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FINAL CALL: Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit – Last chance to register!

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The Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit takes place in just two weeks’ time and delegate places are nearly all gone – register to secure your meetings with leading industry suppliers…

Date: 29th – 30th April

Venue: London Heathrow Airport

Clicke Here To Register

Your pass is completely free, and includes:

  • A personalised 1-2-1 itinerary of meetings with suppliers
  • Informal networking.
  • Lunch & refreshments throughout.
  • Attendance to our educational seminar programme.
  • Overnight accommodation.
  • A 3-course dinner with entertainment

There are only 3 delegate places remaining! – BOOK HERE

To find out more, please contact us here.

AUTOMATED CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: Turning Frowns Upside Down – How to address complaints

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Automated Customer Satisfaction (ACS) systems are a boon for businesses, offering valuable insights into customer experience. But what happens when those insights reveal unhappy customers? Here are some best practices, hints, and tips for dealing with customer complaints as part of an automated customer satisfaction system…

Prioritise Alerts: Set your ACS system to flag negative responses and complaints. This ensures prompt attention is given to dissatisfied customers before frustrations escalate.

Multiple Channels for Follow-Up: Offer customers the option to choose their preferred method of further communication. This could be a phone call, email, live chat with a representative, or even a social media message.

Personalise the Response: Avoid generic template replies. Acknowledge the specific complaint within the response and demonstrate empathy for the customer’s frustration.

Empower Your Team: Equip your customer service team with the authority to offer solutions and resolve complaints within the automated system, where possible. This reduces the need for customers to repeat their concerns and streamlines complaint resolution.

Transparency is Key: Be upfront with customers about the complaint resolution process. Outline the timeframe for a response and any next steps they can expect.

Offer Options: Sometimes a simple apology and explanation may suffice. However, for more complex issues, offer the customer a few options for resolution. This displays a willingness to find a solution that works for them.

Leverage Positive Reinforcement: Once a complaint is resolved, send a follow-up survey to gauge the customer’s satisfaction with the resolution process. This demonstrates a commitment to improvement and allows you to identify areas where further training for your team might be needed.

Learning from Complaints: Compile and analyse customer complaints within your ACS system. Identify common themes and use them to address systemic issues within your business. Regularly review complaints to identify areas for improvement across different departments.

Integration with CRM Systems: Consider integrating your ACS system with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This allows for a more holistic view of the customer’s experience and enables your team to tailor future interactions accordingly.

Embrace the Power of Automation: Automated systems can send pre-written emails offering solutions to frequently encountered complaints. However, ensure these emails are well-crafted and personalised, highlighting the human element behind the automation.

Remember: Customer complaints present an opportunity to learn and improve. By implementing these best practices and tips within your ACS system, you can turn frowns upside down, build stronger customer relationships, and ultimately foster brand loyalty.

Are you searching for Automated Customer Satisfaction solutions for your organisation? The Contact Centre Summit can help!

Photo by Ryan Franco on Unsplash

Call Centre & Customer Services Summit – Last few places!

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Time is running out to secure the remaining complimentary VIP delegate spaces and supplier stands at the Call Centre & Customer Services Summit, which takes place on September 17th& 18that the Hilton Manchester Deansgate.

The Summit is a highly-focused event that brings customer care professionals together for one-to-one business meetings, interactive seminars and valuable networking opportunities.

Over two days delegates will meet with credible suppliers who will be able to talk through projects, concerns and obstacles, offering the best advice as well cost saving solutions.

Confirmed suppliers include 8×8, Arise, Aspect, Capgemini, Ctalk, Genesys, IFS mplsystems, Inisoft/KURA, LogMein, Mary Gober, Natterbox, Noble Systems, Performance Telecom, Plantronics, Pole To Win, Premier CX, Puzzel, QuickScripts, Synthetix, The Contact Centre, Tao Leadership, Transversal and more.

Confirmed delegates include representatives from Apello, Anglian Home Improvements, Bet Victor, Barclays Bank, British Airways, Capita, Co-Op Bank, Environment Agency, NHS Ambulance Service, Financial Times, Legal & General, London Borough of Hounslow, Ocado, Santander, Shop Direct, The Hut Group, Virgin Holidays, Whirlpool and more.

