CUSTOMER — April 2014

Customer Satisfaction Takes a Hit Now What?

Hardly a day goes by without an item about how improving the customer experience is now the intense focus of C-levels globally. In fact, the job of chief customer experience officer, or a title very similar, is arguably the fastest growing C-level position in enterprises around the world. The reasons are obvious. They are also what are driving the adoption of new contact center solutions and the use of big data analytics as enterprises large and small seek to create sustainable advantage by enhancing how they interact with all of us...Read More >>>

Certification: Great Programs Help Your Brand; Bad Ones Can Hurt
CUSTOMER Magazine recently spoke with Herb Williams-Dalgart, senior director of certification and performance improvement at J.D. Power, a leading market research company. We asked Herb to explain why organizations seek certification and to help us understand the benefits and challenges such organizations might face.

HigherGround Can Take Your Contact Center to New Heights
Technology can be a great help in making a contact center more efficient and effective. But, in the end, the success of a contact center - or any organization, for that matter - hinges on the contributions and skills of its people.

Call Recording Roundup
Whether used for coaching, productivity enhancement, regulatory compliance, or other purposes, call recording is garnering a lot of interest lately for its ability to make organizations more efficient and effective. Here's a run down of some of the leading players in the call recording market place.

A Contact Center Crystal Ball: Marrying the Analyses of Service, Cost, Revenue, and Now, Customer Experience
If a contact center executive could have anything, it would be certainty… of contact demand, resource availability, operational efficiency, and, most importantly, of agent performance and customer experience delivery. Certainty in the complex environs of a contact center operation, however, is wishful thinking.

How to Make Your Post-Call Survey Results More Accurate
When the service goes out, I always call the customer service center to let them know I noticed. After pushing past the automated attempts to deal with the call without a human, an agent answers quickly. My usual experience with Charter agents is good. They are courteous, helpful and, well trained. After each call I am routed to a customer satisfaction survey. This is good.

Personalization: Big Data Analytics Help Identify, Recognize Personal Life Events
It's your birthday. Your child is graduating high school. Today was your first day at work. All of the above are just a few examples of momentous life events many of us experience, might like others to recognize, and could potentially trigger new purchase decisions.

Customer Engagement's Impact on Brand Loyalty
Connecting with a brand is a lot like initiating a conversation with a stranger. Encountering an individual whose body language is stiff with tepid eye contact that lasts but a mere second or two is not a recipe for engagement. On the contrary, an individual who holds eye contact, smiles genuinely, and willfully initiates a conversation is much more likely to increase engagement. There is a colossal difference in the welcoming perception that is given.

What Amazon and Amex Can Teach Us About Customer Service on Mobile
Last September, when Amazon announced and unveiled the Mayday button, a video-based live support solution that lets Kindle HD customers contact remote tech support, the news was broadly received with both wonder and skepticism. While live video customer service has long been discussed in the customer service and call center support industry, it has taken time for technology innovations and consumers to get used to interacting directly with customer service representatives outside of a phone call. Plus, video is an expensive proposition that does not have any guarantee of decreasing call center costs or increasing customer satisfaction.

Earning Trust with Chat 2.0
Brand engagement has exploded in recent years thanks to the rise in social media and the demand that companies actively participate in online conversations. A brand's interactions with leads and customers impact the way it's viewed. Confirming this is a report by Lithium, a social experience SaaS platform, that noted over a third of consumers say their opinions about brands and products are shaped by social media, and a Forbes study that found 82 percent of consumers trust a company more if they are involved with social media.

Virtual Agents: Bringing Benefits Home with the New Cloud-based Contact Center
Employing work-at-home agents can help companies build more successful customer care and outreach programs by enabling them to call on a larger workforce, pair callers with certain affinities with like-minded agents, and lower their costs in the process. And new cloud-based contact center solutions are facilitating all of the above.

Lead Scoring: Predictive Analytics Can Unearth Hot Leads and Lower Marketing Costs
Generating leads has traditionally involved cold calling, hitting up trade show booths, knocking on doors, and purchasing lists and targeting those on them via telemarketing and direct mail appeals. The advent of the website, with request for information and chat functionality, then created a new channel through which leads could come to businesses. Now big data and analytics are making lead generation and scoring a much more scientific process - and one which is expected to yield greater efficiencies and earning potential for businesses.

Using Big Data for More Effective Call Center Hiring, Other Improvement
Your frontline agents are the face and voice of your call center. They are the most direct point of contact that you have with your customers. A positive experience can leave a lasting impression, but a negative one can have just the opposite effect. In fact, one study by Accenture found that two out of three customers switched due to poor customer service.

TMC Announces Winners of Top 50 Teleservices Agency Awards
At the start of the second quarter of each year since 1986, TMC has delivered its Top 50 Teleservices Agency Ranking lists. In this issue, we are pleased to present the 29th edition of this service, listing the top teleservices firms in the world.