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.

The Current Landscape

While society is beginning to recover, our collective “new normal” is still unstable especially in the workplace. Given the war for talent, employees are empowered with the majority opting for better work-life balance, whether that’s remote work, scheduled hours, or shift preferences. Employers are facing far-reaching challenges related to their contact center workforce that include:

• Difficulty hiring strong talent
• High attrition
• Effectiveness of onboarding and ongoing development
• Agent engagement

Meanwhile, customers continue to voice their preferences after being forced through a self-service funnel during much of the pandemic. They prize greater self-service options, proactive issue resolution, personalized service, and are actively engaging with newer technologies like chat, video, and social media.

Contact centers must now balance a new employee dynamic (operating with lean staff and fewer onsite agents) with customer demands (as call volume, hold times, escalations, and difficult calls surge).

What’s a Business To Do?

In these turbulent times, how does a company navigate a transformed contact center landscape that must adapt to new challenges and demands … from both employees and customers?

Simply put, the organizations that prosper will connect the experiences of customers and employees to understand the cross impact and subsequently drive improvement, identify best practices, and spur business growth.

Collecting customer and agent feedback, giving employees a platform to share ideas, forecasting customer needs, capturing compelling data from both, and using the right dashboards to connect the data will give businesses the following advantage:

The strategic creation of a holistic picture that gets the right data to the right people at the right time to drive meaningful change

Where to Start

Numerous organizations are talking about the importance of connecting employee and customer experience to build an effective hybrid contact center workforce. However, these discussions are still in the early stages with many unsure exactly where to start or how to do it.

#1:  Understand & Connect; Then Address

Actively listen and frequently ask. Frontline agents are a treasure trove of information: unleash the power of their deep and rich customer engagements to understand vulnerabilities and identify valuable workarounds or permanent fixes.

• Use agent notes more often to further identify why customers escalate a complaint, give low satisfaction scores, or leave.
• On the employee front, create opportunities for their voice to be heard – the more frequent the better especially in these rapidly changing times.
• Consider adding pulse surveys to capture real-time feedback or to ask a probing question.

Additionally, identify common or key topics of interest across the two sets of feedback (from employees and customers) and incorporate this intelligence within your analytics.

#2:  Uncover Key Irritants

Understand what the most impactful irritants are for customers and employees and fix those first.

• Use surveys, agent notes (unstructured data), and one-on-ones with frontline managers to identify what broken processes or poor technologies agents are dealing with day after day that are never fixed. They tire of making excuses, feel bad they can’t provide a better customer experience, and know it will impact their service score.
• Begin to build a case for the financial impact of uncovering and addressing employee and customer irritants.

Interestingly, a 2021 Medallia Institute/Josh Bersin research study found that companies who are employee experience leaders were 12x more likely to indicate revenue growth of more than 20% over the last year.

#3:  Discover What is Really Valued

Salary, benefits, and workplace environment all matter, but dig deeper as it’s critical to understand what employees deeply care about and value. It may be:

• Training and education
• Corporate social responsibility
• Diversity and inclusion or
• How proud they are to work for your company/brand.

In terms of workplace pride, a Medallia Institute research study found that companies that ask for and act on frontline employees’ feedback garner the highest employee Net Promoter® scores.

#4:  Unite the Two; Use the Data

Many organizations have access to two data sources — one for customers, the other for employees. Is your organization using both independently … or using and connecting both data sources?

It’s critical to de-silo the data and get multiple business units to share and use the data for the common good. Then build dashboards that bring employee data and customer data next to each other to uncover and identify the correlating impact between the two in terms of:

• Topics of interest (customer feedback and employee feedback)
• Driven behaviors (customer behaviors and employee performance)
• Key indicators (customer interaction analytics and employee pulse, agent notes, and 1-2-1 meetings)

This connection will fuel the delivery of an effective hybrid contact center workforce, while enhancing both employee and customer experience. A holistic approach gives companies the opportunity to create targeted actions to combat workforce challenges, while delivering improved value to customers.

If both experience data sets are leveraged together, the advantages are far-reaching and can generate a significant impact on agent engagement, frontline team effectiveness, customer loyalty, operational efficiencies, product/service innovation, and future revenue.

Interested in learning more? Visit Medallia Experts on Demand to book a 30-minute private meeting with a Medallia Contact Center expert. You can also book meetings directly with Rachel directly.

About Medallia

Medallia is the pioneer and market leader in Experience Management. Medallia’s award-winning SaaS platform, the Medallia Experience Cloud, leads the market in the understanding and management of experience for customers, employees, and citizens. Medallia captures experience signals created on daily journeys in person, digital, and IoT interactions and applies proprietary AI technology to reveal personalized and predictive insights that can drive action with tremendous business results. Using Medallia Experience Cloud, customers can reduce churn, turn detractors into promoters and buyers and create in-the-moment cross-sell and upsell opportunities, providing clear and potent returns on investment. www.medallia.com

Guest post written by: Rachel Lane, Senior Solutions Principal for Contact Centers, Medallia, and originally written on November 30, 2021. To learn more about this and other critical CX topics, register for Execs In The Know’s recent Customer Response Summit and watch the Medallia-led Shop Talk Connecting CX & EX to Deliver an Effective Hybrid Contact Center Workforce on-demand. To access all on-demand content, please register.

The post Connecting CX and EX to Deliver An Effective Hybrid Contact Center Workforce appeared first on Execs In The Know.

If you have yet to tune in to the Fall 2021 CRS virtual event, you can watch many sessions on-demand.
Registration is simple, free, and it takes only a minute to get immediate online access to this insightful content.

