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Stuart O'Brien

Do you specialise in Training & Development for Contact Centres? We want to hear from you!

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Each month on Contact Centres Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on a different part of the customer care market – and in August we’re focusing on Training & Development.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help customer care industry buyers find the best products and services available today.

So, if you’re a supplier of Training & Development solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Aug – Training & Development
Sep – Knowledge Management
Oct – Web Self Service/Chat
Nov – Display Boards
Dec – CRM

For more information on any of the above, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

Disabled customers not sharing personal circumstances with retailers and services

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More than three-quarters of disabled consumers have not shared their support needs with businesses and organisations when accessing essential services, according to the latest research from Experian.

Some 85% of disabled consumers and those with support needs said they had not explained to their bank or building society how they could be better supported when interacting with them, a trend repeated with credit card (90%) and pension providers (91%).

For those that have shared their support needs, 70% are satisfied with the extra support they receive – demonstrating that the support can be put in place once organisations are aware of people’s needs.

The findings come as disability experts, campaigners and businesses call for contributions to a new community driven, open-sourced website which aims to improve accessibility for people when dealing with businesses and other organisations.

The Support List (www.WhatWeNeed.Support) has been created in recognition of the challenges faced by those with additional support needs. It has been driven by leading disability and accessibility specialists, Dan Holloway and Chris Fitch, and informed by the lived experiences of more than 1,400 disabled people and those with additional support needs.

Those behind the project, including main sponsor Experian and other firms including Lloyds Banking Group, NewDay, HSBC, Co-Operative Bank and Tesco Bank, are hoping members of the disabled community will share their experiences to allow the List to expand its guidance, allowing it to incorporate a wider range of support needs over time.

The list is intended to be a publicly available starting point to promote dialogue between disabled people and those with additional support needs, and businesses looking to support the needs of their customers in delivering products and services.

It is a broad list, initially focusing on the areas of sight, hearing, and mental health and dementia, and outlines consumer preferences in the following categories:

  • Telephone communications
  • Written communications and in-person meetings
  • Communication preferences
  • Other support needs

The list will expand over time to cover more disabilities, vulnerabilities, and circumstances, informed by the lived experiences of contributors, and then tested by organisations to see how readily they can be put in place.

The ambition is that the Support List will be used to develop standardised approaches and responses to those with disabilities and support needs, which can be used across multiple industries and sectors, to benefit people with support needs anywhere in the UK. It will be iterated over time based on feedback from consumers and industry.

Dan Holloway, Co-convenor of the Futures Thinking Network at The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities,said: “As disabled people we are used to having to repeat often highly personal, information to every organisation disabled people deal with, just to be able to access services others take for granted. We hope that this project will help break the cycle of exhaustion and trauma that has such a disastrous impact on our lives.”

Chris Fitch, Consumer Vulnerability Lead at the Money Advice Trust, and Research Fellow at the University of Bristol said: “Firms have a legal, regulatory, and business imperative to make changes that allow disabled and vulnerable consumers to access and use their products and services.  Support List connects firms with people – so firms can understand the changes people need, and disabled and vulnerable people can change the way firms understand their needs.”

Paul Speirs, Managing Director, Digital Consumer Information, Experian UK&I, said: “I am proud that Experian has played a role in supporting the creation of the Support List resource over the past year. We hope the website will act as a catalyst for knocking down barriers that are faced by disabled and vulnerable people every day.”

Kathryn Townsend, Government Disability & Access Ambassador (Banking Sector), said: “Companies that provide services on an on-going basis, such as finance, energy and telecommunications, have a unique opportunity to deliver personal, accessible experiences for their customers – and yet many disabled people still face barriers.

“The financial services industry has been leading the way on accessibility, but there is more that can be done across all sectors. The Support List provides a welcome resource which puts disabled people’s voices at the heart of the solution, and will hopefully help address some of the challenges that companies cite.”

In contact centres, every conversation matters. But what matters in every conversation?

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By Sam Hill, VP of Growth, Infinity

In an ideal world, contact centres would have the time, resources and tools available to analyse 100% of their agents’ conversations. Although there’s a difference of opinion in the industry about the levels at which quality monitoring should take place, the general rule is undeniable: a greater level of analysis results in better customer service.

