It’s one thing to deliver good service to a customer, but quite another to achieve this with regular consistency. However, it is exactly this kind of consistency that the modern customer demands.
A good business will always be aware of the important role excellent customer service plays in its success. It is critical to understand that winning customers and building loyalty takes time, and that in order to build good customer relationships, you need to deliver consistent service if you are to retain your customer’s hard-won loyalty.
It is also important to understand just how fragile customer relationships can be. It is far easier to lose a client due to poor customer service and issues not quickly resolved to the customer’s satisfaction than it is to obtain loyalty in the first place.
Customers value consistency from their service providers, because they base their expectations on previous positive experiences. Therefore, it is crucial to not only deliver good customer service at first asking, but to keep on delivering service at the same, if not better, level every time, if you are to continue ensuring customer satisfaction.
This means that you need to focus on making sure that your interactions with customers are consistent and quality based. It is only logical that a consumer’s confidence in your organization will increase if you deliver a consistent level of quality in your service – achieving this ensures that the customer feels valuable to your business.
Obviously, no enterprise is perfect, and customers understand that. However, they are more likely to forgive an occasional misstep, provided the problem is handled quickly and with care. What customers will not tolerate is any kind of rudeness, neglect or failure to deliver on promises.
This is why consistency is so important. Clients need to know that you will deliver on your promises every time, rather than only when it may be convenient for you. This is put nicely into perspective by the fact that customers, on average, will tell less than 10 other people about good service they have received, whereas the number is closer to 20 when it comes to letting people know about a bad experience.
Consistency is an exceptionally powerful customer service tool, particularly in today‘s world, where competition has never been greater, and both consumer choice and empowerment are increasing.
Of course, getting consistency right can be tricky, particularly given the proliferation of channels, which has led to customers triggering an increasing number of interactions with companies as they seek solutions to their challenges. This, in turn, means that they are creating clusters of interactions across multiple channels, and it is vital to service each of these interactions with the same aplomb, in order to deliver a cumulative experience that is good. For consumers, their overall customer journey is more important than any individual interaction.
There is a perceived expectation that every customer has when conducting a service-related interaction and it is critical to always meet these expectations if you are to deliver a consistent experience. Achieving this will demonstrate that you care and that you view customers as individuals - customers always want to feel like their problem means something to you. They want to feel that you have their best interests at heart and are genuinely eager to assist them.
By ensuring consistency, you, in turn, show that you care about how you engage and deliver service to customers.
So, how do you go about creating this level of consistency?
For one thing, it is necessary for employees across the organization, from salespeople to customer service staff, meet regularly to share problems and possible solutions to customer service related issues. A critical element of consistency lies in breaking down silos between departments. Furthermore, you can conduct online surveys and invite customers to provide feedback on their experiences with your organization, in order to learn what is most important to them. Once you are aware of what the key issues are, you can fix them immediately. In addition, monitor customers on all their social streams to catch praise or dissatisfaction, both of which you can learn from.
In addition, always provide clients with a time frame for expecting your response and consider setting up automated responses to incoming client emails, to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
When it comes to demonstrating your company’s consistency in customer service, there are three key areas of focus. Naturally, you need to focus on delivering customer journey consistency. This means having clear policies, rules, and supporting mechanisms to ensure consistency during each and every interaction with a customer.
Since the customer journey more often than not touches different parts of the organization, you may need to specifically create internal teams that are responsible for the end-to-end customer journey across these functions.
After all, we now live in an omnichannel world, and it is crucial to ensure that whatever channel, or even multiple channels, the customer chooses to use, they receive the same level of service across each one. The greater the variability in their experiences, the less likelihood of the customer ultimately being happy with the service received - variability is, after all, the very opposite of consistency.
The second area of focus needs to be emotional consistency. You need to engender positive customer experience emotions at all times. This builds trust and helps you forge a deeper and more meaningful relationship with clients. The greater the emotional connection between your customer and your business, the higher the customer loyalty. After all, nothing is more trustworthy than consistency.
Finally, your organization should focus on delivering communication consistency. Your brand is driven by more than simply promises made and promises kept. It is also about ensuring that customers recognize when you have delivered on those promises. This means you should proactively shape your key messages and customer communications to consistently highlight such delivery.
Achieving all of the above will mean you have to constantly track progress, effectiveness and predict opportunities, which may require your business to rethink both its metrics and analytics, in order to properly report on the customer journey, rather than individual touchpoints.
Furthermore, it is critical to immediately fix those areas where you have identified negative experiences as being common. Reducing bad experiences, even when your service is not necessarily at an exceptional level yet, will help to give the customer a stronger feeling of consistency.
Perhaps most importantly of all, you must bear in mind that the overall customer journey includes much more than just the customer service aspect. Everything from pre-sale engagement through to after sales services forms part of this journey, so true consistency will encompass every single aspect of your organization.
Customers today have far more control than they did in the past and they are also increasingly perceptive and pay attention to every little detail. Therefore, your business simply cannot afford to compromise on any component of the customer journey. Customers expect the same level of service quality across each and every stage of the customer journey, so the only road to true success is to pay attention to detail, offer the highest quality service possible and ensure that every one of your people stays focused on maintaining the high standards you set for your business. There is little doubt that your customers today expect that.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/the-importance-of-consistency-in-customer-service
Publish Date: May 24, 2017 |
Implementing a Virtual Customer Assistant or sometimes referred to as a Chatbot within your contact center will prove to be beneficial to both your organization and the customers you are trying to serve.
The rise of virtual customer assistants has been rapid, of that, there is no doubt, and as with any new technology, there have been mixed opinions about its effectiveness. Nonetheless, despite some shortcomings in the initial versions of these solutions, it is already clear that virtual customer assistants have enormous potential in regard to enhancing the customer experience.
Perhaps the key to success when implementing a virtual customer assistant is to determine where it might best sit within the customer journey. Get this right, and it will be able to act as a valuable addition to the human advisor team, greatly improving your customer interactions.
A well-implemented virtual customer assistant – or in the context of a contact center, a virtual customer assistant – can offer your organization a whole host of benefits, many of which sit outside the realm of the benefits traditionally associated with customer service technologies.
Perhaps the main benefit of a virtual customer assistant is that it fits nicely into what is a growing demand from consumers for new ways to solve their problems and interact with brands and services. Part of this is a growing trend amongst customers to use text and instant messaging as their first choices when communicating with a contact center, rather than utilizing the more traditional voice channel.
The rise in the use of text and instant messaging channels goes hand in hand with a growing desire by customers to solve their problems themselves, rather than asking someone else to do it for them. This is driven, at least in part, by the growing number of Millennials within the customer base. The virtual customer assistant, of course, is the perfect response to these trends.
Of course, there are many other benefits that virtual customer assistants bring to the party, both from the perspective of the contact center and from that of the customer.
Probably the most crucial benefit, from the point of view of the contact center, is that implementing a virtual customer assistant should result in dramatic cost savings. It is well known that voice is the most expensive channel for such a center, so implementing a self-service tool that reduces the load on the voice channel is bound to save you money.
In addition to being cheaper than live agents, virtual customer assistants are also an efficient way to deliver customer service. Because responses to customer queries are based on pre-programmed logic, the consumer receives a rapid and pointed answer to their question. Furthermore, they eliminate human errors, such as delayed responses, incorrect information or even rudeness.
And while it costs less than a human employee, a virtual customer assistant also works much harder, in the sense that it is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, taking no vacation time, sick leave or even coffee breaks.
From the customers’ point of view, virtual customer assistants can improve their satisfaction, as they are now able to complete a transaction without needing to wait in a queue to talk to an agent, or painstakingly search the contents of an entire website for the answer. And they can use their channel of choice, such as text or instant message, to ask a question, knowing they will get an answer almost immediately.
