Coming home from any Customer Response Summit (CRS) event, there are always many amazing moments to reflect on. This past CRS was no different and I came home filled with inspiring stories, great ideas and new connections. However, this event left us with a moment that we did not expect.

At Execs In The Know much of the show, the content, and direction, is planned by me and my team. We know what is going to happen and I am always excited to see the reactions of our community members.  However, at this particular event in Chicago, Chad and I were the ones left surprised, humbled and grateful.

For the second year in a row we have had the privilege of being part of an employee recognition program – the FedEx Purple Promise Award. Ginna Sauerwein, who sits on our Execs In The Know Corporate Advisory Board, wanted to add the opportunity for the winners to be able to attend CRS as an additional benefit to winning the award, to gain exposure to thought leadership learnings, network and have some fun along the way. We loved the idea of having her team with us and to help celebrate the drive and passion for customer service that these leaders were being recognized for. It embodies everything that our conference is about.

This year, as we were getting ready to recognize her team, Ginna called Chad and I on stage and awarded us The Purple Promise. To those of you who know Chad and I, we are not usually short on words and she left us absolutely speechless (literally) – there were no words, just impending tears. You see, I knew exactly what this meant. Not only what kind of leader you needed to be to receive it in FedEx, and the impact that you needed to have made, but also that this was not an award typically handed out to a non-FedEx employee.

Each FedEx company manages its own FedEx Services Purple Promise Quality Award (PPQA) Program and has a process for selecting winners. For a team to be nominated in FedEx Services, the project must have:

– Alignment with strategic objectives

– Used QDM principles, tools, and followed the ABLE process (Access, Build, Launch, Evaluate). There are key steps and deliverables that must be met for each ABLE phase.

– Achievement of measurable results based on any of the following:

• Improved customer satisfaction
• Improved product and/or service quality
• Reduced process defects
• Improved process efficiency, waste elimination, or reduced variation
• Demonstrated team engagement

– Results that are sustainable and repeatable

An amazing honor to say the least. Ginna described why she felt Chad and I should receive this recognition.

“For FedEx, The Purple Promise/Quality Driven Management coin is a symbol of our commitment to continuous improvement and innovation through Quality Driven Management, and our commitment to delivering the Purple Promise every day to ensure continued success in the marketplace. The Purple Promise is, “I will make every FedEx Experience Outstanding”. Recipients of the coin have proven results going above and beyond to provide next-level service, and improvement to the customer experience and/or financial improvements. After working with Chad and Susan over the past 6 years, I have been overwhelmed by the work that they do to empower their customers (brands), to raise the bar for service and the learnings about tools and technology in the marketplace. The networks, knowledge and data they share through their partnership with us have inspired and impacted many brands to elevate their levels of service, and improve the lives of Customers. It is clear to me that the influence they have had on customer experience for so many brands was worthy of receiving this recognition.”

It’s hard to describe what an honor this was. To be recognized by a CX industry leader like FedEx is beyond measure. We feel blessed to be able to do what we love and help drive an industry that we are extremely passionate about. We are always so inspired by the leaders that we work with. They are committed, driven and engaged and we learn a great deal from them. They are not only driven by their business acumen, but also by their hearts. They care about their people and their communities, and we are proud to call them friends, as well as colleagues. To be recognized by FedEx for helping our industry and driving change is such an honor. Thank you Ginna and the team at FedEx for this incredible recognition.

The post The FedEx Purple Promise appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog from Aileen Allkins, Corporate Vice President – Customer Service & Support at Microsoft. To view the original post, click here. 

Last week I had the privilege of giving the opening keynote at the Customer Response Summit in Chicago. It was a great opportunity to connect, engage, and learn from other customer service leaders across many industries to hear what they’re doing to create delighted and loyal customers. In addition, I was able to share some insights into our digital transformation in Customer Service and Support at Microsoft and I’ve shared some highlights of my presentation below.

