Can you imagine walking into a physical store and putting items in your shopping basket only to realise you don’t need these things in the first place? No, right?

But this is a normal consumer habit in the world of online shopping. 

E-marketers lose around $2-$4 trillion every year due to shopping cart abandonment. 

While such a situation is quite unlikely to happen in a physical store, in the comfort of homes and with several devices to browse online catalogues, shoppers are more prone to add products to carts they never intend to purchase. 

This has become a great concern for e-commerce market shares as it means a significant loss in sales and economic impact too.

What is shopping cart abandonment?

The process wherein a potential customer adds items to a shopping cart but does not complete the purchase is referred to as shopping cart abandonment. It is used to calculate the percentage of users who begin the journey with purchase intent but end up buying nothing. Understanding factors like unclear pricing, complicated checkout steps, or confusion around terms such as order shipped meaning can help reduce abandonment rates nd improve conversions.

Shopping cart abandonment rates are an important measure to track the performance of an eCommerce business since a greater abandonment rate may signal a bad experience. An experienced ecommerce SEO agency can help identify and resolve these friction points to boost conversions

Reducing cart abandonment rates leads to increased sales and profit revenue. Thus, streamlining the checkout flow should be a top priority for online merchants.

Here’s how to calculate shopping cart abandonment rates

An e-commerce company needs to be aware of its cart abandonment rate as it helps them gain an understanding of its website’s performance, user experience, and total revenue loss. 

To calculate the same, divide the total number of shopping transactions completed by the total number of shopping carts created. Subtract one from that number and multiply it by 100. This will provide you with the percentage of customers who abandon their shopping carts.

Total No. of shopping transactions completed     — 1 x 100

        Total No. of shopping carts created

How to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates and optimise checkout?

Shopping cart abandonment can be caused by several factors.

You can employ the following methods to address some of these issues and decrease cart abandonment rates- 

1. Provide real-time assistance to the customer

Introducing live chat can boost your sales significantly. It’s a fantastic way to improve engagement rates and increase ROI. Live chat tools allow customers to interact with agents in real-time and receive quick responses, facilitating speedy buyer decisions. 

Reports suggest that 63% of the customers are more likely to return to a website that offers live chat than the one that does not.

Among all the mediums that businesses look to for proactive communications, live chat is one of the most preferred. 

The tool also offers real-time analytics so you can target visitors more effectively. You’re able to send personalised triggered messages in a timely manner to your audiences. 

These can be product recommendations and discount coupons to increase chances of conversion and enhance experiences. For AliExpress Dropshipping businesses, live chat adds a layer of trust and responsiveness that can help convert hesitant shoppers and reduce cart abandonment.

Thus, using live chat in your digital consumer engagement strategy can help you reduce cart abandonment significantly.

2. Optimise website speed

If your website performance is slow, it will not dampen your prospect’s experience and they may not want to come back. A quick checkout procedure can make a world of difference to the user experience your business delivers. Investing in powerful web hosting ensures your site loads quickly and reliably, which is essential for keeping users engaged through to checkout.

Some factors you can pay attention to, include the cart page loading speed, the number of pages leasing to checkout, the number of page objects, and so forth.  

Customers will be more likely to buy things from you in the future if your checkout page is optimised and designed as a high-converting landing page, making the process seamless and user-friendly.

3. Offer multiple payment options to your customers

Another simple solution that could help you achieve better conversions is to offer various payment methods. Make sure to offer as many payment options as possible so that customers can select the one most convenient for them. 

When you prioritise their comfort, they feel cared for and you gain greater credibility.

To earn your clients’ trust, make sure to display security badges or logos as close as possible to transaction forms. Customers will be uneasy about entering personal information and credit card numbers into a Web form that lacks trustworthiness.

You may also read: How to Enhance Post Purchase Experiences for customers?

4. Install the SSL certificate

Shoppers place a lot of trust in the e-retailer while making a purchase, providing personal and financial information. With the rising threat of hacks and frauds, it is your responsibility to ensure that they feel safe. 

