Today’s best-in-class organizations know that delivering world-class customer service is no longer a value-add, but a must. After all, it’s impossible for a company to survive without its customers. Still, some believe that great service is just too costly, so they do the bare minimum. But, what these businesses fail to understand is that poor customer service actually costs more. How much more exactly? According to data aggregated from KISSmetrics, globally, the average value of a lost customer is $243. Is it even more costly for your organization?

I've recently purchased a new software application for my business. The tool has been helpful in making our team and myself more productive. There is of course a bit of a learning curve and a few areas where I've struggled to figure things out but not enough to contact the provider’s help desk or customer service line.

Many contact centers have a goal of completing a number of quality evaluations per agent per month. What is less often talked about is the timeliness of those evaluations and how long after a call agents typically receive feedback.   

Is your Quality Monitoring program the right fit for the Knowledge Workers in your contact center?  

With advances in technology, previously disparate teams of Knowledge Workers are now often working together as part of a contact center that was traditionally comprised of the Task Worker. 

Who could ask for anything more?  

Patents, awards, contracts and customers! There are times when you are so grateful, you just have to shout it out and tell all your friends. This year has been especially productive and rewarding making all of us at Envision so incredibly honored and proud.

Recently I ordered a product online. The experience was safe, easy, price competitive and the item was delivered right to my door step.  It occurred to me how many things had to go right to create this great customer experience.  Their website had to function well in various browsers. Their payment portal had to work properly. They needed to have my item in stock and be able to ship it by the promised date. Every step of the order and fulfillment process had to be perfect to produce a happy customer. Miss even one step and a customer would be disappointed.

No matter what type of contact center, we all have agents with different levels of tenure, skill and motivation that inevitably leads to a bell curve of agent performance and effectiveness. We all desire our agents move to the upper end of the curve where that magic combination of high productivity and quality exists.

Have you ever had a coach or manager offer such helpful, or not so helpful, advice? Did it make you want to jump right in to the conversation and ask for guidance or did you, as most of us do, get defensive and try to explain your actions?

As children, we’re asked by our teachers and parents what we want to be when we grow up. As adults, however, we know the answer to this question isn’t so easy—especially in today’s working world, where it’s common for employees to wear multiple hats and balance interdepartmental responsibilities. Just consider the evolving relationship between sales and marketing, where roles and dependencies are progressively converging.

Since the beginning of time, one thing has remained the same when it comes to consumerism: we naturally gravitate towards personalized products and services. It’s why most of us would rather buy a shirt with a logo or design, verses a generic tee. It’s why some of us would even go so far as to have a shirt custom made if we can’t find what we’re specifically looking for.

There’s no denying that every business today, regardless of size or industry, is driven by two simple words: customer experience.

Patient access teams and contact center agents have more in common than some think. Both represent the front line of customer service; interact with customers at multiple touchpoints of their experiences; and, most importantly, both require mission-critical technology that supports their core functions and priority objectives.

Ask any business owner and they’ll agree that the millennial generation (born between 1980 and 2000) is challenging organizations to redefine their values, internal processes, retention strategies and more. Unlike former generations (Gen X, Baby Boomers), this group tends to care less about income and more about organizational transparency; less about benefits and more about buy-in; less about PTO and more about work-life balance.

If you’re just checking in now, Parts 1 and 2  of this series explore specific areas where contact center managers can embrace openness and honesty with customers and employees. Companies looking to foster a culture of transparency and trust, however, cannot overlook the most important area of business they must be honest about: finances.

Every business leader should tell you that honesty and integrity is vital for success. In Part 1 of this series, we explored how contact center managers can promote a culture of transparency and trust via quality monitoring. Now, let’s take a look at how managers can promote this culture internally by embracing openness, honesty and truthfulness with agents…

We’ve all heard the age-old saying, “Honesty is the best policy.” We live in a world, however, where the truth is that honesty isn’t always promoted. Just consider the U.S. presidential candidates this election season. FBI director James Comey deemed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton “extremely careless” in the way she handled classified information on a private email server as secretary of state. Meanwhile, Republican candidate Donald Trump has yet to release his tax returns to the general public.

Since the advent of the cloud, there has been an ongoing battle between software licensing and Software as a Service (SaaS). The former involves a company signing a licensing contract that permits them to operate a physical piece of software onsite at their location. Meanwhile, the latter involves no physical software product and no licensing contract; rather, the product is available to the company on the cloud as a platform that is hosted by a third-party SaaS provider.

Designed to engage, encourage social connections and maximize attention levels, video games have a certain special appeal. Filled with attractive graphics, challenging levels and exciting storylines, it can be difficult to put a controller down once you’ve started playing.

Call recording is a mainstay within the contact center, utilized by organizations for everything from agent training to risk management to compliancy assurance. Most importantly, however, call recording can (and should) be used to transform the customer experience (CX).

As you know, contact center agents are often your business’s first line of defense. Customer contacts happen at the greatest frequency early in the purchase process when customers are researching brands and weighing their options.

As a contact center leader you’re constantly under pressure to drive revenue for your organization by ensuring that your agents are engaged and supporting an environment that effectively satisfies the needs of your customers.

Data is one of the most useful tools you have at your disposal when it comes to driving productivity in the contact center. Data helps your contact center define and measure progress toward goals, plus it serves as a quantifiable measure for validating success.

As a contact center supervisor, you want what’s best for your customers, your team and your business as a whole. So, you want to eliminate any gaps between your performance and customer expectations while staying aligned with corporate goals. Out of necessity, then, as the overseer of a modern facility, keeping up with technology is one of your primary concerns. In your call center, this means optimizing communication: enabling your agents and customers to seamlessly carry on the conversation over a number of different service channels.

Is your call center experiencing abnormal increases in agent churn? Before you start to panic, know that call centers have one of the highest turnover rates of any industry. In fact, according to research from QATC, overall averages for the call center industry as a whole range between 30 percent and 45 percent.

If your superior were to ask you whether or not you think you’re doing your best, could you confidently answer yes? While this is a tough question, ask it of yourself every once in a while nevertheless to measure whether you’re on top of your game.

Today’s customers are more critical of companies than ever before, being that expectations have been raised by the multitude of businesses vying for their attention. One bad customer experience could leave a bad taste in their mouths or, worse, send them running to a competitor.

Chances are you have a slew of different personalities that make up your customer service team. For example, you might have a few people who are extremely outgoing and another group of agents who are more shy and/or quiet.

A recent survey from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) determined that flight crew performance is the most influential factor when evaluating one’s travel experience. In other words, a simple smile or friendly greeting from a flight attendant can do wonders compared even to extra leg room or a free in-flight snack.

Providing stellar customer service needs to be your company’s credo if you hope to be successful in today’s marketplace. Most businesses are so focused on acquiring new customers that they sometimes end up neglecting their existing ones. This can prove to be extremely detrimental to your company’s bottom line.

