Last week’s Gartner Customer Strategies & Technologies Summit in London provided a perfect opportunity to take the pulse of customer service and customer experience, and to look at future trends that companies need to start preparing for now. The two day event was certainly packed with presentations, and well attended by both vendors and end users, demonstrating the vital ...
Social media has significantly changed the customer service landscape, rebalancing the relationship between consumers and brands and providing a public forum for complaints to be made.
As multiple studies show, social media is now a key channel for customer service. A J.D. Power study found that two thirds of customers who contacted a company on social media did so for customer service. Businesses understand this, but delivering the right level of service can be a challenge, particularly when it comes to integrating with other channels and scaling to meet demand. So, what are cu...
Gamification – the use of game thinking and game mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems - is gaining traction across the world of business. According to Gartner by 2015, 40 percent of Global 1000 organisations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations.So how does this work for the contact centre and how can operations benefit from the transform...
It is fair to say that social media took many organisations by surprise. Suddenly their customers wanted to communicate and engage with them through the likes of Facebook and Twitter, as well as via more traditional channels. The social media journey has therefore seen companies go through a series of stages. Initially (often unofficially) individuals took on the role of being the company rep...
Successfully engaging with customers is critical to every organisation. Whether private or public sector, everyone needs to deliver the best possible experience to their stakeholders if they want to survive and flourish in today’s challenging economy. And the responsibility for delivering customer engagement spans the whole company – from customer service to marketing, sales and operat...
The need for customer service teams to embrace social media is growing, as more and more consumers use the likes of Twitter and Facebook to ask questions, complain and share their experiences of brands. In our own research we’ve seen that more and more UK companies are now making social media part of their strategy. The 2012 Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study found that 70% and 64...
We’ve talked a lot in the past about the emerging importance of social media to customer service and how companies across all industries need to incorporate networks such as Facebook and Twitterinto their strategy. Businesses must understand the opportunities and threats that social media brings to customer service and then put in place the systems to listen and act on what their custom...
Last Friday’s Eptica International Customer Service Summit in Paris provided a perfect opportunity for 200+ Eptica customers, partners and staff to review current and future developments in the customer service market. As part of his presentation, Paul Barnes, managing director of Eptica UK Ltd, outlined ten key trends that the company sees driving the market in the near future. Th...
The internet has been buzzing this week about a major customer service failure by Australian fashion retailer Gasp. The story started when bride-to-be Keira O’Neill visited the Gasp store in Melbourne. After trying on a wedding dress and resisting the hard sell of the shop assistant he was apparently rude to her and her friends. Unsurprisingly Keira complained, politely, by email to the...