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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PHOENIX, ARIZONA – April 3, 2018 – Advocates for customer experience professionals, Execs In The Know and COPC Inc., have announced the release of the 2017 Corporate Edition of the Customer Experience Management Benchmark (CXMB) Series. The 11^th volume in the series, titled The CX Journey: Strategic and Operational Insights, provides an understanding of the current CX landscape. Specific areas of expanded exploration include channel consistency, quality programs, and CX priorities for corporate professionals. Traditional Care (phone, email, and in-person), Interactive Care (online/video chat, FAQ, and self-help), Social Media Care (Twitter, Facebook, forums, etc.), and Mobile Care (apps, text/SMS, and mobile chat) are all explored.

Key Insights from the 2017 Corporate Survey:

– Only 50% of respondents answered “Yes” when asked, “Is your company’s leadership fully committed to a customer-first strategy?”

– Thirty-four percent of respondents didn’t believe their company had a good understanding of which channels their customers preferred, nor how these preferences differed from current channel offerings.

– Interest and investment in chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) exploded in 2017, with more than a threefold increase in the percentage of brands naming chatbots and AI as the technology of most interest and/or investment.

– Only 14% of respondents felt their brands were doing a good job of providing a consistent customer experience across channels and solutions, while only half of brands (51%) had any initiatives to create greater consistency.

The CXMB Series is a resource for customer care professionals, looking to enhance their customer care program, improve brand opinion, and drive customer satisfaction. Brands such as Marriott, Blue Rock Energy, The Mine, The Home Depot, LinkedIn, Hyatt, Desjardins, CIBC, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., and more participated in this year’s survey.

“The leaders in the Execs In The Know community truly display a customer-first commitment in everything they do,” said Chad McDaniel, President and CEO of Execs In The Know. “Our goal with every edition in the CXMB Series, is to help brands better understand the consumer, validating investments and identifying possible areas of improvement. We are thrilled to provide this resource to our community, to further assist them in the pursuit of customer service excellence.”

“We are honored to play an ongoing role in the creation of this valuable industry research. We hope this work will continue to enlighten and inspire,” said Kathleen Jezierski, COO of COPC Inc. “We’d also like to thank the many brands that participated in this year’s survey. Their experience and expertise is what makes this report possible.”

The full 2017 Corporate Edition is available for purchase at https://execsintheknow.com/cxmbseries/2017-corporate-edition/.

About Execs In The Know

Execs In The Know is a global community of customer experience professionals, from various industry verticals, all focused on the same thing – excellence in customer service and 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 their national event – Customer Response Summit – twice a year (in the Spring and Fall), giving executives the opportunity to connect face-to-face. They also hold a number of other live regional events throughout the year including Subject Matter Briefings (on topics like social media, AI, SMS, outsourcing, etc.), Lunch & Learns, Workshops, and EITK Dinners. The community is able to stay engaged long after the events come to an end through industry content and thought leadership, webinars, reports, and various social communities.

To learn more about Execs In The Know, visit www.ExecsInTheKnow.com.

About COPC Inc.

COPC Inc. provides consulting, training, certification and the RevealCX™ software solution for operations that support the customer experience. The company created the COPC Standards, a collection of performance management systems for call center operations, customer experience management, vendor management, and procurement. Founded in 1996, COPC Inc. began by helping call centers improve their performance. Today, the company is an innovative global leader that empowers organizations to optimize operations to deliver a superior customer experience across all channels. COPC Inc. is privately held with headquarters in Winter Park, FL, U.S. and with operations in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, India and Japan.

COPC will also be giving an educational pre-conference seminar at CRS Denver in September, 2019.

For more information, visit www.copc.com.

Media Contacts

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

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

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It was mid-July 2017 when I got an email from a sales colleague about a potential chatbot opportunity with a short window to respond. The prospective customer was the UK branch of supermarket chain Lidl. The Lidl digital marketing director and his team had already looked at a variety of vendors and were ready to make a selection, but they were still open to listening to us. It was a long shot, we thought, but we still wanted to give it our best effort.

