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I See You: Staging Better CX, Using Video

By Mandeep Singh Kwatra, HGS Vice President, Solutions and Capabilities

HGS recently released a white paper on this year’s top 10 trends in customer service. Over the course of the year, we’ll dedicate a blog post to each of these CX game changers. Here, we dissect CX Trend No.3: Smartphone Video Camera Support Is a Gamechanger, highlighting strategies designed to drive the right answer, fast, for your customers—to ultimately result in a higher CSAT and NPS score for your business.

Fade In, Customer Experience Scene One, 1998:

Agent: “Can you look behind that detector box for me?”

Customer: “I see a lot of cables.”

Agent: “Do you see a black cable?”

Customer (increasingly losing patience): “Yes, I actually see four black cables.”

Agent (trying to help, but feeling a bit lost): “Do you see one that is flat?”

Customer: (loud sigh) “No, the cables are all round.”

Cut to Narrator: Most of us have been on the customer end of these frustrating half-hour conversations—trying to explain a problem to the agent who is empowered with the answer and wants to help, but unfortunately has no clear visual representation of the problem. Happily, these days are long gone.

Today, with smartphone video camera support, 3-4 minutes of triage can be accomplished in seconds. By texting customers a simple link, brands can now activate the video camera on a customer’s mobile device to see what they are looking at. It’s that simple. Smartphone video camera support, in combination with messaging or voice support, can accelerate time-to-resolution while boosting customer satisfaction.

If customers are uncomfortable leveraging video, the alternative option is to send a simple picture via SMS so that companies are able to get a better view and understanding of a product issue and communicate more effectively with customers—for example, annotating photos to indicate product issues. This results in key efficiencies for the client—such as better loss reduction as a result of more troubleshooting accuracy and equipment replacement. Real outcomes are cost-containment, better average handle time (AHT), lower product return rates, and improved CSAT.

Customer breaks in (with reminder of who is always right): Sounds great for the business, but what’s the net gain for me?

Narrator: Yes, this video support is focused on you and seeing the brand experience through your eyes. Perhaps no new innovation is better equipped—or applied—to do just this. With mobile cam support, the future of CX is here. According to recent research, the use of video- and visual-based technology will be increasingly favored over BPO traditional and nonvisual digital channels.

HGS has been an early adopter of this solution. According to our own internal research, issue resolution for our mobile cam calls shows a dramatic 76% success rate, with customers sharing images at 78% frequency. Brand education of the channel’s features doubles acceptance rate, with a three-month tracking showing a customer channel use growth from 15% to 33%. Additionally, research indicates that call reasons offer significant upsell—with Damaged/Broken Parts calls coming in at 21% and Part/Product Purchase playing a 12% role in call reasons.

With tremendous upsell potential and high issue resolution, for one HGS client, our mobile cam support drove reduction in handle time and an increase in order accuracy by 30%. The solution innovation enabled more identification of upsell opportunity, for a 9% improvement in revenue, over prior year. But we like to let our customers speak for themselves.

HGS customer: “I can testify to the success of this solution. With my customer service issue, your agent perfectly diagnosed the problem. And that is surprising, as it was so hard to even describe the product issue on the phone. With the mobile cam solution, I was able to transfer photos of the problem to the agent, so together we could visualize the issue and walk through the fix. The HGS agent then let me know he could display the part on the website and order it for me. This agent really did a great job, and now I’m better prepared if I ever need help with something like this again.”

So now let’s try Scene One, again, this time with video support:

Scene Two

Agent: “See that gray-colored detector box next to your coffee up?” Customer: “This?”

Agent : “Yes, make sure the furthest right black cable is tightly connected. It looks loose.”

Customer: “This one?”

Agent: “No, the one to your right. Yes, that’s it. Just tighten it and check your screen.”

Customer: Sigh of relief “Connection is back. Thank you.”

Fade Out

Looking ahead, look to our next generation of customers to lead the demand for this reduced customer effort and optimized service. There are strong catalysts for these adoptions of visual- and video-based services—primarily, the technological advancements and social acceptance driven by millennials and Gen Y.

Source: https://www.teamhgs.com/blog/see-staging-better-cx-using-video/

Publish Date: June 20, 2018 5:00 AM

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3 Ways Social Media Can Make (or Break) Your CX

By Scott Yates, HGS General Manager, Operations

Are you taking your social media strategy as seriously as you should? Imagine you’re a Fortune 100 company spending millions on marketing to create and support your brand, but you don’t prioritize social media support. Your customers are driven to your social media pages—but once they get there, they don’t find 24×7 empathy-building communication or proud, positive brand representation, and a fast, solution-focused approach. Instead they are faced with thread after thread of negative customer feedback and lackluster product support. Simply put, you’re doing it wrong. In fact, you’re missing the plot. With this nickel-holding-up-a-dollar approach, you may have just lost 20% year-over-year growth.

Think smart about your social media strategy, and start with understanding the three ways today’s fashionable feedback tool can make (or break) your CX:

1. Ensure your social media presence speaks to a personality well aligned with your company culture, product line, and, most importantly, customer base. This means shifting from a defensive to an offensive social media approach, with more proactive posts addressing brand, product, or market issues. Invest the time and resources to speak in the tongue of your brand and customers. Also:
   • Avoid company siloes so that Marketing and Consumer Affairs are better funded and aligned in their approach. Understand how Consumer Affairs should be in close step with—and even fuel—departments like Product Innovation, Product Development, and Research and Development.
   • Help bolster your front lines, with agent training that includes product and company culture education and a playbook for how to communicate in precise line with your brand
     
2. Treat social media customer engagements as conversations that stand on their own—deserving of response time and colloquial, culturally appropriate tone. More than ever, the art of conversation is not lost. Think of these exchanges more like a phone call than an email. While a shift to digital customer care is today’s new norm, don’t lose sight of the fact that a four-hour response time—much less a 24-hour response time, is not going to satisfy (much less delight) today’s customer. Also, in responses, don’t hide behind a shadowy 800-number—be present and personal, with open communication and practical solutions to customer problems. Don’t be overly cautious about engaging customers with appeasement, as long as you can solve the problem, retain the customer, and not compromise the complainant.
3. Keep the end goal in sight: gaining and retaining customers. Finally, once you have a sound social media strategy in place, ensure that you share the knowledge. This means integrating robust engagement and reporting tools focused on recording and building knowledge from this customer feedback. While this can be labor-intensive, know that these insights are valuable to your future growth and success. Understand the scale and importance of your social media presence. Specialize your channels and align with your CX support. For example, if you have a customer with 25,000 Twitter followers, most likely your trainees shouldn’t be responding. At the front end of support, build in fast research so agents understand the social profile of each customer posting—from their social presence to their troll factor. If a customer engages consistently in a negative way—this contact should likely be escalated to a veteran team member or set aside so as not to build steam.