If you aren’t able to do so, buyers may feel uneasy and avoid placing orders at the last minute.

Installing an SSL certificate and offering private secure connections on your business site is the greatest way to eliminate this fear. This will advise customers that your network is safe, resulting in a more trustworthy process. 

An SSL certificate is one of the most important tools that any e-commerce website can have. With an SSL certificate and other recognised badges, customers trust you even if there is an issue while completing the purchase. 

It lowers the shopping cart abandonment that takes place owing to trust issues. 

5. Re-target your lost customers

When you initiate retargeting, you are bringing eligible leads back to your online store. This is improved with personalised retargeting. 

Instead of using generic adverts, try retargeting prospects with the products they last viewed or added to their carts. With the right retargeting practices, you can reclaim at least some of your lost customers.

According to a study conducted by 99firms, retargeting clients who have abandoned their carts can increase chances of conversions from 8% to 26%.

Final thoughts

In a perfect world, every customer interaction with your brand would be completed. However, this is not a perfect world. 

While customers differ in various aspects, many have common behaviours, interests, and routines when it comes to shopping online. If you pay attention to these, you’ll be one step ahead of your competition in terms of conversions. 

Additionally, businesses must always make sure that their product information is complete, updated, and consistent across all channels to avoid cart abandonment.  

Incorporate these quick and reliable strategies into your plan to turn reluctant browsers into eager customers.

At Acefone, we deliver catered solutions to boost your customer experience and improve engagement rates. 

The post 5 Practical Ways to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates appeared first on Blog | Acefone.

According to Forbes, ‘’Customer experience is today’s business benchmark.’’ Therefore, we can say that it is evolving as the new norm for brands.

Customers these days have a plethora of options to choose from. If you want to retain them, you must improve their experience across all the touchpoints in their customer journey. 

Besides, there are various resources available on the Internet that educate users on making a buying decision.

Therefore, businesses must deliver a remarkable customer experience that grows their brand awareness.

We recently got an excellent opportunity to interview Alan Pennington, a freelance CX and EX special advisor. With more than 12 years of experience in the customer service industry, Alan has witnessed all the ups and downs in the business sector. 

Alan Pennington has also been listed in the ‘Top 25 Global CX Thought Leaders and Influencers 2019’ for doing a remarkable job in the industry. Alan is currently the deputy chairman of a leading US-based CX software business, SuiteCX. Along with this, he is the special advisor on CX in Deloitte and co-founder of Mulberry Consulting. 

Alan has also written The Customer Experience Book that has received enormous appreciation and splendid feedback.

So, without further ado, let’s walk through the inspiring journey of an acknowledged CX expert, Alan Pennington.

1. What factors influenced you to enter the field of customer experience?

Alan: Back around the turn of the century, customer experience was just in its infancy. It was dominated by research businesses that made you aware of the problems with your customer service but not how to fix them. 

Advertising agencies, too, created outstanding campaigns to create demand and built expectations that the operations could not deliver. There was a significant gap in the market for a firm to take the research and advertising spend and translate that into deliverable experiences. 

While it’s true that just because there is a gap in the market, it does not necessarily mean there is the market in the gap. Fortunately, our hunch turned out to be true!

2. According to you, what is the real definition of good customer service?

Alan: In my opinion, the actual definition of good customer service is delivering brilliant basics, meeting your customer’s expectations and finally adding that little something extra when it is least expected.

3. Being the deputy chairman of SuiteCX, what steps should every business follow to deliver an incredible customer experience?

Alan: Being in the industry for a decade, I would like to share the following steps that businesses should follow to deliver an exceptional brand experience to their customers:

1. Great experiences don’t happen by accident; they happen by design. Therefore, you must invest time in preparing well-defined business strategies and practical approaches.
2. Not every interaction you have with a customer is of equal importance. Hence, you need to map out all of those touchpoints from the outside and use data to understand the critical moments in your customer’s journey. Also, you must look carefully at how these experiences are designed.

The SuiteCX provides the perfect framework to assimilate all the touchpoints and data to evaluate and capture both—the need and the actual changes.

