Customer Experience & Call Center Archives

Business Communication Mistakes To Avoid

Effective communication is at the heart of every successful business, no matter the size or industry. In today’s diverse global business environment, effective communication skills will definitely set you apart from your peers and competitors.

Here are some common communication mistakes we are all guilty of and it would be best to avoid:

Discussing Sensitive Information Through Email

How many emails do you send and receive a day… 10, 50, 100? It’s efficient and effective; without it, we’d all probably have a few problems to say the least! We are so reliant on email that it’s easy to forget the company privacy policy when trying to get through a busy day. However, with the leak of countless confidential emails belonging to prominent organizations over the last few months, now more than ever, it is important to think twice before we hit “send”.

Failing To Train New Employees On Their Desk Phones

It’s easy to assume that people know how to use their email client or smartphone, but what about their desk phone? With all of the models and variations out there, the features and functionality of a new desk phone may be completely new to your recent hire. That’s why it’s important to make sure they are trained on it. Any good business phone provider, including Introtel, will provide training services to your staff.

Failing to Respond to Voicemails

There’s no rule on acceptable time to respond to your voicemail messages. Instead of responding quickly with incomplete information, it is better to wait to respond when you are able to address everything in the message. Furthermore, if your caller asked you to call them back, don’t send an email. Likewise, if they give you the option to respond by email or by phone, use the method that best helps you communicate your point. The main goal is to give your caller the information they need, in the timeliest manner. In general, people in our offices respond to voicemails within the same business day or at most, up to one business day later.

Speaking More and Listening Less

To stay on top of any situation, stop speaking and listen. When you listen more than you speak, you open yourself up to learning and empathy — which in turn help you accomplish more.

Transferring Customers To Numerous Departments

Having dedicated representatives to take customer calls is one of the most important customer relationship management plans you can put in place. If you have ever called a company and been transferred to department after department, you understand how frustrating it can be. That’s why as a business, you should have a plan to deal with sales inquiries, complaints, and general questions. It may sound simple but all too often, businesses fail to plan for this and therefore risk losing customers.

Are you guilty of making any of the communication mistakes above? Let us know in the comments section!

By the experts at Introtel

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6 WAYS TO IMPROVE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Customer Experience & Call Center

A stellar customer experience has a measurable impact on your bottom line. A recent survey by PWC found that 73 percent of buyers consider the customer experience an important part of the purchasing process. Meanwhile, 65 percent of U.S. consumers say a positive experience plays a stronger role than advertising in their decision to buy.

It’s no surprise, then, that businesses are devoting more attention and resources to improving the customer journey. Getting it right, however, means correctly identifying which aspects of the experience their customers value most.

It’s tempting to look at generational differences and prioritize investments based on the expectations of younger generations. But as PWC points out, the generations agree on several aspects of what makes a successful customer experience. Top among them? Speed, convenience and knowledge.

Thus, businesses should prioritize investments that optimize the customer experience for these attributes. There are some nuanced generational differences, of course, but with the right technology, companies can exceed everyone’s expectations.

Speed: The Customer Experience Must Be Fast

As PWC points out, all generations today expect instant access to an organization and everything it offers. Cloud communications allows businesses to reimagine the way they respond to customer requests and deliver goods and services.

Here are two examples that illustrate how the right tools make it possible to satisfy your customers’ desire for speed.

Reduced wait times: Long wait times are a top source of customer frustration, so reducing them should be a priority. To start, analyze call data to understand and eliminate bottlenecks and gaps. Also, consider deploying call-routing technology so that customers reach the right person the first time.

As PWC points out, all generations today expect instant access to an organization and everything it offers. Cloud communications allows businesses to reimagine the way they respond to customer requests and deliver goods and services.

Here are two examples that illustrate how the right tools make it possible to satisfy your customers’ desire for speed.

Reduced wait times: Long wait times are a top source of customer frustration, so reducing them should be a priority. To start, analyze call data to understand and eliminate bottlenecks and gaps. Also, consider deploying call-routing technology so that customers reach the right person the first time.

Omnichannel options: There are more ways than ever for customers to engage with your business, so it’s crucial for employees to know their way around every channel: voice, text, email, web chat and social media. And when employees have the ability to navigate seamlessly from one channel to another, they serve customers more quickly.

Convenience: The Customer Experience Needs To Be Efficient

Customers also expect to engage with your company on any device or network. Every attempt to connect must be smooth, informative and reliable. From a technology standpoint, you need to deliver:

Mobility: Technologies such as unified communications keep your employees connected to your business wherever they are. That has a tremendous impact on the customer experience. Your sales team and subject matter experts are always a click away, even if they’re traveling or working remotely. As a result, you can serve customers’ needs in the moment, enabling you to close sales, resolve issues and answer questions immediately. The customer gets what they need when they need it – and they come away from the experience happier.

