By unlocking valuable patterns and insights, our report will help you keep your customers satisfied and your business thriving.

This latest volume of research contains trending and new data built around the experiences and perspectives of 111 senior CX leaders. It includes content on a variety of topics including CX Technology, Touchpoints, CX Strategies, Workforces, Workplaces, and a special section devoted to comparing CX Leaders Trends & Insights Consumer and Corporate Edition results. And like previous editions, this new research is enriched with the powerful Practitioner’s Perspectives insights — snapshot analysis from accomplished CX leaders representing top brands, each targeting a specific research result.

You can read and download the full CX Leaders Trends & Insights: 2022 Corporate Edition report here.

An Industry Emboldened by Optimism

The CX Leaders Trends & Insights: 2022 Corporate Edition survey conducted brought forth encouraging results, indicating a boost in confidence within the industry. According to the survey, more CX leaders believe they are satisfying their customer’s needs and expectations than at any other time since 2018.

Although there were indications of a slowdown in growth, particularly in terms of headcounts, growth remained a top priority for 2022. The shift to work-from-home (WFH) is viewed as a positive change within the industry, with agents’ remote performance improving steadily. Many organizations have adopted hybrid models that have proven to be highly productive.

However, the industry still faces a few challenges. These include hiring and retention, obsolete technology systems, and increasing financial pressures.

• Seventy-four percent of CX leaders indicated their organizations are already taking significant or modest actions to address economic uncertainties
• Eighty-six percent of CX leaders felt their organizations were generally meeting the customer care needs and expectations of customers
• SMS/Text remains the most highly planned solution in the short-to-near-term, followed closely by Chatbot/Virtual Assistant, Video Chat, and Kiosks
• Seventy-seven percent of survey respondents describe the shift to WFH as having a “Very Positive” or “Somewhat Positive” impact on meeting customer needs and expectations, up from 66% in 2021
• Thirty-eight percent of companies measuring the entire customer experience across all channels
• Only 31% of CX leaders are “Very Satisfied” or “Satisfied” with the CX technology stack

Workforces and Workplaces

In addition to the changes in headcount, the survey reveals a strong and positive sentiment among CX leaders in 2022. Despite facing tumultuous times over the last three years, they see numerous benefits arising from the situation, particularly the shift to working from home.

• The growth of combined operational head counts (both In-House and Outsourced FTEs) appeared to have slowed in 2022, with fewer brands indicating increasing head counts (46% in 2022 versus 58% in 2021), and more brands indicating decreasing head counts (19% in 2022 versus 13% in 2021) (page 20).
• Seventy-seven percent of survey respondents describe the shift to WFH as having a “Very Positive” or “Somewhat Positive” impact on meeting customer needs and expectations, up from 66% in 2021 (page 27).
• The top areas where CX leaders are most interested in improving agent performance include Problem-Solving/Product Knowledge, Proficiency/Speed to Resolution, Communication (Speaking and Listening), and CSAT Scores/Quality (page 24) Forty-seven percent of CX leaders visited a partner site in 2022, up from 16% in 2021 (page 26).

Touchpoints: Channels Measurements & Performance Preferences & Initiatives

SMS/Text and Chatbots are the top solutions that companies plan to invest in in the future. However, before investing in these channels, it is crucial for brands to thoroughly understand whether such solutions align with the expectations and desires of their specific customer base. Brands need to recalibrate their priorities and understand what success looks like from the customer’s perspective, which should begin with accessibility, ease, and effectiveness. Proper monitoring is equally important to validate the value of these efforts.

• Across organizations, roughly three-fourths of all contact volume occurs across just two solutions: Phone and Email; but consumers are migrating, slowly (page 34).
• SMS/Text remains the most highly planned solution in the short-to-near-term, followed closely by Chatbot/Virtual Assistant, Video Chat, and Kiosks (page 36).
• Thirty-eight percent of companies measuring the entire customer experience across all channels (page 38) The average reported Resolution Rate of “Chatbot/Virtual Assistant” improved 19 points year-over-year, from 37% to 56% (page 40).

Strategies, Program Data, and Loyalty Strategies

In the Conclusions section of the Workforce and Workplaces report (page 30), the industry’s optimism for 2022 was highlighted, which is reflected in several of the results presented in this section.

One notable result is that more CX leaders believe their organizations are meeting customers’ needs and expectations than at any point since 2018. However, challenges persist, including outdated processes, tools, and legacy systems that continue to hinder progress, as well as the well-known labor force challenges.

• Eighty-six percent of survey respondents feel their organization is generally meeting customer needs and expectations — the highest result since 2018, and the second highest ever (page 51).
• Legacy Systems/Processes/Tools is the single biggest challenge (34%) facing CX leaders, followed by Labor Force/Staffing/Agent Performance (27%) (page 51).
• The three KPIs that garner the most attention at the majority of institutions include CSAT/VoC, FCR, and NPS (page 58).
• Fifty-three percent of CX leaders think consumers are most frustrated with the customer care process being too long or cumbersome, yet the largest percentage of consumers (42%) point to the difficulty in reaching a live person (page 63).

Artificial Intelligence

Investing in CX technology is crucial for CX organizations, but it’s concerning that CX leaders are dissatisfied with their current CX tech stacks.

• Only 31% of CX leaders are “Very Satisfied” or “Satisfied” with their organization’s current CX technology stack, while 38% are “Very Dissatisfied or dissatisfied” (page 68).
• Text/Speech Analytics, AI, and Agent-Assist Technology were the top three areas of support technology investment in 2022 (page 70).
• Only 60% of organizations have specific plans for increasing the resolution capabilities of unassisted solutions (page 76).
• The percentage of organizations using an AI-powered solution for “improving the customer experience” grew for the third straight year (page 75).

Corporate vs. Consumer Comparisons

In this section, we present a comparison between the results presented in this report and those published in the October 2022 CX Leaders Trends & Insights Consumer Edition report. The latter report was based on data collected during August, July, and September in 2022.

