Companies and contact centers are asking employees to come back to the office now that most “lockdowns” are over. Now used to the flexibility and convenience of remote work, many employees are resisting. Where employers are forcing compliance, employees are re-evaluating their choices, and many are making decisions to quit or try something new. People are flocking out of the big cities and finding larger homes in more rural areas. What does all this mean for the nature of work?

It means that there is no going back in time. The pre-pandemic model of work has been rendered obsolete by the success of the remote work model. So, how do we stop bleeding attrition if we can’t go back?

There are three key trends shaping the workforce today that employers should embrace – listen more, adopt a gig workforce, and build internal resilience.

The first trend is so obvious yet often ignored. It is the power of listening to our employees. At the EITK event in Clearwater, Jen Johnson from Frontier highlighted the need to listen to the customers and those supporting them every day. She spoke about how Frontier improved NPS by 30 points as her team learned the common language of “speaking customer.” Their agents also felt more valued and heard, and their jobs became easier as customer barriers were removed. I feel that many leaders get “busy” and forget the basic skill of listening. If we can’t stop the great resignation from happening, we can at least understand why each of our employees is making this decision.

The second trend is to adapt to the changing workforce. I believe the change that is here to stay is the rise of “gig” work. Gig typically means a short-term job. You have probably heard it in reference to musicians who are going to work a “gig”. Over the last 10 years, with the rise in ride-share services, food delivery, and other freelance work becoming available, many workers have turned to this “gig economy” to have more autonomy over their work. At Directly On-Demand, we define gig work as:

1. Flexibility in choosing where to work, what to work on, and how long to work
2. Rewarding the worker for the specific work product and outcomes achieved rather than an hourly rate
3. Patented routing logic to present the work available to the right skilled worker with the best performance

In product support, adding gig workers as an extension of the traditional contact center provides a resilient layer of talent to meet volume fluctuations.

That brings me to the last trend – planning for and building internal resilience in the organization. To build resiliency in your workforce, you need to have carefully planned career progression opportunities for employees, including embracing this new nature of work. If you have high performers who are no longer interested in the in-office 8-hour shift, give them the option to use their knowledge to provide services in a flexible model, for example, as a gig worker.

In summary, employers need to listen to and understand their employee voice and offer flexible work models to attract and retain the best talent in 2022. However, moving away from traditional models can be challenging if not done right. There are very few providers in the market today that can offer a workforce model that blends the power of global gig experts, in-house full-time associates, and CX transformation technology to offer flexible, scalable, and on-demand CX services. This hybrid model could be the answer to the challenges faced by the customer service industry today as it strives for stability, resilience, and agility in service delivery. Directly OnDemand, recently acquired by CSS Corp, now offers this model in addition to the pureplay gig expert model mentioned above. There is enough empirical evidence to suggest that the customer satisfaction achieved using gig peer-to-peer experts is superior to the traditional model and the model is robust enough to scale up and down during seasonal spikes.

I believe that gig work is here to stay and has already changed the nature of work forever. It is time to participate in it and leverage this new model to find and retain diverse and highly skilled talent.

Guest post written by: Melanie Fricke, Directly OnDemand (recently acquired by CSS Corp)

Guest blog post written by Melanie Fricke of Directly OnDemand, recently acquired by CSS Corp. To learn more about this topic and others, visit our events page to check out upcoming events.

The post Three Emerging Workforce Trends in 2022 appeared first on Execs In The Know.

1. Don’t Overthink or Overspend: Keep Your Focus on What Impacts Customer Loyalty

According to recent Gartner research, a reactive CX strategy focused on “fixing” customer experience issues, or even just refining them, does not lead to increased customer satisfaction rates. So, while you should still look at customer data and survey results, often what seems like a problem is actually negligible in the grand scheme of your customer’s perception of your brand. Instead, focus on where it counts most – and where it can make the most impact.

According to Gartner, that focus is “innovating salient experiences linked to product experience… to achieve true differentiation.”

In other words: updates and upgrades to the way your customers experience your product or service are most impactful when it comes to customer loyalty, accounting for over 36% of increase in loyalty. The bottom line is this: once the basics of your CX program are met, the real focus should be in CX initiatives that enhance the product experience, which will in turn strengthen customer loyalty.

2. Reassess Your KPIs & Rebuild Your Journey Maps

When was the last time you assessed your North Star KPIs or rebuilt your customer journey maps? As consumer habits shift, you need to consistently be re-evaluating your measurement tools and benchmarks. Not only will this ensure you’re meeting the needs of your customers, but it also generates efficiency in how you apply your CX resources.

For example: while you might have historically cracked down on AHT, new data may reveal that more personalized (and longer) interactions with your customers may drive higher levels of satisfaction. Making strategic training investments in this area will then generate higher ROI and better CSAT.

How old are your customer journey maps? Your customers are facing the same economic volatility you are, and the ways in which they engage with your brand – and their needs – may be shifting. As a critical first step to understanding your customers biggest needs and challenges, accurate customer journey (and friction) mapping is essential to triangulating your best-path CX strategy.

3. Get Smart About VoC and Business Intelligence

Capturing, understanding, and acting on customer sentiment is critical to properly understanding your customer journey, and where to focus your CX strategy.

