Consider Flexibility in your Contact Center

This informative article was originally published by Steve Brubaker on Infocision.

As a business owner, you have always maintained a traditional, on-site work environment. As such, your contact center has never granted Work-at-Home privileges, and you prefer to hire local — as opposed to remote — customer service Communicators.

While this policy may have suited your contact center in the past, it’s time to ask whether it’s still aligned with the needs and demands of your workers. The business landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, and workers today — particularly contact center Communicators — are demanding flexible scheduling policies that allow them to work where they want, and in some cases even when they want.

Rest assured, your contact center won’t be the only one changing its strategy to accommodate its Communicators’ needs.  Many customer service administrators are now adjusting their policies and allowing Work-at-Home privileges. According to Gallup, 43 percent of Americans spent at least some time working remotely in 2016. This is an increase of four percent from a previous poll conducted in 2012

Soak that in for a moment: Almost 50 percent of the American workforce is experimenting with teleworking....

Read the complete article on the original source

#CustomerExperience, #ContactCenterFlexibility, #RemoteAgents, #Telecommuting

Companies That Invest In Customer Experience Will Destroy Those That Don't...

This informative article was originally written by customer experience expert Blake Morgan.

We all have good intentions. We wake up, stretch, brush our teeth and think “it’s going to be a great day!” But as the day goes on some of us get off track. We eat the donuts in the office kitchen, surf Facebook instead of working, make impulse purchases on Amazon and when we get home from work — instead of going to the gym we plant ourselves on the couch for a few episodes of reality TV. We started our day with the best of intentions, but got side-tracked and lost sight of the long-term goals.

It’s the same situation with companies. No company sets out and says, “we’re going to just do the bare minimum for the customer so we can increase our profits!”

Read the entire article here and follow Blake on Twitter @BlakeMichelleM

Customer experience: The newest reason to adopt cloud services

Saving money is no longer the top reason to implement cloud services, say top CIOs.  The use of cloud has evolved so that IT leaders think of it as the tool to help them achieve a wide range of business outcomes.

The number one goal is to provide the best customer experience, especially in the competitive contact center market.

Read the original article on #CustomerExperience and the Cloud

Call Center Employees: The Superheroes of Customer Experience

Call center employees are the secret superheroes of every brand. These agents wield incredible power when it comes to customer experience, with the ability to build long-term brand loyalty and shape the customer journey. Positive outcomes for every customer interaction is critical.

Read the entire article here:
Call Center Employees are the superheroes of #CustomerExperience

5 Technology Trends That Are Improving Customer Experiences

Technological trends have set the stage for a new level of customer support and satisfaction. In fact, the way that companies interact with their customers has changed just within the last ten years due to the invention of certain apps, smart phones, and other such things that have made our society and businesses more technologically advanced. 

Technological trends have set the stage for a new level of customer support and satisfaction.

Source: 5 trends shaping #CustomerExperience

How to Make Customer Experience a Priority for the Whole Company

In my exclusive column for CustomerThink last month, I shared my “top tips” for creating the right culture to enable an organisation to become genuinely customer centric.

#CustomerExperience an entire company's priority

How to turn customers into brand evangelists: a customer experience guide to the promoter economy

Can a single tweet topple a great company? It hasn’t happened yet, but a chorus of unhappy tweets from a group of unhappy customers can do a lot of damage to a company that isn’t providing the kind of customer experience that consumers now demand.

#CustomerExperience and Brand Evangelists

3 ways to extend customer service across the enterprise

When customers deal with your organization, they don’t care which department they are communicating with – they simply want the best possible experience and service.

3 ways to extend #CustomerService across the enterprise

Customer Experience Through the Eyes of a Child

I’ve lived in Oregon for a year now and I can say without a doubt that the summers here are incredible. For those that love the outdoors, it stays green and doesn’t get too hot or humid.
#CustomerExperience through the eyes of a child

Customer Experience Management: CX Vision Statement

Companies today have articulated mission statements that guide the organization. In utilities, many of these mission statements include language about providing a superior customer experience.

#CEX Vision Statement

3 Ways Brands Can Improve Customer Service By Embracing Change

Nearly every company today is focused on product innovation, pricing and automating various aspects of their business to improve the customer experience.

3 ways brands can impact #CustomerService

7 Best Practices for Effective Call Quality Monitoring

These days, the words “omnichannel customer experience” evoke thoughts of social media channels and messaging apps.

#Omnichannel customer experience monitoring

4 Power Apps to Manage Your Customer Experience Objectives

There are many productivity apps available on the Android or Apple marketplaces which can help
streamline a contact center supervisor's workday and even work in conjunction with the various technologies used to keep track of various customer experience strategies and objectives.

Evernote is an incredible tool which can be used for storing customer experience stories found on the web, collaborating with co-workers. You can setup a free account and use it on a PC, tablet or smartphone. All of your information is synced across all devices. You can even use it as a universal clipboard for easy pasting of common email replies, web chat responses, etc.
http://www.evernote.com

Pinterest is a wonderful service for capturing compelling customer experience visuals and thoughts. Search the app for "customer experience" and then pin the results for later reading, sharing or repurposing. Print new posters from the infographics which will help inspire, motivate and challenge your team.
http://www.pinterest.com

IFTTT allows you to save steps and do more by connecting "channels". For example, you can connect your "Pinterest" and "Gmail" channels to enable an email to be generated every time there is a new "customer experience" pin found. You could also connect a "YouTube" channel with "Evernote" to save any videos tagges with "customer experience" to an Evernote folder of the same name in your account. Have some fun with this one!
http://www.ifttt.com

Wunderlist is an easy-to-use task management app with sharing, sub-tasks and more built right in. Google Calendar syncing is built right in for syncing tasks within your calendar. Outlook compatibility is inevitable as Microsoft just bought this beautiful app. It's definitely worth tasking up all your customer experience intiatives and adding them to your timeline of goals.
http://www.wunderlist.com