Seattle. The Emerald City – best known for its coffee, rain, grunge and … customer experiences? From September 28^th through the 30^th, the Hyatt Olive 8 in Seattle became the hub for connecting customer service professionals with their peers, creating engaging discussions around the trends, challenges and best practices related to the customer service industry. There was much to be gained at the Customer Response Summit, from conversations in the hallways to soaking in expertise at the panels and presentations. We combed through our notes to share our most valuable bits of information gained.

#1: Digital and Traditional Channels Need to Integrate Seamlessly

A strong and reoccurring theme throughout the Customer Response Summit was the consensus that a robust customer service strategy must assume a holistic online-offline perspective. With the proliferation of communication channels and devices, customers expect to be able to start an interaction in one channel and complete it in another.

In 2015, the customer service industry continues to think about ways to create customer-centric, omni-channel experiences. The end goal is to focus on the user experience and create one-to-one relationships with customers integrated across all their favorite channels – email, SMS, video, chat, social media, and phone, in-store and on desktops, mobiles, and tablets. For example, if a customer has been browsing your how-to videos on your FAQ page on topic A, and then turns to Facebook and asks a different question on topic B, the company should be able to bring together all that data and respond promptly with a concise and useful answer.

The customer expects you to know who they are, what they want, and how they last interacted with your brand. To help seamlessly integrate the multi-channel experience, allowing your brand to truly understand the customer, the use of a CRM was discussed. A CRM that captures data of all interactions will allow your phone agents to see social and online data and your social customer service agents to see phone dispositions, giving all of your team members access to the most up-to-date customer data.

 #2: Effortless Experiences

From multiple call transfers to slow systems, there are numerous causes to an increase in customer effort.  These obstacles are not always easy to identify, making them difficult to remove. To begin to reduce customer effort, you need to understand the obstacles that get in the way of an effortless experience.

Start by being your own customer. Use your customer service line, visit the stores, secret shop, and use feedback from disgruntled customers. This firsthand insight will help you highlight the biggest problems and will allow you to start strategizing a plan to reduce customer effort. An example that I discovered while researching the topic a little more was a story on how Ameriprise Financial sought to reduce customer effort. They asked their customer service reps to capture every instance in which they were forced to tell a customer no. While auditing the “noes,” the company found many legacy policies that had been outmoded by regulatory changes or system or process improvements. During its first year of “capturing the noes,” Ameriprise modified or eliminated 26 policies. It has since expanded the program by asking frontline reps to come up with other process efficiencies, generating $1.2 million in savings as a result (1).

This strategy is similar to a comment received at the Customer Response Summit. An attendee told the story of their “Kill a Stupid Rule” campaign with the goal of calling out rules that hindered experiences, reduced employee happiness, or increased customer effort. You may find that reducing customer effort starts by simply reevaluating your company policies.

 #3: Customer Experience Metrics Are Not “One Size Fits All”

Traditional measures such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and First Contact Resolution (FCR) seem to be the common measures to understand the customer’s perception of the support they receive. Are these the right measures for your business? Maybe, maybe not. Most organizations are trying to solve for (or should be trying to solve for) reducing customer effort, increasing the customer experience and increasing brand loyalty, but we have operational needs to consider as well like cost, handle time, and adherence to schedule. How do you balance both without hindering the experience?

During the Customer Response Summit, Scott Shute from LinkedIn gave an example that I can picture over and over again in my head. Scott was traveling with his wife and three young children during the busy holiday travel season. Their first plane was delayed, creating an incredibly small window of time for his family to get to the gate of their connecting flight. Scott was determined to make the flight as it would be incredibly hard to reschedule.  After running like a track star to the gate, Scott told the airline attendant his story and asked if she would allow his family 90 seconds to catch up and get to the gate. The attendant heard his story, looked in his eyes, and then, slowly walked over to the boarding door. What did she do next? Nope, she did not escort the family personally onto the plane; she closed the door to the jetway!

Can you imagine traveling for the holidays with small children, running across the airport, and making it to the gate in time – all just to miss the plane? Why did the airline attendant have no empathy? Simply put, it’s because the metric that she was being evaluated on was “on-time” flights. A perfect example of how good metrics go bad. While this is a good metric operationally, it can backfire horribly on the customer experience. We learned at the Customer Response Summit that metrics should be based upon the customer, not the operations, if you want to truly create a brand built on the customer experience.

#4: Happy Employees Deliver Happy Customers

The customer experience is nothing without customer-oriented service, and customer- oriented service is impossible without people. Consumers 2020 reports that by the year 2020, the customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. If this is true (and as customer service professionals, we are already seeing this upward trend), we need to treat our employees as we want them to treat our customers.

