Category: Customer Experience

Most of us do.

The interesting challenge is that our brain doesn’t often make beliefs and tested reality feel like different things. It’s almost as if ‘true’ and ‘belief’ only became separate categories in our recent past.

As our actions continue to bump against reality, and our culture has dramatically more interactions between and among people from different backgrounds, this bug can become a real problem.

Happy Friday! We’re bringing you the latest roundup of industry news. This week, we’re looking at the call centre industry, the metaverse, and the next e-commerce rush.   Key news According to a new analysis from the Qualtrics XM Institute, companies with best customer service doubled their lead over laggards as the impact of customer service…
The post This week in CX: Medallia, Qualtrics, and Sabio appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

I’m currently a Product Manager – Tech. Offered a CX role. I like building products but also always been curious about Growing a product that is already built, how does CX tie into this, should I really just go for a Growth role, how much of being a CX product manager is around measuring acquisition, retention, revenues? submitted by /u/apollo8720 [link] [comments]

With a tool like cxdeployer you’ll tick all the boxes for a good CX journey map. Step 1: Map the persona & empathy Know your customer or users by mapping, their goals, aspirations, fears, thinking, dreams and digital habits. What matters most to the persona and whose experience should be enhanced? Step 2: Design the value proposition Use the business model canvas to identify and design values an organization should deliver to satisfy the needs of the customer. What customer wants to achieve? Step 3: Map the customer journey Map the moments of truth, touchpoints, activities, interactions and customer experience and storyboard the journey. What are the start point and endpoint of the experience? Step 4: Ideate on the experience transformation Engage everyone, capture great ideas and tap the untapped knowledge by building on other’s ideas to transform the customer experience. What solutions will lead to enhanced customer experience? Step: 5 Manage execution of the best idea Project management for the execution of the best idea, prototype, accelerate idea to implementation and continuously improve the experience. What is the time to market to realize the transformed experience? submitted by /u/CharacterAd8519 [link] [comments]

The brand name, the first name, the label…

Is To Kill a Mockingbird a good title? By most measures of most committees, definitely not. And yet, it clearly and most definitely worked.

Starbucks has nothing to do with Moby Dick. Nike is easy to mispronounce.

The title is simply the thing you say when you talk about the thing to someone else.

It’s not the thing itself.

Have you ever asked yourself how your leadership style affects your call center operations? You should! Things are busy for contact center leaders and there’s not much time for reflection. But your management style deserves your attention. It affects how you interact with and lead your team members. Your leadership style can also impact how you set and meet strategic goals, and ultimately, what your customer’s experience will be like.
Why Does Leadership Style Matter?
Keyword: awareness. The first step towards success in any task is knowing the playing field. For contact center managers, that means you should understand:

Historical data
Team member expertise and capabilities
Industry trends
Latest tech
Leadership styles

Experts say that understanding yourself makes you more effective, especially in leadership. Why? You have the awareness to notice your strengths and weaknesses, and identify where you can improve call center operations.
For example, knowing you’re a hands-off leader may help you identify areas where you should pay closer attention, say with remote agents’ training. On the other hand, knowing you’re an employee-centric leader might prompt you to critically analyze decisions that could require more executive input. Once you know your management style, you can better respond to the ups and downs of a call center.
Contact Center Leadership Styles
Let’s take a closer look at five call center leadership styles. Our advice? Don’t pigeonhole yourself into just one. Even if you lean toward one style, consider the pros and cons that come with different approaches. Try to learn from the leadership styles you’re less familiar with!
1.    Hands-Off
It’s not unusual for call center agents to complain about being micromanaged. When managers analyze every second of an agent’s day, it hinders productivity. Here, the hands-off (laissez-faire) leadership style comes in handy.

FACT:
Micromanagement lowers morale, reduces productivity, and increases employee turnover.

A hands-off leader trusts team members and agents to do their jobs with little supervision or intervention. Offering agents more autonomy is a fabulous way to improve agent engagement—but it’s not the right approach for every situation. What happens if you have a number of inexperienced, remote agents? You can’t expect new hires to meet customer experience expectations from home without support.
Pros:

Improves agent engagement
Encourages innovation
Leverages helpful technology, like conversation scheduling

Cons:

Problematic for teams with less experience

3 Reasons Why Agent Satisfaction is the New Customer Satisfaction

2.    Influential 
You’re a visionary leader with big plans for your contact center. After years of the same customer complaints or consistent operational inefficiencies, you’re ready to change the status quo. Influential, or transformational, call center managers are enthusiastic, charismatic and extremely motivational. They wake up the energy and passion in their teams to spark much-needed change.
The only downside? Some call center managers are all talk. Let’s say you have a dream to address constant customer complaints about agent indifference. You discuss a grand plan to train your agents in empathy and measure progress by analyzing Csat scores. But…
You keep pushing back the training.
You don’t share progress with your staff.
Your big plans have no substance.

TIP:
Influential leaders are inspiring! But if you don’t follow-through and achieve results, your agents may lose respect for you. Plan properly and take the steps needed to meet your goals!

