Archive for the ‘Interactive Intelligence’

Don Brown and The Future of Customer Service Technology

Posted by Chris Dellen
Sep23
cdellen

I had the pleasure of listening to technology visionary Don Brown, M.D. (Founder and CEO of Interactive Intelligence) speak on the future of customer service at the Indiana Chapter of SOCAP International on September 22, 2011. Below are my takeaways from his presentation.

Bottom Line – Customer Service as we know it is going to change.
“Customer service as we know it is often frustrating because it’s run for the convenience of the servicing organization, not the customer.” – Don Brown
Today, control is shifting to the consumer and it’s turning the way we serve our customers inside out.

Technology innovations that he predicts are on the horizon that will help contact centers meet those increased expectations.

The ACD, 2.0
One of the most exciting aspects of his talk was on one of the most fundamental elements of a contact center. The ACD. He quipped, “Here we give you 2300 dials and levers for you to tune how your ACD delivers customer interactions to the correct agent. And when it doesn’t work correctly, we as vendors point our finger at you and say, you didn’t have your ACD dialed in correctly.” The future ACD will use software driven artificial intelligence techniques to do the heavy lifting for you. “That’s going to happen” and it will raise the level of customer service.

Customer Intent
On the horizon, he mentioned the importance of recognizing customer inten … He also mentioned some of the breakthrough work that Interactive Intelligence has been doing in the realm of speech analytics, which includes intent and customized word spotting, on both the customer and the agent side. Beyond speech analytics, he predicts that in the future, software will be more automated and will further be able to recognize patterns based on demographic information…

Business Efficiency
Another point that Dr. Brown made was that people in charge of the contact center were in the perfect position to impact the rest of the organization. He said that by taking the elements that work well in the contact center and applying those best practices to the rest of the business have the potential to make a big impact. He jokingly said, “we know how many times a day that a $20/hour contact center agent goes to the bathroom but have no visibility into tasks that business people perform such as corporate Lawyers or the HR department.” Dr. Brown said that organizations need to apply the same level of rigor to other business functions. He also gave a short demo on how Interactive Intelligence’s Interaction Process Automation can route “work” throughout the organization, beyond the typical boundaries of the contact center.

So, is the goal of your contact center to drive organizational efficiency or serve your customer in the way they want to be served?

Avoid Unintended Consequences: Coaching for ININ Power Users

Posted by David Currier
Aug1
dcurrier

Interactive Intelligence Video Training GuideThe Interaction Center platform gives users a great degree of flexibility in configuring their personal options. Your power users may configure options for prompts played to callers, remote forward and follow-me features, call timeouts, notification preferences, and more. While this is very powerful, care must be taken when configuring these options to avoid “unintended consequences” – that’s a politically correct way of saying that it is possible to break things… badly.

Here are a couple of examples:

  1. Most often, these problems are the result of user error, or a simple lack of understanding. For example: Every few months, I get a report that a user always receives two e-mail messages when a voicemail is left. A quick look at the user’s client configuration shows that the user has turned on voicemail/fax notifications using their business e-mail address. When a voicemail message is left, IC delivers it to the user’s mailbox and then another message is sent to the same mailbox with a notification that a voicemail has just been received. If not read carefully, it can appear to the user that the message was duplicated.
  2. In some cases, the “unintended consequence” can be more severe. Let’s say the user sets a voicemail/fax alert to call a telephone number with a notification of a new message received, inputs their direct dial telephone number, and goes home for the weekend. An inbound caller then leaves a voicemail message which is delivered to the user’s inbox. IC places a notification call to the user’s DID and, because the user is not available, the call is sent to voicemail and a messages is again delivered to the user’s inbox. IC dutifully places another notification call, and the cycle continues until the user eventually shows up on Monday morning and answers a notification call… after finding over 5,000 voicemail messages in their e-mail inbox.

It gets worse…

Receiving 5,000 voicemail messages would be annoying, but hardly catastrophic. But keep in mind that while notification preferences are usually set in the Interaction Client, they can also be set remotely. If a significant number of user accounts were compromised and the notification preferences set to call their DID numbers, a malicious party could then leave each user a voicemail message and potentially fill all the phone lines with bogus voicemail notification calls – an effective denial of service attack.

