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Sometimes “Customer Experience” feels like a book everyone talks about, but few people actually read. Luckily, the conversation is inspiring and a lot of fun. There’s a rich and vibrant discourse on social media about customer experience and customer service, and so many thought leaders who are constantly pioneering the ways we think about the interactions between…

We love our shoes! Designer Shoe Warehouse, better known as DSW, continues to find innovative ways to capitalize on that universal truth and keep customers coming back for more. From a single store just 25 years ago, DSW has become a footwear and accessories powerhouse with 500 stores and a wildly successful digital business. Today, DSW leads the industry it has so…

When it comes to a contact center queue, the reality is that wait times need to be brought to a minimum to truly satisfy customer expectations. By maximizing self-serve in the customer journey, reducing customer effort with IVR optimization, and using analytics and Quality Management in the contact center, it is possible to find out where wait times are causing negative sentiment and the call reasons causing higher volumes and thus longer wait times. Additionally, using predictive behavioral routing can make conversations more productive when they do get through the queue, to hopefully mollify heightened emotions. But moreover, the goal should be to create personalized customer experiences that delight customers, so that queue times are left far behind in the customer’s mind.

Markets and opportunities move fast. Great Customer Experience has the power to accelerate growth as consumers have more power than ever before. Social media accelerates the flow of information and gives everyone a voice. Technology all but makes time and place irrelevant by providing anytime, anywhere access to almost anything. If any organization is perceived as being too hard to work with, then…

Everyone is talking about removing siloes these days and trying to find practical ways of blending marketing and social customer service. Of course, it’s important to realize these departments overlap, in part because great customer service stories go viral and make brands stand out as reliable, responsive and fun to interact with. In short, social customer service is the new marketing. But…

Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) completely transform the consumer experience and bring contact center software out of the dark ages? Probably not for some, but it does hold promise! Keeping up with technology – and combing through all the hype that surrounds AI – can be a real challenge. It’s not surprising that many contact center leaders…

I like playing a fraudster. Every time I call one of my service providers, I play a little game of persuading the agent to skip parts of the authentication process just for fun. I am always surprised how easy it is to psychologically manipulate an agent. And I’m not a fraudster.