Fast forward 5 months, and we’re seeing tweets like this from the Daily Mail and The Sun:

Wow, what had happened? Well, a fantastic team effort is what had happened.

Winning Team Lidl Over

Lidl saw value in:

– our expertise around all things Customer Experience

– our unique approach to Natural Language Understanding with support for many languages

– our “cloud clout” and the resulting time-to-market

– our design-once-deploy-anywhere framework that allows taking one bot and deploying it on channels like FB Messenger, SMS, Amazon Echo, IVR, etc. with minimal additional effort

– our experience in building and hosting enterprise-grade, transactional customer self-service solutions that integrate into the larger marketing and contact center ecosystem of a multi-national corporation, including the ability to expand into eCommerce

From our Press Release: https://www.aspect.com/company/news/press-releases/lidl-uk-launches-ai-wine-chatbot-to-uk-customers-with-aspect-software

How does a conversation with Margot look like? Have a look here:

When implementing the application, we decided to work with one of our long-time application development partners, 2-steps-ahead, who has been building voicebots on our IVR and chatbot platform, Aspect CXP™, for over a decade. Internally, we had all of the right people in place and ready to take on this project: Aspect Professional Services provided the project management and architectural support, R&D provided support by our on-staff linguists. With the combined forces of our team and 2-steps-ahead we were ready to embark on the buildout of the solution.

A Dream Customer

The project kicked off with a workshop in Lidl’s Wimbledon England HQ at the end of August 2017. The Lidl digital marketing team came with a thorough understanding of how a chatbot experience should look and even a high-level concept of the functionality it should provide.

One of the main drivers for this project was the realization that, while Lidl was successful with their wine selection, winning awards and increasing sales, they didn’t have anyone in their 800+ stores or their contact center that knew much – if anything – about wines. The knowledge was sitting with their full-time on-staff sommelier! The Lidl team wasn’t interested in sharing that knowledge through static content on a website like an FAQ; instead, they wanted to create a much more interactive and engaging way through which they could impart their wine knowledge on their customers.  Artificial Intelligence allowed them to accomplish that by creating a chatbot accessible via Facebook Messenger that could answer questions from customers directly, on the spot. They clearly understood the power of a Conversational UI (CUI) for an engaging customer experience!

A name for the chatbot was quickly found by the Lidl team: Margot – chosen to remind the wine connoisseur of the French wine-making region (Margaux), while generally being a popular first name in the UK.

What Can You Do, Margot?

On a high level, Margot is trained to help customers with 4 different types of inquiries, as the chart shows. In addition, it can direct users to the existing Store Finder, which will pop up as a webview within the Facebook Messenger app.

One of the key decisions we made together with the Lidl team was to put Margot on the main Facebook page of Lidl UK: www.facebook.com/LidlUK. Previous experiences have shown that if you create a separate page just for a chatbot, discovery and retention suffer severely. By adding her to Lidl’s main Facebook presence we were sure that Margot had her home in the heart of the social Lidl experience online.

Lidl UK has several full-time staff members that help with answering questions from social networks. Margot thus “collaborates” with live staff in the sense that they are monitoring the incoming messages for mentions of the desire to speak to customer service, and the user always has the option to involve live staff when needed.

From a CUI design perspective, we decided to go with a mix of natural language dialog and menu-based flows. The initial menus introduce the scope of the solution and provide basic guidance; from our 15+ years of experience of building these kinds of applications, we know that people can be overwhelmed if they know they’re chatting with a computer and feel they can’t interact with it like they would with a human when presented with an open-ended question such as “how can I help you” – they simply expectsome guidance in the form of menus. Over time, as these chatbot experiences establish themselves across brands, these hesitations should go away.

