By Vistio
The podcast currently has 84 episodes available.
Your agents are capable of feats even greater than what you could ask or imagine. So why are contact centers still treating agents like order takers? We're not sure, but Nate Brown is happy to take the mic and develop the conversation even further as we take another look into why contact center leadership is unknowingly hindering it's maximum potential. Put on your listening ears, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to hear some hard truths from one of the greatest voices in CX.
[5:10 - 5:54] We need challengers! It’s very important that we have people constantly pushing against the walls and trying to break out of the box.
[11:59 - 13:16] We put a lot of heat on our education for the lack of challengers, but really the issue is in the onboarding.
[14:13 - 16:05] We need to make sure that agents are being paid enough that they can be safe enough to be pushed to be challengers. They will do incredible things if they are able to push themselves to be challengers.
[21:01 - 21:50] As customer experience leaders, we are always looking for variables that get clients to stay. So much of that decision comes from the customer service interactions.
[22:14 - 25:37] The challenger sale isn’t only accomplishable with individuals, because CX isn’t just for individuals. We can also have challenger groups.
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
Inspiration for good customer experience is all around us. We can be inspired from just about anything, should we choose to see it. Join us for a wonderful conversation with Stacy Sherman surrounding everyday inspiration for doing CX right!
[3:57 - 5:28] There is a difference between simply having a customer experience moment and learning something from that moment from the perspective of the customer, and we don’t want to miss out on those opportunities to learn.
[9:51 - 12:06] Sometimes the customer experience is just bad and the situation is difficult, but there are ways that we can still try to make these situations better from both perspectives. Making sure that you are giving feedback for the good and bad experiences is very helpful for this.
[14:38 - 15:54] If leaders are not empowering their staff and training them well, then the customer can feel it and respond in unproductive ways.
[24:37 - 25:38] Community and peer-to-peer education and support can be just as important in teaching agents how to provide good customer support.
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
As we approach the end of the year, we reflect on all the major decisions we made, and we start determining what we need to do in the future to do better work. It's great when your leaders are in on the plan, but why are most contact centers leaving out the front line in the equation? We're listening in to Jeremy Hyde as we uncover why it's so vital to be transparent with your team, and how leaders can make the most of the feedback loop to ensure everyone is prepared for major changes.
[6:21 - 7:31] You have to create a culture where you are transparent and honest so that your agents don’t just think you’re telling them what they want to hear. Your actions and words need to be aligned with each other.
[9:30 - 12:22] It’s important that you are looking at and receiving feedback, not only from customers, but from your agents to see how things are going.
[17:23 - 19:11] We need to have a plan for how we are going to properly communicate with our agents or it won’t get done.
[22:19 - 24:28] You need to know what moves the needle and what your executive leaders care about in your organization to ignite change from those executives.
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
November is "National Gratitude Month." What better time than to bring our friend Philip Bennett back on the show to discuss just how important it is for leadership (and not just in the contact center) to be grateful for their agents? We're going to learn just how big of an impact ungrateful leadership can have on your contact center, and as a result, your entire brand. We're not just talking about hurt feelings and poor culture; we're talking lost revenue and lost brand loyalty. Tune in to learn why you should ALWAYS be grateful for your contact center agents.
[3:31 - 5:21] What gratitude looks like in the call center and how we can properly show gratitude to our agents.
[10:19 - 12:40] Having ungrateful leadership will lead to a sense of resentment and disengaged employees, which will trickle down to customers.
[15:36 - 17:33] When customers are calling in, they are usually frustrated and they can put that frustration onto the agent. The conversation needs to be turned around so that the frustration is directed at the company and not at the agent personally.
[22:52 - 24:38] We should be looking for ways to make our agents’ jobs easier. If we can make their jobs easier to do, then it will be easier for them to want to stay.
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
AI has a variety of use cases, and we know how helpful it can be when assisting customers, but what if we were able to take advantage of it before we even deployed it out onto the front lines? How can we best use the advantages that AI provides us when it comes to training? Well, we've got Sheri Kendall with us yet again for another deep-dive into how your new agents and AI can coexist, and make your service teams even more efficient and empathetic.