Working on the frontline gives agents the daunting responsibility of ensuring a first-rate customer experience for callers. Though the ultimate objective is to resolve all issues quickly—during the first call optimally—this is not always possible. When a delay is unavoidable, your agents should be trained to empathize with the customer’s likely feelings of frustration.

Millions of commuters and travelers struggling to reach their destinations in last month’s massive snowstorm, “Blizzard 2016,” found themselves stranded with no means out because their transportation carriers were unsuccessful in updating their communication channels. While the airlines and train companies can’t be blamed for the nearly two feet of snow that pummeled a large part of the East Coast, they can be held accountable for leaving customers without the necessary information as to delays and cancellations.

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are no longer used only by marketers and advertisers to promote their brands. Today, more and more companies are discovering that social media needs to become a channel in which consumers request and receive customer service.

Good customer service is more important to an organization now more than ever. Often it’s the only contact a customer has with a company, and, as such, that interaction will directly impact the customer’s perception of your business. It’s a reflection of you, your products and your organization as a whole; which is why providing a stellar customer experience is vital to every business. In fact, more than half (54 percent) of consumers would pay more money for better customer care from their preferred brands, according to the Xerox study, “The State of Customer Service 2015”.

A popular maxim for the new year is “out with the old and in with the new”—something many contact center managers should consider if they still rely on outdated training techniques and performance metrics. Managers who want to achieve the best possible customer service must leverage the latest technology to ensure ongoing call center efficiency and agent effectiveness. Without upgraded software that supports such objectives, their contact centers may fall flat before too long.

More and more people are choosing to bypass the telephone when interacting with an organization for customer-related issues. Instead they’re turning to social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, which have increasingly become important channels through which consumers are soliciting and receiving customer service. 

Every day contact centers are providing more of what consumers want: faster, more informative and valuable service. Driven by growing omni-channel interactions, enterprises are moving away from limited-function contact centers to multifunction and integrated ones. Customers expect to have the option of talking with a live agent from wherever they are across all company-accessed channels, such as Facebook, Twitter and SMS text. It’s up to the contact center to meet those expectations or risk losing their business. As such, managers need to arm agents with the necessary information to meet these multichannel demands. 

In an environment where stellar service has become an expectation rather than a pleasant surprise, contact centers are in a prime position to truly shine and become an integral part of the business. But to do this, they must positively impact their customers. That’s no easy task, however, since today’s Internet savvy consumers are more informed than ever and have likely fully researched and attempted to solve whatever problem they’re calling in about well before making contact with one of your agents.  

With Christmas just a few weeks away, call centers are experiencing an unprecedented volume of customer inquiries, and in today’s ultra competitive marketplace companies just can’t afford the repercussions of poor customer experiences. After all, social media and ratings sites make it easy for consumers to swap stories and discuss their interactions—both good and bad—with an organization. It’s important to remember that despite how wonderful a product or service is, today’s consumers simply won’t spend their hard earned money on poor customer service.

In today’s omni-channel world, consumers expect service on their own terms, whenever they want it and from whichever channels they choose. Social media and multichannel communication, in tandem with multigenerational customers, are raising the bar for businesses and their contact centers.

According to Forrester Application Development and Delivery Expert Kate Leggett, businesses will be exploring proactive engagement—that is, the ability to anticipate a customer’s needs in order to better answer questions and improve the customer experience—in 2015

Now that the well-deserved celebrating and pats on the back of Customer Service Week are over, it’s time for managers to take stock of their contact centers. This is the perfect time to review and overhaul your existing customer service initiatives and introduce some new ones.

As consumer behavior and technology evolves, contact center managers must reassess their current policies to ensure their organizations can thrive. Today, customers are talking, texting, tweeting and chatting more than ever. Their lifestyles demand fast, convenient access to information, and, if you haven’t already started an account, Twitter is a perfect place to begin keeping up with the pace; especially during the holiday season.

Customer service can be challenging enough -- it’s hard to please everyone -- but adding multiple communication outlets to the mix requires even more ingenuity.

The recently appointed CEO of United Continental Holdings took out full-page newspaper ads apologizing to customers and employees for not living up to expectations as a service provider. Since Continental Airlines merged with United Airlines in 2010, the troubled airline has been plagued with issues; including over booking, flight delays, mismanagement; resulting in disgruntled employees and disenchanted customers.

“Trick or Treat?” is a fine question to ask at doors on Halloween night, but when your customers come a knockin’ for service, there should be no response that isn’t a “treat.” In other words, with consumer experiences serving as a major differentiator in today’s marketplace, if you hope to remain competitive, your customers should always be “treated” to excellent service when they reach out to your contact center.

So, how do you make certain you aren’t frightening consumers away with scary, or just plain bad, customer service? The best way to ensure you are offering quality customer interactions is to employ well-trained, highly professional contact center agents. And the most efficient, cost-effective way to coach and train agents is to adopt Click2Coach—contact center software from Envision.

For any business to thrive in today’s constantly changing marketplace, it must invest in employee training on an ongoing basis. This is especially true in your company’s contact center where agents are the ambassadors of your business. One bad interaction might not only cost you a customer, but could potentially tarnish your brand’s reputation.

The customer is always right. Of course, any experienced call center manager knows this isn’t always the case, but that doesn’t mean call center agents shouldn’t give this impression to customers. After all, a recent study from NewVoiceMedia found that 44 percent of Americans will turn to the competition after a bad customer service experience, with almost 60 percent opting to never use the company again.

The contact center is the heart of any company, the direct link to your customers. As such, their experience with your contact center’s agents can ultimately make or break your business. In fact, poor customer service costs the U.S. more than $40 billion each year, according to research from NewVoiceMedia.

Summer vacations are over, the kids are back at school and most of us are getting ready to swap out our tank tops for turtleneck sweaters. Fall is quickly approaching, with the holidays trailing right behind. As tempting as it may be, this isn’t a time for businesses to just coast along until the end of the year – especially when it comes to optimizing contact center operations.

Would your employees turn down $2000 to keep their job? That’s what Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos wanted to find out when he introduced the Pay to Quit program last year. He offered his fulfillment-center employees a one-time payout of $2000 to leave Amazon. If they stayed the amount would increase by $1000 each year, up to a maximum of $5000.

Online self-service is usually very convenient for such processes as checking your bank account anytime, anywhere; refilling a medical prescription with just the click of a button; or finding answers to commonly asked questions on a company website, for example. However, this type of self-service can be frustrating without the right technologies and processes in place.

While voice is still the primary communication channel preferred by consumers, self-service portals are becoming increasingly popular, according to Forrester. In fact, the use of Web self-service is sure to rise in 2014, with 72 percent of businesses already reporting a surge in customers preferring to find answers and resolve issues on their own.

