET.

The 2020 holiday shopping season will look very different from others in recent memory, thanks to COVID-19.
Think you’re ready?
You’re probably not.

With travel at an all-time low and in-store shopping becoming less accessible, consumers will be exploring new ways to make their holiday purchases.
To stay ahead of the curve, retailers will need to stay alert to changing trends in their customers’ behaviour — but most importantly, they must prepare to support them when they run into challenges.

A Complete Guide to Customer Perception

Here are some of our best tips for retailers when navigating holiday shopping season 2020:

1. Revisit your digital marketing strategy

Whether you’re new to the digital marketing game or not, it’s time to take another look at your online retail strategy. Due to the pandemic, online shopping has exploded in popularity. Criteo reports that 88% of US consumers surveyed planned to shop for gifts online and send them to their intended recipients. 

88% of US consumers surveyed by @Criteo plan to shop for gifts online and send them to their intended recipients. #Holidays2020 #OnlineShoppingClick To Tweet

2. Introduce yourself to new consumers

The good news is, consumers are more open to buying from new brands than ever. According to Criteo, 33% of US survey respondents had purchased from small merchants they didn’t previously know about during the peak of the pandemic; 83% intend to continue purchasing from new stores they’ve found.

TIP:
Invest in your business’ online presence with targeted social posts and ads — this will help you meet online demand while attracting new customers!

3. Manage expectations

With the anticipated e-commerce boom over the holidays, communication with your customers is about to become more important than ever. Increased demand will inevitably lead to challenges, including high order volumes and delays.
How to Prepare your Call Center for Cyber Monday and Black Friday
Salesforce predicts that potentially 700 million gifts and parcels are at risk of not arriving in time for the holidays, so preparing your contact center with the proper tools and communication resources will be key!

4. Prepare your contact centers

Your customers will be navigating this new holiday shopping experience right alongside your business. However, they will still expect your support agents to be on standby to address any problems. 
Expect your contact center to be inundated with calls and all other inquiries from technical issues to delayed deliveries. And be sure your team has all the resources they need to tackle this increased demand.

TIP:
Anything from a significant website error to a PR issue can trigger overwhelming demand for your contact center. Getting a crisis plan and the proper tools in place will help your agents control messaging, prioritize customer inquiries, and manage high call volumes.

5. Invest in new technology

The pandemic has played a huge role in shifting businesses and their workforces into virtual and digital platforms. However, just because you made the pivot earlier this year doesn’t mean you’re ready for what the shopping season has to throw at you. Don’t stop exploring new tools and technology to improve your remote delivery.
Investing in solutions such as Voice Call-Backs and Visual IVR will not only alleviate challenges during the holiday season but also benefit your agents and customers year-round!

The post 5 Retailer Survival Tips For Holiday Shopping Season 2020 first appeared on Fonolo.

As many of us continue to work from home and shift working styles due to the pandemic, I’ve been interviewing practitioners and thought leaders about how we can adapt and continue to show up as our best selves in our roles. To that end, I want to share with you my recent interview with Camille Harrison, the SVP & COO of Guidewell Commercial Market, and Guidewell Innovation. Guidewell is the parent company of Florida Blue. Camille shared with our audience her insights and advice for experience leaders in the healthcare and insurance industries.
Some of the quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.

Camille is in the insurance industry where she works with multiple customer segments, so there are a lot of moving parts to her work. During our conversation, Camille and I discuss the importance of not “boiling the ocean” when it comes to implementing change, and Camille shares some of the techniques she’s used to unite folks across her organization, including the C-Suite, in order to move the customer-first work forward.
The Foundation of Your Work Will Give You the Opportunities to do the “Cool” Work Later on

Camille explains that it’s important to focus on the foundation. She shares that she and her team started by pulling together all of their insights and analytics so they could have a solid place to build upon. She says that once you’ve got your foundation in place, you have to start sharing the deeper knowledge with your team so everyone can understand what’s happening.

We spend a lot of time making sure that the whole organization can see the impact of their work, as opposed to being limited to the centralized group of people who are experts at it. So we spent a lot of time knowledge sharing, and really making sure people understood what was happening environmentally.

We don’t just build an action plan in a vacuum. We go to the people who are actually responsible for that business process. And they help us understand our insights. Because our insights are just words on a page, but we bring them to life when talking to experts in that space. So you’re co-developing solutions, and then you bring in the customer and say, here’s what we think we heard, right? Will this work for you and your customers?”

We spend a lot of time making sure that the whole organization can see the impact of their work, as opposed to being limited to the centralized group of people who are experts at it. —Camille Harrison, @_GuideWellClick To Tweet

Create a Center of Excellence

Camille shares that with the support of Guidewell’s new VP, her team was able to create a center of excellence:
We spent a lot of time building foundational capabilities to really listen to customers […] I mean, that is how, frankly, we unite the C suite, right? Because data is uniting right? Insights are widening that people understand what’s driving satisfaction and not. And we’re able to build plans around that in order to drive the outcome of the change that we want.”
She also shares this important message about their journey to being customer-focused:
We found that we were building our business rules and practices around our business objectives rather than the customer’s journey and their expectation. So when we realized that, we took a step back, and we identified six priority journeys. […] Now we orchestrate our business process around the journey or the objectives they’re trying to meet. So it’s really just a pivot and how you’re looking at the same set of problems. But you’re thinking about it and you’re solving from the customer’s vantage point, and you’re leveraging your relationship with the customer to do it.”

Now we orchestrate our business process around the (customer) journey or the objectives they’re trying to meet. —Camille Harrison, @_GuideWell Click To Tweet

The Whole Organization Must be Aligned with the Expectations

Camille shares that now that Guidewell has developed its customer-first focus, both the C-Suite and the organization are aligning with the expectations.
When it comes to engaging the C-suite in order to get movement going, she shares the following:

Come with data, come with information, not opinions, because you can opine all day long about what you think the issues and the opportunities are, but when you can bring very specific actionable items forward, you’re going to get an invitation to the Party every single time. Make sure that you have it in a way that’s consumable, repeatable, and sustainable.”
 
You can’t bring one report and think that you’ve sold you know, your C suite that this is these are the action, there’s got to be consistent, a pattern of bringing information forward to be able to to really drive the results that you need. Make sure you’re having a conversation deeper in the organization where the work happens.”

Have you been keeping up with me on my LinkedIn Live conversations? If not, what are you waiting for? I encourage you to follow me on LinkedIn so you can watch more interviews with industry top leaders, and if you don’t already follow my podcast, click on the link to get new episodes delivered right to your inbox!

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The post Build Your Customer-First Foundation, Align Your Team, and Unite the C-Suite with Data-Backed Insights appeared first on Customer Bliss.

Most people can appreciate how companies are pivoting quickly to meet current demands. But behind the scenes is data and the predictive analytics that provide the insights needed to help ensure customer experiences are perfectly aligned with customer value, preferences, and needs. What does a data-driven, medium-size company look like? Here are three potential scenarios that I believe are potentially transformational.
Raising the personalization bar to meet customer expectations
Everything revolves around the holistic view of the customer
Freedom of choice brings experiences that customers trust
Staying competitive against large companies requires medium-size businesses to create experiences driven by data. With the right technologies, that information can be translated into the convenient channels, fast delivery, and high-quality products and services that customers demand now and will expect in the years ahead. Full Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2020/10/22/3-ways-to-evolve-the-customer-experience-for-midsize-companies/#59bdabbf4b28
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