Reliability: The PWC survey revealed that 59 percent of U.S. customers will stop doing business with you after several bad experiences, and 17 percent will stop after just one bad experience. Dropped calls and poor quality are not an option. Unified communications delivers reliability and exceptional quality with a secure connection between the LAN and the public Internet and support for Wi-Fi and mobile 4G networks.

Knowledge: The Customer Experience Must Be Intelligent And Friendly

Your employees must be knowledgeable and friendly. The right technology arms your employees with the tools and resources they need to deliver on this promise.

CRM integration: Personalization makes your business memorable. CRM integration gives your employees immediate access to detailed customer information, which enables a warm and friendly conversation. Customer interactions are more engaging, and issues are resolved faster.

Scripting modules: Advances in scripting modules have made them more valuable tools. Today, scripts can be dynamically manipulated during calls, allowing staff to navigate between versions. Scripting tools can also integrate with Web Services and internal systems so employees can retrieve relevant information that may be of use while dealing with more complex issues and demanding customers.

It all starts and ends with the human touch.

According to PWC, 71 percent of consumers say employees have a significant impact on the customer experience. The right technology combined with better employee training can help companies improve these interactions. Together, people and cloud communications technology are the best investments a business can make to deliver a smarter, faster and more convenient customer experience.

Source:Mitel

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THE CONTACT CENTER'S PATH TO THE CLOUD

Customer Experience & Call Center

One-size-fits-all’ may be good for a wristwatch or 3D glasses at the movies, but it simply doesn’t work for a contact center. In an age where customer experience has become a key business differentiator, organizations need flexible options for how they provide customer service.

But before focusing on specific features, you should consider contact center deployment options. Conventional wisdom tells us that everything is moving to the cloud, and indeed there are many benefits to cloud-based contact centers. But each organization is migrating at its own pace. In some cases an on-premise or hybrid solution might still make sense. This requires a closer look at business goals and requirements to understand which deployment option is best for your organization.

So what are the options? Let’s start with on-premise contact centers where organizations purchase hardware and software licenses to deploy and then manage them on-site. This has been the traditional model for decades. While many are moving to cloud-based systems, there are still some distinct advantages to the on-premise model—most notably, full in-house control over your resources and data.

Cloud contact centers, on the other hand, can offer significant cost savings as your organization can virtually eliminate upfront capital investments in favor of the pay-per-use model. As a software subscription, cloud services can typically scale up and down with business variability. Because the entire system is software-based and delivered through the cloud, maintenance and upgrades are easier too.

But not all cloud contact centers are created equal—and there are several important considerations. A private cloud, for example, maintains infrastructure and services over a private network. Think intranet versus Internet. This enables software delivery within the confines of your organization’s own network resources. A public cloud solution leverages the Internet and can potentially deliver the most cost savings. This also enables the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for contact centers as a service option, where a third-party delivers contact center solutions on a per-user basis.

On-premise vs. cloud. Private cloud vs. public cloud. As if the options so far weren’t enough, there is one more. Some organizations are adopting a hybrid model to take advantage of the benefits of multiple delivery options. In fact, the hybrid model is an attractive option for organizations that want to migrate to the cloud or to a public cloud without taking the immediate plunge.

Even within the hybrid model, you have options. You can have a hybrid contact center that includes on-premise and cloud elements. This is especially attractive to organizations seeking to migrate to the cloud over time. For organizations that have a private cloud solution and seek to migrate to the public cloud, there’s a hybrid solution that bridges both.

Source:Mitel

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Want to learn more about one of the products or solutions mentioned above? Send an email to contact@introtel.com

HOW MACHINES WILL SHAPE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES OF TOMORROW

Customer Experience & Call Center

In the quest to deliver a more personalized customer experience, businesses have found an unlikely ally in machines. From tiny sensors to artificially intelligent contact centers, machine-based technologies can help businesses better understand, serve and communicate with their customers.

This white paper, based on a recent survey conducted across six countries and 2,500 IT decision-makers, discovers businesses almost universally see machine-based technologies as a significant value-add in delivering a more personalized customer experience.

See an excerpt below or download the entire white paper.

You can find enough arguments to support security features of both cloud-based and premise-based communications solutions. The fact is, while a premise based system may initially offer more control over your data it is not inherently more or less secure. True security has more to do with your overall communications strategy and how you are using the technology. Cloud can be as secure as you want it to be.

Customer Experience Is King

Every business believes they offer something unique to their customers that differentiates them in the marketplace, whether it’s a patented product or a specialized service. Yet, increasingly, the key differentiator for companies isn’t simply what product or service they deliver, but how they deliver it.