Source: https://www.teamhgs.com/blog/3-ways-social-media-can-make-break-cx/

Publish Date: June 12, 2018 5:00 AM

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How to Automate Enterprises for Cost Takeout and Enhanced CX

The second installment of the HGS India webinar series, “How to Automate Enterprises for Cost Takeout and Enhanced CX,” was held on May 24. At this webinar, HGS Senior Vice President of Business Transformation and Innovation, Ram Mohan Natarajan, elaborated on using automation to find the right balance between cost transformation and enhanced customer experience.

Key webinar takeaways were:

• Industry adoption trends in automation
• An intelligent automation approach leading with bots and brains
• The impact of automation in reducing cost, improving quality, and getting the right answer fast

The webinar takeaways were bolstered by a discussion of both back office and front office processes that can be automated with considerable business impact. The webinar also provided actual examples where automation solutions have been implemented and used to deliver significant benefits for companies across industries.

We also asked some poll questions during the webinar to understand and measure audience opinions about the webinar topics:

1. Per our first poll question, “Is your organisation currently predominantly focused on cost optimisation?,” an impressive 56% of participants said they are focused on optimising cost in both back office and customer-facing processes, with 25% saying that they are concentrating on the cost of customer -facing processes, and 19% of respondents optimising cost only for back office processes.
2. The second poll question “Are you using any of these in your organisation?” signaled interesting trends on technology adoption, with 46% of respondents having implemented RPA in their organisation, 23% using both RPA and chatbots, 15% saying they use only chatbots, and another 15% stating that they do not use of these technologies in their companies.
3. The answers to the third and last poll question “Do you think chatbots will be able to answer most of the queries in the next 2-3 years?” bode well for the future of chatbots, with 56% of webinar participants saying that they do think chatbots’ answering capabilities will strengthen over the next two to three years. Another 19% responded that they don’t think this will happen and 25% state that it will take longer than two to three years for chatbots to have an impact.

The collective opinion sample of the overall poll responses pointed toward a market that has already adopted automation to a considerable extent and is open to increasing that adoption percentage.

During the concluding minutes of the webinar, participants were invited to have their questions answered by Ram:

Q1: Should automated webchat solutions be proactive or reactive?

A: There may be solutions, in some cases, that could be proactive. Sometimes, though, there is learning required—we have to learn, and the system also has to learn. We need to ensure that the data gets captured first and the system is able to learn, and then be able to become proactive. For those of us who have not started off on the journey, it might be easier to pick up what is already available, and automate that. I would not necessarily suggest this for the simpler tasks, but at least the repetitive tasks. And that way you start getting the business benefits and you start moving up the value chain. You’ll be able to churn huge amounts of data for your bot to be able to be more proactive.

Q2: How do these chatbots behave in a multi-language environment with different types of consumers?

A: I don’t see too much challenge these days on multi-language. If you look at even freely available tools like Google Translate or any of those available in the market, they are fairly advanced now. So I wouldn’t consider language as a constraint. Rather it’s about, what you want to achieve? What’s your objective? Is it about customer experience or taking cost out? The journey you take will depend on your answer to that question.

Q3: Are most of the benefits to do with costs or accuracy?

A: This is an interesting question. Many people actually start thinking about their business case first and the first logical thing that comes to all our minds is, “I need to save on my costs. I have got 20 people doing the work. Can I eliminate headcount?” Sometimes it is fascinating to see what impact accuracy can have on automation. You know there are bots today that we have implemented for clients that actually impact millions of dollars. Here we are not talking about saving 10 people, but eliminating human error has a much bigger ramification for the company than actually reducing people. Similarly, we have automated processes at the front end that have to do with building the product for a healthcare client. One mistake there can affect all the claims that come in the future. While yes, automation did save on people doing work, the much bigger benefit was with the impact on the downstream processes. These effects are manifold, compared to the small cost savings that could have accrued just by reducing people.

Source: https://www.teamhgs.com/blog/automate-enterprises-cost-takeout-enhanced-cx/

Publish Date: June 6, 2018 5:00 AM

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3 Ways the Cloud Opens Horizons for CX

Posted by Subramanya C, Chief Technology Officer, HGS

Cloud technology is revolutionizing the way today’s companies do business. From easy, real-time data accessibility, productivity improvements and cost reduction to business communication and supply chain management efficiencies, the cloud is a game changer.

How does cloud technology drive breakthrough CX transformation?:

1. The cloud can better prepare companies to provide optimized CX, across channels.

   Companies can employ cloud solutions for internal conferencing, presentations, meetings, and video to drive more coordinated internal communication and productivity. Using cloud apps, companies can connect with customers across geos, sharing presentations and content. With the globalization of business, constant communication and knowledge sharing is essential to maintain growth, productivity levels, and consistency internationally.

2. Cloud-based CRMs can integrate data

   .Companies can undertake better inventory management with wider sales access to inventory. Additionally, customers are provided faster information about product availability. Hosting data on cloud infrastructure can lead to better customer experiences, with faster and more accurate updates about product availability.

   .For customer complaints, cloud data storage enables immediate and accurate product tracking, right down to the store a product was sold from, the shipment it came in, and the factory where it was manufactured.

   .Similarly, when a customer makes a purchase in one country but lodges a complaint from another country, hosting data on the cloud means that your customer care representatives have all the data they need at their fingertips despite not working in the place of purchase.

3. Cloud technology is an ideal collaboration suite for companies.

   Cloud technology has done away with the need for VPN because all company information and emails are hosted on the cloud. Today businesses can access emails and content from anywhere, enhancing productivity with easier data access and better communication. For example, sales executives can access proposals from the cloud and customize them on the spot to improve sales. Customer contracts can be handled better by cloud hosting contract templates, for access and customization of a contract template. For human resources, employee onboarding and the complete employee lifecycle, the cloud (the selection process, offer rollout, and references) ensures better access and processing. For your purchase department, you can use cloud to source vendors for purchasing and implement bidding on the cloud with transparency and an open process while choosing the price and vendor.

To unlock these cloud transformations, many of today’s companies are turning to the experts. The global cloud-based BPO market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 11.39% from 2014-19, according to ResearchMoz. Today’s business process management (BPM) partners can build the cloud infrastructure that is most cost-effective and advantageous.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/3-ways-cloud-opens-horizons-cx/

Publish Date: August 3, 2016 5:00 AM

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Turn to BPO Experts for Better Workers’ Comp Outcomes

Posted by Madhusudan Vasudevan

Insurance organizations that deal with workers’ compensation claims must leverage effective strategies for managing financial challenges inherent to the provision, including increased competition, staffing requirements, and new state regulations.

Claims operations leadership struggles to effectively transform operations to perform at the highest level of compliance and quality standards while also focusing on cost-containment. According to the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI), medical costs for workers’ compensation have increased an average of 6% every year since 2002, and are typically higher than comparable non-job injuries.

An aging workforce, the prevalence of chronic and co-morbid illnesses, and emerging state rules and regulations also have a significant impact on claim costs. The Council also predicted that medical costs will represent 70% of all workers’ compensation losses this year.

