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Webinar: How to Give GR8 Service & Have Your Followers ‘Like’ You in All Social Channels
July 22, 2010 11:00 AM PDT / 2:00 PM EDT
Customers are increasingly turning to social media to air their service issues - especially when they feel companies could give a tweet about them through other channels. In the process, your service reputation is now out in the open for everyone to see. But some companies are leading the charge to use services like Twitter, Facebook, and virtual communities to brand their 21st century service identity. This webinar, featuring industry expert and author Rich Gallagher, will show you how to leverage social media for better service if you're new to it, and how to sharpen your virtual service image if you're an old pro. Topics we'll cover include:
- Why your service is going public and going viral: a look at today's digital consumer
- Social media service success stories: Comcast, Southwest Airlines, Zappos, and more
- Understanding virtual service channels
- Do's and don'ts: How to communicate effectively in a cyber service world
Enkata Announces Customer Segment Analytics
Enkata, a provider of analytics-powered performance management software, launched Customer Segment Analytics as part of its Enkata Discover 8.0, the latest version of its on-demand contact center analytics solution. Using Customer Segment Analytics, business managers can measure how customers react to marketing campaigns, product/service changes, and self-service strategies in the service channels to quickly gauge success or failure. Once a customer segment is created or imported, business managers can track the service metrics associated with the customer segment over time including the number of calls, web visits, emails, CSAT score, First Contact Resolution etc.
SoundBite Communications Enhances Customer Contact Strategies With Hosted Predictive Dialing
SoundBite Communications, Inc., a provider of on-demand, multi-channel proactive customer communications, announced that it is has added predictive dialing functionality to enhance its outbound voice capabilities on the SoundBite Engage platform. Predictive dialers are widely used in contact centers to automatically place calls to large lists of telephone numbers and directly connect reached parties to available agents. SoundBite’s hosted predictive offering can supplement or substitute traditional, on-premise dialers and provides an effective option for managing capacity while eliminating the need to make additional infrastructure investments.
Hayneedle finds a path to more sales with call-routing technology
Online retailer Hayneedle.com is turning to technology to boost revenue from its contact center operations. The retailer, which operates 220 specialized e-commerce sites, such as Cribs.com and Hammocks.com, implemented in September a new system that helps it route phones calls to the sales associate best suited to handle each call. As of June, sales through its contact center are up 38% over the same time last year. The system, from Avaya Inc., enables Hayneedle to route calls to the most knowledgeable and best-performing agent in the office. It also can route calls first to the reps that generate the highest sales -- in general, or for a particular category -- if they are free.
source: Internet Retailer
Webinar: Measuring and Managing First-Contact Resolution: Challenges & Techniques
Thursday, August 5 at 11 AM PDT/ 2 PM EDT
First contact resolution, or FCR, is the key to superior support and operational efficiency for an organization. Get is right, and you win with customers, but get it wrong and it wreaks havoc across the company. So how do you effectively measure and manage this crucial metric in order to grow your success? Join industry expert Dave Brown, author of "Optimizing Support Center Staffing," and Brenda Dentinger of Citrix Online to learn why FCR should be a top priority and how to accurately assess and measure.
Attend the Webinar to learn:
-- The growing importance of FCR
-- Methods for capturing and calculating FCR
-- How to align your measurements with industry benchmarks
-- The relationship between FCR and other performance factors
Multi-Channel Service Delivery: The Path to Creating a Great Service Experience
The latest research report published by the Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company, found that leading service companies were not only looking to utilize channels other than the contact center as a means to capture customer requests and deliver service, but also invest resources in ensuring the consistency and efficacy of information and the overall experience available on all delivery channels.
While the contact center, fax, and email have been the traditional channels available for customer service requests, channels such as live chat, customer-specific web portals, and others have seen increased support in the last three years. Looking ahead, organizations are actively looking to increase the availability of service information via live chat, social media platforms, messaging, and technical forums and discussion boards.
Research findings in the Multi-Channel Service Delivery report indicate that while all firms are looking to improve time to repair and first-call resolution, leading firms focus on increasing access to customer -- and service-specific information and knowledge across the organization. As such, these firms exhibited the following:
- An 85% current performance in first-call resolution, in contrast to a 56% performance for all others
- A 21% reduction in total support costs over the last 12 months, as opposed to a 1% reduction for all others
- An 86% current performance in customer retention when compared to a 74% performance for all other organizations
Americans Will Spend 9% More With Companies That Provide Excellent Service
A majority of Americans report that quality customer service is more important to them in today's economic environment (61%) and will spend an average of 9% more when they believe a company provides excellent service. However, in a challenging economy where growth is harder to achieve, many businesses are missing out on this opportunity. Although only a little more than a third of Americans (37%) believe that companies have increased their focus on providing quality service:
- 27% feel businesses have not changed their attitude toward customer service.
