CX Conversations

Today we’re talking with Vikas and Darryl Addington, the Director of Product Marketing at Five9, and he shares with us some of his own secrets about Artificial Intelligence in the Contact Center. One thing you will have to do if you’re considering using AI for your company is moving towards the cloud, which is where all the data is. There are plenty of benefits to switching over to AI, such as customers being able to get assistance much faster than if they would have to wait for a human being to be available. The problem is it’s often too expensive for smaller businesses, so we discuss ways people can overcome the issue of cost and integrate AI into their own company.

Why people should care about AI 5:12
Are there certain things you need in place to use AI? 6:46
Where people are seeing the benefits in machine learning and AI 12:21
Agent assist capabilities 19:21
Can AI suggest solutions? 22:05
Where to start 27:39

“What [Business] can invest in though is technology using this idea of machine learning, which we can talk a little bit about, they can invest in that to solve the types of problems that they’re suffering from today, which there’s lots of them, especially if you look in the contact center. Tons of room for improvement in customer experience, as we all know, and tons of room for improvement in terms of operations and improving efficiency, and things like that.” 6:02

https://www.linkedin.com/in/darryl-addington-8055642/

Today we’re going to be talking about the power of wait time in driving the customer experience, and to do that we have Tom Reiger, the President of NSI, Inc. and President/CEO at National Business Innovations, LLC. We start off talking about wait time and Gabe asks if it’s really such an important thing to focus on and Tom explains that it’s always something his company is trying to focus on as it can prove to raise your company’s costs by quite a bit if you’re not careful.

Tom’s role 1:27
Wait time 2:18
Understanding certain types of tickets 8:37
What brands are doing to help the consumer have a better experience 13:46
Empowering employees to deliver a great experience 17:31

“You shouldn’t have to hire a million people to find this right balance. So it’s being smart about what you automate, it’s being smart about your channel prioritization, and it’s being smart about how you train and equip your reps to provide that individualized service.” 14:51

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-rieger-33161b1/

Today it’s just Vikas and Gabe talking about the issues faced the most in the CX industry and solutions for dealing with them. We discuss how companies might be trying to manage their customer feedback, and then talk about what employees might be experiencing in their own work life and recognizing when they’re frustrated or losing focus in their job and being able to track the data for that. B to B and B to C companies have their various problems and issues that we distinguish and for which we come up with some solutions.

Is customer feedback being managed more often? 3:10
2 things we would do if we had a magic wand 5:56
B to B and B to C customer service 14:00
Varying customer experience 17:19

“We can detect the sentiment of a customer’s email. What if we could detect the sentiment of an employee’s Slack or email? Maybe it will actually show that there’s a negative sentiment, like they’re getting more and more disenfranchised or hostile in their emails because they’re frustrated.” 8:46

In this episode we’re going to be talking about CX transformation and driving business value with your CX team, and to do that we brought on Laurent Pierre Jr., the General Manager of Microsoft Azure CXP. We discuss what you need to do to work with your team, your leaders, and the customer to create life time value, or to get your customers to want to stick around for the rest of their lives. We want to focus on investing in the customer journey and get customers to love our company by treating them not just as a transaction, but as an actual human being.

Working with executives 2:04
How CX teams should be driving value 3:27
Where to start to get business value 6:01
More on driving value 9:56
Coaching people through it 14:10
Helping the CX team become the best 19:03

“Probably one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard from customers is like, ‘Every time I call this support center, I have to re-explain my environment. I have to re-explain my architecture.’ And so that’s why it becomes important to understand your customer, segment them, but also align industry related technologists that can speak not only the technical language, but the business language.” 10:31

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurentpierrejr/

Today we meet with Chief Operating Officer at UJET, Vasili Triant, and we talk about how companies have been adapting to the age of the mobile phone. Vasili tells us that people have been saying voice is going to die out since the late 90’s, but the reality is that all channels have been on the rise, meaning even demand for voice interactions is increasing. Vasili tells us about how they interact with their consumers and what UJET is doing to collect their data and take care of them based on their needs.

Does voice have a place in today’s market? 1:42
The big challenges that contact centers are facing now 3:37
Why some companies haven’t been able to change 7:20
How UJET is solving current problems 18:24

“The biggest thing frankly is, where are consumers today? They’re on their smartphones, they’re on web, and meet them where they’re at. So we essentially embed the connectivity between a consumer brand and their app, and we don’t make the consumer go outside of it.” 19:30

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasilitriant/

Eric Chon is the Community Support Manager at Zwift, an online competitive cycling app for people who want to exercise and have fun while remaining indoors, and last year they hosted the first ever virtual Tour De France. Today we’re talking about how and why Zwift switched to a different CX platform. Eric tells us of how switching to Kustomer changed their company’s direction and the reasons behind making the switch.