Good Care Leads to Loyalty

A vast majority of CX leaders (99%) believe that providing good customer care has a direct correlation to customer loyalty. Additionally, a substantial 73% of consumers share the same sentiment. When executed effectively, customer care can be a definitive and reassuring encounter between a consumer and a brand.

In light of budgetary constraints and renewed evaluations of the significance of CX within a larger business context, CX leaders must be ready to argue that loyalty is a crucial factor in achieving business success, and any allocation of resources towards CX is tantamount to investing in fostering customer loyalty.

Most Frustrating

The following results reveal that CX leaders adopt a practical approach to fulfilling consumer desires, emphasizing process, policy, and prompt conflict resolution. Nevertheless, customers continue to prioritize access to a human representative, as well as the representative’s competence. This may be advantageous for CX leaders since it implies that their brands are excelling in terms of process and policy. Conversely, consumers anticipate being able to contact a live person on demand, and once they do, they expect a friendly demeanor and excellent communication abilities.

Identifying Non-Humans

The findings on consumer attitudes toward the identification of AI-powered solutions varied significantly based on the demographic being surveyed. While only 47% of consumers agreed that non-human solutions should be clearly labeled (consistent with the responses of CX leaders), the results differed depending on age groups. The majority of respondents in the 18 to 24 age bracket had a neutral stance at 41%, followed by 23% strongly disagreeing.

In contrast, over half of those aged between 55 to 64 years agreed that non-human solutions should be identified as such. These results underscore the need for CX leaders to understand their customers, especially in terms of demographics and their openness to embracing innovative technologies and solutions.

You can read and download the full CX Leaders Trends & Insights: 2022 Corporate Edition report here.

The post Explore Our CX Leaders Trends & Insights: 2022 Corporate Edition Report appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Our Leaders Learning from Leaders mantra came to life as we tackled topics that provided ideas for navigating CX transformation success, thinking and planning differently in today’s business environment, adoption of innovation across the organization, and so much more.

Attendees had the opportunity to discover the latest industry trends, learn from leading brands, make purposeful connections, and gain valuable insights, tools, and techniques for CX across a wide-ranging set of tracks and topics.

And, like always, there was plenty of time to connect with colleagues and make new friends in CX.

Here are some of the highlights from last week’s Summit in Austin.

The Imminent Chatbot Transformation: A New Era to Succeed a Disappointing History

Why do most chatbots disappoint? During our first-ever Tech Forum, Matt Taylor, Co-Founder & Head of Product at Knowbl, and Jay Wolcott, CEO at Knowbl, break down why limitations of previous technology yielded expensive and underwhelming conversational self-service and how the new generation of technology can bring 10x the conversational self-service capabilities with 10% of the expense in just 10% of the time.

Pre-Conference Workshops

Real-World Lessons on Leveling Up Your Customer Experience with Generative AI

Chris Wallace, Senior Vice President of Global Growth at IntouchCX, and Jeff Fettes, Founder, and CEO at Laivly, explored real-world examples of leading brands they partner with that have successfully integrated Generative AI into their contact center programs.

How to Create Legendary Social Media Customer Experiences

While social media management tools have advanced to keep pace with rising expectations, many organizations have not. Lauren Kindzierski, Consultant and CX Advisory Leader at VXI, and Lucia Albero, Senior Community Manager at LG, connected with a packed room of CX leaders to workshop how to achieve legendary social care in 2023. A big topic of discussion? How to amplify your brand by being human.

Passion on Purpose: Why Great Leadership Is Driven by Passion

Jasmine Green, Vice President Enterprise Customer Solutions and Enablement at Nationwide, kicked off the Summit with an inspiring keynote on why passion doesn’t end with your customers. She wrapped up by asking the audience, “How will you make a difference in the time that you have with what you have?”

Delighting Across the Digital Experience

How do you deliver personalization across multiple, sometimes intersecting, customer personas? Panel moderator Sid Victor, Head of Support Services at Movate, sat down with Bit Rambusch, Vice President, Professional Services and Delivery at Phillips; Monte Tomasino, Vice President, Digital Enablement & Engagement at Dell Technologies, and Carlos Castano, Senior Director, Customer Experience and Success at Microsoft to discuss bringing employees along on the transformation journey, personalization strategies, and driving collaboration to converse on a common architecture.

Customer Shop Talks

Customer Shop Talk sessions are small, industry-expert-led discussions on a laser-focused topic.

In Austin, Greg Petersen, Global Connect Sales Specialist at AWS; Dima Cichi, Senior Principal Customer Success Manager at Nuance; Andrea Salerno, Director of Content and Research at Kustomer; and Karen Inbar, Product Marketing Director at NICE, addressed a variety of CX hot topics, including AI-ML-powered customer experience improvements, CX best practices, the modern age of social messaging, and the intelligent tools that should be in your tech stack.

Creating a Culture Ready for Innovation

Panel moderator Connie Workman, Head of CXE Sales, AMER at AWS, spoke with Melissa Archambault, Executive Director, Customer Experience Advocacy & Strategy at CVS Health; Kimberly Masters, Senior Director, Contact Center at Sam’s Club; and Lori Stewart, Director of International Reservations at American Airlines, about the biggest challenges their teams face with CX transformation today. This powerhouse panel dug its heels into that question — among many others.

“You have to find a way to make experiences across disparate brands consistent, which isn’t easy,” said Archambault.

Roku Demonstrates How to Minimize Friction and Maximize Happiness Efficiency Through Knowledge

Cheryll Aganda, Vice President for Customer Experience Advisory for VXI, and Mark McKercher, Director of Customer Care, Commerce at Roku, took center stage to speak about navigating the process and what worked (and what didn’t) when it came to improving Roku’s customer experience with knowledgeable, efficient service interactions at scale.

Leveraging Customer Data and Insights to Design, Build, and Run a Winning CX Program

Many organizations have a lot of data but are constrained by limited access to it and the inability to turn it into intelligence with speed and at scale. Panel moderator Reagan Miller, Global Vice President of Analytics and Voice of the Customer at Concentrix, sat down with Douglas McCann Director – Contact Center Partner Strategy at United Airlines; Jeff Ellis, Senior Director of Customer Experience Services at Vistra; and Peter Gregg, Director, Customer Care Operations at iRobot to talk about getting organized, analyzing the data, and the reasons why what you measure matters.

