Jacada Blog

Great Service = More Sales...Winning! (couldn't resist)

That's according to a new American Express Global Customer Service Barometer. Seven in ten Americans (70%) are willing to spend an average of 13% more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service. 

According to an article by Brendan Read on TMCnet.com, many companies are not getting the math. The study said that 60% of Americans believe businesses have not increased their customer service focus, up from 55% in 2010.  Among this group, 26% think companies are actually paying less attention to service. 

Other stats include: Some 59% of Americans would try a new brand or company for a better service experience. Customers who have a fantastic service experience say friendly representatives (65%) who are ultimately able to solve their concerns (66%) are the most influential. 

Needless to say, good customer service makes a difference! Jacada can help improve your bottom line by streamlining and unifying the agent's desktop.  Automated sign-on and notes, knowledgebase integration, broadcast messaging, quick links, single view of the customer and a unification of multiple applications are just a few of the ways Jacada WorkSpace Unified Desktop can help your company. Contact us for a demo today or click here for more information.

The benefits of call center technology

I found this article on CRMsearch.com (How Call Centers Benefit from CRM Software) and it gives a good general overview of why a unified desktop system is needed by call centers.  One concept discussed is that by tracking customer information, companies can better understand the habits of their customers as well as predict future behaviors.  This is very important in customer service and can be a 'difference maker' for most companies.  Having the ability to anticipate a customer's wants and needs (as well as resolve any issues quickly and effectively) is the reason customers stay with a company for years and years. With the advent of social media, bad customer service spreads fast. 

Check out the entire article here and for more information about Jacada's desktop and process optimization products and how they can help your company, take a tour here. 

Don't let 'madvocates' hurt your contact center's reputation

Customers are more apt to publicize negative customer experiences than any positive experiences and those negative comments can spread like wildfire via social networks.

Read the entire blog here from Customer Contact News. Jacada products can help keep both your customers and customer service agents happy. Making your agents more productive and efficient will lead to better customer service, loyal customers and hopefully, no more 'madvocates!'

What not to do!

Oops!  Nothing stings more than bad customer service which can result in a loss of  revenue, reputation and confidence. Poor customer service ultimately resides in the hands of the agent on the line, but really starts way before the call comes in.  Lack of process and technology to handle the calls makes it quite a feat to keep the customer happy and agents end up scrambling to keep up. 

Read this article from TMCnet.com as one writer experiences a breakdown in customer service.

Rain Rain Go Away

It's been a rainy week here in Atlanta and without the opportunity to get outside and enjoy the sunshine, most of us have been confined inside until it dries out. This gives me some time to organize my office and make sure my work space is in order and ready for work. (ugh, did I mention I’d rather be outside?) Everyone needs an effective work space that allows them to do their job to the best of their abilities. Life is complex enough without having to search and struggle to find the info you need. Customer Service Reps are no exception!

Take a look at the Jacada Whitepaper, Top Six Reasons to Simplify the Customer Service Desktop, to understand why desktop complexity presents one of the biggest obstacles to call center success (it resides on nearly every agent’s desk and pervades every call).  By adding a unified desktop, agents have access to anything they need to successfully complete a call within one simplified view – the smartest way to get your desktop in order.

 

By the Numbers: Customer-Centric Metrics

Why is it important to measure and track customer service? A great customer experience can turn a customer into a "raving fan" for your brand or product as patrons are not just satisfied customers, they are loyal promoters. The end result is referrals, retention and profitable growth! In today's tough market, companies need to do more to understand how customers rate their customer experience and take action to improve it.

Best-in-class customer service operations understand the need to get the most out of each and every customer interaction in addition to reducing costs. How? By adopting customer-centric metrics that offer management quick, yet comprehensive views into organizational performance. These customer-centric companies, built around the ideal experience of the customer, are flooded by traditional data and statistics from every imaginable source. But, without the ability to fully analyze this information, it is of limited value in providing an optimum level of customer service.

For example, a couple of key effectiveness measures such as First Call Resolution (FCR) and CSR Solve-rate are essential for organizations to see how well their customer service reps (CSRs) are resolving customer issues. When a company is focused on improving real FCR, they are, in fact, improving quality, reducing operational costs and driving customer satisfaction to improved levels. This is a true source of improved profits for an organization without dramatic market changes (i.e. price changes, bundle offerings or even lay-offs). By understanding FCR, an organization can see strong benefits and surprising bottom line improvements.

New measures are only half the battle, though. Successful contact centers have achieved the most significant benefits by providing their CSRs with more targeted training and the mandate to make the most of their time on the phone with each customer. A customer service analytics suite like Jacada Insight collects the appropriate data in real-time and across contact channels, and enables organizations to have a more complete view of the customer's experience. In addition, with the robust and dynamic reporting capabilities, organizations can easily identify specific coaching and training opportunities for CSRs and pinpoint contact space processes that need improvement.

