Coveo was honored to join the Execs in the Know community at CRS Denver. As we spent time with fellow customer service and support leaders, we noticed some common themes in conversations, as well as during our panel with Ron Runyon, VP of Service Delivery – Americas at F5 Networks, Kal Kuchimanchi, Director Global Strategy & Central Operations – Customer Support at Uber and James Gallagher, VP of Customer Care and Fraud at Nordstrom.

1. Getting a Handle on Data is a High Priority

From data gaps to management to integration, one of the biggest obstacles we heard over and over to implementing a service transformation is data. As customers expect their experiences throughout the customer life cycle – whether with an agent or on a self-service community – to become more tailored, ensuring that the data carries through each channel seamlessly is paramount. But many leaders are still struggling.

2. AI is Exciting, But We’re Not Sure of the Yield Yet

From chatbots to voice assistants, AI and machine learning are ushering in a new era of customer support, and we need to see ROI. We heard the message loud and clear: the time to implement a strategic AI-powered solution to solve critical issues around CSAT and NPS is now.

3. We Need to Make Friends With Our IT Counterparts

Across the board, we heard that customer support leadership needs a partner for the dance, and that partner is the CIO organization. The IT organization needs to become a strategic and innovative partner for initiatives throughout the customer lifecycle.

4. Do We Know Enough About Our Customers?

Research has shown that customers expect personalization as a standard of service, but we’re still struggling to align our initiatives to the buyer and customer journey. What do they need across channels? How can data drive their experience in real time? Support leaders want answers to these questions.

5. It’s Time to Talk About Change Management?

We’re in a whole new world. With new technologies like machine learning and new expectations of customers, it can often feel like the only constant in the customer support world is change. Having a solid change management strategy and process in place is important now more than ever.

6. Agents Need to be Better Powered and Enabled

As we learn more about our customers, those insights need to be in the hands of the person who needs it most: the agents. Customers expect agents to know their history across channels, and their agents can be left in the dark with a frustrated customer without that information.

7. Show Us the Money

Money and resources are a constant roadblock, even as more and more C-suite leaders understand the critical role that customer success and support play in meeting overall business objectives. Don’t get “shiny object syndrome” when evaluating new options to increase CSAT and NPS, but focus technology investments on strategic initiatives overall.

8. The Issue of Scalability is Becoming More and More Important

This is an area where a technology initiative can help, such as using machine learning to power the experience customers have on your self-service community. As the customer base grows and customers’ expectations rise, support leaders need to plan for scaling their business.

9. We Have Too Many Channels and Too Much Content to Not Invest in Integration

Self-help content. Product sites. Chatbots. Corporate sites. The list can go on and on of the separate multiple channels, but for our customers, it’s one continuous, unified digital journey. It’s time to start treating our content strategy and customer digital experience that way.

10. It’s an Exciting Time to be a Customer Service and Support Leader

Customer support and experience is a rapidly growing field with ramifications into every other area of the business. There are days when it’s hard, but there are days when we know how much our work makes a difference for the people who matter most to us: our customers and employees.

One of the highlights of our panel was Ron Runyon sharing his story of “adaptive transformation” with F5 Networks. As the organization “disrupts itself in every area,” Ron’s team has skillfully and agilely implemented truly transformative initiatives throughout their customer lifecycle, including their implementation of Coveo. You can hear more about their service transformation by watching this video.

One of the first steps to beginning your service transformation is a self-service journey map. You can get started with developing yours with our free how-to guide and checklist. Download it here.

Guest post written by: Audrey Parent, Marketing Specialist at Coveo

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CRS Hollywood is set to take place at the beautiful Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort as attendees will learn, share, network, and engage to innovate while overlooking the one-of-a-kind Hollywood Beach. Guests are in for three days of collaborating with top-level executives from some of the world’s biggest brands with the shared goal of collectively setting the agenda for the future of CX. For 100 years, the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort has enchanted visitors with lavish amenities amidst a quaint, relaxing vibe. This 17-story venue inspired by the lyrics and lifestyle of Jimmy Buffett will set the stage for a year of inviting and educational beachfront Customer Response Summits.

