The following is a guest blog written by Evan Dobkin, Marketing Manager at Aspect Software.  

I entered the contact center market five years ago, working on self-service interaction and the potential for personalized, customized experiences made possible by smartphones. At the time, the industry was planning for a multi-channel world. The domination of the “archaic” voice channel was starting to give way to native apps, social channels and SMS as the tides that would lift all customer service ships. It was very easy for businesses to get caught up in the hype of what was on the horizon and become paralyzed, wondering what changes they needed to make to their business to become part of this modern customer service world.

However, over these last five years, I’ve come to understand that despite the bells and whistles of sleek, up-and-coming communication channels, brands looking to add self-service interaction must begin by perfecting their IVR. A modernized IVR can help to improve the customer experience while providing a solid foundation for additional contact channels.

IVR has been, and will continue to be, the workhorse of your customer service offering. Often regarded by consumers as “the channel of last resort,” because they expect resolution when taking the time to call directly, it’s actually critical for resolving many customer issues. Not convinced? Consider these modern IVR realities:

– IVR is one of many contact points

– Improved speech recognition and dynamic personalization have made navigation easier

– New interactive voice solutions (Amazon Echo, Siri, etc…) emerged that are redefining how we interact with and our expectations of today’s IVR

– It is all about customer experience, ease of use – and containing costs

In 2012 Pew Research Center reported 46% of American adults owned a smartphone. By November of 2016 the number climbed to 77%. With this high adoption rate, consumers are more connected than ever before via social, apps and text and messaging platforms. In fact, KPCB reported in 2015 that six of the top 10 most used apps are messaging apps. Once upon a time voice was just IVR and live agent, but now includes virtual assistants and smart devices with the ability for voice and video.

It’s become apparent that brands can no longer afford to have their IVR operating in isolation. The enterprise IVR must become the foundation of the overall customer service ecosystem by adapting to changes in the way that customers prefer to interact, as well as adopting new technologies to enable the best possible experiences for customers. It’s time to leverage the technologies that make these new interaction points so popular to finally make good on the promise of IVR.

Join my Shop Talk, Modern IVR: Revitalize Your Most Important Touchpoint, at Customer Response Summit Vegas on Wednesday, February 8^th and learn how adding modern capabilities to your IVR can improve the customer experience and help you capitalize on your customer’s first impression.

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The following is a guest blog written by Kathy Juve, SVP, Global Marketing and Product Development at Convergys. Learn more about Convergys by visiting their website.

Among CX professionals, interest in personalizing customer experiences is always a hot topic, but companies often invest too much time and too many resources in things that don’t matter much to customers.

Why? Because most companies lack the necessary research data and analytic insights to know with certainty when personalization works, when it doesn’t, and how to make it have the biggest payoff.

To help contribute to the industry’s understanding of personalization in customer care, Convergys has surveyed over 3,000 customers across a variety of industries. The results have given us an accurate picture of the current state of personalization today, and clear answers to the questions of how customers want their service experiences to be tailored to them.

We share some of the key discoveries here.

Most Personalization Attempts Miss the Mark

In customer care, personalization should be about making attempts to establish an authentic, timely, and mutually beneficial connection with a customer based on what is known about their individual needs and preferences.

Our research shows that most companies are struggling to do this.

When we surveyed customers about their most recent phone interaction, for example, the most commonly identified personalization attempt (47%) was that the agent mentioned the customer’s name. Unfortunately, we found that mentioning a customer’s name ranks near the very bottom in terms of importance to the customer.

So, how do you deliver personalization in ways that matter the most to customers? Our research points out that it’s not simply a matter of training the right agent behaviors or supporting agents with the right technology, but rather a strategic blending of the two.

Here are the top four components of both agent-owned and technology-enabled personalization factors, according to customers:

Agent-Owned Components of Successful Personalization

1) The agent clearly explained the answer to the customer’s question.

2) The agent acknowledges the situation and is sincere in helping to resolve the issue.

3) The agent demonstrates urgency in resolving the customer issue.

4) The agent suggests next steps and provides a timeline for resolution.

Technology-Enabled Components of Successful Personalization

1) The agent had access to account information during the call.

2) Information that the customer entered into the IVR was made available to the agent.

3) The agent personally followed up with the customer after the transaction to make sure the issue was resolved.

4) The agent offered their contact information so that the customer could contact them directly.

 7 Best Practices In Personalization from Top Performing Companies

Although many companies have a lot of work to do when it comes to delivering personalization that matter to customers, some companies are doing a great job in this area—and it’s making an impact on their customers in the form of higher performance metrics and loyalty scores.