Our customers range from individual consumers to the biggest enterprises in the world. We support developers, gamers, government agencies, CTOs, small business owners, parents, grandparents, and everyone in between. Essentially, we support the world. Each year we have nearly 70 million assisted support interactions and over a billion unassisted support interactions across multiple channels including phone, chat, email, communities, and social. We have thousands of engineers and advocates across Microsoft employees and delivery partners, who provide deep technical support as well as non-technical support and customer service across more support and service scenarios than we can quantify.

When I started at Microsoft and took on the challenge to digitally transform the Customer Service & Support organisation, I quickly realised that with such a broad scope of customers and technologies, there was no single program, tool or technology that we could implement across the organisation that would magically make us “digital” and that the transformation needed to be broken down into smaller chunks.

At Microsoft, we took a step back to have a worldview on the impact of digital disruption. We are looking at how the intelligent cloud and mobile are changing how customers want to interact with companies. We are looking at ways to support customers who are using multiple, interconnected devices and how to help them with problems that potentially span multiple brands. We are also considering how customers are much more dependent upon us in a server-less world to ensure their business continuity as well as how we can help them achieve more with our technologies.

Regardless of the changes in technology available to us, and regardless of the world digitally transforming, when it comes to customer support some things remain the same. First and foremost, we would all prefer than customers never experienced problems and so had less need to contact Customer Support. Understandably, customers would prefer to avoid problems altogether and when they do have them, most would prefer to self-solve as the first step and want us to make it easy for them to do that.

We initially focused the first phases of our digital transformation on ‘Shifting Left’. Commonly known in the service and support industry, Shift Left strategies focus on moving issue resolution as close to the customer as possible, and we are doing that through resolving issues before they happen and providing improved solutions to self-solve. AI and machine learning provide the foundation for our Shift Left strategy and I truly believe the potential for what we can achieve is only limited by our imagination. Virtual agents are not new, but the machine learning and natural language technology behind them is significantly improving the value we can offer customers during self-solve scenarios.

The customer experience is at the forefront of our digital transformation and we want to provide customers with support how and when they want it. If, during their interaction with our virtual agent, a customer decides they would prefer to connect with a live agent, they can seamlessly switch at any time. Our virtual agent then takes on a supporting role to the live agent, providing all of the details the customer has already shared about their problem and offering additional solutions. The agent can then rank the quality of the recommendations and/or add their own, thereby continuing to teach our virtual agent and making it more valuable for the next customer.

We are progressing well on our digital transformation journey. Customer support scenarios, one by one, are being streamlined or automated with AI and machine learning being applied. What is most exciting to see is that with the time we save, we are able to add value to some of our customer interactions by conducting what we call ‘Achieve More’ conversations, helping customers get additional value from their Microsoft products and services. In our pilots, we see a significant increase in customer satisfaction on cases where we have this additional conversation and in many cases we also see increased consumption of our products and services.

Our digital transformation is a journey towards creating a world class support experience that delights customers and creates fans. By Shifting Left to reduce volume, we are able to focus on the more complicated support scenarios, providing our customers with more value and helping them achieve more with our products and technologies. Whilst our journey may take different paths and we will have lots of learnings along the way, one constant will remain the same – our customers will always be at the centre.

The post Creating Delighted and Loyal Customers Through our Digital Transformation appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog post from Ted Hunting, VP North America Marketing at Genesys. 

Next month, Execs In The Know will bring together service leaders from many of the largest global brands to advance the conversation on creating great customer experiences.  From past experience, it’s a very tight-knit group of CX leaders sharing best practices and ideas around omni-channel customer engagement, across all channels, and empowering employees to deliver great customer experiences.  This community is one of my favorites as the people are super-smart and passionate leaders who openly share their challenges, advice, and ideas –  it’s all about candid discussions and one-on-one engagement and networking.