[2:25 - 4:19] As contact centers, we usually have a very limited learning and developing budget. AI, specifically ChatGPT, can help us in this space by improving and coming up with ideas for new ways to learn.
[9:12 - 10:02] When we are using tools that allow us to become more efficient in the interaction with customers, it leaves space for us to develop power skills. Our power skills are what set each company apart.
[14:19 - 15:20] People in learning and developing professions are excited to be allowed the space to define their skill set and get better. If you are not excited and you aren’t finding ways to integrate these new tools and technology into your practice, then you probably won’t be around in a year.
[17:08 - 18:27] An issue that comes with having new technologies that are moving so quickly is being able to budget for them. You could start by using some free tools to demonstrate their efficiency, and make a case for the spending. You don’t have to have the money now, but starting to integrate and seeing the importance of these technologies is a good starting point to getting the money.
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
Artificial intelligence has the ability to revolutionize the customer experience. Some would argue that AI can replace your service/support teams and provide customers with a more efficient experience. Stacy Sherman sees AI in a different way.
There's so much value to human interactions and if we're going to do CX right, we need to recognize that AI is so much more than an agent replacement tool. In fact, we can use it to enhance the agent experience, creating better interactions for the agent and customer alike.
Set your clocks appropriately, we've got a lot to learn from this special edition of "CX QA Live!" happening LIVE at 6:30AM from Reuter's CSX event in NYC!"
[ 2:50 - 4:08 ] Whether you’ve been using AI in your contact center or you’re new to AI, there’s room for improvement for everybody. Here’s an example of a use-case: AI can be implemented to listen to calls, register when problematic words are used and give leadership a chance to coach the agent.
Overall, let’s give the agent more tools to save them time.
[ 5:01 - 5:28 ] When we talk about listening to the agent calls we aren’t listening to punish them. We are listening to be helpful.
[ 8:18 - 9:29 ] Imagine being trapped in an elevator and calling the help line. Who would you rather talk to, AI or a human?
[ 11:03 - 11:42 ] You can also switch the narrative and call outbound, not to sell anything or to do a survey, but to ask if your customers are OK and see if there is anything you can do for them.
11-12 The agents need customer service too. When their computer doesn’t work they can get fast help and not have to wait two days. Or, if they are trying to find the answer to a customer’s question they could use a chatbot to get the support they need. Use AI to solve a pain point for the agent.
[ 17:26 - 18:13 ] Imagine using AI for training. It pretends to be a customer and the agent can practice in advance in a safe environment. This would be used for onboarding and ongoing training.
[ 24:35 - 26 ] Here’s how to pick your AI vendor.
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
We've all been there. At one point or another, we've felt helpless to circumstances beyond our control, and every failure has destroyed our spirit in some way. In the contact center, it's almost natural to feel like a victim when things go awry. However, Jeremy Hyde is going to help us shift that mindset and turn seemingly insurmountable obstacles into fantastic opportunities for growth. Get ready to own your mistakes, embrace your circumstances, and transform your contact center's destiny forever…
[ 4:54 - 6:11 ] What does the victim mentality look like in the workplace? Let’s understand that it’s our job is to clean up problems. Let’s shift how we feel about it so we aren’t constantly upset. Think, “I’m the person that gets to help the organization get better!”
[ 8-9:50 ] What does the hero mindset look like in the workplace? Taking ownership of challenges is empowering.
[ 13:30 - 14:45 ] As a leader, provide your team a space where it’s safe to say, “This is what I could do better next time, and here’s how I can improve.”
[ 14:46 - 16:10 ] Never try to assign blame to others. I don’t care who made the mistake, but I do want to understand it so it doesn’t happen in the future. It takes humility to own up to our mistakes. That builds the culture of accountability without any of the negativity that comes along with assigning blame.
[ 17:52 - 20:44 ] How can we reprogram our brain so that we actually seei challenges as opportunities?