Leading from Any Seat: How a Culture of Empowerment and Engagement Paves the Way for Operational Excellence

Having a competitive edge begins with your people. Because happier teams equal happier customers. Keynote Wilfred Busby, Senior Vice President, Employee Experience at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, shared how his organization took HR and transformed it into employee experience (EX). “People need to feel valued, appreciated, and respected for them to be motivated,” he explained.

The Power of Putting People First: Take Care of Your People, and They’ll Take Care of Business

Shannon Patterson, SVP of Customer Engagement Centers at Marriott International, the world’s largest hospitality company, dove into what it means to engage associates and how that translates to seamless guest experiences, happier customers, and brand loyalty. “Success comes down to the people who wear the badges,” she said.

Moments of Brilliance

Moments of Brilliance are mini case-study sessions.

How Zenni Embraced a Customer-Centric Strategy to Build Loyalty and Deliver an Exceptional Service Experience

Mike McCarron, Chief Customer Officer at Gladly, and Brian Kershon, Director, Global Customer Service at Zenni, shared how they have embraced a corporate-wide customer-centered service strategy, and the successes they have seen.

Building a Resilient Contact Center with AI-Driven Performance Intelligence

Lauren England, Director of Customer Success at Pathlight and Stephane Grossi, Senior Manager – Strategy & Analytics – Member Services at Ancestry.com discussed staying ahead of agent performance, optimizing operational efficiency, and driving business outcomes with AI-driven insights.

The 7 X 24 X 365 Relay Team: Getting the Best Out of Your Digital and Live Agents

What makes up today’s best-in-class customer experiences and how can brands get the best out of their hybrid teams? Dennis Hernandez, Vice President at Inspiro, and Cosimo Trapani, Senior Director at 1-800-Flowers.com, share why live agents are still critical to success, putting agents in positions where they’ll thrive, and the need to leverage trends to be ready with solutions to solve customer needs.

Improving CX in the Face of Reduced Resources

Is your organization, like many others, already on a recession footing? Panel Moderator Monica Gupta, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Nuance, shares the stage with April Obersteller, Director of Global Experience: EX + CX at woom; Gerald Hastie, Senior Director, Trust & Safety at Roblox; Dinesh Chand, Vice President Global Client Care at Visa; and Ian Schmehl, Operations Vice President Enterprise Operations at State Farm to discuss how to start breaking down silos, the voice of the customer, and redefining the use of personalization.

The Power of Customer Obsession – It’s Beyond Being Customer Centric

Julie Weingardt, Chief Operations Officer at Turo, the world’s largest car sharing marketplace, as she puts customer obsession under the microscope and explains why building a customer-obsessed culture only happens when the customer is a key consideration in every aspect of the business. “Feedback is a driving element of our customer experience,” explained Weingardt.

Thank You to Our Community of CX Leaders

We are proud to have had the opportunity of gathering such an incredible group of CX leaders for three days of focusing on the PASSION for Customers, the POWER of Technology, and PURPOSE-Driven Leadership.

Stay tuned for more coverage on all things CRS Austin!

The post Customer Response Summit (CRS) Austin Recap and Event Highlights appeared first on Execs In The Know.

But being present and responsive is no longer enough to meet the demands of the modern social consumer. To win in this channel, marketers and customer care associates need to come together to form an all-star team, moving the service experience from a reactive to a proactive state to champion opportunities for value creation.

Many brands operate under the assumption that this is already being achieved when in reality, very few are doing it well. Yes, social media can be a treasure trove for customer insights and brand advocacy, but if executed poorly without the proper framework and tools in place, it can also be a giant abyss, sucking up your time and resources with little ROI.

To avoid the common pitfalls and achieve legendary customer care, here are three mission-critical objectives to set for your social engagement and servicing teams this year:

Objective 1: Remove operational silos and cancel the “cost center” culture

Social media servicing teams tend to reside in either the marketing or customer care organization. While there may be a monthly meeting to debrief and review KPIs, the two functions typically operate in separate spheres. This is unfortunate because the less internal communication and collaboration between the two often results in more customer friction.

To create legendary experiences, the right supporting organization and governance structure needs to be established, combining the strengths of both departments. Marketing can help customer service teams become more proactive and targeted in their engagement strategies, while maintaining a consistent brand voice. By being more selective and strategic on the types of content that warrant a response and the level of urgency assigned to them, customer care teams can find the time to put down the firehose and focus more on joy share and suggestive selling tactics. This is also known as “conversational commerce”, a tactic brands use to respond publicly to a post or a mention with the intent of providing useful information to convert prospects or socialize cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

In return, service teams can help marketing stay ahead of changing preferences, leveraging their daily interactions as a source of truth into what customers want more or less of – including feedback for the product lifecycle, content strategy, and brand positioning. The key is that both sides become intimately acquainted with the other, working as one unified team to gain a better understanding of their customer.

Example:  Take for example a deregulated utility company. While the marketing team might be more focused on promotional campaigns featuring discounts, average savings, customer accolades, and awards, their service teams are busy responding to outage inquires, service requests, and fostering a sense of community. If the two worked as one, the content strategy would be more cohesive, focusing on personal, localized care that leverages a differentiated service experience as a key selling point compared to the traditional sales pitch. More time could then be spent targeting prospective customers through conversational commerce.

Both departments have historically been viewed as a cost center within their organization, but by working together to turn social media into a full-service channel, the number of actionable insights, conversions, customer saves, and cross-sell opportunities can be quantified to flip that perception on its head. With 71% of consumers more likely to recommend a brand to a family or friend after having a positive interaction on social media, the opportunities for value creation are exponential.

Objective 2: Make sure you are leveraging the right SaaS tool across the enterprise

Another trap that many organizations fall into is purchasing too many point solutions to help solve for individual challenges across functional areas, instead of optimizing a single tool and encouraging cross-functional collaboration.