To help highlight some of the amazing ideas that came out of these sessions, we’ve created a five-part blog series — each focusing on a particular keynote session. In Part 5, we highlight Michael Baker’s turnaround story at UnitedHealth Group, one that puts people and compassion at the center of change..

The Business Case for Compassion

Michael Baker
COO UnitedHeathcare Provider Operations
UnitedHealth Group

Click to sign in or register to watch Michael’s Fall 2021 CRS presentation.

To say UnitedHealth Group has undergone a turnaround is perhaps a bit of an understatement. The company underwent a “worst to first” evolution by every meaningful measure. During this session, Michael shares how UnitedHealth Group made a conscious effort to put people and compassion at the center of an ambitious remake of the company’s customer service operations. The result has been a dynamic shift in not only the customer experience, but also a rising opinion of the brand among both industry watchers and customers alike. Here are some of the most notable learnings from Michael’s journey:

1. Compassion and Tenacity Can Move Mountains

When looking to place an individual as an advocate for your customer, consider compassion and tenacity as top factors. While it’s important to have well-rounded call center skills, the fact of the matter is individuals who are both compassionate and tenacious can connect with customers in unique ways, creating customer experiences that have the power to literally shift brand perception.

2. Rethink Measurements and Goals

With compassion as a core purpose, it becomes counterproductive to focus on some traditional measures of productivity, like average handle time (AHT). Such measures shouldn’t be a distraction when the focus is on compassion. Instead, attention should be given to the overall experience, including an agent’s ability to truly listen and guide customers to a workable solution regardless of what it takes, or how long it takes. Compassion can’t be rushed.

3. Moments of Compassion Build Trust

When agents take the time to listen and express compassion for a customer and their issue much, in the same way, they might treat family, something special happens. Customers realize they’ve got an advocate, a true advocate. And this builds trust in a very special way. Trust matters, especially when it comes to something as important as health, and that trust is a bridge to many things.

4. Keep It Authentic

Brands that can keep it authentic often have an edge. UnitedHealthcare Group keeps it authentic with the use of handwritten cards from agents to customers. It’s small but heartfelt, and it can mean a lot to the person on the receiving end.

5. No CX Journey Ever Has an End

No matter how far a company has come on evolving its customer care operations, there’s always more to be done. People can get better, technology can evolve, and the next great process change is just a spark of inspiration away. As you explore where priorities should go next, always keep the customer at the center of every initiative, and always ask, “Will this improve the experience?”

The power of the human-to-human connection can not be overestimated. If you’re wondering how your company can make a stronger emotional connection with customers, you should know that the Fall 2021 CRS event featured a panel discussion around creating empathy, another powerful avenue for building trust.

Be sure to check it out:
Creating Empathy and Eliminating Frustration on the Path from Automation to Live Engagement

The post Fall 2021 CRS & Five Key Takeaways from Five Keynotes — Part 5: UnitedHealth Group appeared first on Execs In The Know.

While the labor shortage has affected every industry, one role that has fared relatively well during the labor shortage is that of the work-from-home (WFH) customer service agent. WFH contact center roles are nothing new, but the pandemic contributed to many organizations shifting more of their workers to this construct by necessity. Many Execs In The Know community members were early leaders in identifying barriers to successfully hiring for these roles. Within that framework, the most successful organizations were those that started thinking differently about the ways they recruit and retain top talent.

Perfecting the work-at-home contact center model

According to Gartner research, 70% of customer service and support agents prefer to work at home. That same research shows that these employees wish to continue working from home in some capacity once the pandemic is long over. This is in line with surveyed service leaders who believe that WFH is decidedly here to stay. In fact, 81% of service leaders believe that 30-50% of their workforce will primarily be WFH in 2023.

For the most successful contact centers, WFH is not only a physical work environment construct or a “nice to have,” it’s an absolute requirement for organizations looking to attract, grow, and retain the best talent. In fact, this type of work gives organizations real power to make an impact on employee satisfaction, attrition levels, and career advancement for associates, while also achieving the contact center’s other ultimate goal of providing superior customer service.

As we think about the future of WFH and how organizations can be most effective, there is no better place to insert the decades-old wisdom of focusing on people, process, and technology — all of which will be pivotal for any organization that wants to survive in this experience-dependent world.

What that means in practice is not only taking care of your people with proper onboarding, training, and ongoing support, but also enabling them with the most effective processes and technology to succeed. Let’s briefly break down each of the three core elements: 

1. Engaging employees

A blended model of telework and in-office work expands an organization’s labor pool globally. But to engage the best talent, organizations also must reimagine their workforce and workplace models. This requires digitization of core functions and processes, as well as a focus on employee care throughout the talent lifecycle, including:

• Sourcing and recruiting: Savvy organizations are using technology to target both passive and active candidates — such as implementing RPA and AI-enabled administrative processes to increase the hiring speed of quality candidates and create more personalized interactions. They’re embracing social media and a variety of recruitment channels to uncover and engage with a diverse pool of candidates and promote their employer’s value propositions.
• Onboarding: Particularly during an employee’s first 90 days, focused training is crucial to ensuring a smooth and productive experience. In a WFH model, tools such as workflow checklists, interactive online experiences, and video content are particularly important to increasing employee engagement.
• Ongoing training: It’s important for contact center agents to have access to training and helpful information embedded in the work they do. Leveraging tools such as Walk Me, and augmented and virtual reality helps bring these interactive experiences to life. At Conduent, our Learning Services team is an exclusive partner of Apply Synergies, the founder of the 5 moments of need It’s an approach that ensures the right tools are available at every stage of the employee journey and that the various stages of learning and performance most effectively support employees’ needs.
• Supporting health and wellness: Organizations can support the wellbeing of their WFH associates through live and AI-enabled health navigation and advocacy. This includes things like Employee Assistance Plans, 1-to-1 health advocates, online wellness tools, educational webinars, and AI-based symptom tracking and triage tools. 