In a world where online storefronts can be launched in weeks and entire industries disrupted in months, more businesses are (rightly) focusing on the customer experience as the new battlefield for market share and customer loyalty.

This will come as no surprise to those businesses that have closely watched the digital transformation of the last decade. Customers, particularly millennials, have readily embraced digital technologies in their day-to-day lives, from online shopping to mobile banking.

Today, exceptional customer service isn’t solely determined by face-to-face or voice-to-voice exchanges; it’s a multichannel and, frequently, machine-enhanced process that ties together voice, video, mobile and online channels to deliver a seamless and highly-personalized experience.

If you want to see the future of customer service, look to the habits of millennials:

They are extremely connected to their mobile devices and take them everywhere.
They use their smartphones to text more than talk, and are just as likely to use a social media app as their wireless service provider to communicate.
They value privacy and yet are willing to share personal information in exchange for better service.
They place a high premium on convenience and personalization and have few qualms about moving to a competitor if they can find a better combination of price and experience elsewhere.

Within the “millennial mandate” for convenience and connectivity lies a challenge and an opportunity for businesses. The challenge is to deliver a mobile, unified, digitized customer experience in a way that is affordable, sustainable and meaningful. The opportunity is to create a customer experience that fosters loyalty, increases satisfaction and drives revenue for years to come.

Giving Machines A Voice In The Future

One of the most exciting aspects of the evolving customer experience landscape is the ability to bring machine-enhanced communications into the experience. Like data analytics before it, machine-learning technologies and AI can help to deliver a much higher level of personalization and efficiency to customer transactions and interactions. Coupled with sensors and machine enhanced communications, businesses can now deliver a completely new kind of customer experience with their products and services.

We’ve already seen the beginning of this trend toward giving machines a voice with chatbots: software-based programs that “converse” with online customers, using artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to move the conversation forward. Millennials, in particular, have displayed a high comfort factor with chatbots. In one UK-based survey, over 60 percent of millennials reported using chatbots, and 71 percent indicated they would welcome chatbot engagement from a recognizable brand.

While machines have the potential to positively transform customer service and contact center experiences, integrating machine-based communications with existing products and services can also have a dramatic impact on customer experience. For example, a professional services company might use machine sensors to diagnose repair issues before a technician arrives, resulting in shorter repairs and higher rates of first-time resolution. An airport might use video-enabled communications with its defibrillator stations to provide live assistance in the event of an emergency. And professional athletes may someday have communications-equipped helmets or wristbands tied to biometric sensors that alert coaches and physicians the moment a player is injured or dehydrated.

In a world where online storefronts can be launched in weeks and entire industries disrupted in months, more businesses are (rightly) focusing on the customer experience as the new battlefield for market share and customer loyalty.

This will come as no surprise to those businesses that have closely watched the digital transformation of the last decade. Customers, particularly millennials, have readily embraced digital technologies in their day-to-day lives, from online shopping to mobile banking.

Today, exceptional customer service isn’t solely determined by face-to-face or voice-to-voice exchanges; it’s a multichannel and, frequently, machine-enhanced process that ties together voice, video, mobile and online channels to deliver a seamless and highly-personalized experience.

If you want to see the future of customer service, look to the habits of millennials:

They are extremely connected to their mobile devices and take them everywhere.
They use their smartphones to text more than talk, and are just as likely to use a social media app as their wireless service provider to communicate.
They value privacy and yet are willing to share personal information in exchange for better service.
They place a high premium on convenience and personalization and have few qualms about moving to a competitor if they can find a better combination of price and experience elsewhere.

Within the “millennial mandate” for convenience and connectivity lies a challenge and an opportunity for businesses. The challenge is to deliver a mobile, unified, digitized customer experience in a way that is affordable, sustainable and meaningful. The opportunity is to create a customer experience that fosters loyalty, increases satisfaction and drives revenue for years to come.

The UC Imperative

Implicit in this customer experience transformation is the need for unified communications. Customers expect an omni-channel experience that extends seamlessly across their mobile and online interactions, and gives them the option of moving between voice, video, text and chat as the situation and personal preferences dictate. Equally important, customers expect contextual conversations that integrate their multichannel experiences so, for example, customer service agents on a voice call can quickly reference an online chat that transpired earlier in the day. Initiatives like these are fast becoming the norm for customer experiences, particularly in the competitive finance and retail industries.

It is true that some industries, and some regions, are farther along on the customer experience journey than others. Yet nearly all businesses agree customer experience improvements are a key part of their digital transformation, and that machine-based technologies have an important role to play in those improvements. In the following sections, we highlight some of the insights from our survey of more than 2,500 IT decision makers who shared their vision for the customer experience of tomorrow.

Source:Mitel