So here’s the question: How will you lead your organization into 2026 and beyond?

That’s the conversation at the heart of Customer Response Summit (CRS) San Diego, hosted by Execs In The Know. What began as a small gathering of passionate leaders has grown into a thriving community, one where CX leaders from the world’s leading brands come together to ignite ideas, exchange hard-earned insights, challenge the status quo, and collaborate on the future of customer experience.

This year, we celebrate 15 years of elevating CX through honest conversations, lasting connections, and bold thinking. And while we’re proud of the journey so far, we’re even more energized about what’s ahead. Join us as we collectively shape the future of CX: grounded in curiosity, courage, and connection.

Come discover why attendees are saying that if they could “attend only one conference a year, it would always be CRS.”

A Summit Built for Leaders by Leaders

CRS is about stepping into a room where the future of CX is being written. Every keynote, panel, case study, and breakout session is built for practitioners, designed to cut through the noise and focus on the challenges and opportunities you’re facing right now.

You’ll connect with brands leading the way in customer experience. They’re the peers making bold moves in real time, and they’re ready to share what’s working (and what isn’t).

Featured Speakers

The Summit’s keynote lineup features executives pushing boundaries inside their organizations and industries. Their candid stories of transformation, missteps, and breakthroughs will challenge you to rethink what’s possible in your own strategy.

• Kimberly Dorsett, Executive Vice President, Head of Truist Care Centers, Truist
• Travis Brown, Senior Director, Campus Teams, CCV
• Maureen Barnett, Vice President, Global Fan Experience, Fanatics
• Dawn Spring, Senior Vice President, Global Member Support, Peloton

You’ll also hear from leaders at:

• Southwest Airlines
• Chegg
• ClassPass
• The Home Depot
• Tripadvisor
• TD Bank
• Nestlé Purina
• State Farm
• The Black Tux
• Microsoft
• …and many more!

View the Speaker Lineup

What to Expect: Strategies, Stories, and Space to Think Bigger

CRS San Diego is designed to help you answer the questions that keep CX leaders up at night:

• How do we deploy AI responsibly without eroding customer trust?
• What new skills will the workforce of the future require, and how do we retrain at speed?
• How do we responsibly use customer data while navigating rising privacy regulations?
• How do we strike the right balance between automation and humanity?
• Where should we double down, and what’s safe to let go?
• What’s the next big disruptor we’re not seeing yet?

What’s In It for You

• A practitioner-built agenda. Every session is grounded in real-world challenges, whether that’s scaling global care, sharpening KPIs that matter, or navigating workforce transformation in an AI-driven world.
• Strategies you can use immediately. Case studies, frameworks, and templates that translate directly into your playbook.
• Stories from the front lines. Honest perspectives from brands navigating the same roadblocks you’re facing.
• High-signal networking. Just candid dialogue with senior leaders who understand the stakes and are generous with their insights.
• Hands-on working time. Breakouts and workshops designed to pressure-test ideas, identify opportunities, and leave with next steps you can bring back to your team.

Why Leaders Keep Coming Back to CRS

• Clarity on your roadmap. Walk away knowing where to focus for 2026.
• Faster execution. Borrow proven playbooks to reduce time-to-value on your initiatives.
• Better alignment. Bring back actionable insights that help rally cross-functional teams.
• A trusted network. Build relationships you can tap long after the conference.

As John Caldwell, Senior Director of Team Member Service Centers, put it: “There is no better place to meet peers in the industry and partners that can help you overcome the big problems we all are facing.”

The CRS Difference

For 15 years, Execs In The Know has built a community defined by authenticity, generosity, and shared purpose. Here, leaders drop the pretense. They share setbacks as openly as successes. They lean on each other for perspective, advice, and ideas. And they keep those conversations going well beyond the event itself.

Why Now

The pressure to deliver faster, more innovative, more human customer experiences isn’t slowing down. If anything, the expectations on CX leaders are intensifying. But the best breakthroughs don’t happen in isolation. They happen when leaders come together to wrestle with tough questions, swap unfiltered insights, and leave with renewed conviction.

That’s what CRS San Diego delivers: three days of real-world learning, honest connection, and strategic clarity.

You belong in the room. Let’s make it happen.

Plan Your Experience

• Preview the agenda
• See our featured speakers
• Browse FAQs
• Register Now

Hotel Room Block Deadline: Wednesday, August 27, 5 PM PT
Rooms at the InterContinental San Diego are limited—reserve yours now to stay steps from the action.

The post Shape Your CX Roadmap for 2026 and Beyond at Customer Response Summit San Diego, Sept. 17-19, 2025 appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Each “customer” had different goals, expectations, and pain points, and it was the job of the attendees to guide them through the booking process as quickly and easily as possible through this journey mapping activity. During the panel discussion prior to breaking into groups, panelists noted the key considerations for journey mapping to be non-linear, rely on data, and contain many variables.

The six different customer personas were:

Ethan: The budget traveler who is always on the go, both for work and pleasure

Kate: The tech-savvy business woman who works hard and rarely takes vacations

Doris: The grandmother who loves to connect with people and is very involved with her family

Dave: The do-it-all father who is always busy and heavily influenced by ads and what other parents say

Betty: The new mother of two babies who is heavily involved in her online mom groups

Mary: The millennial law student and part-time waitress with little time for herself

The panel described the process of journey mapping by highlighting the importance of looking at the experience from end-to-end, finding milestones, and figuring out what happens at each junction to examine what is working and where there is untapped opportunity. During the exercise, attendees mapped along five different customer journey stages – awareness, considerations, purchase, post-purchase, and pre-arrival. Collectively we dove into the completed journey maps and evaluated the various responses to get a better idea of what drives decision-making processes from a CX leader’s perspective, and below is what we found.