• Reignite Your Voice of Customer (VoC) and Survey Program: For a business to create a successful VoC program that actually tells them something valuable, you’ll need consistent insights coming in through as many channels as possible in order to capture the most data, from the most customer types, at different junctures of their journeys with your brand. While you might already use questionnaires or surveys, consider adding additional elements to your VoC program to create a more robust feedback engine. Consider elements like:
  • SMS Surveys
  • 5-Star Surveys
  • Social media monitoring
  • Text & Sentiment Analytics
  • Email surveys
• Build Better Business Intelligence: Business Intelligence is one of the single most important investments you can make in your CX program – and right now, most of your competitors are probably lacking. That’s why you can’t afford to. In fact, 99% of contact centers don’t think their data intelligence strategy currently meets business needs. By harnessing the power of BI and data analytics, you can see the actual breakpoints and pain points in your customer journey, and it’s the only way to build a truly customer-centric program.

4. Empower The Employee Experience

The Great Resignation hasn’t shown any signs of letting up in 2022 and CX programs will continue to contend with an ongoing war for the best talent in an industry already known for its battles with turnover and attrition. Not to mention, replacing a representative is costly. Gartner research puts the price tag at $14,113 per agent.

Largely, most organizations need to focus on engagement. Gartner research found that only one-third of contact center agents are engaged, and those who are not are 84% more likely to search for another job. A Gallup Poll showed that engagement could improve turnover rates in businesses up to 43%.

So why is engagement so low, and retention following suit? Consider the full employee experience:

• Pay & Benefits: The desire to better their paychecks and benefits package, especially during a period of inflation, could be alluring to your agents. Consider if you are competitively compensating your contact center agents – raising pay and/or providing better agent benefits is likely cheaper than replacing them entirely if they leave.
• Career Advancement: You are more likely to see CX agent retention improve when agents can see a career path in your contact center. CX leaders should consider prioritizing promoting from within. For example, create a portal for agents to apply for internal openings that is separate from the one you use for external hires.
• Assist Technologies: Consider technology additions that will help to ramp your agents quickly, set them up for success, and keep tabs on contact center performance with consistent improvement over time, such as:
  • Training simulators that onboard new agents and upskill existing agents to learn new skills in simulated environments.
  • Personalized coaching technologies to seamlessly track, measure, and act on agent performance needs on an individualized basis and identify personalized KPIs and goals.
  • Gamification solutions that integrate real-time coaching and analytics with gamification and incentives have benefits for agents and supervisors alike. Agents are in it to win it, literally, when they are rewarded for their performance. Supervisors are armed with performance data and more engaged agents.

5. Re-evaluate Your BPO or CX Partner For Agility & Flexibility

If you’re not sure whether your CX outsourcer is delivering the quality and results you need, think about what your new CX goals are, and who might be best poised to help you achieve them. Consider what technologies they have available, who their clients are and what industries they play in, and how their strategies, vision, and values align with your own. Here’s our must-have list for any CX partnership:

• Robust Digital and Omnichannel Support
• The Makeup of Their Agent Workforce (Try to secure a team of digitally-native agents)
• An elite selection of technology tools and offerings
• How flexible a partner can be, and how ready they are to face the unexpected
• The more secure and crisis-ready, the better

As the world shifts into increasing levels of uncertainty, it’s vitally important to start building a CX strategy designed for volatility.  In times of economic uncertainty, sticking to a core focus around what success means to you (your KPIs), who your partners are, and how you’re engaging your customers and employees, is a sure way to keep your program focused and ready to withstand any ups and downs ahead.

Guest blog post written by ibex. To learn more about this topic and others, visit our events page to check out upcoming events.

The post Best Practices for Protecting Your CX Program During Economic Volatility appeared first on Execs In The Know.

However, one thing has become a clear trend in the wake of the pandemic (can we say wake yet?): assisted service has a distinctly digital path forward. The long-standing love/hate relationship with live chat seems to be in a love phase once again. Customers and service organizations are increasingly utilizing the channel, fueled by a desire amongst younger generations to communicate in non-voice mediums. Live chat as a stand-alone is, however, becoming rapidly obsolete, being replaced with messaging that supports a variety of digital communications. How humans connect has also changed, by the end of 2021 over 90 percent of the global internet population use a mobile device to go online according to Statista.

This move toward digital communication has put a feeling of disconnection in the relationship between brands and their customers at a time when they’re critical to growth objectives. This relationship is increasingly at risk as costs of switching brands continue to decline. So how can you keep connected with customers in this digital-first age?

If customer service is to transform from “necessary but unsightly cost-center” to “center stage in the company growth strategy” we must be willing to embrace digital-first connection and focus on creating continuous conversations which are driven by contextual data. In order to fulfill our potential as a growth lever, service leaders must harness these four approaches to deliver value to customers in the digital world:

1. Pursue a Human-Centric Technology Strategy

Technology has always existed to enable humans to achieve outcomes faster and easier. At some point, we diverged from this mission and many in the service industry sought to replace humans with technology. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the application of chatbots and virtual assistants. While these technologies hold immense potential to improve our organizations, that will be achieved through reduction of redundant and low-value tasks and enablement of better human-to-human connections. The next phase of improvements should begin from the inside-out, focusing investments on the agent experience and identifying the roadblocks that get in the way of your agents building or deepening relationships with your customers. Begin by observing agent workflows and noting when they’re focused on the screen/system/tab instead of the customer. For many customers, that interaction with your agent could be the only time they truly engage with your company, and you want your agent’s attention to be entirely on the customer.

2. Put Your Data into Action

It’s no secret that an experience which feels tailored to the customer’s needs is better. When companies are able to show customers that they understand their situation and educate them on the ROI of being a customer, not only is the experience lower effort but it’s also higher value to the customer (and company).