4. What are some common myths that newcomers have when entering the field of CX?

Alan: In my personal opinion, some of the most common myths include:

1. CX is very complicated.
2. It is an expensive undertaking.
3. It is a project; when actually, it is a never-ending journey of changes and adjustments.

5. How does it feel when you see your name listed in the top 25 CX Thought Leaders and Influencers 2019?

Alan: I am constantly humbled by the feedback and to be seen by my peers as a leader in the CX/EX space plus, having recently been described as an industry legend too, is the pinnacle of success for me.

6. What practices do you follow to tackle a frustrated customer?

Alan: I take them back to basics. I destroy the often held myths that prevent leaders from fully embracing the huge commercial wins by integrating CX/EX into their business strategy and solution toolkit. 

This gives people the confidence that they can succeed, and I go ahead and prove it to them. Now you have a fully engaged sponsor.

7. Based on your experience, what are some common mistakes businesses make that hinder their customer service?

Alan: They spend too much time fixing recurring problems rather than redesigning the experience based on the known issues. 

Data, information, and research are too often used as reasons not to act—“we need more data”, which means it is not turned into actionable change. Often, the default is to create a vast programme and wait for 2-3 years. It might take years to deliver, and in the meantime, the world might change.

You need to make hundreds of tiny changes that require little or no governance changes when it is a collective cross-functional approach. In fact, making a lot of small changes might take your CX to the next level. Just like in the words of Nike, “Just Do It!”

8. What strategies do you personally follow while creating a business plan for the operations group?

Alan: I focus on real-time in year deliverables to engage as many individuals as possible across various operations and demonstrate a line of sight business measurable improvements. 

Businesses must focus on the quarter ahead but with an eye on the longer-term cumulative goal and ensure that their deliverables are customer outcomes-focused. 

So, start with what you want to achieve, by when, and then create the plan of action.

9. We know that The Customer Experience Book is a hit. We would love it if you could share some insights from it.

Alan: Remember that

CX is not input; it is the output of activities that happen inside your company. 

When it comes to CX, we are in the memory business. It is about designing positive memories and attention to detail is critical to success. 

Also, customer-centricity is rarely the answer; it is about dialling up the CX component of your business strategy to the right level for your brand position.

10. Are you working on any new book? If yes, we’d love to know more about it.

Alan: I am writing a novel at the moment and have started working on a follow-up business book that centers around the ROI of CX. It focuses on the growing area of the employee experience, which I see as the next big thing in the world of customer experience.

The bottom line

Alan Pennington is a great believer in practical advice. He focuses on direct actions that can effectively impact your customer’s experience. 

With tremendous experience, Alan believes that a positive customer experience is the backbone of your business success. It is because satisfied customers become the loyal ones when served with care. 

Businesses may consider it an extra effort to focus entirely on customer experience, but it is worth it.

If you are looking for effective cloud telephony solutions to enhance your customer service, you are at the right place. Acefone offers advanced cloud solutions that will help you improve your business communications. 

The post Expert Opinion: Boosting CX to get more referrals by Alan Pennington appeared first on Blog | Acefone.

Buyers want to interact with you in a convenient, effective and meaningful way.

And to meet these ever-evolving customer expectations, you must have a sound engagement plan in place. In fact, it should be your prime objective, aligned with your business vision. 

Customer engagement is an essential part of a business strategy that ultimately contributes to the overall brand experience. If you successfully engage with your buyers, they are more likely to prefer you over other brands.

So, what is a customer engagement strategy?

A customer engagement strategy, essentially, is a business approach to building long-lasting relationships with your buyers. It involves understanding their journey and experiences with a brand across multiple communication channels, both online and offline.

An excellent engagement strategy enables you to offer seamless experiences to your audiences and ultimately, increase your sales. Doing so is indeed fruitful for both your audience and your business.

It isn’t surprising then that 72% of businesses claim that improving customer experience is their top-most priority. It helps them focus on value creation and get ahead of their competitors.

