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Secrets to Incredible Customer Service with Paul R. Jones - Blue Ocean Contact Centers - ContactCenterWorld.com Blog

Secrets to Incredible Customer Service with Paul R. Jones

When it comes to customer experience, there’s a lot of cross-over between the hospitality industry and the contact center industry. We’re both in the business of earning a customer’s repeat business through the quality of the experience we deliver. With that in mind, we reached out to Paul Jones, an award-winning hotel manager within the Best Western organization. Paul has earned acclaim for his exceptional management skills in the hospitality field – particularly his ability to generate loyalty with both staff and guests. We sat down with Paul to discuss his views on best practices for creating incredible customer service.

Do you have a “process” for consistently creating exceptional service experiences?

Paul: I believe there are really three parts to the process: active listening, great note-taking, and agent ownership.

It begins with training agents to pay active attention to what your customer is saying – not just the primary information like their name and address, but even the small comments, maybe something said in passing. Our employees are trained to listen for and include those small pieces of information in the guest’s file – so the next agent who interacts with that guest can reference the small details. In our world, maybe the guest mentions at check-in that they’re in town for a family member’s graduation – if the agent who checks out asks them about the graduation ceremony, that creates engagement for both the agent and the guest. And giving the agent the chance to really impress a guest when something goes wrong is even more powerful. For example, if a guest encounters an issue, it would be easy to simply give reward points to resolve the situation. But going the extra mile might be sending something special up to their room that the guest will enjoy – maybe they mentioned that the restaurant carries their favorite wine and the agent has access to that information. Or, for guests who mentioned they have to catch a plane before 6 am when our café opens, we can have something ready for them. Those are the “wow” moments that come from active listening and great note-taking.

But it goes deeper than that. Encouraging the act of effective listening requires effective management. We work hard to set expectations up front. Every front desk agent is challenged to write a “WOW statement” every day about an awesome customer interaction. They have ownership in delivering those experiences and being recognized for their success.

What are you looking for when hiring for agents in the hospitality industry?

Paul: When I’m hiring the right fit for an open position today, I do almost the opposite of what I did years ago. I used to rely heavily on someone’s résumé and previous experience to decide if they’d be good for the role. If hospitality wasn’t in their existing repertoire, I wouldn’t look twice at them.

Today, what matters most is the cultural fit. We can easily train someone to be successful in hospitality – but only if they have the personality fit and values first. Empathy is key. So is the ability to listen and maintain a positive attitude. Everything else we can teach.

So, I go into an interview and talk much less about what’s required, and instead I explain what we do, where we’re at in the market, and what our vision is for the company. I look for how engaged a candidate is in this conversation. Are they listening? Does it excite them? Do they feel they can make a contribution?

How do metrics and standards play a role in customer service?

Paul: Metrics and standards lay a solid foundation for measuring the success of your employees, but you have to be aware of how those standards impact the customer experience. That’s true in hospitality, and I am sure it is true in the customer service industry overall.

Let me give you a specific example. The industry standard in hospitality is for room attendants to clean 15 rooms per shift.  In the hotel I currently manage, we provide suite accommodations. Each room has a kitchenette including a dishwasher and, on average, the rooms tend to be larger than industry standard. So when I came on board at this property, I could see the effect that the “industry standard” was having on the cleaning operations for a hotel with non-standard rooms. Our attendants were stressed and quality was suffering.

I proposed dropping our requirement to 14 rooms per shift. Not surprisingly, the hotel owners said anything less than 15 rooms would negatively impact the bottom line, but I argued that the level of room cleanliness would also inevitably hit the bottom line. In an industry where TripAdvisor reviews have real-world revenue impacts, there was a business case to be made for lowering the rooms per shift requirement. So, we reduced the number of rooms to 14. It showed our team that we were going to bat for them, earning their trust and loyalty, and we created a better experience both for them and for our guests. Those results showed in our customer satisfaction scores and the ranking of our property relative to others in the Best Western group.