Some tips given at the Customer Response Summit to create a loyal employee experience include following a closed-loop process with your employees as you would your customers. Just like when addressing customer rage, when employees give you feedback, LISTEN! More importantly, it’s not enough to only listen;let them know that you hear them, and tell them what you are going to do about it!

One of my favorite tips I heard at the Summit was to not assume that your employees know how they affect the customer experience. You need to tell them! At Dialog Direct, we have a “WOW story” program:every week, we share a story about how one of our frontline employees created a “WOW” experience for a customer or even for another employee. This reminds the team that each and every day, they personally have the power to positively or negatively affect someone’s day. It’s exciting to see the lightbulb turn on in someone’s head and watch them get really excited to make someone’s day. By setting the stage and removing the roadblocks, you allow employees to create remarkable experiences and feel empowered and more satisfied with their work.

#5: Follow the Data

Customer engagement strategies are fueled by customer data. Understanding what customers have done, what channels they’ve used, what products they’ve purchased, and what service interactions they’ve had are all important data sources that can be used to build predictive models. Leverage cookie data and past-purchase data to help develop and train models. These models are critical in helping service teams understand which customers need your attention, which customers are about to churn, which customers are most likely to purchase again or buy more frequently, and which customers are likely to call in and check the status of an order, claim, or billing issue.

READ: Predictive Analytics in Action: Implementing Strategies for Dramatic Sales Lift

As companies gain a deeper understanding of customers through research and predictive analytics, they will use that information to develop more individualized customer experiences, such as reaching out to the right customer at the right time, using their preferred channel, and delivering a personalized offer pre- or post-purchase. Another example: service teams will leverage the power of predictive analytics to route callers to the phone agents who are “the most likely to help” based on the anticipated reason for the call. Similarly, predictive can assist in finding which type of agents can be paired to the right type of caller to improve the FCR. They will use learnings from these proactive engagements to improve operational performance and to predict future customer behavior.

#6: The Whip and Nae Nae Is Not as Hard as We Thought!

We came, we saw, we nae nae-ed.

What do you have to add to this list?

But, wait … There’s more! 

We enjoyed meeting everyone at the show and would like to share with you our 2015 “Customer Rage” study. This free, detailed study offers primary research on the issues Americans are experiencing with brands and examines customer-complaining behavior.

Get your free copy of the 2015 Customer Rage Study

For more information on how Dialog Direct can help you implement these these and other customer experience strategies into your call center, send me a note at sara.wright@dialog-direct.com 

Sources:

(1) https://hbr.org/2010/07/stop-trying-to-delight-your-customers

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The Empowered CX – Rethinking Service for Mobile & Self-Help Panel ft. HGS, Nintendo, Expedia, and Target.

The following is a guest blog written by Richard Shapiro, Founder and President of The Center For Client Retention (TCFCR). To learn more about their solutions visit their website at http://tcfcr.com/.

Once again, Chad and Susan McDaniel orchestrated a stimulating and educational Customer Response Summit, this time in beautiful Seattle. The keynotes were insightful, panel discussions enlightening and thought-provoking and the attendees were always engaged. Of course, Chad and Susan know how to throw a party and every social event was fun, especially the extravaganza on Tuesday evening at the Tap House Grill. The 80’s were a great era and all the trinkets, music and dancing brought us right back to that decade. Without fail, the opportunity to network peer-to-peer was the pièce de résistance.

The conference began with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Envisioning Center and Digital Crimes Unit at Microsoft. Those of us fortunate enough to attend Monday’s afternoon event were appreciative of an inside look into this major corporation. A picture is worth a thousand words. Perfect way to begin.

Microsoft Tours During CR Summit Seattle

The 1980’s, the theme of the conference, highlighted where we were and how far we have come. Chad, our exemplary MC, began the symposium with several clips spoofing customer service, including one memorable scene from the Seinfeld TV series when Jerry was told there were no cars available even though he had a reservation. Apparently, car companies don’t always actually reserve a specific car; the request is only entered into the system; making Jerry extremely frustrated. The question to the audience: has service improved in the last 30 years? It depends!

The organizations participating in the Customer Response Summit are leaders in their industries. Every participant wanted to learn, share and brainstorm with the Best in Class so their company can improve and provide exceptional service across every channel.

The 80’s were a simpler time with two primary channels of communication: face-to-face and phone. Now, in addition, there is email, chat, text, apps, etc. Consumers are not only using various channels to communicate, they are vaulting between each one making it difficult, almost impossible, to track and serve consumers. It’s an especially laborious task when company budgets remain tight and the cost for technology increases exponentially.