Word of Mouth Still Matters

A few of the personas involved in the exercise had attendees design their journey maps with a parent, or middle-aged buyer in mind, and each map showed that word of mouth is still a crucial aspect to a customer’s journey.

Attendees fleshed out their journey maps for Dave (a father) under the presumption that he would likely seek out the opinions of other parents as influential factors in his journey. Groups also felt that Betty (a new mom) would probably follow suit and might even go a step further and seek out the opinions of those who are a part of a mom group or blog. Doris (a grandmother) mapped out to prefer voice communication and to be influenced by personal recommendations.

Technology can provide many wonderful luxuries in 2020, but it’s impossible to replicate the value of the spoken word from a trusted source. The younger crowd values word of mouth. Brands realize this, only they see that persona’s discussions happening more often through a different channel.

Nearly Every Map Documented Social Media as an Awareness Channel

Aside from Doris’ (the grandmother’s) mapping, all the other personas were partly designed with social media as a key awareness channel, particularly for the youngest personas. In many cases, this is now the most important channel when it comes to raising awareness for a brand.

Social media is a perfect tool for connecting with customers who haven’t heard of you yet. PPC advertisements and other campaigns can quickly show value to relevant users within the target audience.

Even though social media can serve as an incredibly effective tool at every stage of the buyer’s journey, we noticed it show up most consistently in the Awareness category, as perhaps this is where major brands still find it to be most impactful.

The Value of Celebrity Endorsements

In 2015, Microsoft released a study that showed how human beings now have an attention span of roughly eight seconds, which is less than that of a goldfish. Attention spans have been on a gradual decline, and are continuing to do so.

This plays directly into the value of celebrity endorsements. In advertising, a celebrity endorsement is an impactful way to grab attention, establish credibility, provide an associative benefit of the product, ensure higher degrees of recall within the customer, and leverage the love and adoration the celebrity’s fans have for them as a person to sway fans towards the brand. In an era where we all have 8-second attention spans, any method that consistently grabs eyeballs and establishes value immediately is a method worth implementing.

Our attendees knew that, as a good portion of the journey maps showed celebrity endorsements as consistent influences, namely with Mary’s (the millennial’s) journey maps. As a member of a younger demographic looking to book a spring break trip, Mary was mapped to be influenced largely by celebrities, trends, or Instagram influencers.

Most Common Thought or Feeling: Excitement

A critical part of the journey mapping exercise was to keep the customer’s thoughts and feelings in mind through each stage of the journey, both positive and negative. The most common feeling we saw, by far, was excitement.

Excitement was most prevalent during the awareness and pre-arrival stages of the journey, understandably so (as no money is spent during these stages). There were some mixed emotions during the middle stages of the journey maps, as customers were worried about getting the best deals possible, overwhelmed by a flurry of options, unsure if they made the correct decision, and at times even a bit frustrated with the process in general and how long it takes.

The emotional aspect from a customer’s point of view may vary from one industry to another, so it is always crucial to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes at this part of the exercise. Most purchases are not as fun as booking a vacation, and therefore not as exciting, so to map them out as such might be biased and wouldn’t make the most of the exercise. That being said, it was interesting to see what negative feelings the attendees would envision customers having despite buying something so exciting.

Wrap-Up

Customer Engagement Live is always a fun, collaborative way to get inside the minds of our attendees at Customer Response Summit to see the processes that have made their brands so successful be put to use on the spot. In this installment, we learned so much about how brands shift processes to accommodate for each persona, which proved to be an impactful new wrinkle in this year’s session. We can’t thank Interactions enough for providing such an organized, creative, and engaging activity for our attendees and we can’t wait until Customer Response Summit: Coronado, CA where we will host the next Customer Engagement Live session.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Blog post, written by: Execs In The Know and featuring the Customer Engagement Live Session at Customer Response Summit, Hollywood-FL, presented by Interactions

The post Live Customer Journey Mapping Insights from CRS Hollywood appeared first on Execs In The Know.

With so much game-changing information in such a short amount of time, we know CRS can be a lot to digest – so we’d like to recap ten of Hollywood’s most memorable takeaways from all the spirited keynotes, panel discussions, breakout sessions, and overall recurring themes and topics of conversation that made this particular Customer Response Summit one for the ages.

1. Operational Preparedness: Addressing Global Impacts to Your CX Operational Readiness

Obviously with the recent unfortunate worldwide circumstances regarding the coronavirus, industries of all types are having to look inward to figure out how to keep internal processes on track during this unusual, uncertain timeline that came out of left field.

At CRS, we proactively faced the elephant in the room by starting the conversation on how to deal with the impacts of coronavirus on the CX industry. As such a new development, there is a lot of fear and uncertainty around what to expect. No sessions focused on the topic, but many conversations were had among those who were thankfully able to still make it to Hollywood despite the virus bringing on plenty of travel issues for people around the world.

To continue the conversation and pull together as a community, EITK hosted  a webinar on March 11^th with some of our most respected board members and partners to help execs gain a clearer understanding on operational preparedness. Nobody could have seen this coming, therefore it shed light on the importance of learning about questions you should be asking now and gaining insights, hearing perspectives, and discussing considerations for the short and long term. This webinar is available on replay and a Virtual Briefing Series is now scheduled to continue the collaboration amongst CX Leaders through this difficult time.

2. Happy Employees Are Still The Way to Generate Happy Customers

During one of our panels, a question was asked about how call center skills and training have evolved over the past five years and the impact that it has had on the hiring process. With so much change towards becoming more of an omnichannel world, call centers have more tools and resources than ever, which subsequently provide more opportunity for agents to develop various skill sets and hone their craft by keeping up with industry trends to best serve the customer.

In response to this, one panelist shed light on the importance of understanding expectations and recognizing the differences of how people learn. Being too rigid can prevent call centers from getting the most out of their agents, which becomes a major issue due to the tremendous cost of mis-hiring.