Outsourcing for Increased Efficiency

Optimal cost effectiveness and flexible deployment of resources, particularly in the management of workers compensation claims, sometimes means partnering with an organization with proven record of managing workers’ compensation clients. It is proven that outsourcing claims management functions increases the productivity of business line managers and those in related functions, as they are not paper shuffling or spending hours trying to resolve side issues associated with claims. This is the most effective way to minimize administrative costs and increase revenue and market share, by keeping premiums lower, managing risk, and achieving organizational budget and growth goals.

Many organizations are turning to business process outsourcing (BPO) as an option that brings cost-containment, improved turnaround time (TAT), and service level excellence to these insurers. Effective BPO vendors will bring expertise and a competitive advantage to a myriad of functions and services, including medical bill review, reconsiderations, code and nurse review, provider data management and contact center solutions. Also, they bring in value added services through process reengineering and application of robotic process automation (RPA) to improve process efficiency

Rework is one of the top drivers of additional costs for workers’ comp insurers. It’s is all about getting it right the first time and having the right intellect and resources focused on the final objective. The ultimate goal is to take the most effective path to payment and return to work, via effective project management and skilled resources.
Medical cost containment is an area in which a BPO partner can make a critical difference in time, energy, and resources. Bill review and coding are other areas where a BPO partner can help streamline efficiencies. A BPO partner can review each treatment code (CPT code) to ensure it is related to a specific claim/injury, confirm compensability, appropriateness, eliminate duplicates, and ensure accurate coding.

Most organizations are now outsourcing complex functions like clinical and coding processes, due to a large talent pool with relevant certifications like NCLEX and CPC, which is an add on to their clinical/coding background.
Case management is another area of opportunity where case nurses’ and adjusters’ work can be categorized decoupled into core and administrative functions. This enables them to focus on their core strengths improving productivity and focus toward faster employee return to work, while their administrative tasks can be performed by offshore agent or nurse.

Automation as a Cost-Containment Strategy

A vendor partner can also ensure the right level of RPA deployment to automate redundant steps, which is critical to ensuring that claims are turned around in time to adhere to state-regulated bill payments and avoid costly penalties. Automation reduces the manual effort required for each activity or even totally eliminates the manual effort required for some tasks. Significant capacity optimization can be achieved by connecting and building business rules on multiple applications. This saves the valuable agent effort of toggling between systems enabling them to handle more and more complex transactions.

Robotic automation, a non-invasive technology, doesn’t require back-office integration through APIs and seamlessly works with end-user interfaces and enterprise applications. The technologically agnostic solutions work well with data-intensive processes, across multiple domains and industry verticals. It offers various functionalities including responding to external stimuli and deciding when to execute functions; acting autonomously to use and orchestrate any application; bringing inherent data protections, transactional integrity across systems; and providing clear audit trails and other system management functions.

The Bottom Line

A good business process outsourcing (BPO) partner that works with workers’ compensation as a specialty will have the knowledge and procedures in place to ensure every statute is met, every contingency is covered, every report is submitted correctly and on time, and everything is exactly as it needs to be, removing the bottlenecks to reduce costs and improve revenue flow.

BPO gives health insurance organizations the skills and synergy they need to improve internal policy and process maps, and ensure the highest levels of compliance in an increasingly complex statutory environment. A successful BPO/CCO partnership returns value beyond the terms of the Statement of Work between the payer and vendor; the partnership should enable payers to focus on their core mission and service to the community.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/turn-bpo-experts-better-workers-comp-outcomes/

Publish Date: July 27, 2016 5:00 AM

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5 Traits of Customer-Obsessed Companies

Posted by Mandeep Singh Kwatra, VP of Solutions and Capabilities and CX Strategy Services Leader

Today’s customers evaluate a company on the experience that they receive. The entire sales cycle (pre-sales, purchase, and post-purchase) experience is as important to them as the actual product or service. Today’s multi-tasking customers are juggling multiple channels at one time, often on multiple devices. Servicing these customers requires companies to be always alert, frequent the same channels as customers, and be consistent is their customer service across channels.

Due to this influence of digital channels and shifting customer loyalties, more and more companies are becoming “customer obsessed.” There is a continuous strategizing about how to woo the customer, how to deliver a wow experience every time, and how to win trust to gain a larger wallet share.

So, what are the typical traits “customer obsessed” companies possess?

1. They reserve a seat at the boardroom table for a resident expert of customer intelligence

   Many companies are bringing a customer experience leadership executive into their C-suite: either a chief customer officer (CCO) or customer experience officer (CXO). These team members will have the requisite knowledge and expertise to make use of customer data and lead transformational CX strategy. Many companies talk about how important customer service is to them and are diligent about collecting data, however, the data is often meaningless without a sound strategy for interpretation and reporting.

2. They focus on customer retention over acquisition.

   According to Bain & Company research, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. Most companies are single-mindedly focused on acquiring more customers and draw up their marketing plans specifically to attract more new customers. What’s the cost of customer acquisition compared to retention? There’s no definitive answer; however, most sources cite acquisition costs as between 4 and 10 times more than retention. It’s often less expensive to market to existing customers, and that means providing Unified Customer Engagement®, with a consistent, unified customer experience, across channels.

3. They blend multiple sources of customer data.
   Today your customers don’t reach you just by the phone. They prefer to use digital channels like social media, text, chat, and apps, and that is only the beginning. This spectrum is only going to grow, with new Internet of Things solutions coming out every year. With so many different communication channels, there are numerous sources where valuable customer information is available. Customer preferences vary with each channel, so it’s essential to study and understand data from all sources before making changes. Using data from multiple sources helps you make better predictions about customer needs, predict purchase behavior, and above all personalize customer experience.
4. They develop post-transaction interactions with customers.

   In today’s digital, customer-centric world, companies often forget to reach out to the customer after a successful sale is complete. It is very important for a customer-centric organization to engage with their customers even after they make a purchase and continue to communicate over the longer term. Ongoing communication helps companies to continuously gather customer feedback and learn about changing customer preferences.

5. They make room for customer needs.

   Often companies try to solve problems of the past. In fact, the focus should be on how the future will shape tomorrow’s optimized CX: how will customers communicate, engage, buy, and live. Customer-obsessed companies keep a futuristic outlook to managing their customers not just today but with a view to maintaining the same standard or higher service in the future too. They are always flexible in accommodating customer needs in their marketing and customer service plans. These companies understand that customer needs do not always align with their own goals. So they factor in room for customer needs when formulating their customer service plans. This may mean bringing in CX experts, such as business process management (BPM) companies, to provide digital roadmaps and customer journey maps, supported by technology implementation expertise.

Ultimately, delighted customers are your greatest marketing, with the best ROI. Refine your CX approach, for a customer obsession that delivers.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/5-traits-customer-obsessed-companies/

Publish Date: July 13, 2016 5:00 AM

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Combine AI and the Human Touch for Exceptional Customer Service

By Chris Lord, Global Head of Growth, Strategy and Marketing

This article was previously published in CMSWire.

Companies face major challenges when trying to effectively scale customer service. Successfully responding to customer interactions across an expanding range of channels puts even the most customer-centric organizations to the test.