Earlier on this blog, we addressed some of the most-hated customer service practices and how contact center managers can avoid them. Some of these practices included long wait times to connect customers with live agents and transferring customers numerous times.

It’s no secret that the customer experience directly impacts contact center success. It’s why 96 percent of contact center managers recently polled by Deloitte said they expect their facilities to grow in the next two years in order to better support customer experience demands. It’s also why 85 percent believe that the customer experience provided through the contact center is a competitive differentiator.

Dealing with medical issues is generally unpleasant—inconvenient and anxiety-producing. Often these issues require repeated visits or phone calls to doctors’ offices and hospitals, which, in and of themselves, are time-consuming and nerve-wracking, nevermind the pain or discomfort the patient is feeling from his or her health concern.

Therefore, due to the “side effects” of their medical condition, patients may be more on edge than the average contact center customer when calling for assistance; after all, these are not your typical contact center inquiries about appliances or tech devices. The gravity of these issues makes customer satisfaction in healthcare a bigger challenge than in other, less personal, industries.

We’ve all heard friends say “the service was good, but the food was so-so,” or “the food was great but the service was terrible.” Customer service and product quality always go hand-in-hand simply because the customer experience is never limited to the value of a product. At some point, whether it’s online, in a shop or on the phone, we will encounter some form of customer service, and this will be the most lasting impression we walk away with.

As the “dog days” of summer roll on, providing and improving customer satisfaction grows both more important and difficult. Why? Because scientific research proves that, for many people, as the temperature increases, patience decreases.

If you’ve noticed a little more of an edge in your customers’ voices recently, don’t panic because it may have more to do with the heat than anything your business is or isn’t doing. Still, bearing in mind that people tend to be a little crankier this time of year, it’s important that you have the tools to make sure your agents operate at peak levels. Even when the mercury creeps toward triple digits, improving customer satisfaction should remain a top priority.  

One of the newest avenues for companies looking to build upon their customer service strategy is text/SMS. With research from Gallup showing that Americans use their cell phones more for sending and/or receiving texts than any other function—and that text messaging was the preferred communication method for Americans under the age of 40—it makes perfect sense why text is being so warmly embraced within the enterprise.

Chances are your sales department uses customer relationship management (CRM) software to manage critical customer data and to streamline business processes. Now think of what CRM can do for your contact center agents when integrated with your existing contact center software. The possibilities are endless.

Eighty percent of companies believe they deliver exceptional customer service, but less than 10 percent of consumers agree. These numbers make it abundantly clear: contact center managers must know how to strategically use customer data in order to understand how their customers truly feel about their company’s quality of service.

Has your CRM seen better days? Though perhaps still fully functional, does its legacy architecture make it difficult to synchronize data? Are your employees using it for conversation tracking, agent performance monitoring, or any other essential features—or has it become simply an electronic rolodex?

An outdated CRM can undermine your business goals especially with regard to customer service. Companies run the risk of losing customers these days more from service process issues than product quality. A slipshod support experience can decidedly reduce the likelihood a customer will recommend a service or product or repurchase from that same company. Even if they don’t lead to customer churn, service issues can quickly eat away at company worth and profitability, as the cost to support a customer inquiry or complaint can be $2 to $11 per contact, according to aggregated industry reports.

If you’re reading this blog, then you likely understand the importance of collecting customer data in order to streamline organization-wide processes and operations, as well as to improve customer relations.

Once upon a time, when a call center agent had resolved a customer’s issue, the caller was typically asked to answer a series of short questions about his or her experience on a 1 to5 ranking scale. Contact center managers could then manually compile those answers and try to evaluate agent performance and construct best practices using the responses as a road map. Still, without meaningful insight into what was behind those numerical rankings, improving customer satisfaction was a difficult chore.

Fortunately, contemporary contact centers have the opportunity to implement technology that facilitates more in-depth data collection and examination. Today’s best-in-class contact center software gathers information derived from phone, email, chat or any other channel available to the customer and helps break it into smaller chunks of actionable data. That information then becomes the foundation on which contact center managers build customer service best practices.

“Workforce optimization” (WFO) software—technology that facilitates agent coaching and training through such things as educational lessons and interactive exercises in order to strengthen personal development skills and customer interactions—should without question be part of contact center managers’ customer service strategies. After all, our research shows that 80 percent of companies believe they deliver superior customer service when only 8 percent of consumers agree. WFO software has emerged as a vital tool for bridging this gap within the contact center.

We’ve all experienced it, the dreaded runaround. It goes something like this: You call into a contact center, navigate through the IVR, repeat your contact information, reach a service representative who directs you to another agent, who then puts you on hold... the cycle continues. Unfortunately, this is an all too familiar and frustrating experience for consumers who’ve become accustomed to the expediency of online and mobile self-service.

As a contact center leader, you already know that inconveniencing customers can harm your company’s reputation. But did you know that it could also cost you money? According to the “Avaya Customer Effort Impact Study,” two-thirds of survey respondents said they would stop spending money with a company as a result of a “high effort” experience—or an interaction that requires considerable time and effort to complete. What’s more, survey respondents stated that the following activities contributed most to a poor experience:

• Repeatedly contacting a company to resolve a problem
• Failure to reach an actual agent to get an answer
• Dealing with representatives who lack the proper knowledge
• Lack of follow-up

It’s no secret that happy employees many times equal happy customers. After all, employees spend more time at work than they do anywhere else; it makes sense that small things like providing remote work options or taking into account lifestyle choices and preferences can make a world of a difference when it comes to transforming corporate culture and demonstrating support of employees, which hopefully retains them for the long-term.

When contact center agents are hired, they typically go through fairly comprehensive training before ever interacting with a live customer. Thinking on the fly, solving problems on the spot and dealing with customers of varying temperaments is not an easy task, so managers need to be sure customer service representatives are fully prepared before they send them into action.

When a new gadget drops, everyone has to have it. It’s why a record number of customers waited hours on end last September to own the Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, according to research from CNBC.

Right now, business leaders everywhere are looking for ways to improve customer service without spending a lot of money or overhauling current infrastructure. Now, thanks to recent innovations in workforce optimization software, this is possible.

The majority of contact center advancements today are centered on the promise of big data and analytics. For example, digital customer service channels like live chat and videoconferencing invite (or even mandate) customers to enter data about themselves or their service inquiry prior to an interaction.

If you’re looking to improve your contact center operations, hiring qualified agents and deploying a top-of-the-line customer relationship management solution are certainly steps in the right direction. These measures, however, are not the only pieces to the contact center puzzle. If you want to truly maximum your contact center’s value by transforming it from just a service hub to an ROI generator, you are going to have to go a bit further:

Create New Opportunities Using Big Data

Every interaction your employees have with customers generates information, and this information, taken as a whole, is commonly referred to as big data. If you don’t have the ability to collect and analyze information efficiently in your contact center right now, you are missing out on a whole sea of readily available business intelligence that you could be using to improve processes across your entire company.

