CCW Digital: A Customer Service Online Platform: Recent Episodes
Seth Adler
More times than not, building a 360 degree view of the customer begins with digital marketing and building a positive perception of a product or service before the purchase and post-purchase phase. Today, business leaders are quickly realizing that they need to align marketing with CX to drive customer acquisition before focusing on customer retention and loyalty.
In this fireside chat, CCW Digital's Matt Wujciak discusses blending marketing, brand perception, and CX with Wajma Mohseni - marketing expert and former Director Of Global Brand Marketing at the WSJ.
Wajma is the Co-founder and co-chair of DJ Green, an environmental initiative at Dow Jones with a network of 300+ global volunteers.
She was also the Judge at ANA (Association of National Advertisers) B2B Awards (2021) and the North American Transform Awards (2017).
Wajma was also selected for The Asia Society Young Leaders program in 2010.
CCW Digital's Matt Wujciak and Google's Rob Lawson discuss how Google has turned Search, Maps and more into a conversational experience with Business Messages.
Before Google, Rob started (and sometimes sold) companies focussed on mobile advertising, games, communities and messaging.
In this fireside chat, you’ll learn:
-Different mobile commerce trends
-Emerging consumer behaviors in messaging
-How to meet customers where they are (and so much more).
Rob also touches on how brands like Walmart, Vodafone, Dish, Levi's and JetBlue are successfully using business messaging for customer care, sales/acquisition, and marketing.
Chief Amazement Officer, Shep Hyken and CCW Digital Senior Analyst, Matt Wujciak discuss the top takeaways from Shep's new book "I'll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again & Again."
Topics include:
-Shep's number 1 business measurement leaders should be monitoring
-Why loyalty programs don't always drive loyalty
-Technology driven personalization vs the human touch
-Leveraging consumer behavior trends to creat marketable customer experience (and so much more)
CCW Digital's Principal Analysts Brian Cantor and Matt Wujciak sit down with Servicenow’s Industries Director, Manufacturing, Joe Mulrooney to discuss:
-The increasing importance of after sales support, specifically in manufacturing (and what other industries can learn as well)
-Challenges and obstacles to focus on such as: process optimization, complex processes and silos across departments, and a changing workforce
-What the answers and lessons learned from manufacturers and service employees who have matured some of these
-As well as more specific customer service topics such as cloud technology, increasing customer satisfaction scores, and so much more
For a deeper dive into this topic, check out ServiceNow’s whitepaper on Digitization: the fuel for after-sales services growth.
Customer relationships in retail banking are ultimately predicated on trust, but achieving this level of authority isn’t easy, as we continue to see customer behavior evolve. However, at the end of the day, there is always a premium on understanding your customer.
In this episode, Paul Brown, Principle Product Manager at OpenText, gives his insight on customer insights and their role in facilitating more meaningful customer relationships. By uncovering deeper insights, companies can capture a more comprehensive picture of their customer to provide consistent, seamless experiences across all channels.
This topic, and more, will be discussed in detail at the upcoming Rethink Experiences for Retail Banking Event, a free online event hosted by OpenText.
In four informative sessions, speakers will discuss what it takes to win over and engage customers in the digital age. The event takes place on June 24 and will also be available for on-demand viewing.
Convenient digital experiences have become table stakes in the hypercompetitive world of retail banking. True brand differentiation -- and lasting customer loyalty -- hinges on securing trust through personalized experiences at every moment of truth.
What does it take to deliver that degree of personalization and trust in the digital world? How do we stand out from the crowd - not just in terms of our offering - but in terms of our values? How can we improve the efficacy and conversion rates of our activities? Ahead of his speaking session at Rethinking Experiences for Retail Banking, a free online event taking place on June 24 and subsequently available on-demand, Guy Hellier, VP of Product Management, Digital Experience at OpenText, answers these questions and more on the CCW Digital Podcast. Secure your free spot in the upcoming event here.
Over time banks have built a unique blend of technologies, processes, and culture to address customer requirements. One of the challenges retail banks face today is understanding their toolbox of IT architecture to deliver on their brand promise. As customer experience becomes the major differentiator, uncovering improvement areas to create more value is an essential step in their strategy, as well as for consumers.
This topic will take center stage at the upcoming Rethink Experiences for Retail Banking, a free online event hosted by OpenText. Across four engaging sessions, the insightful speakers will reveal what it takes to win customers through personalized, seamless, digital experiences. The event takes place on June 24 and will be available for on-demand viewing.