The following are seven best practices that we’ve observed are common to top performers. Keep them in mind as you begin to consider where your company should be aiming as you plan to take personalization to the next level:

1) Recognize customers by their phone number, not hard to find serial numbers, account numbers, VIN numbers, etc.

2) Send a post-call, closed-loop text that includes agent names and a phone number.

3) Develop training around call handling and agent behaviors that relate to the personalization drivers.

4) Train agents to listen to the tempo of the customer and match that tempo.

5) Build a formalized, systematized, and standardized agent notes system that creates a virtual, personalized repository of information on a customer.

6) Integrate one-stop-shop desktop tools and automatic agent alerts for easy access to prior channel contacts, payment history, customer information, sales data, etc.

7) Leverage call listening for more than just quality monitoring. Use it to deliver a better solution fit via new product features, product packaging and pricing models.

There’s a lot more to the story! At CRS Austin, Gina Massa, Senior Director, Operational Performance Analytics at Convergys, will be sharing more data from our survey and going into much more detail on the topic of personalization in customer care. You’ll discover more insights and strategies that will help you design and execute a plan that establishes better customer loyalty through personalization.

About the Author

Kathy Juve is Senior Vice President, Global Marketing & Product Development at Convergys where she also drives the company’s Customer Interaction Technologies (CIT) and Analytics business units. With more than 10 years experience in developing on-trend tech solutions to help global clients improve the customer experience for business results, Kathy advises clients on the emerging role of using analytics to drive and support customer care strategies across digital and assisted-channel.

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The following is a guest blog written by Amit Shankardass, Executive Vice President of Marketing for Teleperformance. Learn more about Teleperformance by visiting their website.

Sometimes the world moves so quickly that it is difficult to see which changes and developments are really important. Progress just happens and we often forget how things used to happen, even in the recent past. How customers relate to brands is just one example of an area of business that is moving faster now more than ever, especially in terms of how the customer experience shapes how customers feel about brands and companies.

In order to predict the future, it’s impossible to just extrapolate from the past, but it’s possible to step back from the rapid change, to take stock and evaluate just what has changed. With a deeper understanding of what has changed the customer experience and why, it is easier to understand how customer interactions may change in the coming years.

The industry analyst Gartner recently published a research paper suggesting that 89% of the companies surveyed are now competing with the customer experience as a key differentiator. Managing the customer experience has become the single most important task for executive managers, now with a higher priority than other traditional areas of focus, such as reducing costs or increasing revenue.

Why has this happened?

The simple answer to this is that the way customers communicate has changed in a short period of time. Two specific innovations arguably made the largest impact on mobile Internet access:  (1) launch of the Apple iPhone in 2007 and (2) rise in popularity of online social networks. Customers are now comfortable publishing their views on products and services for the consumption of friends, family members, and followers, and they have immediate access to prices, reviews, and the ability to make purchases 24/7.

How did this happen?

Customer service used to be the interface between companies and customers via specific channels. The company would define how and when a customer could get in touch with a company by publishing a 1-800 phone number or an email address. Companies would also have clear opening hours when service is available.

This service paradigm has been reversed because of the innovations already mentioned. Now customer comments and requests for help proliferate across many channels, with the channel chosen by the customer, not the company. Companies now seek forums in which customers discuss their products because customer expectations have changed dramatically.  A company that does not respond to its online community is considered to be ignoring its customers.

What are the implications for the enterprise?

The implications to-date have largely revolved around the need to expand the service function to encompass many different communication channels, embracing blogs, review sites, and social networks in addition to voice, chat, and email. However, a great change to corporate strategy is emerging, driven by changing customer communication habits. It’s increasingly clear that companies need to place the customer at the heart of their strategy because of the evolution in the customer journey, and they need to know what that journey looks like today as well as in the future.

Regarding what companies should do now to prepare for the customer journey of tomorrow, Stephen Loynd, Global Program Director of Customer Contact for Frost & Sullivan said, “In today’s rapidly changing world, companies need to adapt to the rise of new channels. We’ve done research that looks at the rise and decline of channels taking place today and over the last couple of years. What we see is that while e-mail and IVR are on the decline, channels such as chat, mobile apps, social media, video, and web self-service portals are all on the rise. Clearly, companies need to be thinking about how they’re going to adapt to this new world and what partners can help them with the journey.”

Customers expect that they can communicate and interact with their favorite companies and brands before, during, or after a purchase, or their interactions may have nothing to do with a purchase. Customers are building relationships with companies, no longer simply making service calls. This new type of customer relationship calls for organizations to rethink their interaction strategies. Any department that interacts with customers should ideally be a part of a single “customer relationship management team” to coordinate previously distinct functions such as marketing, sales, public relations, advertising, and customer service.

