Two weeks ago, I attended our annual Genesys Sales Kickoff (SKO) meeting in San  Francisco. During the week of Main Stage presentations, breakout sessions and training, I learned a lot, more than I can remember. But one statement made by our CEO, Paul Segre @PaulSegre , made me think. The words he spoke, “fail fast” apply to so much of what we do in our daily routines, but more importantly for this post, to our most valuable resources—our employees and customers.

To me, failing fas t means quickly recognizing the wrong path has been taken and making a change in direction. For a large Customer Service organization with thousands of employees recognizing failure can be extremely difficult, but changing direction quickly can be impossible without the right people, processes, and systems in place. Here are steps you can take to “fail fast” that will help your organization provide world-class customer service: 
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While they may not have witches sending flying monkeys after them, your customers' paths to interact with you are far more complex than the simple directions Dorothy received in the Wizard of Oz . The only direction Dorothy needed was to, “Follow the yellow brick road.” By traversing between channels, your customer may take any one of hundreds of different paths to do business with you. Customers now routinely use three or more channels to complete a transaction.

If I want to buy something I may do some research on the web, lob in a phone call to the contact center with some questions, and eventually drop into a store to make my purchase. My son might look online, maybe tweet a question to some friends, and ultimately buy based on a chat with an agent on your website.  It’s not the number of channels that makes life complex for those of us interested in providing a good customer experience, it’s the fact that different customers ca... read more >

Flipping on the big screen TV late the other night, I was reminded that we live in a world of too much information and often not the information we are looking for. On my DirectTV, I have every national and regional sports network (good stuff), real-time debates on the stock market, and the ability to download any show I may want to watch. But I mostly receive clutter – the channels and shows I want are often lost in the hundreds within the programming lineup. And, if it weren’t for the remote and DVR, I would not be able to watch the very few programs I really want to watch.

Unlike when I was a kid with a few channels, today we live in a world of too many channels, and they are usually broadcasting the wrong show. Luckily, like most men, we are masters of using the remote control to find what we want, when we need it. To paraphrase DirecTV’s current ad slogan, “Don’t just watch TV, Direct TV!”  Thank good... read more >

Does your organization have a Customer Experience strategy? And, have you implemented either Net Promoter or Customer Effort Scores? 

Like most managers, you might feel these metrics provide value to your organization. After all, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. At the same time, you are not sure who or wha t is in control. A recent article published by Forrester Research challenges these type of one question metrics as it’s hard understand how to influence it.

This process is similar to measuring your blood pressure or body temperature. You can see the score , but determining the cause requires more analysis.

In the early days of call centers, we used pseudo metrics to determine if customers would be happy with the service provided. Metrics such as Service Level, Abandoned Rate and Average Time to Answer were all created to tell us the service was good enough against the corresponding budget spend. ... read more >

We’ve heard the words uttered a million times in our lifetime,  “This call may be monitored and recorded for quality assurance purposes.”

It’s finally time to retire this phrase.  Today, most sophisticated companies have moved beyond simple recording to advanced speech analytics to gain actionable insight into the root causes associated with customer churn and dissatisfaction. 

Now, more than ever, companies are looking for ways to differentiate themselves from the competition. Gaining critical insight into the customer experience can mean the difference between increasing customer lifetime value and mysteriously losing that customer to the competition. Genesys recently announced its plans to acquire UTOPY , an innovator in customer analytics and workforce optimization solutions. 

Ovum research weighed-in on the recent acquisition and according to analyst Keith Dawson, “The market increa... read more >