To create personalized experiences brands must be able to acknowledge past contacts, reference context on their relationship and recommend relevant next steps; in other words it needs to be driven by data. But even more importantly, customer data needs to be presented to agents in ways they can actually use. Information such as a timeline of recent contacts (with access to notes), the last few purchases and overall customer spend, must be embedded within your agent interface to be useful. But data should not just flow into customer conversations, each interaction presents an opportunity to learn insights which can be used well beyond customer service. Analysis of customer intents should lead other parts of the business to investigate root causes and make fixes. Changes in customer sentiment or perceived personal ROI should be used to create more effective Marketing messages. And customer frustrations with products or policies should lead to changes. When brands put their data into action, using insights to teach customers how to maximize the value they get from the products or services on offer, customer trust and confidence grows. When customers trust your brand, they stay longer, spend more and happily tell others about your brand, the trifecta of customer loyalty.

3. Create a Dialogue

In the digital-first world, service cannot be transactional, and customers do not appreciate when they’re treated as tickets (really, they never have). As new means of communication have been introduced into the market customers have tried, and will continue to try, each and every way of connecting with a company. Unfortunately, as new channels have been added, they’ve often been added as “bolt-ons” creating silos in both our customer and agent experiences. Customers using many different channels is not necessarily a bad thing, it only becomes a high-effort experience when it feels fractured, with customers frequently stopping and starting (over) on their journey to resolution. Leaders must embrace this journey and view their contacts as an ongoing dialogue, the simple back-and-forth which happens in any other type of relationship. Humans today communicate in fluid ways. Imagine texting a friend, getting to a point in the conversation where it just makes more sense to give them a call, but when you do, they have no idea what you were texting about. That’s often what it feels like to customers who need (for a multitude of reasons) to “pick resolution up” at a later time. Perhaps the issue required some investigation on your part. Or the customer had to go pickup their child from school during the middle of a chat conversation. Creating an ongoing conversation means that customers & agents must be able to flow between channels without losing a step. Taking a channel-agnostic view of your customers is a good start to avoiding siloed contacts. This will allow your organization agility in workflows and workforce – quickly able to meet shifting customer needs and transition conversations from one channel to another. Such an approach should also focus on easily adjustable customer flow builders, options for “same agent” routing and embedded contextual information to make conversations personal.

 4. Get Proactive!

Though customers may not be asking for you to reach out to them, they value proactive service when they get it. Proactive outreach puts the company in the driver’s seat, giving leaders control over the conversation and potential avenues to engage with customers. In line with approach #2 above, service leaders should be utilizing their customer data platform to identify opportunities to engage customers with service agents. The best use cases for proactive contact will not be surprising: solving problems customers are not yet aware of (or where they have not taken any action) and teaching customers to appreciate unused aspects of your products. In both cases, an initial digital outreach is the most logical first step. Leaders should have predefined, and measurable, actions which they would like to achieve through proactive contact. This should include both a company-preferred channel path which can be self-service, assisted or some combination of both. Company outreach should be triggered by some type of action, or inaction, by the customer. For example, you’re a meal-box delivery service, and begin noticing a spike in contacts about an ingredient in your latest box; let’s say it was an unfamiliar ingredient. Despite the spike in volume, it’s more likely that you’re not hearing from even half the customers experiencing this issue. Adding an automated email to “impacted” customers, with assurances on the ingredient, and a clear pathway for the customer to take action (such as a replacement ingredient) will build customer confidence, even if no action is taken.

While many customer service norms have changed in the transition to a digital-first world, one thing has remained constant. Great service is built on a foundation of clear communication, helpful humans, and easy resolution. Keeping these principles at the forefront of your strategy will help you to build long-lasting relationships with your customers, no matter what new technological advancements come next.

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Guest blog post written by Dixa. To learn more about this topic and others, visit our events page to check out upcoming events.

The post 4 Ways to Keep Connected in the Digital-First Era appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Research shows that customer operations leaders in large organizations rely on an average of 175 SaaS applications to manage their CX workflows remotely. But often, they do not take the time to evaluate how well these apps work together to create the “flow” that’s crucial to a “workflow.” With little insight into how their processes and technologies are affecting agent productivity, leaders are missing opportunities to improve their efficiency and drive better results.

To address the situation, many companies are looking at tools like Fin’s Work Insight Platform. Tools that solve the problem by providing measurable productivity insights (especially those that reveal how agents really work across SaaS applications) empower CX leaders, enabling more agile customer operations teams, which customers love.

At Execs In The Know’s Customer Response Summit event in March, Fin executives Evan Cummack (CEO) and Charlene Wang (VP of Marketing) led an interactive workshop providing unique insights into how organizations can use program data to understand and improve the performance of their CX and operations teams. As a part of the session, Evan and Charlene shared how companies are currently gathering and utilizing data, while also outlining next-level best practices for how to use data to scientifically improve training, processes, technology, and automation.

The session addressed and answered questions, such as:

• How can CX and operations leaders use data to improve their processes?
• How can you turn agent insights into quantifiable action?
• How can process data power improvements in core areas, like agent training and coaching?
• How can program data be used to identify inefficient processes and technology and drive change?

In most cases, the customer request resolution process is not a linear one. It’s complicated by unnecessary steps and impeded by distractions. This makes it important to find a solution that cuts through all this complexity to provide measurable and actionable insights for CX teams. Additionally, a solution should be easy to install like Fin’s browser plugin which reveals how agents work across applications, enabling better coaching, processes, and technology, leading to greater efficiency and improved CX outcomes.

