Ccw Digital: A Customer Service Online Platform

Iassen Deenitchen brings us up to speed on how to empower the customer: "To make sure, or give them the assurance that if they need to talk to somebody, they know who to reach out to, and it's driven by them in satisfying the need that there's really somebody in ING to help them out."

Jason Liberman highlights the importance of staying relevant and competent in the online payment space: "We live in a time where you've got the likes of Google and Facebook, who are constantly under scrutiny. You always have to think through the lens of what could happen. So, as PayPal and other payment players get a little bit more progressive, get a little bit more strategic in the way they interact with customers, we always need to think three steps ahead, to make sure that we are following all types of regulation. If there's new sorts of privacy requirements, are we handling them?"

Alexis Smith highlights the need for more focus on the employee: "I think it just comes down to, first of all, employees are people. I think we sometimes neglect to think that, and it's all the rage now. We're all talking about being more human and seeing each other as being more human, and I think that's really important, but the only way to reach your customers or your consumers regardless of what business you're in is through your employees. So I think it takes a greater focus today on figuring out what's important to them, what drives and motivates them, how do they feel valued."

Jorgen Lislerud shares the importance of customer feedback: "We have to measure the voice of our customer. If they are internal, it's still as important or even more important than with external ones. Listen to their feedback and go above and beyond."

Peter Cszuczka joins us, giving insight on how to optimize productivity within: "The talent we have, they are hungry for more and we can tackle that by having much more complex activities, automizing and outsourcing or offshoring, whatever can be done at the current level of knowledge there and focusing on more high value added activities to be done. That doesn't necessarily drive an increase in number of people working for us. It clearly drives an increase in the level of skill that is needed. That's what people want."

Uber's Martin Rowlson joins us and shares that the region comprises 20% of the volume for the organization but 70% of the complexity. Based on the pace of change within the industry and the rate of growth at his organization, Martin's goal is to identify best practice, align best practice and build on best practices. Defining processes can’t take two weeks because "that process may have gone…literally gone."

From Barclay's, Sebastian Antony joins us and shares his philosophy, "I mean we look at it from a customer lens to start with, the customers are at the heart of it, and we mean it. We mean it and we are the pioneers in bringing in innovative products."

Adrian Ruth joins us and shares the importance of bringing the best possible content to the audience: "You talk about the voice of the customer, but for the BBC, our customers are our audiences. So, we are always thinking ... That's how we really, I think, motivate people around the BBC to get really engaged with what we're doing, is because everyone really cares about the audience. People like me joined the BBC because they're passionate for it, and they really want to deliver the best possible output on every platform and every genre to the audience."

This week's double episode offers an important reminder: successful contact center initiatives are not "one size fits all." ServiceNow's Abhijit Mitra, our first guest, reveals the importance of adapting technology to the unique needs of the contact center operation, agents and customers.  It is not enough for technology to be "powerful" -- it must be relevant. Later, we chat with Brian Johnson of Hotwire, a finalist at this year's CCW Excellence Awards.  Johnson details his organization's approach to training and performance management, paying specific importance to context.  It is not enough to cultivate talented agents -- they must be right for the business and its customers.

This week's guests do not represent identical organizations.  They do, however, share a passion for the customer experience -- and the role people play in the process. Jim Iyoob of ETech, our first guest, reveals how to meet the heightened expectations of today's customers.  What do they really want? How can an organization pair the right people with the right technology to meet those demands -- and deliver a customer experience that matters? Thomsen, a finalist at the CCW Excellence Awards, discusses his efforts to cultivate a customer-centric culture.  We may be in the digital age, but Sign-Zone remains focused on the personal touch. Thomsen reveals how his organization trains, coaches and incentivizes agents to prioritize connections.  

Recorded at CCW Vegas 2018, this week's double-episode offers a deep dive into modern contact center trends. We begin with Dan Burkland of Five9.  As the host of the CCW Excellence Awards, Burkland is the perfect person to answer burning customer management questions.  What are some commonalities among "excellent" contact centers? How are leading organizations handling the digital transformation? We then welcome Terry Lang, Vice President of Comerica Bank's Retail Customer Contact Center. Lang explores the intersection between technology and humanity. How can a "human" approach to technology empower agents to engage customers?  