Don’t panic…

Ok, so don’t be afraid to use advanced features just because they involve a certain amount of risk. Rather, be aware of the possible configuration options for a feature and its potential pitfalls or the consequences of different settings.

Managing Call Flow Schedules in ININ’s Interaction Center

Posted by David Currier
Jul18
dcurrier
Interactive Intelligence Video Training GuideThere are few things more frustrating for the person managing call flows for an organization than to find out that callers are hearing the wrong menus and being presented with the wrong options. In the Interaction Center platform, there are a number of reasons this might happen, but one of the most common is a schedule misconfiguration.

Here are a few tips to help ensure that your schedules are in good working order:

1) Schedule tab selection – An Interaction Attendant schedule includes a number of different tabs that can be selected to determine the type of schedule (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, Unplanned, and System). One mistake is for a user to click on other tabs to see how they are configured and then publish the Attendant profile without changing the tab selection back. It is critical to remember that only the active tab is used for a given schedule.

2) Time range selection – Most schedule types include a time range that can be configured to determine the hours during each day a schedule should run. Be sure that the schedule is indeed configured for the intended time range. If, for example, a weekly schedule is configured to run 8am Monday to 5pm Friday, but no time range for each day is configured, calls would be handled by this schedule outside of regular business hours.

3) Unplanned schedules – Use unplanned schedules carefully. They allow easy schedule changes for unplanned events (severe weather outage, unplanned company meeting, etc.), but will trump all other schedules. If an unplanned schedule is accidentally left in effect, no other schedules configured for that profile will be used until it is deactivated. Also keep in mind that an unplanned schedule will immediately take effect when the checkbox is checked (without publishing).

4) System schedules – System schedules were introduced in Interaction Center 3.0 as a powerful way to centrally manage call flow schedules without requiring changes in Interaction Attendant. Once a schedule is configured in Interaction Attendant and linked to one or more system schedules, it can be managed and updated from the schedules container in Interaction Administrator. This can dramatically simplify schedule management, but should be used carefully. For each Attendant schedule where the system tab is selected, be sure that at least one system schedule is actually linked. Also be sure that linked system schedules are marked active in Interaction Administrator if they should be in effect

Learnings From the 2011 ACCE Conference – Guest Post by Lori Bocklund

Posted by Ruth Lochary
Jul11
rlochary

We are pleased to bring you a guest blog post today. This article was written by Lori Bocklund, President of Strategic Contact. The article was originally published in the July 8 edition of the National Association of Call Centers “In Queue” newsletter. Lori is a leading expert in the Contact Center field and NACC is a great resource for the industry.

If you are like me, there is never enough time or money to attend conferences to learn more about the industry. Lori’s summary of the recent ACCE conference (held in June) will give you a run-down of the biggest topics and the latest trends. I encourage you to read Lori’s article and check out NACC’s newsletter. Here’s some great learning without leaving your desk!

I just returned from the ACCE Conference in New Orleans, one of the biggest and best contact center conferences of the year. While more people seem to be finding budget to attend conferences again, perhaps some of you are wishing you could have been there to attend sessions and talk to peers and vendors (and perhaps drink a “Hurricane” or eat some Gumbo!). So here are some tidbits to share.

Heads are in the Clouds
Call it what you want – hosted solutions, Software as a Service (SaaS), Communications as a Service (CaaS), cloud solutions – but regardless, it has arrived for both buyers and sellers. At least half of the vendor exhibits featured cloud-based solutions. Some offer full blown contact center solutions with routing, reporting, IVR, CTI, and performance tools (e.g., WFM, QM). Others were peddling targeted applications such as CRM, proactive outbound contact, web chat translation services, analytics, or voice of the customer surveys. The chance to get something done quickly, with little upfront cost, really seems to resonate with companies constrained by IT resources and budget dollars. In a knowledge exchange session I facilitated on the topic, attendees testified to implementations that maxed out at three months. No one could recall a premise-based implementation of similar technology that came close to that timeframe. Concerns seem to be security, reliability, and negotiating and managing service level agreements – all topics that can be addressed with the proper due diligence in project processes.