Of course, the sheer volume of calls coming into the contact centre makes this impossible to do manually. As a result, most use only a small sample size of their customer conversations to make wider assumptions about the quality of their support. Some contact centres target a percentage of an agent’s calls, for example, while others analyse a specific number each month or split out successful and unsuccessful customer conversations.

But when every conversation matters, this can lead to skewed and inconsistent conclusions.

At a time when 93% of customer service teams feel their callers have higher expectations than ever before, it’s vital that contact centres learn from their interactions. By refining and scaling the ability to analyse conversations, technology can play its part in helping to meet an increasing demand for customer excellence.

Converting anecdotes into data

In all industries, businesses crave customer insights. It’s fortunate, then, that contact centre agents are on the frontline when it comes to harnessing that knowledge, interacting with new thoughts, complaints and enquiries throughout the day.

This level of exposure means agents are privy to the nuances of general customer opinion – a treasure trove of information, and the kind of data that contact centres should be converting into actionable insight.

If manual quality monitoring is untenable on the required scale, however, contact centres must turn to technology. With solutions such as conversation analytics – where keywords are monitored during conversations over the phone – contact centres can review higher volumes of calls, fine tuning their customer service in the process.

This kind of investment is essential, not just for the purposes of improving customer support, but also to meet the growing expectations of modern customers. According to a recent Salesforce survey, 79% of worldwide consumers believe the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services. Customer service is no longer the conduit to a sale; instead, it is seen by many as the product itself.

What’s in a phone call?

While call tracking technology reveals what led to a call, conversation analytics reveals what happened on every single call you make or take. This level of analysis enables contact centres to reposition their sales tactics, develop more informed marketing strategies, and transform the quality of their service at scale.

With greater levels of customer insight available, contact centres can shape and refine their strategies before any gaps in service have fully materialised. And when the market rapidly shifts – for example, during the pandemic or the looming cost of living crisis – this kind of granular analysis can better anticipate changing customer needs.

What kinds of questions are regularly occurring? At what point in the conversation are keywords being mentioned? Are there new patterns emerging in caller requests? Again, spiralling living costs could lead to more calls from vulnerable customers who need agents that are trained to provide the right support and response.

With murmurs of an impending recession growing, retaining every single customer is crucial. In the UK, 58% of consumers say they would end a relationship with a business due to poor customer service. If consumer expectations continue rising on their current trajectory, this figure will only increase.

Conversation analytics can take contact centres where they need to go. Through high volume analysis, businesses gain a better understanding of their customers’ needs – enabling them to enhance their levels of service, increase loyalty and improve sales conversion rates. Only with this level of insight can contact centres unlock the real value from their conversations.

The benefits of introducing bots into your business 

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By Woven

We live in a fascinating period where almost every day technology is becoming a more significant enabler in our lives. In business, the emergence of the combination of Artificial Intelligence and Process Automation (or as we now progressively know them, Bots or Virtual Agents) has created the scope to provide a level of service that simply wasn’t possible previously. Alongside that there is also a much sharper focus on the implications of failing to offer great service. 

So, what is a bot and why do I need one? 

Bots in the context of customer service are effectively software programs which simulate human conversations across either voice or text. 

Bots have huge natural advantages: 

  • They work 24/7/365 providing instant customer support 
  • Increase first contact resolution with automated responses 
  • Reduce service costs and increase efficiency 
  • Improves customer experience  
  • Provides an automated feedback survey to produce insights  
  • Real-time content management    

Do you want to create personalised and dedicated customer experiences?  

Then you need a trusted outsourcing partner! Woven’s bespoke technology integrates seamlessly into your legacy systems with ease and speed.  

Contact us today to see how we can help your business 0333 103 7337 / hello@wearewoven.com.

Secure your place at September’s Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit

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Have you and your colleagues take up your complimentary places at the upcoming Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit

Your pass is entirely free – and allows you to meet with a range of suppliers that can support your upcoming plans and projects.

Plus, you can enjoy insightful and educational seminar sessions such as “Engaging your team to make a difference to your customer experience”, hosted by Harriett Treadwell, Customer Love Director at Butternut Box.

12th & 13th September

Radisson Blu Hotel Manchester Airport

You can confirm your attendance HERE via our online booking form (takes two minutes).

Or if you have any questions then please do not hesitate to contact us today.