For instance, with contact center software that can identify trending words and topics from all conversations and display them on a screen in real time, a manager would be able to recognize immediately when many consumers are calling to ask about a specific product. That information could be shared with the marketing department, which could create a special promotion—such as a “2 for 1”—giving customers an opportunity to save money on a purchase and helping your company boost sales. In the past, marketing would have had to track sales numbers for days or weeks to come up with a special offer; with real-time analytics, it can be accomplished almost immediately.  

Frustration is probably the single most common side effect of customer service. Not getting the answers we want or finding a solution to our problem is an experience most of us can identify with when it comes to dealing with service agents or company websites.

As an executive, nothing excites you more than signing up a new client. The satisfaction you get from knowing a customer is putting his or her trust in you is exhilarating, and the positive financial impact is always welcome.

Today’s world of customer service—filled with digital and self-service channels like Web chat, co-browsing, SMS and in-store kiosks—looks entirely different than it did decades ago when customer service was characterized by a person-to-person experience, be it in-person or over the phone. The findings of a new survey conducted by J.D. Power, however, show that there is still a desire for that human touch, despite the surge of digital channels, especially when it comes to their banking experience.

You’ve probably heard it more times than you can count by now: Customer service is a crucial differentiator for businesses. Simply hearing that message repeated frequently may make you a little numb to it and take away some of its power—but don’t let that happen; the message is of such significance that you should keep it uppermost in your thoughts. As an executive, what matters most to you when planning strategies, however, is empirical data, because the more information you have at your disposal, the more likely you are to make a sound business decision.

In that spirit, we’ve compiled a “lucky seven” pack of statistics that clearly illustrate just how critical the customer experience is in today’s marketplace, and how important improving customer service in your organization will be moving forward:

1. Some 68 percent of businesses planned to increase customer service spending in 2014—Call Center IQ, 2014 Call Center Executive Priorities Report

2. By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator—Walker, Customers 2020: The Future of B-to-B Customer Experience

3. At least 62 percent of companies view customer experience provided through contact centers as a competitive differentiator—Deloitte, 2013 Global Contact Center Survey

4. A full 88 percent of consumers speak with live representatives on the phone at least some of the time—NICE Systems, Global Customer Experience Survey

5. In 2013, 51 percent of U.S. consumers switched service providers due to poor customer service experiences, up 5 percent from the previous year—Accenture, 2013 Global Consumers Pulse Survey

6. As much as 63 percent of 1,620 consumers tested under laboratory conditions said they felt their heart rate increase when they thought about receiving great customer service—American Express Service Study

7. About 84 percent of survey respondents said their company’s executives are fully committed to their company’s customer experience goals—Temkin Group, Data Snapshot: CX Expectations and Plans for 2014

Companies expect a lot out of their contact center agents, and with good reason: Agents carry a lot of responsibility in terms of upholding the company reputation and providing a consistent, positive customer experience. Agents directly represent the company, so it’s worth spending some time ensuring they are properly and efficiently trained. If your agents are not well-trained, performance will inevitably decline, as will customer satisfaction and, eventually, business revenue.

Ensure your agents can perform to their utmost ability by implementing quality agent training software, such as Envision’s Click2Coach, which gives you the tools you need to facilitate excellent customer-to-agent interactions. Click2Coach is a no hassle way to use in-house data that’s gathered by the software to coach your agents and improve the vitality of your company.

You’ve spent all week observing your contact center agents’ performance and are finally ready to sit down and write your evaluations. Unfortunately, from past experience, you know that you’re going to have to jam a square peg into a round hole to complete these reports, because you are still using cookie-cutter evaluation forms. Rating your representatives on a 1-5 scale for a number of basic categories gives them only a surface-level view of their performance and areas for improvement, thereby limiting your ability to conduct effective contact center agent coaching and training.

The importance of maintaining a high customer retention rate—the rate at which a company turns one-time buyers into return customers—is evident, especially when it comes to the bottom line.

For example, aggregated research from Customers That Stick shows that:

Contact center data capture and recording solutions have come a long way since their early days. In years past, supervisors might have occasionally recorded a voice interaction to help them evaluate agent performance using simple, generic evaluation forms. But with innovative contact center software like Click2Coach, managers can now capture a plethora of information across a variety of channels that can be used to evaluate and train agents.

Rapid growth is the ultimate dream for any small business manager, especially in today’s competitive marketplace, where 80 percent of entrepreneurs who start a new business fail within the first 18 months, according to research from Bloomberg.

The voice of the customer is valuable. In the contact center realm, time is of the essence. In only a matter of seconds, customers can decide to leave your business completely or choose to upgrade their account, solely based on their interaction with an agent. Making sure agents are prepared to effectively handle customers is indispensible to retaining and fostering new customer relationships. Get the most out of your agents with an evaluation tool that allows supervisors to collect interaction data and sort through it automatically for the “golden nuggets” of data in each call. Voice of the Customer (VOC) analysis can give you an edge over the competition by addressing issues early on. While other companies may merely respond to preexisting complaints, your company can get ahead of this curve and begin instituting trends, a huge advantage.

Even when it may not be blatantly obvious, agents nowadays are constantly gathering valuable data about customer likes and dislikes, habits and tendencies. Envision’s VOC offers an interaction evaluation survey that immediately tells what customers ordered, the process that was followed, what they complained about, why they complained, and any possible patterns emerging. Agents can then use this data—right from their desk—to map out what to improve on in future interactions.

Customer service is, and always has been, at the core of the contact center. For instance, aggregated research shows that 71 percent of customers have ended their relationship with a company due to poor service. Furthermore, 39 percent of customers admitted to avoiding a company for two or more years after a negative service experience. As a result, 62 percent of organizations view customer experience provided through the contact center as a key competitive differentiator.

Any C-level executive who has been involved with onboarding new employees knows the process can be daunting. The practice of identifying prospects, interviewing candidates and then finally making a hiring decision is quite time-consuming and intense, because making the wrong choice can set your company back in both productivity and revenue.

Almost any blog you read on the topic of customer service will tell you the same thing: customer care (i.e. retention, loyalty, quality of service, diminished churn) must be a top priority for organizations. A sea of related statistics and market research corroborates this sentiment. For example, according to aggregated research from HR consulting firm Adecco, 15 percent of customers will abandon a company due to poor customer service; meanwhile, loyalty from one customer can be worth 10 times as much as one-time purchase.

In years past, contact center managers were forced to play guessing games when it came to evaluating agent performance. The best they could hope to do was steal a few minutes away from their desks to listen to a few random calls and take hurried notes.

