Just as call centers acquired new technologies and prioritized shifting to a work-at-home environment without compromising customer experience, the same must now be done in reverse if returning to a traditional office location. But, how?

The old ways of operating are long gone. Call centers will be forced to deal with more unforeseen challenges as we collectively navigate through the new normal by drumming up creative solutions to new problems – just like Ford is doing with wearable technology that buzzes employees if they get too close to their coworkers.

Since we are all in this together, it is helpful to get in the know by leaning on public resources, collaborating with peers, and exploring what others are doing in your industry before designing your reopening strategy. Maybe wristbands that enforce 6-foot social distancing are not exactly an immediate solution for the masses just yet, but there are plenty of other components to make the process of reopening call centers a seamless and stress-free experience for agents and customers.

A Safer Office Work Environment for Healthy Agents

Reintroducing agents back into call centers begins with creating a cleaner, safer work environment. The CDC points to the long-standing “Hierarchy of Controls” for protecting workers as shown below from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

While it will be imperative to have a larger inventory of hand sanitizer, masks, gloves, and other quarantine staples we have become all too familiar with, creating a healthy post-COVID call center entails much more than stocking up on Purell. Instead, it will take thoughtful consideration on all fronts from the basics, including following the CDC’s guidelines for office cleanliness and other protective measures to more advanced considerations in the elimination phase that entail how we respond once wide-spread testing and vaccinations are available.

Accommodating Your Agents Every Way Possible

With close working conditions and shared spaces, call centers proved early on to be among the most vulnerable work environments in regards to the spread of COVID-19, and in lieu of a vaccine, it will be an important factor to consider as you phase workers back into their in-office environments. A South Korean call center saw 44 percent of its agents on one-floor contract COVID-19 despite the country’s swift reaction to addressing the virus early with mass testing and digital surveillance. In the image below, you can see just how easily a virus can spread so quickly in a condensed office space.

This piece from National Geographic dove further into what could be the end of the traditional office floor plan that has been the standard in offices around the world for decades. In-office accommodations are much more than just spacing desks apart and raising cubical walls – businesses might have to reconsider the handling of elevators, corridors, hallways, and any other area that sees high foot traffic.

We are learning that employers will be adopting staggered arrival times for agents and employees, as well as staging areas for elevators, and routine temperature checks to nip any potential wave of illness in the bud. A redesigned office layout combined with proactive testing and fever monitoring makes for a much healthier, more sustainable post-COVID call center.

Preparing For The Return

Before you have staff return to work, there are several considerations one must address. The CDC offers a Workplace Decision Tool to evaluate the many facets involved including safeguards, policies, procedures, workspace environment consideration, protocols, expectations, and initial and ongoing communication. While each country, state, industry, and business type vary in recommendations, it is important that you read-up and prepare. Here are a few things to consider.

Educate Yourself

• Read through all federal, state, and local government requirements and familiarize yourself with CDC and OSHA standards. On May 27, 2020, the CDC released a Resuming Business Toolkit that includes checklists to help guide you through your restart readiness and worker protection consideration. Additionally, it offers an infographic poster to share in your place of business and links to all the important resources you should have at your fingertips.

Focus on an Employee First Model

• Consider conducting an anonymous survey with your staff to gain a better understanding of the fears, uncertainty, and doubts of your employees so you can uncover and proactively address any noted concerns. Surveys are great for an initial gauge to help you prepare but on-going input should be part of your return to work plan for early identification of additional concerns and to let your workers know you’re listening and care for their safe return and ongoing welfare.
• Work with your Human Resource teams to understand resources available for mental health concerns and make sure there are measures in place to communicate the availability of these resources and how to access them in case they are needed.
• Consider maintaining work-at-home options and policies that address productivity for employees who enjoy working from home, who care for elderly or young children, or are at-risk individuals who are productive and are equipped to work from home.
• Remodel your transaction volumes and adjust work schedules accordingly to support service levels. Consider the scheduling implications of commute schedules, public transportation concerns, office traffic patterns, and scheduled breaks.

Innovate and Communicate

• Prepare and communicate new protocols, policies, and expectations. In particular, revise your sick policy to offer additional flexibility, communicate cleaning policies, spell out expectations on the use of masks, set standards for temperature testing prior to arriving to work and or onsite testing, and set a hardline for not coming to work if they have been possibly exposed.