This is because virtual customer assistants have faster and more accurate access to the client’s information. A virtual customer assistant linked to your company’s database will have immediate access to all the history of use and even behavior patterns that a particular client has, and as it is electronic in nature, it will be able to hunt down the relevant information required at speeds that would make even a superhuman agent blush.
Virtual customer assistants also improve things for agents, in that they offer the ability to solve simple, quick-response needs, which frees up your contact center’s customer service representatives to focus on the kind of complex customer demands and high-touch interactions that actually challenge them – and everyone wants a bit of challenge from their jobs.
There are even virtual customer assistants that have the ability to go a step beyond the standard simple question-answer interface. Using artificial intelligence to be able to understand the intent and sentiment of the query, they are able to translate this into actionable transactions. A good example here would be a situation where a customer wants to add another driver to their vehicle insurance policy. A transactional virtual customer assistant would be capable of actually walking the customer through the entire process required to achieve this, eliminating the need for the client to talk to a human agent.
Another major benefit is that virtual customer assistants can incorporate visual media, which is ideal since humans themselves are very visual creatures. While they do primarily communicate through text, virtual customer assistants are capable of incorporating rich media like picture and GIFs into the conversation. Using images like this can help make virtual customer assistants seem more human, or could even allow them to showcase a product that may be easier to display than to describe. A good example here is if a customer asks a question about a particular product and the virtual customer assistant is able to show them an image of the product, as well as similar products that may also interest the consumer.
Most critically, a virtual customer assistant, these days, is almost indistinguishable from a human and can deliver a seamless, natural human experience. In addition to this, it can give your brand a ‘voice.' For example, if your brand is a more informal type, the virtual customer assistant can be programmed to use slang and casual language and can refer to the business in the first person.
With so many benefits to offer, the only thing that seems to be holding virtual customer assistants back at the moment is the fact that some of the initial high-profile solutions have demonstrated shortcomings. However, despite these, it should be obvious that they have the potential to contribute to and enhance the customer experience quite significantly.
Virtual customer assistants today are no longer merely a novelty item; they have the potential to further open up your company’s self-service channels while adding a great deal of value to the customer experience. Of course, in order to add this level of value, we need to use virtual customer assistants that truly make the client feel like they are having a conversation with a real human - one that is incredibly knowledgeable and quick to provide the right answers.
Enterprises today are constantly on the lookout for technologies that can save them money and decrease the load on their human agents while improving their ability to service the customer. At the same time, Consumers are increasingly seeking faster ways to resolve their problems and to do it by themselves if at all possible. Virtual customer assistants clearly meet the requirements of both customers and organizations.
Modern brands ultimately want to be where their customers are, and in a world rife with smartphones and social media, where those customers are is on their mobiles, texting, messaging and posting. Therefore, it should be obvious that using virtual customer assistants will become as natural to them as texting a friend.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/the-many-benefits-of-the-virtual-customer-assistant
Publish Date: May 23, 2017 |
Today’s modern, tech-savvy customers are becoming increasingly demanding in their quest for a great customer experience. They expect to be able to shop anytime, anywhere and from any device easily, and if your brand is not fulfilling these expectations, you won’t survive. Therefore, one of the critical aspects of any customer service strategy today is to deploy an Omnichannel sales and customer service approach that provides customers with an integrated experience across all channels, including telephone, mobile, chat or social media.
However, while many companies have already implemented their Omnichannel infrastructure and strategy, many of them are still failing to take advantage of its benefits, and combined with the growing expectations, the result is rising customer frustration with their experience. Let’s look at a few of the reasons why:
95% of customers use more than one channel to communicate with companies!
Over the course of the customer journey, customers may switch channels for a variety of reasons. In fact, according to Forrester, 95% of customers use more than one channel to communicate with companies. Sometimes users are interrupted, or maybe they just figure their task would be easier on a different channel. Some activities actually require users to move across various channels to complete them. Regardless of the reason, the customers expect any multichannel support experience to be seamless, that the company will have access to a single view of their customer profile across all channels. This includes all of their customer information, order and billing history, and a universal history of all interactions which enables customer support to be able to pick up the conversation without hesitation, and the customer will not have to repeat the story upon calling back or when switching between channels.
Where the problems arise is when the channels are disconnected and are working in a separate silo. This leads to a sort of “channel blindness” and keeps the customers from having a seamless experience as they move between channels. The reasons for this vary for, including the costs that companies face while integrating different channels. However, many times the disconnect between channels originates in issues much deeper than the front-end design of the channel experiences. As organizations begin to integrate new channels, technologies and procedures are added in stages and often completely separately. The result is a lack of coordination in processes that leads to a fragmented backend infrastructure for many companies. Other possible roadblocks occurring on the backend could be caused by disjointed organizational hierarchies and working teams, separate fulfillment processes or old procedures that no longer work in the new Omnichannel reality.
Omni-channel service consistency and seamlessness go hand in hand. As customers perceive each customer service channel to be part of the company as a whole, all information given to the customer, no matter the channel, must match to avoid confusion and frustration. Inconsistency between different channels gives the impression that the entire company is disorganized and unable to provide superior support, and it’s a common problem. In fact, while nearly all customers use more than one channel to communicate with companies, Accenture reports 65% are frustrated by inconsistent experiences. For example, nowadays, customers often use their smartphones and tablets to visit a company’s website. In fact, a report on mobile CX found 63% of consumers use mobile devices a few times a month or more to search online for customer and product support. However, it is still unlikely that they will actually make the purchase on their phones, especially in the same session. So, while brands may emphasize responsive online storefronts designed for mobile devices to ensure an optimized mobile experience, they tend to forget about the consistency of the customer experience when the customer transitions out of his mobile world.
You may think that your Omni-channel strategy is successful while actually it’s not and vice-versa. Today it’s crucial for businesses to have a reliable measurement strategy in place to accurately track valuable KPIs and to optimize them to evaluate what is working well and what's not properly, as well as the overall Omnichannel strategy. Furthermore, as the customer base grows, each channel must be able to scale up to meet the demand without creating silos. Not only does this keep information consistent, but it also gives the system the ability to change channel distribution to match the rising traffic.
As communication channels are evolving to meet growing customer expectations, so do customers expect seamlessness and consistency in their Omni-channel customer support. While the challenges to meet these expectations are real, a unified customer engagement platform offers brands a tremendous opportunity to create an optimal customer experience across all touch points, thus transforming frustration into brand loyalty and advocacy!
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/why-are-customers-frustrated-with-omnichannel-cx
Publish Date: May 22, 2017 |
Once upon a time, quality and price were the essences of buying decisions. However, today more and more brands are chosen based on whether the overall customer experience matches customer expectations, and delivering a frictionless, cross-channel customer experience is the key.
While the rise of self-service solutions meets the growing customer demand for quick, efficient solutions in many service situations, optimized assisted-service across these channels is still critical and remains the best way to ensure success. Companies need to recognize when self-service will be more effective or when live agent assistance will be better; then they need to offer a seamless transition between them. Those brands that do are reaping the benefits. Let’s take a look:
Today, an effective digital self-service solution on the web, mobile, social and messaging channels is the foundation for any customer service strategy. The reasons are quite clear as 53% of US online adults now are likely to abandon their online purchase if they cannot find a quick answer to their question; while 77% say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good online customer service. It is no surprise then that, according to Forrester, “customers increasingly leverage self-service and digital channels for customer service because these channels offer the least amount of interaction friction.” Customers will make the first contact with a variety of issues, and once they do, there are many issues that cause customers delays. However, when there is a self-service option, in particular, a virtual assistant that’s available 24/7 leveraged across all digital channels, it eliminates long wait times, or having to be transferred to different representatives in order to resolve their issue, while also speeding up queuing time for customers who can’t be helped by the virtual assistant.