Every survey is pointing to self-serve as a customer preference. But, when self-serve doesn’t provide the answer, consumers call. According to the report compiled and reported by COPC and Execs In The Know, Traditional Care still is the dominant player in a multi-channel world. Herein lies the challenge. Because the complexities of the issues are significant and consumers have many options for communicating with a company, knowing and tracking the consumer channel history is imperative. It not only helps provide a more personalized experience, it allows a company to target their resources and train associates in real-time.

The costs are high associated with adding new technology, educating agents how to respond with both empathy and constant new information, and hiring additional staff to keep up with demand. It is nearly impossible to close the service gaps. However, impossible is a word not in the vocabulary of the conference attendees. The goal is facing the issues and delivering solutions.

Scott Shute, VP of Global Customer Operations at LinkedIn Delivering his keynote

These were several major themes discussed at the conference:

• Many companies are relying on community forums to help provide support to their customers. In the past, it was possible to develop common scenarios and train staff to respond and be the only trusted source. Today there are so many combinations of software platforms, apps, etc., that relying on third party trusted advisors has become an essential and necessary way to conduct business

• Companies need to do an even better job of educating agents to focus on the emotional component in a transaction; listening to what the customers are feeling and acknowledging those feelings is an important first step. Soft skills are king

• Customers expect companies to track each channel used to communicate with the company. The desire is an easy transition from one channel to another. Very few companies currently have these capabilities

• Some attendees from the retail industry have found their NPS scores have plateaued. Explanation: overall customer expectations are on the rise, speed of delivery is a definitive competitive differentiator and multi-channel service is insisted upon.

• Most attendees are using NPS, but are frustrated when the customer is not able to make a distinction between their initial product quality concerns and how customer care handled the problem. Agents feel a disconnect.

• It’s important to empower employees to make out-of-the box decisions, but also set guidelines to ensure they are fair to the company.

• Customers like to be provided with options in order to make decisions, giving them a feeling of control.

• The trend is to employ remote agents, but the challenge is to motivate and train them when they are not located on-site.

Discussion During a Customer Experience Meet-Up

Other suggestions, comments or recommendations:

• Research has shown that providing additional useful information when responding to a customer’s direct question or issue improves overall satisfaction.

• Video chat is one of the best ways to sell devices; everyone concurred that offering video chat creates tremendous opportunities.

• Focusing efforts to serve people with disabilities should be more of a priority but staffing requires special training.

• Customers prefer social media communications that are more conversational and less corporate-speak.

• Using Gamification to train younger agents can be more effective than other methods.

• It is important to communicate to staff that every employee in the company must focus on the customer, even if their specific job is not in customer support. The goal is a customer-centric company culture.

• Many companies are using old school quality monitoring criteria that is tactical, rather than strategic. What information would get the attention of the C-Suite?

• It’s worthwhile for companies to consider developing a stand alone app for their customer support where the consumer’s history and preferences can be stored and tracked.

• Ensure all support has been designed for the appropriate screen size. Otherwise customer frustration is created and the support function diminished.

• Marketing should provide customer support with sufficient lead-time when releasing new campaigns so they are completely prepared to respond to questions or concerns. That must become the new norm.

• Onboarding new employees is even more important than ever. Most technical support positions are going to Millennials who possess great technical acumen, but don’t always have appropriate communication skills.

• Everyone is competing to provide the exceptional customer experience. Amazon has set the gold standard in customer service for innovation and speedy solutions and delivery. Every customer has high expectations. Any response other than now is regarded as slow and not customer focused.

• A major benefit of technology should be to allow agents to have more time to serve customers.

• According to the COPC & Execs In The Know Customer Experience Management Benchmark Series, 2015 Consumer Edition the percentage of customers using Twitter, Pinterest/Instagram increased 75 percent from 2014 to 2015. Text also saw a gain of 22 percent.

• There must be a security component to customer care. Customers want their personal information to be protected. How can we balance customer effort with additional layers of security?

• Associates should be encouraged to use LinkedIn as an important career tool. A professional photo should be displayed and your team counseled to keep profiles updated with detailed position summaries.

• A company’s success cannot always be judged by revenues; some customers stay even though they are dissatisfied and when there is a choice they will jump ship and do business elsewhere.

• Number one, most important question in every meeting: what’s in this decision for the customer?

• According to the 2013 Customer Rage Study, conducted by Dialog Direct, 94 percent of customers want to be treated with dignity and only 35 percent felt they received respect.