The decision to improve reporting and analytics will help drive call center operations more effectively and will be the "critical path" for the most successful performance improvement efforts.

Scott Norteman - Client Business Executive, Jacada Inc.

The Customer Experience Evolution of Contact Centers

Are contact centers becoming extinct like dinosaurs or typewriters?

Based on the hype in the general media, it seems pretty clear that contact centers are a dying breed; getting replaced by more modern interaction channels like the Web, mobile, and social media.

But the data tells a different story. I've done a lot of consumer research over the years, and it continues to show that customers very often want to speak to someone on the phone. Whether it's to verify a piece of information, get help, or place an order, some people still want to interact with an agent. And when it comes to getting customer service, the phone often remains the preferred channel – across all generations of consumers.

While contact centers may not be quickly fading into obsolescence, they are not evolving fast enough to guarantee their ongoing relevance. As Charles Darwin said: "In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."

So what do "collaborate" and "improvise" mean for contact centers?

Collaborate means that contact centers need to connect with other channels. They need to augment and support Web, store, branches, mobile, and social media interactions. It's no longer viable to think of phone interactions as standalone experiences. Therefore, contact centers can no longer remain an isolated organization. For contact centers to thrive, they will need to become an integral component of multi-channel experiences.

Improvise means that contact centers need to redefine their purpose; their raison d'être. For many years, contact centers have been considered cost–centers; companies did everything they could do squeeze every last penny out of the cost of every last phone interaction. This pushed many interactions to offshore call centers and gave rise to purely cost-focused metrics like average handle time (AHT).

Contact centers need to evolve from cost-centers to loyalty drivers. The biggest financial impact of a phone interaction often has nothing to do with the cost of the call; it's the resulting behavior of the customer on the other end of the phone. Companies obsess about cutting $0.50 from the cost of a call without recognizing that the phone experience might generate a $1,000 difference in the lifetime value of that customer.

So how can contact centers learn to collaborate and improvise? By mastering what the Temkin Group has defined as the four core customer experience competencies:

1. Purposeful Leadership: Operate consistently with a clear set of values.
2. Employee Engagement: Align employees with the goals of the organization.
3. Compelling Brand Values: Deliver on your brand promises to customers.
4. Customer Connectedness: Infuse customer insight across the organization.

Over the next five blog posts in this series, I will explore how companies can apply these competencies to their contact centers. We'll dedicate one post to each of the four competencies and then use the final post to examine the metrics and measurements that you need to support the effort.

Let me circle around to the original question: Are contact centers becoming extinct like dinosaurs or typewriters?

Not yet. But the ones that don't evolve will definitely not survive. 

Bruce Temkin - Customer Experience Transformist & Managing Partner, Temkin Group and author of the popular blog, Customer Experience Matters

Bruce Temkin has been retained by Jacada to participate in the Customer Service 2.0: Access The Experts speakers series. The opinions shared herein reflect the views of the author, and not necessarily Jacada or its employees.

What makes for exceptional customer service?

 Without doubt, the media is overflowing with real life stories of customer's bad experiences with call centres so let's put aside for a moment the natural desire to redress the balance for those instances where we've suffered at the hands of a customer service agent or indeed have wanted them or someone to do likewise. Think instead about those cases where a phone call or email conversation with the call centre leaves us feeling good, and realising that apart from just a few, they're not all bad. It could be the result of getting a query resolved on the first call, getting through to an agent with just a couple of key presses on the IVR, or getting a sensible explanation for that unusually high bill. 

Dig deep, we all know what makes good customer service. But what makes exceptional customer service? Perhaps it's that one time when the agent credits your account in a gesture of goodwill. Or when the agent quickly resolves your broadband problem and gets you on your merry way. Or my own recent experience. I called the call centre at a well known and very reputable department store, renowned for its excellent customer service. The problem was that four items from a recent order had arrived by courier but the fifth had not. Thinking that such a problem was outside of the capability of online FAQ and with much irritation I called the helpline number to find the elusive fifth item.

The phone rang off the hook and I gave up. While musing over the irony of the difference between the customer service in the call centre and the store, the phone rang. It was the department store. 

"We noticed you rang in and we're sorry we couldn't get to your call in time, what can we do to help?"

I was floored! From that moment on, I'm a captive and non-churn-able customer. Why? They took the time to realize I'd made the effort to call and they made an even bigger effort to call me back. Unbelievable! The call itself was answered efficiently, however even if it had run into a problem, in my elevated state I would have overlooked it. The missing package arrived promptly, but even if it had not, it probably would not have mattered as my belief in good call centres had been restored.

Therein lies the lesson. Exceptional customer service leaves a lasting impression.

Karnail Jita - Presales Consultant, Jacada Inc.