You Can Optimize Your Desktop
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a contact center with an “ideal” desktop, but I know a lot of people who long for an improved desktop and applications. People need to capture interaction information and customer profiles (including the increasingly changing and elusive contact information – like cell phones and email addresses), and they want to make it easier for their reps to help customers. Enter today’s CRM solutions and desktop optimization applications. The former can be had for less pain through hosted applications and improved deployment approaches (configured instead of customized, with “easy” integration). The latter bring the metrics to see what is happening on the desktop, integration between applications to avoid the pain of cut and paste and notepads, and the process optimization to smooth interactions delivering shorter handle times and increased first contact resolution (which EVERYONE wants). Both deliver a desktop “portal” that truly transforms the customer and rep experience.

Performance Tools Cross Barriers and Channels
With the proliferation of analytics tools, customer satisfaction surveys, and eLearning and coaching capabilities, vendors are vying for the attention of call center leaders who want to take their staff and center performance to new heights. As centers mature, they yearn for these tools to meet the high demands corporate leaders place on them to improve customer service, cut costs, and drive revenue. Speech analytics has been the “hot” topic in the past few years, and seems to be settling in to the realities of where and how to use it – including the commitment of appropriate analyst resources to drive value from this powerful technology. And now with text analytics and cross channel analytics, companies can apply similar analysis to their email and web chat. Scorecards and dashboards were of great interest, as was desktop analytics coming from both the performance suite vendors and from those with desktop optimization solutions. The sessions the attendees flocked to (popular topic!) and vendors present (many choices for VoC) reinforce that there is no reason not to do voice of the customer surveys anymore to complement quality monitoring and other internal performance perspectives.

Still Room for Niche Vendors
While some of the big vendors anchored the event, it was also clear there is still plenty of room for niche players that help companies solve the specific challenges. Want to improve your reps’ keyboarding skills? There’s an app for that! Need to add proactive outbound contacts to your customer interaction strategy? Recover idle time to use for knowledge building with your agents? Improve your forecasting ability? You guessed it; there are apps for those too. Whether your needs are wide-ranging or targeted, whether you have a “suite” approach to technology or seek best of breed solutions, there are good options to consider.

Social Media Hype Continues and Takes a Reality Check
We heard and talked about “tweets” and “followers,” social media strategies and the role of marketing and the contact center in responding to these important interactions. From keynotes to sessions to vendor booths, social media hype flowed. But at the same time, the table and hallway conversations were flavored with some healthy skepticism on the fit of social media for various companies and their customers. Perhaps we’ve reached a point in the maturing of these new interactions where people will take a careful look at the role they play today and tomorrow. In a time where companies must make careful choices about priorities for their precious investment of time, money, and resources, the reality check is a healthy thing.

Lori Bocklund, President – Strategic Contact
lori@strategiccontact.com

ININ CIC 2.4 End-Of-Life Extended

Posted by Ruth Lochary
Jun29
rlochary

Here’s an important announcement we received this week from Interactive Intelligence:

Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Center® (CIC) 2.4 and Enterprise Interaction Center® (EIC) 2.4 products were scheduled to reach end of life (EOL) on June 26, 2011. Interactive Intelligence has extended the EOL date to December 31, 2011. ‘End of life’ status occurs three years after the last ship date of a product version.

As we’ve discussed in other blog posts, Interactive has announced CIC “Four.0”. There are some very exciting features coming. Here’s a link to some videos to give you a more detailed introduction to these features – including speech analytics, server virtualization, and many more. Some of you may be wondering, “Should we skip 3.0 and go straight to Four.0?” Great question – we can make a case both ways depending on your specific situation.

Let’s say you are a customer running CIC 2.4. Here are some things to consider:

•   Waiting for Four.0 will give you access to the latest features and most powerful functionality

•   We don’t yet have a firm release date for Four.0 and the initial release may not include all of the features your organization leverages (such as Interaction Recorder, Dialer, etc.). Those may come in the early service updates to Four.0. You need to take this into account in planning your schedule for your upgrade.