The conference closed with an inspiring presentation by JC Quintana, an innovative executive, author, speaker and founder of the Corporate Relationship Group. JC, a stand-up comedian on the side, concluded a long day with just what the audience needed. Although a comic, JC’s message was serious and relevant. He led a discussion about his Seven Unified Customer Strategies for Relationship Management: Relationships, Engagement, Centricity, Service, Support, Transparency and Experience. He emphasized CRM needs to be a collaborative activity, a unified approach to eliminate silos. JC’s closing remark, “A journey of a 1000 miles starts right where you are.”

Richard Shapiro, Founder and President of The Center For Client Retention

When is the next Customer Response Summit?

February 23 – 25, 2016 in Phoenix, at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa.

Can’t wait!

To hear more about Customer Response Summit Phoenix, visit the official event website.

Richard Shapiro, Founder and President, The Center For Client Retention; author, The Welcomer Edge and the soon to be released, The Endangered Customer: 8 Steps to Guarantee Repeat Business

The post The Best of the Best – Customer Response Summit Seattle appeared first on Execs In The Know.

To hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Seattle, September 28-30th, 2015.

Though customer experience continues to be a top priority and competitive differentiator for businesses, customer satisfaction has been on the decline for the last four years, according to a 2015 Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report. In a similar vein, research in 2014 by American Express, a company often cited for their excellent service, found roughly thirty percent surveyed say organizations usually miss their expectations. Only five percent say companies exceed them.

As consumers, we know this. Though we’ve made strides with automation and today have the convenience of channel choice, all we have to do is think of our own recent experiences. We can quickly conjure up an arduous, long journey — scenarios of waiting on hold, inappropriate timing of offers, and repeat calling to get the right person on the phone. And then we have to start from the beginning with yet another uninformed agent, if we weren’t disconnected upon transfer. These journeys require great customer effort and result in frustration and a loss of valuable time — and likely customers and revenue opportunity.

Though we have more paths to purchase and service than ever before, contact centers, the hub for most customer interaction, continue to struggle to provide continuity of service across these channels. Increased customer mobility, and the growth of newer touchpoints such as the mobile channel, smart apps and Internet of Things (IoT) devices only add to the struggle.

But, let us envision a world where channel hopping doesn’t occur because of dead ends, but by choice based on preference, ease and availability. Your customers take quick trips to resolution rather than long journeys. They are in the driver’s seat, deciding when to start, or continue engagement, or perhaps react to an organization’s outreach. And they decide how, combining channels of their choosing to focus on the outcomes they need, whether it be returning a defective product, inquiring about a triple play deal or responding to a lower mortgage rate offer.

Customers engage at their pace and across channels they choose, spanning time to reach their outcome. The organization captures these key interaction moments, connects the waypoints, and analyzes and triggers the next right action. Business analysts and customer experience experts can create a blueprint of the customer experience flow, the quick trip toward outcome, with the ability to automatically adapt engagement and manage the customer outcome, without an over dependence on an IT department.

At the Idea Lab in Seattle at Customer Response Summit Seattle, Virtual Hold Technology (VHT) will show this world. We’ll discuss callback options that can be initiated over multiple channels and devices, and that save time and have dramatic impact on key operational and loyalty metrics. And will show how customer outcome management enables organizations to tie the silos together, capture context, and identify opportunities to navigate effortless customer experiences and desired outcomes.

The post Ditch the Customer “Journey” & Navigate Quick Trips to Desired Outcomes appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog written by Ted Hunting, Senior Director, North America Marketing and Global Demand Generation, at Genesys. Learn more about Genesys by visiting their website.

To hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Seattle, September 28-30th, 2015.

Gartner’s CEO has proclaimed that Digital Business is Upon Us. Companies that think they are not digital businesses will be out of business and the companies that will win in this era of digital transformation are those companies that make the most of every business moment. What Gartner is proclaiming is key to every company in every industry is essentially “customer care for the connected consumer” – the key topic of the Customer Response Summit Seattle. It’s also why I encourage customer care and CX leaders to attend what I have found in the past to be an extremely enlightening event, attended by smart, energized customer care executives and luminaries. From speakers, to networking, to innovative new ideas in the “Idea Lab”, it will be a fun few days of learning and “eureka” moments.

As CX and contact center leaders in our companies, we are now squarely in a position to help our companies make the most of every business moment and create the connected customer. The business moment occurs via customers hitting web chat, social channels, webpages, IVRs, mobile apps, text messages, and of course good old fashioned phones and email. These business moments, which historically started with the phone, have now changed 180 degrees with digital being the first and preferred communication channels for today’s connected consumer.