About Eric and Zwift 0:26
Why Zwift switched to Kustomer 3:56
Omni channel 5:54
How moving from Zendesk to Kustomer happened 12:15
Advice for companies considering a change 14:13

“It’s a lot easier for us to kinda see, well how many calls did we get? How long were they? Which teams worked on them? And did that call turn into a chat? Did that chat turn into an email? We can see that transition. We can see how many of those there are and having the tools to be able to see like, well how often are we channel switching? Right? From one to the other, you know, that kind of information is just readily available at Kustomer.” 11:11

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericchon/

In this episode we talk with CEO and Founder at Kustomer, Brad Birnbaum. We’re gonna be talking about this idea of a ticket free future. We discuss how and why Kustomer started, Kustomer focus on a seamless customer experience, and the role of an omnichannel platform to service modern customer needs.

Brad’s background 0:44
The 3 principles on which Kustomer was founded 2:49
What does truly omni channel mean? 4:17
CRM’s role 7:33
Final advice for leaders of customer service 14:05

“You have to adapt, right? It’s kind of adapt or die, right? You have to adapt and that is how you do business in every facet of how you do business. Customer service of course is a critical part of it. You can have a great product, but poor customer service and you probably will not have repeat customers, you won’t have customer advocacy, and in the end you probably won’t win.” 14:39

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleybirnbaum/

Today we’re going to be talking about language resilience in this expansion of key superpowers, and to do that we have Edmund Ovington, the VP of Global Alliances at Unbabel and Vikas joining us. Edmund explains why resilience, agility, and flexibility are the superpowers that your company will need to survive. People want to communicate with a company in their own language and it doesn’t matter if that company is foreign because they want to be catered to. We talk about the benefits of expanding and being available to more than just our native locations.

Resilience is a superpower 1:00
Why has language become so important in the customer service arena? 6:10
How companies communicate with foreigners 9:08
Changes Edmund has seen in language 13:24
How can companies expand and scale thinking of language as an advantage 21:00

“Are you showing empathy and a desire to transact with them? We think about this at Kustomer, this concept of ‘the me’ and the consumer, right? And the consumer wants to be–they don’t want to think of you as an American brand or a British brand, right? Yes you might be, but I don’t want to do business with you in your language. Do business with me in my language, and I think that’s where we’re seeing the customer experience evolve to.” 4:19

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmundovington/

In this episode we’re going to be talking about why and how to manage a global CX team. To do that we have two special guests with us: Michael Windsor, the Senior Director of Global Customer Experience at Skybox Security, and Vikas Bhambri from Kustomer. Michael has worked in various places around the world, including Israel where they focused a lot on security, so he tells us what we can expect when working in different regions and how to go about customer experience in those various places.

Where to start 2:22
Michael’s experiences with organic vs. BPO 6:36
Other lessons learned 8:53
Variability from region to region 10:46
Challenges faced 12:07
Scaling globally 14:23
The cost/saving perspective 18:01

“Ultimately the customer experience or customer success starts from when that first sales call all the way in terms of how they’re supported. So not only do you have to make sure that the teams that you manage are aligned with that, you really need to understand that entire customer journey and keep it foundationally the same.” 11:21

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelwindsor/

Today we’re talking about the importance of visual context in customer service and to do that we brought on Vikas Bhambri and Wade Radcliffe, who was Director of Business Development at Streem and is now the Vice President of Strategic Sales at Xerox. We talk about why video can really help improve the customer experience, such as cutting down on troubleshooting or quoting time. There may be some pushback from customers or even service reps that they won’t want to see each other, so Wade’s solution is having both be able to see what each other are seeing and discuss their situation, and then ease into having face to face time.

Wade’s intro 0:30
Why is it important to introduce visuals? 1:48
An example from Vikas 7:08
Visuals and car dealerships 10:33
How to start with visuals 13:43
How it works 15:08

“So I’ve seen your space, now let’s have a face to face conversation about how we go about ordering furniture for you, for example. Like a lot of things in the contact center world, you kind of want to have your channels work for you as opposed to you trying to make a certain channel work perfectly.” 6:42