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How to Identify the Best Call Center QA Program

Quality assurance is the cornerstone of call center management practices. Optimizing QA practices increase agents’ efficiency, reduce wasteful spending, and enhance the quality of the service to customers. The combined benefits of optimizing QA practices provides a competitive edge, making identifying the best call center quality monitoring program essential to overall success. Comparing Quality Assurance Platforms A powerful call center quality assurance program can make the difference in agents’ abilities to provide top-notch customer service if it provides customer-concentric and objective evaluations. The three main platforms of quality assurance teams include the following: Internal: An internal quality team is ideal for businesses that want analysts to answer calls during high call volume and have total control over the quality program. There is an inherent risk of lower quality by pulling analysts to help guide call queues because the agents are not being evaluated during those peak times or given proper coaching. Because evaluations tend to be subjective, possibilities are dropped to mentor agents. Outsourced: Cultural issues may arise with outsourced QA teams. There is a significant distinction between customers from the U.S. and those in the Philippines, South America, and India, for instance. A tone or word could mean the difference between losing a customer or establishing loyalty. A call center quality assurance program should provide call center managers with relevant data to properly coach agents properly alongside insight into the customers’ expectations. Pro-sourced: Pro-sourcing quality teams are another platform to consider. An essential component of a successful pro-sourcing relationship is uncovering business intelligence to help an organization reach its goals and objectives. Most pro-sourcing quality assurance teams are located where customers reside, so they have the ability to understand the regional and local culture of the customers. Pro-sourcing quality partnerships work with the business expert to provide an unbiased, customer-centric analysis of strategies to enhance the customer experience and increase client loyalty. Make sure that the program and quality analysts are experts in call center quality assurance. That way they can provide meaningful insight into excellent customer service for your clients. Aligning Call Center Quality Assurance Programs with Business Needs Over three-fourths of consumers view customer service as the real test of how much a company values them. More than half are comfortable severing their relationship with a brand over one poor customer experience. Choosing a call center quality monitoring program is essential for providing outstanding customer experiences every time agents interact with customers. However, selecting a suitable call center quality assurance platform that aligns with the business’s goals and needs is a daunting process., Here are four elements that contribute to the success of a call center quality monitoring program: Precise and to the point Clearly defined agent program Consistency, accuracy, fairness, and objectiveness Integration of managers and supervisors into the process Following these techniques, tool, and tips will help businesses significantly improve their call center quality assurance practices. It will optimize the service their team provides to their clients. The enhanced quality and efficiency will result in a competitive edge. This blog was first published on LinkedIN

Automatic Conversation Insights for Quality Assurance: 5 Tips

Nothing is as important as the quality of services or products that you offer to your customers. It determines the level of customer satisfaction, employee engagement and your revenue. To monitor how you are doing with respect to quality, you need a set of standards, policies and procedures to be followed by everyone in the organization. When looking at process improvement models or performance initiatives, one should also ensure that there is a vehicle for constant testing and upgrading. The feedback loop, or closed loop process will enable identification of weaknesses and inconsistencies in the service delivery. One of the best ways of monitoring and improving Quality Assurance (QA) is through conversation analytics, the study of call recordings and live phone calls. It combines language and audio processing to offer exceptional insights into customer sentiment and emotion. Simply put, it brings the human aspect into the analysis. How can you use valuable conversation insights to improve your quality assurance? Here are five tips to get started. Remove Human Bias Human bias is likely to occur during call scoring, which affects agent performance. Automating the quality monitoring process ensures that there is consistency and transparency in the process. The information gathered is accurate and can be acted upon to improve services. Elimination of human bias also ensures that the conversation insights gathered during analysis are also consistent. Organize Unstructured Data The typical call center receives an overwhelming amount of raw daily data. Conversation analysis helps you to create connections and relationships from the unstructured data. Automation helps the QA team to dig deeper into the data and create a wider knowledge base into consumer behavior. The other departments will make better use of the information once it is in a structured format. Direct your Focus Conversation insights give you a better understanding of your company performance, not just the individual agent’s performance. Customer insights reveal how they feel about your products, prices, policies and services. This vital sentiment directs your focus to what is most important to the customer and the business, such as employee engagement, customer satisfaction and business growth. Create a Fast Information Loop For the conversation insights to bring change to your quality standards, you need to have a fast information loop. Gather feedback consistently to understand how the company is performing. Remember to test and review your feedback loops for speed and accuracy before settling on a process. Embrace Innovation For real change to take place in your quality assurance program, you need to embrace innovation. Technology and innovation are at the core of automation. It starts with Big Data analysis, distilling insights and using them to improve your business processes. Innovation also influences your choice of metrics so that you can focus on measuring customer satisfaction levels, employee engagement levels and overall organization performance. With automation, your QA team will work better and faster and given that they are the connectors between the staff, customers and the business, you will gain intimate knowledge about customer sentiments and company policies through conversation analytics. Consider these five tips to push your business forward and get the edge on the competition today.

Contact Center Essentials: 5 Keys to Success

Excellent customer service stems from a variety of components, such as a well-performing contact center. While smoothly operating call centers utilize specific elements that drive top-notch performance, few contact centers reach this level of service. With growing customer demands, businesses need to rethink which features empower successful customer service experiences. Identifying and Meeting Customer Needs In today’s data-intensive world, it is challenging to identify what matters most to customers. Call center success involves separating out distracting figures and facts to determine the measurements that mark success and ultimately enhance the client’s experience. Balancing quantitative and efficient contact center success metrics have a favorable effect on the customer experience. Here are the top five keys to ensure call center success. Technology: Call center technology is continually evolving, making it challenging to keep track of the latest market innovations. For instance, over 86 percent of today’s call centers are multichannel, from intelligent call-backs to universal queuing and voice biometrics. It is essential for call center success that metrics include web and mobile support. Also, nearly 60 percent of 25 to 34 year-old customers share poor customer experiences on social media. Key performance indicators: Analytics enable businesses to anticipate customer needs and exceed expectations. It supports reliability and efficiency and creates an improved customer experience. Likewise, automating call center processes reduce new agent training periods, eliminate extended hold times, enhance and optimize agent utilization, and present opportunities for up-selling. Performance and contact center success metrics are critical to overall business success. For instance, a one percent improvement in first call response results in an annual operational savings of over $275,000. Agent engagement: Employees who are engaged are 87 percent less likely to leave for another position than those who are disengaged. Empower and encourage employees to strive for success when engaged with customers. Enthusiasm, confidence, helpfulness, and a proactive approach will gain customer loyalty, satisfaction, and trust. Make employees aware of how their contribution has a positive impact on the overall success of the company. Ongoing training: Businesses can increase customer interaction success rates by training agents to resolve issues efficiently and respond appropriately to clients. A well-trained, educated, and informed agent will improve the first contact resolution and also reduce average handling time. Training is vital to ensure agents are aware of the expectations for handling customers. They need to understand how to personalize the interaction instead of just handing the call. After an agent is initially trained, follow-up training must take place. New Ideas: These should be measurable and influence the perception of the business positively among customers to ultimately improve revenues. This will help businesses deploy customer management strategies on empowering agents to implement new approaches. For instance, call-backs lower customer abandon rates by over 30 percent. For call centers to deliver high-end services consistently, it must implement the tools to empower agents to provide outstanding customer service. These five keys to call center success will influence performance and move toward call center success. The result will be more than just customer satisfaction; it will also create customer and employee loyalty.