Register here.
Is remote work really the future, or will there be more of a hybrid policy? Will companies offer remote work as a perk to senior level employees only, or for everyone? Will certain departments come into the office some days out the week while others are in an office every day? How will this influence leasing costs for office space?
And arguably most importantly, how will your company's policy affect the living arrangements of it’s employees?
Nearly half way into 2021, many of these questions are still unanswered. CCW Digital Analysts, Matt Wujciak and Brian Cantor dive into remote work vs. work-from-home, and the effects it's having on the employee and customer experience.
On this special episode sponsored by ServiceNow, CCW Digital's lead analysts Brian Cantor and Matt Wujciak sit down with Mike Luessi, ServiceNow's GM for healthcare and life sciences, to discuss how COVID-19 has impacted customer experience in healthcare, and customer service as a whole.
Topics include:
-Insights from Mike's recent interview with Forbes on vaccine distribution and administration.
-The future of self-service.
-AI and automation's greatest impacts on customer experience.
-Digitized workflows (and so much more).
For a deeper dive into this topic, check out ServiceNow's webinar on 10 best practices to solve vaccine management challenges.
Join a high-level conversation with CCW Digital Analyst, Matt Wujciak and Loris CEO, Etie Hertz as Etie covers the future of customer service, agent/employee training, digital channels, and consumer behavior.
Etie is the CEO of Loris, an AI tool that provides real time coaching to customer service agents as they navigate hard conversations. Loris provides dynamic text suggestions to agents who are helping customers via digital channels including chat, email, SMS and messaging.
Etie began his career as a corporate attorney at a large, multinational firm focusing on M&A and Venture Capital. He left in ‘07 to start an investing company and that led him to start several businesses - some of which failed and a few that succeeded. In 2008 he founded a payments company that he sold in 2015 to ShopKeep--the first iPad based point of sale company (preceding even Square). He served as the CRO at Shopkeep, which was then acquired by Lightspeed, a publicly traded Point of Sale company.
Now, as the CEO of Loris, he's empowering the world’s fastest-growing companies to have better conversations with their customers. Learn how at loris.ai
Mastercard Chief Marketing Officer, Raja Rajamannar has been recognized by Business Insider as the top 25 Most Innovative CMOs in the World, and Forbes as the 2018 Top 5 Most Influential CMO’s in the world. In this episode, Raja joins CCW Digital Analyst Matt Wujciak to discuss lessons from his new book, Quantum Marketing.
Michael Levitt is a Fortune 500 consultant, #1 bestselling author, and host of the Breakfast Leadership Show, a top 200 podcast on iTunes. He is a 2x Top 20 Global Thought Leader on Culture with Thinkers360. He's also a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, speaker, and columnist for CEOWORLD magazine. Join Michael as he sits down with CCW Digital's Analyst and Writer, Matt Wujciak, to talk about the rise of corporate "burnout."
It's no secret that delivering quality employee experiences results in quality customer experiences. But it's easier said than done. Chalhoub Group, the largest retail operator in the Middle East focuses on employees first. Here's what their Head of People Experience, Rhency Padilla had to say on the topic, following Qualtrics' Work Different event.
Following the Qualtrics Work Different event, we sat down with Peggy Dalman, Biltmore's Director of Guest Intelligence to discuss how the historic house museum and tourist attraction used consumer data to deliver the right marketing tactics and desirable customer experiences.
Matt Wujciak and Daryl Gonos discuss the results of a modern workforce management solution - one of the most important yet overlooked tools in employee management and productivity.
Freshly's VP of Customer Experience, Colin Crowley, (recently featured in the WSJ) discusses how the meal subscription delivery service has been capitalizing on speed of service during the pandemic.
Bestselling author and former CX and social media leader at McDonald's, Discover, and Humana, Dan Gingiss, and CCW Digital writer and analyst, Matt Wujciak talk about emerging engagement channels in CX, marketing, and customer service.
CX is changing and you don't want to fall behind. Tune in to this episode to learn some best practices and consumer behavior trends on navigating the customer experience during and after the COVID-19 era.
An interview with the Thuzio Co-Founders - Tiki Barber (former New York Giants running back and current CBS Talk Show Host), and Jared Augustine (current CEO of Thuzio, CEO of Julius Influencer Marketing, and former Director at Seamless - now Grubhub).
