New Normal - digital. done. right: Recent Episodes
Andrew Maher - Experience Storyteller
2020 brought great changes. What I hadn't achieved in the last 10 years a virus did in 4 weeks. - How are you and your business adjusting to new ways of working? - Are you trying new ways to communicate with colleagues and customers? - How do you keep designing great digital experiences? This podcast covers these topics and more bringing interesting experts from across the globe together to share their experiences, thoughts & insights. Join me! /Andrew
This is just a brief episode which is possibly better to see the video version but I talk about the new Corona Warn App which came out this week in Germany. It has been now only 2 days and almost 8 million downloads in activations have happened.
I will revisit this application over the course of the summer to share how it have been accepted and what effect, if any, it has had.
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Tim Gogal has been in the customer experience (CX) industry for a long time and like me is frustrated with the state of affairs. We recorded this interview right in the middle of a pandemic which is challenging industries to rethink how they approach delivering excellent customer experiences. Tim shares a number of his experiences when working with clients large and small.
Join me on another episode of New Normal where I cover people working in the world of designing Experiences.
Andrew Prokop has been CEBPing for over 20 years. I did have to jog his memory during this interview but it is true. Whether TAPI, CEBP, bot and web services he has seen most all and still is full of ideas for today's businesses.
I have had the chance to interview Andrew over the years and always come away more informed. He feels this is that trigger many businesses needed to recognise that digital, or the internet in general is really important to their business. He shares what might still be holding some back and where the change needs to come from.
Enjoy this episode of 'New Normal' and please subscribe and tell a friend or two. If you have ideas of what I might bring onto the podcast in the future, drop me a note.
Nate Brown is a first-timer on the podcast but was on an interview with me last year. He is always focused on the experience created no matter where he is or what he is working on. Nate is passionate about the people he works with and knows how to build engaging teams of employees even when those are distributed across the map.
We cover how to manage those distributed teams, what it is really like to work in some of those beehives of offices and really, what this virus might just bring all of us - improved customer experiences.
Interview date: 27. September 2013
Paul Dunay loves marketing and has his own unique approach to it. He also has a nose for data and has been looking closely into how data and the customer experience play a role together. This is why he made an ideal interview partner on this CX404 show. Paul is a well known and recognised B2B marketer and is Global VP for Marketing at Maxymiser who specialises in web optimisation and analytics.
Here some of the points covered in the interview:
- Having worked across a broad section of companies from startups to large corporations. What have you learned from those large or small in their challenges when approaching the online client/customer?
- You recently blogged about 6 Tips for Turning Big Data into Great CX. LINK But data and the subject of Big Data is everywhere today like Social Media was being hyped 4 to 5 years ago. What role might all this data play in improving the customer experience?
- Check out this study just done this year and some of the interesting findings.
- http://go.maxymiser.com/MobileRetailStudy2013_web.html
- Many companies are creating Voice of the Customer VOC roles in their businesses to address the need of today's customer. What data would be important for these roles and where might it come from?
- What one suggestion would you give to a brand, business owner, digital media team, customer experience manager, who might be listening to this now on how they might improve the digital customer experience?
Kate Nasser is "The People Skills Coach" and makes it a point to not let us forget how important those skills are when delivering customer service. In this wonderful exchange with Kate we discuss how these skills extend into the digital world of services.
Russel Lolacher and I have a similar illness, we see every interaction people have with companies and think about how it could have been done differently or better. Sometimes, we are surprised at what we see. A previous girlfriend got tired of listening to his analysis and so he decided to start blogging. The Upsell is his place to capture all those experiences but also share them with the rest of us.
In this episode of the CX404 we talk to Russel about the customer experience and particularly how situational awareness plays a role in the whole experience.
David McQuillen has spent almost 18 years in the customer experience frontier; from the dot com to major financial institution like Credit Suisse and OCBC running their customer experience programs. He shares with us his experiences of what challenges those companies have in addressing the modern customer as well as how this prepared him to run his own digital business.
This episode came from a video interview of Shai Berger of Fonolo. We talk about how they are able to add a layer into the fabric companies already have to improve the customer experience. Plus some hope for 2013 and scoop on their upcoming new customer.
Improving the Customer Experience? An interview with Fonolo's CEO Shai Berger Companies are having a hard time in delivering good service. Berger: There is this growing gap in what is seen as the norm on one side but has not been met from the other. Many companies are hobbled by legacy call center equipment. Customers today using their phones, their smart phones it must seem like something from another era when they finally come through to an agent and have to repeat their answers to multiple agents. There is a huge potential here.
What part of this experience is Fonolo trying to address? Berger:There are 3 main problems; phone menus, waiting on hold & repeating information to agents. We are working to solve these main problems across the web no matter how they approach the companies.
How does Fonolo fit into this mix? Where does Fonolo play? Berger: We build on top of those processes already in place. There is a huge investment already in place and we place ourselves on top. the key to make that work is the simple callback. Fonolo sits in the middle to manage that process. One way this is done is by placing a widget on the website. the customer sees the contact us page and the visual interface let s the customer chose how they want to interact with the company and ask for a callback when they are ready. Behind the scene is Fonolo making the inbound call to the call center. The call center sees the call like any other inbound call. We navigate the IVR and wait in queue. The agent gets a regular inbound call, we place the callback then to the customer, bridge the two together and the customer has this great experience and nothing had to change on the call center side.
So there's little change or no change on the contact center side needed? Berger: Right, people have set up Fonolo in a matter of days. The customer adds the widget to the website and Fonolo navigates the IVR as a gateway to the call center. The same is the case for mobile apps. Lots of companies have mobile apps. This is a huge trend in customer service. You can add a Fonolo component to the mobile app it does the same process. It is a visual representation of the IVR. They tap the choice they need and some time later a callback is made to the customer.
So, this is a solution which does not sit on premise right? Berger: It is a cloud based service which makes it easy to deploy and makes pricing very low. We have companies with 5 agents which use our solution at $100/month. This is nothing really new. There are solutions from Avaya "Callback Assist" and Cisco has "Courtesy Callback" but these have been totally out of reach for smaller companies. These are much too expensive for them and here at Fonolo we wanted to make this the "norm" for them as well.
Come back to the top, you mentioned this 2013 would be a watershed year in customer care. What do you think will make for change this year? Berger: There are a few macro trends playing here and one of the big ones is the smart phone revolution. We've hit a tipping point with just a few months ago we've passed 50% smart phone penetration here in the US. So, when a platform becomes so ubiquitous it is hard for companies to ignore the kind of advantages you can have for your company by using this platform. I always cringe when I got to a mobile app which has all this functionality and then there is a "contact us" tab and they just have their regular phone number. You are throwing away all the functionality that platform is giving you. So my vision is that within a few years there should be no smart phone apps doing this anymore.
If you have a smartphone app it should be a lot smarter than just displaying the 1800 number
What is your wish for 2013? Berger: We need a change in attitude among the larger companies. The bigger banks, airlines, retailer need to recognise this value, We have had a long trend of looking for the cheapest way to serve customers. We need to see a change to invest in the technology and enable the agents to better serve the customer.
How we can find out more about Fonolo.
http://fonolo.com/
Customer Experience 404 with Andrew Maher is a podcast series that brings to light the challenges of delivering excellent digital customer service. We invite industry leaders from around the world to share with us their secret hot sauce - their secrets to solving the digital divide.