Over the past month I’ve focused on the importance of knowledge management within customer service, looking at the challenges that need to be overcome, and the skills that a knowledge manager needs to succeed.In this post I’m going to look at the end result – the benefits that leading organizations have achieved by centralizing knowledge and making it available to their agents...
Contact centre agents are at the front line of providing customer service, acting as the public face of an organisation. It is therefore critical to give them the training, tools and information they need to deliver a superior and joined-up customer experience.However, as they have often grown in a channel-based, ad hoc manner, many contact centres struggle to integrate information from different ...
Last week marked a significant anniversary for Eptica - our Customer Experience Blog has now been running for three years. Created in April 2011, it has grown significantly since then, receiving thousands of visits from 160 countries across the world. This is the 290th blog post, with subjects ranging from the impact of wearables on customer service to how our software has helped safeguard elephan...
Last week the post in our series about effective knowledge management for customer service shared five top tips for successfully deploying and reaping the benefits of knowledge management in your organisation.Here we complete the series with a best practice example from Domestic & General, the UK’s leading warranty specialist. The company has transformed its customer service operat...
Knowledge is at the heart of delivering a successful, consistent and efficient customer experience whatever type of organisation you are in. Collecting and sharing information, incorporating feedback and keeping centralised knowledge updated is central to delivering superior customer service.However while most managers understand the importance of knowledge, many are simply not sure where to start...
Staff turnover has always been a problem in a lot of customer service teams. While the UK average employee turnover rate is approximately 15%, in contact centres it averages around 25%. That means one in four agents leaves every year - although for some contact centres turnover can be as much as 60%.One of the key impacts of staff turnover is increased training costs. On average, new agents receiv...
Insurers today are facing growing challenges. The rise of the internet, greater competition, diminished customer loyalty and increased claim costs all require a radical shift in approach if insurers are to survive. It is no exaggeration to compare the sector to retail – where the damage caused by changing consumer behaviour has decimated traditional high street players.Efficiently delivering...
Excellent customer service combines great people and strong processes, underpinned with the right technology. Experience shows that it is vital that these three elements are balanced – after all the best people can’t do their jobs if their IT doesn’t provide them with accurate and up to date information that meets their needs.Unfortunately we’ve all heard stories of well-in...
This week’s Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Conference brought together leading businesses and industry experts to help share best practice when it comes to multichannel customer service.As well as insightful presentations from Domestic & General, Thomson Holidays and the Customer Contact Association, delegates heard from Paul Barnes, Eptica’s UK managing director on the tr...
Happy customers are at the heart of successful businesses. While this sounds obvious, in today’s fast moving, multichannel world keeping customers satisfied – and winning new ones - is much more of a challenge than ever before.Companies need to look at their overall strategy and ensure that the processes and technology within their organisations are allowing customer service teams to d...