Lyft Product Manager and Social Media Leader, Chris Vetrano, discusses Lyft's social media strategies with CCW Digital's Matt Wujciak. Learn how to combine and capitalize on CX and Digital Marketing with the right tools and strategies.
CX consultant, keynote speaker, CEO, and Forbes Councils member, Annette Franz (The 100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter by Business Insider) covers the importance of EX (employee experience) and how it translates to CX (customer experience) in this chat on employee engagement.
WSJ and NYT bestselling author, Shep Hyken discusses some of his latest work on delivering amazing customer service and experiences. In this podcast, Shep shares classic service-driven inisights and comical personal stories.
VP and Verizon Global Sales Leader, Kelley Kurtzman shares her experiences on the importance of personalized and predictive customer service and how Verizon stayes ahead in the automation game.
Former contact center leader at Microsoft, Dee Nilles shares some of her best practices for managing thousands of agents, inisghts on the future of the contact center, and effective strategies on how to combine technology and personable corporate culture.
Low-touch, automated interactions are all the rage in many industries, including the travel and hospitality space. How is this rise of bots impacting the ability to make a human connection? Reservations.com co-founder Mahesh Chaddah, who believes passionately in the human touch, shares his take on where agents and bots fit into the contact center of the future.
In this two-part episode from CCW Austin, we welcome Stacey Haynes from Fossil and Aransas Savas from WW (formerly Weight Watchers). Stacey begins by revealing how to make the most of customer experience partnerships, while Aransas shares how to make purposeful design the centerpiece of your customer contact (and business) strategy.
From newsworthy security breaches to "low-touch" digital channels, customers are justified in having trust issues. Do not, however, let them question YOUR experience. Take Luke's advice, and learn how to make your entire omnichannel experience secure, customer-centric, frictionless and personalized.
Live from CCW Austin, "Wonder-FULL" author Kelly Radi reveals how to unleash your inner superpowers, which will in turn help your team members play to their strengths. The result will be a better, more empowering office dynamic -- and a better, more customer-centric engagement experience.
Is customer engagement moving away from voice? Not according to Manny Marrero from Getaroom, whose company continues to make the voice channel its priority. Reliance on a conventional channel does not, however, mean the company is averse to using advanced analytics technology to make more meaningful customer connections.
The customer experience is too important to leave to chance or guesswork. Let Trent Haynes from BNY Mellon Pershing and Brian LaRoche from CallMiner reveal how a deeper approach to analytics can help you better understand your customer -- and better position your agents for success.
You can't create a great experience without knowing your customers. But if "knowing your customers" is the only purpose of your customer intelligence strategy, you're missing out on some significant opportunities. Live from CCW Austin, Allison Corley from Mercedes-Benz Financial Services shares her more multi-faceted, dynamic analytics success story.
The insurance industry is one of the top 5-10 industries to be disrupted in the next 10 years through autonomous vehicles, internet of things and changing consumer demands. Insurance Australia Group (IAG), the largest general insurer in Australia and New Zealand, has ambitious plans to lead the digital transformation in the insurance industry by becoming the "Amazon of insurance.' It plans to do so by going from selling insurance products to becoming an "ecosystem" or marketplace for insurance and safety. In this podcast, we hear from Brent Burgess, digital technology executive at IAG, on how the company plans to achieve its ambitions.
The most common use cases for CX automation are for not for the customer; they're designed to augment agent performance. The biggest challenge for agents is having to do back-office tasks and search knowledge bases while servicing a customer, hence the importance of robotic process automation and striking a balance between the human touch and automated processes. In this podcast interview with CCW Digital, Sateesh Seetharamiah, vice president and global product head at AssistEdge for EdgeVerve, a subsidiary of Infosys, discusses why cutting-edge CX automation tools combine RPA with artificial intelligence to augment agent performance.
How do you build an effective CX strategy when your team is spread across the world and your direct customer is not the end user? Like many B2B and B2C businesses, that was the challenge facing PostNL, the premier postal provider for the Netherlands. In today's experience economy, it's all about going the extra mile. For this podcast episode, we interviewed Mark Eldridge, chief customer officer of PostNL Cross Border Solutions, and Verena Junginger, customer contact manager for Spring Global Delivery Services. After undergoing a digital transformation and CX transformation over the last two years, PostNL has transformed from a traditional mail company into a logistics services company supporting e-commerce. For instance, they can collect parcels at home for customers who wish to return items purchased online, deliver flowers and meals and even assist with furniture assembly. Eldridge says it was important to make a cultural shift for the customer-centric mindset to become "just the way we do things around here."