At the same time, a self-service solution that can show up before the live chat or phone solution enables brands to keep pace with the behavioral evolution of today’s customer who prefers to search information and answers independently, and now has the digital tools to do so. This includes even creating an FAQ section on the website or alerting customers of existing issues that they can troubleshoot themselves through a step by step guide. Proactively enabling your customers to help themselves empowers the customer and improves the overall customer experience, as customers can get the answers they need any time of day. This, of course, leads to higher conversion rates while reducing support costs because fewer live chat agents are needed.
While there is no denying the importance of self-service, nevertheless, there are many situations where customers make initial contact on self-service, and then seek to continue the process with a live agent for a more personal interaction. In other words, customers want to be able to easily switch between channels when self-service is not enough. While in 29% of cases it’s the phone, followed by email (23%) and web chat (15%), it really depends on the customer's context, such as their location at the time, which device they are currently using, whatever else they may be doing at the time, the precise nature of their support request, its emotional layer, the level of urgency and their personal preferences. Now the challenge, as well as the tremendous opportunity it presents regarding the overall customer experience, is to take control of this process of contextual escalation.
Today, through utilizing artificial intelligence technology that fuels machine learning interactions within self-service applications, these various dimensions of context can be immediately analyzed in real time. In addition to all the information about the customer’s relationship with the brand, including prior interactions, purchase history, and more. Brands can now collect instantly actionable virtual assistant interaction data to expand their understanding of a consumer’s intent by picking up on patterns in behaviors as they happen. By placing customer service requests in their right context, brands can now engage with customers across communications channels (including email, voice, SMS and social media) with a high degree of customer understanding. As a result, consumer service and purchase needs are handled quickly. Since inquiries escalate through the most cost effective channel and the most expensive agent interaction channels are reserved for the highest value activities.
With the growing move to a digital Omni-channel customer experience, so too is the need for an optimized Omni-channel customer service strategy. Starting with an effective self-service solution, brands can begin to unlock the data information that is generated across multiple customer interactions and channels to create that frictionless, cross-channel customer experience that customers have come to expect, whether within a self-service solution or live interaction. Welcome to the future of customer service.
Publish Date: May 19, 2017 |
As an increasing number of customers choose to do it themselves, it appears as though the most crucial technology in the future contact center will be self-service.
It should be clear to anyone that the customer experience today is vastly different to what it was just a decade ago. This is mostly due to the wide range of new technologies that have come to the fore, but it is also, at least partly, due to changing attitudes within the customer base itself. One thing that is obvious is that customers are only going to be demanding more from your organization’s customer experience as we move forward.
One of the key issues that is changing the customer experience is the blurring of the boundary between work and home. In other words, more customers want to engage with businesses outside of the traditional office hours. This means finding new ways to enable them to receive such service, on a 24/7 basis. Since very few organizations have the resources to employ agents on a full-time basis to meet this demand, the answer is instead to enable your customers to serve themselves.
This is ideal for a large portion of the customer base too, since customer attitudes have also shifted significantly in the past decade. Where before, their first instinct was to call customer service for help, most now prefer to solve problems on their own. The goal of self-service is to do everything possible to help customers solve the issue on their own, by empowering them with the information they need and giving them the flexibility to access it at any time. Of course, you still need to ensure, as much as possible, that you still have agents available if they are required.
Self-service, of course, is not only about enabling the customer to do things for themselves – deploying such solutions will reduce waiting in queues (and thereby dissatisfied users) and minimize support costs for your contact center as well.
However, on the customer service front, self-service is rapidly becoming a must-have, as a growing number of Millennials join the customer base. This is a market segment that is increasing in size, spending power and influence. It is a segment that generally demands instant gratification – the nightmare scenario for most customer service centers - and most crucially of all, it is a segment that prefers to do things for itself.
Surveys of Millennials have indicated that around two-thirds of this market claim to feel good about themselves, and the company they are doing business with, when they resolve a problem without needing actually to contact customer service.
This is a generation that actually wants to do it themselves and prefers to have total control over its own support experience. With this in mind, it is no wonder that Gartner has suggested that the future of customer service will be self-service.
Of course, it is one thing to offer customers – particularly Millennials – the option of doing it themselves, but unless you provide them with tools that appeal to their sensibilities, you are just as likely to irritate them as if you left them holding on the line for an agent for ages. And the Millennial market, more than any other, is the one most likely to take their business elsewhere, the first time they are left unhappy by your service.
This would seem to rule out using the most common contact center self-service method, which is the standard interactive voice response (IVR) solution. These have many faults, including the fact that users sometimes fail to discern what the automated voice is saying, or that the menus provided offer too many options. By the time the consumer has listed to half a dozen options, they have probably forgotten what the first one was. Besides, we live in a visual world, where it is easy to tune out a droning, robotic voice and perhaps miss the option you were waiting for. Basically, standard IVRs are often simply not equipped to help users solve the kind of problems that they want to sort out for themselves.
On the other hand, one thing you can be sure of is that most customers – and all Millennials, if we’re being honest – will have is a smartphone. This is why implementing a visual IVR solution could conceivably be the answer to your self-service challenges. This is a solution that effectively offers all the benefits of a standard IVR, without any of the drawbacks.
Visual IVRs take advantage of the fact that the customer has a device with a large screen, by delivering a menu that is visible and easy to scroll through. Even long menus are easy to handle, and it is generally a simple task to scroll back a screen if the user feels they have missed some important information. Ultimately, providing the menu visually effectively increases the users’ ability to both absorb and enter complex data.
Furthermore, by visually involving the customer and giving them a tactile experience into the bargain, you give them a genuinely satisfying experience that leaves them feeling happy about the transaction, once they have sorted their issue out for themselves.
Moreover, unlike a standard IVR, where failure to solve the problem means transferring back to the queue and holding for an agent, visual IVR is able to seamlessly connect customers who fail to solve their problem to other self-service options and/or an agent support resource. And the solution can even provide said agent with context, meaning they already know what the customer's issue is by the time they answer the call. When you have failed to solve your own problem, nothing makes you feel better than immediately having a sympathetic and knowledgeable voice on the other end of the line.
Still, there is little doubt that fewer and fewer such transitions are going to occur in the future, as customers become more adept at solving their own challenges, and self-service technologies continue to improve.
The easier contact centers can make it for customers answer their questions and solve their problems, without having to actually speak to an agent, the more likely it is they will find themselves ranked highly by those selfsame customers, who are able to do it themselves at the first time of asking.
One thing we can be sure of: consumers expect companies to keep improving their levels of service, and self-service is the only long-term solution to meeting such customer expectations. Moreover, as more Millennials enter the market, so the demand to ‘do-it-yourself’ is only going to increase, and companies that wish to remain at the forefront of customer service are going to have to ensure they have the best self-service technologies available in their contact center.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/self-service-and-the-future-of-customer-service
Publish Date: May 17, 2017 |
Customers hate having to repeat steps already taken, simply because the agent they are speaking to doesn’t know anything about their problem. This can be solved by providing context.
Customer service is a tricky thing to get right, in today’s multi- or omnichannel world. After all, most often, by the time a customer gets through to an agent in the contact center, they have already tried at least one, if not several, other channels to resolve whatever their issue may be. The problem, from a customer service point of view, is that when they do reach an agent, they inevitably find themselves having to repeat everything they have already done to the person on the other end of the line, who oftentimes is quite bewildered at how frustrated or angry the customer is from the outset.
This occurs because of a lack of context. The agent is unaware of the previous attempts made by the customer to resolve the problem; they have no information to tell them, prior to answering the call, who the customer is, what other recent actions they have taken, and any other potentially useful information.
Nobody who has spent any length of time attempting to sort out an issue wants to start at the very beginning again. Realizing that the agent knows nothing about your situation is not only frustrating in this respect, but is made doubly so by the knowledge that contact centers have access to so many wonderful technology channels, and yet can’t seem to get the basics right.
