To Queue or Not To Queue? Only if you get Value for Effort

Customer Effort
May 13, 2013
0

Queuing – it may be a British pastime but it’s not exactly something that we relish doing. How many times have you just shrugged and walked away when it’s “not worth the effort”?

We are busy people who want to minimise the amount of time, energy and effort we put into things that we don’t value. Things like trying to navigate around a complicated and badly designed website, setting up a product or service or trying to get answers from a contact centre. Sometimes we don’t want to be “wowed” by customer service. Sometimes we just want it to be easy. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Contact centres, Featured, Global, IT Infrastructure Tagged With: , , , , ,

Delight Your Customers, But Only Where it Matters to Them

Customer Service
May 10, 2013
0

The Henley Centre for Customer Management has done some research into customer effort. They interviewed a number of companies about their experiences, and the findings inspired us to look at the topic ourselves.

People don’t hate hold music – they hate being on hold

It’s fair to say that call centre hold music isn’t popular. We all hate listening to It’s a Small World over and over while we wait for someone to sort our problem out. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Contact centres, Global, IT Infrastructure Tagged With: , , , ,

Meeting the Contact Centre Challenges Facing SMEs

Liz Edwards
May 7, 2013
0

I had one of those contact centre calls at the weekend where I was pushed from pillar to post, asked for my account number numerous times, asked for my date of birth a couple of times — and got frustrated many times.

One of the frustrations of working in this industry is that you can see clearly how much more effective some contact centres could be just by upgrading a bit of their kit. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Contact centres, Global, IT Infrastructure Tagged With: , , ,

The Most Popular Stories in April

Popular Articles in April
May 7, 2013
0

Once again in April, Let’s Talk was getting to the heart of the big issues of the day.

Again the topics were varied with everything from boating to banking; and we saw blogs on security, brand loyalty and pioneering telehealth in the south west of England.

Anyway, why not see for yourself? Here are the top five articles from the Let’s Talk blog over the past month.

Enjoy! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Financial Services, Global, Government, Health, IT Infrastructure, Public sector, Unified Communications Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So What is ‘Customer Effort’ Anyway?

Customer Effort
May 2, 2013
0

It’s not a new craze that’s trending on Twitter. It’s a theory that’s been around since the 1940s.

Customer effort measures how easy a customer’s experience is – from the first time they visit a company’s website or shop floor, to when they’ve taken a product home and set it up. Not forgetting the customer service they get after that.

It’s a good way for companies to keep track of what their customers are thinking. And the most useful way to measure it is to simply ask customers how easy is it for them to deal with you. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Contact centres, Global, IT Infrastructure Tagged With: , , , ,

Make it Easy and They Will Come

Customer Service
April 24, 2013
0

There’s a basic fact behind every purchase you make – you want it to work. 

Whether it’s a washing machine, a car or a broadband service, you want it to work. 

And the effort you have to put in to making your purchase work will influence how you feel about the company that sold it to you. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Contact centres, Featured, Global, IT Infrastructure Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Easy Does It: A New Take on Loyalty

Guest blogger Dr. Nicola Millard
April 16, 2013
0

Every business wants to have loyal customers – but loyalty is always a rather strange concept in business. We often only discover that a customer isn’t loyal when they never speak to us again! We’ve had ‘customer recommendation’ and ‘customer delight’ as benchmarks for loyalty for a while – but happy customers may still go to the competition, so measuring satisfaction might not be the best way to test loyalty.

A survey of 75,000 customers published in 2010 in the Harvard Business Review made a startling statement – you don’t have to delight your customers, you just need to make it easy for them! This seemingly went against all the common wisdom about customer satisfaction that had gone before it. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Contact centres, Featured, Global, IT Infrastructure Tagged With: , , , , ,

As fast as a call but no accent

As fast as a call but no accent
April 2, 2013
0

The contact centre isn’t perfect – there are certain bugbears we just live with:

*         Speaking to someone in another country.

*         A noisy background.

*         The time it takes to get through to someone. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Contact centres, Global, IT Infrastructure Tagged With: , , , , ,

Are your customers fickle?

Are your customers fickle?
March 21, 2013
0

Businesses need to work harder than ever to keep customers loyal. It costs much less to hold onto customers than it does to find new ones. So your brand can’t just be a symbol that says your products are great. It has to follow through in your service too, from the people on the phones to the ones on the front line.

Keeping up with the digital world

Already you can look at a DVD in a store and search cyberspace for a cheaper deal, there and then. You can look at forums and see which pair of headphones has the best sound. Or get a voucher on the fly. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Contact centres, Global, IT Infrastructure Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Autonomous Customer (INFOGRAPHIC) – Part 3

Autonomous Customer
March 19, 2013
0

Consumers say organisations still struggle to link channels.

94% want to email the same agent they spoke to

65% like it when organisations notice they have a problem

The Autonomous Customer - Part 3 [Read more...]

Filed Under: Contact centres, Featured, Global, Innovation, Social business Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
«Older Posts