•   CIC 3.0 is currently a very stable platform. If you are running CIC 2.4, we highly recommend 3.0.

If you have any questions about your release or upgrade, please give us a call.

ININ Supervisor Video Training Guide

Interactive Intelligence Announces Release of SU12

Posted by Ruth Lochary
Jun27
rlochary

Interactive Intelligence Video Training Guide

Interactive Intelligence released SU12 for its CIC 3.0 platform on Friday. We wanted to get a quick blog post out to let you know what you will find in SU12. Here are some highlights:

For Interaction Process Automation (IPA)

The product has been enhanced to support multi-page work items. This functionality allows multiple work item forms to be routed to a user via a single work-item interaction, without having to pickup each page of that work item.

For Interaction Feedback

1) Feature has been added allowing the score for a question to be ignored

2) Survey questions can now be weighted to be between 0 and 1. This means a question can be weighted to the right of a decimal point (i.e. 0.5) as is possible in Interaction Recorder.

For Interaction Optimizer

The scheduling engine’s algorithm has been changed to give agent schedule preferences higher precedence.

For Interaction Recorder

1) Interactive Intelligence has added enhancements to better support work-at-home agents. The bandwidth usage for uploading screen recordings has been reduced. There is a parameter that will allow system administrators to modify the amount of bandwidth used for uploading screen recordings.

2) Interaction Center Business Manager (ICBM) Interaction Recorder users can now see scorecards scored by users other than themselves. Up to now, users were only allowed to see questionnaire scorecards that they were in the process of scoring or had completed. Administrators will have the ability in SU12 to set a parameter giving permission to view other scorecards. This will allow, for example, a supervisor to view a quality analyst’s scorecard.

All of these enhancements are in addition to things added in SU 11 – like support for 64 bit faxing. There are more technical improvements in SU12 as well – but that’s a topic for a blog post from one of our engineers!

As always, please let us know if you have questions.

Securing ININ’s Interaction Center Against Toll Fraud

Posted by David Currier
Jun20
dcurrier

Interactive Intelligence Video Training Guide

While every effort can be made to secure a phone system against intrusion or abuse, there will always be methods that can be used to exploit a system. The Interaction Center platform is no different. Like all other phone systems, it has security precautions and necessary vulnerabilities. In other words, a lot of thought goes into how to secure an Interaction Center system against attack, but certain features of the system result in unavoidable insecurities or weak spots.

An example of this is remote access. It is usually desirable to allow users to remotely call into the system and access voicemail, manage their status, or perform other tasks. However, this exposes the system to the outside to any party with credentials that grant them access to the system. While this is definitely a feature worth having, it is also a potential vulnerability.

The most common attack against an IC system we have seen exploits this feature and often results in toll fraud. Here’s how it works:

1) Someone with a desire to gain access for whatever reason (and who likely knows they are calling an Interaction Center server) calls a number that reaches the target system

2) The caller navigates through menus and identifies a method to login to the system remotely (this is allowed by the Remote Access node in Interaction Attendant)

3) The caller then attempts to login using various combinations of extensions and passwords, sometimes gaining a list of extensions to try from the dial-by-name feature

4) Once a successful username and password combination has been found, the caller uses one of several methods to place outbound calls to other numbers (often international), one method is to set the user’s status to Available, Forward at an international number, then call the user directly

If remote access to the system is desired (and it almost always is), the best method to protect against this kind of attack is to enforce a solid password policy. The default password policy in IC is often sufficient, but should be evaluated to be sure that it matches your organizations security policies. As a best practice, set a secure password when creating new users and don’t use 1234 or the user’s extension. Remember, It is always possible to crack even a good password with a brute force attack, but much less likely.