As a member of the Execs In The Know CX Partner Advisory Board, on behalf of Genesys, I am excited to again join this group and will be leading an educational session with group brainstorming on “Journey Analytics and Effortless/Personal Keys for the Next Era of CX” on September 20th. The session will discuss how you can use journey analytics and new digital approaches to orchestrate an “outside in” customer journey that is more personal and predictive, while reducing effort. We will also share best practice use cases where AI, bots, digital self-service, and humans can work hand-in-hand. Join us to discuss and learn about this new era of effortless, personal omni-channel CX where old and new emerging channels come together and robots and humans work as one.

I highly recommend brands who truly understand the importance of customer experience to their business success and survival to join this group.  Execs In The Know is a well-respected organization that people turn to for advice and it’s unlike other similar events in the CX industry, due to the level of attendees and openness in communication. In attendance will be leading financial services firms, retailers, healthcare companies, hi-tech firms, hospitality companies, and utilities from across North America – both traditional leaders, but also some of the new disruptors changing business today. To learn more about joining visit https://execsintheknow.com/events/crs-chicago/ and follow @execsintheknow. And to learn more about Genesys, the industry’s #1 customer experience platform and recognized leader per Gartner and others, please visit http://www.genesys.com/about.  Or checkout some really awesome customer stories from CX leaders like Sabre.

Execs In The Know would like to thank Genesys who have been a long time supporter of the Customer Response Summit event, continue to be involved and valuable to our community of CX professionals, and truly care about seeing progression and enhancement in our industry. 

The post Customer Experience Leaders Share Innovative Ideas for the Next Era of CX: Customer Response Summit Chicago, September 19-21 appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest post from [24]7. For more information about [24]7, visit their website. 

TRUE OR FALSE?

America became independent on July 4, 1776. Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb.  Magellan was the first to circumnavigate the globe.

All myths.*

Chatbots are the greatest thing since sliced bread.**  All chatbots utilize artificial intelligence. Chatbots will replace humans.

All myths.

Chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) are all the rage in the area of customer service. Everyone wants one. A lot of people are claiming that chatbots will take over our industry. Will they make an impact?  Absolutely. Should you be evaluating how they could benefit your company and your customers? Definitely. Will chatbots and AI eliminate humans?  Nope, at least not anytime soon.

Debunking chatbot myths is not easy when there’s so much hype and hyperbole in the market today. Most every vendor now offers a chatbot of some sort and many companies are trying to build their own. But, it’s important to first determine what’s fact and what’s fiction, else you might end up investing time and resources on a dead-end project that only addresses part of its intended goal.

At Execs in the Know’s Customer Response Summit, we’ll establish a dialog that addresses these four popular chatbot myths and separates fact from fiction:

1) A chatbot can answer any question.

2) Any company can do artificial intelligence.

3) All chatbots are created equal.

4) Artificial intelligence eliminates the need for humans.

We’ll also discuss things you should consider when it comes to evaluating artificial intelligence and chatbot solutions with the goal of helping you become a myth buster.  We hope you’ll be able to join us on Tuesday, September 20 at the Customer Response Summit in Chicago to participate in the conversation!

Kevin Payne
Vice President of Marketing at [24]7

*The Declaration of Independence was announced on July 4, 1776. However, the war raged for another seven years before independence from England was finally granted on September 3, 1783.  The electric light bulb was invented by Sir Humphry Davy. Edison was the first one to find a filament that would burn for days at a time. Magellan died in the Philippines and made it only half way around the world. His second in command, Juan Sebastian Elcano, completed the journey.

**What is the greatest thing since sliced bread? I vote for Ben and Jerry’s “Cherry Garcia” but you can check out some other wacky ideas here.

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For those who worry that technology is doing irreparable harm to our day-to-day communication, here’s some good news. The art of conversation is not lost, it’s just evolving. In the customer experience call center world, we’re on the front lines of business to consumer communication disrupters, starting with digital channels like a company website and chat, to SMS-text, social media, advancing natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive learning, automation, and analytics. These tools bring tremendous opportunity to win and retain customers with better CX.