Re-engineer the Workspace and Workflow

• Prepare immediate workspaces. Hang signs that clearly display social distancing requirements and reminders about cleaning protocols for employees. Consider the risk of shared workspaces and equipment like headsets, phones, computers, and other staples and supplies. Consider how you will address this hotbed of germs through cleaning protocols and or by ordering additional inventory to offer dedicated equipment and supplies.
• Attend to your physical worksite. Consider needs for ample 6-foot social distancing, the need for physical barriers, and additional wall or floor signage throughout the physical location for employee and customer consumption. Make sure there is a general plan for regular cleaning of shared spaces like bathrooms, door handles, conference room facilities, light switches, breakrooms, and the like.
• Update protocols for dealing with inbound and outbound materials (i.e. mail and packages), as well as connect with your facility manager to further examine the facility’s air filtration systems as a preventative measure.

After The Doors Open

Monitor and Educate

• Continue to monitor the federal, state, and local government requirements and familiarize yourself with CDC, The WHO, and OSHA standards.
• Keep an eye on cases in your area, be aware of your workers’ physical and mental health, including your own.

Continuous Feedback

• Have regular conversations with your team members and connect with them on a consistent basis to collect on-going input, monitor employee sentiment on the lines, and keep those lines of communication open.

Ongoing Monitoring and Evaluation

• Be consistent with monitoring new protocols, policies, and cleaning standards.
• Reevaluate KPI’s and adjust accordingly to the current state-of-business to ensure unrealistic expectations are not another source of stress on your team. Performance reviews and metrics will need to be expanded to include safety measures, making sure to keep everyone on the team is following protocol and consistent with the new policies.

No stone can be left unturned when it comes to the health and safety aspect of reopening your business, and the onus falls on leaders to prioritize new behaviors to ensure agents return to a safe work environment for years to come.

How Will You Respond?

One silver lining of this pandemic for businesses is that it is forcing everyone to fortify their contingency plans so that if there were ever a situation that required call centers to be shut down again, closing and reopening them would be easier.

For now, companies must simply follow proper CDC protocols, listen to employees, and do everything possible to ensure they have the environment and the resources to continue providing customers with the best possible experience. With many of the largest brands in the world acting quickly to adopt new service models, acquire new technologies, redesign office layouts, and keep call centers germ-free, it reinforces the idea that every call center needs to look at every possible solution before and after reopening – because as evidenced by the aforementioned National Geographic piece, a poorly-designed call center could be devastating.

The best course of action is to be proactive, continue to seek information on what others are doing, and identify the strategies you see working for your company. With so much at stake, it is important to explore all opportunities, to review OSHA’s Guidance on Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19, and as we’ve learned through this pandemic, to remain flexible.

To get involved in the conversation, Corporate Brands can Join Know It All (KIA), and we invite everyone to check out our April Issue to the CX insight Magazine featuring a number of articles on COVID-19. Additionally, visit our COVID-19 Readiness resource page for links to articles and other pertinent resources, or register for the May 28th webinar, Business Continuity in the Midst of a Crisis & Preparing for the New Normal.

Visit our COVID-19 Readiness Resources Page to view a
Featured List of Return to Work CDC Resources.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Blog post, written by: Execs In The Know

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“Through live events, webinars, and the KIA Online Community, we are working with CX leaders to gain a comprehensive understanding of their biggest pain points and make connections with other leaders so together, we can evolve the industry,” said Chad McDaniel, President and Co-Founder of Execs In The Know. “With the new CX Trending Topics webpage, we have created a platform to provide CX leaders with resources and insights to help them navigate their CX strategies in the most effective way possible.”

Most recently, COVID-19 has forced companies to further examine internal processes and business contingency plans (BCP), and social distancing has made it clear why a diversified Bots, Outsourcing, and Gig strategy can help companies weather the storm during uncertain times. The Artificial Intelligence and Gig Economy videos atop the Trending Topics page highlight the unique perspectives of EITK’s community members on these strategies. These CX leaders have shared their thoughts on how these trending topics factor into their CX strategies, how these topics have changed over the past few years, what the future holds for the industry, and how fellow CX leaders can exercise best practices when it comes to the most pressing issues within the industry.