In the middle of the project, we came up with the idea to teach Margot to understand emojis. What if people asked her about ? or ?? We didn’t want to pass on the opportunity to add that element of fun to the mix.

Generally speaking, the Margot persona was designed to be light-hearted and informal; a true wine enthusiast but definitely not snooty, someone who loves food and good company. Margot is truly conversational in her style, answering questions as such as “which red wines from Chile under £6 do you sell”, “what goes well with grilled salmon”, or “how do I get that stain out of my tablecloth??” She has additional features, such as an interactive wine quiz to encourage further brand engagement and to interact with customers in a fun, intuitive, and light-hearted manner.

From a linguistic perspective, Margot was a welcome challenge for our linguists. Not only was Margot designed to allow for plain English inquiries such as “I’m making roast beef for my friends tonight, what should I get with that”, or questions including multiple items of information as in “looking for a red wine from Italy under 6 pounds”, or those staccato communicators that send a single word such as “rose”; but Margot was also to benefit from the food ontologies built into Aspect NLU, the natural language understanding engine embedded in Aspect CXP™, so that she could easily subsume inquiries about ziti, farfalle, macaroni, spaghetti, tagliatelle, rigatoni, vermicelli, fettucine, pappardelle, penne, fusilli, … under pasta, or roquefort, gorgonzola, stilton under blue cheese, or … you get the idea. With the built-in ontology, Margot can now easily help with thousands of food items, offering over different 200 individual recommendations.

Some more impressive numbers:

Time to get serious

8 weeks after our initial project meeting we were ready to get serious… Margot was ready for friendly user testing from Lidl brand advocates. Lidl announced Margot on the Lidl Community, and first testers signed up. Testing chatbots early is critical to their success, and needless to say, we quickly found areas for improvement and gaps that we had to close, whether it was missing Mexican cuisine examples in our food ontology, or the ability to parse out money amounts expressed as diversely as “£5”, “5£”, “5 quid”, “a fiver”, or even “around five-ish”. Through a QA phase of intense collaboration between the teams, we were able to squash the bugs in record time and approach deployment readiness.

When we did go live, we decided for a soft rollout, before announcing Margot to the press. However, when the press embargo was finally lifted on January 31st, the feedback we got from the media, our partners, the analysts, but also Lidl customers expressing their joy of interacting with Margot on Twitter, was overwhelming positive, getting coverage in Contact Center World, Daily Mail Online, Telegraph, Food and Wine,  and our favorite was this video from the Huffington Post, who invited a real sommelier, Janet Harrison from Cracking Wine, to “compete” against Margot. Who won?

Itching to chat with Margot yourself? Go to www.facebook.com/LidlUK and hit “Send Message”. Or jump right into the conversation by going to m.me/LidlUK.

Stay tuned for more updates on the coming to life and the adoption of Margot over the coming weeks and months. Many new features are being added as we speak, and both teams aren’t running out of ideas what else automation, artificial intelligence-style, can do to support Lidl on their journey to the top of the UK and international grocery retail space. And this journey has just begun.

Interested in finding out more about the topics in this blog or Aspect? Aspect 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.

The post How We Built the Wine Bot Margot for Lidl appeared first on Execs In The Know.

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.

The post Chat vs. Messaging for Customer Support: Why Messaging Wins appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Some things never go out of style, like The Beatles, evenings by the fireplace and homemade apple pie.

Unfortunately, your contact center isn’t one of them, and if you haven’t replaced or upgraded your solutions recently, there’s a good chance your customers have noticed. In that case, it’s probably time for a little contact center modernization.

A good contact center makes an impact for three important stakeholders:

1) Your customers
2) Your agents
3) And your business

Contact center modernization can make your solution better for them all. Customer care has made huge advances over the last several years. Texting is now a common communication track for businesses, and AI and chatbots continue to forge new ground.

Amid all this change, customer expectations have responded. Today’s customers demand the flexibility to communicate in their preferred channel, at their preferred time. And they no longer accept long wait times and impersonal service as the norm.

