The following is a guest blog post from Greg Sherry, Vice President Marketing at Verint. For more information about Verint, visit their website. 

Thank you for taking part in Verint’s interactive general session at Customer Response Summit Las Vegas called “Customer Engagement LIVE!”  where we broke into discussion groups for interactive discussions and summary read back presentations. Here are some of the recommendations we heard from the groups as part of the breakout group notes and read backs:

What’s Old Is New Again. When is the last time you received a handwritten note or personal email from a business you engage with? It was memorable, wasn’t it? Think of ways you can incorporate genuine, personalized touches with customers. The strategy can be scalable: one “wow” moment can generate genuine delight and powerful word-of-mouth amplification.

Think Mobile. Do you have a mobile strategy? The need is clear: provide information, customer support, “wow” moments via mobile channels. But be careful: consumers often have limited ability to “digest” content you are sharing with them (because they are at the airport, walking, at home, multi-tasking), so be sure your content and communications are as short and to-the-point as you can.

Establish a common knowledge base across all channels to ensure consistent response. One company recognized the need to consolidate contact center systems to a single agent desktop. Customer service agents had difficulty serving customers in a timely manner and providing accurate information because information resided in 13 disparate systems. By consolidating all the systems into one agent desktop view, the company quickly reduced agent average handle time (AHT) and saw increased customer engagement scores. The unified access to the applications and information also increased employee productivity and helped provide a personalized experience for customers.

Develop a Journey Map as Part of Your Customer Experience Strategy. Our group defined a journey map as a diagram that illustrates the steps your customers go through when they engage with your company, across different channels and touch points. The more touch points you have, the more complicated — but necessary — the journey map becomes. Creating a customer journey map is an investment but is well worth the cost. For some creative ideas on journey maps, check out this recent blog post by Verint’s Nancy Porte – Five Tips for Building a Customer Journey Map.

Millennials/Diverse learners. Move away from phone to proactive chat; offer chat if automated resolution doesn’t work. Find ways to be “proactive” with communications when you anticipate that a customer’s expectations won’t be met.

Develop a Comprehensive Work-From-Home Strategy. One great reason to offer work from home is that you have the ability to recruit some of your organization’s biggest “fans,” regardless of their location. If you offer part time or flex time, you could have highly enthusiastic providers of information – and raving fans – who support your solutions or services. The customer experience these fans deliver could be very meaningful.

Use analytics not just for customer projects, but also for agent performance and metrics. Many companies use in depth analysis for customers, but more straight forward measurements for agents (AHT, quality score, Adherence etc.) Look at ways you can analyze agent performance more to impact customer experience. Identify which associates have the best cross selling abilities? Use their recorded interactions to train others. Who are the agents with best overall cx abilities?  Have “gold” and “platinum” customers (highest value customers) routed to them since they are top in delivery of CX. Drive pilots of business changes based on analysis/date- and “go big” with winning ideas. Also explore further: how can you provide different levels of service based on the “value” of your clients to your business.

Drive customer experience excellence while also handling call-types that are more and more complex. One organization is leveraging contact recording and speech analytics to determine the reason for calls that fall into the highest 10th percentile of average handle time, which are the longest calls. We can’t solve everything, but we believe that if we can “fix” the issue(s) that cause the top three to four call types, we can free up resources and focus that will help us enhance the customer experience.

Build the Feeling of an In-Store Experience Online. Meet customers at the right moment when they are challenged. Know when they are about to defect. Provide the support they need when they need it. (How are you doing in this area? One idea is to implement a journey map project as mentioned above.)

Consider an Automation Pilot. Organizations are under pressure to increase processing efficiency and productivity, reduce errors, cut operational expenses, and maintain security and regulatory compliance. Key advancements in the areas of robots/bots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are creating opportunities to service and engage with customers like never before.

Organizations should consider automating repetitive and time-consuming processes, allowing employees to focus on more complex tasks, cross-selling and delivering a personalized experience. The net: position automation as beneficial—and not a threat to your employees’ jobs.

Do you have some creative or best practices ideas to add? We’d love to hear those, too! Help us continue the conversation and submit your idea on Twitter by using the hashtag #CustEngLive. You can also follow and tag us on Twitter @ExecsInTheKnow and @Verint.

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This is a guest blog written by Greg Sherry, Vice President Marketing at Verint Systems.

One of the primary objectives of Customer Response Summit Austin was to “identify best practices and discuss innovative ideas on how to serve customer through emerging channels.” Verint’s contribution to this theme was an interactive general session called “Customer Engagement LIVE!” where we grouped executives into discussion groups of seven or eight participants. The groups engaged in conversations around the strategies and execution steps that can help define how customer-centric organizations can enrich interactions, improve business processes, and optimize the workforce.

One of the questions included on the breakout group handout, for example,  was “If you could provide your peers with one piece of advice as they create and execute their customer experience strategy and program, what would it be?”  There were also discussion questions around Customer Engagement and Enterprise Workforce Optimization.

Below are some of the highlights attendees shared during the breakout group read back presentations. Do you want access to group facilitator notes from all of the major discussion and engagement areas? If so, click here for the detailed Customer Engagement LIVE! notes.