There is no one-size-fits-all call center agent, and it is imperative to make it as easy as possible to onboard, train, and train agents. Having these internal processes in place will prevent companies from feeling as if they mis-hired, when it’s possible they hired the correct person but never put them in the right position to thrive. This panelist noted how many agents do not want to be call center agents forever. With so much opportunity, agents nowadays are hungry to learn new tools and advance their careers. If your call center doesn’t allow them to do that, you may lose an A+ player you were unaware was even under your employ.

3. The Importance of Journey Mapping

Our always exciting and interactive Customer Engagement Live session for this Summit was focused on journey mapping. Attendees were broken into groups to explore the best ways to provide customer care to various buyer personas in the travel space.

The panel discussion on this topic generated a mixed bag of approaches to journey mapping, which made it a perfect topic for Customer Engagement Live. We learned about how one company makes sure to utilize all areas of their organization to empathize with the customer and get a broader approach focused on customer pain points. This process shed light on the fact that many of the company’s customers were having to deal with as many as 15 agents at a time and having to tell their story to each one, highlighting the need for a new approach. We learned how another company’s journey mapping strategy was born of crisis and focused on supply chain, which led to the creation of a CX taskforce. Another highlighted the process of reverse engineering by working with the end goal in mind since getting started was the hardest part of this company’s strategy.

There is no single way to handle journey mapping since many customers have different needs and preferences depending on industry, and it is always great to see how peers are handling putting the customer first. We can’t wait to show you a whole lot more of this session when we release our piece on Customer Engagement Live takeaways, where we’ll examine all the responses and insights that came from the groups who participated. Stay tuned.

4. Artificial Intelligence: Is it the Right Choice For Everyone?

It is evident that while AI adoption is increasing, we heard in Hollywood why it’s not for everyone. As with everything, it really depends on the state of the business, the goals, defined opportunities, and outcome expectations.

On one end of the spectrum, one of our Shop Talk sessions gave an interesting look into debunking some of the myths around AI with two myths being heavily discussed.

Myth #1: Technology isn’t quite ready to be the default.

Myth #2: Many customers would rather speak with a human.

This Shop Talk breakout session explored one example where the company’s CSAT rates were at 4.4 when customers connected with both agents and bots, which was higher than when interacting with just one or the other. In this same example, the average number of messages per ticket sent by bots rose by 9%, while messages per ticket sent by agents dropped 14% quarter-over-quarter – proving how the adoption of bots has made agents more productive by freeing up time to handle more pressing and sensitive issues.

On the other hand, one of our keynote speakers discussed how they chose not to incorporate AI into their strategy and instead continued to focus on drastically improving CSAT scores within their traditional and thriving customer experience strategy. We learned how this company determined most of its internal conversations around AI were focused on cost savings – which quickly led to the team realizing it was not worth the investment. If the conversation isn’t able to be started with a focus on agent productivity and customer experience, it might not be the proper investment even in a world leaning more into technology with each passing year.

5. Data Personalization

We learned during a keynote session that between 75-80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a retailer that recognizes them by name, recommends options based on past purchases, knows their purchase history, and understands their needs and expectations.

As we mentioned earlier, frustrating processes that require a customer to retell a story to multiple people will drive buyers away quickly. Establishing trust with the customer through data is key, as people put a hefty amount of trust in a company when supplying it with their personal information. The info is sent over with the assumption that it will be treated with respect and used properly.

We heard plenty of conversations on this topic and are curious to see what’s in store for the next ten years of personalization, as well as how the importance of data protection grows right alongside it.

6. The Expanding Capabilities of Automation

It was a powerful experience learning how certain companies are currently implementing automation processes to improve their agents’ productivity. With each passing year, AI becomes better at not only solving problems, but proactively identifying small problems before they become big problems.

In one session, we learned about how a company’s automation technology gathers data to identify patterns at scale and poke holes in existing internal processes to then tell the company which parts of said processes need to be automated. This data is then swiftly put into a ranked list of processes, detailing how many hours are spent on a specific task and how many systems are involved before receiving an overall score to determine how well the process is functioning. When corralling data in this way, agents and other employees see plenty of time freed up due to the avoidance of meetings to discuss how these processes can be improved – a company can simply look at the data, easily evaluate, and make decisions, all thanks to automation.

7. The Gaming Industry’s Applicability Across the Board

“What works in gaming and invocation applies to anybody with a digital experience.”

On more than one occasion, we received a look into how the gaming industry is a trailblazer when it comes to providing a great customer experience. With such a dedicated and fiercely loyal consumer-base often exclusively living on digital platforms, it is always worth examining how the giants of the gaming industry are keeping customers happy in an industry that will quickly let you know if everything isn’t up to par.

8. Zig When Others Zag: The Most Resounding Resolution Tidbit of the Event

One of our keynote speakers devoted some time to problem solving processes. We learned how this company has a strict policy where agents do not have the ability to compensate customers. No matter what happens, the customer will not receive a gift card, discount, or any other type of compensation to smooth things over when something goes wrong with a purchase or interaction. They noted that 90% of the time, it is much better to solve the problem.

When opening the idea up to the audience, only one other attendee in the entire room noted that their company had a similar policy. It’s a creative strategy from a keynote full of creative endeavors, but nobody can argue with KPIs and long-term growth.

We always love hearing creating problem solving techniques, and this was easily one of the most interesting ones of CRS.

9. Keep Listening

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most effective. Listening seems easy enough, but it was insightful to hear more about the different ways that companies are listening to their audiences with the intent of discovering new ways to satisfy them.

Attendees’ feedback on the topic of surveys was mixed. While some companies seemed to not get much value out of them, others had distinct strategies to use surveys in order to better listen to customers and understand pain points. General surveys can be easily forgettable, but detailed ones centered around interactions can uncover vital data points that can transform a CX strategy.