3 Call Center QA Best Practices to Try Right Now

One of the biggest ways a company can increase sales is by focusing on their contact center QA. Call center and BPO quality assurance are some of the top factors in determining a business’ level of success. Etech Global Services can help you find the best solution to address your call center quality analytics. When you utilize programs that analyze your call center’s quality, there are additional specific ways to make sure you’re getting the most from it. Here are the best practices that you should implement in your call center to increase quality immediately. Invest in Training The best customer service agents are the most knowledge in their jobs. All top customer service representative programs begin with a highly effective training program. When hiring new employees, you make an initial investment in training and recruitment. You can get a greater return on this investment if your training program can effectively make an employee succeed in your business. You can also get a lower turnover rate by keeping your employees more satisfied. Your training program shouldn’t merely focus on new hires; additional training programs for existing employees can help you maintain top quality assurance for your customers’ experiences. Prioritize the Top Calls Another best practice for call center quality assurance involves the type of calls your system spends time to analyze. Rather than picking a random percentage of your entire call database to evaluate, prioritize on your most lucrative or meaningful phone interactions. Insignificant or routine calls don’t always need to be thoroughly analyzed for quality. Your most valued calls may include ones where there is significant interaction between a customer and an agent, calls that involve high volume purchases, repeat calls from previous customers with a problem and calls related to new products. Once you’ve narrowed down the choices to those top calls, you can focus your analysis on samples from that group primarily. That way, you can get more out of your call center quality analytics system. Link Call Center Quality and Customer Data The most important method of maximizing your success with a call center analytics system is to link it to other parts of your business. One thing that definitely needs to be in this equation is your data regarding customer satisfaction. No matter what you provide, a product or a service, you must also have some way of analyzing whether or not your customers are pleased with your offerings. Use this information along with your call center data to get a better picture of where your company stands. Customer surveys after a call can help you ensure that your call center analytics are focusing on the right issues. Then, you can take the new information you’ve learned about your customers’ attitudes and feelings and apply it to your training program, making it all link together. Whether your business is fielding thousands of calls a day or just a few, it’s important to be able to understand how your phone agents are able to deliver service. A comprehensive call center quality assurance program is able to help your business reach its goals faster and more effectively. This blog was first published on LinkedIN

10 Influential Ways to Improve Call Center Quality Monitoring

For businesses that rely on the ability of their customer representatives to deliver outstanding service over the phone, call center quality analytics are a must. With call center quality monitoring, you can ensure that your employees are following the guidelines that can help your business succeed. Along with a monitoring program from Etech Global Services, there are additional techniques that can help your company get the most out of this technology. Here are the best ways you can utilize this helpful tool for your company. Let Representatives Be Part of the Process : The most important thing for a company that uses call center quality analytics is that your agents need to be part of the process. This can help foster a more positive atmosphere for evaluations rather than a punishing one. Incorporate Fun, Friendly Competitions to Motivate Team Members : To support a positive atmosphere, you may want to incorporate fun contests that are tied to call quality scores. A little friendly competition between employees can help motivate team members. Identify Common Problems With Agents : When analyzing call center data, look at what some customer service representatives struggle with. If you see a trend, you can address it as a company with new training. Work With Team Members Who Need Help : For those who are struggling to meet the requirements for call center quality, work with the team members who need help. Focusing more energy on training is a better investment than simply replacing these employees. Connect Quality Assurance to Company Goals : Identify the needs of your company, and draft specific goals that you want your agents to reach. All of your quality assurance effort should be directly related to these goals. Focus the Most Energy on Your Top Calls : Instead of monitoring short routine calls, focus your quality assurance program on the most involved calls where there is more interaction between customers and representatives. This is a better use of your time and resources. Analyze Customer Data With Quality Analytics : Customer surveys and other forms of evaluation should also be used alongside of call center quality assurance. Analyze all pieces of information to get the best picture of where your customer service falls. Give Plenty of Positive Feedback : Your call center monitoring feedback should offer plenty of opportunities to recognize those who are doing well. Employees want to continue doing the things that they get recognized for, so this increases motivation and productivity. Implement a Specific Training Program : When new employees come onto your team or existing employees are struggling, use your data to implement a specific course of call center training. This can help your employees know what to expect and give you greater results. Utilize Your Human Resources : Take advantage of all that your team has to offer by putting peoples’ strengths on the stage. Peers training each other can be much more effective than a supervisor or team leader taking the lead. Call center quality is a vital part to keeping your business practices consistent and profitable. Using the top ways to improve your call center effectiveness can help your company increasingly meet its goals. This blog was written by Jim Iyoob, EVP Customer Experience and Operational Excellence for Etech Global Services.

3 Tips to Increase Conversions for SaaS Business

The digital world is very exciting and is always getting better every day. For the technical sales professional, it means unending possibilities of closing the deal. Any opportunity that will increase your conversions is worth looking at because it increases your revenue. One such opportunity that has been tried and tested is the SaaS business. SaaS is an abbreviation for Software As A Service. It is a way of delivering applications over the Internet as a service. As a customer, you do not have to purchase software; you simply access it over the Internet. It is a brilliant product as it relieves you of the hassle of managing the software and hardware. The company providing the web-based software assumes all the risks and controls its accessibility, performance, and security. Now let us unpack how you can increase conversions as the SaaS provider, Funnel testing and optimization There are three types of funnels, Paid sign up – no free trial. The customer visits the page, signs up, pays and activates. Free trials – timed product trial. The customer visits the page, trial sign up, activates and then pays to upgrade. Freemium – free for life. The customer visits the page, signs up for free, activates and upgrades. The funnel type you choose is dependent on your application functionality. Carry out the following steps for proper funnel testing and optimization. Baseline your macro conversations – What is the percentage drop from the guests who visited your site, to those who signed up, to those who activated and finally upgraded. Categorize your optimization options – Your optimization opportunity is the step that has the highest drop. For instance is 10,000 people visited the site, 1,000 signed up, 500 activated and 100 upgraded, the highest drop off is from those who visited the site and those who signed up. Research – Gather qualitative data to identify the conversion barriers. Carry out surveys and usability test to understand why there is a high drop off. Develop and implement A/B tests – Once you have understood where the challenges are, improve your funnel of choice. You can combine, change or remove the order of steps. After the modification, implement by testing your new designs from the headlines, buttons, images and other variations. Measure the result against your baseline – After the tests, measure against your baseline and see if there is a change. Review and repeat accordingly. Your aim in this step is to uncover the funnel that gives you the highest conversions. Segment your customers Define your customer segments. For example, you can split the homepage into different sections for testing. There are three main types of customer segments to test, Company size segmentation- You can divide your clients by the business size, this also captures people who want to use the applications for personal use. Segment using the number of employees in that company which then determines the pricing. Account type segmentation- A typical example is a professional account for individual use and enterprise for organizations. The professional account gives them an opportunity to sample the application free before signing up. Customized segmentation- You ask the visitor a few questions to determine their needs before directing them to the application site. By understanding your core customer, you will design the applications to meet their specific needs as well as focus on the highest return on investment. Test Your Calls to Action A SaaS application is not complete without a call to action. The last step towards increasing your conversions is to test your call to action. Go back to your funnel test and use the result to survey, analyze and create appropriate tests. The best approach is to customize your call to action as opposed to copying what everyone is doing online. The call to action should be short and enticing so that the visitor clicks the button. For example, instead of “See plans and pricing,” use “Try us today” or “Free download.” Try different calls to action and stick to the one that gives you the highest conversions. In summary, these three tips, funnel testing, and optimization, segmenting your customers and testing your calls to action will increase your conversions. The rule of the game is test, test and test some more.