According to Gartner, 89% of companies are competing on CX, yet less than 10% of consumers think service from the call center is good. Today’s businesses need to improve service, be easier to do business with and open 24X7, and be consistent across multiple channels and digital devices with personalized interactions, empathy, and insight. Without this optimized service, brands risk becoming irrelevant to today’s customers, who show no loyalty. A Unified Customer Experience Strategy® brings a balance that leverages the latest digital innovation, while also cost-effectively improving service through conversations that make emotional connections with customers. This means understanding these three drivers: 

1) Customers’ expectations of service competence are higher every day, with world-class companies like Amazon and Apple setting an excellence standard that is leading with self-service and integrating human expertise when it adds value. Households have adopted digital and AI innovation as a way of life. Think “Hello Siri.” Starting your conversation with a bot is rapidly becoming the new norm. According to a recent Google study conducted by Northstar Research, more than half of U.S. teens and 41% of U.S. adults use voice search on a daily basis. A consistent customer experience that bridges channels is extremely important for Generation C—a demographic of connected customers  that represents today’s  buyer attitude and mindset. Bots, increasingly, provide a strong sense of reliability, consistency, and ease of use, which are critical to meet the demand for a unified customer experience strategy.

2) Conversations are driving commerce. “Conversational commerce” is a term coined by Uber’s Chris Messina in reference to the intersection of messaging apps and shopping. With customers interacting through messaging and chat apps, conversational interfaces have become mainstream, enabled increasingly by AI and bots. Today talking to a bot is more and more akin to connecting with a human. Bots employ NLP for more colloquial verbiage and appropriate tone, recognition and understanding, to increasingly replicate a human interaction. Culture and customization can be applied to mimic character and persona of human agents. And, with their ability to process language, chatbots are able to handle tedious tasks like data entry, scheduling, and other basic assistant-like tasks.Bots, however, are exception prone and can’t deliver on all fronts. For example, in Facebook’s recent launch of a bot API for its Messenger IM service only 30% of requests could be resolved entirely without a human stepping in, according to The Information, a Silicon Valley blog.  So the seamless integration of brains, or human assistance with bots, is critical to an optimized digital customer experience. 

3) Bots are assuming more menial service tasks, requiring service agents to evolve to more sophisticated tier 2 ambassador responsibilities. The ideal self-service approach has proven to be an intelligent integration of more empowered and empathetic human agents with the highly efficient bots. Whether front-end bot or bot-assisted agent, the key is to employ automation where it adds value through reduced customer effort (improving CSAT by guiding customers to the right answer fast), cost-containment, or revenue generation. Bot deployment frees up human labor for higher-minded, more emotional and complex decision making. According to a recent report by Horses for Sources, automation is making way for strong growth of highly and medium skilled personnel—with highly skilled positions in the service provider industry increasing by 56%, and medium-skilled by 8%. However, low-skilled, routine jobs drop 30% as many of these roles get phased out over the next 5 years:

Ultimately, today’s CX expectation is the right answer, fast: an authentic connection that’s also the right combination of automated self-service, driven by bot technology via the web and messaging, or via voice, integrated with assisted support from well-trained agents, or DigiAMBASSADORs. With a unified customer engagement strategy, service providers can customize targeted deployment of these solutions—seamlessly bridging any bot-brain gaps and driving real outcomes. The most intelligent business brands know that good customer experience today is as much about smart, personalized conversations as it’s ever been.

Interested in finding out more about this topic or HGS? HGS is one of the subject matter experts that will be sharing their insights and expertise at Customer Response Summit Chicago, September 19-21, 2017. CR Summit Chicago will feature keynotes from Amazon, Lyft, Square, and Microsoft. For more information about our leading event for CX professionals, visit our event website. 

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