5 ways digital technology is improving the utility service experience

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By Tony Corlett, Commercial Enterprise Client Director at Maintel

The current utilities market has never faced greater competition or demands from regulators. However, adopting digital technology can significantly improve the overall utility service experience; from engaging and retaining customers, to adhering to regulation.

It’s easy for organisations to be overwhelmed by the myriad of services and technologies that are available to help them improve competitiveness or compliance. Selection of the appropriate technology and delivery partner is key to success.

Failure to effectively choose and integrate new technologies can have significant repercussions and affect relationships with customers, regulators, and ecosystem partners.

New technology can help utility organisations to improve operational efficiency, resilience, and compliance. Through integration of the online and on-phone experience, reducing costs, and empowering employees, digital technology has an important part to play in improving the utility service experience:  

  1. Improving customer experience

A great customer experience is paramount for utilities; from sales to in-life service, expectations are high, and competition is intense. This pressure comes in many guises, from industry peers, to resellers and comparison websites. So, the service experience must be easy, informative, and available through a range of contact channels. Failure to quickly meet customer expectations can result in them easily moving to another supplier.

Digital technology can significantly improve customer satisfaction by delivering systems that can provide information, handle calls efficiently, and integrate online and on-phone communications. Also, information provided during a service disruption or outage can significantly reduce customer frustration and improve overall call handling efficiency.

Services such as contact centre and unified communication solutions can help address the above challenges and improve the utility customer experience.

  1. Enhancing employee productivity and satisfaction

New technology now allows utility organisations to enable a more empowered and flexible workforce and therefore drive greater productivity. Ensuring that employees are engaged, motivated, and digitally empowered is key to maximising efficiency. Utility organisations typically depend on good internal communications to operate effectively, and so designing and integrating an effective workplace communication infrastructure is critical to improving the overall employee experience. Using technology to automate processes and free teams from repetitive tasks significantly helps drives efficiency and allows a focus on providing a great supply experience. Conversely, not harnessing new technology can undermine operational efficiency and restrict employees’ ability to deal with customer enquiries.

  1. Increasing security and ensuring compliance

Utility companies have unique safety requirements and often operate in high risk environments, with stringent compliance and security regulations across the entire organisation. Network security, protected data, intrusion protection, virus detection and removal are critical requirements for all utilities. Ensuring the safety and compliance of these organisations is essential to enhance cyber security and prevent threats including viruses, hacking, piracy and DDoS attacks. Leading-edge technology can help prevent breaches which could result in the loss of customer data or operational failure, both of which can be catastrophic for any utility organisation.

  1. Optimising organisational resilience

Organisational resilience is a priority for any utility organisation, both for competitiveness and for regulatory compliance. Installing a highly secure network solution ensures that multiple devices and locations can be seamlessly connected. This enables telemetry and usage data to be captured and analysed to optimise energy network performance and customer consumption. Networking technologies can also be used to monitor utility distribution infrastructure and help avoid leakage and wastage problems by allowing instant and secure access to critical system data. A highly resilient utility organisation is better positioned to sustainably serve the long-term needs of its customers.

  1. Operational efficiency

Managing costs and ensuring operational efficiency is critical for any utility organisation. Replacing old technology with more effective alternatives can lower support costs, improve the ability to collaborate and increase resilience. Proactively monitoring networks and usage patterns can also help to reduce wastage, minimise consumption and deliver sustainability. By using technology to monitor energy consumption, not only can the optimal supply and distribution balance be achieved but customers can also receive real-time consumption information to help them reduce their usage. In addition, digital transformation offers a convenient opportunity to simplify infrastructure by consolidating to fewer suppliers. Using a variety of technologies from disparate vendors is complex to manage and not always cost-effective.

Do you specialise in Virtual Call/Contact Centres? We want to hear from you!

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Each month on Contact Centres Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on a different part of the customer care market – and in July we’re focusing on Virtual Call/Contact Centres.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help customer care industry buyers find the best products and services available today.

So, if you’re a supplier of Virtual Call/Contact Centres solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Jul – Virtual Call/Contact Centres
Aug – Training & Development
Sep – Knowledge Management
Oct – Web Self Service/Chat
Nov – Display Boards
Dec – CRM

For more information on any of the above, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

WEBINAR REWIND: Staff wellbeing and engagement in your contact centre: Why your business success depends on it

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Don’t worry if you missed MaxContact’s recent webinar about why improving staff wellbeing and engagement is more important than ever to ensure business success in your contact centre – you can now watch the entire session on-demand.