Workforce attrition can have significant financial effects on a company. After all, when a business experiences a decline in its workforce and doesn’t replace lost staff, productivity can dramatically decrease, which can cause a company’s bottom line to suffer. In fact, aggregated research from Barracuda found that just five hours of unproductive work a week can cost a company $6,357 per employee per year.

Does this sound familiar? You are a longtime contact center supervisor who has developed excellent instincts through the years. When a trend in customer interactions is emerging in your environment, you typically recognize it before most of your colleagues. The problem, however, is that your current contact center software solution—if you employ one—doesn’t have the functionality necessary to provide real-time data about interactions. As a result, you can’t confirm your suspicion that a trend is forming until it is too late to take any kind of meaningful action based on your intuitions.

For instance, let’s say you work for a retailer and as you walk around the contact center floor, you hear several agents answering questions about what clothing items are a good match with your company’s most popular winter coat. You think a trend might be developing, with many customers looking to make additional purchases after originally calling just to buy or ask questions about the jacket. But because you can only hear one conversation at a time, you can’t be sure this is anything more than just a coincidence. In other words, you are caught in a data silo.

The Internet is full of statistics about so many topics that it can be difficult to drill down to truly critical nuggets of information. In particular, the Web is replete with facts about the importance of improving customer service. So, to help you avoid wearing out your keyboard with search engine queries, we decided to compile 10 of the most compelling business-related customer service statistics you’ll find anywhere:  

By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. – Walker, “Customers 2020: The Future of B-to-B Customer Experience”

Every company today knows full well that customer service is at the core of its profitability and continuity—especially for a few select industries. In fact, a new survey commissioned by global market research firm Ipsos calls out those verticals that boast the worst customer service departments: 

Providing a single first-class experience is great, but if your goal is to retain customers—and it should be—you have to be confident that your contact center is delivering high quality customer service with every interaction. But how do you ensure that your representatives handle each inquiry with care? How can you feel assured that every customer receives reliable, accurate assistance?

Top-notch contact center software that can integrate seamlessly with CRM systems can capture multiple kinds of data and make it easy for managers to analyze agent performance. Such best-in-breed software can produce detailed interaction summaries and reports from multiple channels (e.g. call, email, chat, social media). Reports can be sorted according to agent or group, by reason for the call or by outcome so managers can save time and find exactly what they need when they need it.

All too often, contact centers are referred to as cost centers. While they certainly play an important role in ensuring customer satisfaction (i.e., answering customer inquiries, solving product and service-related problems and monitoring call quality), contact centers are viewed as having little to no real impact on bottom line results. Businesses, however, are starting to realize the value of the contact center as a potential revenue driver. 

Right now, the cloud is all the rage. The technology seems to be popping up all the time in advertisements for both personal and business purposes across all mediums and platforms. All this attention means the cloud is surrounded by quite a bit of hype, which can make it difficult to drill down on exactly what benefits it can offer your business.

Microsoft recently announced that after July 14, 2015 they will no longer issue support or security updates for any version of Windows Server 2003. If you are still running Windows Server 2003 in your datacenter, you need to take steps now to plan and execute a migration strategy to protect your infrastructure.

When it comes to customer service, consumer expectations are higher than ever. Today’s buyers expect consistent excellent service and when their needs are not met they may take their business elsewhere and influence others to do the same. To ensure your representatives aren’t irritating customers with preventable mistakes, your supervisors need tools that can help make call center coaching more efficient and effective. Envision’s Click2Coach software can ensure your agents stop the following common annoyances in their tracks before they began to affect your business negatively:

Poor agent phrasing

Customers do not want to hear condescending phrasing such as, “if I were you” or “what you should have done” from contact center agents. With Click2Coach, agents can monitor every aspect of customer interactions and provide training materials right from their desktops, including:

• On-demand, personalized training sent to agents at their desktops
• Short video clips on the fly, or training clips that have already been created and delivered to agents
• Evaluations of recorded customer interactions (including voice and screen) sent directly to agents, along with supervisor annotations and training as a complete coaching package
• Examples of “great calls” sent to agents so they can use them as a guide
• Motivational recognition and team or individual incentives delivered to agents’ desktops

People love to talk, especially when it comes to customer service. Today’s consumers are flocking to the web to discuss their experiences with companies—good and bad. In fact, 46 percent of American consumers say they always tell others about good service experiences; however, an even greater number (60 percent) say they talk about poor service experiences, according to the American Express 2014 Global Customer Service Barometer.

It is much less expensive to retain customers than to onboard new ones. And a loyal customer is worth his or her weight in gold. In fact, while only 12-15 percent of customers are loyal to a single retailer, they represent between 55-70 percent of sales in some verticals, according to the Center for Retail Management, Northwestern University.

Companies have become obsessed with customer service. After all, it’s now seen as a major competitive differentiator for brands and separates today’s more-profitable companies from their less-lucrative counterparts. In fact, nearly 60 percent of organizations say that service and support will be the top source of competitive differentiation in the next three years, according to research from SAP. However, in a world in which competition is fierce and customer expectations high, satisfying customer needs is becoming increasingly difficult for companies.

“I’m just looking,” is a well-known clue to retail salespeople that they should back off: the customer just wants to browse. But how do your service agents know when to back off during a service call?

Establishing boundaries is key to effective customer interactions, especially where your agents want to upsell and/or cross-sell. But in their quest to make extra sales, sometimes these agents can be overzealous. Remember the extreme example from Comcast just a while back in which the customer service rep refused to let customer Ryan Block cancel his service? The agent’s refusal to comply with the user’s wish was a national embarrassment, on top of almost certainly costing Comcast any chance of ever winning that customer’s business back.  

It’s the question on every business owner’s mind: What’s the secret to generating more profits? Most companies would answer customer acquisition, arguing that the only way to boost your bottom line is by onboarding new customers. Those companies, however, would be wrong, as the real money lies in customer retention.

In the past, it wasn’t uncommon for a customer to dial into an 800 number, wait on hold for over an hour and then be routed to an inexperienced, unpleasant customer service representative who couldn’t answer a simple inquiry.

In today’s business environment, in which customer expectations are at an all-time high, companies have become obsessed with improving the customer experience—and for good reason. Research has shown that consumers are willing to spend more money with a company that delivers superior service. Sure, customer service is imperative and has become a competitive differentiator, but are companies becoming so fixated on their customers that they’re forgetting about their most important asset—their employees?

Gone are the days when a customer’s only option for reaching a company’s customer service department was to pick up the phone and dial an 800 number. Thanks to the Internet, consumers now have a breadth of communications channels—such as email, live chat, SMS and social media—from which to choose.

No two customers are the same; different people prefer different methods of support. According to a survey of 8,000 consumers conducted by Ovum, 52 percent of consumers use three or four communication channels when engaging customer service. While 56 percent of participants still favor traditional phone calls with agents, 44 percent prefer non-voice channels—such as email and social media—as their first choice for customer service.