Unlock More Productive Teams with the CX and Customer Operations Benchmark Report

Did you miss the session? Here’s a recap.

Tens of millions of hours of real-world data captured by the Work Insights Platform has been compiled in Fin’s CX Insider Report: Customer Operations Benchmarks for 2022, which details industry standards around a number of key metrics, including handle time, data loss, agent utilization, and policy adherence.

Here are a few highlights:

• An average CX employee spends only 66% of their day actively working to resolve cases or tickets
• 26% of cases require 5 or more human touchpoints
• 10% of cases require 11 or more interactions to resolve
• A majority of cases require at least 4 unique applications to solve
• A clear correlation between slower page load times and lower agent utilization
• CX agents in the top quartile need less than 3 minutes on average to solve a ticket

Comparing the benchmark statistics in the report to the data received from the Work Insights Platform allows customer operations leaders to evaluate their own processes and identify those that could be improved for greater efficiency and better outcomes.

Download your copy of Fin’s Customer Operations Benchmark ebook now.

Did you know that more than 53% of ticket inefficiencies are the result of poor process definition, under-training, and insufficient knowledge resource management? For more insights like this, gathered from millions of hours of real-world data, and to discover Five Key Strategies to Maximize your Operational Efficiency in 2022, download Fin’s ebook here.

Guest blog post written by Fin. To learn more about this topic and others, visit our events page to check out upcoming events.

The post Revealed: How to Use Data to Transform Agent Actions into Operational ROI appeared first on Execs In The Know.

In this blog post we provide a glimpse at some of the CRS Clearwater sessions outside of the previously covered keynotes, including panel discussions, pre-conference workshops, and breakout sessions. These types of sessions are often where some of the best discussion and sharing opportunities occur during such events, and CRS Clearwater was no exception.

CRS Clearwater Panel Discussions

Is Your Voice of the Customer Data Failing to Deliver Change? You’re Not Alone.

During this panel, Concentrix’s Marc Mandel led an in-depth discussion about maximizing Voice of the Customer (VoC) data, touching on survey design and deployment, strategies for VoC data use, and techniques for turning customer feedback into action.

Marc was joined on stage by Jyl Applegate from Humana, and Balakarthik Venkataramanan from Bill.com. The two discussed the ways in which their organizations are delivering value not only to customers, but also to their organizations at large, and doing so by delivering relevant intelligence quickly, and at scale.

Key Takeaways

• Customer loyalty has to be earned, now more than ever, making your CX a prime differentiator
• The perception of CX is shifting from a cost center to a revenue generator … it’s a shift CX leaders need to embrace and evangelize
• The secret sauce in the success of many CX projects is putting in place a cross-functional team, creating consensus, and a shared stake in the project’s success

Asynchronous Messaging: Putting an End to Cumbersome Starts and Stops

Life is unpredictable, and people don’t always have time to sit on hold. Furthermore, there are sometimes interruptions during what might seem like a good time to contact a company for help. Here’s where asynchronous engagements can help.

Nuance’s Selena Castellanos discussed these and other points in leading a panel that featured Jeff Myers from SiriusXM, Vin Varma from Oak Street Health, and Gregg Stallwood of UnitedHealth Group. The conversation swirled around the advantages of select messaging channels, asynchronous conversations, and advantages of virtual assistants that are well-supported by live agents.

Key Takeaways

• Unless an automated solution is fool proof (and few are), a live agent needs to be only a click or button push away … most automated solutions can’t do it all (at least, not yet)
• Messaging is quickly replacing other mobile device solutions (such as mobile apps)
• Context is more important than ever, and asynchronous makes context more available to both agents and customers alike

Let’s Get Digital: Driving Limitless Performance Through Digital Adoption and Operations Excellence

Consumer needs are as complex as they’ve ever been, and there has never been a greater impetus for brands to spread their digital wings. In fact, greater digital adoption is quickly revealing itself as a key ingredient in unlocking the value of data and unleashing greater operational excellence.

During this session, 24-7 InTouch’s Chris Wallace leads Shannon Fogarty from Marriott International, Sagarika Prusty from Wayfair, and Karyn Carlton from Cars.com in a discussion bringing together digital enablement, and how it can empower greater personalization, improved agent engagement, and a better overall experience for customers.

Key Takeaways

• Rapid digital adoption may have been hastened by the pandemic, but it’s a direction in which most forward-thinking brands were already headed
• No matter how advanced a digital solution, it should never weaken the ability of a brand to provide human empathy
• An investment in the employee experience is an investment in the customer experience

CRS Clearwater Pre-Conference Workshops

Key CX Performance Benchmarks: Using Data to Transform Agent Action into Operational ROI

Fin’s Evan Cummack and Charlene Wang brought CX program data into focus showing how actionable insights can lead to optimized workflows and improved agent performance. Highlights of the discussion included techniques for reclaiming productive agent hours, creating greater efficiency in moving tickets to close, and understanding the impact and importance of agent hardware, software, and connectivity.

Key Takeaways

• Agent processes should include a plan for continuous improvement
• “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” — Peter Drucker
• Experimentation is a reasonable and rewarding path to achieving success

The Great Resignation Reinvention

COPC’s Rick Zayas and James Cammareri led an engaging session focused on one of the most pressing and difficult issues to face CX leaders in the past several years — labor challenges. From identifying some of the key drivers contributing to the situation to practical solutions aimed at crossing the divide, the session highlighted what workers want, need, and expect in order to fill the CX jobs of today and tomorrow.