Pros:

Builds trust with employees
Addresses and sparks change for systemic issues within the call center

Cons:

Can backfire without sufficient planning and results

3.    Employee-Centric
Democratic, participation style, and feedback-oriented are all synonyms for the employee-centric leadership style. You value your team members’ opinions, insights, and feedback—so much that you use it to make strategic and operational decisions. Talk about empowerment! Your agents will thrive knowing their input matters, and you’ll likely notice happier customers, too!
The only problem? Some decisions need to be made by leaders, not employees. That’s why you’re here! Our advice? Consider employee feedback but remember you have the final say for contact center operations.
Pros:

Makes agents feel valued
Instills a culture of fairness

 Cons:

Might overlook the need for executive input

4.    Absolute
Nobody likes a dictator, but there are times when authoritative leadership is needed in a call center. Sometimes your agents don’t see the vision you might have for crushing quarterly goals and surpassing customer expectations. Sometimes managers need to make decisions primarily on their own.
This works a fraction of the time. You’ll create a toxic work environment If you don’t trust your agents to offer input on decisions that affect them.
Pros:

Effective for meeting tight deadlines
Overcomes agent inexperience

Cons:

Creates a toxic work environment
Leads to agent attrition

8 Tips for the Ideal Call Center Environment

5.    Transactional
A transactional leader responds to positive performance with rewards and negative performance with punishment. While incentives are a common motivator, negative reinforcement might diminish employee morale. Transactional leaders are results-driven and see the agent-manager relationship as a logical exchange.

Poor performance = negative reinforcement like discipline or even termination
Strong performance = rewards like preference scheduling and raises

Bottom line? If you’re going to reward employees for strong performance, make it count.

TIP:
Scheduling preferences and extra vacation days are nice perks, but agents find bonuses, promotions and raises more appealing.

Pros:

Works well if rewards are meaningful (raises and advancement)

Cons:

Slightly patronizing to employees if rewards aren’t monetary
Not linked to long-term performance

Most call center managers have a #LeadershipStyle. Common styles include: hands-off, employee-centric, absolute, transactional and finally, influential. What’s your #CallCenterLeadershipStyle? Tell us in the comments! #cctr #AgentEngagementClick To Tweet
5 Tips for Being an Effective Call Center Leader
Whatever your style may be, these tips will help you succeed as a call center leader:

Be adaptable: Don’t accept one leadership style as the be-all-end-all. The best approach is to adapt to the demands of the situation, sometimes pivoting from one style to another.
Be patient: You might not find a leadership style groove right away. It’s OK to experiment with different techniques and gather data from analytics or employee feedback. Try brainstorming with other call center managers, too!
Channel empathy: This goes for both customers and call center agents. Working in a high-turnover industry means a little compassion goes a long way.
Admit when you’re wrong: Sometimes you don’t have the right solution. It’s best to be honest and it’s OK to show vulnerability occasionally. Your colleagues and agents respect you more for your candor.
Adopt a tech-forward mindset: Your competitors are investing in the best SaaS tech to meet their employee and customer needs. Reduce the burden on agents by trying out a software solution like Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs — you’ll give customers autonomy and smooth out call spikes as well!
The post 5 Effective Call Center Leadership Styles first appeared on Fonolo.

Likability is a weird quality. Plenty of people are fans of Aretha Franklin or Bob Dylan, but it’s not because either of them spent a lot of time mailing out Christmas cards or being particularly warm to their fans.

Google doesn’t do tech support and plenty of popular high-end restaurants got that way by being difficult to book and not particularly welcoming to new patrons.

One reason is that we’re drawn to status. To like something as a way of certifying our insight or rank.

But there’s a different path, one that’s far easier to maintain and travel. It’s simple: Like your customers and they’re more likely to like you back.

This is one reason that the Beatles switched their focus after their first US tour (and eventually stopped touring). They couldn’t figure out how to like the screaming young fans that didn’t have much in the way of discernment. Instead, they shifted to writing and producing music for fans and colleagues that they wanted to spend their time liking.

If you want to be more liked, begin by liking.

Using a tool called CXDeployer, you can create a remarkable customer experience in five easy steps. Step 1: Map the persona & empathy Know your customer or users by mapping, their goals, aspirations, fears, thinking, dreams and digital habits. What matters most to the persona and whose experience should be enhanced? Step 2: Design the value proposition Use the business model canvas to identify and design values an organization should deliver to satisfy the needs of the customer. What customer wants to achieve? Step 3: Map the customer journey Map the moments of truth, touchpoints, activities, interactions and customer experience and storyboard the journey. What are the start point and endpoint of the experience? Step 4: Ideate on the experience transformation Engage everyone, capture great ideas and tap the untapped knowledge by building on other’s ideas to transform the customer experience. What solutions will lead to enhanced customer experience? Step: 5 Manage execution of the best idea Project management for the execution of the best idea, prototype, accelerate idea to implementation and continuously improve the experience. What is the time to market to realize the transformed experience? submitted by /u/CharacterAd8519 [link] [comments]

Piano, a leading digital experience platform, released its 2022 Subscription Performance Benchmark Report. The study analyses customer behaviour in publisher subscription environments. This report looks at current behaviour throughout the customer journey: overcoming registration obstacles; turning registered users into subscribers; engaging active subscribers; and mitigating churn. Key findings “As subscription programs mature, publishers need to adopt…
The post What does the new subscription report reveal about customer churn? appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Working professionals develop emotional detachment. It’s the only way to thrive in the work. Emotional detachment helps us remember that we are not our work, and that feedback is useful, not an attack.

Commitment permits us to keep going (especially when we’re asked to provide more effort than we planned).

It’s easy to confuse the two.

Being detached doesn’t mean you don’t care. It simply means you’re focusing on the work and those you serve, not on your own narrative.

And being committed comes from a professional decision, not from an existential crisis.

PS Thanks to Ari for two lovely essays (1 and 2) with his take on my work around marketing, dignity and leadership.