No More Underdogs!

There’s no arguing that cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses run their operations. From ensuring that remote workers stay in constant contact, to allowing organizations to deploy new applications in seconds, cloud computing has certainly made an impact on the business world. 

As if being one of the biggest technology disruptors wasn’t revolutionary enough—cloud computing is also helping level the playing field for small businesses, enabling them to successfully compete with large enterprises with bigger IT budgets, more staff and better resources.

By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator with approximately 80% of executives expecting contact centers to play a key role in defining it.

But, while the majority of companies say they deliver "superior" customer service, only 8% of customers agree. So, where is the disconnect, and how can contact centers bridge the gap?

Join us for this webinar where we'll uncover the key challenges preventing contact centers from meeting customer satisfaction expectations and 6 ways to address them including:

Stand Out From The Crowd

Attracting new customers and retaining existing ones are arguably two of the most important aspects of business; however, they are also the most challenging. In fact, 21 percent of U.S. small business owners say that customer acquisition is the most difficult hurdle they face, according to the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index.

Cloud computing has come a long way since 1961 when the concept was first introduced. It’s gone from being an overused buzzword—that tech startups prattled about to help sell services—to one of the biggest technology disrupters. In fact, one could argue that we’re currently living in the “era of cloud computing,” judging by its widespread adoption.

The cloud continues to make a major impact on businesses, providing them new ways to communicate, store data and share information. Contact centers, in particular, stand to benefit greatly from moving their operations to the cloud. 

With the new year underway, it’s time to ask yourself what you have done to prepare your company for success in 2015. As your call center is your most customer-facing department, have you made any resolutions to bolster operations there in the next 12 months? If not, you may want to consider adding some new tools and strategies to ensure that your call center stays ahead of the competition during the coming year. 

Your contact center agents are the foremost customer-facing representative of your brand. As such, the manner in which they conduct business with your customers is often the foundation for your company’s reputation.  And that reputation can be eroded one customer at a time when poor customer service is experienced repeatedly. In fact, a recent customer service survey by Accenture revealed that in 2013, 51 percent of U.S. consumers switched service providers due to poor customer service experiences, up 5 percent from the previous year.

Your company’s reputation is paramount to your success, and, therefore, your customers’ view of your business is the most important factor in your company’s ongoing ability to generate revenue. Imparting a positive view, therefore, circles right back to your agents—with a well-trained agent being your best defense against customer defections. 

Many organizations are encouraging a greater number of employees to work from home more often, and the call center space is no exception. Recent call center research published in the Harvard Business Review found that at-home workers completed 13.5 percent more calls than those in the office. Furthermore, the study found that employees saved approximately $1,900 each on transportation and various other expenses over nine months, leading to increased job satisfaction and lower attrition rates.

Regardless of the industry in which you work, chances are you’ve read or heard quite a bit about big data over the past several years. The concept is fairly simple: advances in technology are rapidly producing ever-larger quantities of information.

We're excited to announce a new partnership with 3CLogic to offer even more enhanced workforce optimization for contact centers.

By now, you’ve probably read and heard quite a bit about how critical customer service is in today’s marketplace. Several market research firms have recently released reports touting the customer experience as an increasingly critical differentiator and have also predicted that it will grow even more important in the years to come.

How you schedule contact center agents affects operations and customer satisfaction in ways you may not even realize. For example, tweaking your schedule so you have the optimum number of agents with the right skills on board at peak call times can greatly affect hold times.

How is the customer experience about hold times when customers call your business? How about the quality of the responses they receive once they reach customer service—especially if they’ve been bounced from department to department? Are you kept awake at night worrying that capacity in your contact center is not sufficient for customer retention?

Businesses are pulling out all the stops to provide top-notch customer service and contact center productivity these days, and rightly so. The statistics, reports and surveys detailing the importance of customer service are preponderant, touting its emergence as a competitive differentiator.

As it becomes more increasingly difficult to compete for consumers’ attention, the burden is on companies to find new, better ways to satisfy discerning consumers. Companies are casting an eye toward ways to maintain their customer service edge.

With Dreamforce, Salesforce.com’s user conference, just around the corner, we thought it would be a great time to talk about capturing data from your CRM system to help improve customer experiences.

Envision is rolling out the welcome mat to partners! With more than 20 years of enterprise workforce optimization (WFO) solutions experience we are inviting partners to our mission of providing WFO in the cloud! Click2Coach Cloud is an enterprise-class cloud-based workforce optimization solution that is affordable for all contact centers whether you have five seats or 5,000! Learn more about Click2Coach Cloud at www.envisioninc.com/click2coachcloud.

In the past, the contact center was primarily a one-trick pony. Customers with a question or complaint would dial in and agents would do their best to resolve the issue at hand. Today, however, the contact center is a jack-of-all-trades.

In recent years, the clear lines that once separated departments within an organization began to blur, with more overlap in responsibility between divisions, particularly in the contact center. Increasingly, contact center agents have been tasked with marketing or upselling new offerings during customer interactions.

As a contact center manager who is passionate about your job, chances are you’ve read more than a few articles containing tips for improving customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, many of these pieces provide only vague guidance and, after a while, they may begin to blend together.

Contact center quality management is key to a successful business. Businesses want their contact center agents to put their best foot forward at all times. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools available today to help capture, evaluate, analyze, and use the information from customer interactions to drive service improvement and coaching and training efforts. Ensure every customer interaction is a positive one with the following tools:

How angry customers are handled in the contact center can be the difference between customers taking business elsewhere (and complaining publicly about their experience) and a peaceful resolution that keeps them coming back for more. These five tips for calming angry customers can help every interaction end positively.

Social media platforms have become the new 1-800 number. With nearly one in four people worldwide projected to use social media in 2013, it comes as no surprise that customers are turning to these networking platforms to connect with brands and vice versa.

We live in a world more connected than ever before—that is a simple fact. Every indication is that the future will bring even more connectedness, making it increasingly easy for people to share information. That is especially true of customers, who are more likely than ever to share customer service experiences.

Every contact center employee is bound to come up against one or more of these difficult customer service scenarios mentioned below. However, the key is not to avoid them, but handle them with grace and, of course, a smile.

Are your contact center agents working hard or hardly working? Unproductive contact center agents, cost employers an average of 46 percent of their salaries in lost productivity. Moreover, employees who are disengaged are also 23 percent more likely to leave within 12 months, compared to a one percent probability of turnover among highly engaged employees, according to data from the Contact Center Association. In a 1,000 seat contact center with a 15 percent population of disengaged employees, turnover costs alone could add up to $158,000.

Investing in a workforce optimization solution for your small, medium or large enterprise contact center is a big commitment. After all, the solution is not only responsible for directly shaping the work habits of your employees, but also plays a huge role in the customer experience and how satisfied they are with your company. Conducting a bit of research to make sure your software has all of the components you need to measure and track agent effectiveness is key.