Obviously, there are numerous factors that influence the customer’s context – everything from personal preferences to their location, and from their emotional state to the actual nature of their request plays a role in determining the customer’s context, and contact centers should be able to establish all of this, in order to serve the customer effectively and efficiently.
Remember that context, ultimately, provides meaning to various interactions and can link recurring interactions together, in order to determine patterns and thus to help recommend a course of action. If you are able to correctly evaluate the context, you will be far better positioned to understand and manage the customer relationship better. Proper context also assists in reducing the customer’s effort involved, and that goes a long way towards improving their happiness.
After all, customers are people too, and they want organizations to recognize that their time is also important and should thus not be wasted. Knowing the customers’ history and being aware of the problem they are trying to solve when the agent speaks to them will be a big help in improving customer satisfaction.
You only have to put yourself in the customer’s shoes to realize how much more appealing a brand becomes when – having already become frustrated from trying multiple methods to resolve their challenge – a customer is put through to an agent that has a deep level of insight into their issue, from the moment they answer the phone.
So the question then, is how do you ensure that your agents have context before they answer a call?
This is not always easy to do in an omnichannel environment, but there is one tool that can make life much easier for both the customer and the agent – the visual IVR. Operating in much the same manner as a normal IVR, but with visual prompts sent to the user’s screen, instead of voice prompts, the visual IVR is the next generation of self-service tools. Unlike a standard IVR, which can be confusing, take too long or simply not offer what the client is after, the visual IVR is easy to navigate, simple to use and, most crucially, is able to record every action taken by the customer, meaning it can serve as the filter that provides context.
Most customers today will be happy to try on-demand digital assistance first, especially if it as easy to use as visual IVR should be and is able to offer them a clear path for helping themselves.
Visual IVR technology is thus the perfect answer to creating a better customer experience – it makes it simple for the customer to drill more deeply into their enquiry, it records these attempts and is able to provide agents context if they require it, and if it succeeds in solving the customer problem without the need for a phone call, it saves your contact center money as well.
However, our focus here is on the situation where the customer is unsuccessful at fixing the issue. Through the visual IVR, they can then choose to be transferred to an agent through various methods (call back, waiting queue, chat) and the tool will at the same time provide the agent with the steps the customer has attempted already, thus enabling them to rule those out during troubleshooting, meaning they can more quickly get to the solution. Faster resolution time, of course, equates nicely with great customer service.
It is clear then that having a solid visual IVR solution in place will ease the customer journey, as it will place real context around their efforts and should ensure your agent is better prepared to deal with the challenge, while at the same time ensuring your customer’s journey is as seamless, personalized, and efficient as possible. After all, adding context to the conversation is one of the easiest ways for an agent to personalize the customer experience.
Ultimately, any good contact center should have a visual IVR system. Not only will such a solution help to reduce overall call volumes, due to its ability to pivot those calls into a fully capable digital engagement, but when callers do need to be transferred to an agent it will both ensure they are routed to the right agent the first time, and provide the right context to the agent. Servicing your customer without them needing to re-authenticate or once again explain why they are calling will reduce customer frustrations and lead to a happier resolution for them, while at the same time reducing the average handle time of these calls as well.
When you look at it this way, the only surprise is that not everyone is already using the visual IVR to boost their customer service and reduce costs to their center
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/visual-ivr-a-great-way-to-provide-solid-customer-context
Publish Date: May 16, 2017 |
An increasing number of senior citizens are making use of smartphones when communicating with contact centers. Adopting a visual IVR is the ideal way to make their lives easier and reduce your own costs at the same time.
There is a common misperception that the Internet, social media and smartphones are the all-but-exclusive domain of the younger generation. That is not the case, however, with many older adults enthusiastically adopting these technologies not only as a means of staying current but also of keeping in touch with old acquaintances and younger family members.
Statistics indicate that one in five Twitter users is over the age of fifty. Perhaps this is not such a surprising stat, since everyone knows the president is an avid user of the service, and he’s already 70. However, more than 50% of Americans 65 and older use the Internet, with three-quarters of these active on a daily basis. So it should come as no surprise to learn that in an increasing number of senior citizens are purchasing and using smartphones as well.
In fact, a survey conducted last year by Age ¹ indicated that over half of all respondents in between the ages of 60 and 79 owned a smartphone. Despite this growing uptake, there remain a number of challenges faced by senior citizens in adopting these technologies. For some, the challenge is physical in nature, with health conditions and disabilities making reading difficult or successfully operating the buttons on these devices challenging.
In addition, there are inevitably going to be members of the older generation that have skeptical attitudes towards the real benefits of technology, and others still that experience difficulties in learning to use these new devices.
On the other hand though, embracing new technology later in life also offers its own benefits. Smartphones are the ideal way for senior citizens to remain in touch with friends and family, either through calls, SMSes, or accessing platforms such as Facebook or Skype.
Clearly, then, the smartphone is inevitably going to be the go-to device for many older customers when they want to get hold of your contact center. And for the multitude of simple questions that many customers will want to ask, your contact center is undoubtedly going to want to use an IVR where it can.
In the healthcare sector, we have the perfect confluence of an older customer base and an industry that by its nature will be required to provide answers to a diverse range of questions relating to care packages, medicines, payments and many other such aspects. So what is wrong with employing a simple IVR?
Many senior citizens have some form of hearing issue, which means that even hearing things correctly when talking to a live person is not always easy. With the synthesized voices found on IVRs, understanding what is being said becomes even more difficult.
Moreover, in most cases, IVR technology is not exactly senior-friendly when it comes to issues like volume, pitch, tone and speed. Nor even when it comes to the amount of time provided to respond to prompts. Obviously, this means that your IVR is generally only succeeding in doing the opposite of its intent – it is making the process more, not less, difficult for the customer.
Other issues older people raise with IVR systems is their dislike in talking to a machine, the often complex nature of the telephone menus and the lengthy instructions related to this. In addition, menus are generally considered to be too long. Nobody wants to have to go through the same menu multiple times to find either the option they want or the one that will at least allow them to speak to a human operator. As a contact center operator, your organization also should not want them to try and contact a human operator, except as a final resort, since such calls are the costliest ones your center can field.
With senior citizens, poor voice recognition can also impact their use of a typical IVR system – it is easy for them to become frustrated when the system fails to recognize their voice commands and choices. Anything from a bad line to unclear pronunciation to excessive background noise or handset volumes can cause this. But whatever the cause, the result is never one which reflects positively on the service provider.
Moreover, many older people have indicated that if they have a bad experience with an IVR, and there is a competitor whose system is more to their liking, they would be quite happy to transfer their allegiance there. This means you now find yourself in a position where customers might be willing to jump ship to a competitor that better addresses their needs. And you should never forget that in most cases, senior citizens have time on their hands anyway, so it is a simple matter for them to research your rivals and shop around.
So what is the answer?
It is surprisingly simple – instead of utilizing a standard IVR, introduce a visual one instead. By delivering a visual menu to the customer’s smartphone screen, they are able to see the menus and peruse them at their leisure. No more frustrating electronic voices, no prompts that fail to give adequate time to respond, and no more forgetting what was number one on the list by the time the IVR has given you a sixth possible choice.
Visualizing the IVR is ideal for the older demographic, as it makes the process simpler and easier, enables them to make their selection a lot faster and completely changes the experience. After all at its most basic, humanity is a visual species, so seeing the menu is far more comforting than simply listening to it. Secondly, it makes it simpler for users to navigate back and forth to find the option they need.
Visual IVR has been proven to increase customer satisfaction because it improves your service levels, and it is also a lot better suited to retaining and satisfying customers. So why haven’t more healthcare providers adopted this solution? It is most likely because they have not yet realized that senior citizens are not as technologically backwards as they might think, and see visual IVR as something that will increase, rather than decrease, the complexity of navigating customer service, even though this patently untrue.