Global powerhouse Rakuten has benefited greatly from its commitment to an omnichannel experience, and two leaders from the organization recently joined CCW Digital to discuss their road to success. They were joined by Martin Taylor, whose company Content Guru helped to empower their journey -- and the omnichannel revolution within so many other leading organizations.
Should your contact center team's use of data be creepy, costly, risky ... or customer-centric? This isn't a trick question, but actually achieving the customer-centric outcome CAN be very tricky. Luckily, Brad Lemons of Nationwide is on your side. He'll be sharing best practices for using customer data in his presentation at CCW Austin. Ahead of the eagerly anticipated event, he shares some insights on the CCW Digital Podcast.
Because customer centricity involves elevating the entire journey, you cannot focus solely on a particular channel or function. You need to consider the entire, end-to-end experience. Certain channels do, however, play a particularly vital role in capturing data about the customer experience. Chat is one of them, and in this exclusive podcast, Jim Iyoob of ETech and Matt Cecil of Verizon reveal how they leverage the available insights to better understand customers, better empower agents, and better elevate the entire customer journey. The conversation closes with tips on how to communicate the findings to "non-call center" stakeholders in the business.
You've heard data can empower a great customer experience, but how do you achieve that connection? How do you acquire the right data, interpret those insights and then create actionable intelligence for your key stakeholders? Brian LaRoche of CallMiner and Cristopher Kuehl of Sitel answer this question in a podcast conducted at CCW Vegas.
Leading equine etailer SmartPak has all the ingredients for a "human" customer experience -- a clearly defined market, employees who truly know and care about horses and a passionate commitment to customer experience. But how does the organization measure this humanity? How, more importantly, does it transform a customer-centric framework into demonstrable business results? This episode of the CCW Digital podcast has the answers.
On the one hand, emerging organizations have the opportunity to adopt a customer-centric vision from day one. On the other hand, emerging organizations have the unique challenge of preserving that vision as they rapidly scale in terms of size, region and scope. In this exclusive CCW Digital podcast, Meredith Molloy of Purple Carrot reveals how her organization is navigating this challenge. She also shares guidance for turning agents into true customer advocates -- and then measuring performance.
In the hours leading up to the 2019 CCW Excellence Awards, we caught up with two of this year's finalists. First, Northwestern Mutual discusses how his organization is making an omnichannel customer experience a reality. He also shares his perspective on empowering employees. We then welcome Alex Gross of BARK, who shares how his company is using actionable insights - and an unflinchingly customer-centric (and dog-centric) attitude - to achieve impressive customer experience outcomes.
We love to talk about 360-degree customer views, real-time analytics and actionable intelligence. Putting the insights into action? Well, that's another story. Luckily, CCW participants from Verizon and Verint are here to discuss the mechanics of collecting and leveraging high-caliber customer insights -- across the entire organization. They reveal how to give data meaning to internal stakeholders, which in turn allows them to create true value for customers.
The rise of "connected technology" and new contact channels should be creating more valuable, convenient experiences for customers. Instead, they often create more complexity and headaches. In this interview from CCW Vegas, speakers from August Home and UJET reveal how to avoid this complexity - and create digital interactions that your customers actually want to pursue.
Customer-centric brands do not settle for mapping journeys; they focus on orchestrating great experiences. In this interview, industry influencer Jim Tincher reveals how to create easy, valuable experiences at all key moments of truth. Rather than a source of frustration, your journey will drive more satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.
The most common use cases for CX automation are for not for the customer; they're designed to augment agent performance. The biggest challenge for agents is having to do back-office tasks and search knowledge bases while servicing a customer, hence the importance of robotic process automation and striking a balance between the human touch and automated processes. In this podcast interview with CCW Digital, Sateesh Seetharamiah, vice president and global product head at AssistEdge for EdgeVerve, a subsidiary of Infosys, discusses why cutting-edge CX automation tools combine RPA with artificial intelligence to augment agent performance.
College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving won the award for best-in-class contact center at the 2019 CCW Excellence Awards. In this interview, support lead Tim Heidemann reveals how his company achieved excellence. More importantly, he shares how College Hunks will remain customer-centric as it embraces new technology and scales its operation.