A successful voice of the customer program can provide a wealth of useful information to your business, which can be used to improve the customer experience. However, many companies fail to make use of the data they collect. In fact, according to Forrester Research, two-thirds of American companies have VoC programs, but less than one-third make decisions based on customer needs and voice of the customer data.

In today’s highly-competitive marketplace, your company needs every advantage it can get. If you haven’t considered using voice of the customer data (VoC) to help provide that edge and improve the customer experience perhaps it’s time to try it out.

Unfortunately for SMBs, customers don’t care that you have more limited resources than a large enterprise; they still expect top-of-the-line service from every company they patronize. In fact, according to a recent Zendesk survey, 55 percent of consumers said they switched to a different company after a single negative customer service experience.

Consumers are increasingly turning toward their plastic to make payments—to the tune of two-thirds of all transactions. With this in mind—and with news of the recent breach at Target where the credit card data of up to 40 million customers was compromised—businesses need to do everything within their power to ensure that the sensitive data associated with these consumers’ credit cards is as secure as possible.

Why does data matter? Because data is everything. Data is how you measure. Data is how you decide. Data is how you teach. Data is how you improve customer experiences. In the third video in our series, we explore the true importance of data to your contact center and your business as a whole.

When Envision started nearly 20 years ago, Envision was the first to put CTI, computer/telephony integration into a call quality product. Having the best technology at the time wasn’t enough though. We needed to ensure we gave them the tools to not only identify problems, but to make their agents better.

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. I’d like to think that these pictures will be worth more than that to you. As the contact center industry has continued to evolve, so has the ways we educate each other and share stories, tips and best practices. That’s why I’m excited to debut a new feature here on the blog: The Envision Video Series.

Today’s best-in-class organizations know that delivering world-class customer service is no longer a value-add, but a must. After all, it’s nearly impossible for a company to survive without its customers.

"Customer-centric” is shaping up to be a buzzword for 2014, and perhaps no area of your company is more consumer-focused than the contact center. Service quality can make or break a company. After all, 86% of customers quit doing business with a company after a bad customer service experience, and over half admit they would only try to reach support once before giving up on a purchase.

Call center managers everywhere are still struggling with the age old question: How do you increase worker productivity without sacrificing the quality of customer service and also ensure that you are fairly judging performance?

How much do you really know about your customers besides their names, phone numbers and addresses?

In today’s highly-competitive marketplace, it’s important to understand why customers make the decisions they do, how they feel about those choices and what type of experience they had. Armed with this information, you can start delivering a better customer experience. In order to do so, however, you have to gather the right data.

When it comes to protecting sensitive consumer information, your company takes all of the appropriate measures. You have a robust digital security policy, a firewall that protects all of your data and comprehensive intrusion detection processes. You even encrypt data when it is transmitted over the Web.

Every time a customer dials into your business and speaks with an agent, that interaction is a direct extension of your brand image. In other words, they can further good feelings already established or foster bad ones.

Customer data enters a contact center via many channels—social media, telephone, live chat and more. So, it’s no surprise that customers expect to be heard loud and clear.

These days, everyone in the contact center industry is talking about how customer analytics are the most important thing to use to enhance the customer experience. But what customer analytics should you focus on?

Now that you’ve gathered a wealth of customer data, what’s next? In today’s hyper competitive marketplace, it’s not enough to just gather customer intelligence; you have to put it to work. Below are four ways businesses can utilize voice of the customer data to improve their overall business operations:

Spring is here and that means it’s a great time to clear the cobwebs away from your customer service strategy and usher in some fresh habits to start the new season. After all, recent research from McKinsey indicates that 70 percent of purchasing experiences are based on how a customer feels they are being treated.

Workforce optimization has gained a reputation for being a complicated, time consuming and expensive process. But now, things have changed and contact center managers have the ability to rewrite the rules and turn the contact center into a revenue-driving force.

Desktop analytics software provide a complete picture of what’s occurring in the contact center – before, during, and after customer interactions. The data flooding in from an agent’s desktop is an invaluable tool for improving performance, process and efficiency in the contact center, ultimately improving the customer experience. The top three benefits of desktop analytics are as follows:

Much like the virtuoso musician who never stops practicing, even your most talented contact center agents can improve upon their performance. And now thanks to an innovative, cloud-based solution engineered by Envision, coaching and training your agents to help further develop skills, improve techniques and increase sales has never been easier.

Today’s contact center is at the forefront of customer service, satisfaction, and retention. In many ways, it is the hub of the organization, making it a particularly challenging place to work and manage effectively. However, contact center challenges, while varied, are not insurmountable. Having the right tools on hand, such as voice of the customer data, can help the contact center stay organized and productive, meet customer expectations, and succeed in a competitive marketplace.

Get ready, get set...the holidays are nearly here, and with them come a flood of calls to your contact centers. Put the proper coaching, training, and tools in place now so agents will be able to handle any situation thrown their way.

The holidays bring an annual influx of customer orders, requests, questions, and complaints. Prepare your contact centers now for higher volumes so you can sail through the holiday season with less stress and more success.

While small businesses may not have the capital to compete with larger organizations, they do have an innate advantage – personalized customer service. In fact, when it comes to improving customer service, bigger isn’t always better.

A lot rests on the shoulders of contact center managers, and those who are most successful tend to possess certain qualities. Never fear –these seven habits can be developed through hard work and dedication. Let’s take a look at the seven habits of a highly-successful contact center manager.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and with it comes a chance to express gratitude for the bountiful contact center benefits enjoyed this year. What are contact centers thankful for this holiday season? Let’s explore the top three below:

Let’s face it; you greatly depend on your contact center agents to foster good relationships with customers. Needless to say, having a high turnover rate will not only impact your bottom line, it will also create a number of additional expenses.

It was once commonly believed that cost centers were a drain on company finances. Now we know that the opposite is true. Your contact center can be your top money maker, as they often serve as the first point of contact for the people who truly drive business revenue: customers.

Improving customer satisfaction and customer service is not what it used to be. Thanks to emerging technologies and trends, businesses now have unprecedented access to voice of the customer data to help deliver the best customer experience possible. Whereas, in the past, the contact center was just used to monitor call quality, today it’s seen as the driving force behind many businesses’ customer retention efforts.

These “seven deadly sins” can bring contact center effectiveness, productivity, and accountability to a standstill. Keep customer satisfaction high by avoiding them.

It’s no secret that exceptional customer service is the key to retaining customers and increasing revenue. In fact, companies that prioritize the customer experience generate 60 percent higher profits than their competitors, according to a Gartner study titled “How to Approach Customer Experience Management.”