Companies like Uber and AirBnB have already started transforming the transportation and hospitality industries through new digital models, yet this is only the beginning of the larger transformations that will hit every industry, from financial services, to retail, to technology. Yet when I have asked CX leaders this year how many can see their entire customers journeys from webchat, to tweets, to IVR, to mobile, to even an in-store visit, 11% has been the highest number among leading companies, in cities across North America. We clearly have a huge gap when it comes to the connected consumer and creating great, seamless, omnichannel journeys. I see great progress, but I also see many companies failing to deliver.

Many companies talk about “omnichannel” but what is really offered as the norm are fragmented conversations, in siloed channels, versus continuous, unified conversations, across channels. Join me in the Idea Lab where we will share a glimpse of a NextGen Contact Center for the Digital Age. Two nextgen ideas will be shared: 1) Using Journey Dashboards with a true omnichannel view, across all channels, to power a great omnichanel customer journey. 2) Innovative new digital approaches for a nextgen customer experience – combining web, voice, mobile, and the Internet of Things.

Digital business and the connected consumer is upon us. For us in the CX industry it’s a golden opportunity to help our companies win like never before. As a CX leader are you and your company ready to play? Or perhaps more importantly…are you ready to win? Come to Seattle and get in the game.

The post NextGen CX For The Digital Age – It’s Key to Business Survival appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog written by Daniel Hong, Senior Director of Product Marketing Strategy, at [24]7. Learn more about [24]7 by visiting their website.

To hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Seattle, September 28-30th, 2015.

Show of hands…how many times have you heard the word ”omnichannel” in a meeting, and like reflex action, you let out a slightly muffled grunt, just loud enough for the person sitting next to you to hear and acknowledge your sentiment with a “we’re totally on the same page” eye roll. And then later on in the meeting, when the “how would we implement omnichannel” is discussed, a flurry of questions is posed, by multiple meeting attendees, with sharp tones of tactful skepticism accompanied with cocked eyebrows. This seems to be a common scene unfolding in conference rooms today.

While omnichannel has been wildly heralded by vendors as the ultimate panacea for broken customer journeys, it’s no secret that there’s a certain degree of incredulousness among enterprises when it comes to actually making omnichannel customer engagement a reality. At the same time, all enterprises are sold on the vision and promise of omnichannel.

After all, it makes perfect sense that customers should be able to start their journey in one channel on one device and continue their journey, in a seamless fashion, on another channel and on a different device. All the while, the customer’s experience is continuous because context is maintained, regardless of the touch point. Matias Duarte, the former lead designer of Android at Google, sums it up well “…but when services actually work seamlessly across all these screens that are available, you’re going to be like, OMG, obviously.”

Channel Pairing

When it comes to delivering a true omnichannel experience, channel pairing is an obvious place to start. In channel pairing, you identify common cross-channel journeys and create linkages between two channels. Here’s why: over 85% of customers that can’t get what they need to get done on the website (the channel where most customers start) will cross to the phone, mobile app, web chat, social media or email, and 70% will seek live agent assistance. Even as websites are optimized, there will be a slew of customers that will cross channels and devices in a single journey, for a variety of different reasons that include wanting to talk or chat with a live agent, using different devices, workflows within the journey, preferences, and time constraints, just to name a few.

By pairing channels that customers commonly cross, enterprises can move context from one to another, to provide greater personalization for the customer and also significantly lower customer effort. Also, by pairing channels, enterprises can orchestrate a unique experience like visual IVR that merges a mobile web experience and voice on a smartphone.

Pair Up in Seattle

At the Idea Lab at Customer Response Summit Seattle, [24]7 will be demonstrating two examples of channel pairing that make sense for your customers and reap immediate benefits for your business:

• Web to IVR: Deliver a seamless experience that maintains the context of your customer’s web interactions and provides that information to your IVR. Your IVR can then provide a personalized experience that better serves the customer and lowers AHT for time spent in the IVR and with the agent.

• Virtual Agent to Chat: Serve your customers with an intelligent virtual agent that serves up the best “right answer” to handle 90% or more of inquiries. For the more complex or authenticated inquiries, pass the context to a chat agent to assist the customer quickly and effectively.

Both of these examples can be implemented quickly and deliver a smoother, seamless and more engaging experience for your customers, while reducing your costs.

The post Omnichannel: Taking it From Vision to Reality appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following post is a guest blog written by Sara Wright, Marketing Director at Dialog Direct. For more information about Dialog Direct visit their website. 

As customer service professionals, we experience it every day: the dreaded customer complaint. There is no way around it and no channel that is off limits. If someone is unhappy, you are going to hear about it – or are you? Statistics show that for every customer who complains directly to you, there are 26 more unhappy customers that are remaining silent (1). Silent to you, that is. You can be sure they are telling their friends, family, and social media networks at an alarming rate. And, with social media, there is no stopping the wildfire.