3 Little Known Ways That Consumer Sentiment Affect Your Business

The sentiment is defined as an attitude or opinion prompted by emotions or feelings. To understand this better ask this question: How do consumers get these feelings when they base their opinions on your company? I believe they come in two ways: After interacting with the staff. Customer service plays a huge role here in how they will feel about your company. For instance, when a customer is served well, they feel satisfied and happy with the company and thus have a positive opinion about it. A happy customer is a return customer. On the other hand, if a customer is not served well, they will feel disappointed and not valued, thus will have a negative opinion about the company. After consuming the product or service. For instance, a customer buys a product hoping that it will do what the company claims it will. When it doesn’t meet his expectations, he feels disappointed and thus forms a negative opinion about the entire company. But if he is happy with the results, he views the company positively and raves about it. In this digital era, you can quickly analyze your consumer’s sentiments by opinion mining. This is simply tracking their moods toward your products/services through their posts, tweets, reviews, and comments. It can either be negative or positive or a combination of the two, they are all good depending on what you do after receiving the analysis. If you have never thought about reading between the lines of your customer’s feedback, the time to start is NOW. Here are 3 little known ways that these findings affect your business:- 1. New/modification of your product When you are planning to introduce a new product into the market, you always undertake market research through surveys and focus groups. The feedback you receive helps in the product design, but the most important information that will help you is from customer reviews after the launch. What sentiments do they have towards the products and your company? It helps you go back to the drawing board and develop an entirely new product or modify it. You know this is of utmost importance because consumers and growth are the lifeblood of your business and there is no better way to grow than in the direction the consumers want. Let us see how you can use consumer positive or negative sentiment to drive product/service development. Positive sentiment : Case in point, Etech Global Services. It started off with one service: a telecommunication consumer call center. The clients and consumers were happy with the services and their positive sentiments facilitated the introduction of other services like chat, email, social, and software development. It is now an omnichannel contact center able to meet the needs of a larger clientele from different industries across all communication channels. Negative sentiment : For example, if you launch an app and some customers respond by saying it “crashes too often” or “it takes too long to start” then you can turn this negative review to your advantage. You use it to modify the app by eliminating the shortcomings and, viola, you have a great product that consumers love. 2. Damage/build your business reputation Consumers always share their sentiments with their friends, family, and other consumers. Positive comments and reviews about your products will definitely build your business by attracting new customers. I consider this word-of-mouth advertising which is the most effective method of advertising, and to add icing to the cake, it is absolutely free. On the other hand, negative comments and reviews (word of mouth) can severely damage your reputation in a matter of seconds. For example, a customer can post about a bad experience they had with an agent and the thread starts, within a short time it becomes the trending thread, and some customers who were initially satisfied with the company, all of sudden become extremely unhappy. What do you think these negative sentiments will do to your business reputation? It will definitely damage it. I recently published an article on managing your reputation, read it here. Please remember the old saying, “a happy customer tells one friend, and an unhappy customer tells the world” 3. Turn potential customers into loyal customers Before a customer makes the final buying decision, they ask around to know the experiences of others. When they actually go out and buy it, the aim is to validate what they heard about the product. If it turns out to be right, they become loyal customers. For example, if I recently traveled and wanted to eat somewhere different, I went online and looked at the available options. To narrow them down, I read the online customer reviews and settled on the one that had the highest rating. I was not disappointed and anytime I visit that town, I will always go there. All around us are potential customers who would benefit from our products or services. What they have heard about you, can make the difference in whether or not they use our products or services. When they come to you, how they will feel will determine if they will return or not. What every manager wants is to turn potential customers into not just one-time consumers but loyal customers. Positive online customer sentiments work in your favor by bringing potential customers to you. It is now up to you to either meet their high expectations and convert them or disappoint them and lose them forever. There you go, these are the ways that consumer sentiments affect your business: new development or modification of products, building or damaging your reputation, and turning potential customers into loyal customers. You have the power to direct the feelings of your customers and thus their sentiments. How have consumer sentiments affected your business? This blog was first published on LinkedIN

Grow Your Bench, Grow Your Business: 8 Simple Succession Planning Tips

How prepared is your business to capitalize on opportunity? Without a strong bench you could essentially be limiting your growth potential. Take this quick quiz: Do you feel if you want something done right you must do it yourself? Is there nobody on your team you trust to get the job done? Do you scramble to have coverage in your center? Do you have high leader turnover? Do you drop balls because you are doing other people’s work? Are you overwhelmed? Would you like the opportunity to do something different? Do you fail to hold people accountable because you do not have a replacement? If you answered yes to any of these questions…it’s time to look at your succession planning tactics. Here are a few tips to take ownership of where you are and implement change: If you don’t have a succession planning strategy, begin now. The cycle you are in will not be broken without an investment in change. Draw a line in the sand and break the cycle. You cannot afford to wait any longer. Own the problem and the solution. List and define the critical roles within your center. This will give you a framework to work from. Prioritize based on impact to the business, and other known variables (pending promotions, center growth, retirements, resignations, etc) Identify who has potential for upward mobility. Focus first on your high potential people, those with consistent results and demonstrated ability to learn quickly and thrive on challenge. Who is important…what, how, when are equally important. What will they need to know? How will they acquire those skills? When will this be complete? Enroll your team…You’ve already proven one person cannot do everything. Break the cycle and involve others in being part of the solution. Map it out…don’t keep plans in your head. Take ownership of ensuring there is a mapped out plan with timelines that can be executed on. Finally, find an accountability partner to have check points with. This should be someone you can trust to not accept excuses from you. It’s easy to make excuses for ourselves…but not as easy to explain to someone else why we’ve failed to hold ourselves accountable. Not only will you begin to build a strong bench, but engagement, performance and morale will all improve as a result. In the words of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, “The journey of thousand miles begins with a single step.” I encourage you to start your journey today!