Let’s face it; your contact center is bound to make mistakes every now and then. However, the key is to learn from these mistakes and take the appropriate steps to mitigate them before they become a reoccurring problem and plague your contact center.

In today’s economy, businesses are being forced to do more with less. For contact centers this means finding new ways to address increasing customer demands without burning a hole through the wallet, which is often easier said than done. As a result, more and more contact centers are turning to the cloud.

When you ask someone in the contact center industry what they think encompasses great customer service, you’re guaranteed to get a slew of different answers.

You’ve just finished putting a new group of agents through your training program and they are finally ready to hit the phones. But are you 100 percent confident that you’ve given them all the necessary skills to effectively handle customer contacts? If you answered no, then maybe it’s time to take a second look at your training program.

Many contact centers grapple with the decision of implementing a work at home call center agents model, often fearing that agent productivity and efficiency will suffer when agents work remotely from home. However, recent research provides compelling evidence that says otherwise.

Did you know that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep current ones? While you may be able to put a price on gaining a new customer, you can’t put a price on customer loyalty. Obtaining loyal customers is critical to the longevity of your business as they are often your biggest advocates, spreading the word about your business to friends and colleagues.

There’s a reason why consumer surveys have stood the test of time; the traditional tactic is a proven method to gain critical voice of the customer data, which is paramount for improving customer satisfaction. However, soliciting feedback from your customers can often feel like pulling teeth.

There’s no disputing the fact that the purchasing habits of consumers have drastically changed as today’s consumers have a great deal of payment options to choose from. However – with more than 66 percent of all transactions made with a payment card – consumers’ data is more susceptible to theft than ever before.

The role of the contact center has certainly changed over the years. While in the past, the contact center was used primarily to monitor call quality, today’s contact center is more strategic than ever before, collecting and analyzing valuable customer data to make better, more informed business decisions from the top-level down.

Let’s face it – your contact center agents are an indisputable extension of your business. After all, they are often the first point of contact for your customers and your first line of defense to mollify customer concerns.

Your contact center agents are in the trenches, directly interacting with customers on a daily basis. But are they being as effective and efficient as they can be? While in the past customers patiently waited on hold to speak to an agent, today’s customer is more demanding than ever, expecting immediate answers within minutes, not hours.

Times have certainly changed in the contact center sphere. Traditional brick and mortar contact centers are no longer the king of the hill as today’s contact center is more technologically advanced, deploying sophisticated solutions meant to capture data from today’s 21st century customer.

Did you know that 91 percent of unhappy customers never bother to complain; instead they just quietly walk away into the hands of the competitors? With a statistic like that, it’s clear that businesses, more so than ever before, need to focus on the Voice of the Customer (VOC). If not, they may not know when their customers are ready to jump ship.

Your customers interact with you in many different ways…via phone, chat, e-mail, and surveys and now through social media channels. Every interaction, or voice of the customer, provides a wealth of data about that customer’s perception of your brand.

24 reasons why you should use Envision contact center software.

Like some of its patrons, Bodybuilding.com started out small, the brainchild of a visionary with a passion for fitness and for helping people reach their personal best. Today, this Idaho-based e-commerce business is the largest online sports nutrition company and the most visited bodybuilding and fitness website in the world.

When it comes to attempting to increase customer satisfaction through customer centricity, it’s essential to not simply understand what a customer-focused organization is, but what it is not.

In an increasingly competitive market, your company’s economic well being depends on conducting business in a way that’s smarter than your competitors. Establishing and adhering to a superior benchmark of customer service means having the appropriate technology tools to monitor and assess your contact center interactions. Since the 1970’s, business organizations have been depending on “first generation” contact center metrics.

Unfortunately, common mistakes are just that, common. And in the world of customer service, people within the industry commonly use the terms “customer loyalty” and “customer satisfaction” synonymously. However, these two terms have very different meanings and represent two distinct measures of business performance that should be tracked separately.

The following article offers you key insights into the process of improving and growing your brand’s value through contact center analysis.

You’ll learn the steps to moving away from the platitude of ‘Great Customer Service’ to empowering your customers to become raving fans; willingly spreading the word about your company to their own sphere of influence, whether that’s through social networks or by word-of-mouth endorsements.

BRANDING 101

The majority of businesses spend vast human and capital resources in an effort to establish their brand in the minds of consumers instead of investing in an improved customer experience. A brand is a promise your company makes to a prospective customer and the impression that individual is left with regarding how well you fulfilled upon that promise.

People understand that your brand stands for something, whether that be superior value, exceptional quality standards or a highly reliable product. Buyers are always willing to spend more for products that carry a trusted brand name than generic or unknown brands. And they’re willing to pay that higher price in exchange for the confidence they have in a given brand.

HOW CONTACT CENTERS REINFORCE YOUR BRAND

For those business that sell consumer goods through third party retailers, there’s a good chance buyers of those products will never actually meet an employee of their favorite brands. However, the chances are far more likely that buyers will contact that company at some point for reasons that include:

• Making a complaint about the product
• Asking a question before or after the point of sale
• Wanting instructions about how to use the merchandise
• Requesting payment options or enquiring about job openings

By reading this article you’ll discover the role that your contact center plays is vital when your goals include an improved customer experience that results in larger profits. The contact center of any operation is key to implementing, improving and taking ownership of the critical business metric called customer satisfaction. You’ll also learn about the core principles and processes needed to make your organization one that operates from true customer centricity.

A highly competitive market dictates the need for an improved customer experience, and a customer-centric contact center, made possible when you collectively work smarter, not harder. Effectively implementing these principles may prove highly advantageous to the profits and growth of your business.

Call center coaching is the practice of providing your agents with the personalized training, objective feedback and information they need to perform at their best. It’s a continual process of evaluating behavior, and improving it through training and motivation. The Envision software platform makes coaching and workforce management simple for contact center supervisors and agents, and leads to better service and increased customer loyalty.

Despite in-store retail and internet platforms driving the vast majority of sales business, contact centers remain a cornerstone of many companies’ sales and support infrastructure. Who of us hasn’t been forced to call a product manufacturer or an e-commerce support number for general information, technical help, or to make a purchase when a website is behaving badly?

Over the last several years there has been a move towards virtualization of the contact center, with increasing numbers of work-at-home call center agents. This has been made possible through significant advances in broadband technology as well as developments in work-force management software.

In a global workforce, creating customer continuity is important in establishing a unified customer experience. A contact center executive may identify one center that is performing below other centers. A single contact center can employ hundreds of individual agents and while these agents all receive the same training, performance can vary greatly between agents. 

In today's environment, it is important to forecast not only the amount of calls coming into your contact center but also be able to forecast faxes, web chats, and emails. With the importance on social media interactions as well, this is providing many challenges for contact center. Supervisors need the tools to train their agents with the skills to be able to respond to multimedia & social media inquiries from the customers.