The new Trending Topics page also highlights other EITK offerings to help businesses navigate the impact of COVID-19, including a section dedicated to EITK’s growing COVID-19 Resource Center, which highlights the newly-completed Virtual Briefing Series that was inspired by an initial real-time effort of EITK’s Advisory Board and provides CX-specific solution concepts on a weekly basis regarding a specific hot button topics that CX leaders need addressed during this time of uncertainty. As CX leaders continue to lead together through COVID-19, EITK will continue to grow this webpage to provide the most relevant, up-to-date insights on the areas CX leaders care the most about.

To visit the new CX Trending Topics Webpage, click the link here: https://execsintheknow.com/knowledge-center/cx-trending-topics/

About Execs In The Know

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

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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.

This will all be transparent to customers, and you can’t do it by stringing point solutions together or patching add-ons to an aging system. Instead, a holistic approach needs to be put in place to understand where complexity is impacting customer experience (CX), and which technologies can address that to support seamless customer service. Understanding and then managing that complexity is another key 2020 trend we’re seeing in this space. As a starting point for developing that holistic approach, the following are two forms of complexity that all contact centers must address.

Complexity of Technology

There have never been more technologies for contact centers to manage, and new technologies are transforming every aspect of contact center operation including support for omnichannel engagements. Although telephony may still be the dominant channel for customer interaction, new technologies make other channels viable options, such as video, web chat, mobile messaging, and various forms of social media. These offerings are complex for IT in different ways, but they provide new elements that makes seamless CX possible.

Digital transformation and the emerging world of AI is also bringing chatbots and new forms of self-service, along with predictive analytics that drive more personalized customer interactions. In all of these cases, the technologies are complex by nature, but with the right vision from IT, they can be deployed in ways that reduce complexity for agents and enable them to provide seamless CX, where the customer journey can be understood in ways never before possible.

Complexity of Meeting Customer Needs

On the receiving end of customer service, your customers are being impacted by these same technologies, and that adds another layer of complexity. They now expect the same CX regardless of how they engage with your contact center – via mobile, from a home phone, PC, or even social channels – and sometimes a mix of these during the same session. Not only must agents have omnichannel capabilities to seamlessly roll with this in real time, but they must also have a broader mix of communication skills, as each of these channels has distinct rules of engagement.

With these new technologies, we have a far greater range of touchpoints for collecting data about customers. There are numerous repositories of customer data that feed into the contact center’s collective understanding of customers. Agents are supported by multiple information sources including databases, contact center and business applications including CRMs – all adding to the complexity of the agent desktop and the understanding of the customer journey. As buying behaviors shift online, AI applications are now able to map out complete customer journeys and provide agents with highly specific and prescriptive guidance that extend their role beyond being reactive problem solvers.

How to Move Forward

A holistic approach is needed to reduce the complexity on the agent desktop, leverage existing and emerging technologies to streamline and automate workstreams for greater efficiency.

These are just a few examples of the increasing complexity in contact centers and the need to understand and support customer needs. The relationship between agents and customers has never been so complicated, and it’s increasingly being shaped by today’s technologies. IT decision-makers don’t need to have a granular understanding of all this complexity but need to understand how these technologies can make that complexity manageable.

What’s most important is being able to deploy complex technologies in a way that both enables and empowers agents to provide a seamless CX. This is harder than it looks, and the process begins with focusing on the end result – seamless CX – and working backwards to collaborate with the right technology partners who know how to support that.

Upstream Works provides enhanced omnichannel contact center solutions that make CX personal, seamless, and effortless. We empower agents with a feature-rich, unified desktop and seamless integration across multiple applications and CRMs for data-driven CX engagements and better outcomes.

Contact us and see how we assist organizations like yours reduce contact center complexity with a holistic approach to an amazing, seamless customer experience.

Guest post written by: Upstream Works

The post Why Seamless CX Matters More Than Ever appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Messaging Customer Care: Real-World Deployments, Real Results

The goal of this blog post is to clearly identify the business value of implementing messaging customer care alongside traditional care channels such as phone, email, and live-chat. In my role as Head of Product, I have the privilege of meeting customer service and customer experience leaders on a weekly basis. Over the last several years of my career, I have racked up several hundred such conversations.

These conversations are a part of my role that I love and value immensely because they help me understand our customers’ priorities. While every organization has its own way of articulating their customer service priorities, they generally fall into three main buckets: improving customer experience, controlling customer service costs, and improving agent satisfaction. Agent productivity impacts all three of these commonly held priorities.