2. Building the right processes

For today’s call centers, another key to success for both WFH and brick-and-mortar roles is making the connection between employee experience and customer experience, and then employing the tools, methodologies, and cultural elements that will ultimately drive success. In our experience, that equates to taking a “human-centered” approach to contact center design and operation.

Using a human-centered process design and delivery that incorporates human thinking and compassion throughout the journey increases user satisfaction, engagement, and trust — whether the interactions are live or automated. Human-centered design enables organizations to clarify or reframe the real issues at hand, and it puts the human — who traditionally has been at the endpoint of a transaction — first. Organizations that pay attention to design and the way consumers interact with their products and services earn loyalty and see their respect for human needs reflected in the bottom line.

All this may sound academic, but practically speaking — there are lots of ways to measure the impact of human-centricity, both internally and externally. At Conduent, we use analytics and data insights as part of the equation, including leveraging sensitivity analysis to boost learning among our own customer service agents.  

3. Adopting the right technologies
   

Having the right technology infrastructure in place is fundamental to the successful contact center. But in a WFH model, in particular, technology requirements are often different and require a more strategic approach to implementation. Organizations with a mindset of continuous innovation and improvement are in the best possible position to build the most effective WAH infrastructure for both customer service delivery and employee satisfaction and success.

During the pandemic, Conduent increased its use of analytics (including sentiment analysis) to evaluate customer satisfaction (CSAT) drivers and opportunities to reduce customer complaints. Through that process, we were able to identify 35% more agents in need of additional on-the-job training. Ninety-four percent of those identified were recommended to receive soft skills coaching, which allowed us to upskill our staff and ensure they were applying the right levels of empathy and compassion to live interactions during this critical time. This strategic use of analytics has helped to elevate our contact center operations in two important ways:

1. Optimized agent performance: AI-based call analytics paired with natural language processing provides valuable insights on agent and call-level metrics, helping to evaluate markers such as over talk, silence, call length, and caller sentiment.
2. Increased ability to anticipate and resolve customer issues: Using analytics to categorize critical situations, we’re now better able to proactively plan automated workflows that route inquiries to the appropriate person or specialized team.

For WAH operations to be successful, organizations must also keep a keen eye on mitigating risks such as fraud risk, security risk, and risks to employee safety. Employing a balance of cloud vs. enterprise infrastructure is one of the best steps you can take to minimize security risks. At Conduent, we’re also using sophisticated speech and language detection tools that diagnose sentiment analysis and help reduce the risk of fraud.

Successful organizations have also built or implemented various custom smartphone applications to help ensure that employees stay healthy — whether they’re WFH, in the office, or in a hybrid model. At Conduent, we used our proprietary virtual assistant technology to develop a custom return to workplace app that associates used each day to assess and self-report their own fitness to work. Data from our custom application helped us keep track of thousands of employees daily from our various locations, with data readily accessible to managers via our integrated HR system. The data could also be used for contact tracing.

Keeping the momentum going
Work at home is a powerful concept that experts predict will continue in much greater frequency than before the pandemic. More of our own clients have embraced this model and the opportunities it provides for enhanced employee satisfaction, flexible and efficient service constructs, and reduced costs.

Though WFH is not a new concept in the contact center space, the sudden shift to WFH during the pandemic gave many in the industry the opportunity to evaluate the people, processes, and technologies they have in place, and make strategic changes that will carry them forward. To keep the momentum going, organizations must retain that same agile mindset that was invigorated during the pandemic, and build partnerships that allow them to grow and flex as the WFH landscape continues to evolve.

Statistics used in charts are from:
Global Workplace Analytics. Global Work-from-Home Experience Survey. April 2020.
Airtasker. Survey on Benefits of Working from Home. March 2020.

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Furthermore, if you are a CX practitioner at a corporate brand, consider joining the conversation on Know It All (KIA) online community. Crowdsource and connect with your CX peers in a collaborative, non-competitive environment — a totally free service from Execs In The Know.

The post How Contact Centers Can Thrive by Doing Work From Home Right appeared first on Execs In The Know.

In this article, you will find five common feelings leading to stress for many agents, and suggestions for addressing these for your staff.

I feel isolated, disconnected, and unheard.

Working from home has been positive for some agents and difficult for others. Coupled with a pandemic that forced people to self-isolate, it is no surprise that this has become a common stressor. This can also lead to an even greater disconnect between agents, their peers, their managers, and senior leadership. Customer experience (CX) leaders also need to remember that agents have a unique perspective because they talk to customers every day. This gives them valuable insights and ideas that do not always see the light of day. Regardless of whether employees are in a contact center or are working from home, it is important to create a cadence of scheduled activities and agent feedback mechanisms to reduce the feeling of isolation and drive more engagement. These can include:

• Consistent and frequent one-on-one check-ins: This is different from formal performance discussions, but is instead a time to talk with agents, assess how they are doing, listen to any challenges they are having, and/or hear their ideas. This should be an informal setting that is non-threatening to the agents so they feel comfortable opening up to their supervisors.
• “Fun” activities, wellness opportunities, and interest groups: Fun activities could be with their own teams, or cross-functional teams, but the goal is to bring people together in a way that has nothing to do with work. Examples might include online gaming sessions, virtual games, monthly online lunches, and book/music/movie clubs. Additionally, many companies are now providing ongoing and structured opportunities for employees to participate in virtual (or in-person) exercise and wellness activities such as yoga, meditation, or group walk/runs.
• Employee satisfaction surveys, focus groups, and anonymous feedback: Most companies now have employee satisfaction surveys. Those who excel post the results, analyze the data, implement action plans, and communicate progress to those plans. Focus groups are another means to gather agent feedback. Surveys will give you valuable data, but nothing can replace a good conversation. These should be structured, ongoing, and paired with a communication plan. Providing the ability for agents to submit anonymous suggestions and questions also goes a long way in removing any fear agents may have about voicing concerns. However, leadership must ensure they have processes in place to respond to all submissions, track them, and do something with them.