It’s encouraging to notice more companies dedicating specific programs to listening. It spreads across departments and channels, but is more critical than ever before. We can’t wait to see what the next developments of escalation tracking and page-level feedback are over the next few years.

10. The Attendees

Many attendees, along with EITK team, verbalized the fact that this specific Customer Response Summit felt more communal, social, and collaborative than ever before.

We take pride in having created such a unique, engaging community and it means the world to everyone involved to hear that attendees are truly having a great time and getting value out of the proceedings. The news of the virus and the many last-minute travel cancellations could have easily put a damper on the entire Summit, but all in attendance banded together to make it the best Summit to date, and we can’t thank everyone enough for joining us in Hollywood.

Thanks to those who joined us in Hollywood, we hope to see you at our next CRS in Coronado, California – October 5-7^th. In the meantime, please take advantage of our Virtual Briefing Series focused on COVID-19 and take a look at our COVID-19 CX Readiness page with CX resources and more.

Blog post, written by: Execs In The Know

The post 10 Takeaways From Customer Response Summit (CRS) Hollywood, FL appeared first on Execs In The Know.

At our recent Customer Response Summit session on AI, a show of hands revealed a surprising number of senior CX executives are still stuck at square one or two on the path to full implementation. Here are the five biggest stumbling blocks they cited (hint: it all comes down to #5).

1. Absence of a clear long-term strategic plan

In their enthusiasm for new tech, many brands plowed ahead on small-scale applications without creating a long-term blueprint for success. “Our approach started out very piecemeal,” said one executive. “We’re looking to bring various elements into a more cohesive strategy.”

2. Lack of ownership and internal collaboration

Too often, the teams tasked with developing AI products are working at loggerheads with the departments their programs are supposedly designed to support. “Sometimes our IT group doesn’t bring us in to ask us how something should work because they don’t like what we have to say,” said another attendee. “They assume, ‘customer service will just figure it out.’”

“We went to chatbots to drive our costs down, but it hasn’t worked out as we’d hoped,” said another. “It was a result of too many cooks in the kitchen.”

3. High levels of complexity within the existing organization

Many brands cited concerns that AI could further muddy some already highly complex organizational structures. “When you’re a Tier-3 vendor, you have 40 different systems to navigate,” said a vendor in the CX space. “We need AI to have these systems talk to each other, but we’re afraid to exacerbate existing problems.”

Said another, “In many cases AI seems to be adding to the complexity, not reducing it.”

4. Predicating resource allocation on achieving short-term goals

“How do you get your organization to be patient with AI?” an attendee asked. “Implementation is a long-term process.”

“The leadership obviously wants a return on its investment sooner rather than later, so it’s a question of managing expectations and providing clear and specific metrics to capture incremental improvement,” another suggested. “But that’s easier said than done.”

“It’s been hard for us to secure the funding to clean and integrate our data without a near-term ROI,” another agreed.

5. Poor foundational data and data governance practices

“How do we get from here to there?” one attendee asked. “Our challenge is the capacity – systems in the support organization were not in place. We’re tasked with laying the data foundation system we need to implement AI.”

“Our customer service organization has a pretty good data foundation but not all departments do,” said another senior executive. “There needs to be more integration. Who ‘owns’ the data?”

“You need to be thinking about your underlying data sources,” another added. “Without that piece, your AI will never function as you envisioned. You must have a strong foundational data element to build on.”

The Bottom Line

Given the importance of building on a strong data foundation for any AI strategy, square one isn’t necessarily a bad place to be. It’s far easier to begin your AI journey by implementing a data governance framework than it is to go back and clean your data and data-storage structures after AI products are already in place.

No single CX Leader can go at it alone. If armed with a long-term strategic plan, a solid support network of cross-functional stakeholders, and clear expectations for incremental improvement, you can gain buy-in for taking that critical first step.

The post AI for Customer Experience: 5 Things That Hold Brands Back appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The fact is, brands are learning to expect a different kind of unexpected. “We’ve all prepared for a snowstorm – a day or two,” said one executive. “What’s the long-term strategy? Quality can’t stop because we’re working from home. How do we as a company guarantee that we remain consistent in our operations and the service we deliver? What are we doing for the customer, for the employee, and the business?”

Taking a Realistic Stance on Travel

Companies are struggling to “right size” their response to the potential health risks associated with travel. “There’s a lot of misinformation going on,” a CRS attendee pointed out. “We have to have a proportional response, not an over- or under-response.”

“Everyone is sitting on edge waiting to see how it’s going to expand,” another said. “Everyone is doing everything they can do without going overboard. Right now, we’re telling our employees they don’t have to travel if they don’t feel comfortable with it.”

“Safety first and foremost – partners and clients,” said an executive whose company recently grounded all international travel. “You could end up sick yourself, or you could end up quarantined just because you got on a flight with someone who is sick.”

Focus on Hygiene Reinvigorates Existing Policies

Many CRS attendees with operations in Asia said they have doubled down on workplace hygiene policies already in place. “We have strict regulations around compliance but over time we’d gotten a bit lax,” admitted one executive with 80,000 agents in the Philippines. “In addition to providing more tissue packs and antibacterial products we are also doing daily temperature checks – every person gets one. If they are running a temp they are sent to our full-service medical staff for assessment and, if necessary, they can self-quarantine.”

Said another, “We’re doing the basics – we’ve got thousands of masks ordered, and they’re in the centers. Hand sanitizers have always been there but we’re doubling up or tripling up on quantities. We’re also trying to find ways to make hand washing fun and less of a chore.”

Attendees agreed that transparency in internal communications is key. “We’re keeping consistent messaging in terms of ‘sanitation’ of the workspace. If someone thinks they need to be quarantined they can self-declare without fear that their job is in danger. It’s all about comfort and clarity around who’s coming into the center to work, when it’s safe to do so, and why we have these policies in place.”