With all of our knowledge about the effects of online reviews and social media, and the damage they can do to a brand, it should be assumed that corporations are stepping up their efforts to improve customer service. Is it working? According to Mary Jo Bitney, Executive Director of the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University, it doesn’t appear to be.

She and a team of researchers have completed a study showing 56 million American households experienced at least one problem as customers during the past 12 months. What’s more, the rate of “customer rage” appears to be growing rapidly. In the same study, conducted from 2004-2007, 52% of those with customer rage felt unsatisfied with how their complaint was handled. Customer rage dropped by 5% in 2011, showing that companies were getting better at seeking out and understanding complaints. But, two short years later, the percentage of customers unsatisfied with how their complaints were handled skyrocketed to 56%. Bitney says many companies are throwing money at the problem without fixing it (2). So, the questions stands: do we truly understand how to solve our customer problems?

We can begin to find a solution to this issue by understanding the delta between what customers want versus what they have actually gotten during their experiences complaining to customer service channels. Such results were collected through an independent study conducted by Dialog Direct, in partnership with CCMC and Arizona State University, in which phone interviews were conducted to 1,000 households. The study is based on one originally conducted by the White House in 1976, offering a clear comparison of customer satisfaction over the years. The results clearly showed that there are 13 consistent solutions complainants are telling us that they want as a resolution when they complain. The responses and differences between what they wanted versus what they got may be somewhat surprising.

The #1 thing that people wanted? To be treated with dignity! How do you accomplish that? Simply listen. 94% of respondents stated that they wanted to be treated with dignity by just being heard. While this might seem obvious, only 35% feel like they were actually heard.

All too often, we respond by going on the defensive. We believe we are right, and this is why we are right –right? This strategy, while most likely creating an even more infuriated customer, also limits our ability to truly understand why a customer is not satisfied. They will tell you the problem, how they think it should be resolved, and give you a critical view into their thoughts to make a change happen. So, before you try to explain, contest their complaint, or offer a solution to the situation, listen.

Want to know the other customer “wants” as they relate to the complaint process? Visit Dialog Direct in the Idea Lab at Customer Response Summit Seattle for your free copy of the study, to get ideas on how to innovate your customer-engagement process, and to maximize your customer-complaint-handling success.

To learn more about CR Summit Seattle, taking place September 28-30, 2015 click here.  

Sources:

1) Lee Resources International
2) Freeman.D. (2013, November). New Customer-Rage Study Out for Holiday Shopping Season. Retrieved from: https://wpcarey.asu.edu/news-releases/2013-11-26/new-customer-rage-study-out-holiday-shopping-seasonex

The post Addressing Customer Rage: Are You Doing The Right Things The Wrong Way? appeared first on Execs In The Know.

This is a guest blog written by Dan Gordon, SVP Strategy & Development, West Interactive Services. Learn more about West on their website. To hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Seattle, September 28-30th.

Picture this: You’re a frequent flyer, going from city to city every week, and spending hours in airports. You have your routine down to the letter and any substantial hitch has a domino effect on your schedule – not to mention work/life balance.

You roll with inevitable delays and gate changes better than most, but you have to be in-the-know. You don’t demand flawlessness, but you do expect communication at a rate that keeps up with the countless voice messages from your colleagues, emails from your boss, texts from your spouse, in-app bill-pay alerts, etc., that are hopefully punctuated by a few moments to catch your breath.

So, you opt-in to SMS/text alerts from your airline. When you land, your phone dings with a notification that your connecting flight is delayed due to plane maintenance. “Ok. Is there a gate change?” you naturally reply, knowing that it takes 20 minutes to trek from point A to point B.

The response: Radio silence or, perhaps worse, a plain old “Thank you for flying with us.” (Why? Because that alert was sent by a machine and there’s nobody manning it on the other end.)

There’s an estimated 30-minute hold-time when you click-to-call, so you ask a rep at a nearby kiosk who, unfortunately, hasn’t yet gotten the memo that there’s a delay in the first place, much less its implications. Meanwhile, dozens of other confused passengers are duplicating efforts – spending far more of the airline’s time and money – when a simple “There is no gate change at this time,” SMS response could have taken care of it.

***
Pew Research tells us that 9 in 10 Americans own a mobile device and roughly 65% of them own a smartphone, proving that this scenario is a very real one – and this customer service challenge, a pleasantly solvable one.

***
One-to-one agent-based support is expensive, which explains why many organizations adopt proactive communication strategies to preempt some of customers’ inbound service needs. SMS/text messaging engages customers on devices they’re already using and just so happens to provide a more bang-for-your-buck than other channels.