You need to keep up in order to keep your customers.

In the past, updating or replacing your system to provide a higher level of service was cost-prohibitive. But today, that’s not necessarily the case. With a cloud-based system and an experienced partner, you can take your customer experience to new heights without doing the same for your expenditures. If you haven’t done so yet, going to the cloud is the number one step in contact center modernization.

But even if you do have a cloud-based solution, there are a few best practices to find even more value. So with that in mind, here are the top three benefits and best practices to guide you through your contact center modernization.

Save big money over time

Obviously, one massive incentive of contact center modernization is cost savings. So as you begin this process, consider future adaptations for even greater efficiency and customer experience.

As new technology develops, you need to have a process to incorporate it into your contact center plan. Customers may want to connect through traditional voice channels, but the preference is quickly changing to other channels, including email, chat, mobile and social.

That means your contact center needs expanded capabilities around these channels. On the one hand, you’ll have a few more expenses up front to ensure all those channels are supported, even if you’re not currently using them. But these channels are also easily automated, which can drastically cut customer service costs and agent workload.

Best Practice #1: Update the systems you need today and prepare for the growing customer service channels of the future.

Of course, upgrading your premise-based system to accommodate all of these channels can get very expensive very fast. But by moving to the cloud, you can cut many up-front costs and prepare for quick changes down the road.

These solutions could completely replace your current technology, but they’re more likely to run alongside existing systems. Cloud-based solutions let you pick upgrades you need without the expense of replacing all your current equipment right away. Plus, your customers can start using the channels they love, giving an instant boost to loyalty and retention.

Create better experiences for customers and agents

Cloud-based contact center solutions not only create enjoyable experiences for customers. They also give you tools to raise agents’ and managers’ productivity and job satisfaction while lowering attrition and training costs.

Customer service used to be black and white. A customer called and waited for an agent to answer. But call volume rises every year, even as people reach out via text, email, web chat and social media.

They want to interact with you at a time that’s convenient for them. Waiting on hold is not convenient, and it causes stress for your agents. Integrating automated solutions, like an IVR or one-way and two-way proactive text messages, is option to increase self-service and answer questions before someone calls. Other tools, like SMS Assistant, help agents interact more efficiently, creating exceptional experiences for everyone involved.

Best Practice #2: Support popular channels customers want with solutions that make agents’ jobs easier.

Modern contact centers are gaining momentum as the best option for responding to customer needs — regardless of channel or device. Good cloud-based solutions integrate customer data across all channels, letting employees see someone’s interaction history to relieve frustration for both your customers and your agents.

Focus on strategy, not just software

One of these tips already told you to keep an eye to the future, but this goes one step further. Not only does your contact center technology need to be ready to adapt, you must put a strategy in place to incorporate new channels as they develop. Crafting that strategy can be a major challenge, but your communication technology provider may be able to help.

When it comes to contact center providers, you have two options. Some providers sell a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, in which you’re on your own to implement, strategize and upgrade your solution down the road.

Managed service providers, on the other hand, take that responsibility and emphasize service in addition to software. A partner with managed services supplies experienced contact center professionals who work with you throughout the life of a contract to ensure you’re providing the best customer experience possible.

These are the partners who go beyond software and employ professional services expertise to help you devise the right strategy.

Best Practice #3: Don’t hire a software provider. Work with a partner who will keep your contact center ahead of the curve.

With the right partner, you can leave strategy in the hands of experts, so you can focus on present-day operations of your business.

Learn more about contact center modernization

Before simply buying the newest headsets or routing system, go through these three best practices to discover what you really need in a cloud contact center solution. You can read even more about this process by downloading our ebook, The Many Benefits of Modernizing Your Contact Center.

If it’s time to upgrade your contact center, don’t worry. Follow these few best practices to get the updates you need and prepare for new changes to create the most benefit for your customers, your agents and your business. With the right partner and strategy, contact center modernization can ensure your customer service never goes out of style.

