Christmas is a stressful time. It is stressful for consumers buying last minute presents or chasing up a missing delivery, but it is also stressful for the staff in stores and contact centers with the many customer enquiries that follow the season. The number of queries companies receive is enormous, and every single one matters to the consumer that sent it
National Customer Service Week (NCSW) will soon be celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. Running between October 3-7, it highlights the importance of customer service to every organization, and provides the opportunity to learn from best practice and to celebrate success across the sector.
It may seem like a long time in the future for consumers, but as every retailer knows Christmas is coming – fast. Now is the period for finalizing plans and ensuring that the vital holiday season goes as well as possible. Customer service and the experience you offer consumers is a critical part of this, so what should companies be doing NOW to ready themselves?
Delivering a great customer experience is vital to every organization today – and much of the responsibility for delivering this comes down to contact center agents. They are at the frontline of every business, and their performance is crucial to your brand reputation, consumer satisfaction and overall customer retention. Rising contact volumes, across more and more channels...
Research shows that 82% of consumers say they’ll switch to a rival if a mistake made at one of these touchpoints* is not addressed. It is easy to see why businesses focus on making every interaction as seamless and high quality as possible.However, a new report by consultants McKinsey points out the downsides of focusing solely on individual touchpoints rather than also...
We’re now into the busiest time of year for retail, with contact centers facing huge volumes of incoming queries from consumers on the phone, email, Twitter, Facebook and chat channels. This means that even if companies deploy effective web self-service systems to provide consumers with fast, consistent answers to their most commonly asked questions...
Recruiting and retaining high quality customer service staff is one of the cornerstones of keeping consumers happy and loyal. Even with the rise of self-service options, for the majority of channels (email, social media, chat, phone, face to face) the experience created by the people you employ is crucial to the success or failure of the customer relationship. Gartner predicts...
We’re now coming to the end of National Customer Service Week, which highlights the vital importance of customer service to businesses and puts the spotlight on the great work done by those in this sector. It also looks at sharing best practice to further improve standards, ultimately benefiting consumers everywhere.On that note, let us focus on the positive side of customer...
In competitive markets, customer service is often the most important differentiator. This is especially true if companies are selling similar products, at similar prices – and for service businesses such as utilities and financial services where there is no physical product to create a differentiation. When customer service is the main source of competitive advantage, it’s essential to...
Today, all organizations understand the importance of improving the customer experience they provide if they want to succeed in winning business and increasing loyalty. The customer experience should be improved constantly, otherwise even once leading companies will simply fall behind their competitors and customers will move elsewhere.Companies require an effective management process to...