I fear my job is at risk.

It has been an unsettling year for everyone, creating uncertainty about job security. It is not possible to guarantee staff that their job is safe, especially given the events over the last year, but leaders are able to minimize the angst through:

• Transparent and consistent communication: You may not be able to disclose everything, but the more transparent you can be as a leader, the less stress your staff will feel. It is always important for agents to hear from their leaders because in the absence of communication, people will create worst case scenarios in their own minds, which is often worse than reality. Both monthly (or quarterly) “town halls” with senior leaders and weekly meetings with direct managers are key.
• Genuine open-door policies: Create a culture and environment that encourages staff to ask questions and voice their concerns. This requires all levels of management to adopt genuine open-door policies, even if you need to set aside certain hours that are available for just that. This can even be done remotely by way of opening a web meeting during certain hours or allowing staff to schedule on your calendar during established hours.
• Training and development: One of the best ways to alleviate concerns about job security is ongoing training and development. Again, there are no guarantees of job security, but by creating career paths, development plans, and working with staff to further their skills, agents will gain confidence that they are valued and the company is still invested in them, regardless of what the future may hold.

I get “yelled at” all day from unhappy customers.

There is no question that agents have a difficult job. Yes, it can be satisfying to solve customers’ issues, but let’s face it – most of the time customers are not contacting an agent because things have gone well. This can be very taxing to agents and the best ways to help them navigate through this is:

• Training and coaching: Help agents learn the skills and utilize their resources to de-escalate difficult customer situations and resolve issues effectively. Agents will of course receive training on tools and processes as part of new hire training, but there is always something to learn to make the job a little easier. Ongoing monitoring and coaching are of course important, but there are other creative ways to help them develop these skills such as peer coaching, brainstorming sessions, and case studies of similar situations and how they were resolved.
• Escalation support: There are of course times that agents will not be able to handle a challenging customer. They need to know that they have support, either from their direct manager or an escalation team. In a physical center, this is easier since they can put the customer on hold and ask a peer or leader, but remote workers may face more challenges. So, ensure you have instant messaging queues or some ability to reach someone should escalation be necessary. In short, ensure they do not feel alone should they need support.
• Rewards and recognition: Responding to unhappy customers all day every day is taxing and can often feel like a thankless job. Whether agents are in center or working from home, it is more important than ever to implement structured programs to consistently shine a light on high performance. Most companies have performance-based approaches which are, of course, effective. But it is important to go beyond this as well, such as having peer-based nominations and spontaneous recognition when a “great customer experience” is observed. Company-wide awards programs in which leaders from departments nominate employees based on actions aligned with company values also provide exposure for staff and helps recognized individuals feel more connected to the organization as a whole.

I do not always receive updated information, or I get so much information I cannot keep up.

The amount of information agents receive on any given day can be daunting. And they are expected to receive, absorb, remember, and apply it — all while caring for customers. Sometimes they do not even receive needed information for various reasons. Leaders can and should look closely at their communication process and consider:

• A central repository of changes/updates: This could require a technology and infrastructure investment, but the best-case scenario is a central repository of updates and communication for agents. This puts the responsibility on them to check it, but also ensures everyone has access to the same information at the same time.
• Electronic receipt/tracking: Additionally, it is becoming more important to have the ability to track information flow, ensuring each agent has received, accessed, and confirmed their understanding of important updates. A central repository would certainly make this easier but there are less sophisticated ways to do this as well. The updates could be categorized and triaged based on level of importance/complexity and that would trigger the type of receipt or confirmation required.
• Structured cadence and daily huddles: Regardless of where or how the information is provided, the more structure the better. In other words, critical updates are sent on Mondays only from specific people (with exceptions). The results are agents know when to look for key updates and from whom. Other types of updates could be shared in daily huddles with direct managers, versus sending emails. There are several ways to do this, but the key is to simplify and put a structure around it that is easier for agents to digest.

I work from home, but I am finding it difficult to balance work with my personal situation.

Employees who will continue to work from home also have children and personal situations they are balancing. While leaders have businesses to run, scheduling has been a source of stress for many agents. Leading companies have implemented more flexible and creative scheduling practices such as:

• Split shifts: For example, you might allow agents to work for four hours early in the day and four hours later in the day. This can be a benefit to agents but also to the organization depending on customer transaction arrival patterns and volume.
• Longer shifts over fewer days: Some companies are taking volunteers who would like to work a shorter week but longer hours. For example, 10-hour shifts over a four-day period might be an option. Again, depending on personal situations this allows agents some flexibility while providing the coverage needed by the organization.
• More (but shorter) breaks: Let’s face it. Many of us have worked from home all or most of the last year. It is challenging to only have two 15-minute breaks during an eight-hour shift, especially given the distractions common at home. Offering more breaks throughout the day that are shorter in duration provides some relief to agents. If workforce management plans for this, it should not impact service levels.