Benefits and Limitations to “Work from Home”

In the most severely affected areas, governments are telling workers to stay home. But even in industries where working from home (WFH) is a viable option in theory, a lack of supporting infrastructure poses significant challenges as quarantines stretch from weeks to months.

“In China first and now Japan, when people started working from home volumes went through the roof because they couldn’t use their laptops due to security and privacy issues, and we couldn’t send enough desktops to their homes,” said an outsourcing manager at a global consumer electronics company. “How do you solve for 30% of capacity at 200% of volume? You can’t,” he said, adding that, “We’re using translation services to reroute volume from China. We’re also relying on gig workers to bridge the gap.”

“WFH may make sense if it’s just a few people, but it just doesn’t work for 600 employees,” the executive pointed out. “And you can’t move equipment around because of travel bans.”

“We don’t have an at home model, and it’s just not something you can pull the trigger on unless you already have something in place,” another agreed.

Some forward-thinking companies have been stress-testing WFH as part of their BCPs, however. “Business contingency planning is hard. There’s no way to just think your way through it – you have to test it,” said an executive from a major car manufacturer. “One challenge we encountered around WFH was server capacity, so we addressed that. You have to try these things out before something happens. You can’t just do it in theory.”

“We’ve equipped our agents so they can work from home both for flexibility and convenience but also in case of emergencies,” said an attendee with a call center in earthquake-prone Mexico City. “We’re switching this month to make my entire department WFH.”

An executive from a smaller company said, “All of our workers have desktops and “go bags” to be equipped at home. We’re a small team so we can’t afford to lose people.”

“WFH doesn’t always work for every country and every culture,” one attendee noted. “You have to get buy-in for the model if you want to explore this as a long-term solution.”

How BPOs Are Handling the Crisis – and Clients’ Concerns

For business process outsourcers (BPOs) — particularly those operating in Asia — the situation has made clients uneasy. A few attendees said their BPOs had contacted them proactively to explain the precautions they are taking in their contact centers, but many said they are still waiting to hear from their business partners. “Getting that proactive communication really made me feel more comfortable,” said one attendee.

“As an outsourcer we’re taking another look at our response,” said one BPO. “It’s a partnership between us and our clients and it’s going to lead to some interesting discussions on how best to move forward.”

A representative from a gig sourcing provider said his company is offering to allow clients’ in-house agents to use its platform in a pinch. “This is a contingency plan – the platform isn’t really set up for in-house teams,” he cautioned. “But it does work on personal devices.”

A Potential Shift to New Business Models

How can brands leverage their current experience to strategically prepare for a future that may include more long-term global disruptions down the road? What’s the role of technology in mitigating their impact?

“This coronavirus situation definitely makes us think about offering more self-serve options and speed up development on those services. Machine learning and predictive service models could help deflect volume as well,” said an attendee. “We’re just at the cusp of a lot of these service offerings but, given the current outlook, it seems these technologies might limit our exposure in future.”

The Bottom Line

As the business impacts of coronavirus continue to reverberate across the globe, brands are being forced to re-evaluate contingency plans designed primarily for short-term and potentially long-term operational disruptions. Companies that take this opportunity to leverage new technologies and strategies that can help insulate them from major global events like coronavirus will be well-positioned to maintain continuity of service if — or when — the next long-term crisis occurs.

Are you a CX Leader at a consumer brand? Continue the conversation on “Know It All” (KIA), our private online discussion forum where senior CX executives are connecting across industries to innovate and share best practices. Click here to visit and request to join.

The post Global Disruptions to Customer Service: How Top Brands Are Adapting Contingency Plans Amidst Coronavirus Concerns appeared first on Execs In The Know.

For the majority of CX history, companies have been primarily focused on repairing their relationships with customers, instead of preparing for issues. Although proactive customer support is not a new idea, companies still struggle with how to heighten its impact with big data.

The combination of technology and proactive support is creating a monumental shift in CX by making strategies more customer-centric, improving customer loyalty by 5%, and increasing overall revenue. By curating thoughtful customer experiences and meeting customers on their terms, CX operations can be less of a cost center and more of a profit center.

Proactive customer support is critical to any CX strategy because of its ability to anticipate customer needs and their preferences, and provide a well thought out experience with a brand. By keeping simple customer queries at bay, it reduces operating costs and unnecessary friction which keeps bottom lines low and CSAT scores high.

Proactive Customer Support: The Stats and Facts

A proactive approach to support is an organization’s ability to foresee certain problems before they occur and implement early processes to help contain the negative impact it might have on customers.

For instance, if a retailer is experiencing a hiccup with a logistics company that’s causing mass order delays, they can do one of two things:

Quickly train agents on their response to the influx of calls they are about to receive (reactive)

Promptly send out an SMS message to impacted customers letting them know their delivery is delayed by X amount of days (proactive)

 Option two clearly offers the least amount of friction with customers and immediately decreases the amount of potential call volume and thus, reduces costs long term. By strategically implementing proactive support, companies have reported a:

• Reduction in inbound call volumes by 20-30% in 12 months
• 25% decrease in operations costs
• 3-5% increase in customer retention

But being proactive isn’t just something companies should strive for, it’s what customers want. A survey found that 87% of customers want to be contacted proactively by a company about service issues.

When Shift Happens

Although in the moment proactive support decisions make an immense impact on operational costs and brand perception, the real value and shift in CX comes when it’s powered by big data.

Big data is the collecting and analyzing of data and should be used throughout the customer journey, not just the beginning micro moments–an opportunity I see a lot of CX leaders overlook. When you couple big data and proactive support approaches, you move away from the break-fix style of support and shift toward a strategic predict-pivot methodology.

For example, if a customer is trying to upgrade their subscription, and have no luck using self-service tools, email, or chat the last resort is calling the company. When the customer is prompted by the IVR, a company should know their channel hopping history. Ideally, a proactive automated message that addresses the customer and asks if they are calling about switching to a different subscription or something else. Once their selection is made, they should be routed directly to an agent for help. This proactive approach eliminates the stress and frustration of a customer repeating themselves and increases speed to solution.