Interested in finding out more about the topics in this blog or West? West 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. 

The post Top 3 Benefits and Best Practices of Contact Center Modernization appeared first on Execs In The Know.

PHOENIX, AZ. – (February 12, 2018) – Community of customer experience leaders, Execs In The Know, have announced the details for four Artificial Intelligence (AI) Briefings they will host in 2018. The Execs In The Know AI Briefings will make stops in Boston, MA; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; and Seattle, WA, over the course of the year.

Here are the official dates and locations:

– Boston, MA: February 13, 2018

– Atlanta, GA: May 3, 2018

– Chicago, IL: August 16, 2018

– Seattle, WA: October 18, 2018

Each event is an opportunity to discuss how AI is impacting service strategies, with other care leaders that are looking to maximize their strategy or implement it. Each day will feature a candid Q&A session with a panel of AI Solution Providers, followed by a Corporate only discussion. There will also be an Innovations Lab, allowing attendees to see live applications of how AI is working to improve CX, in different channels and processes, with various solution providers. Networking, as well as discussion around challenges experienced, solutions, best practices, or innovations as it pertains to AI for customer service, will also be valuable takeaways.

To learn more about these events and how to register, visit the events section of the Execs In The Know website:  https://execsintheknow.com/events/.

About Execs In The Know

Execs In The Know is a global community of customer experience professionals, from various industry verticals, all focused on the same thing – excellence in customer service and 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 their national event – Customer Response Summit – twice a year (in the Spring and Fall), giving executives the opportunity to connect face-to-face. They also hold a number of other live regional events throughout the year including Subject Matter Briefings (on topics like social media, AI, SMS, outsourcing, etc.), Lunch & Learns, Workshops, and EITK Dinners. The community is able to stay engaged long after the events come to an end through industry content and thought leadership, webinars, reports, and various social communities.

Learn more at www.execsintheknow.com.

Media Contact:

Alyssa Pitura
info@execsintheknow.com

The post Execs In The Know Artificial Intelligence Briefings to Make Four Stops in 2018 appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Click here to catch up on Part 1 – Customer Expectations, Part 2 – Channels, and Part 3 – Operations.

The fourth installment of this series focuses on thoughts on technology.

• AI will begin to automate tasks for the agent and the customer – however AI will take longer to mature than previously thought, due to data infrastructure not mature enough to fully leverage.
• Companies will begin to shift from handling transaction to personalizing service.
• Digital will continue to experience strong growth, powered by mobile usage.
• Messaging channels will continue to grow social volumes.
• More conversations around the “social ethics” of AI deployment.
• Continued push on technology – moving infrastructure to the cloud.
• Deep/machine learning will play a role in 2018 for brands to meet customers where they are. I think brands are starting to get on board with the concept of machine learning and using data to predict behavior. But deep learning can extend beyond things like chatbots. If a brand can predict what a customer might be looking for, it can tailor content to the customer that allows the customer to self-service, send push notifications, etc.
• Thinking about AI secondarily to the types of use cases and outcomes desired that require it.
• Companies will have to address AI and ML in their strategies for customer acquisition and engagement. 2017 may be seen as a year of hype as lots of new vendors emerge on the scene. Expect consolidation and actual AI/ML deployments to increase in 2018.
• Interest in – and deployment of – customer journey analytics tools will increase, as companies try to identify and solve problems upstream before they occur.
• Strategic enterprise automation (front to back office) will help businesses begin to improve the customer experience, while optimizing back office operations, leading to stronger sales and a better bottom line. Examples include automated machine learning/AI, self help, chatbots/avatars, to RPA and beyond.
• People continue to overestimate innovation in the short term and underestimate it in the long term.
• We will see the first practical examples of AI in the areas of contact center routing, compliance and quality, with practical use cases.
• Some brands are testing AI for knowledge management (ie. agent support tool powered by AI vs. a traditional knowledge management tool). A lower risk approach to testing AI vs. directly with clients.
• Over the next 3 to 5 years, I believe that the majority of inquiries that come into the contact center will no longer be voice or email, but some form of messaging. SMS is only one form of messaging: it encompasses a broad swath of methods including iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Kik, WhatsApp, and more. Many people are following WeChat, which is now one of the largest standalone messaging apps with over 963 million monthly active users. Part of the reason it has been so successful is that you can do more than just send messages. Apple is moving down the path with the announcement of its Business Chat messaging solution which is an extension of iMessage and will include some ApplePay capabilities. The convergence of these technologies will be what ultimately tips the scale to shift consumers and businesses away from phone and email to messaging.
• Maturity issue with emerging virtual assistance technologies (chatbots, AI capabilities, etc.), continues to lag – requirements for specific user case studies at an all-time high.
• Buzz and hype are high, but adoption is low. Brands realize they need more data in order to leverage these technologies to be accurate.
• I’m not convinced that brands have the capacity/talent/full understanding of what precisely goes into machine learning and true AI (beyond chatbots). I think we’re going to see a wave of failed adoption on that front.
• Technology – Proliferate of technology out there – from measuring CX, to ‘omnichannel’, to speech analytics.