You shouldn’t patronize your older customers by suggesting that they have no handle on the latest technologies because the facts clearly belie this. At the same time, with customers of this nature - those that are more likely to become easily frustrated with technology when it doesn’t work as they expect – you do want to do everything you can make life easier for them.
What it boils down to is that you need to recognize the fact that they are much the same as any other customer segment. Many older people are more technology-proficient than organizations give them credit for, and they, like other customer segments, prefer doing things as quickly and directly as they can, without having to wait to talk to an actual person.
With visual IVR, you have the opportunity to not only make navigating the sometimes complex world of healthcare simpler for them, while providing them with a 24/7 service facility but at the same time saving your contact center thousands of dollars per year.
Better customer service at a lower cost – what’s not to like about that?
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/fantastic-ivr-rise-of-the-silver-surfer
Publish Date: May 10, 2017 |
‘Customer experience’ is a phrase widely bandied about in the contact center space, but failure to define what it means to the organization can easily result in unhappy customers and lost earnings.
Defining the customer experience is not as simple as stating that it is ‘the experience that a customer has when interacting with a company.' Although this may be technically true, and even count as the textbook definition, the truth of the matter is that properly and effectively defining the customer experience encompasses a much bigger picture.
IBM, for example, has defined the customer experience as ‘the designed interaction between a customer and your organization.’ If we unpack this statement, the key term here is the design element. This is because your customer experience is ultimately determined by the way in which you have designed your actions, processes, and procedures. If they are designed well, then your customer will likely have a good experience. Design them poorly, and you will probably end up with unhappy customers.
One of the challenges with customer experience is that it is seldom something that is looked at in a holistic manner. By this, we mean that the customer experience needs to form part of the fabric of your organization, rather than merely being the focus of a single area of the business. Most often, customer experience is viewed only from the marketing point of view - how should the stores, marketing, and advertising look and feel to support the brand and give the customer an inclusive experience?
However, in most cases, there are no processes or procedures to link the contact center to marketing, as it most often resides under sales or operations. Because of this distance and the fact that most organizations still operate in silos, in most instances the marketing team will have little understanding of what takes place in the contact center.
Clearly, this is a major failure, as the contact center is inevitably at the coalface of customer interaction. It is, without a doubt, the most common communications channel a business has with its customer base. In fact, a Purdue University study pointed out that a massive 92% of customers judge an enterprise based upon their interactions with the organization’s contact center.
So if your company is defining its customer experience based on marketing, while your customers are defining their experiences based on the contact center, something is likely to give because of this disconnect – and you can bet that when it does, it will be your business that suffers, as customers shift their loyalties elsewhere.
It should be clear then that to defining the customer experience properly, you must ensure that your contact center plays a prominent role in any such definition process. After all, it is the customers' needs, perceptions, and influences that play a major role in shaping a company's direction, so the entity most closely associated with handling customers when they are unhappy should really have a big say in how your business defines the customer experience.
Since your contact center most often is the front line of the customer experience and has to face the brunt of dissatisfied customers, the processes you put in place will go a long way towards defining the customer experience. These processes need to focus on both the customers’ ease of access to information – whether this is related to purchases, simple inquiries or to fixing a problem they may have – and to their speed of access. This is all about the service level, the length of time they have to wait for resolution and the kind of hoops they have to jump through to achieve this resolution.
Furthermore, a properly trained and empowered contact center can be instrumental in increasing customer satisfaction and improving customer loyalty. Correctly and efficiently handling customer issues is the key to strengthening customer relationships and building and positioning the company brand more effectively.
In turn, handling the customer issues properly requires the correct management of pain points that can easily lead to negative customer experiences. You don’t want the customer to have to hold too long for service; you want to be able to serve them via their channel of choice and ensure seamless transition if they move from one channel to another; you don’t want to frustrate them with complex IVR menus; and you want to have the correct escalation policies in place to ensure prompt and effective action is taken to sort out the customer’s problem.
If all of the above is done right, then your agent will have the opportunity to support the brand messages and to boost customer satisfaction further, through the judicious application of discounts, vouchers or some other means of making the customer feel special. This is where we get to the crux of the customer experience: in order to ensure customer satisfaction, be prepared to go the extra mile in delivering not only service but a little extra on top. And be willing to empower your agents to make such offers.
Remember that what it boils down to is the fact that the more exceptional the customer experience, the more it impacts positively on your bottom line. Depending on your business or the vertical market you operate in, the overall monetary impact of customer experience when defined by how customers perceive their interaction with your company, can potentially be measured in millions of dollars.
Poor customer experiences are a huge source of wasted money for companies. This is not only in terms of investment in contact centers and personnel but also in terms of money lost because unhappy customers inevitably buy less from your business. Failing to educate and inform your customers can lead to confusion or frustration, and frustrated and confused customers can easily churn away from your organization, causing a dramatic shift in customer loyalty, which will have further long-term financial impacts.
On the other hand, effective problem resolution and solid customer service should lead directly to an increase in customer satisfaction, as a result of improved processes and better approaches by your agents. An improved customer experience should translate directly into long-term loyalty, with all its attendant revenue benefits.
Ultimately, you need to think carefully about how you define the customer experience, because a well-defined and thought out customer experience will play a significant role in delivering to your customers the experience you want them to receive – one that reduces customer churn and attrition; one that supports cross- and up-selling; and an one that truly succeeds in building loyalty.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/defining-the-customer-experience
Publish Date: May 4, 2017 |
Delivering a better customer experience is always a key goal, but not always that easy to achieve. Effectively implementing and utilizing a Voice of the Customer program is the answer.
By now, most enterprises understand that customer experience is vital to their businesses. In fact, many might go so far as to point out that in the current economy, they expect to be competing primarily on the customer experience ticket.
Given this, it is no surprise to learn that most companies think they know what their customers’ want. Unfortunately, what they think and what their customers think often diverge quite drastically. And failure to properly understand what your customer wants inevitably leads to a slump in respect of everything from product research and development to marketing communications, and from sales effectiveness to services delivery.
This means that companies need to understand their customers better if they truly plan on delivering the kind of customer experience that will differentiate them from their competitors. It is here that the voice-of-the-customer (VoC) program comes into play, as this is something uniquely designed to help companies better understand the experiences they are delivering. VoC describes customers’ feedback about their experiences with your products or services, as well as their future expectations for these solutions.
Remember that in the end, the customer experience ‘lives’ entirely in the minds of the customer themselves, regardless of what your organization might think. This is why VoC programs are such a priority for so many businesses - the ability to truly listen to the customer and get inside their head is crucial if your goal is to compete on customer experience – and VoC programs are the only way to systematically listen and then use this data to take action to improve the customer experience. VoC programs also enable you to monitor your own performance over time.
Of course, implementing an effective VoC program is no simple task. It entails capturing, categorizing and prioritizing customer expectations and preferences. This is necessary in order to ensure that the right mix of culture, people, processes, and technology are put in place, in a sustained effort to unfailingly delight the customer.
Of course, it is also important to understand that customers are never a single, homogeneous group. Therefore, in order to be effective, a VoC program will need to be based on well-defined customer segmentation. This can be done according to specific demographics, and by transactions, behaviors or other activities. It should also take into account other influences like loyalty program attributes and, of course, social media behaviors.
A good VoC program should encompass both manual and technology approaches: manual methods can include focus groups, reference programs, and customer interviews, all of which deliver good qualitative analysis, but fail to scale well. To achieve real scale, you should leverage technology, as this will also enable your business to continuously gather customer feedback in a way that makes it much easier both to analyze and to act upon.
Obviously, the more customer data you have access to, the more effectively you will be able to understand the VoC. This means bringing together the customer data stored in everything from your ERP and CRM to that found in e-mail, service management, billing, and marketing records. In other words, effective VoC requires you to find a way to bridge the disparate data silos within your organization, in order to properly consolidate and make sense of customer relationships.
