Customer Service

Moving from monologue to dialogue with customers

Published on: September 10, 2014
Author: Pauline Ashenden - Demand Generation Manager

Organisations need to radically change how they interact with their customers proclaimed Jo Causon, CEO of the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) in a recent speech.  In her state of the nation address, she highlighted how the balance of power has shifted dramatically from companies to their customers. While many organisations see this swing as a threat, it can actually deliver benefits to t...

6 Top Trends Driving Customer Expectations

Published on: August 27, 2014
Author: Pauline Ashenden - Demand Generation Manager

Every business understands that today’s customers are demanding more – and are happy to move to the competition if they don’t receive what they are looking for. However, breaking these demands down into specific areas can be difficult, so those involved with customer experience should take a look at a recent Forbes blog post by customer service expert Micah Solomon as it gives mo...

Customer Service and the Commonwealth Games

Published on: August 23, 2014
Author: Pauline Ashenden - Demand Generation Manager

Tickets for the 2014 Commonwealth Games have just gone on sale, and organisers are reporting high demand. The 11 day games, which begin on 23 July 2014, will see 4,500 athletes from across the world compete in 17 sports across 14 venues in Glasgow. Given the overwhelming triumph of the London 2012 Olympics, Glasgow will be hoping for a similar success story, boosting the Scottish economy and inspi...

Delighting your customers through getting the basics right

Published on: August 22, 2014
Author: Anne-Merete Jensen - Senior Business Consultant

There are lots of stories about companies that have delighted their customers. Take Sainsbury’s renaming its Tiger Bread based on feedback from a three year old girl that it looked more Giraffe-like or US restaurant Morton’s Steakhouse delivering a meal to an arriving passenger who tweeted, asking to be met by a porterhouse at Newark Airport.Examples like this are undoubtedly good PR a...

20 years of ecommerce – and the impact on every business

Published on: August 20, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

The first secure ecommerce transaction took place 20 years ago when a lucky shopper paid $12.48 plus shipping to buy Sting’s album, Ten Summoner’s Tales, from NetMarket. From these small beginnings online sales have grown to hit £93 billion in the UK last year, according to IMRG, and are expected to top £100 billion in 2014.How we shop today is radically different to 1994, ...

Being TRUE to your customers

Published on: August 15, 2014
Author: Pauline Ashenden - Demand Generation Manager

In increasingly competitive markets, customers look for experiences that match their expectations and needs. Essentially this means that as consumers continue to become more savvy at researching and comparing brands, companies need to realise that when it comes to customer experience, they need to create a brand promise and deliver on it. After all we live in a world filled with technology-empower...

Mapping the customer journey pain points

Published on: August 12, 2014
Author: Pauline Ashenden - Marketing Manager

All organisations understand that customers go on a journey when they interact with them. However, this is rarely a straightforward trip, but more of an expedition with twists and turns, ups and downs, spanning many channels.Along this journey, Jeff Toister, the author of Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It – identifies thre...

5 key benefits of natural language powered self-service

Published on: August 06, 2014
Author: Pauline Ashenden - Demand Generation Manager

When interacting with organisations, customers value convenience, speed and consistency above all. Self-service systems deliver in all three of these areas, which is leading to their widespread adoption on the web. But self-service isn’t stopping there. Advances in speech recognition and voice to text technology mean that companies are beginning to look beyond websites to applying self-servi...

The changing face of the high street

Published on: August 01, 2014
Author: Pauline Ashenden - Demand Generation Manager

We’re used to stories of doom and gloom on the high street. The combination of the internet, out of town superstores and the recent recession have decimated the number and range of shops available in town centres, with many long-standing retail chains going into receivership.However a new report from the University of Southampton’s Retail Research Group points to major, positive change...

Escaping the downward customer service spiral

Published on: July 30, 2014
Author: Derek Lewis

Customer satisfaction with UK companies is worsening. That’s the stark headline finding from the latest Institute of Customer Service (ICS) UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI).Researched every six months, the Index fell in July 2014 for the third consecutive time, with over half of organisations seeing a drop of at least one point in their ratings. Satisfaction levels fell in 12 out of th...

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