It's almost a rule that customer contact professionals have to rave about the power of artificial intelligence.  But what can they do to actually harness that power?  How can they ensure AI and automation are meaningfully contributing to the custmer experience? For Nate Ford of Allianz and Carmit DiAndrea of Verint, one particularly valuable application comes on the speech analytics and quality monitoring fronts.  Automation technology can help organizations better understand customers, agents, interaction quality and operational opportunities.  Recorded at CCW Vegas, this episode finds Ford and DiAndrea exploring the analytics case, while also revealing the role "humans" will still play in this AI-enhanced world.

Live from CCW:  Brian Court of Intralinks and Alton Harewood of 8x8 debunk the idea that customer centricity and cost consciousness are opposing forces.  Bad customer service processes and systems, it turns out, actually cost money.  Investing in a great customer experience can thus prove very fruitful...very quickly.  If, it should be noted, the investments are done correctly.  Organizations cannot recklessly throw money at systems and processes; they must think about what matters to the business, its executives, its agents and its customers.

To thrive in today’s era of customer centricity, organizations must answer two questions: What are customers demanding? How do we actually meet those demands? Lori Jarchow of Ecolab and Andrea Pohlman of Aeritae explore those questions in the latest edition of the CCW Podcast series.  After discussing the new, heightened expectations of today’s customers, they reveal tips for driving the necessary change within the organization.  Pohlman, in fact, shares her secret for turning contact center detractors into advocates for customer centricity.

If you want to know how your contact center is currently performing, look at your metrics and scorecards. If you want to truly understand how customers feel about your brand – and how to fix any problems – you need to dig deeper. You need a robust, ever-evolving analytics program. SiriusXM is fervently committed to such a program, and senior solutions manager Emily Deragon discusses that analytics journey in the new CCW Digital podcast. “We’re ingesting two million calls per month for customer care, and we’re truly getting into the ‘deep and dirty’ insights of what’s happening on our calls,” explains Emily Deragon of SiriusXM in the latest CCW Digital Podcast. “How can it help us with training, how can it help us better forecast, how can it improve agent and customer experiences?” Recorded at the 2018 CCW Vegas, this episode also features commentary from Brian LaRoche of CallMiner Eureka.

From RBS, Nick Muir joins us and shares that it’s not the data that matters, it’s how you use it. He notes that the organization must find customer data wherever it is in the enterprise as there’s no point in having the data if you can’t use it to understand and interact with your customers better. He notes that AI is certainly a solution at which he’s looking but that "when it comes to AI, the investment required is probably more than is being talked about.” As a progressive-thinking organization, Nick notes that RBS wants to spend on innovation. The business has a visualized a utopic state of how they support customers. And so, yes- automation will be implemented the right way as Nick strives to have an intuitive understanding of what the customer is looking for as they interact with the company. He’s on a search for a seamless crossover between automation and human service for the customer.

Lufthansa Director of Customer Services Product Development Martin Sassenfeld join us and shares that "There was a big battle between sales and service and who can do the first-use cases, IT, business, etc.” He continues that customer service won the internal battle.  "We won the chance to build our first-use case where we wanted from customer experience side really sort of a customer pain point. Not to make a use-case where you increase sale, but where you really look into your customer services and where the customer pain points are and to solve these problems with artificial intelligence.” While Martin, his team and the organization already consider the chatbot solution they’ve implemented, artificial intelligence- it’s the self-learning capabilities and analytics to come which "can identify clusters of intents and customer pain points so they can develop some dashboards and make the tool usable for different roles in the organization."

The CEO of HomeServe Membership, Greg Reed joins us and shares that the key to his business is an engaged staff. He’s happy to hear when his organization goes above and beyond and does "a little more than they’re supposed to do.” Greg explains that such behavior showcases that the employee cares about the customer and the company- and that "they’re worried about both sides versus just caring about themselves.” As far as Greg is concerned, choice and voice have led to the current reality. So with Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple "creating value for customers and really seeing customer needs and fulfilling those needs,” Greg and the organization realized they could do the same thing very, very differently. They enhanced the product, changed the terms and conditions, gave field agents new tools and the opportunity to have a new attitude and they’re realizing that "customers will pay if they get better service."

General Manager for Customer Service Operations in Strategy with Arizona Public Service, Hui Wu Curtis joins us and shares her shift from hospitality to energy was actually seamless in that the organization knew it was time to focus on CX. Of course many organizations across myriad industries have realized that CX must now be a focus. Hui then takes us through an example of rallying hundreds of thousands of people around CX through ensuring that everything an organization does is focused on a benefit for the employees or the customers.