If approached properly, there should also be little difficulty in obtaining the relevant feedback required from your customers themselves – after all, customers like to be heard and will thus most likely be happy to engage in a VoC program. Of course, this happiness will not last if the customers get the impression that you are failing to act on their input. In fact, this will likely have the opposite effect to the one you want, as it will leave them with a distinctly bad impression of your service.
It should be noted that a Gartner study has found that although some 95% of companies claim to collect customer feedback, not even half of these even bother to alert staff to the results thereof, let alone actually letting their customers know how this feedback is used. For a VoC program to be successful, you clearly need to close the loop and inform participants what was done, based on their feedback. One of the worst things you can do is to ask for input and then ignore it.
It is equally crucial to understand that VoC should be treated the same as any other touchpoint in the customer journey. In other words, your customer feedback mechanism should be designed to be a part of the customer journey.
This means that when it comes to capturing and actioning customer feedback, this must be done in a way that is authentic. Therefore, you must make the experience of giving feedback a journey in its own right. This is what we mean when we say that you must not only ask customers if they want to participate but must also close the loop by apprising them of exactly what you have done with their feedback.
Also, a successful VoC program is one where you ensure that feedback is obtained in a manner that is relevant to the customer. For example, asking them to fill in a short survey the moment they access your website is not relevant, as the customer has not yet done anything. Neither is asking them questions based on a standard template, as there will inevitably be queries here that are related to touchpoints that they have not even interacted with – not only is this not relevant, but it demonstrates to the customer that you are not genuinely interested in specific information, as you are utilizing a generic template.
Another golden rule for a successful VoC approach is to ensure that the customer is asked to undertake the survey or questionnaire as soon as possible after the event you are asking about. Remember that memory can fade quite quickly, so asking the customer how they felt about an experience that happened weeks ago will certainly impact on the accuracy of the response.
Most importantly, if enterprises want customers to tell them how they feel about all aspects of their interactions with the company, it is vital to make this experience as easy as possible to complete. At the same time, you cannot make things too easy, for fear of, on the one hand, being seen as generic, and on the other, of not receiving data that can effectively be actioned. In other words, you need to find the middle ground where you can obtain feedback that is both easy to supply by the customer and actionable by your company.
The bottom line is that if you want to be a customer experience leader, then listening to the needs of your customers is no longer an optional exercise. It is now vital to understand customer and market perceptions and how customer interactions with your organization are actually being experienced by them. If you don’t understand this, it will be extremely difficult even to meet, much less exceed, your customers’ expectations. Moreover, the value of listening to customers is real, measurable, and immediate and will undoubtedly assist you in improving your organization's performance.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/voice-of-the-customer-getting-with-the-program
Publish Date: May 3, 2017 |
Every company loves positive feedback, but the truth is it’s the negative feedback that really drives the company’s long-term success. How so? Just like any real and important relationship, only when customers complain, do companies truly discover, and hopefully solve, customer problems as they arise.
It’s tried, true (and free) data about what goes wrong and what can be improved, about what customers like and dislike, enabling a brand to grow and evolve. However, customers are not always prone to share with a company the experiences they may have had with their products or services. For every customer who bothers to complain, 26 other customers remain silent! And the ones who do share, usually they will complain on social media sites rather than contact the company directly. Therefore, every complaint is really a precious opportunity. As Bill Gates once said, Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. Let’s look at some of the practical benefits:
What drives innovation in your business? Are you truly listening to the wants and needs of your customers and working to improve your product to meet their expectations? These are questions every brand needs to ask themselves, yet today many companies overlook their most engaged, creative and cost effective source of innovation — their customers! These customers who use their products and services. You might have the best expertise in the industry, but professional knowledge will never be more valuable to business performance and innovation than a single customer who uses a product or service and offers real world feedback, especially negative. At the same time, collecting customer feedback is just the first step to ensuring product innovation. It’s what you do with the feedback that truly matters. In fact, a Gartner study shows that 95% of companies collect feedback. However, only 10% make improvements based on this feedback. The bottom line is listening to your customers and acting on their insights is the only way to guarantee you create a product or service that evolves in line with their expectations, solves their problems and fulfills their needs.
A happy customer is a retained customer, and since it costs six to seven times more to obtain a new customer than to retain an existing one, it’s worthwhile to keep your customers happy. That’s why constantly keeping a finger on the pulse of customer feedback is critical to providing the best customer experience at every touch point. And while positive feedback can be a helpful indication of what the company is already doing well, understanding why a customer is angry is even better. Negative feedback in a customer service setting can help a company reveal flaws in the product development and the customer service process. If product marketing is making promises the product is not fulfilling, this too will often emerge in the feedback. At the same time, in many cases, an unhappy customer who experienced a problem with a product or service, but it was quickly addressed and fixed, often shows more loyalty to a brand than a customer who has never been disappointed with that same product or service. In fact, studies show if a brand resolves a complaint in the customer’s favor, they will return to do business again 70% of the time, while up to 95% of first-time customers will give you a second chance if you handle their complaint in a timely manner. In the end, your customers make or break your business, so use the insight from customer feedback to create a consistent customer experience that will keep them coming back for more.
When businesses and organizations make critical decisions that determine business strategy and planning, it would be incorrect to assume that only intensive, elaborate and expensive market research can provide the necessary information that organizational leaders need in order to make those strategic decisions. As customer feedback is the ultimate source of tangible data and insight into how customers really feel about the product or service businesses deliver, this feedback is also critical to guiding strategic business planning and marketing decisions. For example, before investing time and money in new products or services, it makes good business sense to offer them first to your customer base for their feedback. Without first tapping into the perspective of their customers, companies are missing out on a critical source of data that can help determine the sustainability of a brand’s long-term success.
The bottom line is that brands that embrace and utilize their customer feedback across all channels are the ones that will develop a product or service that customers want to buy, and an experience that exceeds their expectations, enabling growth and success, now and in the future.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/the-gift-of-negative-customer-feedback
Publish Date: April 28, 2017 |
When most people think about customer service, it usually means that someone had a problem, contacted your support team, and then you acted to resolve the issue. While this approach is still the most common, the truth is this reactive listening is overrated.
Why should you create exceptional customer experience only after someone calls in to complain? Your clients will only tell you what they think they need, but it’s how you meet their unexpressed needs that make the real difference in separating yourself from the competition. Being proactive in customer service means anticipating whatever problems or issues your customers may have and addressing them even before these happen, and the benefits of such an approach have more and more organizations re-thinking their customer service strategies to ensure their long-term business success. Let’s take a look at a few of these benefits:
Today, believe it or not, more than 37% of all Tweets are customer service related (out of 500 million tweets per day)! While it may sound rather daunting, the reality is that’s a huge opportunity to turn unhappy customers into happy customers! One of the most effective strategies to do just that is by taking a proactive customer service approach and not waiting for problems to happen. When customers see that you make the extra effort to anticipate and solve problems before they occur, they feel respected and valued, and by offering an early warning system for customer pain points, it can go a long way in building long-term brand loyalty and advocacy. Also, proactively communicating with customers concerning possible problems helps you establish a reputation for transparency and honesty, which builds trust with your customers, and if your customers trust you, then they will continually reward you with their business. That stats haven't changed, generating new customers costs five times more than retaining existing customers. Through a proactive service strategy, you can ensure that your customers stay yours.
If your business is not anticipating your customer needs instead of waiting for complaints and requests, you’re missing out on a key strategy to maximize efficiency and productivity. How so? Research by Altimeter found that the number one cause for complaints online was due to poor experiences, so looking to identify negativity surrounding your brand at the earliest warning is the best way to protect yourself against a crisis. Less time in damage control means more time and resources invested elsewhere. Furthermore, by answering questions before your customers do, you can significantly reduce the number of incoming support calls, so agents can more effectively handle the more serious issues that require special attention. Finally, by spending more time communicating with your customers, you collect much more data about their needs and aspirations and potential new areas where you can expand your services to supply these needs. In other words, with proactive customer support, your customers can help you design and refine your services to serve them better.
