If I could change one thing about the call/contact center industry….

…it would be the culture.

It’s long-overdue for organizations to recognize that a customer-experience-focused contact center will return huge dividends versus a traditional cost-focused business unit.

Often contact centers are too short-sighted. They focus on efficiency-based metrics instead of customer value. Let agents talk to the customer for 30 minutes if that’s what it takes! In the long term, you’re developing deeper relationships and more customer value and that is really what’s important. Otherwise, you could lose them altogether, forever, over a single bad experience.

Part of that change in culture involves compensating agents for what you really need them to do and raising their status in the company. After all, they hold a ... Read More

Best practices for guiding employees to deliver on your brand promise

A few thoughts on what you can do to help guide winning customer experiences, again and again. Do you agree? What is missing?

Create a culture where connecting with customer at an emotional level is encouraged, supported and rewarded. Don’t just give it lip service.
Don’t leave the customer’s experience to chance. Provide employee guidance, but not stilted scripting. Customers immediately know when an employee is disconnected and reading.
Make it super EASY to connect with a live person when desired. Don’t hide your phone number 10 pages in on your web site. Check out www.zappos.com. It’s pretty clear they want you to call.
Provide visibility into the value of the customer and his/her loyalty so that agents can ... Read More

Shaun Smith speaking at Convergys Breakfast, London

Shaun Smith, one of the celebrity authors who writes for The Perfect Customer Experience blog, will be the featured speaker at an event in London sponsored by Convergys. July 6, 8:30-10:30 at London’s Attitude 360.

The breakfast event is called “Getting it Right” and who better to help you get it right than Shaun who has been ... Read More

Misleading Diet Food Labels.

By Dale Wolf

[caption id="attachment_1174" align="alignleft" width="254" caption="Lying Nutrition Labels"]

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Every once in a while, I walk past the TV while I am dressing for work and a story catches my attention. It happened this morning. It was a story on NBC’s Today Show. Matt Lauer asked “can you believe those fat and calorie numbers? I ... Read More