In summary, a lot of anxiety and stress has built up over the last year and it should not go unnoticed. Leaders can alleviate these stressors in many ways, including the ideas presented in this blog post. Additionally, many organizations have expanded the resources available to their employees such as mental health resources, financial services assistance, and legal representation. Most importantly, all leaders need to be aware of any challenges facing agents and take action to help minimize them. Doing so is not only the right thing to do for employees, but will also lead to better customer experiences and greater company success.

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Among the many CX trending topics we will be talking about and creating awareness for Mental Health at Customer Response Summit – September 15-17, 2021.

The post Making Agent Mental Health a Priority: Five Agent Stressors and How to Address Them appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Whew, this year has been a doozy, hasn’t it? As I reflect on 2020 and look forward to 2021, I want to take a moment to share with you my holiday wish list. I think I have been pretty good this year (no pouting and only a little crying), so anything you can do to make some (or all) of these five wishes come true would be great! I’ll be sure to leave you some cookies and milk for your trouble.

#1 Training and Skills Development

I love my job, and I really want to continue to grow and advance in my career. Relevant training and coaching that helps me do the best job I can today, especially given the continued changes to my role, is at the top of my list, Santa. I also want to learn, grow, and prepare for the next phase of my career. So, I would love the opportunity to learn additional skills to better support my customers, while also giving me greater opportunities for advancement.

#2 Attendance and Scheduling Flexibility

2020 has been an interesting year, especially with working from home so much of the time. And even those working from an actual center have had to work hard to navigate all the personal challenges due to the pandemic. It would be so appreciated to have more lenient attendance policies and/or flexible schedules. I realize we are here to meet our customers’ needs, but a little bit of flexibility would really help many of us. Speaking of working from home, once the world starts getting back to “normal,” it would be great to have the choice of either continuing to work from home or heading into the office – or even a mix of both.

#3 Systems Reliability and Support 

As we continue to handle more complex customer issues, systems reliability is critical. It is difficult (and stressful) to try our best to help customers when our tools are slow, inaccurate, unreliable, or even altogether unavailable. And for those of us working from home indefinitely, it would be super if we could get stipends to improve our environment — things like more reliable Wi-Fi and a basic office setup make a huge difference in helping us provide excellent support for our customers.

#4 Policy, Process, and Technology Improvement

I am sure you know that as agents, we often bear the brunt of unfriendly customer policies. It would be great if some of the most painful policies were a wee bit more friendly to make it easier for us to help resolve customer issues. Related, it is sometimes difficult to find accurate and relevant information to best support customers, so tools that guide us to the right information would be quite helpful. Finally, since customers are using all kinds of ways to contact us, by the time they get to us, they have already tried several things … could you work on giving us the ability to see all their interactions and what they need before they get to us?

#5 Compensation and Promotion Opportunities

Last but not least, a pay increase would of course be fantastic! But I realize that’s not always the easiest thing to give. So perhaps you could arrange for me (and my role) to be evaluated to determine if I am being paid fairly (and comparably) for the work I do, especially given how much my role is changing. Also, if larger merit increases could be considered (based on performance, of course), along with more promotion and/or career advancement opportunities, this would just make my year!

Thank you, Santa, for taking the time to consider my holiday wish list! My company and colleagues have done a great job in 2020 and I sure appreciate the work everyone has put in to help us respond to the challenges and opportunities during this past year. Here’s to a successful 2021!

Season’s greetings,

Your Favorite Agent

The post A Contact Center Agent’s Letter to Santa Claus appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Twenty-twenty ushered in a whole slew of new challenges for contact center agents like working remote for the first time and higher call volumes from equally stressed-out customers. Well before that though, contact centers experienced 30-45% turnover per year, which is double the average for all other occupations. It deserves attention and in this blog we examine agent turnover, including the hard and soft costs to your company, and how to use technology to support your agents to decrease the agent attrition rate in your contact center.

What Agent Burnout Does to Your Contact Center

The year 2020 will forever be known as the year of stress. Everyone has felt stress on all fronts – both in their personal and professional lives. Agents are no exception.

The pandemic has brought on heightened levels of stress with unprecedented call volumes and ever-growing demands. Disconnecting from that stress is even harder now that many companies are working from home and can’t leave work at work. Increased pressure on call center agents to continue to be empathetic while managing a spike in calls from emotionally charged customers causes immense amounts of stress that ultimately leads to burnout.

According to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), employee burnout is a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” It’s characterized by three distinct outcomes:

• Feelings of exhaustion or lack of energy.
• Feelings of negativity or cynicism related to the workplace, or a feeling of increased mental distance from one’s job.
• Reduced efficiency in the workplace.

According to Gallup research employees who say they very often or always experiencing burnout at work are:

• 63% more likely to take a sick day
• 13% less confident in their work performance
• 6 times more likely to leave their employer

On average, 74% of your agents are at risk of burnout. It’s unsettling to consider how much of your contact center workforce teeters on the edge of being overwhelmed to the point of quitting.

The Cost of Agent Burnout

A certain amount of turnover should be expected. Employees will come and go, get promoted, or make lateral moves to other departments where their experience can add value to the organization. No matter what, attrition costs your contact center.

Agent turnover costs more than just the time and training required to backfill the position. There’s the operational cost of recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding. Then there’s the productivity costs of ramping up the new agent to reach the productivity of more seasoned agents.

It’s important that the true financial impact of attrition isn’t undervalued. From the point that an agent leaves the company to the point that the resulting empty seat is filled and fully productive can cost thousands of dollars per employee.

Why Digital Engagement Reduces Stress

There’s just no way to sugar coat it. Working in a call center is a stressful job. The majority of your agent’s time is spent engaging with customers and it takes a lot of emotional labor. The work is fast-past, results-driven, monitored, and as mentioned above, things have only gotten worse since the pandemic. It’s no wonder that companies are looking for more ways to optimize agent workflows to reduce work related stress and improve agent retention.