Put simply, it promotes a worthwhile end-to-end customer experience and efficient support.

And why is customer engagement important?

Regardless of the size and industry of your company, customer engagement tools have evolved as a crucial benchmark for all businesses. Now, engagement is about using different communication channels to engage with leads and exceed their expectations.

The importance of enhancing customer engagement can not be overlooked. It allows you to:

• Boost customer loyalty: Brand loyalty can only come if you successfully deliver excellent customer service. Offer hyper-personalised experiences to your buyers and they’re likelier to return to your brand for repeat purchases in the future.
• Increase revenue: The businesses that invest in better engagement processes and ideas achieve a higher customer satisfaction rate. This, in turn, results in increased revenue.
• Creates a competitive edge: Focusing on creating a well-planned strategy helps you deliver a consistent customer experience, create business differentiation and attract new leads.

Additionally, the implementation of an efficient customer engagement model is the key to business success. Without it, brands will find it hard to grow and survive in such a competitive market.

7 valuable tips to build a foolproof engagement strategy

Buyers expect brands to understand their needs, desiring to be consistently engaged and assisted every step of the way. If you wish to achieve higher customer satisfaction levels, look towards the latest technology and new-age ideas.

Here is a collection of the most effective ways you can develop a great engagement process and build a loyal client base.  

#1 Use an omnichannel approach

‘Tis the digital era; netizens nowadays initiate their interactions with a brand on one channel but continue their conversation across multiple platforms. 

Thus, providing a consistent experience across all touchpoints is critical.

An omnichannel approach consolidates all user interactions across different channels such as websites, social media, phone calls, applications, or retail stores onto a single platform. Doing so helps brands engage with clients in a uniform, brand-compliant fashion. ntegrating tools like The QR Code Generator (TQRCG) into this strategy enables seamless transitions between online and offline touchpoints, making it easier for customers to access information, promotions, or services instantly.

Moreover, buyers wish for a holistic experience with brands, irrespective of the number of touchpoints involved. Offering an omnichannel experience decides if you have an effective engagement strategy in place or not.

#2 Promote real-time engagement with live chat

Kevin Stirtz, the author of one of the famous books ‘More Loyal Customers’, once said,

“Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time, or we’ll lose them.”

Live chat is one such channel that allows your agents to interact with buyers by answering their queries in real time seamlessly. It facilitates a strong agent-buyer rapport by enabling instant resolutions. Often, agents are even able to share their screens or send links to guide clients.

Thus, a live chat platform can help you establish stronger relationships.

#3 Utilise chatbots to automate your customer engagements

Using chatbots as part of your customer engagement strategy can have a significant impact on your business. Research by Business Insider revealed that 80% of companies claimed they are either using or planning to use chatbots by 2021.

Chatbots can be used across all communication channels, including social media platforms, mobile apps, e-commerce websites, and instant messaging applications. They are increasingly being used for improved interactions.

#4 Enable co-browsing to provide live engagement

Businesses are increasingly focusing on visual engagement solutions such as co-browsing to cut through the clutter of marketing conversations and connect emotionally. 

In fact, according to Forrester’s research, browsing ranks first among other interaction channels, with a 78% customer satisfaction rating.

The revolutionary co-browsing technology enables agents to interact in real-time with a client’s browser, acquire a firsthand understanding of the problem and give an appropriate solution. It assists in resolving technical difficulties or complex form-filling to submit an application successfully.

#5 Encourage personalised conversations with video chat

Video chat solutions can be one of the most advanced and powerful tools in a brand’s arsenal of engagement tools, helping them deliver exceptional customer service. As part of modern call center software features, they’ve already established their contribution to the delivery of real-time conversations.

These solutions reduce the number of touchpoints and enable smooth real-time interactions with clients around the world. Additionally, face-to-face personalised discussions allow you to discover problems quickly and provide compelling answers.

They are, put simply, vital for a successful engagement strategy. 

#6 Improve your customer engagement on social media

A social media marketing strategy can improve an organisation’s interactions with its audience, updating the latter about the latest offers, and driving repeat purchases. 