What does a “rooms per shift ratio” have to do with contact center operations, you might ask? Well, I can envision the same scenario in any industry where customer service agents are measured on hard and fast metrics. In the contact center, Average Handle Time is an important metric, but if an agent feels rushed to finish a call, the quality of the customer experience could be negatively impacted. Finding the right balance is key. You want to look at handle times (in our world, time to service a room) versus customer satisfaction for the team overall and for the agent individually.

How do you address customer complaints or customer service interactions that go wrong?

Paul: It comes down to empowerment and decision-making. My agents know I expect them to make a decision. Bottom line: make a decision that you think will resolve the problem and it’s okay if it’s not the same decision I personally would make. When a guest makes a complaint, I want them to decide how to handle that situation rather than dismissing the issue or escalating it to someone else.

Following the situation, I’ll sit them down and express that I’m proud of what they did to resolve the issue. Then I explain how I may have made a different decision and why. It starts a conversation rather than about being right or wrong. It’s an approach that teaches them how to improve while simultaneously empowering them to make their own decisions and hold themselves accountable for a customer’s experience.

No matter how high we strive to deliver exceptional customer experience, someone will always complain about something. I tell people that handling those customers is about having empathy. Put yourself in their shoes. The customer’s experience most likely started well before they got to the hotel – whether it be delayed flights, missed connections, or whatever – and it’s not necessarily the employee who did something wrong. But it is the employee who can turn the situation around, lower a customer’s stress level, and make their day better. In the end, I just want my employees to make a decision based on that knowledge, whether or not it’s the decision I myself would have made – that part can be addressed after the fact.

Once again, this is the same in any industry that revolves around the customer experience. Your training and coaching programs may be stellar, but you must stress that the number one thing, the real pivot point to providing exceptional experience, is the ability to make an autonomous decision.

What role do employee engagement and incentives play in your success?

Because social media plays such a big role in the hospitality business, we reward our agents every time a guest names them in an online review. If an agent has created a “wow” experience that gets public recognition from a guest, that’s pretty much the definition of a job well done, and we need to recognize and value that.

We also track customer responses – both through surveys and reviews – to help us follow up and go back to training if necessary. We share our satisfaction scores and third-party reviews with every employee at the hotel, not just among the management team. There is no siloed information. This is how everyone gets to understand the impact of their interactions.

And management needs to understand that listening to their employees is just as important as listening to their customers. That can be as simple as making sure employees have the right tools to do their jobs efficiently and effectively or it can be as complex as challenging industry standards as we talked about earlier.

And finally, we understand the importance of ensuring our employees have fun. They don’t need to be laughing all the time, but things like small perks and treats will show you care. When your employees have a good experience, that’s when you can guarantee consistent and exceptional customer experience.

The Secrets to Successful Customer Service

At the heart of the matter, great customer service in any setting starts with listening. Listening to your customers and to your employees – and then taking what you heard and acting on it.  Paul’s experience and his insights about the role that note-taking plays in creating “wow” experiences in the hospitality industry translates well into the contact center industry.

If you’re looking for an outsourcing partner, ensure you’re working with someone who understands the dynamic between customer service agents and the customer experience. That partnership will be essential to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

We want to hear from you. What are you looking for in a contact center partner? Let us know today.

Related Articles

5 Insights About Sourcing and Developing Strategic Partnerships

5 Most Critical Elements of a Successful Contact Center Launch

4 Essential Resources to Read Before You Craft Your Contact Center RFP

Source: https://blueocean.ca/incredible-customer-service-secrets/

Publish Date: June 26, 2018


2024 Buyers Guide Cloud Contact Center Solutions

Page: 1234
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Call Center Studio

Call Center Studio
Call Center Studio is the world’s first call center built on Google and is one of the most secure and stable systems with some of the industry’s best reporting. It is one of the most full-featured enterprise grade systems (with the most calling features, one of the best call distribution, outbound dialing features and integrations—including IVR, AI Speech Recognition, blended inbound/outbound calling and includes Google’s new Dialogflow and Speech API. Call Center Studio is the absolute easiest to use (with a 10 minute setup), and is the price performance leader with lower equipment cost and less setup time.