However, SMS isn’t so simple that you’re off the hook for two-way support; just as they would when having a text conversation with a friend, customers expect to be able to respond to SMS notifications and assume your brand will heed their replies. (It’s completely rational.) The big hitch is that not every reply is predictable and not every interaction can be automated. (They’re only human.)

Fortunately, solutions are out there. Agent-assisted SMS can do much of the heavy lifting for you – managing conversations, automating texts when possible, routing queries appropriately, and enabling agents to multi-task.
Customers fully benefit from the convenience of your SMS support offer, your contact center agents more confidently manage customer service, and costs stay impeccably low. That’s textbook “win, win, win.”

Advanced SMS solutions can interpret free-form, natural language texts and automate replies; others can route requests to an agent and provide as much freedom or selection of “canned” responses as is appropriate. Any agent on the receiving end of an escalated customer message can see the entire conversation (including an initial alert that may have prompted it) and duly engage with countless users at one time.

Unlike phone conversations, which demand undivided attention and plea for in-call resolution, SMS dialogues could take place over two minutes, 12 hours or even days, depending on the nature and urgency of the matter. Nonetheless, every interaction is recorded, every conversation is regulation-compliant, any transferred agent maintains visibility, no conversation requires exclusivity, and every customer feels nurtured.

Think back to that your same travel experience above. An offer to request SMS “HELP” with the initial notification of a flight delay could have saved multiple customer service representatives’ valuable time – not to mention your frustration. Multiply that times the hundred-some fellow passengers on your flight, times however many flights a day, in however many airports around the world, and you’re talking serious savings and skyrocketing customer satisfaction rates.

Now imagine the implications in your industry, on your contact center: Banking, insurance, utility, healthcare, pharmacy, telecom, retail, home services… You name it.

If that’s not a reason to feel great about hopping on a plane to Seattle, to join Execs In The Know at Customer Response Summit, I don’t know what is.

West will share more about how this concept works at the Idea Lab during Customer Response Summit Seattle, September 28-30, 2015. Join us!

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Survey Reveals Majority of Consumers Utilize a Multi-Channel Approach, but Still Embrace Traditional Contact Channels for Issue Resolution

WINTER PARK, FL and PHOENIX, AZ — August 19,  2015 – Leaders in the customer experience management (CEM) industry, COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know, global network of Customer Management Professionals, have announced the release of the Customer Experience Management Benchmark Series (CXMB) – 2015 Consumer Edition Summary titled, “The Consumer’s Perspective:  Exploring Multi-Channel Customer Care”.

The summary presents a snapshot of the total survey results including the continued strength of traditional channels of customer contact by phone, email, and in person—if given a choice and assuming the customer’s issue would be resolved. The 2015 Consumer Edition is the sixth report of the CXMB Series.   

The full report will be released at the Execs in the Know Customer Response Summit in Seattle, September 28-30, 2015.Detailed findings of the report will be presented by COPC Inc. during a post-summit workshop on October 1, 2015.

“As the customer care industry evolves to meet consumer expectations, the 2015 CXMB Consumer Report provides insight into how consumers are utilizing various contact channels. This insight can really help direct improvement efforts,” said Chad McDaniel, President and CEO of Execs In The Know. “For instance, this year’s findings show that a multi-channel approach is now the norm, yet Traditional Care is a major intersection on this journey. Brands need to understand how and why consumers use the channels they do, and take steps to ensure the experience is always positive, no matter the approach.”

The 2015 Consumer Edition includes year-over-year comparisons in areas such as channel usage, first contact resolution performance, and overall satisfaction with customer care. This year’s research also focuses on the customer journey and the customer’s experience in resolving issues through multiple channels.

“We are proud to be participating in this year’s Consumer Edition of the CXMB Series. We know from working with our clients that customers expect multiple ways to easily contact a company,” said Cliff Moore, Chairman, COPC Inc. “What this survey suggests is that customers still value that human connection. Companies will need to maintain high service levels in traditional channels while ensuring their multi-channel strategy delivers a seamless and consistent experience,” said Moore.

The CXMB Series has been providing insight about the customer experience since 2012. Each year the survey offers a consumer version that is released in the fall and a corporate version that is released in the spring.

To download the summary, visit http://ow.ly/R6Viq.

To download past editions of the CXMB Series, visit https://execsintheknow.com/resources/cxmb-series/.

About COPC Inc.