It’s something our advisory team at VXI observes frequently when evaluating a brand’s social media technology stack. Often upwards of a million dollars can be cut from the budget by simply consolidating tools and selecting the right SaaS platform to streamline workflows. The ideal social media management platform captures conversations, filters, and sorts through the noise with the help of AI, automates workflows for determining urgency, and leverages intelligent routing to get the most impactful mentions to the right team at the right time. If your social listening and engagement platforms are two separate tools, it’s time to downsize.

To make matters worse, having too many tools can lead to disparate measurement and reporting practices across the organization. Social NPS and sentiment scores are two examples of KPIs that need to be reviewed by the collective team – not in functional silos.

Example: If a product has just been launched and sentiment scores are trending down, customer care teams are often the first line of sight into the issues that need to be addressed. While marketing and PR teams are inclined to publish public apologies, too many “I’m sorry” messages on social media will only fuel the flames when it comes to diffusing negative sentiment scores. Instead, customer care teams can assist marketing by responding with positive engagement methods and higher response rates. When operating from the same tool and reporting infrastructure, a more productive conversation can be had around how the proactive content and the reactive servicing strategies are working together to create the best experience for the customer.

Objective 3: Create a playbook for earned and owned content

Achieving the perfect response rate between owned and earned social content is somewhat of a holy grail. With an endless flow of mentions to sort through it can be one of the more challenging strategies to implement and operationalize. Every time you think you’ve mastered it; social behaviors change and the balance shifts again. Depending on the size of the servicing team, some organizations may choose only to respond to conversations on “owned” media or the content that a brand creates and shares from their proprietary pages. Others, set a goal of responding to everything.

While there is no one-size fits all approach, every functional area within the organization must answer one question – which conversations are most impactful for your customer and brand? Once that question is answered, content can be categorized, and stakeholders assigned. Luckily with the right SaaS tool, artificial intelligence (AI) can help automate many of the back-end processes to ensure only actionable content is filtered through to your customer care representatives.

Today, leveraging AI to gain efficiencies on social media extends beyond a messaging bot. For programs that engage with “earned” content, or the conversations happening outside of the brand’s direct line of sight, AI plays a pivotal role.

Example: One multinational retail brand was able to replace their social media triage team by automating the back-office workflows required to sort through the earned content, tagging and assigning functional owners based on the category and level of urgency. This included marketing insights, crisis management, and opportunities for suggestive selling and conversational commerce. By eliminating the manual triage process, their service team was able to work faster with less effort, freeing up opportunities for value creation.

With 31% of prospective customers turning to social media to make pre-sales inquiries, responding to earned content can be a great way to increase a brand’s conversion rate for online sales. For example, if a telecom customer asks about fiber internet options on Twitter, or a retailer is mentioned on a forum about an old product model that needs to be replaced, these are prime opportunities for customer care teams to jump in.

After all, supporting your customers on social media isn’t just about responding to a complaint or acknowledging accolades. It’s about proactive engagement and two-way conversations that show you care – because you can. The brands who create legendary experiences in 2023 will take their marketing and servicing teams a step further, working cross-functionally and with the help of AI to capture and retain customer attention.

Meet with our social media domain experts at Customer Response Summit (CRS) Austin

If you enjoyed our blog, make sure to attend our pre-conference workshop, “How to Create Legendary Social Media Customer Experiences.” VXI and our brand partner LG will be hosting a session to help attendees rethink, reimagine, and revive their social customer engagement strategies. Participants will gain hands-on experience running through the 7 key steps that lead to legendary social care.

Guest blog post written VXI. VXI Global Solutions is a BPO leader in customer service, customer experience, and digital solutions. Founded in 1998, the company has 40,000+ employees at more than 40 locations in North America, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. VXI delivers omnichannel and multilingual support, software development, quality assurance, and CX advisory, automation & process excellence to the world’s most respected brands.

VXI is backed by private equity investor Bain Capital and is one of the fastest growing, privately held business services organizations in the United States and the Philippines, and one of the few US-based customer-care organizations in China.

To learn more about this topic and others, visit the events page to check out all of our upcoming events.

The post Social Media as a Service Differentiator: How to Win in 2023 appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog post by Jeff Toister,  Founder of Toister Performance Solutions, Inc. Click here to view the original post on the Toister Solutions website. 

The post Three Social Media Trends in Customer Care appeared first on Execs In The Know.

PHOENIX, AZ — (November 21, 2016) — Execs In The Know, a global network of customer experience professionals, together with COPC Inc., announce the results from their first travel industry survey, CXMB Industry Insights: Travel & Hospitality. The survey focused on the customer care experience, the purchase experience, and customer loyalty.

The findings show that both leisure and business travelers are using multiple customer service channels to resolve issues. However, customer satisfaction is higher when travelers self-select a channel that they want to use rather than being forced into one. Furthermore, a consistent experience across channels is so important among travelers that it ranks higher than competitive pricing and a personalized experience.

Survey participants were U.S.-based individuals traveling for business only, leisure only or both. Here are some key travel and hospitality industry findings for both leisure and business travelers. See the infographic for more details.

– Business and leisure travelers still prefer to talk to someone in person or on the phone to resolve their issues. Both groups were equally open to using new channels of communications — social media, text, mobile chat and smartphone app — at 27 percent for business travelers and 30 percent for leisure travelers.

– When multichannel communication is a choice rather than a forced approach for issue resolution, customer satisfaction increases. Conversely, when forced into a multichannel approach to resolve an issue, both business and leisure travelers stated a dissatisfaction rate at nearly 50 percent.

– Both business and leisure travelers consider a consistent customer experience across communication channels significantly more important than competitive pricing. In particular, 60 percent of leisure travelers stated a consistent experience was important.

