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- 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
What stops companies from investing in intelligent desktop technology in the contact center?
June 14th, 2010The Customer Experience Management team at Cincom was recently asked this question by Blake Landau, the editor at Customer Management IQ. Blake was trying to get to the bottom of why some organizations are slower to adopt intelligent desktop technology— technology that is proven to improve customer experience.
Here is our team’s response: First of all, many companies are either just not aware of what’s possible today, or they’re happy with the status quo—they’re just not looking to make transformational improvements.
Also, not ... Read More
Friends tell friends about the good stuff
August 26th, 2010A majority of Americans will spend an average of 9% more when they believe a company provides excellent service according to survey findings released in the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, a survey conducted in the U.S. and eleven other countries exploring attitudes and preferences toward customer service.
I like that stat but what I found interesting was how people are most likely to spread the news about their good experiences
Here’s the scoop from the news release:
Good News Travels Fast – Until You Go Online
Importantly, customers are spreading the word willingly and widely when they experience good ... Read More
What’s wrong with the way we look at contact center employees?
July 21st, 2010Which of these statements is true?
Statement 1
Contact center employees are a vital link to the customer. Through the way they exercise their talents, knowledge, and resources, they are uniquely positioned to influence customer perceptions of the enterprise and build or diminish the brand promise.
Statement 2
Contact center employees are among the most poorly paid and under- appreciated employees in the enterprise. They have limited career growth opportunities, are measured and evaluated more frequently than any other group of employees, and incur the highest turnover rates.
Extreme Experience: Zip-lining and Hocking Hills Ohio
July 12th, 2010
The older boys (men) after a day in the trees.
This weekend I went to Hocking Hills OH for a weekend getaway with my 5 siblings and our families. Hocking Hills is a regional treasure in southeast Ohio.
Our first activity was zip-lining. We booked through ... Read More
What is the Difference Between Guidance and Scripting?
July 6th, 2010
Guiding employees results in a better performance
Bring them to their feet with intelligent guidance
Contact centers have always relied on scripting to lead agents through interactions. But lately, a new term has joined the contact center lexicon: intelligent guidance. So what’s the difference?
Think of ... Read More
If I could change one thing about the call/contact center industry….
June 28th, 2010…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
June 22nd, 2010A few thoughts on what you can do to help guide winning customer experiences, again and again. Do you agree? What is missing?