John Rake

John Rake has over 20 years of experience in the software industry with extensive background in contact center, multi-media communication and sales training software development. Prior to joining Envision, John was the co-founder of Four Creeks, a mobile marketing SaaS company that targeted the automotive industry. In this role, he co-designed Four Creek’s initial SaaS product offering and infrastructure, managed the daily development activities with an offshore development team, and oversaw the daily operations upon release. Less than one year after initial launch, Four Creeks was successfully sold to OneCommand, a multi-media marketing and communications company for the auto industry and community organizations where he was the senior product manager and interim VP of client services. As Envision’s Director of Product Management, John is responsible for developing and managing the company’s product roadmap, defining specific product requirements and ensuring that Envision’s strategy and solutions are delivered on time and within budget.

Recent Posts

Keeping Your Contact Center Merry During the Holiday Season

Posted by John Rake
12/3/15 1:30 PM

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.

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How to Handle the Challenges of Customer Service in the Digital World

Posted by John Rake
10/29/15 1:30 PM

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

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Are Your Customers Getting Tricked or Treated With Your Service?

Posted by John Rake
10/20/15 7:30 AM

“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.

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Don’t Sacrifice Quality of Customer Service For Self-Support

Posted by John Rake
9/10/15 1:30 PM

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.

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Improve Customer Satisfaction with a Customer Self-Service Support Channel

Posted by John Rake
9/8/15 4:35 PM

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.

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Back to School: Voice of the Customer 101

Posted by John Rake
9/1/15 1:00 PM

How does today’s voice of the customer (VoC) differ from yesterday’s? In a myriad of ways, such as in how businesses use it to approach customer feedback from surveys, how those surveys are delivered to the customer and how they have been made more customer-friendly. And improvements don’t stop there—think more relevant, current and targeted customer responses—thanks to VoC software solutions from companies such as Envision.
While typical surveying approaches commonly yield about a 10 percent response rate, VoC solutions have been tied to 50 percent or greater response rates, according to a recent article in a leading CRM publication.VOC software’s success can be directly tracked to its abilityto ensure that customers only receive surveys that are unequivocally pertinent to them.
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Getting Your Customer Service Healed Up

Posted by John Rake
8/24/15 1:00 PM

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.

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Summer, It’s Hot, and improving Customer Satisfaction Is Critical

Posted by John Rake
8/17/15 9:30 AM

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.  

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CRM and Contact Center Software Integration: The Ultimate Customer Service Tool

Posted by John Rake
8/10/15 6:30 AM

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.

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You’ve Collected Great Customer Data, Now What? - Part 2

Posted by John Rake
8/6/15 3:50 PM

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.

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