Additionally, save the date for CRS San Diego at Hotel Del Coronado on October 5-7, 2020 as Customer Response Summit promises more insights into customer experience hot topics, powerful speakers, and breathtaking beaches on the West Coast. Stay tuned for more information to follow on CRS San Diego.

“We are excited to celebrate our 10-year anniversary and look at 2020 as a banner year to attend our Customer Response Summit events,” said Chad McDaniel, President and Co-Founder of Execs In The Know. “With powerful speakers in the lineup, we’re looking forward to setting the agenda for the next 10 years of customer experience excellence.”

Customer Response Summit is one of the world’s most interactive gatherings of customer experience leaders featuring execs from household brands seeking to expand their networks and take away key insights into how to delight their customers. Top-level brands and select Execs In The Know business partners and associates will be on hand to deliver spirited keynotes, interactive sessions, expert panel discussions, and data-driven case studies. Additionally, the event includes an exciting industry tour, the release of the latest Customer Experience Management Benchmark (CXMB) report to detail the hottest year-over-year trends within the industry, and so much more.

To register for CRS Hollywood, visit this link below:
https://www.cvent.com/events/crs-hollywood-florida/registration-4ef475911d9849d3bd12a4b23ca269da.aspx?fqp=true

If you are interested in becoming a part of our prestigious community of customer experience leaders, you can request to join our online community called Know It All (KIA) here: https://community.execsintheknow.com

About Execs In The Know
Execs In The Know is a global community of customer experience (CX) professionals focused on setting agenda for CX by providing opportunities for CX leaders to learn, share, network, and engage. Execs In The Know gives brands a platform to share and gain insights, benchmark their brand, stay on top of the latest trends in CX, and create lasting relationships with their peers – “Leaders Learning From Leaders.” Execs In The Know holds numerous live events each year including Customer Response Summit, Subject Matter Briefings, Lunch & Learns, and Leadership Dinners. They also offer industry content and thought leadership through their webinars, reports, Know It All online community, and various other social media groups. To learn more about Execs In The Know visit: www.execsintheknow.com.

Media Contact:
Gina Morkel
480-687-5326
gina@execsintheknow.com

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The new, sleek, and modernized website was designed with the CX leader in mind and offers relevant information and value propositions regarding all future events, including Customer Response Summits, Lunch & Learns, Subject Matter Briefings, and more. On the new site, EITK has also built out a more comprehensive, engaging Knowledge Center full of blog content, interactive webinars, white papers, brand spotlights, Customer Experience Benchmark Reports, and many other forms of thought leadership pieces. Users will also find more unique video content featuring key insights from some of the CX industry’s biggest brands as well as links to the KIA Online Community and Marketplace. Heading into 2020, Execs In The Know is positioned to provide the CX industry with more data-driven, thought-provoking, educational content than ever before to help set the agenda for the future of CX.

EITK’s new website redesign was built alongside the revamping of its exclusive online community Know It All (KIA). Together the Execs In The Know and KIA online sites provide a seamless marriage of solution-based content full of CX insights offering public and private information for CX leaders. While the Execs In The Know website offers educational industry-specific content as well as live and online events on a number of topics such as outsourcing, the gig economy, and artificial intelligence, KIA adds its own unique touch to the online experience. The KIA online community and marketplace extends the experience by providing the world’s most collaborative and engaging CX environment where leaders share information, network online, and engage with each other and content – a valuable leaders learning from leaders experience. Together, the redesigned ExecsInTheKnow.com and KIA online community and marketplace build out an all-encompassing online experience to provide valuable takeaways and actionable information to executive-level CX leaders.

“We are very excited for our new online experience for our CX leaders,” said Chad McDaniel, President and Co-Founder, Execs In The Know. “With progressive leaders in our community, our comprehensive online experience is foundational to providing our community with thought-provoking experiences and represents just one of the many ways we are driving thoughtful discussion and setting the agenda for CX.”

Execs In The Know sets the stage for many new offerings in store for 2020, including the launch of the new CX Insight Magazine featuring thoughtful, engaging think pieces from Execs In The Know along with contributed articles from industry experts. This is just one example of how EITK and KIA are taking the next step in arming its community of leaders with information they can use to enhance strategies to provide their customers with improved experiences.