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iNextrix Technologies

iCallify
iCallify: intelligent call center software is one of the most popular products offered by iNextrix. iCallify is developed using cutting edge technologies as well as the predictive sphere of artificial intelligence. This call center software has some intelligent features along with the standard features available in other call center solutions. Thus, it is truly an intelligent call center software solution.
This intelligent call center software is built to benefit all businesses, no matter what industry vertical they belong to. This call center software has features to empower different campaigns in different call centers and businesses.


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Accordia Solution

Accordia Solution CIS
Accordia Solution is an innovative developer of seamlessly integrated cost-effective omnichannel Contact Center Solutions specifically targeted at the micro, small and medium operations.Our core business model involves the development and marketing of IP Telephony and IP Contact Center Solutions. We also strive to develop customer interaction solutions which include contact center and customer relationship management (CRM) that enhances Customer Experience Of The Future (CEOTF) and optimizes agent productivity.

Our flagship product, the Accordia Customer Interaction Suites (CIS), offers comprehensive functionality by helping your business meet and exceed the level of service in line with...
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Adversus Dialer

Adverus Dialer
Adversus is a web-based dialer and practical CRM solution for telemarketing, fundraising, and appointment scheduling businesses.

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Alcor Consulting, Inc.

HoduCC/VoipCor
Omnichannel contact center platform which can be deployed on-premise, private cloud or public cloud subscription. Our contact center provides all of the modern features expected in a full contact center solution. Includes voice, SMS, chat, email, and social media integration. Built-in integrations for all major CRM's (Plus a built-in CRM). Survey module and QA module are also available.

6.) 
Allstream

Contact Center
Contact Center is a powerful tool that you can add to your unified communications (UC) solution to ensure you've always got the right resources available to both customers and employees, no matter the communication channel they're using — voice, email, web, chat or social.

Contact Center’s enhanced call routing and workforce management tools can help increase employee productivity. And with the advanced reporting and forecasting tools, you’ll be able to properly staff your contact center and enhance your customer experience.

It has everything you need to deliver superior customer and employee experience.

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Alvaria

Alvaria Cloud
Alvaria Cloud is the only enterprise cloud contact center solution that allows you to adopt best-of-breed Customer Experience (CX) and Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) applications modularly. Start with one or more applications and then add applications with ease when ready for additional capabilities, as your needs change. With the Alvaria Cloud Platform, you have the advantage of knowing that all provisioning, security, user management and other administrative tasks are already configured and in place.

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Alvaria

Noble Contact Center
Noble offers a modern communications platform for optimizing all customer interaction. Put Noble’s unified platform to work for you — building performance and productivity, improving the quality and effectiveness of customer contacts, and reducing costs. With the critical software technologies that contact centres need most, our solutions provide seamless integration to existing corporate environments, reduce your learning curve and protect your technology investments.

9.) 
Amtelco

Genesis Intelligent Series
Genesis is the latest advancement in Amtelco’s long line of call center solutions. This call center technology is entirely software-based and virtualized, with cloud-based capability. Genesis provides skills-based automatic call distribution (ACD), built-in speech recognition, text-to-speech (TTS), and voice services to improve call routing and management.

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Arise Virtual Solutions

The Arise Platform
Arise is a pioneer of on-demand customer management business process outsourcing solutions, headquartered in Florida. Through the cloud-based Arise Platform, Fortune 50 and other companies connect to Service Partners who deliver authentic, loyalty-building interactions with their customers. Delivering radical flexibility to meet even extreme contact volume fluctuations, the award-winning Arise Platform is an innovative alternative to the traditional contact center.

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Astute Agent
Astute Agent gives your agents everything they need to work cases confidently and efficiently. This modern case management CRM is the preferred choice for Consumer Relations and Customer Care teams who support some of the world’s most prestigious brands.

Astute Agent balances agent efficiency with customer experience. Here’s how:

- Automated email responses
Using natural language processing, Astute Agent reads incoming customer emails and automatically supplies a response to agents to review and send.

- Auto-populated case fields
AI capabilities automatically suggest reason codes, product codes, and other case information, saving agents minutes per case.