- 28% say that companies are now paying less attention to good service.
These findings were released in the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, a survey conducted in the U.S. and eleven other countries exploring attitudes and preferences toward customer service.
Not surprisingly, nine in ten Americans (91%) consider the level of customer service important when deciding to do business with a company. But only one-quarter (24%) believe companies value their business and will go the extra mile to keep it. Most feel businesses can do more to retain their loyalty:
- 48% feel companies are helpful but don't do anything extra to keep their business.
- Worse, 21% believe that companies take their business for granted.
Importantly, customers are spreading the word willingly and widely when they experience good service. In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, customers are more inclined to talk about a positive experience than complain about a negative one. Three-quarters (75%) are very likely to speak positively about a company after a good service experience in contrast with 59% who are very likely to speak negatively about a company after poor service.
Good service experiences also carry more weight than bad ones when Americans make future spending decisions. Consumers are far more likely to give a company repeat business after a good service experience (81%) than they are to never do business with a company again after a poor experience (52%).
In fact, consumers say the three most influential factors when deciding which companies they do business with include personal experience (98%), a company's reputation or brand (92%), and recommendations from friends and family (88%).
Nearly half (48%) of consumers report always or often using an online posting or blog to get others' opinions about a company's customer service reputation. But when consumers go online they're looking for "watch outs," saying they put greater credence in negative reviews on blogs and social networking sites than on positive ones (57% and 48%, respectively).
A negative service experience is an important factor for most Americans: 81% have decided never to do business with a company again because of poor customer service in the past. When asked how many poor experiences they allow, half of all Americans (50%) reported it takes two poor service experiences before they stop doing business with a company.
Importantly, consumers are far more forgiving if a company has earned their trust over time. Almost nine-in-ten consumers (86%) report they're willing to give a company a second chance after a bad experience if they've historically experienced great customer service with that company.
But companies who get it wrong should realize it's at a cost.
- Half of consumers (52%) expect something in return after a poor customer service experience, beyond resolving the problem.
- Most consumers (70%) want an apology or some form of reimbursement.
In most countries where the highest percentage of consumers feel that service is more important today, there is a corresponding belief that companies have increased their focus on providing good customer service:
- 65% of Indian, 49% of Japanese and 47% of Mexican consumers agree with this statement.
However, some consumers are not feeling the love. In Australia (71%), Germany (66%), and Canada and Italy (65% each), consumers say they feel companies haven't increased their focus on service or are paying less attention to it.
Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience in a Multichannel World
Today's online channels not only serve as marketplaces but also as public forums in which consumers and businesses sound off about your products, your service, your people and your brand. No longer do companies serve customers in a one-to-one environment, regardless of channel. Thanks to the Web, every interaction has the potential to become broadcast as one-to-many, for better or for worse.
Full Article...
Finding the Time to Let Call Center Leaders Lead
Have you identified the most important role or position in your center? Based on the thousands of centers I have observed, the most important job in the call center would appear to be the Team Leader or Supervisor, or whatever you call your frontline leader. This is why contact center management, HR and senior leadership should do everything possible to build strong frontline leaders.
Full Article...
How savvy firms monitor customers' online chatter
Monitoring, analyzing and responding to what consumers are saying on social media sites are no longer just activities for big-name companies. With consumers sharing their experiences through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other outlets at "the speed of thought," as Gartner Inc. analyst Toby Bell puts it, this is quickly becoming an essential piece of any company's risk management and customer engagement strategy.
Full Article...
Getting Your Team in the Zone
How do you change the focus of your employees? To improve the training and performance of any employee, whether it's customer service training, sales training, or management training, you need to assist your employees to focus on what they can control instead of what they can't so they will be more successful. This article discusses what your agents can control on the phones.
Full Article...
Taking Control of IT Changes
One of the hardest parts about managing IT resources is understanding how to control and document changes to your network infrastructure, applications and systems. And as enterprises deploy more virtualization tools, along with upgrading and improving their desktops, managing these changes effectively can make the difference between satisfying users and dealing with chronic downtime.
Full Article...
Keeping Employees Accountable for Results: Quick Tips for Busy Managers
by Brian Cole Miller
Keeping Employees Accountable for Results contains checklists, how-tos, and other tools to manage performance on an ongoing basis. The book gives busy managers quick, step-by-step advice on: * Setting expectations * Monitoring progress * Giving feedback * Following through
Light on theory and heavy on practical application, Keeping Employees Accountable for Results gives time-pressed managers the proven, practical information they need to help their people accomplish more.
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2010 Service and Support Technology Showcase Now Available
SupportIndustry.com has released the 2010 version of our Service & Support Technology Showcase. This in-depth buyer's guide features the latest tools and technologies in the support services industry that enable support operations to deliver superior customer service. To view the listings,click here...
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