Delegates will also learn about the latest customer care trends in educational seminar sessions led by some of the industry’s leading lights, including a keynote from Philip Cripps, Chief Executive at Thameside International, addressing how you can attract and retain employees using more effective communication. Other sessions include:-

Is The Voice In Customer Contact Centres Dead?

Nicola Collister, Managing Director & Founder, Custerian

What Are Contact Centres Doing Right Now?

Jonty Pearce, Editor, Call Centre Helper

The Need For Speed: How To Adapt And React To Ever-Changing Customer Demands

Ian Lycett, IT Configuration Senior Manager, Nationwide Building Society

Gayle Buckland, Event Manager at Forum Events, said: “We’ve been overwhelmed by demand for our second event of the year, following April’s successful London Summit – we look forward to welcoming everyone to Manchester for two days of business and networking.”

To secure a complimentary delegate place, call Tiffany Cox on 01992 374087 or email t.cox@forumevents.co.uk.

To attend as a supplier, call Gayle Buckland on 01992 374063 or email g.buckland@forumevents.co.uk.

For more information, visit www.contactcentresummit.co.uk.

GUEST BLOG: The foundational pillars of omnichannel success

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By IFS | mplsystems

Many organisations want to provide an omnichannel experience, but few are actually doing it well consistently.

If you’re a contact centre leader who’s been challenged with leading the omnichannel charge, you’re probably wondering what it takes to make, or break, a successful program.  More importantly, what are the components necessary for getting it right?

Achieving true omnichannel success will require a combined focus to people, processes, and technology that’s driving toward a unified management of the customer experience.  Fundamentally, omnichannel service is about creating a unified experience that ensures context and clarity on a customer’s past, present, and future.

From the perspective of process improvement, organisations must tear down any silos amongst business units which prevent making connections between things like customer feedback and agent performance.

Additionally, the development of a holistic view of each customer should be accessible and consistent across the organisation, along with being integrated through systems that ensure true omnichannel routing and handling of all contacts. The most important part of being capable of improving the customer experience is having access to a robust set of data for decision-making on all customer-focused initiatives.

It’s not acceptable for a contact centre or other business unit leader to make these important decisions on assumption or half-truths. If contact centres want to deliver omnichannel success, and great customer experiences, they need to connect the dots between the many touchpoints of the customer journey.

To connect these touchpoints in the omnichannel customer experience, there are four sets of systems that are necessary for organisations to utilise:

  • Systems of Engagement

These systems manage the contact channels for both self and assisted interactions and include omnichannel interaction routing that’s based on a single set of rules.

  • Systems of Operation

These systems ensure the operational side of interactions run smoothly and include workforce optimisation, agent desktop, and robot process automation.

  • Systems of Record

These systems manage the transactional data related to customer engagement which includes Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), knowledge management, and customer feedback.

  • Analytics

These systems process large volumes of structured (CRM, ERP) and unstructured (call recordings, text, scripts, social posts) data. Analytics systems can provide root-cause analysis so that organisations can understand why customers engage. Additionally, they are able to identify interactions that are handled well and those that are not. These systems should also include predictive capabilities that use historical data to forecast likely customer actions.

While it sounds (and is) incredibly complicated to orchestrate an omnichannel customer experience, by implementing an advanced agent desktop system, organisations can place these complex systems beneath the surface and deliver only the most relevant data to an agent’s fingertips. The result is an experience that is delivered to the customer with ease and fluency yet powered by complexity and sophistication.

It’s important to realise, however, that improvements to the agent’s desktop could be difficult to track and justify based exclusively on numbers.

That doesn’t make the impact any less real. The intangible benefits, such as, “improved agent experience”, can be found in reduced operational costs that are the result of agents using more efficient processes, or decreased employee engagement because of improved system function.

Beyond this, the customer experience is also improved and can lead to improved customer retention, up-sales and increases to customer lifetime value.