“We are pleased to provide the results of this survey, showing how a multichannel approach to meeting customer needs can affect the traveler’s experience. For companies focused on providing excellent customer care, our findings reveal a choice of communication options is the key to customer satisfaction. Travel and hospitality brands should not only be present in the channels their customers prefer, but also need to be capable of resolving their issues through these channels,” said Kathleen Jezierski, chief operating officer, COPC Inc.

“CXMB Industry Insights allows us to dive deeper into different industry segments and provide the important insights that our community members in each vertical are looking for,” said Chad McDaniel, president, Execs In The Know. “Our findings provide a better understanding of the customer landscape in the travel and hospitality sectors, and hopefully will spark some ideas for brands to improve the customer experience and enhance overall customer satisfaction.”

This travel survey is the first in the series of industry-specific research, and is part of the larger Customer Experience Management Benchmark (CXMB) Series, also published in partnership between COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know.

Download http://ow.ly/OxT3306onPG, or sign up to receive future survey results produced by COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know. Other industry-specific reports will follow in early 2017.

To hear a further discussion about CXMB Industry Insights: Travel and Hospitality, join COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know on Tuesday, December 6,at 1 p.m. ET for a webinar. To register, visit http://ow.ly/yYyY306onpY .

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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. For more information visit www.execsintheknow.com.

About COPC Inc.

COPC Inc. is an innovative global leader that empowers organizations to manage complex customer journeys. The company created the COPC Customer Experience (CX) Standard and provides consulting, training and certification for operations that support the customer experience. Founded in 1996, COPC Inc. began by helping call centers improve their performance. Today, the company works with leading brands worldwide to optimize key customer touchpoints and deliver a seamless experience across channels. COPC Inc. is privately held with headquarters in Winter Park, Florida, U.S. and has operations in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, India and Japan. www.copc.com

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Putting the customer first is nothing new, but service excellence is becoming more competitive than ever before. While reducing hold time for incoming calls was once a key differentiator for brands, today the growth of digital channels means every touchpoint between consumer and brand is a make or break opportunity.

A recent McKinsey Quarterly, The CEO guide to customer experience, focuses on the importance of molding customer interactions and providing high-level insight to improve customer interactions. But a good piece of advice needs specifics. So we’re taking an in-depth look at three tips for how a brand can start growing loyalty.

Simplify the move from touchpoints to a journey

According to McKinsey, customer loyalty isn’t created through individual touchpoints, but “the complete, end-to-end experience customers have with a company from their perspective.” We agree. It’s all about the customer journey!

Why? Well many times, touchpoints are the responsibility of a business silo. The focus is on providing the best experience on that channel, without communicating with the other channels.

If a consumer starts on social media and then jumps to a phone, they have to start the interaction from the beginning. After all, when a brand’s channels aren’t connected, the customer’s information doesn’t travel with them. So even when satisfaction with individual touchpoints is high, the overall satisfaction can be quite low. This is because the customer perceives a company as not centered on their interests or concerns.

Knowing key pieces of information about the customer helps transform disparate touchpoints into a connected journey. As outlined in our e-book, Navigating the Customer Journey, the following four questions are central to the transformation.

– How long have they been a customer?

– Through which channels has the customer navigated?

– What are the customers’ previous brand interactions?

– Is there additional contact information to piece a customer identity together?

The move from individual touchpoints to a customer journey is an important one. When responding to each question, including data and customer commentary will enhance your ability to navigate the customer journey seamlessly and effectively.

Help customers take the best steps on their journey

Thanks to new digital technologies, McKinsey notes that consumers expect personalization in every interaction with a brand. Research cited states that 25 percent of customers defect from a brand after a bad experience. In other words, every interaction on the journey needs to pinpoint and meet personal expectations, including seamless, consistent service across channels.

Companies can take the lead by automating the next appropriate step when a customer interacts on a traditional or nontraditional touchpoint. By making connections between touchpoints, the brand has the added benefit of customer information moving along with them.

For example, Jane places a blue shirt into her online shopping cart, but doesn’t complete the transaction. The following weekend Jane is in the physical store. When she enters, beacons trigger the brand’s app, which then proactively sends Jane an SMS letting her know the blue shirt is available in her size. At the same time, a store associate is notified with details into Jane’s journey – enabling the associate to provide appropriate assistance, and even cross-sell by suggesting complementary pants.

Because the customer’s information travels with them, the automated, next best step doesn’t leave a customer alone on their journey. The company is now an active partner is their success.

Apply metrics wisely

Without metrics, a customer journey might actually be a slog through the swamp. When implementing a system, McKinsey suggests centering on the most important customer-experience measurement for the company. Once they’ve been defined, quantify other relevant indicators with supplemental metrics.

With reams of data available from each customer interaction, identifying the top metrics and pieces together can be time consuming. But when it comes to customer retention, it’s time companies don’t have.

Surveys are a great way to get immediate feedback, especially within the contact center. For example, say a customer waits on hold for 30 minutes without speaking to a representative. When they are presented with a survey option about their experience, they note their frustration with a 3 out of 10.

Instead of sitting in a CRM system waiting for a yearly marketing or customer experience review, this information is relevant today. A customer service manager needs to know if there has been an influx of low ratings, which could indicate an immediate problem. Additionally, a chief experience officer would be interested to know how likely it is for customers that give low ratings to defect.

To remove the manual collection and analysis of information, it’s helpful to have reports that:

– Connect the journey: define customer experience flows to establish the relationship between interactions and outcomes.

– Measure the success or failure of individual interactions: associate data from structured and unstructured sources for the right level of insight.

– Leverage data from CRM systems and other enterprise tools: provide context to captured data from external sources.

To compete on excellence, companies must make continual improvements to the customer journey or risk falling behind. Companies now need to pair these insights with practical applications to show value today.

The post Three Steps for Customer Service Excellence appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest post from Susan Hash, Editor of Contact Center Pipeline.

Social Media: Tap Into the Power of Employee Advocates

Businesses pour an incredible amount of time and budget into creating positive buzz on social media. While tweeting, liking and sharing has largely been the domain of marketing and social media teams, more companies are now encouraging their employees to become brand ambassadors using their personal social networks. It’s called employee advocacy. Although it’s not a new concept, adding a social media component has amplified the effects.