How do you provide the best customer experience in your industry? Deloitte partner Angel Vaccaro discusses how the definition of a "good" customer experience has changed over the last 20 years and how businesses can keep up by combining personalization technology with the human touch. "Know me, know what I want so that when you're interacting with me you're giving me messaging that makes sense for me as a human," says Vaccaro. In this podcast, Vaccaro gives examples of how brands can build an emotional connection with their customers.
Innovative products bring customers in the door, but amazing experiences keep them coming back for more. A firm believer in this mindset, Uber's global support lead Lisa Stoner reveals how she is creating a service experience as disruptive as the company's product suite. As part of this discussion, she addresses the ongoing relevance of outsourcers as well as opportunities to create a more diverse, inviting culture inside the organization.
We all want our agents to focus on "high-value work." We all want to elevate efficiency without compromising customer centricity. But how do we achieve this optimal customer contact operation? In this week's episode, two leaders from American Family Insurance share their thoughts. They reveal strategies for identifying high-value tasks, while also discussing the impact of lean methodology on the overall CX effort.
“If you don’t set those goals, you don’t know where you’re going. Your customers are going somewhere. You need to lead them as well.” -Cindy Gallagher
Both CCW and Alorica are celebrating their twentieth anniversaries. As part of the occasion, Alorica president Colleen Beers joins our podcast to reflect on the past two decades of customer contact. How have customer demands evolved? Which technologies have changed the game? Beers also looks toward the future of the space, while commenting on the importance of women-in-leadership initiatives.
Humanity is the theme of today's two-part episode. First, Deb Zell shares how Dell Technologies uses contact center data to better understand (and deliver for) our customers. Later, Mel Penna reveals how Comcast adopts a human perspective to CX strategy, including the decisions it makes about processes and technologies.
UX designers Benjamin Judy and Lily Bather discuss how they're building the next generation of 7-Eleven digital products to transform convenience retail into an on-demand experience. Lily is an interaction designer who is working to enhance the retail experience by crafting 7-Eleven’s next generation of software applications, like the 7NOW mobile app. Ben, meanwhile, leads the UX team at 7-Eleven from a one-man army into an 18-person operation in just four months.
ADP's innovation centers in Pasadena, CA and Chelsea, New York are a hive of prototyping, testing and experimentation. Margot Dear, senior director of customer experience for ADP's compliance solutions, tells CCW Digital about how the agile movement around design thinking caused a sweeping culture change in the organization. "All of a sudden you have VPs sitting side by side with designers and working together to whiteboard solutions." ADP provides cloud-based solutions to help employers manage payroll, HR and recruitment services.
How do you become the largest e-commerce company in the entire world? User experience design. Amazon is constantly experimenting and rolling out new features that put the customer first, experimenting with same-day delivery, drones, and even brick-and-mortar stores. Meghan Borsic, Head of UX Research & Design for Consumer Electronics at Amazon talks innovation and why some organizations aren't able to sustain it.
As customer demands change, so too do expectations for contact center employees. Workforce management is consequently taking on renewed importance, and Thomas Kim of CIBC shares best practices in this exclusive interview.
In this exclusive interview, Robert Gofourth of Blue Cross Blue Shield NC does not simply advocate for a switch to a competency-based quality model. He dives deep into the competencies necessary to connect with customer's in today's market.
Traditional quality scoring is broken. Lexi Emmons of Bright Horizons joins the CCW Digital podcast to provide the solution. Learn how to incorporate factors like emotion, empathy and personal connection into your assessment.
Best-selling author Shep Hyken reveals why "convenience" is the centerpiece of a great customer experience.
What does it take to turn customer insights into customer-centric action? CCW Nashville speakers share their tips and strategies in this two-part episode.
In this two-part episode from CCW Nashville, we welcome Kelley Kurtzman, Jim Iyoob and Roach. First, Kurtzman and Iyoob discuss the opportunities and benefits of predictive analytics. Roach then shares insights into Johnston & Murphy's empowering contact center culture.
"I encourage people to up skill themselves. And really that's my conversation with a lot of my direct reports and the people who do work in our shared services, that you know you've got to change with times." - Anil Bhavnani
The Mayor of Vilnius Lithuania joins us and shares what makes a city attractive to prospective citizens: "Speaking about again the recipe of the successful cities, especially for young talents, again just to repeat, I think it has to be historic because we have to feel the roots because new place is somehow lacking something. It has to be green because people want to be healthy. They want to go to nature and so on, and it has to be modern. It has to be forward-looking. "
Chris Gilmore joins us and shares Infosys' approach to implementing new processes: "The movement from talk to actual implementation, there's a big, big gap. The gap exists because of some inherent challenges in the way AI is shaping up as of today. The most critical aspect comes to, as to, which is the right use case which will show them the quick win, but also be able to determine and demonstrate that AI is really something which is going to help them in the future."