Why You Need an Integrated Customer Engagement Platform (ICE)

If customer retention is a priority for growth this year, then you have to get serious about your customer experience. A priority for any customer experience should be allowing you customers to choose how they interact with your business and for the millennial generation, live chat for customer service is quickly becoming a preferred option. A recent research study conducted by complaint management research consultancy Software Advice, found that 63% of millennials prefer to have their basic customer support questions answered via live chat. This is a big deal. Millennials already account for $600 Billion in retail sales and Accenture estimates that the millennial generation will represent 30% of retail sales by 2020. To meet this expectation and increase your online sales, live chat for customer service is a reliable and trustworthy customer experience that caters to any customer active on your website. If you have not started to interact with customers via chat, you will need to consider a wide range of chat solutions to match your specific business needs and find a partner to scale your team. Benefits of Live Chat Convenience and hold time – live chat is convenient for most customers and trained chat teams can significantly reduce hold time. Customers can receive support instantly even if an agent is not immediately available. Most chat services can operate an automated queue to request customer information and suggest canned responses to provide a solution. Reduce customer abandonment – Live chat software can be implemented in specific phases of the decision-making and checkout process to reduce abandonment and increase sales. Whether you are selling retail or services, live chat will connect customers with an agent in critical purchase decision phases. Chat software will let the agent know what page a customer is viewing and ready prepared responses to up-sell or provide immediate support. Easy to Implement & Scale – The software is easy to implement and is typically just one line of code for your website. An experienced live chat contact center like Stratus (shameless plug) will help you successfully install and prepare a team of agents to engage your consumers. Key things to consider when choosing live chat software. Offline Customer Support Does the chat software solutions provide operators with technical assistance and client support on 24/7 basis? This is critical because a real time tracking of visitors can increase sales and customer loyalty for your website. Responding to questions faster is possible along with finding specifics for interested shoppers, giving incentives, discounts, and receiving feedback. Offline customer support includes mobile web browsers compatible with smart phones; this makes communication with your customers easy. Hence, even if the operator is not available, you can send a text message to them. When he/she clicks the message, they will have a direct connection with you through the mobile platform. Canned Responses Canned responses are preset responses to frequently asked questions. They increase the speed of chat and facilitate better customer satisfaction. Therefore, it is crucial to choose a live chat software solution that provides operators with an opportunity to respond quickly to customer inquiries. A great live chat software solution has the ability to store valuable data from daily operations and produce a complete knowledge base, which in turn helps to formulate canned responses. Other than giving information about your company, at the core of your website’s purpose is to attract customers and convert them. Normally, visitor will spend around 15 seconds on a website to find out what he/she is looking for. With live chat and canned responses visitors and agents can quickly find resolution or information. Canned responses increase the speed of resolution and allow the agent to attend to more than one customer at a time. But beware with the robotic canned messages, the best demonstrated practice is to create canned messages that sound human and have transition phrases built into them. Customization Options Some live chat software solutions do not have room to cover all the needs your business. Choose a solution that you can customize to keep up with your business needs as well as helps you to adapt to changing situations. Most solutions facilitate easy customization of chat themes, buttons, chat interface, and chat skins among others. Installing easy customizable solutions ensure that the business can handle consistent brand identity across all marketing channels and brand touch points. Pricing What are the cost implications of the live chat software you want? Before you can consider desktop software that features a low cost per single user or web-based software that features a monthly bill. The decision should be based on your specific customer needs, products and website traffic. Outsource To an Experience Team You can build your own in-house team; but if this is a new channel, Etech Global Services can help you scale and plan a strategy for the future. Some things to consider: What business needs and I trying to address? How will I define success? What characteristics make a good chat agent? (Hint: They are very different than good voice agents). How do I train new chat agents? How do I gather business intelligence from the chat interactions? How do I fix issues and continually improve? An experienced team will generate an ROI faster. A happy customer is a returning customer. 56% of respondents have successfully used live chat at least once. If you offer quality customer service they will come back to your website. Give your consumers the opportunity to chat with operators and we ensure that they will value it. This blog was written by Jim Iyoob, Executive Vice President of Customer Experience for Etech Global Services. If you would like to learn more about Etech, please contact us at info@etechgs.com.

The Impact of Call Monitoring and Score Cards in the Call Center

Any opportunity to improve call center operations is worth taking. Call monitoring and scorecards top the list. Call monitoring is a feature that allows you to listen in to a live call and track what matters most to the call center. The scorecard is a call scoring evaluation form that keeps track of agent’s performance. The data you gather using these two tools will help you optimize your call center operations. However, you need to use them effectively lest they mislead your strategy. Agents are the contact persons, and therefore, when they improve their performance, call center excels. Let us get into the details of the influence of call monitoring and scorecards have in the call center. A better understanding of agents’ performance For research or a study to be credible, you need to carry out both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Call monitoring gives you the qualitative data while scorecards give you the quantitative data. When you monitor agent’s live calls, you will gather instant information about what they do well and what needs improvement. That is a qualitative study. When you record their performance in the scorecard, you can know quantitatively how the agent is performing. In the end, you will know the areas the agent struggles with and thus focus on how to improve them as well as commend them for areas they are excelling. Highlighting training needs As you monitor agent’s calls and record the findings, you will notice areas that need training. The purpose of listening live to the agents is not to catch them doing something wrong, but to highlight weakness areas that require training and development. The data you collect will help the agents understand the matter better, and the best ways of handling the issue. In addition to highlighting the skills gap among your agents, call monitoring and scoring are part of your best training tools. Tracking Progress After training your agents, you need a medium of tracking their progress. You need to know whether the training was beneficial or not. The scorecards will keep a record of your agents’ performance, and thereby give you an indication of the quality standards. Use calibration sessions to help you customer service representatives understand their progress at work. A successful session will guide your team to areas that are on track as per the set standards and those that are lagging behind. Knowing where you stand and where you want to be will you the motivation to focus on the right things. Improved coaching sessions Part of a manager’s role is to coach the employees. When you sit down with an agent and review one of their interactions with a customer, they will get a better understanding of how they are performing. It will also make your work easier as you try to highlight what they are doing wrong. The coaching sessions are great for the employee to look within for answers under your guidance. When they come up with a solution, they will implement it better as compared to when you impose one on them. The coaching session will be successful for you and the agent. Improved customer satisfaction Agents’ performance affects customer satisfaction levels. All the above points lead to an extremely skilled agent, happy and satisfied with their jobs. When a happy employee serves a customer, he or she receives excellent support leading to high satisfaction levels. To repeat this cycle, you need to carry out call monitoring and keeping scorecards on a regular basis. Carrying out call monitoring and scoring will benefit the call center in several ways, a better understanding of your agent’s performance, highlighting training needs, tracking progress, improved coaching sessions, and improved customer satisfaction. To continually offer quality services and maintain an efficient quality assurance program, you should keep these two tools at the core of your analysis. You will create a ripple effect where every stakeholder remains satisfied. For more advice on creating a world class quality program that drives customer experience or if you would like to learn more about Etech Global Services, feel free to contact me. This blog was first published on LinkedIN