What makes the employee voice so powerful? Employees have more credibility than the CEO on social media when it comes to the company’s work environment (48% vs. 19%), business practices and crises (30% vs. 27%), according to the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer, the global communications marketing firm’s annual trust and credibility survey. The survey respondents also stated that, on social media and content-sharing sites, they’re far more trusting of family and friends (78%) than a CEO (49%).

I recently had the opportunity to talk with employee advocacy expert Christopher Hannegan, Edelman’s executive vice president, U.S. Practice Chair, Employee Engagement. The idea behind employee advocacy, he says, is that employees are so impassioned and excited about their company’s products, culture and workplace, they will actively talk to others about it, encourage them to buy the company’s products, or apply for a job.

Naturally, employee advocacy is rooted in the culture. “You have to have an engaged workforce before you can expect employees to go outside of the company and start talking favorably about what it’s like to work there and how great the products are,” Hannegan says. “Employees need to understand and feel good about where the company is heading, their role within the company, what they can do to make a difference, and they need to have a good relationship with their manager.”

Elements of an Employee Advocacy Program

If you are considering rolling out an employee advocacy program, there are a few critical core elements that need to be in place to be successful. Hannegan says it boils down to four areas:

– The content and information that your want employees to share.

– The technology to enable the sharing. “There are many tools available, but when assessing platforms, it’s important to be clear about what you’re trying to accomplish with your program before selecting the technology,” he notes, adding that, many times, companies will choose the platform before they’ve figured out why they’re launching an advocacy program.

– Cultural expectation setting. Make sure that employees not only understand that it is OK to share the content, but that it is viewed by the company as a positive activity. Importantly, they need to understand that it is optional and not a requirement. “If, for some reason, they’re not comfortable advocating for your company, they don’t have to,” Hannegan stresses. “That is especially important if you have a workforce represented by unions.”

– A way to measure the results. How will you know if your employee advocacy efforts are making a difference? Understand how you are going to measure what you’re trying to accomplish—whether that is increased sales of a certain product, more job applications from top talent or higher engagement with a particular blog post or other online content.

Common Missteps to Avoid

While a successful advocacy program can boost your company’s credibility, visibility and revenue, the reality is that many companies attempt to launch one without ensuring that the key elements are in place. The following are some of the more common mistakes to avoid.

– Not having a clear gauge of employees’ views of the company. Some companies make the mistake of trying to launch an advocacy program when employees are not likely to be positive advocates, Hannegan says. Measuring your employee engagement is critical to avoid misreading your audience.

– Assuming that employees don’t want to participate. Some companies take the opposite view that employees would not want to talk about them online or that there would be no value in it. “What companies sometimes overlook is that, if for nothing else but to help find talent and to help burnish your overall reputation, there is an incredible power in having your employees talk about you,” Hannegan says.

– Not providing employees with adequate training on how to use the social media tools or on the guidelines for sharing.

– Launching an advocacy program because “everybody has one and we should have one, too.” Companies need to clearly define the purpose of the program, Hannegan notes. Is it to sell more products? Improve the company’s reputation? Attract better talent? “Define the use case upfront so you can then develop the right programs, select the right technology, and build in the appropriate KPIs and the right measurement for it,” he says.

Consider an Internal Advocacy Program

Employee advocacy can be very impactful if there is a really clear and articulated business case for the program, and if every element of the program is anchored in the business case, Hannegan says.

Most companies think about employee advocacy as making it possible and desirable for employees to talk externally about the company and its products. An often-overlooked opportunity is to apply that same mentality within the company, he points out. “Having employees talking to each other about how great it is to work at the company or how excited they are about a product launch is powerful. It creates a positive cycle from within and reinforces engagement. That in turn helps to make the external advocacy even more compelling.”

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Ginna and her family.

The following is the first in our “Meet The Board” series. We hope you’ll enjoy getting the chance to know our EITK Advisory Board members a bit better over the coming months! 

Get to Know: Ginna Sauerwein, Managing Director, FedEx Services

My name is Ginna Sauerwein. My first name is pronounced like a bottle of “Gin” and then add “na”. My last name is pronounced like “Sour Wine”. I wanted to get that out of the way first because it is a constant opportunity! Thirty-two years ago, after working for good companies like J. C. Penney, Miller Brewery, and Delta Airlines, I was lucky enough to be hired by a young company named Federal Express – now grown up and called FedEx. I’ve worked in numerous capacities for FedEx over the years, and since 1993, I’ve served as a Managing Director in Customer Services. Based in Dallas, Texas, I oversee customer contact employees who provide multilingual customer information services for FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight, and FedEx Office. As a key member of the FedEx leadership team, I manage employees in customer contact centers and reps working remotely from home. I’m responsible for defining Premier Programs and implementing new customer contact channels including social media, chat, video-chat, and technical services support for fedex.com.

I believe customer experience is defined by every interaction. I think each interaction must end with a thoroughly delighted customer to ensure they will conduct business with FedEx again and again. My goal is to make it as easy as possible for the customer to interact with FedEx and to provide solutions that exceed their expectations.

My role on the Advisory Board is important to me and is best described by a two-part short story that began in 2000 and spanned two countries.

Part 1:  While living and working in Guadalajara, Mexico, I accompanied the FedEx couriers to an area of town that had lean-to houses made of cardboard and pallets, no running water or plumbing, and dirty, dusty roads. We were there to deliver toys and food we had collected for a Christmas Charity. My husband and four children went with us and we all passed out presents to the very thankful crowd. Later that year, my direct survey scores were 10 points higher than any Managing Director had ever received in Mexico. My curious boss asked how? What did I do? 