Improving agent productivity means conversations are being resolved faster which is a key component of customer satisfaction. It also impacts agent satisfaction because higher productivity is achieved by eliminating repetitive, mundane or wasteful actions that agents are required to do for issue resolution. Finally, and most significantly, agent productivity is directly tied to cost control since its presence enables organizations to handle higher volumes of customer service requests.

In previous posts, we’ve talked about how messaging customer care provides superior CX for consumers. What’s often overlooked is that customer care over messaging channels is also significantly cheaper compared to other, more traditional channels including voice and textual channels such as email and live chat. This is largely because messaging enables agents to dramatically increase productivity.

Voice vs. Messaging

To understand how much more productive, we analyzed a representative sample of our customer base. We found that agents on our platform are able to resolve between 5.7 to 14.5 conversations per hour. This resolution rate is about 25-65% higher than that of voice teams. The median messaging customer care team resolves 7.2 conversations per hour. This is about 42% higher than the benchmark of 4.2-5.2 resolutions per hour for a voice agent. This does not include conversations that did not require a response (e.g., conversations resolved by bots and automation, or a “Thank you” from a customer after a conversation was already marked resolved by an agent). Also excluded are additional conversations conducted by agents that were never resolved.

This disparity in productivity is driven by a messaging agent’s ability to handle many more simultaneous conversations than a voice agent is able to. Agents on our platform often have more than 10 conversations being actively handled at once without jeopardizing the quality of service.

Email vs. Messaging

Messaging provides an even higher productivity gain over email. Email, like messaging, is an asynchronous channel. This means that conversations don’t have to happen in real time and can span minutes, hours, or even days. However, from a consumer’s point of view, email is a highly dissatisfying channel, associated with high response times (often a day, sometimes several days) and high friction.

Emails tend to need more words compared to messaging which wastes agents’ time without adding much value to the actual problem resolution for the consumer. This communication style often requires a lot of back and forth, which feels natural in a messaging-style conversation, but can get frustrating in a more “offline” format. Email issue resolution costs for enterprises that we’ve talked to tend to be in the range of $6-7 per resolution. Compare this to the $2-2.5 cost per resolution for an average messaging team on our platform and it translates into a 60-65% productivity gain over email agent teams.

Chat vs. Messaging

Live chat has been around for a long time and is a well-established service channel in many organizations. On the surface messaging and chat look similar enough that enterprises tend to assume that they also have similar costs. However, this is not the case due to a key difference between messaging and chat: asynchronous versus synchronous interactions. Chats often suffer from a high abandonment rate whereas a messaging conversation can never be abandoned. This is the source of messaging’s productivity advantage over chat. Messaging conversations never get abandoned as there are no session timeouts.

Timed out chats often lead to either channel hopping or new chat sessions (e.g., if a user gets timed out because they were browsing a different webpage and didn’t see an agent’s reply). For each abandoned chat that drives a new session or a phone call, the time spent by the first chat agent is wasted productivity.

Messaging also allows more simultaneous conversations than live chat’s typical 3-5 range. We estimate that eliminating involuntary abandons and enabling higher simultaneous conversations can add up to 15-30% higher productivity over live chat. Abandonment rate being the key variable for the extent of these savings.

Whether comparing messaging customer care to voice, email or live-chat, it is safe to say the messaging provides a superior customer experience. Perhaps most importantly, it drives 20-60% agent productivity compared to traditional channels, creating a win-win situation for the consumer and the enterprise.

Messaging provides a superior customer experience and drives 20-60% agent productivity compared to traditional channels, creating a win-win situation for the consumer and the enterprise.

What is your experience? Have you looked at what a messaging operation could save your organization?

Interested in finding out more about this topic or Sparkcentral? Sparkcentral 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. Sparkcentral will be delivering a Customer Shop Talk session titled “Digital Messaging Customer Care at Scale”. 

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

The post Messaging Customer Care Business Case appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The report is aimed at providing insights into consumer opinions and behaviors, specific to the financial services industry. Topics in this report include customer care experiences, channel use, customer effort, quality of care, privacy, and a comparison on U.S. and Canadian customers.

The infographic below highlights a few key findings, but you can also download the full complimentary report here. 

