Category: Customer Experience

Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4qb4o3HPqw October 4 is #CXDay an annual global celebration of customer experience. CXPA is the organisation at the heart of better customer experiences. CX drives success in Africa, join other CXPA members in celebration of all the customer experience professionals who work in all industries to create great customer experiences. If you missed this opportunity to energise your organisation around driving success through CX or creating awareness for customer experience values. You still have time to plan to leverage CX Day for the upcoming year as you build up to the year end. It comes at a key point in the year which can feel like the most difficult in keeping momentum as the year is winding down to recognise the employees withing your org that have added value, maintains and innovates the customer experience at your company. ​ #ccxp #customerexperinece #customer #customerjourney #customercentricity #cxpa #CXafricaday #CXdayafrica This website was established to help you join the global #CXDay celebration as well as the celebrations in every region of the world: https://www.cxpa.org/get-involved/reg… submitted by /u/CXinTheCity [link] [comments]

This is obvious. Circus peanuts don’t have nuts, legumes or anything else that resembles a nut.

They’re a metaphor. Or perhaps a simile, it depends on your level of pedantry.

And yet, many people have a hard time with metaphor. Metaphor, not memorization, is the heart of learning.

If you understand A, and you see that B is like A but a little different, now you understand B.

Memorization is brittle. Metaphor scales.

Metaphor helps us create the next thing and find our footing when confronted when the new.

I believe that understanding metaphor is a skill. We can get better at it.

Find some circus peanuts you don’t understand and decode them.

History is filled with examples of people who made errors in judgment.

The executives at Decca that turned down the Beatles, the CEO at Digital who said that no one would ever need to have a computer in their home, and the reviewers that didn’t like the movie 2001.

And of course, the creators that are wrong so often. The entrepreneur who raises a bunch of money and fails, or the musician who follows up a hit with a string of duds.

But these failures are all a sign that someone had been given the privilege to be wrong in the first place.

It’s tempting to find a sinecure where someone tells you what to do all day–after all, then you’re off the hook and you can’t be wrong, only the boss can.

But it’s far more thrilling and useful and fulfilling to be the one who might mess up.

There are unforeseen speedbumps, missed connections and of course, a lot of luck.

If you are in love with your authentic voice, you’re unlikely to change. One lesson from the 500 Songs podcast is that most classic rock songs were made by people who started pretty far from where they ended up, but persisted, adjusted and changed until they created the hits they sought.

Not one of them sounded the way they thought they would when they started… the act of making a hit involved abandoning some of what they said they believed in. These hits weren’t ‘authentic’ or the work of native talent. They were evolved, tweaked and changed in response to feedback from the world.

Change too often and you stand for nothing. You’re simply chasing a shadow you will never catch.

Refuse to change and you’re likely to be overlooked.

Somewhere in between is the posture of someone who has the maximum chance for success. This is what happens when a creator goes to the crossroads. Professionals serve the audience by leading them to where they need to go.

Hello, Customer Experience folks 👋 For anyone using observability tools like New Relic, we’ve recently published a framework on how to improve digital customer experience! This is a great resource to know what to look out for when wanting to optimize customer success. Take a look -Daniel submitted by /u/NewRelicDaniel [link] [comments]

The industrial age prized these three attributes. We’ve all been indoctrinated into adopting them through our time in organized schooling, and it’s easy to imagine that the world still wants this.

When work is geographically bounded and the assembly line is the dynamic of efficiency, this is precisely what’s sought. Your resume certifies that you have what it takes to check the boxes, and the hiring company adjusts its offered pay to get the folks it needs, when they need them.

But now the rules have changed, suddenly and perhaps for the long haul.

There are still companies, many of them, searching for HCW. But those aren’t jobs we actually want.

When your job is digital, when you can work from home, there is no such thing as “handy.” That means that the company is either going to hire the cheapest possible person out of perhaps a billion worldwide, or get a computer to do it, or…

Or they need to hire someone special.

Someone with significant skills.

They might be the traditional sort of skills. That you’re actually truly great at coding or design or engineering. You’ve done the reading, built a body of work and earned the respect of your peers. That you’re not saying, “you need anyone, and I’m anyone,” but instead, are demonstrably and substantially better at the craft.

Or they could be real skills, which some call soft skills. That you bring emotional labor, thoughtful analysis, care, humor, equanimity or other difficult human actions to the work. Significantly more than most people do. If you’re off the chart at this, it will be valued by the places you’d be happiest working.

The good news is that there’s a path. The hard part is digging in and becoming better than good.

Not better than good at everything, or even better than good for everyone. Simply better than good for someone.