Stay tuned next week for the final installment in the series Part 5 – Use Case Studies/Data and Security/Risk. 

The post 2018 Predictions for the Service Leader: Part 4 – Technology appeared first on Execs In The Know.

We surveyed a number of customer service/experience leaders, from many of today’s leading brands, in our community to get their predictions for 2018. Over the coming weeks we will be releasing their thoughts on specific CX topics including customer expectations, channels, operations, technology, use case studies/data, and security/risk.

Click here to catch up on Part 1 – Customer Expectations and Part 2 – Channels.

The third installment of this series focuses on thoughts on operations.

•Further advancements in the area of personalization of the experience. The ability to leverage “big data” sources to create a more personalized experience. Driving demand for analytic platforms, as well as analytic resources (both offshore and onshore).
• Expansion of the work at home (work anywhere) models for care support for cost savings. Advancements of tools and technology to support this.
• ‘Employee engagement’ truly changing culture.
• Customer service must be able to show ROI to adopt messaging channels and chatbots for customer interactions.
• Companies will begin to focus more on the entire customer lifecycle from acquisition, to sales, to service/support. The lines will blur between organizational siloes that focus on acquisition and those that focus on customer care, as businesses embrace a more holistic approach.
• Business leaders will get better at overcoming common, but large, digital transformation challenges (e.g., data silos, governance, systems integration, executive buy-in, acquisitions, technologies, security, etc). This will enable them to develop better customer insights that are actionable, to improve the customer experience, as well as optimize business operations.
• Businesses will drastically adopt and improve how they apply predictive analytics across the enterprise.
• Businesses will further embrace outsource service providers as strategic partners vs. traditional labor arbitrage.
• The usage of behavior profiles will go mainstream in marketing and customer service.
• Companies realizing that they need to center operations, technologies and practices around people and customers, not case numbers and ticketing systems. Leveraging modern technology to replace legacy systems will take time, but brands realize they need to start now to execute on their 3-5 year vision.

Stay tuned next week for Part 4 – Technology.

The post 2018 Predictions for the Service Leader: Part 3 – Operations appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Click here to catch up on Part 1 – Customer Expectations. 

The second installment of this series focuses on thoughts on channel choice and omnichannel digital transformation.