4 Tips for Reducing Attrition in the Contact Center

High turnover is a challenge for a contact center and especially the recruiting department whom need to ensure that the companies has sufficient staff to meet all the customers’ needs. A majority of the agents in the contact center are aged between 18 years to 35 years. These are the famous generation Y, and their working culture has seen its fair share of negativity. Generation Y employees expect instant results and success, and will move to another job without blinking if they will reach their goals faster. That makes the contact centers all over the world have the highest turnover rate according to statistics. It is inevitable for employees to leave your company, but that should not discourage you. You can try working on these four tips to reduce churn at your contact center: Engage the employees Employee engagement is very important for you to reduce churn. When your employees feel engaged and involved with the company, they will be more productive. A high-performing employee is recognized for their hard work, and this motivates them to do more. To engage the millennial employee, think of utilizing technology, as they have grown up with technology and work well with it. For example, you can introduce electronic games that they can play during their breaks, and can compete as individuals or teams. At the end of the day, your goal is to have highly engaged employees who will be satisfied with their roles and not want to leave as soon as they start working. Create a supportive working environment An agent is under a lot of pressure. The management expects him or her to meet certain KPI’s, and the customer expects to receive the best customer care. Being the link between the two parties, at times it gets tough, for example, when dealing with frustrated customers. Why and how the customer is angry is not under your control, but you can ease the burden for the agents by creating a supportive working environment. Let them feel your support and motivation on a daily basis. Allow your agents to escalate extremely difficult issues for them to resolve and you can give the customers a solution as well as teach the agent how to deescalate at the same time. Ensuring their working spaces are clean and habitable will also help employees to be comfortable as they work. Add meaning to their jobs Another reason that generation Y employees quit their jobs is if it doesn’t create some meaning. They don’t want just to work for the sake of it; they want their work to be meaningful. You can create meaning by involving them in charity work or volunteer opportunities. They get to interact with the communities around them and feel they are giving back to the community they live in. You can also ask them to give suggestions of the charities they want to support. Such opportunities get them involved and interested in their job as it gives them a chance to influence the company decisions. Acknowledge their Performance Finally and importantly, you need to acknowledge their efforts. Motivation fuels the desire to do better even when the going gets tough. As a manager, you need to appreciate your agents and show them that they are doing well. A simple “Thank you” for handling a customer well, for bringing in the highest sales, or showed the best improvement will go a long way in motivating that agent. They will feel appreciated and valued. Therefore, they will continue giving their best to work not searching online for the vacancy announcements. Remember to commend even the ones who are trying to reach the top, not just those who are already there. Working with a highly motivated team will reduce churn in your contact center. In summary, to reduce churn in your contact center, keep you employees engaged and motivated. They will derive satisfaction from their jobs and not be quick to look for something else. This blog post first publish on LinkedIN

How Do You Build a Team That Goes the Distance?

A team that lasts is a great team and a great team is built by a great leader. Nothing is more frustrating for a leader than to have constant turnover among his or her team. Constant turnover makes it difficult to develop a smooth working team because the leader or manager is always having to hire and train new team members. Constant turnover also takes a toll on the other team members. An essential component of developing a strong team is having team members who get along well and have a good rapport with one another and this can’t happen if the staff is constantly changing. So how do you develop a staff that stays together and will go the distance? Here are some tips: Know your Team Members I don’t mean to simply know their names, but to KNOW them on a personal level. Know what is important to them and their families, and know what their goals are. As their leader, taking the time to get to know them builds trust and confidence resulting in a team that is loyal and thriving. Define and Assign Roles One of the major benefits of developing a knowledgeable staff is that it guides you in placing them in roles that are suited to them. Knowing their strengths and placing them in roles where those strengths can be further developed will ensure their success. Promote from Within The hope of career progression is a win-win for the company and the employee. When employees see that there is a chance for advancement they are far less likely to look for new opportunities outside the company. When possible, it makes much more sense to promote someone who already has a working knowledge of the organization than to hire from the outside. Communicate Effectively Open communication rather than a top-down style is much more effective and communicates to your employees that their opinion and ideas are valuable. Celebrate Together Celebrate victories as a team, celebrate birthdays as a team, and do things that will further develop team rapport. These go a long way in building a team of happy satisfied employees who don’t feel the need to leave their current job in hopes of finding something better. These make for a leader that everyone wants to follow and builds a happy and satisfied team that goes the distance.

Five Top Practices for Effective Vendor Management

Effective and efficient vendor management should be your priority if you want to remain competitive in the marketplace. Vendor management enables you to drive service excellence, mitigate risks, gain value from your vendors and manage costs throughout the partnership cycle. Wrong partnerships will lead your company to its deathbed while right ones will help you achieve your long-term goals, so take all necessary steps to ensure that you stay on top of things from the beginning to the end of the relationship. Below are five best practices that can help you improve your vendor management strategy. Align Vendor Management Framework to Business Objectives A vendor comes in to support your company goals and objectives. To ensure efficiency, you need to pick a model that supports your organizational goals and strategy. As stated above, a wrong partnership will ruin your organization instead of building it. Start by creating an internal vendor management team that will be dedicated to handling vendors from the onset. A committed team will focus on procuring the most appropriate vendors and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships. Vendor management is different from other organizational aspects like employee management where typically the Human Resources department would source and hire, but the department heads will manage them. The size of your vendor management team will depend on the number of outsourced vendors and their contribution to the company. Your goal here is to position your office as a strategic function that facilitates the long-term health of key vendors. Classify Existing Suppliers Unless you are a start-up company, you already have some vendors. Look at that list again and classify them based on the products or services they provide and the level of impact it has on the company. Regarding goods and services, a vendor can provide hardware, software, system integrators, telecommunications or services. Their influence can be tactical or strategic. Proper classification helps in resource allocation because not all vendors are equal. For example, a vendor providing hardware is different from the one providing a service. To determine further the distribution portions, consider whether the partnership will be short-term or long-term. Your aim is to invest more on the strategic vendors whose role has the highest impact on the organization goals and objectives. However, do not neglect the tactical vendors. Establish a Vendor Management Structure Your framework is in alignment with the overall corporate goals and your suppliers classified, next you need to focus on the governance and reporting lines to achieve the set objectives. A management structure covers the following steps: Vendor selection process needs and requirements. Having the right people with functional capabilities and skills to oversee the vendor relationships effectively, while working closely with other business units. Documented decision-making roles and responsibilities to avoid conflict and duplication. Clear accountability for top-priority vendor management functions. Performance management processes and incentives to instill confidence among the employees. This structure will ensure your team works seamlessly and increase your resource management effectiveness, including cost containment. Define the Relationship A vendor is your business partner and will potentially be privy to confidential organizational information. The amount of information shared between the two parties will vary depending on the nature of the services or products they provide, and the length of the contract. You need to safeguard yourself and the vendor by defining the partnership parameters. Determine what to share at what point of the partnership, agree on individual responsibilities for the overall success of the relationship and contract termination circumstances. Your aim should be to protect yourself from any misunderstanding and risks that may emerge if the partnership collapses. You would also be well advised to also execute standard Non Disclosure Agreements. Monitor and Measure Vendor Performance Monitoring and measuring are a common practice in all organizations, and you may have some experience in what it entails. However, in vendor management, you will use project management skills more than any other skills. In addition to the paperwork, you have to monitor the overall benefit of the relationship to the company. Consistent monitoring and measuring of vendor performance will enable you to quickly notice when something goes right or wrong. Given the impact of a vendor to the organization, their performance has to remain top notch. Hold performance review meetings to discuss the progress of the partnership. Effective and efficient vendor management is crucial for the success of your business and should be a top priority. Having a good team in place will establish a mutually beneficial relationship that can be your competitive edge.