Customers want seamless service in the form of fast responses on their channel of choice (or convenience) — whether that’s chat, phone, website, text, or social media. Providing answers in a cost-effective way while still delivering an exceptional customer experience is not easy, which is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. AI can make an immediate and impactful difference in the short-term for companies looking to streamline the relationship with consumers.

That said, a 2014 report by Forrester (registration required) shows understanding customer emotion and empathy are critical components of a successful customer experience. Clearly the human touch is needed at the heart of customer service.

How can organizations create customer experiences that deliver efficient service and actually help build empathy, at the same time? By deploying self-learning, automated AI helps customers better serve themselves at a low cost.

Customer Desire for Speed and Convenience Fueling Self-Service

Customers are increasingly knowledgeable and tech-savvy — we all know that. A report by Gartner (pdf) predicts that by 2020, customers will manage 85 percent of their relationships with organizations without interacting with a human.

But despite that growing preference for self-service, there are still times when customers prefer human interaction.
Businesses ultimately help themselves when they offer customers the best approach — whatever format that takes — to get the right answer fast. Not only do they improve customer satisfaction, they reduce the effort and cost to provide that satisfaction. The net result is a higher likelihood that the customer will repeat purchase and become a loyal promoter, sharing their great experience by word-of-mouth and social media.

Blend Human and Robot Interactions for Better Customer Experiences

Recent technological breakthroughs combine the best of personal and automated services to create a new model of customer engagement.

The core of AI in customer service is self-learning powered by analytics. Self-learning allows computers and automated systems to monitor human agents’ reactions and responses to questions and process inquiries. They can teach themselves how to complete basic tasks and respond to simple questions without having to escalate it to a live agent.

And, they learn from what happens if a problem is escalated to a live agent, so over time fewer and fewer inquiries require the human touch.

These automated systems don’t require a major upheaval of IT, and companies won’t have to ditch expensive legacy systems. Most importantly, AI in customer service can actually drive revenue over time with improved customer satisfaction and repeat purchases — eventually paying for itself.

Where to Start
What does that mean for you, as you look to build a more efficient and empathetic customer service model that marries human and artificial intelligence?

Customer Journey Mapping: Anticipate possible friction points in the sales or service cycle and plan proactive online popups to guide customers toward a solution.

Analytics for Front-End Research: Big data and analytic tools can help you determine the most appropriate channels for problem resolution based on the complexity of the issue, availability of support, and lifetime value of the customer relationship.

Personalization: Understand your customers and personalize their interactions based on what you know of their demographic and preferences. Think about a dynamic website experience automatically customized to past consumer purchase behavior or a chat interaction incorporating previous text or web interactions so the consumer doesn’t need to repeat information.

Consistent Brand Experience: Content, particularly FAQs, should be dynamic but consistent across all channels. Use automation and intelligence to contextualize, anticipate, learn, and continually improve.

Simplicity: Pick a single queue, product, brand, etc. to start and launch digital projects that can be stood up in 60–90 days, allowing you to quickly gain value and learn.

It’s All About Balance

Artificial intelligence represents a huge step forward in delivering a better experience for customers. However, if it is to succeed, technology needs to be combined with traditional human skills in order to deliver a seamless customer journey that balances self-service with empathy, ultimately providing a tailored experience for every individual’s needs.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/combine-ai-and-the-human-touch-for-exceptional-customer-service/

Publish Date: June 29, 2016 5:00 AM

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CX Trends Forecast Disrupter No. 1: 5 Ways to Reduce Effort

Posted by Lauren Kindzierski

HGS recently released a white paper on this year’s 10 customer experience disrupters—those that are sure to alter the CX landscape this year. Over the next few months, we’ll dedicate a blog to each of these CX game changers. Here we dissect Disrupter No. 1, Reducing Customer Effort, highlighting five strategies designed to reduce the burden on the customer for an improved and more frictionless CX to ultimately drive a higher CSAT and NPS score for your business.

Leading to Low Effort

What do customers really want? It’s an efficient, satisfactory solution to their queries, according to a recent study conducted by the Corporate Executive Board and published by the Harvard Business Review. The study demonstrated that reducing customer effort increases the likelihood that the customer will return, increases the amount they will spend and increases their propensity to speak positively about the company – in other words they will become more loyal. The research also states that low effort scores led to a 94% likelihood to repurchase and an 88% chance to increase spend. All the more reason to initiate these five strategies for a better CX:

1. Ensure self-assessment of customer service processes. Self-assessment is a great way of understanding the effectiveness of the customer experience process. A customer journey map will determine where you are at in your digital transformation. At each customer touchpoint, how much effort are customers putting forth? The right map will cover all digital channels: text, chat, web, and social, as well as voice. Review the entire customer journey for an apt understanding of processes that push customers to invest too much effort. Only then will your digital transformation strategy address your greatest CX weaknesses—those processes and pain points that exact the most customer effort.
2. Analyze the voice of your customer. Gather, act, and analyze customer feedback to ensure your understanding of high- effort touchpoints. This analysis should reach all levels of CX—beyond customer surveys, for the most comprehensive, detailed feedback (that also reflects your digital delivery). Compile customer chat transcripts, text messages, and emails, as well as customer surveys, to decode customer input with analytics.
3. Take a more strategic approach to self-service. Self-service should be the foundation for future customer interactions, with agent assistance integrated in seamlessly when it adds value to the consumer’s interaction. Keeping up means focusing on outcomes, like measuring the effectiveness of FAQs in terms of resolving customer issues and applying interaction analytics to top contact driver analysis. Aim for a smart, seamless user experience that drives automation first. For example, FAQ resolution measurement can reveal important structural challenges to predictive resolution to customer queries, such as pushing out how-to videos. At HGS, we’ve measured and rebuilt self-service for one client to design a device-agnostic platform, for a resulting 97% query resolution rate online, in just 90 days. Comprising knowledge management, CRM, and analytics capabilities, this DNA tool empower self-service and addresses customer queries at the earliest touchpoint, for optimized customer experience. These types of strategic tools and innovation will streamline and simplify your customer experience to help customers find the information they need quickly and efficiently.
4. Get ready: The bots are coming. It’s important to embrace the disruption—those innovative tools that add automation to your self-service delivery. Today more third-party providers are focused on automation for more efficient and cost-effective workflows. This means bots—the delivery method of robotic automation. And bots bring real outcomes—cost benefits and improved efficiency over manual process handling and ability to leverage application software without integration. In the front office, automation is improving experiences for customers by getting them the right answer, fast. In fact, HGS has been able to employ bots to unlock for our clients results like reduced processing time by about 75% in some of the processes. And you aren’t losing out on tone of CX delivery—today’s bots use natural language so customers never know there isn’t a live agent behind delivery. Autotext, autochat, autosocial: Add this innovation to your self-service delivery, for CX that meets today’s demand.
5. Employ digital for proactive, optimized CX. Digital tools are breaking barriers in terms of redefining the customer experience. For example, with SMS service delivery, businesses can make transformational improvements in customer experience, with alerts and prompts, such as bill payment reminders, order status updates, and warranty expiration notices. Today’s innovation is geared toward this level of proactive service, which ultimately boosts CX and also drives significant operational performance improvement.