ININ Unwraps Details on CIC 4.0 (a.k.a. four.o)

Posted by Chris Dellen
Jun13
cdellen

The good, the bad, and the forgotten…

Our team was briefed by ININ product management the other day on some of the major components coming in CIC 4.0 which is slated to be released sometime around the end of June… We won’t be able to cover everything we learned; however, here are some of our key takeaways:

Things that we like:

1) CIC servers will finally be able to be virtualized along with some of the other ancillary sub systems and components with the exception of media servers, which can’t be virtualized

2) ININ adds Real-time speech analytics capabilities to Interaction Recorder

3) Upgraded multi-media handling for chat and email

4) New Report Structure – should alleviate some of the reporting/analytics challenges and will be more flexible. In addition, it will collapse 171 reports into more useable sets

5) ININ will now be offering a concurrent licensing model, providing more flexibility for you

Good news / Bad News

1) While we applaud the support of Windows server 2008, (good) it does present some upgrade challenges. You will not be able to just lay 4.0 on the same servers currently running 3.0. This could affect your budget requirements for 4.0 (bad)

2) (Bad) Not all customers are going to have the ability to upgrade soon because of the delayed release of additional products in the early SU’s i.e. Interaction Dialer, possibly Optimizer and other add-on products.

3) (Good) HMP is being eliminated from the IC servers. (Bad) However, for large conferencing environments, you will still require an HMP media conferencing server.

Things that we were hoping to learn more about that were left out of our presentation

1) Evolution of media servers and localization

2) Bulls eye routing

3) New licensing cost model

4) 4.0 Release Plan/Schedule; we were led to believe that the initial release may be limited to a few customers and true GA to come later

As we continue to learn more, we will continue to keep you updated.

The First Stop in Call Troubleshooting in Interactive Intelligence Environments

Posted by David Currier
Apr12
dcurrier

When troubleshooting issues with your Interaction Center servers, the first place to look are the server event logs. Actually, we recommend that you regularly monitor them for unexpected warnings and errors. Similarly, when troubleshooting reports of trouble with calls, the best place to start is the Call Log on the active IC server at the time of the call. While there are a number of different ways to search this log for one or more calls, the simplest is with a Call ID. Along with a report of what happened from a user, the log entry for a call will quite often be enough to determine what happened.

1) Browse to the Logs folder and open the folder for the date of the offending call

How to View the Interactive Intelligence Logs Folder

2) Open the file CallLog.ininlog (by default it will open in the ININ Log Viewer

Interactive Intelligence Log Viewer

3) From the Filter menu, select Filter Configuration – this will open the Filter Configuration dialog

4) From the Filter menu, create a new filter for a Context Attribute

Interactive Intelligence Context Attribute

5) From the Context Attribute dropdown menu, select Ctx Attrib 1

ININ Context Attribute Dropdown menu

6) Enter the Call ID of the call in question in the Search Item field and click Add, then click Ok

The Call Log will now be filtered to the entry for the specified interaction and (depending on the type of call) will provide many useful pieces of information including the calling and called party numbers, users involved in the call, start and end times, the call disconnect reason, and more. If more troubleshooting is required, the information provided in the log entry of a call will help you know where to look next.

ININ Supervisor Video Training Guide

How to Monitor Contact Center Agents using Interaction Supervisor – A Video Training Guide

Posted by Chris Dellen
Apr1
cdellen

Here’s Interactive Intelligence’s tool to help track your most essential resource – your people

Every call center has a buzz…you can feel the energy from the people in the air. Keeping track of those people is an essential part of every contact center leader’s day. Here’s the tool that gives you detailed insight into the work your agents are doing. See where to find this critical information.

3 Reasons why Customer Loyalty Beats Customer Satisfaction – The Tale of Two Socks

Posted by Ruth Lochary
Apr1
rlochary

Call center leaders are always measuring something. We’re buried in data and reports. One of the things we struggle to measure is “CSat” – customer satisfaction. We try post-call surveys to assess this; but privately, I think most of us would admit that we’re not sure those reports really amount to much of anything. If the customer is satisfied, they’ll keep coming back, right?

I’ve been doing some research on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and was surprised to learn that “loyal” is much more important than “satisfied” for a customer. I’ve got a story to illustrate.

Several months ago, a friend convinced me to start a walking/jogging program with her. I agreed and visited Blue Mile, a local walking/running supply store, to buy the right shoes.

These people are experts and they are passionate about running/walking/fitness. They didn’t talk down to me or laugh when I asked basic questions. In fact, they got excited about my new adventure. They answered my questions and urged me to come back if I needed anything else.