By consistently monitoring how customers use your products, services, and self-help resources, it empowers CX teams to proactively respond to issues before they arise. By piecing together the breadcrumbs of a customer’s journey, companies can utilize that data to view the full distance of the customer, past purchase behavior, and their likely next step.

How to Get Started

A lot of ideas and concepts in CX take a lot of time and money upfront, but proactive customer support that’s powered by big data works with what you have already. To begin the process, review your customer feedback from last quarter and extract the weaknesses customers noted.

What do these problems mean for this quarter and the quarters to come? What data do you have around the issues to inform what a proactive approach might be?

Start making a new chapter in CX history by starting a proactive, data-based shift in the way you deliver experiences to your customers. Once you get started, you will definitely notice a positive difference in key metrics like AHT, call volume, CSAT, and NPS. The combination of big data and proactive customer support has saved some companies up to $10 million. How much will you save?

Guest post written by: Jennifer Turner, Vice President, Business Development, Retail, TaskUs

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The following is a guest blog by Charles Schrier, Director of Marketing  at SmartAction.

As a lifelong customer service professional, you’ve watched the customer service function change from necessary evil to cornerstone of business success. For so long, businesses found ways to cut costs and increase efficiency in the call center because it was always viewed as a “cost” center. But with today’s customer demands for experiences that are easy and effective, and with more contact channels than ever before, it is getting near impossible to forecast and staff the call center, train agents in the proper skills, and offer consistency across channels and touchpoints.

Companies have an amazing opportunity to meet customer demands and create a strategic advantage over the competition by incorporating AI automation into their customer service operation. Forrester research tells us that 2/3 of consumers said that valuing their time is the most important thing to them, which helps to explain the rise in self-service adoption. With conversational AI automation, businesses are offering self-service for many of the simple and complex repetitive tasks that their call center agents had always been doing. Thanks to consumer tech products like Siri and Cortana, customers are actually very adept and comfortable interacting with conversational AI, whether through voice or digital media. Therefore, companies with AI automation are outpacing competitors by offering the effortless experience their customers want while migrating their operations towards sustainable growth.

AI automation’s most impactful ROI promise is in helping call centers conquer headcount challenges. As contact volumes explode through more and more channels, it has become increasingly difficult to forecast and accurately staff the call center. Even when volume spikes are predictable, they are still expensive to manage using live agents alone. The answer to higher volumes is no longer to hire more people, but rather to use AI agents mixed with live agents in order to automate more and make the live agents more effective for the inquiries that require the human touch. Many companies have found success using an AI virtual assistant service to:

• 1. 1. 1. Automate repetitive calls, chats, and texts with live agent failover. This helps agents focus on the top priority customer conversations because the routine tasks, like checking order status or making payments, are taken care of by AI.

   

  1. 2. Gather customer data upfront before passing to live agent for assistance. An example is customer account authentication with screen pops for agents so that customers do not need to repeat information.
  3. 3. Automate outbound calls and SMS texts for appointment confirmations, delivery reminders, reorders, or other alerts. This is normally a huge cost and time-suck for live agents.
  5. 4. Offer a conversational AI Front Door, which uses a natural language greeting like, “How can I help you?” to capture intent. Conversations then get routed either to the IVR, a live agent, or additional AI self-service.

  By using AI automation for these four types of engagements—automating more than ever before possible—businesses are optimizing their human resources in new ways while maintaining customer satisfaction scores. Moreover, with these new capabilities, agents have a better opportunity to be heroes for the customer. They are providing real value and being rewarded for critical thinking and problem solving, which makes the job more fulfilling and creates incentive to stick around.

  AI automation will change the face of your customer service operation, just as it has for so many others, but you must invest now. Interested in finding out more about this topic or SmartAction? SmartAction is one of the subject matter experts that will be sharing their insights and expertise at Customer Response Summit Marina del Rey, September 10-12, 2018. CR Summit Marina del Rey will feature keynotes from Chick-fil-A, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Upwork. SmartAction will be delivering a case study with Electrolux on “A Cost-Benefit Analysis: How Electrolux Major Appliances Successfully Brought AI to Their Customer Experience”. 

  For more information about our leading event for CX professionals, visit our event website. 

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PHOENIX, July 12, 2018 — Execs In The Know, a community of Customer Experience Professionals, has announced the details of their national event – Customer Response Summit (CRS) Marina del Rey. CRS Marina del Rey will be held September 10^th-12^th, 2018, at The Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey, in Marina del Rey, CA. Culture, customer engagement, AI, the millennial workforce, mindfulness, digital transformation, and more will be featured topics of discussion. The customer experience conference will include keynotes from Chick-fil-A, LinkedIn, Upwork, and Microsoft.

CRS is a gathering of customer service leaders, across many verticals, focused on creating innovative experiences for their brands. Highlights of the CX leadership event include an exclusive tour of the Porsche Experience Center Los Angeles, evening networking opportunities, and numerous case studies. The newest version of the CXMB Series – 2018 Consumer Edition, will also be released (a joint effort between Execs In The Know and COPC Inc.).

“Our EITK community is a dynamic, collaborative group of customer experience executives who are constantly inspiring us and leading the charge in their own organizations,” said Chad McDaniel, President and CEO of Execs In The Know. “There’s nothing quite like the sharing, networking, and learning at our live events and I would urge anyone who hasn’t been part of one to join us in Marina del Rey to experience it for themselves.”

Other leading corporate brands that will speak at the customer care event include Humana, Uber, GoDaddy, Southwest Airlines, Slack, Electrolux, and more.

To learn more or to register, visit the event website https://execsintheknow.com/events/marina-del-rey/.