Key Takeaways

• Flexibility (including the ability to work remotely) is as much a core consideration as pay
• Gig workers are sometimes a best option for meeting talent needs and worth investigating for CX programs that are struggling to meet resourcing needs
• Minimum hiring requirements have to evolve alongside customer needs and expectations

Designing a Service Strategy to Deliver Superior CX

Crystal Collier brought to life a highly interactive session by PTP, filled with an exploration of better ways to design and implement multichannel experiences that exceed customer expectations, and enhance the employee experience. Proactive versus reactive, cutting edge service strategies, and boosting key performance indicator (KPI) results were all topics of discussion.

Key Takeaways

• Service strategies are most effective when they are built around delighting the customer
• Backend process can have a massive impact on the customer experience (both good or bad)
• The only way to know if actions and implementation are effective is through proper measurement and tracking

CRS Clearwater Case Studies

Opendoor’s Transformation to a Unified Customer Experience

ibex’s Doug Hoffschwelle sat with client Shannon Hodges of Opendoor for a riveting discussion about Opendoor’s rapid growth and innovation in the real-estate space. Facing the typical challenges that often snare hyper-growth brands, Opendoor was able to put a plan in place to overcome things like siloed experiences, inconsistencies, and inefficiencies.

Key Takeaways

• Improving performance is a team sport, and all stakeholders need to take an active role
• First, tackle the problems that create the most problems for customers; approach everything through the customer lens
• Create plans that can accommodate growth … plan for where you’ll be, not where you are

How Our Client Achieved $1.5M+ Cost Savings with Digital Self-Service

Airkit’s Spencer Wiedeman shared how their insurance client accelerated digital adoption not only creating significant cost savings, but also how it led to better experiences through proactive and digital service engagements.

Key Takeaways

• Transformations need to start with the idea of increasing customer satisfaction
• Proactive service is now a critical part of the mix for customer engagements
• Complexity is a major detractor for the customer experience … identify processes that are overly complex

How MeUndies Transformed Their CX with Pathlight

Pathlight’s Ramon Icasiano was joined by MeUndies’ Caylen McCool for a detailed review of MeUndies’ journey of transformation, focusing on the value of real-time metrics and creating a culture rich in transparency and accountability.

Key Takeaways

• Customer and employee needs often go hand-in-hand
• It’s nearly impossible to know where you need to go if you don’t know where you’re at
• Performance doesn’t begin and end with metrics

Guiding Travelers Despite the Great Talent Shortage

Uniphore’s Kumaran Shanmuhan provided a compelling case study on how Priceline.com was able to better provide a more consistent and empathetic experience to customers by making and deploying necessary policy changes across its entire BPO network using automation. Ultimately, Priceline.com agents received the right kind of personalized guidance to lead them to their next best action, creating the best consistency, and an improved customer experience.

Key Takeaways

• Every customer engagement matters, and consistency is key regardless if an interaction is automated or not
• Employees need help in helping customers … before, during, and after the interaction
• The goal should be nearly effortless CX, for both customers and agents

Our Next Event Is Closer Than You Might Think

For those unable to attend CRS Clearwater, we hope these post-event Wrap Up blogs were able to give you’re the inspiration and ideation enjoyed by the event attendees. That said, reading about an event is never quite as rewarding as attending. That’s why we invite you to consider joining us during our next CRS event, taking place in Coronado, California, October 24–26, 2022.

To learn more about CRS Coronado, or register for this highly anticipated event, take a moment to visit us at the CRS Coronado landing page.

The post It’s A Wrap — Part 2: More Great Insights from Clearwater, FL appeared first on Execs In The Know.

While contact centers are increasingly turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications for a variety of reasons, these technologies are not a silver bullet for everything, nor are they a complete solution for a specific problem set. They can, and should, play a role in helping contact centers adapt to digital transformation – in conjunction with existing technologies and processes.

When considering vendors offering AI applications, contact centers should consider how well they interwork and support the systems currently in use, rather than looking to replace them altogether. For now, AI will best serve contact centers as a complementary technology.

Operational Challenge #1: Maintaining Staff

The impact digital transformation has on staffing may not be that obvious, largely because it’s been overshadowed by the pandemic. By now, contact centers and agents have adapted to a work-from-home model, which will remain in place for many contact centers.

Contact centers have been hugely impacted by the Great Resignation, as has the entire service economy. Turnover in call centers has averaged 30% to 40%.

Supporting home-based agents presents many operational challenges for contact center leaders, and compounding that is the way digital transformation is reshaping the customer experience (CX). A key change is the need for seamless omnichannel communication with the growing use of digital channels by customers. If contact centers cannot effectively support this, the agent experience (AX) suffers and, as we’ve seen with the Great Resignation, agents will leave for greener pastures.

In terms of maintaining staffing levels, there are two immediate AI use cases to consider.

The first would be intelligent routing where AI can direct incoming inquiries based on the channel used by the customer. This can be especially effective for existing customers, where analytics can determine channel preferences based on past history. This way, inquiries will get routed to agents with the right skills set – both at scale and in real-time – making their jobs less stressful and more tenable.

A second use case would be self-service automation. The main idea is that better forms of self-service are critical for AX, and all contact center vendors now have AI solutions that go well beyond conventional IVR. Digital transformation is simply raising the bar for what self-service needs to be. The longer agents have to keep dealing with routine queries or repeating steps already covered in IVR, the bigger your staffing issues will become.

Operational Challenge #2: Speed to Competency

Digital transformation enables a remote working environment and allows contact centers to draw from a much larger pool for hiring agents.