Breakout Group Discussion Highlights

Employee Engagement- TED Talks! We want to hire and retain the best contact center agents that we can. So, we want to make sure we have a variety of internal programs around employee engagement as well as all our focus on customer engagement.  One thing we started was Ted Talks Tuesday’s where we find creative and inspirational Ted Talks videos that have themes around creativity, innovation, customers. We then have a discussion group after the video. Our executives, managers and agents love all the interactions we all have – and we are learning new ideas and ways of thinking at the same time!

Integrate more digital themes and engagement into our traditional customer service environment. We have started to use gamification in our customer services group. As part of the program, we are identifying customer “brand ambassadors” who will serve as fans of our organization and our customer services mission. We are tying these fans into our CRM system and gamification solution foundation. We think these ambassadors will help us differentiate our brand – as well as the customer experience we provide to our customers.

Mobile-  How can you gain more customer loyalty? When adopting a tech strategy  for mobile, customer experience overall (including customer service) – you have to “win over the customer” when they first become a customer. The customer’s initial experience with your organization must be meaningful and personalized. When customers are new-reach out to them when they’re excited about new service.  Make it very easy for them to set up services and profiles. This is your best window to drive loyalty- the customer’s initial experience with your organization.

Create a broad, multi-channel “listening” program. One organization created a multi-pronged campaign branded “We Listen.” It was launched across a variety of media channels internally within the organization, as well as via a 42-foot company branded recreational vehicle (RV). This “RV Relay” was a literal and figurative “vehicle” that included a rotating crew of senior level executives who drove a total of 8,500 miles across North America and visited dozens of customer sites. They engaged customers in a variety of channels including Skype, Twitter, Google hangouts, a company blog, etc. They launched a new online customer community during the relay that drew 5,500 customers per week and ultimately 150,000+ registered community members.

Think of this: Can you find ways to be “proactive” with communications, when you know that a customer’s expectations won’t be met? There are many ways to do this with data from delivery systems, mailing systems, survey data- and many ways to proactively reach out to customers- email,  phone call, SMS etc. Also think about using IVR/routing/skills based info to get customers to the person/place that can solve their issue (rather than the one-stop shop (call center) where all issues end up (and various issues can’t be solved due to department silos, information gaps etc.)

Do you have additional creative idea you’d like to share – or questions about the content in this blog post? If so, email me at greg.sherry@verint.com. I look forward to seeing you at a future Customer Response Summit.

The post Follow Up and Group Facilitator Notes: Customer Engagement LIVE! appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The one hour session will take a deeper look at how actionable knowledge management can address the increasing need for self-service, while support the need for traditional channels when self-service is not enough. The following key highlights will be shared:

– Trends impacting effective customer engagement and self-service
– The 3 E’s of customer experience: Effectiveness, Ease, and Emotion
– Best practices for creating actionable knowledge
– The digital tipping point and how to balance self-service and the human touch

“Findings from our recent CXMB Corporate Report show that 63% feel their company is beginning to divert focus away from traditional avenues of assistance into autonomous (self-help) options,” said Chad McDaniel. “While it’s crucial to still offer traditional channels, it’s becoming increasingly important to not only offer self-service, but to optimize it the right way.”

To register for the webinar visit https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/9146439583075979009.

About Execs In The Know

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

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

About Verint Systems

Verint^® (Nasdaq: VRNT) is a global leader in Actionable Intelligence^® solutions with a focus on customer engagement optimization, security intelligence, and fraud, risk and compliance. Today, more than 10,000 organizations in 180 countries—including over 80 percent of the Fortune 100—count on intelligence from Verint solutions to make more informed, effective and timely decisions. Learn more about how we’re creating A Smarter World with Actionable Intelligence^® at www.verint.com.

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This is a guest blog written by Kelly Koelliker, Director, Solutions Marketing at Verint Systems. Learn more about Verint at http://www.verint.com/.

For the first time ever, self-service channels have surpassed the phone as the most popular channels for service. As a result, organizations are beginning to invest heavily in these channels, seeking to provide the user experience customers demand. Meanwhile, contact centers still field millions of phone calls every day. So while the self-service channels are growing, many interactions still require the human touch of a phone call.

Many customers prefer to find information on their own, searching and browsing on web and mobile devices. Self-service offers the convenience of anytime/anywhere access for customers, with an added benefit of lower cost for organizations. At the same time, assisted service channels like the phone offer the value of the human touch, which can be critical when dealing with sensitive or complex issues.

Clearly, both traditional and emerging channels are important for a complete customer service strategy. But to really optimize engagement across these channels, organizations must pay attention to which channels are preferred for different user types and user scenarios. While many customers select self-service as their initial engagement channel, what causes them to pick up the phone? What is the tipping point that sends a customer away from self-service and to an assisted channel?

Once an organization understands the tipping point between self-service and assisted service, they can optimize both of these channels to best serve the customers and their specific issues. Self-service design should focus on ease of use for a frictionless experience, relying on tools like knowledge management and seamless escalation. Assisted service strategies should focus on soft skills to connect with the customer and guided troubleshooting tools to handle complex issues.

If executed correctly, your omnichannel strategy can serve each customer with exactly what they need, when they need it. To learn more on how to get started, join us on June 21 at the Execs In The Know webinar, “The Digital Tipping Point: Balancing Digital Self-Service and the Human Touch With Knowledge.” To register and learn more, visit https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/9146439583075979009. 

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