What started as a change in channel preferences, has led to a situation in which most companies will need to reorganize how they conduct business if they want to deliver a customer experience that meets expectations. Are you already planning how to make your business more customer-centric, and if not, can you continue to deliver services in a way that your customers expect in 2016?

This article is based on content from the Teleperformance ebook “Outsourcing Up!” published earlier this year. To read more about the book and to download your free copy, please click here: http://tinyurl.com/outsourcing-up.

To hear more about this topic and others like it, and for more information about Teleperformance, join us at Customer Response Summit Austin (Sept. 18-20, 2016).

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The following is a guest blog written by Abhay Prasad, Senior Director, Product Management, Self-Service, at Aspect. Learn more about Aspect by visiting their website.

Did you know your customers probably don’t want to talk to you?

This is one of the surprising discoveries we made while conducting primary consumer research on customer service preferences across generational groups, including Millennials. Instead of talking to an agent, 70% of Americans would rather solve product and service issues themselves and 91% would use self-service if it were available. And the demand for self-service is growing. This year, 42% of survey respondents told us they would rather do just about anything else (like clean a toilet) than talk to customer service – a 27% increase over last year’s survey results.

By tapping into consumer’s preferences for self-service options, businesses stand to save millions of dollars in operational costs, but only when self-service is convenient, appealing and customer-focused. IVRs, which have been considered a mainstay of customer self-service for years, are designed more to keep customers from reaching an agent than to help them resolve their issue in an efficient manner. As a result, most customers who find themselves in an IVR will do their best to find their way out again.

There IS a better way to meet customers’ self-service needs. In fact, we can think of at least eight better ways. Here are two of our favorites:

Caller Intent Prediction

Caller intent prediction can identify the customer profile and see transactional information associated with the account.  With this information, the IVR can predict the caller’s question; making them feel recognized and known while also speeding up their interaction.  For example, a customer calling into a retailer could hear: “I see you have three orders in transit. Are you calling to track the shipping status on a package?” And only when the customer says no are they presented with the full IVR menu.

Experience Continuity

Our research also uncovered that 89% of customers are annoyed when they have to repeat themselves. This happens when a caller is knee-deep in an IVR menu and gets disconnected. Or when they reach a point in the IVR that absolutely needs live assistance and have to repeat all the information they put into the IVR to the agent.

With context continuity, your IVR would guide a consumer who calls back soon after getting disconnected into the spot where they left off: “Did you want to finish changing your telephone pin?” Or, it would ensure that relevant data entered in the IVR would be passed to an agent who can start the conversation — with “Let me help you finish this reservation.” Instead of “How can I help you?”

In addition to caller intent prediction and experience continuity, there are no less than six more tactics that will transform IVR interactions into a rich self-service experience that helps reduce frustration, create a positive experience for your customers and save you money by driving up IVR retention rates. These and other modern IVR capabilities can help build customer loyalty.

To learn more about the other six tactics, join me on September 20^th at 11:30 A.M. for my session at Customer Response Summit Austin, Where’s the Love?  Get Your Customers to Adore Your IVR.

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This is a guest blog written by Dan Gordon, SVP Strategy and Development at West, Interactive Services. Learn more about West at West.com/Interactive.

It’s estimated that we spend 177 minutes (nearly one-fifth of our waking day) on our phones daily — habitually checking them for updates around 150 times.[i] Furthermore, it’s predicted that mobile commerce will account for almost half of all e-commerce by 2018.[ii] Seasoned Silicon Valley gurus have even asserted a probable P.C. extinction as a result of the increasing functionality of mobile devices.

Digital disruption is transforming our lives and the brands we touch. Organizations need to put more power in customers’ hands. We need to free consumers to interact on their own terms and treat every interaction as a piece of an ongoing conversation. We need to enact thoughtful strategies to… Get. More. Proactive.

We’re now living in a world where 87 percent of parents use texting — 72 percent of which hold a positive perception of companies that offer text messaging customer care.[iii] It’s estimated that in 2018, mobile search will generate 73 billion calls to businesses across every industry.[iv] Luckily, knowing this puts brands in control of their own destiny!

When it comes to facilitating the graceful communications that customers now demand, it’s clear that we need to show them we know them on the web, over a call, via text and everywhere in between. This is where connected communication is quickly becoming a must.

Understanding that customers now expect seamless interaction across different channels, these prime examples illustrate how proactive strategies can do a lot of legwork for your business:

A leading cable provider uses natural language recognition in the automated voice system to interpret a caller’s everyday speech to determine that his internet is down. The call ends and the company attempts to remotely reset the modem unsuccessfully. Recognizing failure to resolve the issue, the provider automatically follows up with SMS. The text message directs the customer to a mobile webpage to easily schedule an appointment with a service technician. Click here to see this multi-channel experience in action.