Four Ways to Boost Customer Experience

Customer care representatives are a necessity to any company offering customer experiences. Because they are at the forefront, they determine the kind of service customers enjoy or otherwise. Best-In-Class organizations realize this fact and work to turn this service resource into a critical asset. This is done most effectively through engaging and empowering the customer care representatives. An empowered employee will be motivated to deal with any obstacle as long as they resolve customers’ issues and protect the company image. He or she will strike a balance in the service delivery because they understand the organization’s standards as well as the needs and expectations of the customers. Here are tips and practices that will help boost front-line performance leading to excellent customer experiences. Measure Current Performance : It is essential to know your current performance situation. What are your front-line employees doing to deliver exceptional customer experiences? Someone once wrote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” You need to know where you are going and where you are, for success path mapping. Most companies have customer service goals and measuring tools in place. However, you need to align the metrics to the brand standards for exceptional experiences. Utilize all the available resources to ensure that you measure the essential performance metrics. Give Individual Feedback : For the highest impact, you need to monitor each employee and how he or she interacts with the customers. You may have a script and have trained them on call and chat etiquette, but subsequent to training, you need to monitor each employee and give feedback accordingly. Acknowledge and reward the agents that are doing well and encourage and train those who are lagging behind. Constant monitoring allows you to notice low-quality interactions and therefore, react before it gets out of hand. When you correct an employee immediately, it helps him or her to change and act in line with the corporate standards. In a large contact center, this might be a challenge given the high number of agents. You can overcome it by holding calibration sessions and group coaching with a few agents at a time. Encourage Accountability : Accountability stems from taking responsibility. When an agent understands and owns his or her role in the customer experience chain, then they will be accountable not only to themselves but also to the company. You can know whether your employees are responsible during individual coaching sessions. A responsible agent will acknowledge their errors and suggest behavior changes that would ensure it does not happen again faced with similar circumstances. However, if an agent cannot see where they went wrong, they have yet to embrace accountability. Another great way to check for accountability is through customer surveys. After every interaction, the agents should administer the short survey to get customer feedback. When you use the above sources of information well, you will know the areas that require enhancement measured against performance metrics. Incorporate Supporting Teams : Front-line employees do not work alone; a variety of teams support their efforts. For example, the technical team is a crucial part of the customer experience process in a product oriented contact center. Analyze the performance of all the supporting departments to know the weak and strong links. Strengthening all teams will ensure that customers experience the company as “one” not departments. Free knowledge sharing and working together to achieve organizational goals as far as customer service is concerned will keep you ahead of the competition. The aim is offer consistent experiences to the customer. In summary, when you measure employees’ current performance state, individualize feedback, encourage accountability and incorporate the supporting teams in the process, you will be on the right track to higher-quality customer experiences. Your goal should be to measure, review and refine agents’ performance. This blog was first published on LinkedIN

Ten Principles to Drive Effective Collaborations-part 2

As a continuation from the first article on principles to drive effective collaborations, here are five more tips to strengthen your foundation. Manage difficult trade-offs Not everything works out as intended, not only in life but also in business. You need to have a provision of making compromises where necessary. These trade-offs may not be easy but will make all the difference in the way your organization collaborates. Knowing when to make the trade-offs requires the leader to be informed and empowered because these decisions will change the course of the business. The good news is that collaboration provides the tools for the key decision makers to obtain the right information at the right time. Exploit the rhythm of convergence and divergence History repeats itself; meaning the organization experiences highs and lows almost at equal measures. For example, when initiating a telesales campaign, you start with a large number of prospects, but during the campaign, two things can happen:- Convergence – the number reduces to capture the real sales Divergence – developing more products to meet the needs of the customer Look at the rhythms created over time in your organization. How do you gather information, sort it and later on develop it? You may be surprised at how that data will affect your decision-making. Articulate and implement a few strict rules Without rules, there is chaos, and this is especially true when there more than one party involved. With the understanding of what you want to achieve and how to go about it, you can articulate rules regarding the employee behavior. Each department needs to understand their roles and responsibilities, and what is acceptable and what is not. For the organization to experience effective collaboration, do not leave the rules at the articulation stage; implement them. Also depending on your company policies, you can use rewards and punishments to enforce those rules. Design flexible organizations that encourage the required collaboration Without contradicting the above principle on articulating and implementing a few strict rules, you need to have a flexible company culture that will facilitate effective collaboration. Remember that your internal functions or dysfunctions, spill over to the external environment and vice versa. Therefore, you need to be attentive, adaptive and responsive to your environment. Flexibility means that you can sense the shifts in the environment, can work together to respond to the changes, and the leaders decide what to do in real time. Collaboration makes all these possible and helps you deliver the best business results in the worst-case scenario situations. Align support systems to endorse ownership After working hard on the other nine principles, the glue that will make them stick is ownership. When everybody in the organization takes ownership of the process and the outcome thereof, achieving effective collaboration will be easy. They will share information at the right time, hold dialogues and make the right decisions for the betterment of the company. Your core role in leadership is to align the support systems. Utilize the collaboration technology to promote ownership of the process. It should make life easy for the staff, not complicate things. In summary, effective collaboration is a team’s effort, and these principles help to provide the guidelines and foundation for achieving that. Just to recap the ten principles are, Focus on business results Encourage high standards for information sharing, Align information and authority, Encourage accountability, Look at collaboration as competence, Manage difficult trade-offs, Exploit the rhythm of convergence and divergence, Articulate and implement a few strict rules, Design flexible organizations that encourage the required collaboration and Align support systems to endorse ownership.