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
People are at the heart of business. Always have been; always will be. However, managing your entire workforce can be daunting, and making even the smallest mistake can have drastic consequences. So what can you do to prevent that from happening? If you're Dan Smitley, you get that workforce engaged! We'll be focused on WFM strategy in today's discussion, but we'll also be breaking down Dan's session from ICMI last week, as well as going over the conference experience in general. If you missed out on the conference this year, don't miss out on this episode!
[6:42 - 7:57] As a vendor, a lot of thought goes into the booth, its decor, and what you present, but the most important part of these events is the people. It’s such a magical moment when you are able to meet your online friends and really get to network with others.
[8:21 - 9:11] Workforce Management (WFM) has three primary buckets: forecasting, scheduling, and real time management. In essence, we are asking how many calls or interactions we are getting, who's going to be taking them, and how we manage, in real time, when we are wrong about how many calls or people we have coming in.
[15:04 - 17:08] Oftentimes, WFM removes themselves from conversations and being heard, because all they say is that it’s not their problem. What WFM needs to think through is if we are going to look at employee engagement and investing in the employee. Then they need to stay in these conversations of where the company is going.
[22:47 - 24:45] To go after that paradigm shift and start breaking down silos, we first need to look at people complexly. People are more than just the numbers and there needs to be so much more curiosity in the people, before we start adjusting people’s life and working patterns.
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
Coming to you LIVE from Orlando, FL! We've got a special episode of the show coming to you live from Vistio's booth (#805) at the ICMI Contact Center Expo! This time around we're turning the tables and show veteran Stacy Sherman has Rob Connelly in the hot seat on the topic of human-first AI. What does that entail? You'll have to tune in to find out!
[ 3:22 - 4:39 ] Human-first AI is an implementation or use of AI that does not detract from the quality of life of the humans involved, rather, it takes tasks that aren’t ideal for humans, that don’t offer value to humans and gives them to AI to do instead.
[ 10:02 - 12:24 ] Wondering how to pick a software vendor? Make sure that your software vendor’s vision is aligned with your own. The software vendors’ actual business goals in the long run will be facilitated by evaluating more longer term value that they bring to their customers through the problems that they solve with their software and the way that they solve it.
[ 62:21 - 20:54 ] Speaking to the fear people are facing of losing jobs, let’s break down several layers of resistance. Agents are afraid of losing their jobs. People are concerned with AI in general.
[ 22:05 - 22:45 ] We as humans need to feel connections in our work. We can’t just clock in and clock out. The quality of our work will decline. If brands are not creating for their agents a genuinely safe place to find human connection, agents will leave and go find it somewhere else.
[ 25:04 - 26:36 ] We are all a little bit tired of the AI conversation. Many of us feel pressured to find an AI solution. At the end of the day any implementation needs comes down to understanding the opportunities and the problems of the contact center.
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
We already know how important it is to optimize the customer experience. However, if you're hyper-optimizing each department individually, you could be creating siloed, disjointed experiences and not even realize it! Luckily, Dave Seaton is here to share how zooming out and analyzing the journey from start to finish will help you create better experiences for your customers AND agents alike!
[5:11 - 6:23] The antidote to hyper-optimization is to zoom out, adopt a customer journey perspective and then go intentionally design your customer experience around those moments that actually matter. This is the most efficient way of creating a better experience for your customers, while not using up your resources.
[7:24 - 9:15] A great tool to help organizations understand this is the customer journey map. This map helps visualize how decisions made affect the contact center, and really illustrates how the CX whac- a-mole works.
[15:59 - 17:26] We always are in a hurry to get clients off the phone and solve their problems quickly, but what if we keep them on the phone a little bit longer and avoid them having to call back again in the future? If you understand the customer's journey, then you can proactively solve their next issue.
[21:22 - 23:58] Using the customer journey map is like comparing gambling and investing in the stock market. Sure you have the chance of hitting the jackpot, but you are much more likely to make money in the stock market. You have the chance to have success without the customer journey map, but you are so much more likely to succeed with it.
As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.
The podcast currently has 84 episodes available.