Many companies are solving this problem by adding digital channels such as SMS/text, web chat, Apple Business Chat, Google’s Business Messages, and social media direct messages. Contrary to what you might think, adding these to your channel mix can actually help reduce agent stress and workload.

Here’s how digital engagement improves your agent’s experience:

Minimizes emotional drain

It’s much easier to get yelled at in text. A message in all capital letters or containing profanity doesn’t have the same emotional drain as being on the phone with a screaming customer. Empathy is required by text and phone agents, but showing empathy is much easier when you’re not being verbally abused.

Keeps the conversation on task

Compared to a phone call, messaging is concise and to the point. There’s no chatter about how your day is going and the weather like there is on a phone call. Messaging allows an agent to avoid the chit chat and get down the business of solving the customer’s issue without a lot of irrelevant conversation.

Avoids awkward silence

Since messaging is asynchronous, agents have more time to think, do research, and respond. If an agent is on the phone the customer expects a response immediately. If the agent needs to consult a manual to get the answer, there’s an awkward silence and the agent is under pressure because the customer is sitting on the phone waiting. In messaging, customers can go on with their daily lives, allowing the agent more time to respond.

Affords agents more relaxed support

When an agent is on a phone call and needs help they have to put the customer on hold. In messaging, agents can collaborate with their manager and other team members to get advice without the customer being aware that the agent is struggling to solve the issue.

Reduces repetitive tasks

Answering frequently asked questions can simply become monotonous and repetitive which adds to agent stress levels. Digital channels enable companies to create pre-built responses for common questions with snippets. This reduces agents typing time with keyboard shortcuts to make repetitive responses fast.

A lot of these questions, such as “what’s my order status?” don’t necessarily need human agents to intervene. Contact centers that use bots and agents to manage their messaging channels realize even better results. Bots help customers get answers to questions like “How do I reset my password?” or “Where’s my order?” without waiting for an available agent.  For more complex situations human agents can provide the knowledge, expertise, and creativity that only they can deliver. When call center reps feel that their labor, knowledge, and time is respected, they will be less likely to burn out.

Takes some of the surprise out of speaking to the customer

One of the reasons phone calls can be so stressful for agents is that they never know what they’re walking into. Is the customer angry or just in a rush and frustrated that they had to sit on hold?

With messaging, you can collect intel on the nature of the customer’s inquiry prior to transferring it over to a human agent. Whether you use a bot or a form to understand the customer’s intent, you can arm the agent with information they need to quickly resolve the inquiry.

Digital engagement also allows you to use sentiment analysis to monitor conversations. Agents can easily detect shifts in customer attitudes and behaviors during conversations. Quiq’s visual sentiment analysis feature helps agents and managers understand which messaging conversations may need extra attention.

Support Agents with Digital Engagement

Agent turnover is expensive, especially within a functional area that heavily relies on human labor. As unpleasant as it is, attrition is a workplace reality no matter where you work and regardless of the function. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore the causes or costs associated with high levels of agent turnover

Adding Messaging to the list of channels you already have is an investment in the agent experience. So much of contact center efficiency and agent productivity hinges on equipping agents with the right technology. Quiq Messaging gives your employees what they need to access information and solutions quickly in one simplified platform. Ready to support your agents and contact center with digital engagement? Schedule some time with one of Quiq’s conversation experts to get started.

Guest post written by Marciela Ross, Sr. Manager, Content Marketing Marketing at Quiq

As you set off to undertake projects with the intent of being more customer centric, think of the technology that your customers use to connect and engage with your brand. Quiq helps brands present their customers with consistently jaw-dropping customer experiences across SMS/text messaging, rich messaging, web chat, and social channels. With Quiq’s Conversational Engagement Platform, companies can easily orchestrate commerce and service conversations involving both bots and humans.

If you’re ready to get started, schedule some time with one of Quiq’s conversation experts. We welcome the opportunity to discuss how your business can use messaging and bots to provide customers with a seamless digital engagement focused on delivering a world-class customer experience.

To learn more about digital transformation go to: www.quiq.com.

The post Increase Employee Retention with Digital Engagement appeared first on Execs In The Know.

This significant change in power is the reason why brands are intensely focused on customer-centricity. Customer-centricity, customer-focused, and customer-obsessed aren’t just buzz words used in customer service circles. These terms represent a new era that affects operations throughout the entire organization.

At the heart of customer-centricity is personalization. The ability to deliver an experience that feels tailored to the individual. It all starts at research, continues through purchase, and is critical upon fulfillment/delivery..

Of course, delivering a bespoke customer experience at scale isn’t happening without the help of technology. In this post, we discuss how to deliver real customer-centricity during your digital transformation by starting with the most basic and necessary functions – communicating with your customers.

Customer-Centric Digital Transformation

Consumers are the catalysts for brands undergoing digital transformations within every industry.  From catching a ride on Uber to ordering food through DoorDash, consumer’s have created the “on-demand” economy. They are also the reason companies are undergoing a digital transformation to put technology at work throughout the entire company.

Digital transformation can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. To some, it means breaking down data silos. To others it may be improving segmentation for enhanced personalization.

For your customers, it boils down to something very simple. “Quickly help me when and how I need it, in the easiest and most convenient way.”

Quite often we see companies immediately turn to the internal processes and procedures that happen away from customer-facing roles when they consider leveling up their customer-centricity. It’s assumed that customer-facing roles are already providing customer-centric support and service. It’s a mistake to dismiss the opportunities that exist right up front where your customers can see and feel the difference.