• The continued shift to “social channels” and the need to be adept at serving customers who reach out for help in social media.
• A key word is “predictive service”. Next era CX – what AI will enable?
• C-Suite will begin to see the potential for revenue generation on the service side of the house with new channels and old channel improvement.
• Companies must be more agile in testing and deploying new solutions and channels due to increasing competition from new market forces (e.g. Amazon).
• Businesses who do not embrace omni-channel digital transformation will lose customer loyalty, their share of wallet and overall market share, to those that do.
• The volume of calls will continue to grow even with the continued introduction of alternative channels of support.
• Amazon will disrupt the ACD market.
• IoT pervasiveness will increase call volume.
• Phone channel continues to be the dominant channel for “complex” client care issues.
• Many companies focusing on “demand management” initiatives to help clients self-serve, improve CSAT and reduce call volume.
• Mobile Messaging/SMS and MMS. More interesting and efficient use cases for text will emerge. Companies realizing that leveraging instant photos or videos sent can help reduce conversation time.
• Companies look for more true omnichannel platforms and adoption for these grow. Not just a single platform that can hook into all kinds of other technologies, but a single platform that can tie all of the conversations together, no matter what channel.
• Phone channel continues to be dominant for overall customer resolution.
• Companies will continue to add more channels and favor “cheaper” asynchronous (can respond at the same time) channels, like chat and text, in exchange for “more expensive ones”, like phone and email. Volumes of total communication will stay the same, but allow for brands to save money.
• Two way SMS continues to lag with some brands testing specific use cases.

Stay tuned next week for Part 3 – Operations.

The post 2018 Predictions for the Service Leader: Part 2 – Channels appeared first on Execs In The Know.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA – November 16, 2017 – Global leaders in the customer experience industry, Execs In The Know and COPC Inc., have announced the release of the 2017 Consumer Edition of the Customer Experience Management Benchmark (CXMB) Series. The report provides compelling insights into key areas of consumer expectations, opinions and perceptions in using multiple channels for customer care. Traditional Care (phone, email, and in-person), Interactive Care (online/video chat, FAQ, and self-help), Social  Media Care (Twitter, Facebook, forums, etc.), and Mobile Care (apps, text/SMS, and mobile chat) are all explored.

Key Insights from the 2017 Consumer Survey:

– After two consecutive years of solid improvements, consumer opinion toward customer care’s ability to meet needs and expectations has flattened

– With results going back to 2014, 2017 saw the lowest percentage of consumers avoiding interacting with customer care

– Whether or not consumers self-select the multi-channel approach (as opposed to being forced into it) continues to have a profound impact on resolution and satisfaction rates for multichannel engagements

– In-Person Shoppers place far more value on good customer service than Online Shoppers

The Consumer Edition of the CXMB series is a resource for customer care professionals, looking to enhance their customer care program, improve brand opinion, and drive customer satisfaction. The 2017 Consumer Edition is the fifth consecutive year of reporting on findings of U.S. consumers, in all age groups and geographic regions. The survey findings provide both an overview of the entire customer care experience and insights regarding specific channels, as well as two new sections about the purchase experience and customer effort.

“The 2017 Consumer Edition of the CXMB Series is our most comprehensive to date,” said Chad McDaniel, President and CEO of Execs In The Know. “With every CXMB Series edition we continue to expand questions and sections that are important to today’s CX Professional, in addition to comparing data over the years to identify trends and patterns. Our community find the reports highly valuable and love using these insights to benchmark, learn, and plan their future approach.”

The full 2017 Consumer Edition is available at https://execsintheknow.com/cxmbseries/2017-consumer-edition/.

About Execs in the Know

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

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

About COPC Inc.

COPC Inc. provides consulting, training, certification and the RevealCX™ software solution for operations that support the customer experience. The company created the COPC Standards, a collection of performance management systems for call center operations, customer experience management, vendor management, and procurement. Founded in 1996, COPC Inc. began by helping call centers improve their performance. Today, the company is an innovative global leader that empowers organizations to optimize operations to deliver a superior customer experience across all channels. COPC Inc. is privately held with headquarters in Winter Park, FL, U.S. and with operations in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, India and Japan. To learn more about COPC Inc., visit www.copc.com.

For more information, visit www.copc.com.

Media Contacts

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

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

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