Sai Ramasamy joins us and shares how implementing RPA has introduced improvements in other sectors of banking: "We share knowledge across multiple areas. So we've divided our center of excellence team into development bit, into the technology bit that we do, and various other bits, so we kind of collaborate on each of these, with the other banks that we have the collaboration with. We started it off as purely specifically for RPA, but now we have grown out of it, and we want to collaborate on various technologies that are available within the banks and build the capabilities."
Kate Levchuk joins us and elaborates on trans-humanism and its implications in business: "Trans-humanism is the ideology that says that we as human beings, as human species, have the right and even the obligation to improve ourselves. With the help of this technology while at the same time taking care of the environment and other living creatures."
James Potter joins us and shares how implementing robotics influences the customer experience: "We wanted to do something which got those first few robots built in each department. Fund some ideas on the ground across the 29 Ministry of Departments that could lead to automations. They might not and they might not be RPA specific. They might be other tools that are better suited, but just trying to engage that conversation at a practical business level."
Ander Emil Balk joins us and shares the integral relationship with IT when implementing robotics: "I can pursue that really long tail of very simple processes or tasks, because it's not processes really that we are automating. It's simple tasks. We can actually find smaller vendors that have that most simple technology, that makes it cheaper, so we can pursue smaller business cases."
Jamie Campbell joins us and highlights the importance of getting to know customer needs: "If there's anything that would be a lesson and I don't think we're anywhere near the stage where we should be giving out lessons to people but it's one thing I think has been a huge value to our business is, we were never afraid to ask questions."
Beju Shah joins us and shares how data can communicate from the organization to the customer: "If you're looking at supervisors who are looking at capital ratios versus people in charge of resolution and they're not talking to each other, but they're sharing the same information, it'd be really good if they could just flip between the two and go, “Actually, what's going on there?” It gives them other insights."
Ali Bouhouch joins us and shares how IT and business must work together to provide th proper experience: "IT has to change and they have to change their mindset first and they cannot just demand a table, a seat at the table of business."
Mia Jalava joins us and shares methods of improving contact with the customer: "When the frontline people are talking to each other so that they understand that it doesn't mean that if I'm saving time from one angle, they are going to just kick me out. It means that I actually can talk to the customers. I can actually hear what they are saying and I don't have to type the computer."
Justin Reilly joins us and shares the global impact of change in the app development space: "A lot of folks that are in this space, especially in the AI community, don't want that to happen again with this thing that could fundamentally change our society for better or for worse. So the openness of that, the ability to say look, I've figured out a better way to do x or y, I want to share that with the world so people can build on top of it"
Kendal Jolly shares the importance of nurturing positive customer interaction: "When people help you out and provide some sort of action or assistance that makes something easier, makes the customer interaction go more smoothly, that helps perhaps lighten your load, and recognition is not reward. It doesn't have to be money. It doesn't have to be some item. It's just: How do you give those pats on the back and those thank you very much, from one employee to another?"
Jim Kowalczyk joins us and shares the importance of testing before implementing new processes:"I'm a big fan of trying to build things in an environment. Proof of concept to see if it actually works before we charge down the path and have IT start to build a large enterprise-wide solution."
Deb Denure highlights some crucial techniques that are implemented within her team: "One of those foundational principles that we teach and that we transfer is this notion of a purposeful pause and to take sort of a little brain break so we can refocus and help gather or gain the next steps or gain momentum, what to do next. That is something that we work with the staff on, on a regular basis. That's something that my team and the learning group really goes at and sets this notion that we make the difference."
Cory Kreeck shares some advice on how to handle escalated calls effectively: "If you've got a situation where it is escalating, view that as an opportunity to learn how you might have better helped that customer. And then as a second course, be prepared to acknowledge it might not have been about you."
Greg Marion shows us the potential of creating a proper customer experience:I" think customer experience techniques can unleash innovation and new growth. So the experience strategy to me is applying some of the same skills of the Double Diamond approaches and real empathy with the customer and new ways of doing ethnographies and all different ways of thinking."
Naked Wines' @LauraEvans on the organization's take on process excellence and how she fits, "my role was doing financial planning and analysis. So that means being involved in budgeting, forecasting, measuring the performance, and Help setting the strategy. So it was a really nice way to end up getting into the nitty-gritty of how a business actually works as opposed to viewing it from the outside."