Role of Senior Management in Delivering Customer Service

Hundreds of articles focus on customers and agents when it comes to customer service, and senior management role pops up as one of the many points in the article. However, I believe the contact center leadership plays a big role in ensuring that customers receive exceptional experiences. Leadership is about achieving results through others. Dwight D Eisenhower summed it up by saying, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want to be done because he wants to do it.” Today, I would like to change the focus to the senior management and the significant roles they play in the customer service delivery process. Here are their five key roles;- They Set the standards Before the customer representatives can pick up the phone and answer calls, they need to have a script guideline in hand. Managers draw up these guidelines or scripts based on the results they want to achieve as well as their experience with that brand and customers. They also sit down in meetings and discuss ways to help the company using data intelligence. For example, if the supervisor notices that the average handling time per customer is high, then he investigates the issue to uncover the possible reason the representatives are taking too much time on a call. He then discusses it with the managers to come up with a solution. Senior management formulates the company mission and vision, and they are at the forefront to ensure that all strategies implemented lead the company towards their goal. Without a goal, the organization will walk blindly. They Empower Employees Employees execute the set strategies. What would happen if you have the best customer service strategy, and tools and techniques in place but you do not have great employees to do the work? Absolute failure! Senior management is responsible for hiring the right people for the job, training them on the best practices, inspiring and motivating them to deliver results, monitoring their performance. When you have a knowledgeable team on the ground, you will achieve good results. However, a great leader knows that knowledge alone is not enough to achieve great success; they empower the agents to make decisions on behalf of the organization. An empowered team is an unstoppable team. They improve processes Technology is at the core of the excellent customer service delivery. An agent cannot make the decision to change obsolete equipment, but the senior manager can. The management monitors the trends in the industry and the organization output and makes the decision to upgrade or change the system. They understand the impact that great customer support software has on the level of service provided and are always on the lookout for what is working and what is not. When the team is well equipped, they will be effective and efficient in their work. The best way to support the representatives is to provide them with up to date tools and technology that gives them the opportunity to focus on the customers. They create the culture Senior management helps to create the corporate culture. New employees come and adapt to the existing culture. If the management creates a culture where exceptional customer service is a top priority, everybody else will follow suit. They create a great working culture by leading by example because they know that actions speak louder than words and most people learn by observation. For instance, you can answer some calls in the presence of our agents and show them how to handle difficult customers. They Foster Open Communication For any organization to thrive, they need to have open communication policy. The employees should be comfortable to come to you for assistance. Having a top down communication only will paralyze your effort to deliver exceptional customer service. Open communication brings together people into strong teams. Open communication also means that you provide your agents with all the information they require to meet customers’ needs. When you withhold information from the representatives, they will keep escalating issues to you. Therefore, you will waste time on one customer while the agent could have resolved the client’s problem if he had all the information. These roles of top management, setting standards, empowering employees, improving processes, creating a positive working culture and fostering open communication molds the contact center to deliver great customer services. When the leadership is strong, the representative will be strong.

Why Companies Still Need Chat?

If you know me, I consider myself a nice person. However when I receive terrible service, I try not to complain. I don’t kick and scream, I try to not call the company and complain, I do not try and make a scene. I’m one of those “nice” clients we hear so much about. All I will tell you is this; I am also the customer who never comes back. Sure, I could tell you off and feel better, but in the long run, I prefer to leave quietly and tell everyone else I know about my experience. You see, we talk about those nice customers who never complain and we all think they are great. But the sad part is most companies don’t understand there are plenty of people just as “nice” as me. When a “nice” person like me gets fed up, we go to your competitors. I tell you this because as I was trying to purchase products this week on a company’s websites and could not get any live help. Imagine that? I was trying to buy on an E-Commerce site and could not get help. Well my E-Commerce company – you have lost a great consumer this week and you have no idea how much revenue you lost because you chose not to have chat as an option to help me when I needed it most. Stats: Last year in the US alone more than 155 million consumers spent more than $165 billion – Yet, the shopping cart abandonment rate averages 70%. I was one of those people. Why? Because I could not get any help… Wouldn’t it make sense to assist these consumers before they leave without purchasing? You know the deal, have you ever gone online, found the product you’ve been looking for at what you thought was a great price, but you felt you did not have 100% of the information you needed to put it in your shopping cart? You look for a way to self-serve, ask questions and to your surprise no one is online helping you because the store is not open when you are ready to buy. I know what you are saying Mr. Webmaster. 95% of the information that consumers are looking for is already on your website. But let me ask you this – is it easy to find? Consumers like me want the information NOW. It’s fast food for the internet – I do not want to look around to get my answer, click 100 times to find the answer- I want someone to help me in real time. Nearly one half of shopping cart abandoners say that they plan to conduct more online research before purchasing in order to get the best price. As people abandon the shopping cart like I did, they are going to competitors who may have chat and will capture their sales. That’s what I did. People appreciate live chat for a number of reasons, and time is a key factor. Of those who prefer live chat, 79% said they did so because they get their questions answered quickly and 46% agreed it was the most efficient communication method. https://econsultancy.com/blog/63867-consumers-prefer-live-chat-for-customer-service-stats#i.1kthq2g12uce8n As more website visitors become more experienced online, even more visitors will abandon their shopping carts, and online comparison shopping will become ever more commonplace. Highly educated, experienced shoppers are more likely to use voucher codes or look for them online. Chat agents can offer the codes for them so there is no more searching and time spent not making the sale and increase AOV. Forrester found that web buyers that abandon shopping carts spend more time online than those that don’t. More than two thirds of shopping cart abandoners say they like to shop around before making a purchase. Reiterates how valuable it is to keep customers on your website. Look, if you can answer the shoppers questions in real time, do their comparisons for them in real time, keep them on my site and satisfied, they are more likely to make the purchase from me? Would you leave your brick and mortar store open without a sales clerk there? Of course not, but you do it every day on your website. If you do not have Chat or Social media as your solution you can start now it’s never too late. This Blog was first published on LinkedIn