Needless to say, I’ve been back for purchases large and small. I stopped in the day I finished my first 5K – just to tell them what I did – not to buy one thing! It didn’t matter – they greeted me with the same enthusiasm…they offered advice…they encouraged me.

Last Saturday, after my morning walk, I had to throw away my socks. They were worn out. I bought them a long time ago at the “megamart” in town. Where did I go for my new socks? That’s right – to Blue Mile. The person waiting on me had me try on two different kinds of socks to be sure I got the right type!

So, what’s my point? I was satisfied with the socks from the “megamart.” The purchase transaction was handled just fine. The socks lasted a very reasonable amount of time, so there wasn’t a quality issue. The price was competitive (cheaper, actually). But, I didn’t go back to purchase more.

Instead, I went to the business that earned my loyalty. The staff at Blue Mile connected with me as a person. They know me and what’s important to me. They share knowledge for free and they make it easy to do business with them.

You can be satisfied, but never buy from a business again…just like me and my socks. Loyal customers are created when your people connect with those customers. In fact, the research shows three important things about loyal customers:

o They spend more
o They stay with you longer
o They more easily forgive your mistakes.

Here are a couple of questions for you today: are your customers satisfied or loyal? What would it mean for your business if more customers were loyal? What is one thing your contact center agents could do today to connect and create – not just satisfied, but – loyal customers?

Interaction Center 3.0 Service Update 11 Released by Interactive Intelligence

Posted by David Currier
Mar29
dcurrier

It has been nearly a year since Interactive Intelligence has release a significant set of new features for their flagship product, the Customer Interaction Center version 3.0. The release of Service Update 11 was announced yesterday and includes a number of enhancements that have been a long time in coming – literally. This includes a 64-bit fax client driver, advanced call analysis on the media server, new features for Interaction Attendant, Tracker, Process Automation, Recorder, and more.

There are a couple of critical considerations to keep in mind when planning to apply this update. First, IC 3.0 SU10 (New Patch Target) is required prior to installing SU11. If you have not already done so, I definitely recommend applying Service Update 10. It has been a very stable release with very few significant bugs. Second, apply Interactive Update 1.0 SU8 prior to installing SU11. As of Service Update 10, the update cycle for Interactive Update was separated from the main product to allow independent fixes and feature enhancements to the “updater” – this will help make deployment of Service Update 11 much smoother.

A note of caution…

Service Update 11 includes the first significant new features in almost a year. New features always increase the likelihood of new bugs – in fact, there are already a couple of critical bugs in SU11 impacting remote users that require patches to fix. If you do not have a business need for the new features available in SU11, I recommend the “wait-and-see” approach. If this update is critical to your organization, proceed with caution.

Ear to the Ground, Part 2 at Contact Center Conference 2011

Posted by Ruth Lochary
Mar24
rlochary

The Contact Center 2011 conference continued on Wednesday. Many more great speakers presented. Here are a few of the highlights I picked up from the day.

Change thought for the day: “Home agents – if you’re not doing it, do it. If you are doing it, it’s time to expand it. All of the excuses to not do it are gone.”

Customer service thought for the day: How many of you encourage customers to call your center? Don’t we generally look for ways to direct people to our IVR, website…some form of self-service? We want to avoid the more expensive phone call, right? Zappos puts their 800 number on every page of their website because they WANT you to call them. They say that every phone call is 3-5 minutes of uninterrupted time with their customer. How’s that for a paradigm shift for you?

How do you turn talent into successful performance? That is a challenge for the leader of any organization. I know we all certainly deal with it in our contact centers. According to Garrison Wynn, our staff members need to know they’ve been genuinely listened to and heard. That connection – taking the time to genuinely listen, forms the foundation of your influence as a leader. The act of listening to your staff builds trust for you. That trust then enables you to lead your group through change and other challenges. Don’t you think that sometimes we look for a fancier or more difficult solution? It’s not any more complicated that this – listen to your people. By the way here is one quote I especially liked from Mr. Wynn’s talk: “If you criticize other’s ideas too much, they’ll never use your ideas, no matter how good they are.”

If you’d like to see more of what’s happening at the conference, go to www.contactcenter2011.com/live.

