Category: Customer Experience

I’m pretty sure how the first meetings went almost a decade ago:

“Well, we’re paying our affiliates 5% for referrals. If we pay charities a tenth of that and call it a donation, it’ll be great PR and we’ll also make a profit on every sale because we won’t need to pay a full commission…”

Amazon didn’t invent the online affiliate concept, but the company certainly turned it into a significant engine for growth. If a consumer bought a $100 item that someone in their program linked to, they would pay the referrer about $5. That meant they had little chance of actually turning a profit on that sale, but it led to millions of new customers, people who came back again and again. It also usually turned one sale into a few…

The end result is that Amazon has paid many billions of dollars in affiliate fees, and their affiliates (like Wirecutter, CoolTools, and formerly, Squidoo) sometimes built entire businesses around the simple idea that recommending a product and sending someone to the biggest online retailer to buy it could lead to income.

Smile turned more than a million non-profit charities into affiliates at a bargain rate. Now, that $100 purchase turned into forty cents sent to the cause of your choice.

I used to send you, my esteemed readers, to Smile links, but when I realized how little each donation was, I switched to geni.us, and so our donations went up 10x.

To date, Amazon Smile has sent charities more than $500,000,000. That’s not a ‘donation’ of course, it’s simply an allocation of marketing spend. And yet, half a billion dollars makes them a very significant donor in aggregate, one of the biggest corporate donors in the world.

So why cancel the program?

I have a few guesses:

The new management at Amazon is aggressively streamlining programs and expenses to enable focus and increased profitability. Programs that involved a lot of people and time got harder to justify.

They’ve always done a bad job of explaining the program, as evidenced by the fact that many people (including me) were surprised that the aggregate donation number was so big.

Most charities aren’t very good affiliates. My guess is that few of the million recipients did much at all to persuade their donors to buy from the smile link that donated back to them.

And perhaps most of all, as Amazon continues to dominate online retail, the affiliate program is probably less important strategically, and cutting costs on that front may seem like a simple way to increase short-term profit.

Western industrial culture has had a hard time thinking about charity all the way back to Community Chest and the United Way. If the ‘game’ is to maximize profit, then sending money to good causes seems to undermine that. Some people argue that companies have a corporate social responsibility, that the compact they sign with the community is to not simply take as much profit as possible but to invest for the long-term well-being of the places they work and the people they work with. Or, as may be the case here, it’s simply a marketing tool.

If call center retention keeps you up at night, you’re not alone. In the era of the “great resignation” and in an industry with record staff turnover, employee retention is on every manager’s mind. The numbers are sobering. According to the 2021 ICMI report, a contact center’s average employee turnover rate was 58% per year. This figure is about 10 percent higher than the US average employee attrition rate of 47.2%. What’s up?
Every field has employee turnover, of course. But stressful industries like contact centers stand out. Let’s take a closer look at why call centers see so much agent turnover and consider the solutions.

TIP:
Tools like Fonolo Voice Call-Backs relieve agent stress and keep customers off hold by offering call-backs during call spikes. Conversation Scheduling let callers schedule a call-back up to 15 days in the future.

Why Does Call Center Retention Matter?
It’s worth the effort, we promise. The cost of losing an employee is much higher than most people realize. The hard costs of employee turnover are easy to measure – and significant. They include money spent on administrative taskwork, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding.
Soft costs are harder to see, but they cost money too. There is low productivity surrounding an employee leaving: co-workers are spread thin while covering extra duties, and supervisors scramble to keep things running smoothly.

FACT:
It costs 30-50% of their salary to replace an entry-level employee. Mid and senior-level employees cost companies between 150% – 400% of their salary to replace. Bottom line? Train, compensate, and engage your employees!

Why Do Call Centers Have High Turnover Rates?
Low wages are a factor
Higher compensation is always a good place to start. Most call center agents are underpaid for their skillset and education, compared to the market. Indeed says, the average hourly rate for US call center agents is $16.50. That’s about a dollar per hour less than a data entry clerk and two dollars less than an administrative assistant – comparable jobs with considerably less stress.