One of West’s retail partners incorporates similar self-service elements to support day-to-day customer interactions. Learning from customers’ past behavior, the company is able to consistently predict a caller’s intent before a word has been uttered. For example, the IVR system can identify a customer by name, predict the desired action (like retrieving store hours), provide available appointment times, and send a reminder SMS with any relevant details after all is said and done.

Even “going green” is a cinch for customers when companies strive to make automated interactions connected and personal.

It’s never been a secret that the world is becoming more dependent on mobile devices; however, companies are increasingly conscious of the need to address customer concerns before they develop.

Be sure to join us on May 17 at the Execs In The Know webinar, “The Mobile Shift: How to Proactively Deliver a Better Customer Experience,” to position your organization for success.

[i] Google, Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile

[ii] PWC, Total Retail Survey 2016

[iii] OneReach, Harris Poll Results

[iv] Google, Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile

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If you are launching a chat initiative, then this short blog carries a big lesson. Uncover the six common traps that cause chat business models to fail.

Chat provides a mechanism for customers to obtain assistance online when browsing a website/mobile app. Based on experience with various chat implementations, and speaking with multiple businesses, it’s clear that the business case for chat is not simple.

The original theory was that chat would mirror an IVR/Automated Phone System and deflect calls. Because agents could service multiple customers concurrently, the model appeared to be a win-win. Customers are serviced in their channel of choice and agents are twice or three times as productive. WRONG! It’s been proven across multiple industries that if this is your sole objective, then your chat business model will fail.

Here are the six reasons why your chat business model could fail:

Reason #1: Lack of clarity on the value proposition
If the ultimate goal with chat is to reduce expenses by avoiding calls, take a hard look at this approach. This is not a valuable add to customers. Your value proposition should be focused on providing assistance in the customer’s channel of choice, possibly by making the sales and acquisition process more convenient for customers.

Reason #2: Fixing the wrong problem
Before implementing, question what it is customers are doing online that drives them to call the contact center. Why couldn’t they self-serve in the first place? Too many times companies launch chat to fill a gap in website design. If customers are not able to complete their transaction easily online without assistance, make that a business priority first. This should go for mobile sites and smart phone/tablet apps also.

Reason #3: Key channels are missed
The majority of organizations are focusing chat efforts on traditional, non-mobile websites. We know that a mobile first mentality is critical. A chat business case needs to include deploying chat on mobile site and apps. Google/Ipsos research states that 90% of smartphone users have used their phone to make progress toward a long-term goal or multi-step process, while “out and about”. If you leave mobile out of your business model you’re missing out on a large group of your customers.

Reason #4: A business benefit has not been monetized
Avoiding a call into the contact center is not a source of revenue, it’s cost avoidance. Additionally, it is only a possible estimate based on what the customer may or may not have done if chat is not available. Your benefit needs to be focused on hard numbers, such as conversion rates or “widgets” sold.

Reason #5: Key partners are not considered thoughtfully
Not all chat software/software vendors are created equal. Many companies apt to lean on the vendor they know best or the latest one that came “knocking”. To ensure you have the right solution and partner consider using issuing a request for proposal (RFP).

Reason #6: Key resources are missed
Have you considered all of the internal resources that will be needed? Are the costs of these resources calculated into your cost structure? Workforce management, quality monitoring, management and other internal resources need to be addressed in your business model. If you don’t calculate these up front, you’ll be surprised with your financials.

Guest blog author Nicholas Klisht, Contact Center Strategist at Nielsen IT Consulting

If you’d like to learn more about chat implementations and four tactical tips to ensure your chat project is successful check out http://www.nielsenitconsulting.com/chat-implementation/.

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The following is a guest blog written by Ted Hunting, Senior Director, North America Marketing and Global Demand Generation, at Genesys. Learn more about Genesys by visiting their website.

To hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Seattle, September 28-30th, 2015.

Gartner’s CEO has proclaimed that Digital Business is Upon Us. Companies that think they are not digital businesses will be out of business and the companies that will win in this era of digital transformation are those companies that make the most of every business moment. What Gartner is proclaiming is key to every company in every industry is essentially “customer care for the connected consumer” – the key topic of the Customer Response Summit Seattle. It’s also why I encourage customer care and CX leaders to attend what I have found in the past to be an extremely enlightening event, attended by smart, energized customer care executives and luminaries. From speakers, to networking, to innovative new ideas in the “Idea Lab”, it will be a fun few days of learning and “eureka” moments.