Let’s be honest, It’s unlikely that customers will applaud your efforts in using big data to predict buying patterns if they have to wait on hold for 30 minutes to get an update on their order status. It’s true, customer-centricity needs to be ingrained in the culture and reflected in both the front and the back-end of your business. However, your customers only see, understand, care about what is immediately in front of them.

Customer-Centric Digital Transformation in Practice

Take, for example, what Brinks Home Security did. This top home security company uses chatbots to bring more value to customers nearing the end of their home monitoring service contract to drive retention.

Brinks sends current customers customized offers as part of their retention program. The retention program presents an offer to reduce the customer’s current monthly rate in exchange for a contract extension. As an alternative, free products may be offered as the incentive instead of a rate reduction to extend a contract depending on where the customer is in their customer lifecycle.

The Brinks team knows customers preferred digital channels, but the team was shocked to see how many customers opted to review and accept their offer through a chatbot guided messaging conversation. Nearly 80% of their customers overwhelmingly choose to receive a text message and accept the offer through a bot versus calling in to talk to an agent or taking the time to select and fulfill the offer on a landing page.

Brinks started with what they knew their customer’s preferred. Brinks knew that customers valued their service and products, and that a rate reduction or a free product are highly motivating incentives. They also knew their customers didn’t want to play phone tag with agents to obtain this value.

It all started with the customer’s experience, engagement, and value. It didn’t start with the process, but that doesn’t mean the business didn’t change. The benefits of the chatbot resonated through the company:

• Agents didn’t have to make the manual outbound calls to present the offer to customers, which reduced costs and freed up those resources to handle other, high value interactions.
• The company was able to reach more customers and achieve a higher acceptance rate for the offer, which increased revenue and retention.
• Customers were able receive a timely, personal offer and enjoy uninterrupted service in a convenient, easy way, which increased customer satisfaction.

Brinks and many other companies are realizing the value of customer-centricity and how technology supports their efforts. In fact, CIO.com reports that 35 percent of CIOs have earmarked customer experience improvement as one of their hallmark business initiatives, the State of the CIO research found. (cio.com)

The KISS Method of Customer-Centric Digital Transformation

Customer-centricity is much more than offering good service. It is about recognizing how your customer behaves, what they want, and ensuring that every part of your company is focused on delivering value in the specific way that is meaningful to that customer.

While customer-centricity is most commonly thought of as collecting as much data as possible about customers’ wants, needs, and preferences to customize offerings, it isn’t always such a complex undertaking. Nor should it be. Many companies have found opportunities to make their customer support and service more customer-centric through the simple use of messaging and chatbots.

There is enough research out there that shows customers prefer the convenience of engaging with brands on their mobile devices. Consumers demand the ability to self-serve when they want it and to receive fast responses from agents when they need it.

This is exactly what messaging channels like live chat and SMS in conjunction with bots provide. New rich communication channels such as Apple Business Chat and Google’s Business Messages are fancier and more elegant messaging options that create personalized shopping experiences, and make the purchase process simpler and more convenient.

In addition to making the customer interactions more seamless messaging and bots  are operationally a better choice. According to a recent Forbes article, the average cost of a customer call answered by a human is $35-$50, compared to just $8-$10 for a text-enabled chatbot. (Forbes) Whether you agree with those numbers or not, it is fair to say that messaging is 1/5th the cost of phone calls, so definitely a channel to take advantage of sooner than later.

Integrating messaging and bots is not a large disruptive project. In fact, Quiq has been able to get companies up and running on messaging and bots in as little as 24 hours. Our clients report seeing immediate results in the way of decreased calls, lower abandonment rates, increased agent productivity, and notably higher customer satisfaction scores.

The Key To Customer-Centric Digital Transformation

The most important thing to keep in mind during your digital transformation is to keep the customer, not the technology at the center. The technology should be a means to the end of understanding the customer at a deeper level. The more you understand your customer, the more you know how to help. The faster, more convenient help you provide a customer, the more they will value you as a brand.

Guest post written by Marciela Ross, Sr. Manager, Content Marketing Marketing at Quiq

As you set off to undertake projects with the intent of being more customer centric, think of the technology that your customers use to connect and engage with your brand. Quiq helps brands present their customers with consistently jaw-dropping customer experiences across SMS/text messaging, rich messaging, web chat, and social channels. With Quiq’s Conversational Engagement Platform, companies can easily orchestrate commerce and service conversations involving both bots and humans.

If you’re ready to get started, schedule some time with one of Quiq’s conversation experts. We welcome the opportunity to discuss how your business can use messaging and bots to provide customers with a seamless digital engagement focused on delivering a world-class customer experience.

To learn more about digital transformation go to: www.quiq.com.

The post How To Keep Customers Front And Center During Your Digital Transformation appeared first on Execs In The Know.

What is corporate culture? Depending on who you ask, you might get a slightly different definition. Essentially, it is an organization’s values, vision, and behaviors that guide how the company’s employees and leadership interact internally and externally. It is reflected in all aspects of the business from hiring, training, succession planning, coaching and feedback, dress code, scheduling, office environment, meeting protocols, communication, marketing, product development, customer and employee policies, vendor relationships, customer and client satisfaction, social responsibility, leadership, metrics, and all aspects of operations. Culture encompasses the intangibles of what gives your organization its identity and can be a key differentiator among competitors.

The most successful companies have strong cultures that are sustained over time and reinforced daily. Navigating through the pandemic, the decisions you make and the messages you send internally and externally will have a lasting impact, shining a bright light on your organization’s culture and character.