About Execs In The Know

Execs In The Know is a global community of customer experience 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 Dinners. They also offer industry content and thought leadership, webinars, reports, and various social communities.

Learn more at www.execsintheknow.com.

Media Contact:
Alyssa Pitura
info@execsintheknow.com

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Many brands ask us about the differences between using live chat versus digital messaging (ie. Messenger, WeChat, in-app/in-web messaging, etc.) for customer support. That’s right, chat and messaging are NOT the same. Although chat was loved by brands in the past, we believe its final days, as it currently exists, are near. To explain why it’s important to first clearly distinguish how the two are different.

Take a look at the examples below to see the difference between a messaging interaction versus that of a chat interaction.

 The example above is one of messaging.

In this interaction, I had reached out to one of my favorite brands, Nordstrom, to get some help finding a jacket.  Here is what was great about using messaging for customer support:

– This conversation was asynchronous, meaning the agent and I could communicate without being available at the same time.

– It was extremely convenient – I received a push notification on my phone’s home screen when the agent responded (rather than staring at my phone waiting for a response).

– It was contextual, so if I ever forgot which jacket I was looking at, I could just open up the app and go directly to the link the agent had sent me. Also, if I ever reached out again, the agent would know exactly what that previous interaction looked like.

– It felt personal and human. I was able to share just how genuinely excited I was by simply adding emoji to the message. With messaging, agents and customers can share and express emotions via emoji and gifs.

My experience with chat was very different…

In the chat interaction above, I needed help from customer support regarding a slightly more complex issue than my first example. This conversation was also much more frustrating for me due to the limitations in chat. Let’s break those down:

– The conversation was synchronous (as are all chat interactions), so I had to be actively available to receive the agent’s response and vice versa.

– It was session-based – so once I closed out of the chat, the entire conversation thread was lost. I was essentially held hostage in the chat and if I were to leave, I’d have to start all over again (which, of course, happened).

– Since chat lacks context, I had to re-explain my problem to a new agent when I reached back out for more help.

– When I had trouble explaining my issues and wanted to share a screenshot of my problem, I was deflected to email (since chat is text-based).

– There was no use of emojis or gifs and the entire interaction felt impersonal and lacked the human element.

Messaging costs less than chat

If the examples above don’t convince you that messaging is a preferable way to interact with a company, let’s look at the numbers. According to a research study by Mckinsey, a single chat interaction costs a company between 3 to 5 dollars per interaction. A messaging communication is less than $1, which is up to 1/5th the cost.

Not only are messaging interactions less expensive for brands than live chat interactions, but with the proper technology in place, agents can handle as many as ten messaging conversations at one time. That’s 5x what most contact centers report for concurrent conversation handling on chat.

People prefer messaging

Regardless of the cost savings, here’s a pretty powerful fact: 9 out of 10 customers actually prefer to message a business. Why? Because messaging is a HUGE part of our daily lives. Here’s another fact: 1.4 billion people around the world send over 50 billion messages each day to communicate with one another. In addition, WhatsApp and Messenger have around 1 billion monthly active users each and WeChat around 900 million. Messaging as a conversation and interaction interface has fundamentally shifted how we communicate with one another, and it is about to shift how people communicate with your company.

To learn more about how messaging helps improve customer satisfaction, enhances employee engagement, and drives real financial results, download the latest (and totally free) Aberdeen report: Customer Messaging: Happy Customers, Productive Employees & Better Financials.

Interested in finding out more about the topics in this blog or Sparkcentral? Sparkcentral is one of the subject matter experts that will be sharing their insights and expertise at Customer Response Summit Charleston, March 12-14, 2018. CR Summit Charleston will feature speakers from Neiman Marcus, Indeed, Capital One, T-Mobile, and more. For more information about our leading event for CX professionals, visit our event website.

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The customer service industry will experience the biggest digital shift yet in 2018, as customer experience (CX) brand leaders seek to expand channels, leverage analytics, adopt automation, and integrate the front office with back office operations. CX pioneers should prepare for a surge in the adoption of disrupter technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), digital self-service, and bot tools, as well as the need to hire data scientists to improve business intelligence and better enable consumers to get the right answer fast. These digital capabilities will help some businesses, with the right unified engagement strategy and delivery expertise, to unlock a treasure trove of transformational potential for optimizing customer experience—balancing the cost of service with frictionless engagement. In this report, we will cover those digital innovation and customer engagement operational trends that will assist CX leaders in planning their transformation projects in 2018-19. (Click here to view a webinar from January 10 on this same topic.)

1. Digital channels finally overtake voice.

We will finally witness the tipping point where digital channels—email, chat, social, text, messaging—overtake voice in the contact center. Mobile driven interaction management —in-app messaging, chat, SMS, and social—have become foundational components of an omnichannel strategy. According to Dimension Data’s global contact center benchmarking report, digital interactions accounted for over 42% of all interactions taking place inside the contact center in the beginning of 2017. At that current rate, digital was expected to overtake voice in 2018. It’s already happening with some of our clients. One consumer packaged goods client being serviced out of the UK receives 71% of all customer interactions from digital channels, and only 29% from voice. Included in these statistics are messaging via WhatsApp, which currently accounts for approximately 10% of the client’s volume. Instant communication will become the standard for exceptional customer service in 2018. Messaging is the new channel of choice, according to Twilio research, which states 89% of consumers want to use messaging to communicate with a business. There are multiple benefits to messaging such as the ability to send photos or videos between agents and customers, faster and more timely communications, and the ability to stop, start, and continue with the conversation at the customer’s convenience.

2. Investments in advanced analytics tools drive customer experience transformation.

Advanced data analytics tools can help businesses uncover business-critical insights and gain a competitive edge. According to Gartner, “By 2018 50% of agent interactions will be influenced by real-time analytics.” As customer experience analytics matures, it is becoming increasingly predictive and focused on personalization. A sophisticated data analytics tool can make predictions, or generate recommendations based on information gathered, thus giving contact center agents and bots more background and context on each individual customer they are servicing. In addition, analytics plays a significant role in increasing productivity. As one case in point, speech analytics can detect non-value adds, such as long conversational pauses or points in the conversation when the customer has to repeat responses.