DID YOU KNOW?:
Zippia reports that 65% of contact center agents have college or university education

Stressful work
Call center work is stressful. Agents can feel like they’re putting out fires all day long. They deal with frustrated, upset, and sometimes angry customers, responding calmly and with empathy — but the stress takes a toll. Studies by Toister Performance Solutions show that a whopping 74% of agents are at risk of burnout. When customers have been waiting on hold, often for hours, it only makes things worse.
Lack of training and opportunity
Call centers put considerable resources into onboarding, but even that can comes up short. Despite spending an average of 6-12 weeks training new call center employees, half of agents say the initial training needs to be more hands-on and engaging.
Once agents are hired, the training tends to stop. And there is little opportunity for advancement. Call centers are often viewed as separate entities in a company and do not always offer the traditional career path that an employee might have if they joined as an administrative assistant or data entry clerk.
But your employees want to grow and progress in measurable ways, financially, professionally, and personally. When their goals aren’t met, employees can disengage and start to look for fulfillment in other workplaces.
More Benefits of Call Center Retention
There’s plenty to lose if your employee turnover rate is too high. We’ve already discussed the dollar figures. Employee churn is expensive! But there are other things to be gained by lowering your employee turnover rate and creating a healthy, supportive professional culture where people want to work. Who doesn’t want that? Here are some other benefits of lowering your employee turnover:

Agents become more efficient at their jobs.
Knowledgeable, experienced agents can become brand ambassadors.
Skilled agents offer higher quality customer service.
Happy agents = happy customers.

How do you calculate employee turnover? 
Use this simple formula to calculate employee turnover. Most contact centers calculate this number on an annual basis:
Number of agents who quit ÷ average number of agents on staff x 100 = attrition rate expressed as a percentage.
5 Call Center Retention Strategies That Work
Hire carefully
Throw your search nets wide and include social media and video posts to attract digital natives to your contact center. Call center work is increasingly technical – some even say that contact center employees are the first generation of AI workers – and you’ll benefit from the expertise and experience of millennials. Offer career open houses where prospective employees can observe your company’s culture and facilities. And hire carefully, ensuring your new staff members are team players who can express empathy and handle stressful situations.
Train thoroughly 
Once you’ve identified and hired excellent staff (way to go!), you’ll need to train them well. Be transparent about company goals, processes, and performance metrics, and employ effective onboarding strategies. Set up new hires with a mentor if you can. And don’t rush things. A survey done by ASAPP research found that reduced training lowered agents’ confidence and competence – and led to an uptick in absenteeism.
10 Proven Training Methods to Improve Your Call Center Performance
Training should not be a one-and-done scenario either. ASAPP also reported 38% of agents said ongoing training and career growth opportunities would improve their jobs.
Offer automation tools to support employees 
Call volumes at inbound call centers increased dramatically during the pandemic. Gartner says 41% of call centers reported higher than usual volumes during the pandemic, with some reporting increases as high as 800% over previous levels. Customer volumes remain high.
Automation and AI-supported tools can help deal with high call volumes and lower your agent’s stress. You can use chatbots to answer simple queries. In fact, IBM predicts that 80% of routine customer queries can be answered by AI-enabled chatbots. And call-backs can keep callers off hold and lower call spikes by rescheduling calls for quieter periods. Fonolo’s Visual IVR provides even more flexibility, letting customers select a call-back from any device at a time they prefer.
Promote engagement
Engagement is a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to keeping call center agents happy and slowing down employee turnover. What improvements can you make?