COPC Inc. is an innovative global leader that empowers organizations to manage complex customer journeys. With a focus on driving improvement, the company provides consulting, training and certification for operations that support the customer experience. Founded in 1996, COPC Inc. began by developing the COPC® Family of Standards and helping call centers increase their performance. Today the company works with hundreds of leading brands worldwide to optimize key customer touch points and deliver a seamless experience across channels. COPC Inc. is privately held with headquarters in Winter Park, Florida, U.S., and with operations in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, India and Japan. To learn more about COPC Inc, visit www.copc.com.

 About Execs in the Know

For over 15 years, Execs in the Know has built a reputation of excellence in the Customer Management Industry and a worldwide community of over 50,000 Customer Experience Professionals. Execs in the Know connects people to engaging industry content, thought leadership, current trends, peer-to-peer collaboration, networking, and industry employment opportunities. Examples of this can be seen at their Customer Response Summit events, roadshows, webinars, workshops, Blog Talk Radio segments, Industry Benchmarking Series, blogs, thought papers, and social communities.

To learn more about Execs in the Know, visit www.execsintheknow.com. For more information on their Customer Management Recruitment Solutions, visit www.justcareers.com.

Media Contacts

Lezli Harrell
Vice President, Marking
COPC Inc.
lharrell@copc.com
www.copc.com

Alyssa Pitura
Director of Marketing and Brand Experience
info@execsintheknow.com
www.execsintheknow.com
@ExecsInTheKnow

The post COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know Release Summary of Customer Experience Management Benchmark Series – 2015 Consumer Edition appeared first on Execs In The Know.

To hear more about this topic, join us at Customer Response Summit Seattle, where 24-7 Intouch and our other Idea Lab sponsors, will be sharing their leading ideas on how to improve the overall customer experience, for the connected consumer. 

Psychology and Culture

Monitoring contact center retention and fostering well-performing agents is an ongoing battle companies face. Incentives, social activities and coaching sessions drive performance and help identify stars. The ideal is to develop these individuals, help them grow into Team Leaders and future Managers of your existing teams. This cycle continues with new agents joining your team, while existing ones grow or eventually depart.

The concept seems easy enough. Meeting KPI’s is always important, but focusing on motivators and the employee experience is where you’ll make the difference. Insert “Culture”. Yes, a term that’s cliché and not directly tied to your retention or performance numbers. That said, let’s forget about those metrics right now and look at it from another perspective.

We’re attacking the root of the issue here and focusing on the psychology of employees. What small gestures do we appreciate? What defines ‘professionalism’ in the contact center? How does recognition impact us?

Revisiting theories developed by psychologists Frederick Herzberg and Abraham Maslow, the Two-Factor Theory and Hierarchy of Needs, reminds us to meet peoples’ basic levels of needs to keep them engaged. Shift to humanizing your employees’ experiences, get them psychologically engaged and slowly create a culture that builds confidence to succeed, learn, and grow.

HERZBERG’S TWO-FACTOR THEORY

MAZLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

The Sports Comparison

Going on a tangent for a moment, if we make some parallels here to professional sports we can draw some similarities to our own companies. Right now the NFL, NHL and NBA are in their offseason, trying to retool to win a championship for the upcoming season. There are some teams actively pursuing Free Agents to join theirs. Attracting players requires teams to sell their organization, atmosphere, team environment, etc.

In this world, first impressions matter. First meetings with ownership. First tour of the team facilities. First meetings with potential teammates. First conversations with the local media. Once joining a team, it continues. First practice with the team. First win as a team. First loss as a team. First bad performance on a new team. First individual triumph.

One thing all dynasty championship teams have in common, regardless of the sport, is a winning system and culture. Players within those systems understand their roles and continually experience positive impressions throughout their time with the team. It’s something you can’t measure, but an obvious trait you see in the New England Patriots, Chicago Blackhawks, San Antonio Spurs, etc.

First Impressions in Recruiting and Onboarding

Attracting great talent in the contact center and keeping them is similar to the sports analogy. To new employees and candidates, first impressions will impact whether they feel confident in winning with your company. Winning in the sense of being supported, learning, growing, and ultimately succeeding.

The smallest details impact the first impressions that are made. The idea is to hit the ground running with positive sentiment. The earlier you do this, the better rapport you can build. From an influential position, it’s easier to create brand ambassadors. As time passes, they’re more inclined to view you from a favourable perspective that highlights great moments and disregards the rest.

Stripping it down to the most basic form, below is an initial baseline of areas companies should consider when recruiting and onboarding team members. They’re obvious, but easily overlooked.

This same framework should be incorporated as you begin promoting your stars. It’s true that there’s always a first for everything. Continue to build on confidence and lasting first impressions, as your stars become leaders and important pieces to your championship team.

RECRUTING/ONBOARDING FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

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