Iassen Deenitchen brings us up to speed on how to empower the customer: "To make sure, or give them the assurance that if they need to talk to somebody, they know who to reach out to, and it's driven by them in satisfying the need that there's really somebody in ING to help them out."
Jason Liberman highlights the importance of staying relevant and competent in the online payment space: "We live in a time where you've got the likes of Google and Facebook, who are constantly under scrutiny. You always have to think through the lens of what could happen. So, as PayPal and other payment players get a little bit more progressive, get a little bit more strategic in the way they interact with customers, we always need to think three steps ahead, to make sure that we are following all types of regulation. If there's new sorts of privacy requirements, are we handling them?"
Alexis Smith highlights the need for more focus on the employee: "I think it just comes down to, first of all, employees are people. I think we sometimes neglect to think that, and it's all the rage now. We're all talking about being more human and seeing each other as being more human, and I think that's really important, but the only way to reach your customers or your consumers regardless of what business you're in is through your employees. So I think it takes a greater focus today on figuring out what's important to them, what drives and motivates them, how do they feel valued."
Jorgen Lislerud shares the importance of customer feedback: "We have to measure the voice of our customer. If they are internal, it's still as important or even more important than with external ones. Listen to their feedback and go above and beyond."
Peter Cszuczka joins us, giving insight on how to optimize productivity within: "The talent we have, they are hungry for more and we can tackle that by having much more complex activities, automizing and outsourcing or offshoring, whatever can be done at the current level of knowledge there and focusing on more high value added activities to be done. That doesn't necessarily drive an increase in number of people working for us. It clearly drives an increase in the level of skill that is needed. That's what people want."
Uber's Martin Rowlson joins us and shares that the region comprises 20% of the volume for the organization but 70% of the complexity. Based on the pace of change within the industry and the rate of growth at his organization, Martin's goal is to identify best practice, align best practice and build on best practices. Defining processes can’t take two weeks because "that process may have gone…literally gone."
From Barclay's, Sebastian Antony joins us and shares his philosophy, "I mean we look at it from a customer lens to start with, the customers are at the heart of it, and we mean it. We mean it and we are the pioneers in bringing in innovative products."
Adrian Ruth joins us and shares the importance of bringing the best possible content to the audience: "You talk about the voice of the customer, but for the BBC, our customers are our audiences. So, we are always thinking ... That's how we really, I think, motivate people around the BBC to get really engaged with what we're doing, is because everyone really cares about the audience. People like me joined the BBC because they're passionate for it, and they really want to deliver the best possible output on every platform and every genre to the audience."
This week's double episode offers an important reminder: successful contact center initiatives are not "one size fits all." ServiceNow's Abhijit Mitra, our first guest, reveals the importance of adapting technology to the unique needs of the contact center operation, agents and customers. It is not enough for technology to be "powerful" -- it must be relevant. Later, we chat with Brian Johnson of Hotwire, a finalist at this year's CCW Excellence Awards. Johnson details his organization's approach to training and performance management, paying specific importance to context. It is not enough to cultivate talented agents -- they must be right for the business and its customers.
This week's guests do not represent identical organizations. They do, however, share a passion for the customer experience -- and the role people play in the process. Jim Iyoob of ETech, our first guest, reveals how to meet the heightened expectations of today's customers. What do they really want? How can an organization pair the right people with the right technology to meet those demands -- and deliver a customer experience that matters? Thomsen, a finalist at the CCW Excellence Awards, discusses his efforts to cultivate a customer-centric culture. We may be in the digital age, but Sign-Zone remains focused on the personal touch. Thomsen reveals how his organization trains, coaches and incentivizes agents to prioritize connections.
Recorded at CCW Vegas 2018, this week's double-episode offers a deep dive into modern contact center trends. We begin with Dan Burkland of Five9. As the host of the CCW Excellence Awards, Burkland is the perfect person to answer burning customer management questions. What are some commonalities among "excellent" contact centers? How are leading organizations handling the digital transformation? We then welcome Terry Lang, Vice President of Comerica Bank's Retail Customer Contact Center. Lang explores the intersection between technology and humanity. How can a "human" approach to technology empower agents to engage customers?
It's almost a rule that customer contact professionals have to rave about the power of artificial intelligence. But what can they do to actually harness that power? How can they ensure AI and automation are meaningfully contributing to the custmer experience?