Part 2:  Later that year, FedEx moved me to Texas for a new opportunity. While we were preparing to leave Mexico, my oldest son informed me that Cinthia, a school friend who also played soccer with my daughter, wanted to move to Texas with us. I laughed and he responded with, “Mom, I am serious. Cinthia’s dream is to play basketball and you know this will never happen in Mexico.” I acknowledged reality because I knew my son was right. I told him to have Cinthia talk to me and she told me her story. Cinthia had not seen or talked to her mother in seven years because her mother only had time for her new family. Cinthia’s father supported her dream, but he had a girlfriend, a new baby, and not a lot of time for Cinthia. In that moment I said yes to Cinthia’s request. Departure day came and we arrived to pick-up Cinthia. I met her father for the first time in the driveway. My Spanish was so-so and he did not speak English. Despite the language barrier, he presented me with legal papers relinquishing his rights to his daughter. I was now her legal guardian. We got in the Suburban to leave and my thoughts were very judgmental. How could this man let his only daughter go with strangers to a foreign country? What was he thinking?

So what did I learn from these two experiences in Mexico? And how does it impact my leadership style, my thoughts about customer experience, and my role on the Advisory Board today? Let me try to explain.

Part 1: Stepping out of my office to deliver Christmas cheer in one of the poorest parts of town, reminded me that the shadow I cast as a leader – and as a parent – is extremely important. Working side by side with my team for all the right reasons, paid off professionally by improving relationships with the couriers. It also paid off personally by teaching my children a lesson. They learned that giving is as important as receiving and that helping others is the right thing to do.

Part 2: The school year started and the governing body over high school sports said Cinthia could not play basketball. We traveled to the Texas capitol to fight this decision, and after a lost hearing in Austin, our only option was to send Cinthia back to Mexico, pay for a different type of visa, and enroll her in private school. This was an expense I was not prepared for and a hardship on my family. I was feeling sorry for myself for putting us in this position, but I was not going back on my word.

A few years later, Cinthia asked me to read her senior thesis. I was shocked as I read how frightened she was the day we departed Mexico. She wrote, “I was so scared I almost opened the door on the Suburban to jump out, but Ginna turned around from the front passenger seat and flashed me that big smile, and I knew everything would be okay”. I wanted to cry. I hadn’t seen this. My perspective had been how lucky Cinthia was to escape her situation. How could I have missed how frightened Cinthia was and how incredible her father was to recognize the opportunity and let his daughter follow her dream?

Cinthia’s high school coach never gave up and was able to find her a full-ride to the University of Texas in Edinburgh. She had the highest GPA on her basketball team, graduated in four years, was accepted into grad school, and eventually played for the Women’s Mexican National Team. She has retired from basketball and now works for Microsoft.

All these years later I am grateful for my experiences in Mexico. I realize how lucky my family was to have Cinthia in our lives. We got as much, if not more, out of the relationship as she did and I now receive one extra call on Mother’s Day.

What if I had said no to Cinthia? What if I had said no to delivering gifts with my couriers? If I had said no, my family and I would have missed out on such rich experiences. So my message is this. Be aware of the power you hold in your journey, no matter if you are giving or receiving. Be conscious of the shadow you cast for others to see. Say yes to new experiences. Avoid being judgmental and consider how someone’s perspective may be different from yours. Participating on this board, and serving in a leadership role at FedEx, gives me the opportunity to enrich lives, say yes to new opportunities, adjust my perspective, help others, learn from others, and practice making the shadow I cast a positive one.

The post Meet The Board – Ginna Sauerwein – The Power of Perspective appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Social media is still an immature customer service channel.

That’s apparent when reading the latest Customer Experience Benchmark report from Execs In The Know and COPC, Inc. This report is the 2015 Corporate Edition and was published in 2016.

I previously analyzed their 2013 report and their 2014 report and came to the same conclusion each year. Most companies still don’t get social media as a customer service channel.

Six years ago, I did my own tiny social media study. That’s back when the Starbucks Twitter profile said that some guy named Brad did the tweeting. Things are pretty much the same as even back then. (Except for Brad. I’m not sure what happened to him.)

In this year’s report, I did see a glimmer of hope that more companies are starting to catch on. Social media customer service is still far from maturity, but it might be entering it’s adolescent years.

Below are three of the more interesting trends revealed in the report. You can also purchase the full report from Execs In The Know. It’s full of intriguing insights on social media plus more traditional channels (phone, email, etc.) and emerging channels like self-service and chat.

Trend #1: Ownership

More customer service teams are getting involved, and they’re getting more resources to do it. It still isn’t great. Here’s the breakdown of who owns the social media function:

Customer service has sole or joint ownership of social media in 54 percent of companies surveyed. That’s up from 50 percent last year.

The percentage of companies that give their social media agents training is also up, though not quite as high as it was in 2013.

Side note:

What the heck are companies doing that aren’t training their employees?! I can just see those managers now.

“Hey Kayla. You’re a millennial, right?! Don’t all you millennials get social media and stuff? Well, you’re in charge now.”

I digress.

The other good news is that 60 percent of companies surveyed expected their budget to increase. Only 27 percent of companies surveyed last year planned to increase their budget.

Trend #2: New Channels

Twitter and Facebook remain the big dogs when it comes to social media customer service.

There are other sites like Pintrest, Instagram, and LinkedIn that have millions of users but haven’t really caught on for customer service.

However, there are a few alternative social media channels that are increasing. The chart below compares each channel’s share of social media engagements in 2015 vs 2014.

Here, it’s helpful to remind ourselves what constitutes social media. This is the definition from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)

What types of sites are in these three growing categories?

• Forums include online support communities like this Apple site.
• Review site examples include Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google My Business.
• Blogs posts can engage customers too, like this sample post from Alaska Airlines.

So, the real trick for companies is figuring out where their customers are trying to interact with them and then establishing a service presence in those channels.

Trend #3: Maturity Is Still Low

If something stays the same, does that constitute a trend?

I’m going to say yes. It’s important to acknowledge that many companies are struggling to serve their customers via social media.

Just 20 percent of survey respondents felt their social media customer service was mature or very mature.

This is going to pose a problem for two reasons. First, social media volume is increasing. The survey found that social media volume increased in 77 percent of companies.

Second, companies are struggling to keep up with this volume. I examined this 2015 multichannel study from Eptica to learn about social media response rates.

