With large hikes in energy prices being announced by major UK utilities the spotlight is currently firmly on the sector. Politicians have condemned the rises, with Labour leader Ed Miliband threatening to impose a price freeze and ex-Prime Minister John Major calling for a windfall tax on utility profits. At the same time utilities have received major fines for past misselling and misleading custo...
Organisations understand that every interaction with a consumer is something that they’ve got to get right if they want to win and retain customers. And many strive to excel at each one of these touchpoints, measuring performance and changing operations to improve satisfaction.However, according to a new article from consultants at McKinsey in the Harvard Business Review, by focusing on indi...
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...
Customers want to interact with companies on an ever-widening number of channels. And while newer channels such as mobile and social media may currently be hitting the headlines, it is vital that customer service teams don’t neglect traditional communication methods such as email, the web and phone.In fact, the total number of contacts, across every channel, is increasing. A recent study by ...
Effective knowledge management is a key element of delivering customer service and that’s why we’ve been focusing on this important area in recent weeks.In our first post we discussed how to get started - outlining the different stages of knowledge management within customer service operations. Following this we covered building a business case, outlining the benefits your organisation...
For those of us that work in customer service, the need to invest in the skills, technology and processes to deliver a superior customer experience can appear obvious. Happier customers means greater retention, more sales and therefore more profits. So why won’t the board sign off on that new system/increased training budget? It all comes down to the business case. What seems a no-brain...
Most organisations have a clear idea of the demographics of their customer base, which makes it easy to create the right tone for all customer service interactions. From understanding the language they use to how they like to be addressed, it enables companies to build engagement and loyalty with the right audiences.Mind Candy, the family entertainment company behind the Moshi Monsters phenomenon,...
In our first blog post in our series on knowledge management we talked about the different stages of collecting and sharing information across the contact centre.So, once you’ve identified where your organisation is now, how do you move forward and create a strategy to implement knowledge management? And what are the business benefits that you’ll receive?Starting with the benefits, the...
When customer service became formalised into a specific department the primary channels were the telephone and post. Hence staff were organised in a call centre, as a large part of their job was answering telephone calls, along with responding to letters from customers.A lot has changed since then, with a plethora of new channels now available for customers. The rise of email, the web, social medi...
More and more of us are using mobile devices to interact with companies online. The combination of the ease of use of tablets and the fact that we always have our smartphones to hand, mean that for many it is fast becoming the default way of accessing the internet. Backing this up, consultancy IDATE predicts that by the middle of next year more people will get online through smartphones and tablet...