According to GlobalWebIndex, 54% of social browsers use social media to explore products.

You must use social media platforms to increase online engagement, and increase your social media followers, differentiate your brand, develop stronger relationships with your customers, and ultimately, enhance brand loyalty. Used appropriately, social media platforms can give a massive boost to your business.

#7 Collect feedback to improve your strategy

One of the most critical components of a successful customer engagement plan is to get regular feedback. It is important for a business to know if buyers are happy with their products or not.

Not only does this help you register their satisfaction or dissatisfaction, but it also helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses. You can then alter your offerings, your interactions and even your campaigns accordingly. 

Key user engagement metrics to measure user activities

Measuring user engagement with the correct metrics is essential because it offers meaningful insights into your audiences’ perceptions of your brand. 

These insights provide critical information about your products and if your service is resonating with your users. You can even design your future roadmap based on these metrics.

The following are the key user engagement metrics for measuring user activity:

1. Active users

This is a significant metric that measures the percentage of active users who use your product on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. It assists you in understanding the trends that your users seek in a brand.

2. Customer retention rate

The customer retention rate metric tells you whether your audiences are sticking to your brand. 

A greater retention rate indicates that your users are more likely to use your product in the future. Measuring user retention can help you increase user engagement across all touchpoints in your product.

3. Core user actions

It evaluates if your customers understand the core messaging and can use the functionalities of your product. If they are using the key features, it implies that your service is actively engaging your users.

The bottom line

For a brand, creating a meaningful customer engagement strategy must be the top priority. If you want to survive in an ever-evolving, hyper-competitive market, you have to understand your customer’s expectations and establish effective communication with them.

Therefore, implementing a suitable engagement model will help you build stronger agent-client relationships, better conversion rates, and, lastly, enhance your business’s bottom line.

The post How to Build a Powerful Customer Engagement Strategy For Improving the Overall Brand Experience? appeared first on Blog | Acefone.

A remarkable customer experience keeps your customers coming back while promoting your services to others. Businesses with excellent customer experience reported higher customer referrals and customer satisfaction are key to a successful business.

Indeed, to be able to deliver unparalleled experiences, you must equip your employees with the requisite resources and authority. Train your employees to provide quick and effective solutions to resolve customer issues. 

Speaking with us today is Ingrid Lindberg, the first-ever CXO (Chief Experience Officer) in the USA. Lindberg is a certified CX professional, CX specialist and founder of Chief Customer. In continuation to our ‘Expert Opinion’ series, we discuss the finer details of a superlative customer journey with the virtuoso who has over 20 years of unbeatable experience in the industry.

1. What made you choose a career in customer experience?

I truly fell into the field of customer experience. I worked in financial services, placing trades for people when we started to bring the ability to place trades online for the public—the beginning of financial services on the web! I had ideas about making it easier. MY CIO (Chief Information Officer) encouraged me to learn how to design web pages so people could easily use them.

That indeed was the beginning. 

I had ideas, and education in sociology, studying people, and curiosity. I was lucky enough to get formal training and then the opportunity, not just to design web pages but pieces of paper. Then came contact center interaction design. The next thing I knew, I was doing multichannel designs with strategies behind them. And that became the customer experience field. 

2. What do you think is a criterion for a successful customer experience expert? 

In my experience, there is no such thing as a CX expert. Customer experience is too big of a bucket for one person to be an expert on the whole thing! 

There are expert journey mappers; experts at designing interactions; experts at building strategies; experts in research and creating the voice of customer programs and the likes. It is like any other industry—you must declare your major. 

I am an expert at developing strategies and designing company transformations. I am not great at building Voice of Customer programs. I’ve led people who have done that work, but I am not a market researcher.  

3. Have you ever successfully motivated a business to achieve demanding performance standards during an uncertain time? If so, how?

One of the most significant transformations that I designed and led was at Cigna during the recession. We were facing tremendous pressures and a rock-bottom stock price. The motivation for that transformation was indeed a burning platform—change or die. 