To subscribe for future event and content updates, visit this link below:
https://www2.execsintheknow.com/JointheMailingList

If you are a corporate brand interested in becoming a part of our prestigious community of customer experience leaders, you can request to join Know It All here: https://community.execsintheknow.com

About Execs In The Know
Execs In The Know is a global community of customer experience (CX) professionals focused on excellence in customer experience. Execs In The Know gives brands a platform to share and gain insights, benchmark their brand, stay on top of the latest trends in CX, and create lasting relationships with their peers – “Leaders Learning From Leaders.” Execs In The Know holds numerous live events each year including Customer Response Summit, Subject Matter Briefings, Lunch & Learns, and Leadership Dinners. They also offer industry content and thought leadership through their webinars, reports, Know It All online community, and various other social media groups. To learn more about Execs In The Know visit: www.execsintheknow.com.

Media Contact:
Gina Morkel
480-687-5326
gina@execsintheknow.com

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Retail giants like Pier 1 are incorporating bots into human-led conversations to collect repetitive information. But bot usage is not just limited to large corporations. Companies like lifestyle clothing brand Stio spoke about the company’s bot journey, citing that the implementation of messaging alone reduced the number of phone calls by 9% within the first month and the introduction of bots saving 83 priceless agent hours within 2 weeks.

With so many businesses rapidly adopting bots and quickly realizing benefits to their bottom line, the question isn’t if you should implement bots, but how and when. Here are three things to consider that may help you demystify those questions.

Why Do Bots Work

Bots are a programmable interface used to complete tasks once done by humans but work best when they work alongside human agents. The difference between a bot doing a simple task and a human agent doing the same task is that bots do it faster, and usually error-free. For example, bots can fill out a form, send an email to customers based on a predetermined trigger, or respond to a simple customer request, leaving human agents to the work that only humans can do.

Most bots are simply a set of rules that determine how a question should be handled. Bots work because those sets of rules are programmed by the humans who understand what requests typically require a simple, contained response, which ones need to be escalated, and which ones need to be routed to specialists. 

Bots and what they can do should not be oversimplified, however. Bots are capable of handling more complex tasks such as identifying keywords that prioritize conversations over others. For example, bots can be told to prioritize conversations that contain the words “buy” or “purchase” over conversations that contain words such as “return” to enable human agents to convert more sales.

Where to Implement Bots

Bots are making such a substantial impact because they can be implemented across a broad spectrum of industries in a multitude of departments to address a myriad of situations. Credit Unions are using bots to open accounts and process loans faster. Retailers are using bots for pre-sales service and post-sales support. Travel and hospitality are utilizing bots to book rooms and amenities and even enhance the guest’s stay by providing outbound notifications. You name it, bots are likely already doing it. 

Quiq believes that bots work for and with everyone in the organization, even other bots. With Quiq’s messaging software, bots can transfer conversations to human agents, queues, or even to other bots – at any point in the conversation: beginning, middle, or end. Managers are able to view the productivity of bot-owned conversations, just like they can monitor human agents. In fact, agents and managers can observe bot conversations and take over the conversation from the bot if needed. 

Don’t pigeon-hole your bots into just one task or department. Don’t even constrain your bot(s) to one part of the customer conversation. Bots can and should seamlessly work throughout the entire customer experience in every department. You can orchestrate a bot strategy to work seamlessly across your organization. 

When to Implement a Bot

For many Quiq clients, implementing web chat and/or messaging has been the impetus to launch bots. With so many customers eager to engage with a company through digital channels like SMS/text messaging, web chat, Apple Business Chat, and social channels like Facebook and Twitter, incorporating bots into the conversation is a natural next step. 

While some things, like trying snowshoeing for the first time, could be approached with a “Let’s see where this goes” attitude, bot building is not one of those things. We recommend you plan the experience you’d like to deliver before sitting down to configure your bot.  