- Time-saving case feat...
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CCaaS, SIP Trunking, SD WAN, Interconnectivity
Brook Trout Solutions provides Technology Guide services to help Contact Centers find the best possible solution for their business.
We represent the leaders for CCaaS, CPaaS, SD-WAN, SASE, SIP. We identify the best fit for our customers and help them manage the lifecycle of the customer engagement. We also have an excellent solution for mobile marketing and can raise call acceptance by more than 50% with a Next Generation caller ID for mobile phones.
We solve problems and give our customers time back to run their business. Give us a call we have world class expertise and resources that can help you build an exceptional customer experience.

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Voice & Video Services at the Speed of Business
CallnFax offers global virtual telephone numbers with Flat-Rate pricing, A-Z termination service with full CNAM support, and full-featured video meeting solutions. CallnFax has been delivering reliable solutions since 2009, accompanied with personalized customer support, designed for Call Centers, Contact Centers, and Global Enterprise.

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Welcome to CallShaper – Harnessing the Power of the Cloud for Greater Sales Efficiency
For sales-based call centers, where margins are so tight, it’s all about closing. Thanks to CallShaper, inbound or outbound call center directors can have a dynamic, highly flexible platform that enables sales agents to focus on making the sale.

Thanks to CallShaper’s flexibility, call center directors who are managing multiple vendors from multiple locations can have everything they need on one platform that offers 99.999% reliability. And when it comes to reporting, CallShaper has no equal in providing real-time transparency.

With CallShaper, clients quickly find that they are better able to manage efficiencies at the sales rep level – and make more money!

15.) 
Cloud Call Center Search

From AI - WFO and everything in between!
Cloud Call Center Search has spent hundreds of hours evaluating and vetting leading cloud software applications (Omni-Channel, Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Workforce Management and many others) and their actual use in the trenches with real-world clients. As a result, we understand the strengths and weaknesses of cloud-based call center software solutions. At NO charge, Cloud Call Center Search will match your organization with the cloud software providers that are the best fit to drive positive ROI in your customer experience, sales, and back-office operations.

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CC4Teams
Contact Center solutions; that is what we do! So we know, like no other, that integrating natively with Microsoft, making our solution available on the same screen is what your customer contact team needs. CC4Teams enhances Microsoft Teams with features and adds additional functionality to use Microsoft Teams as a complete Omni-ChannelContact Center solution.

For example, CC4Teams adds our proprietary drag and drop IVR (no code needed), ad-hoc or scheduled call recording, operator attendant, historical and real-time reporting (integrates with Microsoft PowerBi), wallboards, home workers, supervisor functionalities, and skilled based routing directly to Microsoft Teams.
The intuitive CC4...
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17.) 
Contaque

Contaque VERVE
Cloud or On-Premise? Elevate Customer Experience Either Way with Our Contact Center Solutions!

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𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗺®
Content Guru makes engagement easy. A global leader in cloud communications solutions, we deliver off-the-shelf and bespoke customer engagement and cloud contact centre services, through the multi-award-winning 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗺® platform.

Europe’s largest Customer Engagement and Experience platform, 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗺, brings together intelligent automation, third-party systems integration, and on-demand scalability to enhance all customer communication functions. With true omni-channel engagement capabilities, 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗺 gives organisations the power to create consistent and seamless experiences for customers, inspiring loyalty and powering success.

19.) 
Convoso

Convoso is the #1 dialer software for outbound lead gen/sales-related contact centers. Our cloud-based omnichannel solution solves the biggest frustrations call centers have with their dialer, including:

*Caller ID reputation
*Call flagging/blocking
*Low contact rates
*Limited insight into list performance
*Time wasted resetting lead lists
*Dropped calls
*Poor answering machine detection

Customers report dramatic increases in contact rates of up to 300%, delivering more conversions and significantly improved ROI.

20.) 
CSX Cloud

CSX Cloud
CSX Cloud provides a full omnichannel cloud-based turn-key customer communications solution as a service based on a monthly subscription with no long term commitments. Our easy to use solution and top-notch customer service makes it an easy choice to get started today.
 
Page: 1234



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