While contact centers don’t have the luxury to keep hiring agents as traffic grows, they do need to hire and train them faster than before. This is another by-product of the Great Resignation, where there has been a sudden surge of people exiting the workforce, making the need to replace agents a top priority. As such, the challenge of speed to competency and onboarding new agents is more about maintaining current staff levels rather than adding agents to scale up.

In terms of operations, this means contact centers are playing catchup trying to replenish their depleted ranks rather than staffing up for growth. As noted above, AI applications alone won’t enable contact center leaders to totally catch up, but it has a key role to play, especially to speed up the hiring and training process.

When considering AI vendors, there are two capabilities you should be looking for.

First is the ability to quickly vet candidates for the skills needed, not just for specific agent roles, but also for the basic competencies they’ll need for your industry and customer base. This is especially relevant for global businesses, and how digital transformation removes the borders of geography, allowing contact centers to hire agents with greater proximity to customers on a regional basis. These possibilities are very recent, and while they hold great promise for improving CX, you really need the scale of AI applications to execute on this promise.

Second would be the next step, which is to train and onboard new agents once drawn from this pool of candidates. Machine learning (ML) is of particular importance as you’ll need to profile best practices from your top agents and use that as the template for training new hires. This is how you leverage AI to shorten the learning curve and provide real-time guidance for new agents.

Not only will agent turnover drop when you can onboard them more effectively, but so will the associated costs with staffing.

Guest blog post written by UpstreamWorks. To learn more about this topic and others, visit our events page to check out upcoming events.

The post Maintaining Staff and Improving Speed to Competency During the Great Resignation appeared first on Execs In The Know.

CRS Clearwater was attended by an impassioned and enthusiastic group of some of the customer experience (CX) industry’s best and brightest, and the event featured more than a dozen sessions including keynote presentations, discussion panels, and informative breakout sessions and workshops, as well as ample opportunity for professional networking and socializing.

If you were able to join us for this special event, you know exactly how valuable these sessions were. But if you were not able to attend, now’s your chance to catch up on the conversation with the following keynote session synopses, along with a dozen or so key takeaways.

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How Beachbody Became a Digital-First Company

Presented By: Todd Montgomery, Executive Vice President, The Beachbody Company

Synopsis:

Beginning in 2014, Todd Montgomery and team began a journey of robust transformation. This change has since yielded a more responsive, more consistent customer care experience, along with improved performance across several key metrics like average speed of answer, customer satisfaction (CSAT), and Net Promoter Score (NPS). All while lowering costs, improving the agent experience, and creating greater internal accountability.  Not to mention this was all accomplished amid a global pandemic.

Todd’s keynote kickoff told a compelling story about the value of investing in technologies like self-service solutions and better agent tools, while always maintaining a focus on the customer experience. Through thoughtful scaling, careful and ongoing assessment, and a data-driven, results-minded approach, Todd and team are already checking the box on many objectives, while constantly assessing and looking toward what’s next.

Key Takeaways:

• Prioritize identifying and tackling pain points, focusing on those things that drive the most volume
• Invest in areas that allow you to leverage your program data (including Voice of the Customer) to create more efficient experiences for customers
• Implement and experiment with tools and solutions that can simultaneously automate and improve the customer experience

How Fanatics Activated Its CX Data Superpowers

Presented By: Carolyne Truelove, Head of Global Fan Experience, Fanatics

Synopsis:

As the ultimate one-stop sports fan destination with a database of more than 80 million global customers, the Fanatics brand is working with a wealth of data, and actively using it to field a team of data superheroes. Together, this team is united with a shared goal of improving the customer experience right across the enterprise. Faithfully following where the data leads has already unleashed many performance and cost improvement victories, including steadily decreasing Contacts Per Order, fewer escalations, and lower costs.

By focusing on the right metrics, harnessing data to better understand the customer, and tirelessly championing the cause in a way that informs and unites, a data-driven strategy can produce profound results. By approaching CX with a fan’s passion, Carolyne and team are turning data insights into heroic moments — all in the spirit of a mission to serve.

Key Takeaways:

• Data is a powerful mover of meaningful change when leveraged correctly and consistently, and the data always tells a story when seeking investment and support
• Feedback is a gift that should be both treasured and acted upon
• Strong internal partnerships and centralized metrics are the keys to unlocking support for not only a single powerful superhero, but a powerful super team

Embracing a Commitment to Employee Success

Presented By: Teresa Ignacio, Vice President, Client Care Managed Services, Visa

Presented By: Mike Jones, Senior Director – Customer Care, The Home Depot

Synopsis:

Teresa Ignacio and Mike Jones lit up the stage, evangelizing the critical importance of creating better employee experiences. Although each told a slightly different story, the themes remained the same. The employee experience was nothing short of a rallying point, one for effective deployment of improvement efforts — the type that can have a multiplicative effect. By supporting a drive for greater employee success, each leader demonstrated how their efforts were empowering an ingredient essential in the recipe for customer success.

The world has undergone significant change, and contact center agents have been asked to handle challenges unimaginable only a couple of years ago. While the foundations of the past may have been a good starting point, they weren’t designed to address all the employee needs that have arisen in our new normal. Contact centers have been impacted in ways large and small, and forward-thinking companies have responded with greater flexibility, awareness, and dedication to their most important asset — their people.

Key Takeaways:

• The employee experience is multifaceted … many critical areas need to be addressed like career development, engagement, and work environment
• Investing in employees (and the tools and technologies that support employees) is one of the single best investments that can be made in the CX space
• Leadership approach, processes, and policies must all be flexible enough to change with the times and evolving consumer expectations

CX Transformation Secret Revealed: The Hero Is Your Customer!