These five straightforward strategies will help your customers get the right answer, fast, for optimize customer experience. Reducing your customers’ effort will allow your company to focus more on your core business and aim for higher quality work with relative ease.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/cx-trends-forecast-disrupter-no-1-5-ways-to-reduce-effort/

Publish Date: June 15, 2016 5:00 AM

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Payers Seek Cost, Integration Efficiencies in a Value-Based World

Posted by Anand Natampalli

Health insurance is no longer primarily a business-to-business transaction between payer organizations and employers. Today, payers must be prepared to holistically meet the needs of millions of individual consumers—from onboarding and first appointments to billing and wellness and retention.

Cost management has always been a core focus area for health insurers, but in a value-based world, costs that previously had been absorbed by large group plans now need to be identified as medical or administrative costs in order to meet the medical loss ratio requirements outlined in the Affordable Care Act.

Payers are dedicating more resources, technology, and money to network management, claims accuracy, and medical cost management in order to lower costs, improve provider and member satisfaction, and make healthcare more accessible. Realizing these goals will require health plans to rethink their business workflows in the key areas of automation, business process outsourcing, and technology integration.

Automating Efficiencies
Automation reduces or eliminates manual processes for many tasks with data-intensive processes, across multiple domains and verticals. It acts autonomously to use and run multiple applications, bringing inherent data protections and transactional integrity across systems and providing clear audit trails.

Effective automation relies on good business process design and can have significant return on investment. According to the BPO analyst NelsonHall, automation can reduce organizational costs by up to 30 percent within three months of implementation.

Business Process Outsourcing
According to Black Book research, as many of 74 percent of payers are looking to business process management experts that have the necessary expertise to blend front office and back office processes to eliminate downstream impacts of transactions that can result in process gaps and clerical errors, so they can focus more internal efforts on managing risk and delivering an outstanding customer experience.

This approach makes sense as the number of individuals seeking health plans continues to rise. The ability to manage processes efficiently will quickly become a lower-value contribution to the bottom line. In addition, BPO organizations that work across multiple verticals are able to bring the best practices from each, improving the level of quality and service overall.

Technology Integration
Digital transformation has changed the paradigm by which goods and services are delivered to consumers in retail, financial services, telecommunications and entertainment, to name just a few sectors. With the aggregation of member data, insurers gain the ability to evaluate and re-evaluate the customer lifecycle and the likelihood that members are in need of and will subscribe to additional services. Without the technology to integrate member health data and preferences, insurers will fail to meet consumers’ rising expectations for a seamless and satisfying experience, leaving members frustrated and difficult to retain.

Therefore, it is critical to create opportunities to engage with members and build affinity whenever a touchpoint occurs—from enrollment, onboarding and health plan education to appointment reminders and change-of-life events. Tailoring member specific service based on these unique circumstances and preferences is dependent on a robust data analytics platform within the insurer organization.

Regardless of the engagement methods used, the goal is to amass integrated member data to identify individually-appropriate interventions to best manage their health. To achieve this shift, insurers will require a cloud-based platform integrated into business process outsourcing (BPO) services. The total solution must go beyond the member-facing channels to also provide integration with enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

Health insurance plans that embrace digital transformation of this magnitude stand to achieve substantial efficiency improvements in acquiring new members and providing services over the course of the customer lifecycle.

Anand Natampalli, MBA, is Senior Vice President, Global Sales & Business Development, for HGS, a provider of end-to-end business process services for numerous Fortune 100 health insurance companies and large provider organizations. He can be reached at anandmn@teamhgs.com.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/payers-seek-cost-integration-efficiencies-in-a-value-based-world/

Publish Date: May 18, 2016 5:00 AM

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Your Customers Are Chatting: Insights from the Front Lines

At our May 6 webinar, “Your Customers Are Chatting, Are You Still Talking?,” HGS VP of Solutions and Capabilities Mandeep Kwatra dispelled some myths about chat and provided details on how to pivot to this platform from other service channels. Alon Waks, Global Head of Marketing at LivePerson also shared some insights on chat as a CX must-have.

A record number of attendees took part in our webinar polls, sharing their chat benchmarks. Our first poll asked, “What is the status of your brand or company in providing chat as a channel for interacting with customers?” Responses were evenly split among “Implemented as a standalone” (30) and Implemented as an integrated channel of service (39), with 0 attendees responding that “Chat doesn’t offer much benefit.”

Per poll two, we also found that 49% of our attendees provide between 2–5 channels for their agents to access for service, with 33% of respondents providing more than 5 channels. “This isn’t a new scenario,” Kwatra noted. “As organizations grow, different systems come in and customer information is sitting in different places. So a lot of companies fall into the two to three systems category leading up to five or more.”

As part of our Q-and-A session post-webinar, our experts shared more insights:

Q1: When is it okay to use auto chat with customers?
Mandeep A: Automated chat is typically useable in low-value interactions, where you can have more straightforward answers to queries. For example, “I want to know where your nearest store is,” or “I want to know about your return policy.” These scenarios are fairly standard in their process, and you need limited customer information to create a trouble ticket to complete the transaction. These are some of the scenarios where you can deploy automated chat.

Q2: Would you say that having chat services available helps decrease call volume and how can you measure this?
Alon A: First of all, the natural tendency of people today is to seek sales and service on digital. In fact, 58–60% of journeys start on digital. When you enable the channel to be effective and responsive and personalized, you will significantly reduce the amount of call volume, possibly by 40%. When you use chat analytics to gain voice of the customer insight, you can reduce repeatable chats. If you know that certain questions are commonly asked or certain interaction patterns repeated, you can provide significant content information on the website that addresses these questions or repeatable patterns. For example, if you saw that a question such as “ “Will this family plan also give me mobile replacements every year?” is asked with some frequency, you can add it as an FAQ that automatically pops up at the right point in the customer journey. When you go digital, you can respond more effectively to inquiries, some of which can be addressed through chat or self-service.

Q3: Should chat only be in English or can it be multi-lingual?
Mandeep A: Chat can be multi-lingual, as well. A lot of companies have adopted chat more as an English language platform. But there is a demand that is building up to make it multi-lingual and there are several platforms that provide very accurate automated translations. My recommendation is start with English, get it right and then add more languages to it.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/your-customers-are-chatting-insights-from-the-front-lines/

Publish Date: May 11, 2016 5:00 AM

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Unified Engagement: 4 Must-Haves

Posted by Subramanya C

In recent years, there’s been a shift in the way customers shop, highlighting an increased need to focus on unified customer engagement. Today, brands and customers are invariably using more than one channel when interacting with each other. A recent study surveying 7,000 consumers found that in the past 6 months, 67 percent of online shoppers made purchases that involved multiple channels. Consider this simple example as an everyday scenario:

Bill is considering buying a lawn mower. A colleague recommends Brand X. Bill immediately picks up his smartphone and starts researching lawn mowers from Brand X. Because Brand X’s website is not optimized for the mobile experience, he finds it difficult to see the photos and abandons his search for the moment. Once he’s back at his computer a couple of hours later, he continues his search for Brand X to get more information about the product his colleague recommended. Specifically, Bill wants to know what type of battery the lawn mower has. When he’s unable to find the answer to his question on the brand’s website FAQ section he gives up researching the recommendation and begins looking at a competing retailer’s site.