With 72%* of contact centre workers saying they are burnt out or facing burnout, and the ‘great resignation’ hitting the UK contact centre industry hard, how do you look after your employee’s wellbeing, keep them engaged with your business and drive business results?

The panel discusses:

• Why staff wellbeing matters to your business
• How to engage staff to improve retention rates and hit targets and KPIs
• Key wellbeing and engagement initiatives to implement in your business now
• Live audience Q&A

About the speakers:

Natalie Calvert: CX and EX executive coach, Natalie Calvert, has led over 100 customer and employee experience transformations across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the USA. Natalie helps transform business culture, with her proven track record having impacted over 200,000 employees globally.

Sean McIver: With over 15 years experience in various roles and industries within the contact centre industry, from the front lines to looking after teams and systems, Sean has a wealth of industry knowledge. Now a Product Owner at MaxContact, Sean focuses on delivering the vision and objectives of MaxContact’s customer engagement platform, ensuring the customer voice is at the heart of every decision.

Click Here To Watch

*Independent research of 750 customer facing workers conducted in November 2021 by MaxContact.

Consumers want more self-service options

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81 percent of consumers say they want more self-service options yet only 15 percent of consumers expressed a high level of satisfaction with the tools provided to them today whereas businesses believe 53 percent of consumers are very satisfied with their self-service.

That’s according to the NICE 2022 Digital-First Customer Experience Report, which highlights significant gaps between company and consumer perceptions of current digital- and self-service channels.

This despite 95 percent of companies reporting a major increase in self-service requests in 2021, indicating a rapid growth in consumer demand for greater speed and convenience.

The 2022 Digital-First Customer Experience Report was designed to compare the perspectives of businesses and consumers regarding self-service and digital channels, drawing on responses from 1320 respondents in the United States and the United Kingdom.

NICE noted that consumer expectations are increasing as digital and self-service channels proliferate and evolve, which has led to companies searching for insights into customer experience and brand loyalty. The NICE report is intended to meet that need, revealing potential blind spots among service providers and helping them improve their digital and self-service options. For example, although 36 percent of consumers say they would like to see companies make their self-service smarter, less than 11 percent of businesses are making that a priority.

More generally, the NICE report indicates that 95 percent of consumers place great importance on customer service which impacts brand loyalty. Online self-service and easy access to their preferred channels are two of the top customer service factors in their decision regarding brand loyalty. The majority of consumers (57%) surveyed said they would abandon a brand after one or two negative digital customer service interactions, yet most businesses tend to underestimate how quickly that could happen. Nonetheless, the survey does show that companies recognize the importance of current digital channels to consumers and are attempting to improve their availability. In 2022, the top digital channels companies are planning to expand significantly are chat (47%), website access (44%), and search options (42%).

Paul Jarman, NICE CXone CEO, said, “Avoiding friction is the key factor today in shaping opinions and differentiating between brands consumers love and those they feel are not worth their time. We undertook the 2022 Digital-First Customer Experience Report in order to provide companies with the consumer’s viewpoint and to help them set priorities that drive frictionless experiences. While focusing on digital-first interactions, our report underscores the importance of both agent-assisted and self-service channels, with businesses primarily wanting the ability to choose whichever option they prefer at any given time. This confirms the need for CXi–Customer Experience Interactions–a new approach that focuses on the end-to-end digital customer journey, requiring a complete customer experience platform that only NICE CXone offers.”

You can download a copy of the report is available here.

Join the industry at the Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit this September

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There’s a free place waiting for you at the Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit – As a professional in this field, the event is designed to give you the opportunity to network and create new business relationships.

Here is what you need to know;

When: 12th & 13th September

Where: Radisson Blu Hotel, Manchester Airport

Format: Corporate ‘speed-dating’. As our guest, you will be provided with a bespoke itinerary of pre-arranged, 1-2-1 meetings with suppliers relevant to your requirements. A series of seminars will also be hosted throughout the day, and overnight accommodation, all meals and refreshments are also included.

Who Attends: Senior customer service professionals, with representatives from the likes of EasyJet, Direct Line Group, Cineworld, The Perfume Shop, Ocado Retail, Hoist Finance and many more.

Click here to secure your FREE place or contact me today to find out more.