The Curated Experience

I want to talk about the call center agent because I have a passion for improving the agent experience. Being a contact center agent sucks because of the leadership in the organization, but it does not have to be this way. We schedule, regulate and punish agents for going to the bathrooms at the wrong times. Most of the managers speak to me about the needs of the business and that if bathroom breaks were not scheduled that would harm the productivity and the numbers. I call Bullshit on that!

I want to discuss why we have difficult customers and what to do with them. 1. You are creating difficult customers. So do a self-evaluation on why customers are "difficult." 2. Fire some of your customers. Sometimes you just don't need certain people to be your customers. 3. Upskill your folks with better tools. Tools and knowledge that helps your team deal with complicated human interactions.

Customer Experience needs to be personal and copying other crappy industries isn't the way to go.

- Remember the paper- less office - How will we screw up this whole AI thing in service - What happens when all the humans in the contact center get eliminated - What happens when every call in the contact center is a tough one - Federal prisoners have more freedom than call center agents -Healthy culture - who do we hire is the most important decision to make - People in HR will be super busy -Value people

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague about analytics a few weeks ago about analytics software. We talked about AI and advanced analytics but I digress. I want to talk about what service leaders measure, particularly in the contact center or service centers. What are you measuring? Do me a favor, bring out your scorecards and lets evaluate what you are measurin. I will wait. Let us start at the top of the organization. Most of your metrics tend to be financial, then it filters down to whoever t

We worked in 70 year old company, I wanted to run customer service like a start up right after a B round. He ran IT like the KGB. We were a match made in hell. I had a running list of initiatives in customer service and he always said no or it will happen some day. So I found the cloud, I didn't have his patience. He hated the cloud because he read somewhere that the Cloud will never be good enough for enterprises. "I will chain myself to the servers before we ever move to the cloud". He had a flair

I got a check in the mail, it was from my cable company, they reimbursed me (without my asking) for all the times my service went out. I was happy they did this until of course I woke up and realized it was a dream. Getting customers to a place where there is emotional trust doesn't happen by accident, there is a way to begin building trust.

I have said it before, most customer surveys are a waste of time. I had a bad experience at Best Buy, so I decided to share some free feedback with their CEO - didn't ask for anything, just wanted to share my suggestions as a customer. My email got forwarded to someone, who proceeded to offer me a gift card to Best Buy - I was offended, and hurt that they think I am so easily bought. Then I got over my hurt feelings and used the gift card to buy a new headset. This is a short episode, listen, share and st

7:11 the problem with NPS is that it is antiquated. 8:00 Lack of imagination. Ingenuity is lagging behind: you already know your customer better than you think. 9:10 do you have a loyalty card? 9:27 I have no fucking idea what it does

8:17 Customer experience is a product 11:11 nuke the competition 12:05 CSAT, NPS is no longer cutting edge

Why we are so disconnected in the age of Facebook and why it matters

It's never been a better time to have opinions - especially if you are a customer, everyone wants your opinion. How do you feel about the delayed flight? Give us your ideas on how to improve our clusterfuck of a service. On and on. The idea is you create a "Voice of the Customer" program that will inform how a company might improve it's experience. Problem is the "Voice" you are hearing from the customer is uninformed and misleading.

"If I can only clone my best employees". Think about your best employee - the one you are always creepily talking about cloning. The one who seems to connect emotionally with customers, says the right things and customers love. Instead of cloning, the goal should be thinking about how to influence their thinking.

Episode 21 - Customer Service is harder than Rocket Science pt1 (w Luke Anderson)

"Jumping over the Dollars of Tomorrow for pennies of Today" _ Michael Furman