Here’s how the top 500 U.S. retailers fared via Twitter, Facebook, and email:

Yikes! Do these brands hate their customers?

Seriously, brands. I say this with sincerity and affection: If you aren’t going to respond to your customers on social media (or email?!) then shut down your account.

It’s social + media. Not media. Sheesh.

Here, I suspect companies are lying to themselves. They think they are awesome when they’re not. (I recently wrote about overconfidence causing service failures.)

There are three data points that support this assertion.

First, the Customer Experience Benchmark found that improving the quality of care was a top priority for contact centers for the second year in a row.

Second, the report also found that 79 percent of companies think they’re meeting the needs of their customers, but only 33 percent of customers surveyed agree.

Finally, there’s Gartner’s famous stat that 89 percent of companies expect customer experience to be their primary basis for competition in 2016.

It’s hard to believe we’re entering a new age of customer service awesome if companies aren’t even responding to basic inquiries. Maybe that’s why retail customer satisfaction continues to drop.

One Last Trend

There’s one last trend that I think explains a lot.

Take a look at Domo’s 2015 Social CEO Report. They looked at Fortune 500 CEOs to see which ones had a presence on social media.

Their sad finding is 61 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have no presence on social media. It’s hard to believe that social media will get the attention it deserves if CEOs don’t understand it.

The post Here’s What’s New In Social Media Customer Service appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog written by Sara Wright, Marketing Director, at Dialog Direct.

Last week we shared the first post in this two part series “Uber-Channel Shifts: Lessons Learned From the 2015 Holiday Season.” Get all caught up on the first two “lessons learned” by reading the first post in the series!

At Customer Response Summit Phoenix a one-of-a-kind panel involving customer experience executives from three of retail’s biggest competitors came together on the stage.  The panelists shared their firsthand experience in retail’s hottest trends, innovations, wins and lessons learned.

Here is what we learned:

3. Social Media Brings Delight and In-Store Insight

The speed of growth and change in social media, and the way that it is transforming the expectations of the customer, will continue to revolutionize the way retailers market, sell and communicate with their customers.

The most common way that retailers are engaging with their customers on social media is through two-way social media communication. The debate, however, is about who to prioritize the communication strategy around – influencers, detractors, or do you proactively reach out to all to delight? It depends on who you talk to, but the majority seem to prioritize reactive communication to the detractors or those that have an issue to resolve. One large online retailer, however, spoke up at the Customer Response Summit and stated that they believe in using social media to surprise and delight, not just react. Use vines, photos and video, not just text, to engage with a customer to create an over-the-top experience. Many retailers rely on an outsourced customer engagement partner to help monitor, engage and delight customers, especially during peak times or after hours. It has also been found that social media predictive technology can increase operational efficiencies by nearly 41% by prioritizing the most impactful conversations.

<Read: Going Above and Beyond to WOW on Social Media: Real-Life Case Study>

Other ways that top retailers are using social media is to provide store-level customer experience insights. For example, a brand can capture social media interactions made about particular stores or specific store employees and brings them back to the store. For example, if you love the customer service that Kathy Smith from the Boise, Idaho, store provided you and you tweet about it, there is a good chance that Kathy will see that recognition. If you are upset about the fitting room mess at the Shelby Township, Michigan, store, again, a good chance that the store manager from that location will be aware and take action.

The third way that retailers are using social media is to increase sales through posting about specific products with a link to purchase. It was stated that this strategy is fizzling for them as social sales only contribute to about 1%, significantly down from 2014.

4. Customers Don’t Care About Your Silos

In spite of being recognized as one of the biggest barriers in creating a seamless customer experience, departmental silos haven’t gone away. Brands are working toward breaking the silos by first identifying the silos and understanding how customers interact across them.

In the retail space, there are a growing number of channels and departments that must assume a holistic online-offline perspective; everything from physical store interactions, to marketing and customer service interactives, to departmental credit card initiatives. It was mentioned that to help create a seamless multichannel experience, retailers are integrating a CRM system that houses all departmental and channel interactions. This will give the right team member’s access to the most up-to-date customer data, eliminating some of your customers’ most frustrating experiences such as high-effort engagements and non-personal interactions.

If your brand has not yet completed the journey by tying in a robust CRM system, you may find it beneficial to rely on a customer engagement professional to help. Many outsourced customer engagement professionals have the integrated tools and processes that help bridge the CX and systems gap, helping to create a more seamless experience.

5. Customers Are Still Experiencing RAGE

In conversation over the 2015 “Customer Rage” study, the top conversation was around annoyance with customer service catchphrases. While it was agreed upon by all that the phrase “That is our policy” should never be stated in the call center or on the retail floor, the No. 1 most annoying phrase, as cited by the study, was still being used very frequently. That phrase? “Your call is important to us, please continue to hold.” 50% of all surveyed believe that is the most annoying phrase, while 17% actually want it banned completely.

One of the most controversial topics discussed regarding the Rage Study results? Whether or not to apologize to an unhappy customer. The Rage Study says that 75% of unhappy customers want an apology while only 28% received it. What do the retailers and the attendees of the Customer Response Summit think? Do you apologize or do you not? Well, that is still the debate. Some believe you do own up to the issue and apologize while others believe it comes off very insincere to say that you are sorry. Whether you apologize or not, it is a fact that complainant satisfaction will nearly double (from 37% to 73%) when a non-monetary remedy is applied with a monetary remedy.

It is important to consider that to avoid Customer Rage, it is essential to always be available, personal and effortless. This can be more difficult during high peak-volume times such as holidays and the launch of new programs when your call center is already experiencing a high volume of calls. Consider looking into an outsourced call center partner to help ease the pain of high call volume or to assist with after-hour needs.

Want even more content?

– Join a free webinar on “How to Craft a Strong Customer Service Recovery Program on May 19th. Register Here (expired).

– Interested in what was learned at the Customer Response Summit in Seattle during September 2015? Check out www.dialog-direct.com/media-room/article/crsummit-2015-6-things-we-learned/

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