Today, the main challenge posed by social media is that customer experience no longer a private interaction between the company and the customer, and a few of their best friends and family. Customer support is now open to all on Social media and customers are sharing their experiences with your company with millions of others around the globe, and many share and tell everyone about their experience whether good or bad. One bad customer experience can hurt a brand’s their reputation, but especially so if there is no public attempt to resolve the issue. By being communicating proactively and getting out in front of problems before, or as they arise, your company gains better control over the conversation and enables you to engage with them in a way that frames your business in the most positive light.
With the growing move to a digital Omni-channel customer experience, so too is the need for an Omni-channel customer service presence. Perhaps the ultimate form of proactive customer service is anticipating your customer needs through the deployment of self-service applications across all channels. The truth is many customers prefer to find answers to their problems themselves rather than having to call or email a company, a process that can, without a doubt, be frustrating at times. The basics of Self Service is creating a "Frequently asked questions" section on the website - where customers can be informed about issues that they encounter or using the practice of alerting customers about existing issues that they can troubleshoot themselves using a step by step guide. Proactively enabling your customers to help themselves empowers the customer and improves the overall customer experience.
Proactive customer support is all about solving problems before your customers know they have them, and the improved customer experience fuels overall brand success. It might take some extra thought and effort to build such a system, but the benefits are well worth the investment.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/the-benefits-of-proactive-customer-service
Publish Date: April 27, 2017 |
Today, artificial intelligence is one of the fastest growing technologies within IT operations. Already in 2014, the global artificial intelligence market was valued at about $126 Billion, and that number is expected to reach around $3 Trillion by 2024, which means it is growing at a rate of about 36% a year, according to a report from Transparency Market Research.
One of the main catalysts of this surging market is the use of chatbots in customer service. Many companies around the globe are beginning to add virtual assistants who can provide fast, easy and human-like customer service at first contact and then customer service representatives handle only cases when they have an add-on value.
Let’s look at some of the reasons why:
The vast amount of customer data that is collected by companies is used essentially as the data analyzed by the AI system; this makes each virtual agent only as smart as the data it has been connected to! However, the more data you feed the AI system, the more it learns from the data, the more patterns it recognizes and the more accurately it can communicate with customers in real time. In addition, data sources such as CRM systems, live call transcripts, internal corporate databases, voice transcripts and FAQ’s can all provide virtual assistants with valuable information. This data can be translated into deep machine learning that creates progressively higher and higher levels of intelligence and providing them with the ability to ‘learn’ the correct answer to any question over time.
As customers today expect to receive personal digital experience across all channels at all times, intelligent virtual personal assistants can be easily deployed on almost any interface, including voice response, mobile apps, SMS, the web, and instant messaging. To keep up with the growth of these channels, companies can leverage chatbots to meet the rising volume of support requests. At the same time, chatbots are ironically helping to deliver a more personalized experience as customers don’t have to repeat themselves multiple times to different agents every time they contact an organization. Unlike the results provided by internet searches, which simply match keywords to the requested topic, chat bots are beginning to utilize natural language processing technology, so they actually understand what the customer is asking, and can provide personalized, on-demand service around the clock.
According to Forrester, 77% of U.S. online consumers say that “valuing my time” is the most important part of customer service. One of the main benefits of virtual assistants is that they can greatly reduce the time it takes for your customers to resolve their issues, keeping them happy customers. Customers will initiate first contact for a variety of issues, and once they do, there are various reasons that cause customers delays. When there’s a virtual assistant that’s available 24/7 that can quickly answer questions across multiple channels, it eliminates long wait times or having to be transferred to different representatives in order to resolve their issue, while also speeding up the time in queue for customers who can’t be helped by the virtual assistant.
Not only do intelligent virtual assistants have a huge impact on customer satisfaction, but they also greatly impact company costs. For companies with a lot of volume, increasing automation rates for routine customer requests enables companies to essentially improve customer service levels with fewer agents needed to operate the call center, which also means less space is required, which together can result in millions of dollars in savings on the overall contact center infrastructure.
While virtual customer assistants have the capability to automate many basic customer service functions, the goal is not just about performing the same job with fewer agents, but transforming the role of human agents to focus their attention on the more complex cases, enabling them to provide better and warmer service to their customers. This will not only boost customer loyalty; it can help improve motivation levels for the agents themselves who can connect more to the human element of customer service, and even help reduce the need to keep training new staff in an industry with a traditionally high turnover.
The potential of chatbots for changing how customers interact with companies, and vice versa, as well as the cost savings they offer, is incredible. And as technology keeps advancing, the role of chatbots in customer service and sales will as well. If chatbots are the indeed the future of customer service, the future is now!
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/chatbots-are-the-future-of-customer-service
Publish Date: April 10, 2017 |
There's no denying the fact that customer service is critical to any business. As customers have more alternatives than ever, the businesses that win the battle of customer service gain a clear competitive advantage. That's why it's so important to understand how new technologies can help your company keep that competitive edge in order to best serve your customers and ultimately improve the efficiency of your business Here are four of the hottest technology trends ready to significantly improve customer service in 2017 and beyond:
According to a BI Intelligence report, mobile commerce will make up 45% of total e-commerce, equaling $284 billion in sales by 2020. Therefore, brands will continue to emphasize responsive online storefronts designed for mobile devices in order to ensure a seamless experience, especially if they want to cater to the growing, mobile-centric Millennial demographic. However, as more and more transactions are performed through mobile, it’s only natural for consumers to expect mobile customer service as well. In fact, a report on mobile CX found 63% of consumers use mobile devices a few times a month or more to search online for customer and product support. These consumers expect to connect anytime, anywhere, and providing a text messaging solution allows brands to stay in touch throughout the entire customer journey, from shopping to buying and beyond. Look for more brands to integrate this solution into their customer service arsenal in the upcoming year.
Today, AI is one of the fastest growing technologies within IT operations. One of the main catalysts of this surging market is the use of chatbots in customer service. Many companies around the globe are beginning to replace customer service representatives with virtual assistants who can provide fast, cost-effective and human-like customer service. The vast amount of customer data that is collected by companies is used essentially as a data warehousing for an AI system. This data can be translated into deep machine learning that creates progressively higher and higher levels of intelligence and providing them with the ability to ‘learn’ the correct answer to any question over time. As customers today expect to receive instant service across all channels at all times, intelligent virtual personal assistants can be easily deployed on almost any interface, including voice response, mobile apps, SMS, the web, and instant messaging. To keep up with the growth of these channels, look for companies can leverage the power of chatbots to meet the rising volume of support requests with quicker response times.
Today, the trend toward big data analytics is changing how businesses communicate with customers. Utilizing complex data sets from various sources, companies are gaining important insights into customer behavior and preferences and then using such feedback to provide a more personalized customer service, which drives sales and lasting customer loyalty. Furthermore, by leveraging big data analytics, brands can identify customer pain and passion points more effectively, while even anticipating what customers will ask for in advance to quickly resolve each customer interaction. According to Salesforce, 57% of consumers today are willing to share personal data with companies that send personalized offers and discounts. With such access becoming ever easier, look more and more brands to finally make the push to leverage customer data from their CRMs to create more tailored experiences in 2017.
It’s no secret that the key to successful customer support is communication. By leveraging the key insights available through big data combined with artificial intelligence, brands have an opportunity to collect feedback and more effectively communicate with customers in real-time. For that reason, messaging apps, which have quickly become the dominant form of communication for consumers, are also set to become a critical CX channel for companies. Today 2.5 billion people around the world use messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat and that number is expected to exceed 3.6 billion by 2018. Facebook led the charge in 2016 when it announced it was turning its instant messaging and software application service, Messenger, into a platform that allows businesses to use it as a customer service tool to chat with consumers, and now other innovative companies are also exploring using such platforms for customer support. With the functionality of “always on” customer support, chat apps have a much higher usage and retention rate than most mobile apps, so look for messaging apps being offered by brands to only increase in 2017.