The post CXMB Industry Insights: Financial Services – Select Findings [INFOGRAPHIC] 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

PHOENIX, AZ. – (August 2, 2017) – Advocates for Customer Experience Professionals, Execs In The Know, have released the agenda for their next executive gathering – Customer Response Summit (CRS) Chicago. CRS Chicago will be held September 19^th-21^st, 2017, at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, in Chicago, IL. Knowledge on leading industry trends and subjects such as AI and machine learning, employee engagement, text for service, digital fraud, outsourcing, the VoC on channel choice, big data, and more will be shared. The customer experience conference will include keynotes from Microsoft, Square, Amazon, and Lyft.

Customer Response Summit is a gathering of customer experience leaders, across many verticals, focused on working together to improve the customer care industry, and create innovative experiences for their brands. Highlights of the CX leadership event include an exclusive tour of the legendary Wrigley Field and the inner workings of the fan experience at the Chicago Cubs. The newest version of the CXMB Series – 2017 Consumer Edition – will also be released (a joint effort between Execs In The Know and COPC Inc.).

“Our community lives and breathes the Customer First mindset,” said Chad McDaniel, President and CEO of Execs In The Know. “If you are passionate about your customers and want to create the most meaningful experiences for them with your brand, than you’ll feel right at home with us in Chicago. We emphasize a ‘Leaders Learning From Leaders’ approach, allowing our attendees to work together to share best practices, solve challenges, and create lasting connections.”

Other leading corporate brands that will be speaking include The Home Depot, The Mine (a Lowes Company), Sears Holdings, GoDaddy, Samsung, 1-800-Flowers.com, IHG and more.

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, dedicated to enhancing the customer service industry. Execs In The Know connects people to engaging industry content, thought leadership, current trends, peer-to-peer collaboration, networking, and industry employment opportunities. Their largest event, Customer Response Summit, takes place twice a year, uniting executives from many of today’s leading brands, to create impactful connections and share actionable insights.

Learn more at www.execsintheknow.com.

Media Contact:

Alyssa Pitura
info@execsintheknow.com

The post Leaders to Connect at Customer Response Summit Chicago, to Create Next Level Customer Experiences For Their Brands appeared first on Execs In The Know.

PHOENIX, AZ. – (July 26, 2017) – Execs In The Know, advocates for the Customer Experience Executive and hosts of leading customer experience conference – Customer Response Summit, have announced the formation of a CX Partner Advisory Board. The 2017 Board includes seven member organizations committed to improving the customer service experience and advancing the care industry as a whole. The organizations represented include Interactions LLC, Teleperformance, Genesys, Gladly, COPC, Retailpivot Consulting LLC., and Modern Contact Consulting, Inc.

The Execs In The Know CX Partner Advisory Board will provide industry knowledge, advice, guidance, and recommendations to the EITK community. The Board representatives will use their knowledge of innovations, developments, and customer behaviors to deliver thought leadership, educational content, and direction.

“We are lucky to have the opportunity to work with so many talented, reputable, and knowledgeable subject matter experts in our community,” said Chad McDaniel, President of Execs In The Know. “The creation of our CX Partner Advisory Board brings together seven individuals excelling in the customer experience industry and delivering customer success for their brands and their customers. They are a vital piece of the Execs In The Know community and will strengthen it further through their involvement in our events, webinars, content pieces, philanthropic activities, and meetings.”

Board Members:

Jay Wolcott, VP Social Product, Interactions LLC
Amit Shankardass, Executive Vice President, Teleperformance
Ted Hunting, Vice President, North America Marketing, Genesys
Joseph Ansanelli, CEO & Co-Founder, Gladly
Judi Brenstein, Vice President, COPC
Kathryn McGavick, President, Modern Contact Consulting, Inc.
Razia Richter, CEO, Retailpivot Consulting LLC.

To learn more about the Execs In The Know CX Partner Advisory Board, visit https://execsintheknow.com/about-us/advisory-board/

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, dedicated to enhancing the customer service industry. Execs In The Know connects people to engaging industry content, thought leadership, current trends, peer-to-peer collaboration, networking, and industry employment opportunities. Their largest event, Customer Response Summit, takes place twice a year, uniting executives from many of today’s leading brands, to create impactful connections and share actionable insights.

Learn more at www.execsintheknow.com.

Media Contact
Alyssa Pitura
info@execsintheknow.com

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The post Execs In The Know Announces the Formation of CX Partner Advisory Board appeared first on Execs In The Know.