3. Smartphone video camera support changes the game for customer support.

Gone are the days of customers struggling to explain technical product issues to an agent by phone. With smartphone video camera support, 3-4 minutes of triage can be accomplished in seconds. By texting customers a simple link, brands can now activate the video camera on a customer’s mobile device to see what they are looking at. It’s that simple. Smartphone video camera support, in combination with messaging or voice support, can accelerate time-to-resolution while boosting customer satisfaction.

If customers are uncomfortable leveraging video, the alternative option is to send a simple picture via SMS so that companies are able to get a better view and understanding of a product issue and communicate more effectively with customers—for example, annotating photos to indicate product issues. Real outcomes are cost-containment, better average handle time (AHT), lower product return rates, and improved CSAT.

4. Emojis make digital conversations measurably more emotional and expressive.

As digital conversations overtake voice in 2018 and tone of voice becomes absent from interactions, the customer care industry will need to find new ways to gauge and measure emotion and sentiment. The answer lies in technology. The emoji became accepted and praised as part of the customer care communication mainstream in 2017 and this will expand in 2018—as a means to add lightheartedness or a personal touch and show humor and happiness. Another way to measure and gauge emotion is by embedding text analytics in digital channels, such as text or chat. Analytical dashboards can run behind the scenes as agents engage with customers to detect the level of sentiment in conversations. If the analysis detects a high negative sentiment score, the conversation can be flagged for a supervisor to review. Lastly, the same text analytics approach should be applied when using bots. Today, talking to a bot can be more and more akin to connecting with a human. However, there should always be an option for a customer to escalate to a human agent when necessary.

5. Artificial intelligence (AI) revolutionizes the customer service industry.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing industries across the globe, including customer service. Thanks to the rise of digital channels and the advancement of AI and machine learning technology, we now have the ability to predict (with a high level of confidence) the right answer to a customer’s inquiry in any digital channel — email, SMS, chat, or social. This advancement in technology will make our agents much more efficient. No more looking up answers, spell checking, tagging or categorizing conversations. The only action agents will have to take is to hit “approve” or “personalize” on the predicted responses. These new customer care solutions will bring together the empathy of agents with the efficiency of bots, for AI-assisted conversations that present the facts of a product or brand while adding the personalization of a human touch. AI technology will even be able to automatically tag and categorize posts, saving agents more time.

6. The customer care industry seeks outside expertise to build and optimize chatbot experiences.

As the hottest topic in 2017, customer service professionals had some high expectations chatbots were going to be a game changer. But apparently, chatbots still have a lot to learn. Early in 2017, Facebook announced it was “refocusing” its use of AI after its bots hit a failure rate of 70%, meaning bots could only get to 30% of requests without some sort of human intervention. There are a few reasons most chatbots fail. One, organizations fail to clearly define the bots’ purpose. Two, most organizations launch well before they are ready and fail to do the necessary amount of testing. Lastly, organizations did not have the in-house expertise to optimize and train a machine learning, natural language processing AI model. Chatbots are only as good as the data that feeds them. If chatbots start to learn something inaccurately or are fed false data to start, they will produce false results and humans will need to reset and intervene.

7. Smart Bots&Brains strategy is at the heart of CX transformation.

In 2018, the winning customer service formula will be a strategic “bots-brains” approach, leaning on intelligent automation to create optimized CX, intelligently integrating people at key moments of truth.

Whether front-end bot or bot-assisted agent, tomorrow’s businesses will 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 high- 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 five years.

8. More customer care professionals budget for and hire data scientists/analysts and invest in text and speech analytics.

Delivering voice of the customer data is undoubtedly both art and science. Customer service teams live in a world of “unstructured” data including phone calls, chat transcripts, social transcripts, text transcripts, etc. Teams need analytics tools and data scientists to help make sense of the data and ultimately learn what customers are saying, requesting, complaining about, praising, and questioning. With the rise in digital conversations, hiring the right data professionals is going to become critical in 2018 if they want to execute their digital strategies flawlessly and remain competitive.

9. Robotic process automation (RPA), transforms both the back office and front office.

In the next two years, RPA will be recognized for its front-office potential as well. Automation will provide agents assistance to enhance productivity, by allowing team members to focus on helping customers and less time on navigating systems or post-contact wrap up. Additionally, automation at the desktop, will also improve quality by decreasing errors of manual data entry, reducing rework, and decreasing complaints. Reducing manual tasks allows for a better focus on listening to the customer, empathizing, and providing a frictionless experience. In 2018, we’ll see better collaboration between the front- and back office, for ROI that covers the advantages of both RPA types.

10. Work-at-home solutions grow and provide millennials the flexible jobs they seek.

Over the past decade, telecommuting has increased by 115%—that’s almost 3% of the U.S. workforce, as reported by Global Workforce Analytics and FlexJobs. With hiring, staffing, and attrition being some of the biggest obstacles in the customer care industry, this is one trend that will continue to grow in the next couple of years. There are many advantages to having a remote, at-home workforce. For one, many work-at-home teams will have much lower attrition and absenteeism rates. Two, it expands the talent pool significantly making it much easier to hire for seasonal work. Three, the need to overstaff for the “just-in-case” is greatly reduced, thus saving cost.

Interested in finding out more about the topics in this blog or HGS? HGS is one of the subject matter experts that will be sharing their insights and expertise at Customer Response Summit Charleston, March 12-14, 2018. CR Summit Charleston will feature speakers from Neiman Marcus, Indeed, Capital One, T-Mobile, and more. For more information about our leading event for CX professionals, visit our event website. 

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