Examine the moments in customer conversations where additional resources could be most useful to a human agent. A bot could start a conversation by gathering customer information or inquiry type so that the conversation can be properly routed. A bot could be introduced in the middle of a conversation to ask diagnostic questions or even end the conversation to gauge satisfaction.

At Quiq, we suggest you take a look at all of your digital channels and understand the traffic from each. Understand which channels will have to carry the biggest load for conversations and consider if each channel will need a different bot experience. Once you’ve thoughtfully planned out the experience you’d like your bot to deliver you’re ready to launch.

Bring Bots to Life

Actually launching a bot doesn’t necessarily take any coding skills. Bringing bots to life within your organization can be as easy as clicking and dragging if-then statements, which is essentially how Quiq’s bots are designed. 

At Quiq, we’ve worked with enough clients, big and small, to provide the guidance necessary to implement bots across an organization. If bots still seem a bit bewildering, we’d be happy to walk you through our bot strategy and Quiq’s Messaging software so you can get started on your bot journey.

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

To learn more about this topic, register to listen to the replay of the Execs In The Know and Quiq webinar, Cut Through The Noise: How To Bring Bots to Life, featuring corporate brands – Nintendo and Stio. This webinar was originally hosted on November 19, 2019.

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Entry provided by Ted Hunting- Senior Director North
America and Asia Pacific Marketing and Global Demand Generaion for Genesys

After 10+ trips to Disneyworld over the years I remember when my kids were very young being left with the brand impression “they beat your customer experience expectation”.  Back then it was personal touches like the “princess breakfast” in the Cinderella Castle for my daughter or the special seating for a water show that accompanied a dinner reservation.  Another time at Disneyland, I was actually shocked and surprised to be approached by Walt Disney’s daughter at dinner as she sat down with us to see how I liked the wine from the winery she owns in Napa.  To paraphrase the Disney movie:  “Be our guest, be our guest, put our service to the test”. But now and going forward the great customer experience will be made possible via technology as the key enabler to let businesses win and grow – and I saw it recently at Gartner’s biggest CIO/IT summit.

Hearing from technology luminaries at the Gartner ITxpo at Disneyworld where technology trends were discussed among CIOs and IT leaders with keynotes from tech leaders such as Facebook’s co-founder, the #3 leader at Google, and Microsoft’s Steve Balmer, a new picture for the future of the customer experience emerged.  The future – like when I first visited Disneyworld many years ago – will be centered on one key business outcome:  “meet or beat your customer experience expectation”.  Technology is now central to the customer experience.  Let me share some observations from the past week to illustrate…

Gartner luminaries talked about all future businesses will be totally driven “digitally”, coupled with mobile technology.  Businesses will win by making the most of “business moments”.  From a customer experience standpoint we see this today from customer experience innovators like Genesys:   knowing who someone is when they reach a contact center (e.g. via a database dip via contact center software to existing CRM systems), servicing them according to their preferred channel (e.g. confirming an order via a text message), routing them to the agent or business worker who can best help them (e.g. a bank’s high net-worth client routed to her advisor bypassing the IVR – or as our customer UPMC does, routing a patient to their “Health Concierge”).  Gartner also predicts that in the near future wearable technology will be everywhere.  It started with fitness devices and GPS watches and now its Google Glass, iWatches from Apple or Samsung but headed soon to where even clothing has a chip.  Gartner predicts any item over $100 will someday have a chip in it, allowing the “Internet everywhere” world to make for better business moments.

Now let’s relate this to Disney and what they rolled out while I was at the Gartner event. It’s the future today.  Ironically, EPCOT which now looks a little dated compared to when it opened was meant originally to showcase what the future would like someday – it stood for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.  While there I was shown the future of customer experience in the Disney “Magic Bands”.  Upon checking in to my hotel I was given wearable technology, a band with a RF chip.  So what was the magic and how did it illustrate Gartner’s “digital” and “business moments” from a customer experience standpoint?