Create a positive culture
Recognize achievements and offer meaningful rewards
Use metrics and offer mentoring
Provide ongoing training programs and opportunities for advancement
Support your agents with the right tools and technology

Offer hybrid and remote work options
Remote work is one of the most effective agent retention strategies, according to a Time Doctor study which says 59% percent of people would choose a job with hybrid or remote work options. The same study found people working from home were 22% happier than those working in an office. Working from home is here to stay, and contact centers need to offer agents flexibility, or they will lose them to companies that let agents decide where they want to work.
Spend Smarter for Better Employee Retention
Managers know call center retention is important and are already spending money on staffing, training, and engagement. You need to optimize your investment! Once you’ve ensured your agent compensation is competitive, consider upgrading your work environment and letting agents choose to work remotely if they want to. Make training an ongoing part of your workplace and offer opportunities for advancement.
Finally, a careful audit of your workflows can show you where automation can offset workload, relieve employee stress and improve call center retention. Call it a win, win, win scenario!The post Why Call Center Retention Matters first appeared on Fonolo.

​ https://preview.redd.it/ascn42bcp1da1.jpg?width=1118&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=946e52520eb8f43a2145748d4d66376b8462d6e7 Customer journey mapping allows businesses to gain insight into how their customers interact with their products. You can compare your customer’s journey to the common journeys of other customers or use it to ensure that the customer experience is as good as possible at all stages of the process. Read More –> https://medium.com/@rkoleta/b2b-saas-customer-journey-mapping-edcba5d39ff5 #customerexperience #CX #journeymapping #b2bsaas submitted by /u/rickkoleta [link] [comments]

This year’s initiatives have been excellent. All entrants have done an incredible job. It was not easy to narrow down all nominees to just 50 finalists. But we’ve done it! The top 25 for each category has been shortlisted. However, this is not the end. We’re far from it. We need your help to rank…
The post Time to choose your CXMStars™ winners! Voting now open appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Australian football is a sports game usually played by two teams of 18 players. Points are scored either for kicking the oval ball into the central goal post, which is six points, or for kicking the ball into the central outer post, which gives a single point. Scoring the ball between the central outer post…
The post Introduction to the rules of Australian football: everything you need to know appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

submitted by /u/sstales [link] [comments]

Not that long ago, you could make a living as a typist.

Technology keeps changing the world.

Now, you’re more likely to find a job doing something that seems a lot less mechanized. But that too will be programmatic soon enough.

PS here’s an important new book about perfectionism.

There are mistakes. These are moments when reality teaches us something.

And there’s stupid. This is what happens when we refuse to learn from our mistakes.

“Don’t be stupid” is a fine mantra. It’s particularly apt when talking about cultural forces, political agendas and our thoughtless impulses.

It’s also useful to remember to “make productive and generous mistakes.” And to learn from them.

If there’s one thing managers need to understand about digital transformation, it’s how artificial intelligence is changing CX in the contact center. The cost savings  AI offers makes the move to more automation inevitable. Gartner reports that AI chatbots alone can save the contact center industry up to $80 billion in annual labor costs by 2026. By 2031, the savings could grow to $240 billion. Along with huge cost savings, AI will be a tremendous boon to customers longing for better self-service, and agents who need relief from repetitive taskwork. It’s clear that AI’s impact on customer care and CX will be profound.

FACT:
Contact centers are ahead of the curve when it comes to AI adoption, uniquely positioned to benefit from automation and emerge as tech leaders.

What Do Customers Value in CX?
To understand how artificial intelligence can impact CX, it’s helpful to break down the elements of a positive customer experience from a customer’s point of view.  According to a recent PWC survey, customers value:

Speed
Convenience
Knowledgeable assistance
Friendly service
Human touch

AI Impacts Your Entire System, in a Good Way
Did someone say human touch? Yes! Artificial intelligence is not a standalone technology, but rather a tool that optimizes your entire system. This includes your agents. AI doesn’t change the fact that the human touch is key to a successful customer experience and the best AI applications will actually create space for the human touch and improve the agent experience.
Will Artificial Intelligence Take Agents’ Jobs?
Those who worry about automation taking jobs should also consider how automation can relieve customer service agents of repetitive aspects of their work – and imagine what can happen after that.  By taking over repetitive taskwork, AI frees up agents for work that benefits from the human touch and requires empathy and complex problem-solving. This work is more complex, interesting, and rewarding.
How Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Contact Center
What AI tools Will Improve Contact Center CX?
How exactly will artificial intelligence touch the customer experience? Here are some of the main tools that are available. Let’s look at how they’ll be used.
IVR 
Interactive voice response is a popular automation that’s already widely used in contact centers. This familiar technology does things like invite callers to select a language, enter an account number or choose a department at the beginning of a call. Specialized IVR software like Fonolo Visual IVR offers unique features like conversation scheduling, which allows callers to schedule a call-back at a time of their choosing, up to 15 days in the future.
When they’re powered by AI, natural language understanding, and machine learning, conversational IVR systems go even further, responding to more complex customer queries and speaking in nuanced sentences.
Chatbots or conversational AI
When people talk about conversational AI, they’re usually referring to chatbots. This is one of the first tools contact centers are likely to try when they begin to incorporate AI into their operations. It’s a great place to start and customers are very open to the technology.
AI company LivePerson reports that 85% of customers say they prefer messaging a brand over calling (up 20% over the previous year). Three-quarters of customers said they’d spend more time with a brand that offered chatbot messaging.
Predictive call routing
Smart call routing is another widely used technology that goes next level with an AI boost. Traditional call routing connects customers to the right department, or perhaps to an agent who speaks the right language.
Predictive call routing is much more nuanced, connecting customers to call center agents who are most likely able to solve their problems based on abstract variables like the agent’s personality or expertise. To do this, the AI-powered software considers the customer’s call history, behavior profile, conversational style, personality, and other data points.
To get started with this technology, companies will need to identify and quantify agents’ skills and expertise, as well as their personality type and communication style.
Emotional intelligence AI
Artificial intelligence software armed with natural language processing abilities uses machine learning algorithms to tease out the sentiment in customer calls. For example, a customer may raise their voice if they are becoming frustrated or angry. Longer than usual pauses can also be telling. Computers can be trained in different languages to pick up on expressions, conversational cadence, and linguistic styles that are unique to different cultures.
The software uses screen pop-ups to offer feedback to agents who can use the recommendations to deliver a better CX and get insight into their own performance.
Call analytics
Analytics have always been a big part of operating a successful call center and delivering a great customer experience. Metrics like first-call resolution and average handle time have historically been used to measure agent success and by extension, customer sentiment. (Satisfied customers = happy customers.)
Artificial intelligence fleshes out these metrics with its ability to measure customer sentiment, personality, and tone. This deeper insight into how customers feel can help contact centers offer more personalized, and more successful, customer experiences.

RELATED WEBINAR:
The Impact of AI on Customer Experience

How Can You Introduce AI to Your Call Center? 
If you’ve got IVR systems or smart call routing, you’re already dealing with automation. Great!
As we discussed, the next contact center AI tool for most companies is a chatbot. Research from Genesys says the use of chatbots has doubled since 2017. Why? Customers want instant access to something, or someone, who can help them.
Surprised that people are embracing ‘bots? Don’t be. Customers love self-service and chatbots have come a long way from the underwhelming first-generation examples. Today’s chatbots use natural language processing and machine learning to converse more naturally.

TIP:
Work with a software provider who can deliver AI-powered chat at a scale that suits your business. A good bot is personalized, and intelligent and has access to a customer’s profile and the ability to connect to an agent when needed.

CX and Agent Experience are Two Sides of the Same Coin
A great overall customer experience is a two-sided engagement. To get there, you need to consider the employee experience as well as the customer experience. Some say it’s time to think differently about agents and see them as AI workers. Their skills and abilities are essential to successful AI implementation and to creating positive customer experiences.
MIT robotics professor Cynthia Breazeal puts it this way: “The next generation will have moved beyond being digital natives. They will be ‘AI natives.‘”
Your agents are first-generation AI-literate workers, uniquely positioned to create and deliver excellent, personalized customer service — if you support them and give them the right tools.The post How Artificial Intelligence is Changing CX in the Contact Center first appeared on Fonolo.

Maybe one piece of information is insufficient to get from where you were to where you just ended up.

When we gradually walk our way to conclusions, we’re a lot more likely to find something useful.

Leaping is best reserved for generous acts.