Today, prospective customers employ multiple channels before zeroing in on a purchase. Consequently, today’s brands have to be prepared and consistent across their service delivery channels.

If you’re looking to implement unified customer engagement, here are four must-haves:

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Readiness: Your CRM application should be ready to support a complex strategy like omni-channel customer service. It has to have an open Application Processing Interface (API) that allows developers to build the CRM to link and share gathered data and provide for integration with all channels. This feature is crucial for a CRM to be ready to support omni-channel customer experience.
   This readiness means that the CRM must be capable of studying and learning from your customer history and spotting and predicting patterns. Such an intelligent CRM can use this learning to help offer better, seamless customer experience by sharing and using this learning across all the channels in the omni-channel plan. The CRM should also be web-enabled and hosted on the cloud for better seamless integration, rather than being hosted on a server.
   The CRM also has to be mobile app friendly. Why? In 2019 there will be 9.4 billion mobile subscriptions around the world, and 5.6 billion of them, or 60 percent, will be linked to a smartphone, according to new study by mobile network vendor Ericsson. The CRM must allow developers to integrate the apps for different operating systems (such as, Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows) for simulation, testing, and integrated CRM testing.
2. Supporting Technology: Ensure you have the right computer systems with High Definition (HD) video, audio, and premium Internet bandwidth that can help your customer service agents support customers easily across channels. Along with all these front-end technology solutions, you also need to have powerful back-end technology infrastructure including Internet Protocol (IP).
   Optimum quality, fast omni-channel customer support requires high capacity back-end technology that can enable the front-end technology to run efficiently.
3. Robust, Integrated Knowledge Base: Preparing a strong and perceptive customer knowledge base is essential to a well-performing omni-channel customer support service. The knowledge base should be capable of addressing the information requests that come from different channels and furnish this information to customer service agents through the CRM.
   The knowledge base should include information in different formats and lengths. For example, when answering a customer on Twitter, there is a character limit so the knowledge base needs to provide the agent with short, informative answers; if email is the platform, the knowledge base has to have descriptive answers.
4. Synchronization and Personalization Capabilities: Link between devices is essential. Your CRM needs to be able to allow and support information exchange and learning to happen across devices. This can help each channel learn from the activities on other channels and understand customer interests and browsing history better to offer a more personalized customer experience. For example, if a customer has browsed books from a certain genre on your mobile app, this browsing and preferences history is shared by the app, through the CRM, with the company website. When the customer switches to the website from the app, the website can provide the best product recommendations based on the browsing history on the app.

It’s important to use the learning gained on every channel. This is possible with a web-enabled, open API CRM and knowledge base that shares data. If your service on the first few channels is lacking, you can use the learning that’s happened on these channels to improve on the next/ other channels.

Unified customer engagement comprises a complex system that involves near-constant learning from which companies that implement it need to evolve continuously to stay ahead of the game. BPM vendors can assist in launching and ensuring a successful omni-channel strategy. It’s a key focus of today’s optimized customer experience delivery.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/unified-engagement-4-must-haves/

Publish Date: May 4, 2016 5:00 AM

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Crossing the Generational Divide: 4 Simple Truths About Your Millennial Customers

Posted by Rawool Sahu

Today’s businesses are increasingly focused on how to please and appease millennials—more specifically, those 16-to-36-year-olds among us. As the largest generation in U.S. history, my generation holds significant purchasing power, of an estimated $200 billion annually. That figure is projected to double by 2020, according to Bloomberg Research. Undeniably, millennials are redefining customer experience, with our digitally savvy and self-reliant buying behavior. To meet the evolving customer service expectations of our demographic, brands need to do a lot of groundwork and preparation. Here are four simple truths about our expectations:

1. Millennials prefer a digital journey.
   It’s a well-known fact, by now: my peer group prefers digital self-serve channels as opposed to traditional customer service channels such as the phone.
   Digital channels of service are not limited to only the self-help or email channel. Chat has been, and continues to be, one of the significant channels in managing customer service and helping customers get the right answer fast. It’s my favorite mode of customer service, as it’s for me an easier method of conversation that allows time between interactions. Unlike traditional voice, there’s no set response time. In fact, I find faster agent response and resolution with chat. And I also have a documented history of my conversation with the agent.
2. Millennials are self-reliant.
   As the most educated generation in history, we don’t want to be pushed through a process, we want to be empowered to self-serve. Essentially, millennials grew up with Google search at our fingertips. We know how to get to the information and background we need to make purchasing decisions. We’re independent thinkers. When we do have a concern, we like to go to an FAQ page, a troubleshooting guide, or community forum where customers can ask or answer questions, or receive any sort of walk through, either an article or video, where we can discover answers to our problems. And then, when its helpful to getting the right answer fast, we want intelligent and educated assistance that adds value to our interaction with a brand.
3. Millennials want multi-channel choice.
   We’re changing platforms—from smartphones to laptops, multiple times an hour. And we want you to meet us there. Our expectation is that we can get the right answer fast – consistently, regardless of channel, device, or location. This means a unified customer experience strategy for all relevant channels. Millennial customers today switch channels based on convenience, and they expect the next channel they choose to get them started where they stopped on the previous channel. Another expectation is responsive design to ensure that a brand’s website renders properly on every device irrespective of screen size.
4. Millennials want authentic engagement with brands.
   While millennials often prefer digital communication over voice, we still want relationships with our brands – or rather, we want brands to value us and give us personalized treatment. But we value authenticity, which comes with a true understanding of the company—from vision and mission to values and corporate social responsibility focus. Social media engagement is key here, in terms of developing personalized customer service. This requires businesses to ensure supporting technology and a robust customer database that includes details on customer name, contact preferences, and shopping/ spending patterns. We expect that from our brands, as we want to know them as well as they know us. For example, I participate in as many customer response surveys as I can (if they are of the short 5- to 7-question variety), so my voice is heard, and I can actually effect outcomes.

So, what can we glean from these insights about my peers? Simply put, businesses should be prepared to meet their needs with self-service channels that help them get the right answer, fast. They need multiple channels with cross-channel integration, including self-service. Millenials expect service to be

• Consistent
• Quick
• Proactive, guided by preferences
• Present on multiple channels and cross-channel integrated
• Focused on optimized CX

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/crossing-the-generational-divide-4-simple-truths-about-your-millennial-customers/

Publish Date: April 27, 2016 5:00 AM

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9 Reasons You Really Want to Outsource Workers’ Comp Management

Posted by Dan Schulte

This blog is the first of a two-part series covering the ever-evolving workers’ comp landscape for both providers and payers. This blog represents the provider perspective, and Part Two will focus on the service scope from a payer point of view.