Although it can seem daunting with the current challenges, organizations have a unique opportunity to not only maintain their culture but strengthen it. Even with a mostly remote workforce, organizations should take the positives they have gained through this experience and continue to connect with and build even stronger teams. Tracy Keogh, chief human resources officer (CHRO) with HP was quoted in this article as saying, “If you don’t, you are really missing an opportunity. You are leading through a crisis and connecting with your people. This is the most authentic time in business history.”

So, how do you ensure you do not lose the intangibles of what gives your organization its identity? Culture defines an organization and its success, so it is critical to keep it front and center especially in a time of crisis. Michael Jones, senior director of customer care with The Home Depot, often reinforces the importance of culture with a well-known Peter Drucker quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This article focuses on how to ensure you keep your culture intact and find ways to strengthen it.

Eight Principles to Ensure Culture Continuity

An underlying priority we are hearing from leading companies is a renewed or increased focus on people. This is certainly true for The Home Depot as Jones explains, “A strong people focus is critical. This is especially important in a remote work environment as associates are juggling not only their jobs, but also acting as caretakers, schoolteachers, etc.…for their loved ones. The associate experience is paramount, and that effort will continue for us.” And, as you will see, each principle below has “people” as the common denominator.

1. Lead with empathy and trust: Ensure your leaders are equipped and capable of leading in this new world. Different skillsets and expectations will be involved. Give them the tools, training, and time to evolve to ensure you have the right management teams in place who are comfortable leading employees through this challenging time. This is certainly at the forefront for The Home Depot, as Jones further explains, “We as leaders must make decisions from a place of empathy and trust. Our associates must feel more empowered to act on behalf of our customers than they ever have before, and that requires an increased level of trust from leadership. ‘Do the Right Thing’ is one of The Home Depot’s core values and our associates strive to do that for our customers every day.”
2. Enable flexibility: Many organizations have already demonstrated incredible flexibility while navigating the pandemic and its effect on operations. This need will continue as kids go back to school, with many workers at home trying to navigate online-learning and caring for other family members. In fact, enabling scheduling flexibility is a huge win for The Home Depot, as their workforce management teams are working hard to grant more split shift schedule models, allowing associates to take a larger chunk of time in the middle of their shifts for personal needs. They are also offering more paid breaks into associates’ schedules.
3. Embed culture consistently: With a remote workforce, employees do not have the benefit of the hallway discussions or the buzzing in the office that reinforces company culture. Your vision should be front and center in every meeting and decision. Employees need to feel their purpose and that they contribute to the greater good. Share the organization’s goals, achievements, and challenges, making employees a part of the solution and the wins. The Home Depot is an excellent example of how they have made this happen. Jones explains, “As a values-based organization, The Home Depot centers our decisions on basic tenets like Giving Back, Doing the Right Thing, Respect for All People, and Building Strong Relationships, among others. To keep these key principles top of mind as we make tough decisions, we weave them into nearly everything we do – we start big meetings with a reminder of our values wheel, weave these values into associate-facing communication, recognize individuals who are exemplifying these values, and much more.”
4. Ensure transparency: Communicate clearly, honestly, and frequently. As you have likely discovered, more communication with a structured approach is critical to maintaining and reinforcing your culture. For many, this means continuing town halls, and “fireside chats” remotely, but also creating a regular cadence of updates and smaller forums. In the early days of COVID-19, The Home Depot distributed a “Daily Digest” to associates to keep them in the loop on key business changes, such as the inception of the new Curbside Pickup option at stores. They have since dialed that back as they settle into the next phase but keeping the lines of communication open with consistent email updates, virtual team huddles, and “all hands” meetings with leadership continue.
5. Do not make everything about business: Due to physical distancing and the likely feelings of isolation, it is important to build in time for non-work discussions. Check in with employees and spend more time ensuring their emotional well-being. This includes fun events, but also ensuring enough time is included in discussions to get a pulse on how employees are feeling. Companies like Groupon are also expanding on initiatives they had pre-COVID, such as creating book clubs on topics that resonate with the employee base in addition to continued volunteer events that involve the entire company.
6. Empower employees and give them a voice: This is always important, but now more than ever. Consistently give employees forums to provide feedback (in-person and anonymous), and develop processes for reviewing, prioritizing, acting, and communicating results.
7. Reward performance and “wins”: Look for ways to not only reward good performance, but also recognize employees who go above and beyond for colleagues and customers. For example, allow employees to publicly nominate and recognize peers for doing good deeds. Maintain monthly recognition meetings which include upper management to give high performers more visibility, including examples of excellent customer service. The Home Depot has worked to replicate the in-office experience as much as possible, which they explain is typically filled with celebrations, associate recognition, and career development opportunities, even in a virtual environment.
8. Focus on employee health and well-being: As time goes on, restoring staff is going to be more important than ever. Many companies are focused on providing additional benefits during this time like additional paid leave and supportive resources that include counseling and access to financial advisors. Find out what your employees need and provide resources to best support them.

Culture Continuity is More Important Than Ever

There is no question that prolonged physical distancing is an ongoing challenge to maintaining one’s culture, but with intention and focus, organizations can come out of this time with even stronger and publicly recognizable cultures. Judi Brenstein, vice president of Global Support Groups with Groupon, reinforced this by saying, “Organizations need to plan how they help their people stay true to the company’s mission and values. Just as everyone was scrambling in the early days of COVID-19 to ensure business continuity, it is also important to create a culture continuity plan.” By being intentional, listening to your employees, and staying true to your mission, you can ensure that regardless of where your staff are located, your mission and values do not waver.

The post Eight Principles to Ensure Culture Continuity in a Physically Distanced World appeared first on Execs In The Know.