Each of these customer service trends seek to create a positive, customer-centric experience that gives consumers more of what they want, while businesses will also benefit from a deeper understanding of their customers, businesses will be able to give relevant customer service to the customers based on their needs and expectations, together with new ways to utilize this knowledge and driving better business results. Sound like a win-win.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/4-technology-trends-set-to-improve-customer-experience-in-2017
Publish Date: April 6, 2017 |
For over a century we have been using machines, and as technology has advanced, they have taken on an increasing role in our lives, carrying out a variety of daily tasks. Today, it is safe to say we are even dependent for many things on machines designed to act intelligently. Nevertheless, when people hear the term “artificial intelligence,” the instinctual reaction is still one of confusion, concern, and even fear.
No doubt part of the fear of AI has been implanted by Hollywood and science fiction, which has perpetuated a generally negative association of AI that keeps us in fear of the future, one where machines copy intelligent human behavior until they become even smarter than humans, eventually becoming the ultimate threat to our very existence (see “the Matrix”). In fact, according to a survey conducted by Chapman University regarding Americans’ fears, technology ranked as second highest on the fear scale, while 22% of those surveyed feared artificial intelligence specifically.
The truth is, some form of applied AI is already at work in a vast number of applications that are useful in virtually every field. However, what is important to remember is that a machine is still ultimately just a piece of equipment made up of various parts that work together to perform a function when given the power to do so. Similarly, regarding the powerful and complex algorithms of “neural networks” that are fueling machine learning applications, and which work to classify information in the same way a human brain does. There were actual people that created and programmed the algorithms, devising the logic and steps the machine requires to carry out the given tasks.
Today, one of the main fields beginning to reap the benefits of new AI technology is customer service. In fact, one of the predictions in Gartner’s Customer 360 summit was that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with enterprises without interacting with a human!
In the meantime, as customers voice their complaints across all channels, via phone, email, online chat, and social media, etc., companies are struggling to respond quickly enough to their customers on all fronts. In fact, according to Accenture, businesses are losing $1.6 trillion annually due to poor customer service, so a new digital IT strategy is a pressing issue for many brands.
Artificial intelligence allows companies to respond to customers faster and with more accuracy. Instead of agents needing to memorize company’s customer policies and promotions, while sifting through multiple databases looking for relevant customer information and processing it, all while on a call with the customer, computers utilizing machine learning applications can now understand a customer’s question, quickly search its memory banks, and give the best, most accurate, answer. However, answers are not just pulled from a database. It’s cognitive, meaning it can comprehend the sentiment and nuances of the request. How? The vast amount of customer data that is collected by companies is used essentially as a “knowledge base” for an AI system. The more data you feed the AI system, the more it learns from the data, the more patterns it recognizes and the more effectively it can communicate and handle customers. By sensing or being told whether its answers are right or wrong, it alters the approach it takes in the future, so its accuracy is always improving.
Furthermore, to keep up with the massive growth of messaging channels, companies can leverage artificial intelligence to meet the rising volume of support requests, while also supporting increased demands for speed of response and accuracy. In fact, customer service is the first industry already seeing the massive benefits of such change management. By deploying both messaging and AI together, companies can scale a customer service operation, connect quickly to more customers, while also cutting customer service costs.
The truth is, despite the speculation that AI chatbots will completely replace humans in call centers, there will always be those customers who need the human touch. The successful companies will be those that use chat bots to help agents take care of those tasks that can be easily automated, such as helping to make an online transaction or looking up a customer’s order status. As a result, AI support can ideally provide what customers need before they seek out human support. If not, it can at least route the right messages to the right people, helping customer service reps to prioritize their responses, and thus leading to increased sales and customer engagement opportunities for brands.
With the clear benefits AI offers companies, its integration into everyday IT operations is only going to keep growing, and by leveraging its capabilities to match increased customer service expectations, brands can now reap the benefits of this changing digital landscape. That is nothing to be afraid of!
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/artificial-intelligence-and-better-customer-service-go-hand-in-hand
Publish Date: March 30, 2017 |
Customer service trends are today driven by the need to meet consumer expectations. However, the evolution of technological innovation together with the shift in the demographics of consumers has led to quickly changing expectations. The main challenge in customer service strategy today lies in its ability to adapt to these changes and to grow in complexity, especially as it becomes increasingly crucial to the success of a company.
Customer service is indeed the face of your company and to stagnate in meeting your customer expectations could spell doom. Here are five customer expectations in 2017 your company needs to meet:
Once upon a time, quality and price were the essence of purchase decisions, but today more and more brands are chosen based on whether the overall customer experience matches their expectations, and the failure to do is leading customers to look for brands that will. Especially as the Millennial generation has become the largest worldwide, it's critical that your customer experience design and customer service capabilities are prepared to meet the needs of these younger customers. In fact, a recent study reveals that 72% of Millennials are actually more likely to spend their hard-earned money on positive experiences rather than on strictly material products. In other words, receiving the business of Millennials requires more than the traditional exchange of value for money. Customer service is the key to proving this experience, and as a result, gaining their loyalty and advocacy.
Today, one of the main expectations regarding the customer experience is its level of personalization. According to Accenture, 73% of consumers prefer to do business with retailers that use their personal information to make the shopping experience more relevant. To achieve this, brands need to build insightful profiles of customers based on previous journeys. As a result, agents are equipped with a comprehensive view of their customers, including a complete history of their interactions and transaction history with the company, so not only do those customers don’t have to repeat information every time they make contact, but it enables the personalized experience they expect. This approach can also extend to proactively contacting customers, such as sending relevant promotions, follow-up calls to ensure satisfaction, etc. Indeed, fostering relationships with customers can significantly help companies not only meet but exceed customer expectations, turning them into happy customers.
In this age of Omni-channel interaction, customers expect companies to be able to communicate with them on their preferred channel, be it in response to a self-service inquiry, an e-mail, live chat, social media post or speaking with a live agent on the phone, with the choice often depending on the complexity of the issue at hand. So a customer service Omnipresence, wherever that may be, is essential. At the same time, while communication channels are evolving to meet growing customer expectations, also customers expect consistency in their Omni-channel customer support. So the customer experience and cross-platform branding must be the same on all channels in order to minimize friction and effort for your customers.
Today, no matter the channel, just having a presence isn’t enough. Consumers expect your customer service to help them quickly and efficiently. When they have questions about your service or product, they must be answered in real time, or the customer will simply seek out another available option. In fact, 77% of people say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service. With every additional transfer, phone call or email, customers slowly lose patience with your customer service, which can really hurt your likelihood to build and retain your customer base. So as more channels are rolled out with new and innovative engagement features, be ready to be there waiting because that is where your customers will be.
Today, many customers are prioritizing more of a synthesis of a company’s values with their own. Indeed, consumer habits are shifting from a wild consumerism to a more conscious, selective consumerism, and this being expressed in their choice of which companies to support with their buying decisions. In fact, according to research from Barkley, an independent advertising agency, more than 50% of Millennials make an effort to buy products from companies that support the causes they care about, The reality of more values-based consumer base should influence the strategic planning of your customer service, as customers may expect these shared values also to be expressed by the service reps who they directly interact with.
The bottom line is that customers expect a fast, meaningful, personalized experience on the communication channels of their choice. If you up to the challenge, the results will speak for themselves.
Source: http://www.jacada.com/blog/top-5-customer-service-expectations-in-2017
Publish Date: March 28, 2017 |
LOGIN WITH YOUR CONTACTCENTERWORLD.COM ACCOUNT
I am checking out all the amazing and daily updated content on ContactCenterWorld.com and networking with professionals worldwide
Send To Friends Post On My Wall