Ear to the ground at Contact Center Conference 2011

Posted by Ruth Lochary
Mar23
rlochary

Tuesday was the first full day of the Contact Center Conference and Expo 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve met a wonderful variety of contact center staff and leaders and I had the opportunity to attend several excellent sessions. I could write for a long time trying to recap the various sessions, but you’d get bored with that! Instead, I’ve pulled three things that stuck out to me today.

First, there has been LOTS of talk about social media and what we should be doing with it in our contact centers. Over and over though, I keep hearing one theme – Customers are saying, “give me consistent answers across all channels.” Your phone calls, emails, facebook posts and tweets need to all support the same message. That’s easier said than done given that the channels don’t always belong to the same part of an organization. I don’t have the secret key to this challenge. I’m hearing that it’s something we’ve all got to be aware of and work to figure out for our organizations.

Second, we all have agents in our organizations. Most of us have some type of quality program to help measure the work those agents do. I heard something today that really made me think – “QA is really brand management.” Think about that for a minute. Your QA staff listens to what your company (i.e. your agents) says to your customers hundreds of times a month. How would you change your QA form if you wanted to measure how well your contact center is supporting your company’s brand? That was a paradigm shift for me!

Finally, on the technology front, it’s always interesting to talk about new tools folks are using to improve their contact centers. Here was a bullet that really jumped off a slide at me today: “Proactive outbound calling is the hot new differentiator.” Hmmm…do you offer this to your customers?

If you’d like to see more of what’s happening at the conference, check out the website www.contactcenter2011.com and click on the “Live” box.

3 Steps to Creating Customer Astonishment – Lessons Learned at the Contact Center Conference & Expo

Posted by Ruth Lochary
Mar22
rlochary

We hear so much about customer satisfaction, but is “satisfaction” enough? Moving a step beyond to delighting – even astonishing — our customers helps build loyalty that keeps customers coming back. What does it take to create an astonishing experience? I had one of those experiences recently and I saw 3 things I’d like to share with you.

I arrived at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tennessee to attend the Contact Center Association 2011 conference. I came in one day early so I could visit with friends and family. Unfortunately, I had a terrible cold and a very bad case of laryngitis. I could not talk above a whisper. My sister and I were having dinner at one of Opryland’s restaurants. Our waitress, Paula, could not help but notice my plight – she had to lean over to hear me order dinner! After she took our order, she returned to the table with a mug filled with warm water, honey and lemon. She said, “I thought this might help your throat.” I was blown away that someone would care enough to do such a kind thing (and it did help my throat!!). But, Paula wasn’t finished. As we were finishing up our meal, Paula came back with a “to-go” cup and lid. Inside, she had put more honey and lemon. She said I could use the coffee maker in my room to add hot water to the cup to drink before I went to sleep. I was truly astonished. What an amazing thing to do. As I’ve reflecting on the experience, I’ve identified three things that made it happen:

First, Paula took time to see me as a person. Now, someone with laryngitis so bad they can’t talk above a whisper might stand out a bit to a waitress, but she could have just gone on with her night. Her “job” was to get food to my table. She went beyond her job…to Paula, this was a relationship, not a transaction. She went much deeper than the business at hand (getting food to my table) and met a much greater need for me.

Second, she took time to take the extra step. Paula didn’t stop with one mug of medicine for my throat – she made me two! It didn’t take her long, but it was clearly “above and beyond.” She was motivated to do a little bit more to make a difference for her customer.

Third, she works for an organization that approves of extra effort. Clearly, Paula is a caring person. But just as clearly, Paula works in a culture that rewards taking the extra step. We can probably all think of an organization where a manager would have yelled at Paula for giving away the honey and lemon. Instead, for the price of the honey and lemon, the organization made a huge statement. They mean it when they say, “we are committed to meeting your desires and exceeding your expectations.” They allow people like Paula to succeed.

Hopefully, the crazy early-spring weather hasn’t given you a cold and laryngitis. However, the next time you see honey and lemon, ask yourself, “Am I building a culture that would allow the ‘Paulas’ of my organization to astonish our customers?”

What other things do you think contribute to creating astonishing experiences?

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