Presented By: Jen Johnson, Senior Vice President of Business Transformation, Frontier

Synopsis:

Transformation isn’t easy, but it’s almost always essential. And if done correctly, the rewards go far beyond the bottom line. Frontier has undergone many transformations in its nearly 90-year history. But its most recent transformation has led Frontier toward a path of truly putting the customer first, taking center stage in everything the organization does.

Jen shares her thoughts on the compelling narrative of “the customer as the hero,” and how such an approach inevitably leads to positive experiences for Frontier customers. Naturally, it’s a long-term investment, and not necessarily an easy sell. But with the help of true CX champions, alignment up and down the organization, perseverance, and a common language of “speaking customer,” a cultural shift isn’t only possible, it’s inevitable.

Key Takeaways:

• Every customer is a mighty advocate, just needing the right experience to become activated
• Organizational alignment is a massive enabler in achieving transformational success
• The process is not always easy, and it takes some honest self-reflection to get there

Our Next Event Is Closer Than You Might Think

Catching up on an event by reading these sorts of post-event blog posts might be the next best thing to attending, but it’s a far cry from the experience of attending an Execs In the Know CRS event. That’s why we invite you to consider joining us during our next CRS event, taking place in Coronado, California, October 24–26, 2022.

To learn more about CRS Coronado, or register for this highly anticipated event, take a moment to visit us at the CRS Coronado web page.

The post It’s A Wrap: Insights from Four CRS Clearwater Keynote Presentations appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Achieving business continuity — or ABC for short — can be challenging for customer support organizations. While the pandemic certainly highlighted the need for more resilient support models, CX leaders have always struggled to forecast support volume with 100% accuracy and quickly scale operations to meet rapidly rising customer demand. Even with a trove of data to use for forecasting, unforeseen events — like a service outage, product issue, or even a global health crisis — can be lurking around the corner to obliterate even the best support volume predictions and plans. On top of that, self-service support methods only go so far and it’s challenging to ensure you have enough qualified contact center agents on deck to properly handle any unexpected surges.

Rather than attempting to perfect current prediction models, CX leaders should seek an alternative workforce strategy to deliver the flexibility and scale they need to achieve true business continuity and deliver greater service results. Here, we’ll outline the steps CX leaders should take to ensure their organization and workforce are set up for success.

Understanding the gaps in your current support model

The first step in achieving true business continuity involves understanding where you may be falling short, identifying the gaps in your current support model, and outlining your improvement and continuity goals. Primary areas of focus and questions to ask yourself include:

• Budget and Resource Allocation — How much are you currently spending on BPOs versus in-house support agents? Where have you seen the most return on your investment? Is there a notable difference in performance between the two labor forces? Are you open to exploring alternative workforce models?
• CSAT Status — How are you measuring customer satisfaction across each support channel? Are there any new (digital) channels that could make a notable impact by increasing overall customer satisfaction?
• Support Channel Offering —  Are you able to communicate with your customers via their preferred channel(s)? Are you offering asynchronous support or leaving your customers stuck in the queue? For each support channel, look at your current ticket resolution or time-to-first-response to see if they are satisfactory. If not, set realistic improvement goals and integrate them into your adjusted strategy. When a Directly telco client started offering support via SMS, customer satisfaction for those who opted for a digital experience via text rose by 50% vs. those who decided to stick with telephone support.

Leverage a Partner that offers a Hybrid Workforce Model

There are very few providers in the market today that can offer a workforce model that blends the power of global gig experts, in-house full-time associates and CX transformation technology to offer flexible, scalable and on-demand CX services. This hybrid model could be the answer to the challenges faced by the customer service industry today as it brings stability, resilience and agility to service delivery. Directly OnDemand, recently acquired by CSS Corp, now offers this model in addition to the pureplay gig expert model mentioned above.

As you select Customer Support partners, keep these considerations top of mind:

• Scalability and flexibility — Any company you partner with must have the ability to quickly scale to meet your needs to ensure you’re covered during any unexpected surges and can scale down during less busy periods.
• Reliability — Your customers must be able to count on you to receive the support they need around the clock. A hybrid workforce model blends the reliability of full-time staff with freelance, on-demand experts.  You should trust that your customers receive timely responses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from the best skilled resource.
• Security — Keeping customer information secure should be every company’s top priority. Selecting a partner who has the necessary security tools and processes in place is critical in maintaining your customers’ trust and loyalty.

Leverage the power and knowledge of your existing customer base

There’s a wealth of untapped expertise and knowledge among your most loyal customers. While many BPO or contact center agents need to go through rigorous training to understand your product or service, your customers have inherent product knowledge based on their own personal experiences with your brand. In fact, in a recent survey of Directly on-demand experts, 94% are active customers of the brand they support, and over 79% have over three years of firsthand experience with that product or service.

If you’re still unsure whether on-demand experts can stack up against your contact center agents, keep in mind that 67% of Directly experts have previous customer service or technical support experience. With the freelance and gig economy on the rise, companies like LinkedIn, Microsoft and Samsung are all using on-demand freelance experts from their customer community to address support inquiries with greater flexibility at scale.

True business continuity means being resilient

Even with the best support volume predictions in the world, there will always be unexpected challenges and fluctuations in customer demand, which is why organizations seeking to achieve true business continuity are wise to consider a scalable, flexible, hybrid workforce solution.

