Infographic: Why do Companies with Great Customer Service Succeed?

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Source: Why do Companies with Great Customer Service Succeed?

NewVoiceMedia - ContactWorld for Salesforce Review

By: Jeremiah Methven

We recently had the opportunity to demo NewVoiceMedia’s ContactWorld for Salesforce product. Unlike many other telephony solutions that integrate into Salesforce, the ContactWorld product is available as a downloadable managed package from the Salesforce AppExchange. The raving reviews on AppExchange (currently 4.9/5 average rating) certainly provide a strong endorsement for the product, and the praise is well-justified by the solution’s feature set.

From the agent’s viewpoint, once the package is installed, they have a call window that is visible within their Salesforce. When an inbound call is received, the caller’s information immediately loads into this window, and the appropriate contact record is pulled up in Salesforce (see below screenshot for example):

As anyone who’s taken calls in a contact center can attest, it can sometimes be a Herculean task simply trying to find the appropriate contact record to log a call. ContactWorld immediately improves call handle times in a way that benefits the customer. And in fact, it goes even deeper than that with dynamic options for custom routing, with the ability to rout calls based on any data field in Salesforce (including custom fields and objects). For just one example, if a customer calls back in, the software can see that they have an open case, and immediately rout them to the agent who they originally spoke with. I’m reminded of when I recently had Internet problems and had to call my cable company three different times – every time, I got a completely different agent who asked me the exact same troubleshooting questions that I had already been asked. It would have been a much better experience had my cable company used a product like ContactWorld that would have allowed them to easily connect me back with the first agent I had spoken with.

Since it’s so tightly integrated into Salesforce, ContactWorld greatly improves real-time feedback and monitoring for supervisors. It also has the option to include a voice survey immediately at the end of a call. The caller can simply stay on the line and answer a satisfaction survey right then and there. This method has a higher response rate than email surveys, and allows supervisors to respond instantly to a poor survey rather than simply letting the bad experience linger. This leads into another example of how the product’s routing features can be utilized - a manager can set up the call workflow so that a customer who recently had a bad experience is routed to the center’s best agent the next time they call in. In truth, there are a limitless number of options for routing with ContactWorld. The customer could be routed to the right agent based on account type, monthly payment rate - essentially any data point that already exists in a company’s Salesforce org. They could receive personalized messages before even being routed to an agent, all with the goal of creating unique, customized experiences for each customer.

Overall, we were extremely impressed by the ContactWorld product. We had several ‘wow’ moments during the course of our demo as we were shown features that would immediately improve the agent, supervisor, and customer experience in any contact center. ContactWorld allows for an out of the box improvement in FCR and handle time due to its deep integration into Salesforce. And in those regrettable, yet inevitable cases where the customer is still dissatisfied with their experience, it allows for real-time coaching and feedback for the agent as well as immediate follow-up with the customer. Best of all, it’s easy to set up and install – so easy, in fact, that NewVoiceMedia set a world record by setting up a contact center in just over 20 minutes! Every call center manager’s task is to improve customer satisfaction with limited resources – a product like ContactWorld helps to reduce that challenge and achieves that rare goal of doing more with less.

Contact Centers, Are You Engaging Customers Through Social Media?

By: Sean Hawkins

I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at ICMI’s Contact Center Expo and Conference last week in San Diego. On several occasions, I was asked how the contact center can engage customers in social media. Traditionally, customer engagement is a skill set utilized by Marketing and Sales. However, with the steady rise of social media support, the contact center must adopt a customer engagement plan of action.

In the same way marketing is looking to generate buzz, so too, must the service center. In my opinion, social customer service should be more than a repository for negative and critical feedback.  While you expected some negative posts or tweets, there should also be an expectation to build a community with your clients. A great example of this is a Twitter conversation I had with @DoveMenCare during the NCAA basketball tournament. As I had been tweeting about the games, they wanted to know who I was picking to win and why. This led to an ongoing discussion throughout the tournament. 

At no time did they try to sell or market their product. Rather, they came to my place of interest and made a meaningful impact. If you’re looking to interact with customers through social media in a more significant way, consider the following:

1.    Get personal--Wish them happy birthday and congratulate them on milestones.
2.    Interact--Comment, Like,  Share, Retweet, Reply, and Favor.
3.    Giveaways--Randomly select a customer for a gift certificate or credit their account.
4.    Be relevant--The goal of social is to be social. Therefore, utilize current events (sports, Grammys, movies) as a means of connecting with your customers.

There are certainly others ways to connect and engage customers. I would love to hear what you are doing to connect with your customers.

Sean is a Contact Center manager with over 13 years of experience. He has a terrific pulse on incorporating innovation into the contact center. He's implemented social, outsourcing partners, new technology, and new products, while maintaining an award-winning contact center.

His contact center is a past winner of the ICMI "Global Call Center of the Year" award for Small to Medium-Sized Centers.

Follow on Twitter @SeanBHawkins