Why Live Chat Is the Perfect Tool for Help on Demand

E-Commerce and Internet marketing are standard in the digital age. Nearly every successful business, retail or otherwise, uses some form of web-based sales or information distribution. However, although many customers are happy to do business online, at times Internet-based companies seem to lose the human touch. Offering a live chat service on your website can help you make more sales and provide instant customer support. Customer Convenience Having a 24-hour help desk available via telephone is beneficial, but your clients may be shopping online precisely because they do not want to make a phone call. Also factor in the time and pain factor of dealing with automated menus and waiting for a representative to answer a call. With a live chat tool, on the other hand, it is easy for your customers to continue whatever they were doing while they wait for a representative. The written word may be easier for some customers to understand and respond to, and the option to receive an emailed transcript of a chat after the fact is invaluable. Technical Support Providing technical support via chat can make the difference between keeping and losing a customer. If there is a problem with a client account or with the shopping experience, many people are likely to navigate away from your site and onto a competitor’s site. Live chat, however, may be able to solve a problem instantly, thus winning back your customer and increasing his or her satisfaction with your brand. Being able to instantly assist users with account updates puts your company in the position of providing excellent customer service and possibly closing more sales. Having live chat operators on hand to solve your clients’ technical problems on the spot can have an enormous impact on customer retention. Shopping Assistance If you run an e-commerce site, live chat is indispensable. You may have shoppers visiting your site at any time of the day or night, from all over the world. If no one is available to answer visitor questions regarding product choices, customization, lead times and so on, your site’s bounce rate may be high, and you may be leaving money on the table. In addition to answering product questions, your live chat operators should be prepared to respond to questions about shipping. This includes tracking items that have already shipped and helping customers decide whether or not your standard or expedited shipping will best meet their needs. Other shipping-related questions to anticipate include what gift wrap options are available and whether or not packages arrive with their contents visible. Benefits to You Providing a live chat option enhances the customer experience and provides a valuable service to your clientele. It also helps you run your business more efficiently. In addition to potentially increasing customer retention, live chat may cost your company less than telephone customer service. Your well-trained chat employees may be able to help more people in a shorter amount of time than they would be able to do on the phone. Text-based customer service, such as live chat, has many benefits. It gives your clients instant access to support and provides your company with multiple upselling, customer care and lead-generation opportunities.

The Effects of Live Chat Integration on the Customer Experience

A great customer experience can enhance the value and length of the consumer and merchant relationship. Each product in a marketplace has to be a better or more affordable substitute, tying commercial success to service. Businesses that roll out sophisticated customer experience tactics to add value to their offerings with giveaways, enhanced services, loyalty-based bonuses, live chat, and up- or cross-selling are quickly becoming leaders in the customer service industry. Defining Customer Service Customer service is the interaction between organization and customers. While there are many different definitions, there isn’t a right or a wrong interpretation because what makes customer service good depends heavily on what meets consumer expectations. Customer Experience Ideologists Top industry experts drive innovative strategies for enhancing the customer experience. They create client-centered philosophies for businesses to leverage the emotional aspects of the experience. Some of the top influential people and their service-oriented industry tactics include: Shep Hyken – Supports developing a culture and loyalty mindset to enable clients to share experiences and promote your products on social networks Colin Shaw – Predicts trends for reducing shopping cart abandonment Ken Varga – Believes aligning relevant advertising efforts prompts customers to buy what they’re researching Donna Fluss – Offers free, valuable advice for integrating customer relationship management software in support centers for quality assurance to optimize customer experiences Hank Brigman – Communicating offerings through newsletters, advertising, and word of mouth achieves the goal of being omnipresent A successful customer-centered corporate culture utilizes the services of a dedicated customer experience manager to focus on the emotional aspects of interactions to communicate relevant information. Influencers and the Wow Effect Formula The difference between influencers and ideologists is fuzzy. It may seem that influencers concentrate more on enhancing whatever fun there is to have and less on revenue. In the long run, they influence customer expectations and drive companies to introduce innovative customer-centered mechanisms into action. These people flourish in the social media environment, taking advantages of various platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and social video channels including YouTube to share their thoughts on the customer experience. Influence as a Marketing Tool Not all influencers are published authors or professionals. Anyone who creates ideas and concepts and strategizes on leveraging the customer experience to drive revenue and satisfaction is considered an influencer. For instance, Joseph Michelli, a keynote speaker, focuses on the Wow effect, which is a descriptive designation for a large customer experience goal. He found that 70 percent of customers indicate five main touchpoints for recommending products to others: Engagement: Genuine acknowledgment and care of consumer needs Executional Excellence: Outstanding quality and product knowledge Brand Experience: Ensuring customers believe they’re getting a deal Expediting: Proactively caring about the consumer during the shopping process Problem Recovery: Assurance of satisfaction and compensation Interestingly, engagement and brand experience are the only two touchpoints significantly impacting loyalty. Should a company decide to increase these key performance indicators, it can use techniques such as gamification, an online marketing technique to encourage engagement, or customer support empowerment to feed its culture into the community. This blog was written by Jim Iyoob, EVP Customer Experience and Operational Excellence for Etech Global Services. Connect with me here https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimiyoob

Seven Stages of Design Thinking; An Essential Tool for Customer Experience Manager

Design thinking is a methodology used by designers to solve complex problems, and find desirable solutions for clients. It draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systematic reasoning to explore possibilities of what could be and to create desired outcomes that benefit the customer. However, looking at the above elaborate definition, it is a great process for managers to adopt not just designers. In regards to a customer experience manager, the process allows you to think from the customers’ perspective. How is the customers’ life and how does he or she encounter the company. The marketplace is customer-driven. Your products and services should create value and meet their needs. The only way to understand what they need, how they need it, when they need it and what is of value to them is to involve them in the product life cycle. Here are the seven stages of design thinking Stage 1: Understand the Customer The first step is to understand the end user because they are the core of the design thinking process. Empathize to understand their experiences fully with your products and services. Employ all possible means to comprehend their experiences from observing to interacting with them. Your aim should be to experience your products and services the same way they are. Stage 2: Definition You now know your customer and can define the problems they are facing. In this step, it is crucial to describe clearly the problems and identify the success factors. Otherwise, you will not know when you arrive at your destination. A plainly defined problem will set the pace for the rest of the process. Stage 3: Research Do not leave any stones unturned, dig through previous work done in regards to solving those problems. Research helps you to understand the genesis of a particular problem and tried and tested solutions and the outcome. You need to make sense of everything you find out as you research. However, if it is a new issue, then you have the opportunity to document it well. Stage 4: Ideation With the research findings in place, put your imagination and intuition to work. Conduct brainstorming meetings with other managers and employees to come up with possible solutions to resolve the identified issues. Do not limit yourselves to the obvious ways, dig deeper into ideas that may seem unachievable. The goal at this stage is to have a broad range of ideas. Encourage each participant to float their idea and record all of them. Stage 5: Prototype Next, put your wide range of ideas to test. You need to expand them, combine some, refine others and reject others. Give them a physical form that moves them from un-achievable to realistic ideas. It will allow you to interact and experience the solutions before presenting them to the customers. Remember; you are wearing the customers’ shoes, and you understand what they want from your organization. Stage 6: Select and Implement The above rigorous process will be futile if you do not get to apply the suitable solutions. Start with the most powerful solutions from the selected prototypes. Do not just focus on the practical ones, but on the ideas with the highest impact on the issue at hand. As you implement the prototypes, record the results of customer experiences. Stage 7: Learn Finally, yet importantly, learn from the users. Which solutions solved the problem fast? Which did not? Which ones needed improvement? Your aim is to refine your prototypes to be the best solutions. After your review, do not leave the findings at that, improve the prototypes for the benefit of the customer. In conclusion, design thinking can help you look at problems in a different way and discover solutions that would otherwise remain hidden. Using the above seven stages, you can revolutionize the way you develop customer experience strategies. Design thinking is your secret weapon to finding solutions to difficult customer issues.

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