One of the staples of reality TV over the last few years has been shows about people who do difficult, dangerous, and dirty jobs that most of us wouldn’t dream of doing. “Dirty Jobs,” “Deadliest Catch,” “Ice Road Truckers,” and others make most of us glad that someone else is doing it.

If they ever add “World’s Most Aggravating Jobs” to the mix, one that you can bet will be on the list is working with workers’ compensation claims. Just ask anyone who has to do it on a semi-regular basis.

Make no mistake: workers’ comp is a wonderful safety net for employees and employers. Prior to its introduction between the two Roosevelts (Teddy and Franklin) if workers got hurt on the job and required expensive medical care, their primary option for compensation was to sue their employers. No explanation is needed on why that wasn’t good for anyone. Workers’ comp avoids that unpleasantness.

Yet while it sounds simple and straightforward in theory, in practice workers’ comp is anything but. Instead it presents a Byzantine set of rules, regulations, and requirements that appear to be designed to ensure claims are rejected and providers are penalized for not performing up to standards.

For providers , however, it can be a nightmare, with so many rules and processes that must be followed to the letter, and so many resources required to manage the program, that by the time it’s all said and done, providers might end up actually losing money on the claims. It is why more and more providers are beginning to turn over all of their workers’ comp business processing to outside organizations that focus on this very specialized area of insurance.

Here are some of the many reasons you may want to consider doing the same.

1. No single set of rules. With commercial health insurance, while there may be minor variances here and there, you’re basically working with the same processes, procedures, and rule sets. Not so with workers’ comp. Each state sets its own complex statutes and fee schedules, which must be adhered to exactly or the claim will likely be rejected.
2. Completely separate from standard health insurance. Workers’ comp is very specialized. Health plans that offer it don’t sell commercial health insurance, and commercial plans don’t offer workers’ comp (with rare exceptions). Failure to understand this could lead to a workers’ comp claim being submitted to the wrong payer or third party administrator (TPA), delaying reimbursement and risking a violation of state filing requirements.
3. Initial authorization must be verified. Before a provider can file a claim under workers’ comp, it must obtain an employer’s letter of protection or first report of injury. Not obtaining this pre-authorization confirming the employer believes the employee’s injury occurred on the job could severely impact the entire claims and reimbursement process down the road.
4. Combination of high expertise and low volume. Workers’ comp is very difficult to manage, requiring a high level of expertise. Yet it typically accounts for only 3–5 percent of a hospital’s accounts receivable (A/R). Despite the risks, most organizations find it makes little financial sense to hire an internal expert, relying instead on personnel with minimal training in workers’ comp. It’s no wonder there are frequent problems.
5. Still a paper-based process. While there are a few exceptions, for the most part, workers’ comp claims must be filled out on paper and mailed to the insurance carrier. That is a slow, labor-intensive process that takes internal personnel away from higher-value work. It is also more costly than electronic filing since every line must be filled in every time. And, if just one piece of paper is submitted out of order, the entire claim can be sent back, starting the process all over again and delaying reimbursement.
6. Intricate fee schedules must be followed. State statutes lay out intricate fee schedules that explain exactly what will and will not be covered by workers’ comp for a given type of injury. Failure to understand what is allowable could lead the provider to deliver services that will not be reimbursed, either in part or in full.
7. State reporting requirements. Providers are required to submit regular reports to the state in a timely manner documenting initial treatment, follow-up treatments, and any discussions between the provider and payer regarding the treatment and other issues. These reports are not standardized, however, as each state has its own specific reporting requirements. Again, failure to deliver exactly what is needed, in exactly the format specified, or within the timeframe allotted, creates more headaches and delays.
8. Incessant follow-up needed. Even when everything is submitted properly and on-time, it does not guarantee reimbursement will be prompt. Providers often must follow up frequently to ensure claims are being processed and that there are no issues holding them up. Again, this is a specialized area. Untrained account representatives may not know how to make these calls and spur action. If claims are rejected, more follow-up is required to determine the cause and potentially file an appeal, taking up even more staff time.
9. Reimbursements must be verified for accuracy. Even after reimbursement is received, the work isn’t over. Providers must check each one to ensure there is no under-payment or over-payment. That includes checking that the workers’ comp payer is basing payments on the current fee schedule for that state. If not, an appeal must be filed, again on a timely basis.

The bottom line is that there is a lot of work (and expertise) required to ensure impediments to reimbursement from workers’ comp claims are removed and no money is left on the table. The ratio of volume to value makes it difficult to justify attempting to manage it all internally.

A good business process outsourcing (BPO) partner that works with workers’ comp all day, every day, will have the knowledge and procedures in place to ensure every statute is met, every contingency is covered, and everything is exactly as it needs to be, removing the bottlenecks to reduce the costs and improve revenue flow.

Even the most aggravating of jobs must be done. But they don’t have to be done internally. By moving workers’ comp claims and collections to a BPO partner, you can minimize problems for the organization as well as free up internal resources for more meaningful work.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/9-reasons-you-really-want-to-outsource-workers-comp-management/

Publish Date: April 20, 2016 5:00 AM

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Defining Great Customer Experience: Highlights from the Customer Experience Strategies Summit

Posted by Joanne Morrison

HGS was a proud sponsor of this year’s Customer Experience Strategies Summit in Toronto, April 5–6. At this interactive forum, we were inspired by a talented group of CX thought leaders and forward-thinking brands that are challenging what it means to provide a great customer experience. Strong customer relationships mean customers are three times more likely to stay loyal, six times more likely to recommend the brand, and five times more likely to repurchase. With studies showing that 31% of customers leave because they received a better offer from a competitor, optimizing customer experience has never been more crucial to business growth and survival.

Bruce Temkin, CX Transformist and Managing Partner, Temkin Group, kicked off the first session with his keynote address titled, “Win Customers by Moving from Fluff to Tough.” He began the session by posing a single question to the audience, “What is a great customer experience?” While audience members called out words such as “memorable,” “consistent,” and “effortless,” Temkin challenged us by proclaiming that all the answers were wrong. He countered with the notion that a great CX is whatever the customer thinks it is. To illustrate this point, he used examples of customer experience from 10 years ago, when we were thrilled to receive DVDs in the mail to view the latest movie, use paper maps to get driving directions, and throw ourselves in front of taxis to access transportation. All of this was before anyone had conceived of the notion of streaming entertainment content, GPS devices that provide real-time traffic updates, and Uber. The key takeaway? It’s that if we set our goals on achieving what exceptional customer experience is today, we’ll ultimately fail. What we need to do is anticipate what customers will want tomorrow.