Happy Friday! We’re bringing you the latest roundup of industry news. This week, we’re looking at Microsoft Team’s integration into ‘walkie-talkie’ devices,  Alida’s new conversational surveys product, new research into data breaches, and how industries have progressed 2 years on from the pandemic.  We also have the latest business updates from the cost-of-living crisis. This investigates the…
The post This week in CX: Alida, Microsoft Teams, and NordVPN appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

So, let’s take a look at a few steps that will help you to improve customer experience: Adopt mobile-first approach Use of emerging technologies Embrace cloud solutions Adopt mobile-first approach In fact, 57% of customers won’t recommend a product with a poorly designed website on mobile. In addition, if a website isn’t mobile-friendly, 50% of customers will abandon it, even if they like the business. Mobile-first is often discussed in the context of a future requirement. But the future is already here. Think about how much you use your smartphone for your business or personal tasks. So do your users. As a customer, would you rather have them try to zoom the content on your smartphone screen or have a seamless mobile-first experience? Therefore, you need: Make navigation friendly with easily clickable buttons Compress and resize images Address your page load speed Ensure everything is easily readable Don’t forget about the voice search (Siri, OK Google) Ensure videos are responsive Use of emerging technologies The CX landscape is getting more competitive. To stay relevant and ahead of the competition, many companies embrace technologies like AI, chatbots/voice assistants, VR/AR to enhance the personal experience of their customers. According to Oracle, these technologies will have the biggest impact on the business in the next five years. Let’s take artificial intelligence as an example. AI can help analyze customer’s purchase decisions and create personalized recommendations. Imagine how difficult it would be for an online store to provide personalization? AI allows us to analyze customer preferences and recent shopping behavior to suggest related products for the customers. For instance, Adidas and its “Complete the Look” recommendation feature. The sportswear giant partnered with AI platform provider Findmine to automatically generate complete outfits. Embrace cloud solutions Having the latest technologies to drive your business and digital product strategy is great. But sometimes, in pursuit of trends, we forget about basic things. Cloud-first is the main philosophy behind many digital transformation initiatives. The cloud is the main helper for most companies to become more fast, flexible, and more scalable. Cloud is more than just a technology infrastructure. It provides a simplified environment to support business initiatives and realize the value of developments, such as: Generate better insights Understand customer’s needs, wants, and preferences Power better decisions faster Accomplish in minutes what used to take days Facilitate rapid development, testing, and deployment to live production environments Help marketers anticipate and respond to constantly changing consumer behaviors and preferences Let’s see how exactly the cloud can help improve your customer experience on the example of hyper-personalization You may wonder how it relates to the cloud? The thing is that nowadays, your entire data is on the cloud, which makes it possible for brands to make the most of it. To provide a better customer experience, the cloud allows companies to analyze this data, segment customers based on their behavior, interactions, and preferences. Knowing how your customers behave and interact with your product creates the opportunity to reach them easier, faster, and more individualized. submitted by /u/joe_dojo [link] [comments]

A 98% chance is dramatically different than a 100% certainty.

Certainty isn’t on the spectrum of chance. It’s a different thing altogether. If the weather report says the chance of precipitation is zero, one should never walk outside into the rain.

When you leave yourself a few points of wiggle room, you can build more trust. Low chance of rain is fundamentally different than a slight chance of rain.

At the same time, if it actually is certain, say so.

When you think of improving your call center motivation, do you dream of near-perfect customer satisfaction scores? Impeccable customer service and experience? To get a real sense of how things are going, don’t just look at your customers; look at your agents. If they’re motivated, your customers will likely feel satisfied. If not? Everything goes downhill.
Call center managers and leaders have some of the hardest jobs when it comes to agent engagement. You’re dealing with high turnovers in contact centers, making it difficult to retain talent.
Here’s the thing: call center agents have monotonous days. Talking about the same issues with customers gets old after a while. And if you tack on impatient or rude customers, inspiring agents just gets harder. Your first step to inspiring your agents at work is to recognize how difficult their jobs can be. 
Show some compassion and be proactive to keep agents happy. If not? You’ll scramble to find new talent, and your customer experience, profits, and metrics will suffer. Keeping the ship steady in a call center isn’t just about operational efficiency — it’s also about human connections and inspiring your staff members.
Today, we’ll walk through ways to do that. Trust us; you’ll notice better retention and engagement if you follow some of these tips. But first, let’s explore what motivation and inspiration look like.
What Are the Elements of  Call Center Motivation?
Motivation is a desire to do something. On the floor, agent motivation is the desire to answer calls, help customers, and further business objectives. But you know better than anyone motivation isn’t easily achieved. To fix that, you need to understand two types of motivation:

Extrinsic: Encouraged by external factors, like money, recognition, accomplished tasks, reputation, and time off. In the same vein, extrinsic motivation might come from a desire to avoid a negative external factor, like a demotion, longer hours, missed deadlines, or less engaging tasks.
Intrinsic: Encouraged by self-fulfillment and personal satisfaction. Examples include autonomy, pride of work, self-improvement, and connection.