Guest post written by: Melanie Fricke, Directly OnDemand (recently acquired by CSS Corp). Learn more about this topic at Customer Response Summit Clearwater, March 28-30, 2022.

The post Achieving Business Continuity: An ABC Strategy for CX Leaders appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Join Jeff Fettes, CEO of Laivly, on March 29 at Execs In The Know’s Customer Response Summit (CRS), as he leads an engaging discussion on how nextgen technology, including agent assist tools and real-time AI oversight, can help contact centers take a proactive approach to quality assurance.

Coaching and Development as QA

How does your contact center approach QA? If you’re like most, team leaders review calls after the fact and coach agents on what went right and what could be improved. At this point, the damage has already been done, and coaching is an attempt to prevent the same mistake from happening again.

Coaching and development serve an important purpose for agents, leaders, and brands. However, as a means of QA—especially as the only means—this reactive approach is inefficient. Attended automation tools allow for real-time course correction, which can be reinforced through in-person coaching.

Proactive QA through Ongoing Training

Depending on the program, newly hired agents face weeks of classroom training, often followed by a period of highly supported, extensively coached live training on the floor. Some programs follow this “nesting” period with even more classroom training. In any case, the transition from trainee to live agent is uncomfortable. Attrition rates reflect this, as agents find themselves struggling to remember everything they learned—not just the complex policies or product knowledge, but where to find this information and how to navigate the CRM and other programs.

Even seasoned agents forget key elements of their training or develop bad habits to boost productivity. Attended AI can provide ongoing training for all agents by guiding them through workflows, suggesting knowledge base articles or appropriate next steps, and automating repetitive or low-value tasks.

Remote and Work-From-Home QA Challenges

If in-person training and coaching are already challenging, how do you set up agents for success when they are working remotely? Agents may feel isolated, amplifying the discomfort of transitioning out of training. Remote work also removes a level of oversight, which opens the door to more unintentional—or intentional—errors.

With the right attended automation technology, brands can protect themselves from fraud without encroaching on an agent’s sense of autonomy. On the contrary; an attended automation platform can help a WFH agent feel supported and empowered while providing noninvasive yet ironclad oversight. The outcome? Happier agents and dramatically lower invalid expenses.

How Digital QA Delivers Proactive Solutions

Nextgen technology, such as Laivly’s platform-agnostic agent assist tools, takes QA out of arrears and puts it onto the agent’s desktop in real time. Digital QA delivers notable improvements across virtually all KPIs and metrics, including:

• Average handle time (AHT)
• Appeasement and concession accuracy
• Customer satisfaction scores (CSAT)
• Speed-to-green and average training time
• Policy enforcement and escalations

Just as self-service can’t replace a live customer service agent for everything, digital QA works best when paired with empathetic human coaching and nuanced resolutions. But together, this evolution of proactive quality assurance stands to truly change the game.

Guest post written by Laivly. Learn more about the evolution of digital QA and how contact centers can take a more proactive approach to quality assurance with Jeff Fettes, CEO of Laivly. Check out his Customer Shop Talk session on March 29 at Execs In The Know’s Customer Response Summit (CRS) in Clearwater, FL.

The post The Evolution of Real-Time Digital QA appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Like all previous CRS events, the Clearwater event will take place in a breathtaking venue, providing attendees with an interactive agenda featuring powerful keynotes, engaging panels, exciting breakout sessions, interactive workshops, many networking opportunities, and so much more. If you are a CX leader looking to learn, share, and engage with your industry peers, CRS events are nothing short of a can’t miss opportunity.

CRS Clearwater features an exceptional lineup of keynote speakers including Todd Montgomery, Executive Vice President, Customer Engagement and Support at The Beachbody Company; Carolyne Truelove, Head of Global Fan Experience at Fanatics; Jen Johnson, Senior Vice President of Business Transformation at Frontier; Teresa Tañega-Ignacio, Vice President, Client Care Managed Services; and Michael Jones, Senior Director of Customer Care at The Home Depot. Moreover, CX leaders from across a wide variety of industries will be joining the event on panels, case studies, and other speaking slots, adding to the depth and breadth of the expertise and experience showcased at the event. Be sure to check out CRS Clearwater’s agenda page for a complete look at who is coming to Clearwater, Florida from March 28–March 30, 2022.

“After two years of hosting events in a virtual setting, we are extremely excited to be bringing the Customer Response Summit back to a live format,” said Chad McDaniel, President of Execs In The Know. “As always, we have been working hard to build a tremendous lineup of speakers and insightful content. Our industry, and the world, have undergone significant change since we were together at our last live event back in March 2020, and we are thrilled to be together, in-person, to drive continued progress in the CX space.”

Registration for the event is still open for Clearwater and you can even sign up for email updates on sessions and other future Customer Response Summit events, keeping you informed as each event draws closer. To learn more about CRS Clearwater, take a moment to visit the event page, or find out what to expect at CRS Clearwater by watching a short highlight reel from EITK’s last live CRS event, CRS Hollywood, FL.

To stay up to date on future Customer Response Summit events and all other CX thought leadership, sign up for our mailing list: https://execsintheknow.com/stayintheknow/

Next Stops:
March 28-30, 2022: Customer Response Summit – Clearwater, FL
October 24-26, 2022: Customer Response Summit – Hotel del Coronado, CA
March 1-3, 2023: Customer Response Summit – Austin, TX
September 20-22, 2023: Customer Response Summit – Nashville, TN

The post Customer Response Summit, Execs In The Know’s Signature CX Event, Will Be Live and In-Person — March 28–30, 2022 appeared first on Execs In The Know.