Every Event an Opportunity

Consumers have more options than ever for reaching out to a company with questions or concerns, but with more options comes higher expectations. Customers whose expectations aren’t met are increasingly proving that they will go elsewhere for their service. 

Agents like helping customers. Happy customers buy more and require less service. It is a simple equation that too few companies recognize. A myopic focus on servicing cost creates a reverse incentive for customers, agents, and business partners to select alternate providers for their products and services.

Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are transforming customers’ expectations of what constitutes exceptional service. A well-executed AI experience increases convenience for customers. However, a clunky or poorly orchestrated solution can actually increase customers’ frustration when interacting with your brand.

Historically, businesses engaged in customer service have implemented new systems to address missing capabilities or to improve efficiency. With the number of overlapping capabilities in the marketplace, that mindset needs to shift toward designing solutions with an eye toward experience orchestration rather than simply adding more systems to address changing business conditions.

People hate calling contact centers. However, many companies that seek to create a customer experience strategy that leads to an improved experience are often hindered by the use of flat success measurements such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).

Effective knowledge capture is the first step to leveraging the tacit knowledge retained by your employees, partners, and customers to improve your organization. Still, it’s only the first step. As they say, knowledge is power, but what is knowledge without appropriate management to ensure its dissemination to the people who can best act upon it?

When does customer service begin? For your customer, it begins with the first perception they have of your business. However, it’s the first interaction between customer and business—in-person, over the phone or online—that gives businesses an opportunity to build a relationship.

The past few decades have seen the business world sway multiple times between call center outsourcing and internal call center operations.

When it comes to measuring the success of your customer call center, there’s no shortage of lists telling you which metrics to track. Many of these focus on Average Handle Time, with Case Processing Time close behind. Call Volume is a big one too. In fact, almost every resource out there lists these, along with First Call Resolution, Drop/Abandonment Rate, and Average Time in Queue among the “top ten most important” call center metrics.