Of course, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are both necessary to inspire your agents. Extrinsic motivation speaks to bonuses, vacation time, competitive compensation, recognition, and improved status. Your agents want to feel monetarily and respectfully rewarded for their hard work.
But intrinsic motivation is just as, if not more, important. Call center agents have pretty restrictive jobs, set hours, and scripts to follow. It’s hard to find freedom or autonomy within these bounds — unless you intentionally foster it!
Forbes describes autonomy as a key driver for happiness. So if your agents feel autonomous, they’ll feel more motivated and inspired. Other ways to inspire intrinsic motivation include self-improvement and educational opportunities, as well as software to enable quicker wins.

DID YOU KNOW?
Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs reduce abandonment rates by 60%.

5 Ways to Motivate Call Center Agents
If you don’t have motivated employees, your call center may not be a positive work environment. The good news is that you have ample opportunity to pump up motivation. Let’s start with the most important tip.
Encourage Autonomy
Nobody likes a micromanager. You hired your call center agents because you trust their capabilities — start acting like it! Giving your call center employees freedom to pursue company goals on their terms is a fabulous start in motivating them. Take a look at your internal processes and consider which steps are absolutely vital versus those with room for flexibility.

Can you simplify agents’ work with programmable call-backs?
Does every team member have to start at 8 am, or can accommodate flexible hours?
Do you have to train new hires, or can you trust a senior agent to mentor them?
Do you tell agents how to fix things, or do you offer them a floor to share their ideas?

Do you give your agents enough #EmployeeAutonomy at your contact center? Here are some tips to foster agent motivation: Offer flexible hours, Ask them for feedback, Equip them with the right software and Allow them to share their skills…Click To Tweet
Recognize Hard Work
You know what’s worse than negative feedback? Radio silence. How can agents feel motivated if their hard work is met with zero feedback or rewards?
Regular feedback is a must for motivation. Receiving kudos for a job well done improves their self-esteem. Criticisms (always given privately) should be coupled with training opportunities, a pathway forward, and a goal to strive for. Here’s where you can make use of extrinsic motivation.
Recognize your call center agents’ performance with:

Promotions
Career advancement and more responsibility
Time off
Recognition and praise

Help Them Soar with Education
We mentioned career advancement as an extrinsic motivator. But helping your agents advance their skills can engage both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation drivers.
Think about self-improvement. When you learn new things, it’s natural to feel more engaged and confident. Training opportunities offer the same satisfaction to your agents. Not only will the extra knowledge make their skills more marketable; but it will also help them feel a sense of purpose and self-satisfaction.
And by training, we’re not just talking about a lunchtime PowerPoint. Invest in your agents. Set some room in the budget for education. You might even consider hiring a field expert for a workshop.
Agent education opportunities might include:

Courses
Conferences
Bootcamps
Workshops
Job shadowing

Create a Positive Work Environment
Gallup released an article about employee engagement measures in the workplace. One statement that promotes engagement is:
“My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.”
Another statement: “I have a best friend at work.”
You get the gist: people want to connect with each other and feel a sense of belonging, even at work. All that comes down to company culture. While you don’t have to ensure everyone has a best friend, you should promote intra-office communications and social opportunities. If people feel connected, that’s a strong indication of a positive work environment.
What if your agents work from home? You can still encourage employee discourse and friendships. Consider hosting online social events where employees can gather and play games, or learn to paint with an guided online group painting session.
Encouraging your agents to share feedback can also spur their motivation. Welcome their thoughts through internal newsletters, suggestion boxes, time to speak at meetings, and so on.
Invest in the Right Tech
If industry competitors are helping their agents with innovative tech for day-to-day efficiency, why aren’t you? Trust us; your agents will notice if your business processes are ancient and behind the times. The right contact center tech is a great motivator. If agents know the software will make their job easier, they’ll feel more enthusiastic to go about their work.
Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs help alleviate the wrath of angry customers on your agents. Customers will feel more in control of the situation, and your agents won’t hesitate to avoid long hold times. Ready to take the first step toward more motivated agents? Start with the right tech. Book a demo of Fonolo’s Voice Call-backs today!
 The post Call Center Motivation: How to Inspire Your Agents first appeared on Fonolo.