For Nate Ford of Allianz and Carmit DiAndrea of Verint, one particularly valuable application comes on the speech analytics and quality monitoring fronts. Automation technology can help organizations better understand customers, agents, interaction quality and operational opportunities. Recorded at CCW Vegas, this episode finds Ford and DiAndrea exploring the analytics case, while also revealing the role "humans" will still play in this AI-enhanced world.
Live from CCW: Brian Court of Intralinks and Alton Harewood of 8x8 debunk the idea that customer centricity and cost consciousness are opposing forces. Bad customer service processes and systems, it turns out, actually cost money. Investing in a great customer experience can thus prove very fruitful...very quickly. If, it should be noted, the investments are done correctly. Organizations cannot recklessly throw money at systems and processes; they must think about what matters to the business, its executives, its agents and its customers.
To thrive in today’s era of customer centricity, organizations must answer two questions:
- What are customers demanding?
- How do we actually meet those demands?
Lori Jarchow of Ecolab and Andrea Pohlman of Aeritae explore those questions in the latest edition of the CCW Podcast series. After discussing the new, heightened expectations of today’s customers, they reveal tips for driving the necessary change within the organization. Pohlman, in fact, shares her secret for turning contact center detractors into advocates for customer centricity.
If you want to know how your contact center is currently performing, look at your metrics and scorecards. If you want to truly understand how customers feel about your brand – and how to fix any problems – you need to dig deeper. You need a robust, ever-evolving analytics program.
SiriusXM is fervently committed to such a program, and senior solutions manager Emily Deragon discusses that analytics journey in the new CCW Digital podcast.
“We’re ingesting two million calls per month for customer care, and we’re truly getting into the ‘deep and dirty’ insights of what’s happening on our calls,” explains Emily Deragon of SiriusXM in the latest CCW Digital Podcast. “How can it help us with training, how can it help us better forecast, how can it improve agent and customer experiences?”
Recorded at the 2018 CCW Vegas, this episode also features commentary from Brian LaRoche of CallMiner Eureka.
From RBS, Nick Muir joins us and shares that it’s not the data that matters, it’s how you use it. He notes that the organization must find customer data wherever it is in the enterprise as there’s no point in having the data if you can’t use it to understand and interact with your customers better. He notes that AI is certainly a solution at which he’s looking but that "when it comes to AI, the investment required is probably more than is being talked about.” As a progressive-thinking organization, Nick notes that RBS wants to spend on innovation. The business has a visualized a utopic state of how they support customers. And so, yes- automation will be implemented the right way as Nick strives to have an intuitive understanding of what the customer is looking for as they interact with the company. He’s on a search for a seamless crossover between automation and human service for the customer.
Lufthansa Director of Customer Services Product Development Martin Sassenfeld join us and shares that "There was a big battle between sales and service and who can do the first-use cases, IT, business, etc.” He continues that customer service won the internal battle. "We won the chance to build our first-use case where we wanted from customer experience side really sort of a customer pain point. Not to make a use-case where you increase sale, but where you really look into your customer services and where the customer pain points are and to solve these problems with artificial intelligence.” While Martin, his team and the organization already consider the chatbot solution they’ve implemented, artificial intelligence- it’s the self-learning capabilities and analytics to come which "can identify clusters of intents and customer pain points so they can develop some dashboards and make the tool usable for different roles in the organization."
The CEO of HomeServe Membership, Greg Reed joins us and shares that the key to his business is an engaged staff. He’s happy to hear when his organization goes above and beyond and does "a little more than they’re supposed to do.” Greg explains that such behavior showcases that the employee cares about the customer and the company- and that "they’re worried about both sides versus just caring about themselves.” As far as Greg is concerned, choice and voice have led to the current reality. So with Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple "creating value for customers and really seeing customer needs and fulfilling those needs,” Greg and the organization realized they could do the same thing very, very differently. They enhanced the product, changed the terms and conditions, gave field agents new tools and the opportunity to have a new attitude and they’re realizing that "customers will pay if they get better service."
General Manager for Customer Service Operations in Strategy with Arizona Public Service, Hui Wu Curtis joins us and shares her shift from hospitality to energy was actually seamless in that the organization knew it was time to focus on CX. Of course many organizations across myriad industries have realized that CX must now be a focus. Hui then takes us through an example of rallying hundreds of thousands of people around CX through ensuring that everything an organization does is focused on a benefit for the employees or the customers.