• The magic band opened my room door as a room key.
• The magic band was programmed with my history –  it knew me.
• The magic band let me make charges with it.
• I went online or on my  smartphone and could make dinner reservations for myself and co-workers at  the conference – reservations were stored in the band and also accessible  via my smartphone.
• One evening I had free and I  went to find a gift for my daughter in the Magic Kingdom with my magic band.  I went online to My Disney Experience and also downloaded the  “My Experience” app to test it out and was able to make my FastPasss  reservations for Space Mountain and Splash Mountain since I only had a few hours.  It was all stored in the band and I did more in 3 hours than I have ever done at Disney before.
• At check-in I was invited to be in a test at their new “Be Our Guest” restaurant.  I ordered a dinner online, they knew me when I arrived from my band, and when I sat down they said “sit where you want well find you”.  The band even has geo location  in it.  They arrived minutes later with my sandwich.
• When I used the band and bought  my now grown daughter a new Pooh animal for the one that she has on her bed that now looks very tired from many years ago, the cashier asked if  Pooh “needed a rest as he could be sent to my room or I could pick him up at the park later – or you can take him on an adventure today”.  I  smiled and headed off to Space Mountain and Splash Mountain before the  park closed with Pooh in hand.

Disney and Gartner together were a strange coincidence.  I found what Gartner was talking about during the keynotes was exactly what I was getting a glimpse of from Disney.  The future of the customer experience was seen today courtesy of Gartner and Disney.  Today, like 20 years ago, Disney “beat my expectations” when it came to the customer experience – only this time it was enabled via customer experience technology.  It’s why I love the technology industry and companies like Genesys that are at the forefront of leading the way toward great customer experiences, as are the customers we work with everyday.  “Digital” and making the most of  “business moments” are the future – starting now.

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Execs in the Know is pleased to announce Tom Weiland, Vice-President of Global Customer Service -Amazon, Jasmine Green, Vice President, Chief Customer Advocate, Nationwide Insurance and Dan Balistierri Vice President, Global Service & Experience, MasterCard as the Featured Speakers for the Customer Response Summit -San Diego, February 3rd-5th, 2014.

Tom Weiland Vice-President of Global Customer Service Amazon Click here for bio

Jasmine Green Vice-President, Chief Customer Advocate Nationwide Insurance Click here for bio

Dan Balistierri Vice President- Global Service & Experience MasterCard Worldwide Click here for bio

Tom, Jasmine and Dan join a speaking faculty of Brands that are committed to adopting emerging channels and providing a superior Customer Experience for the Connected Consumer. The faculty includes:

The Summit will also feature the release of our 2013 Customer Experience Benchmark Study with our research partners at Digital Roots. This in-depth study will explore how Brands are adapting, implementing and planning for emerging channels in their Customer Care strategies.

In addition, the Summit will feature a one day pre- conference training seminar developed and delivered by the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) that will focus on the “Foundations for the Future Customer Experience Center.” The Customer Experience Management Training seminar will be facilitated by ICMI co-founder, Brad Cleveland.

Additional Links: ICMI Training Download Agenda View our speakers Link

Join The Conversation with Execs In The Know:

Chad McDaniel
President
Execs In the Know – A Division of M.E.R. Inc.
866-991-3555 (toll-free)
chad@execsintheknow.com
www.execsintheknow.com
www.customerresponsesummit.com

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, December 6, 2013 – Execs in the Know is once again proud to bring the Customer Response Summit, a thought leadership forum, to the Customer Care community. The Summit, one of three held annually, will take place February 3-5th in San Diego. For the first time, the event will feature the Customer Experience Management Training seminar which will be facilitated by ICMI co-founder, Brad Cleveland. This one day pre- conference training seminar developed and delivered by the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) will focus on the “Foundations for the Future Customer Experience Center.” It will be held on the first day of the event, Monday, February 3rd, 2014, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego, California.

The offering is a real need identified through the results of the 2012 Customer Experience Management Benchmark Study. The study conducted by Execs in the Know and their research partner, Digital Roots, focuses on how companies are supporting the Connected Consumer through emerging channels. In the 2012 study “70% of Customer Care leaders identified themselves as requiring additional training and development on emerging channels and how to support them”.

