Too often, I’ll see a vision or mission statement on an entry wall, but then observe very different priorities in day-to-day operations. We put our customers first, but keep the time you spend with them to three minutes. Or we deliver world class service, but we sure don’t have the resources we need on Mondays. In the most successful organizations, …
There are many technologies that can support and enable customer service. Many. A ton. And there are myriad decisions to be made around suppliers and solutions. Sometimes, the less you know, the better you are at asking the right “dumb” questions. The ones that really matter. “How does that make things better for our customers? Easier for our employees?” Don’t …
The ICMI Contact Center Expo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is coming up quickly from May 13 to 16. If you are planning to attend, or if you are interested in current contact center trends, you might be interested in a brief interview I did with Don Fluckinger of TechTarget. In it, I discuss customer experience, agent skills and the impact …
If you work in customer service, you will inevitably interact with angry customers. It comes with the territory. Their anger could be caused by a process or a product that’s gone awry. They may have already had a bad experience as they attempted to get resolution. Or maybe their anger is misplaced. For any number of reasons, the customer is …
On a recent trip to the Bahamas, I was reminded of the importance of an effective service strategy. As a customer service professional, it’s easy to get caught up in the daily details and lose sight of what ties it all together. There are many ways to approach strategy, but there are some common characteristics among organizations that have the …
Recently, I was interviewed by Convo, a publication of NewVoiceMedia. The focus of the interview was on the impact of bots and AI, the continued need for human interaction, and the changes taking place in customer service. Take a few minutes to read the interview and consider if your organization is prepared for the changes ahead.
Everything to do with getting resources right in a contact center begins with predicting what the workload will be. Workload is what leads to how many agents are hired, what your schedule should look like, the number of work stations you need, even how many snacks are in the cafeteria. You get the idea. In a recent LinkedIn Learning course …
An important aspect of building customer relationships is managing customer feedback. This includes both short- and long-term objectives: it involves responding to feedback as it happens and collecting and analyzing feedback from many customers to look for recurring problems and opportunities. In a past issue of The Edge of Service® Newsletter, I look at what it takes to manage customer …