HGS’s own Lauren Kindzierski closed the sessions on Day 1 with her presentation titled “Rewire the Digital Customer Experience to Connect Emotionally with Customers.” Part of the challenge in providing a great CX is that experiences aren’t logical, they’re emotional. However, more than 35% of all interactions are digital and research projects that the digital will overtake the phone channel as the primary method of communication within two years. With this trend in mind, the question then becomes, “How do you focus on emotions to create memorable digital customer interactions?” Customers want brands to know me, engage me, make my life simple, anticipate my needs, feel what I feel, and reward me.

On Day 2 of the conference, Marc Eaman, Director, Marketing Cloud, Adobe, described “The Power of Great Experiences.” At this session,he talked about the disruption happening in the enterprise. He contends that 20 years ago, during the back-office wave,companies prioritized enterprise resource planning (ERP), and now that has become table stakes. Ten years ago, priorities shifted to the front-office wave, and more investment was made in CRMs to automate sales. Again, this strategy has also become table stakes. Today, we’re entering the experience wave. To succeed in this wave, customers’ demand that brands:

• Know me and respect me. For example, if a brand knows that the customer is interested in surfing, they should not be bombarded with offers related to skiing.
• Speak in one voice. Empower employees so they can say, “Yes, I can solve that for you.”
• Make technology transparent. Customers don’t care how your back-end systems work. They just want an experience that is seamless and works.
• Delight me at every turn. Mantras that will ensure success are “Be consistent,” “Be continuous,” and “Be compelling.”

Terry Gardiner, VP, Customer Experience Enablement, TELUS, provided an interactive session on “Best Practices to create Customer Value with High-Impact Omni-channel Experiences.” At this session, he emphasized the importance of moving from transactions to the outcomes that customers want. For example, when customers want to sit in their living rooms and watch TV, they don’t care what time the repair truck arrives, they just want the outcome to match their need. Brands need to recognize that each outcome has a different value for the customer. As CX practitioners, we need to understand what’s important in the hearts and minds of customers. Gardiner also emphasized the importance of culture. He contends that you can have the right technology; however, if employees don’t care, your CX efforts will fail. Gardiner also emphasized that key performance indicators (KPIs) can get in the way of culture. For example, if a salesperson on the phone is incented to sell, that sales person won’t encourage customers to make their purchases in store, even though that may be the better option for the customer. Similarly, average handle time (AHT) can be another problematic metric, as customer service reps may rush customers off the phone without optimally solving the issue. TELUS experimented with eliminating AHT as a metric, and while AHT rose in the immediate short term, it leveled off, and, in the longer term, it did not increase.

Driving the right culture is imperative, and the beauty of culture is that it doesn’t cost anything to drive culture change, nor does it require executive approval. It does, however, have a huge impact on delivering successful CX.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/defining-great-customer-experience-highlights-from-the-customer-experience-strategies-summit/

Publish Date: April 13, 2016 5:00 AM

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Terms Every Digital CX Professional Must Know in 2016: Part 2 – Digital Disruption

Posted by Lauren Kindzierski

Unified Engagement, Digital Transformation, Click to Text, Channel Pivoting, and First Touch Resolution, In our March 31 blog, we shared all of these terms and why they are essential components of today’s optimized digital CX. With our Part Two of our Terms Every Digital CX Professional Must Know series, we share the Digital Disruption-related terminology that will guide optimized experience.

1. Internet of Things—Digital Disruption and emerging innovative technologies are forcing businesses to rethink their business models and go to market strategies. The Internet of Things is one such form of digital disruption that is game changing to businesses across the globe. The Internet of Things is where physical objects or “things” are becoming wirelessly connected and embedded with electronics, software, and sensors that allow these objects to collect and exchange data. The connectivity then allows these physical objects to be controlled remotely via smartphone apps. For example, think about your household, pretty soon all of your appliances will have LCD panels embedded in them. This will allow customer service to tap into the physical object to diagnose problems, assist consumers via video, and provide a better personalized experience.
2. Augmented Reality—Augmented Reality is another form of digital disruption that can be a game changer for customer service. Augmented Reality is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. This technology can be a strategic differentiator for companies needing help evolving its tech-support. With the help of augmented reality, you can aim your smartphone at the product, and then it will show a 3D version of the product, along with interactive guides, how-to videos, helpful tips or even an ability to connect with customer service via video. The best way to describe AR is a blur between virtual reality and gamification.
3. Social Profiling—Think about all of the type of information you can get from looking at a person’s public social network profiles. One could find out everything from the individual’s age, gender, marital status, employer and role, skills, life events, vacations, favorite movies, books, places traveled and so much more. All of this data can be extremely valuable to personalizing the customer experience. Within the last year, companies have figured out how to tap into that goldmine of data (as long as the customer’s profiles are public). All it takes to implement is the customer’s first name, last name, and email address. It is called Social Profiling, and it’s being used for personalization, customer segmentation and persona strategies.
4. iBeacons—iBeacon is a protocol standardized by Apple and introduced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in 2013. You can think of iBeacon as like GPS for indoor locations. The technology enables smartphones, tablets and other devices to perform actions when in close proximity to an iBeacon. Your smartphone will pick up the iBeacon transmissions and pretty much deliver anything at all to the device from offers, coupons, ‘you are here signals’, info, etc. You could, for example, walk into an iBeacon-equipped store, and then have the store’s iPhone app recognize who you are, greet you with a personalized message that says “welcome back”. iBeacons are critical for personalizing brick and mortar customer experiences. It’s important to note that various vendors have since made iBeacon-compatible hardware transmitters – typically called beacons that broadcast their identifier to nearby portable electronic devices outside of Apple devices.
5. Content Curation—For years businesses have used stock photos when marketing the brand. Usually these photos contained model-like, beautiful people using or eating the product or service. The product itself was always in 100% top notch condition. These advertisements where setting consumer expectations high, and only to be later let down by the non-perfection. Today, the voice of the customer has never been louder. Customers would rather see advertisements with real customers using the product or service, or read reviews from real customers to get their non-biased opinion. Content Curation is the answer. Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of user generated content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific product, service or theme. With the help of content curation, you can present photos of real customers using your products collected via social media. You can post these photos to a website, and present an “option to buy” when the photo is clicked on, which will help increase conversions.
6. Social Conquesting—Within the past 5 to 7 years, brands have been dedicating time and resources into figuring out their social media strategies. There is one new strategy that has recently surfaced called Social Conquesting. Social Conquesting can be described as leveraging a competitor’s social audience to acquire customers. For example, customers are turning to social media to air their grievances when upset with a particular brand. When this happens, if the brand doesn’t respond to their upset customer, the competitor will. This is a strategy that is happening in all industries, and has been pretty successful. At the end of the day, customers just want the brands they do business with to listen to them when they are talking in social. The bottom line, if your brand fails to respond, then the competition will. Start monitoring 24/7 and respond!

So that’s the close of our 11 digital terms customer service professionals must know this year. Stay tuned as we continue to stay on the pulse of the terms—and tools, solutions, innovation—you need to keep ahead of the pack.

Source: http://www.teamhgs.com/blog/terms-every-digital-cx-professional-must-know-in-2016-part-2-digital-disruption/

Publish Date: April 11, 2016 5:00 AM

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