“This was an alarmingly high number,” states Susan McDaniel, Owner and Co-Founder at Execs in the Know. “We determined that there was a void in the market for leadership training that bridged the impact of emerging channels to the operational and strategic needs of our Customer Experience Executive community. This new training seminar is built for and around the needs of Customer Care leaders. Attendees are encouraged to add this exclusive Customer Experience Leadership Training seminar to their conference experience”

After extensive research, Execs in the Know partnered with ICMI as the global leader in providing comprehensive resources for customer management professionals. Having trained the full spectrum of customer care professional from executive level down through agents, ICMI was uniquely qualified to design a seminar specifically focused on the changing strategies required around people, processes and technology as a result of emerging channels.

“This unique seminar, designed specifically for the Execs in the Know community, will establish a foundation for todays’ evolving contact center! You’ll walk away enabled to implement what you learn at the Conference,” states Sarah Stealey Reed, Content Director for ICMI. “We’re pleased to confirm that it will be facilitated by Brad Cleveland, who is a sought-after speaker and consultant, and was one of ICMI’s two founding partners. Brad has worked across the globe with some of today’s most celebrated companies and he has an inside view into the advancements that are forever changing customer service.”

For more information about the Customer Response Summit and the cost to attend the “Foundations for the Future Customer Experience Center” training seminar in San Diego please visit www.customerresponsesummit.com or contact Susan McDaniel at susan@execsintheknow.com or Sarah Stealey Reed at sreed@icmi.com

For more information about the Connected Consumer Benchmarking Series or to request a copy of the reports please contact Susan McDaniel at susan@execsintheknow.com or Jason Wolcott at jwolcott@digitalroots.com.

About Execs in the Know

For over a decade, Execs in the Know has built a reputation of excellence in the Customer Experience Industry and a worldwide community of over 40,000 customer experience professionals. We advocate excellence in the Customer Experience which is only possible through knowledge, drive and the power of people. You will find these people in the Execs in the Know Community. Execs in the Know connects people to great industry content, thought leadership, current industry development, peer to peer collaboration, networking and industry employment opportunities. Their bi-yearly Customer Response Summit, Blog Talk Radio, Industry Benchmarking and blogs are a few of the ways that Customer Experience leaders take advantage of the knowledge and power in the Execs in the Know Community.

For more information, visit www.execsintheknow.com

About ICMI

The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) is the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals – from frontline agents to executives – who wish to improve customer experiences and increase efficiencies at every level of the contact center. Since 1985, ICMI has helped more than 50,000 organizations in 167 countries through training, events, certification, consulting, and informational resources. ICMI’s experienced and dedicated team of industry insiders, trainers, and consultants are committed to helping you raise the strategic value of your contact center, optimize your operations and improve your customer service. ICMI is a part of UBM (ubm.com), a global live media and B2B communications, marketing service and data provider.

For more information, visit www.icmi.com

About Digital Roots

Digital Roots is changing the game of customer relationship management in social media with proprietary software and a simple objective – to help relevant brands solidify roots in a digital world. Positioning brands everywhere customers communicate online, they help companies build relationships and improve business results through increased revenue, retention and enhanced reputation. Dedication to innovation and excellence is reflected in everything they do, from customized products to end-to-end program management.

For more information, visit www.digitalroots.com

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Amazon, Mastercard and Nationwide Insurance announced as featured speakers for Customer Response Summit in San Diego.

Customer Care leaders to engage in a dynamic 2 day summit focused on the current state and evolution of the Customer Experience.

Execs in the Know is pleased to announce Tom Weiland, Vice-President of Global Customer Service -Amazon, Jasmine Green, Vice President, Chief Customer Advocate, Nationwide Insurance and Dan Balistierri Vice President, Global Service & Experience, MasterCard as the Featured Speakers for the Customer Response Summit -San Diego, February 3rd-5th, 2014.

Execs in the Know is once again proud to bring the Customer Response Summit, a thought leadership forum, to the Customer Care community. The Summit, one of three held annually, will take place February 3-5th in San Diego at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego, California.

“We are just thrilled to have such a great lineup of speakers for CRS in San Diego” states Chad McDaniel, President at Execs in the Know. “The depth and experience of this group will provide great thought leadership and inspiration to our attendees.”