As CX and contact center leaders in our companies, we are now squarely in a position to help our companies make the most of every business moment and create the connected customer. The business moment occurs via customers hitting web chat, social channels, webpages, IVRs, mobile apps, text messages, and of course good old fashioned phones and email. These business moments, which historically started with the phone, have now changed 180 degrees with digital being the first and preferred communication channels for today’s connected consumer.

Companies like Uber and AirBnB have already started transforming the transportation and hospitality industries through new digital models, yet this is only the beginning of the larger transformations that will hit every industry, from financial services, to retail, to technology. Yet when I have asked CX leaders this year how many can see their entire customers journeys from webchat, to tweets, to IVR, to mobile, to even an in-store visit, 11% has been the highest number among leading companies, in cities across North America. We clearly have a huge gap when it comes to the connected consumer and creating great, seamless, omnichannel journeys. I see great progress, but I also see many companies failing to deliver.

Many companies talk about “omnichannel” but what is really offered as the norm are fragmented conversations, in siloed channels, versus continuous, unified conversations, across channels. Join me in the Idea Lab where we will share a glimpse of a NextGen Contact Center for the Digital Age. Two nextgen ideas will be shared: 1) Using Journey Dashboards with a true omnichannel view, across all channels, to power a great omnichanel customer journey. 2) Innovative new digital approaches for a nextgen customer experience – combining web, voice, mobile, and the Internet of Things.

Digital business and the connected consumer is upon us. For us in the CX industry it’s a golden opportunity to help our companies win like never before. As a CX leader are you and your company ready to play? Or perhaps more importantly…are you ready to win? Come to Seattle and get in the game.

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The following is a guest blog written by Daniel Hong, Senior Director of Product Marketing Strategy, at [24]7. Learn more about [24]7 by visiting their website.

To hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Seattle, September 28-30th, 2015.

Show of hands…how many times have you heard the word ”omnichannel” in a meeting, and like reflex action, you let out a slightly muffled grunt, just loud enough for the person sitting next to you to hear and acknowledge your sentiment with a “we’re totally on the same page” eye roll. And then later on in the meeting, when the “how would we implement omnichannel” is discussed, a flurry of questions is posed, by multiple meeting attendees, with sharp tones of tactful skepticism accompanied with cocked eyebrows. This seems to be a common scene unfolding in conference rooms today.

While omnichannel has been wildly heralded by vendors as the ultimate panacea for broken customer journeys, it’s no secret that there’s a certain degree of incredulousness among enterprises when it comes to actually making omnichannel customer engagement a reality. At the same time, all enterprises are sold on the vision and promise of omnichannel.

After all, it makes perfect sense that customers should be able to start their journey in one channel on one device and continue their journey, in a seamless fashion, on another channel and on a different device. All the while, the customer’s experience is continuous because context is maintained, regardless of the touch point. Matias Duarte, the former lead designer of Android at Google, sums it up well “…but when services actually work seamlessly across all these screens that are available, you’re going to be like, OMG, obviously.”

Channel Pairing

When it comes to delivering a true omnichannel experience, channel pairing is an obvious place to start. In channel pairing, you identify common cross-channel journeys and create linkages between two channels. Here’s why: over 85% of customers that can’t get what they need to get done on the website (the channel where most customers start) will cross to the phone, mobile app, web chat, social media or email, and 70% will seek live agent assistance. Even as websites are optimized, there will be a slew of customers that will cross channels and devices in a single journey, for a variety of different reasons that include wanting to talk or chat with a live agent, using different devices, workflows within the journey, preferences, and time constraints, just to name a few.

By pairing channels that customers commonly cross, enterprises can move context from one to another, to provide greater personalization for the customer and also significantly lower customer effort. Also, by pairing channels, enterprises can orchestrate a unique experience like visual IVR that merges a mobile web experience and voice on a smartphone.

Pair Up in Seattle

At the Idea Lab at Customer Response Summit Seattle, [24]7 will be demonstrating two examples of channel pairing that make sense for your customers and reap immediate benefits for your business:

• Web to IVR: Deliver a seamless experience that maintains the context of your customer’s web interactions and provides that information to your IVR. Your IVR can then provide a personalized experience that better serves the customer and lowers AHT for time spent in the IVR and with the agent.

• Virtual Agent to Chat: Serve your customers with an intelligent virtual agent that serves up the best “right answer” to handle 90% or more of inquiries. For the more complex or authenticated inquiries, pass the context to a chat agent to assist the customer quickly and effectively.

Both of these examples can be implemented quickly and deliver a smoother, seamless and more engaging experience for your customers, while reducing your costs.

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