Our featured speakers join a speaking faculty of Brands that are committed to adopting emerging channels and providing a superior Customer experience for the Connected Consumer. The faculty includes:

The summit will also feature the release of our 2013 Customer Experience Benchmark Study with our research partners at Digital Roots. This in-depth study will explore how Brands are adapting, implementing and planning for emerging channels in their Customer Care strategies.

In addition, the summit will feature a one day pre- conference training seminar developed and delivered by the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) that will focus on the “Foundations for the Future Customer Experience Center.” The Customer Experience Management Training seminar will be facilitated by ICMI co-founder, Brad Cleveland.

For more information about the Customer Response Summit and the cost to attend the Summit in San Diego please visit www.customerresponsesummit.com or contact Susan McDaniel at susan@execsintheknow.com

About Execs in the Know

For over a decade, Execs in the Know has built a reputation of excellence in the Customer Experience Industry and a worldwide community of over 40,000 customer experience professionals. They are recognized as a catalyst for driving critical thinking, knowledge sharing, training and networking for Customer Experience professionals and Customer Centric Brands. The Customer Response Summit, Blog Talk Radio, Industry Benchmarking and blogs are a few of the ways that Customer Experience leaders take advantage of the knowledge and power in the Execs in the Know Community.

For more information, visit www.execsintheknow.com

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The post The talk of San Diego appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Created by Alyssa Pitura- Marketing Coordinator, 24-7 InTouch

The 22^nd Winter Olympics opened Friday, February 7, 2014 in Sochi, Russia. This year’s games features 2,900 athletes from 87 countries. Forty thousand people had the opportunity to watch the Opening Ceremony live, while 31.7 million watched the time delayed coverage in the U.S.A. on NBC alone. Millions more around the world will tune in over the course of the next two weeks to cheer on the athletes representing their home countries. This is an exciting time! For any country involved, the Olympics evoke a deep sense of pride for those competing or watching. It truly is a display of the best of the best athletes in winter sports, either working together on a team, or finding a way by themselves, to achieve their ultimate goals.

This theme of working to be the best you can be to achieve your goals is one that also resonated from last week’s Customer Response Summit in San Diego. The event, hosted by Execs in the Know, ran February 3^rd to 5^th and had over 200 attendees and top keynote speakers from brands like Nintendo, Sony, and Porsche. The interactive, thought-provoking show focused on themes such as using VoC data, customer mapping, mobile, multichannel, and omnichannel, but above all – how to prepare for the customer of the future.

One of the main messages that we took away from CRS is to strive to be the best. Numerous speakers touched on the idea, including the opening keynote speaker, Tom Weiland, Vice President of Global Customer Service at Amazon. Of course it is important to develop a multichannel/omnichannel strategy and to use VoC data to make adjustments to service accordingly. However, data alone will not give a complete picture of your organization. Before you can act on your findings, it is important to have the right people in place. Just like our Olympic athletes, there are certain skill sets and cultural traits suited for each role on your team – search out the best of the best. Once you filter and train the right people, and put them in a position to succeed under the right leaders and with the best technology, you can then start to focus on using daily metrics, root cause analysis, and any extra insight to improve service and strengthen strategy.

What works for one brand, may not work for another, and instead of constantly comparing ourselves to competitors, we should be focusing on what we can do internally to strengthen our organizations. Empower and trust employees; let them own their roles. Enforce the right principles and foster a positive environment; encourage everyone in the company to be passionate and really live and breathe the brand. Finally, listen to your customers and innovate accordingly.

The Olympic motto is made up of three Latin words, Citius- Altius – Fortius, which means Faster- Higher-Stronger. In order to achieve our goals faster, reach higher, and have a stronger business we need to be able to trust in our teammates. It’s important to empower our contact center agents so they can perform at the highest level. Let them know what an important role they play! Just as we all have pride for our countries and the athletes representing our countries at the Olympic games, we need to be proud of our brands and everything they represent – services, products, employees- and strive to ensure our customers feel the same way.

Perhaps the future of customer experience is not the latest greatest technology, but to rely on the experiences and skills of our internal organizations. To anticipate customer needs, by being present and connected, through an authentic customer experience.

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