And we changed that company completely—and they continue to thrive on the platform of customer-centric decision making. 

4. How do you feel after becoming the first person in the USA to hold the title of CXO?

It is such a weird thing. I downplay it all the time because I cannot believe it. 

I did not choose the title; my CEO and CMO did. They had read about the need for a CXO in a Harvard Business Review article and decided that the company needed one. I have been told repeatedly that I am the first to have held it, but I had no idea what it was! 

I remember going to LinkedIn when I was offered the job in 2007. I searched for CXO. There were no results. So, I had to make a lot of it up as I went along. We had to create job descriptions for Voice of Customer leaders and Customer Experience Architects. Every step was an exhilarating battle because there were no best practices. So, we learned a lot. 

I love to say that we built an aeroplane in the sky, successfully flew it worldwide and safely landed it. 

5. You have worked in CX for around two decades now. What were the most challenging situations while advising businesses?

Customer experience should not be such a tricky thing, should it? 

We consistently see pushback on whether or not it works, what the ROI is, whether it should be funded. The most challenging situation I have found myself in as I advise businesses is coming in after they have already spent a ton of money on CX and have not seen any results. 

So often, a company will buy a piece of software to manage customers’ voices or map journeys and then they do not see any results. Spending money without a clear strategy and plan is pointless. It creates so much dissonance and dissolves trust between CX activities and executive teams. 

I implore the leaders out there to just say no to CX efforts until you have three things in place: 

• CEO support 
• A strategy 
• A plan 

6. What, according to you, works best to ensure a seamless customer experience?

I don’t think there is such a thing as a seamless customer experience. The thing about customer experience is that humans deliver it. Humans build websites and apps. Humans program AI. Humans create letters and emails. 

And we aren’t seamless. 

I have learned that you have to bring all the parties together with a shared set of goals and a clear strategy. You have to define the expectations for orchestration and the outcomes. And then you must support them to ensure they get what they need to make it all happen. You must make apologising to your customers an okay thing. We all are human. There will be mistakes. Apologise when it goes wrong, and then fix it.  

7. Would you like to tell us some CX elements that are usually missing in startups and businesses?

I find, especially when working with startups, that all the focus is on the product. A fabulous product is built, and it is beautifully designed and does exactly what you want it to. But way too many start-ups have never asked a customer about whether they want it, if they would use it and if it works for them. 

Start with your idea, yes, but quickly intertwine your customer into your build. 

8. Lastly, how do you think technology affects customer service? How does it influence CX?

I think that technology is simply an enabler for customer service professionals. We spend way too much time in the CX industry talking about customer service. 

In the industries I have spent the most time in (telco, finance, healthcare), we have learned that customer service only accounts for between 6-10% of the experience. Products, processes, and communications are often so much more important. Customer service is there for when something goes wrong with your product, processes, or communications. Focus on those first.  

Wrapping up

Our conversation with Ingrid Lindberg has not only given us meaningful insights into the importance of a customer-centric culture but also helps us understand how businesses can embed the same in their day-to-day operations.

By implementing her advice, organisations will surely notice a significant rise in their customer base, organic marketing, and thereby, their performance.

The post Expert Opinion: The Key To Winning New Customers Is To Retain The Existing Ones appeared first on Blog | Acefone.

A phone system is not only a means of communication but also plays a vital role in securing an institution’s data and managing various operations. Introducing a cloud-hosted phone system can be a game-changer for your university campus. 

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire education system has become virtual. Professors and staff are delivering lessons and information online, with students trying to make the most of these. Operational costs have skyrocketed. A traditional phone system cannot be a permanent solution for a remote world. 

So, what now?

A cloud-based phone system can be your saviour in this crisis. 

Hosted phone systems support remote working. You can experience the best possible features while staying regulation-compliant at much lower costs. What’s more––you’re easily able to monitor performance and resolve any issues faced by your students, faculty, and staff effortlessly regardless of their location. 

However, many administrators hesitate to make this shift because they fear the new phone system will not be able to cope up with the university’s administrative workloads. It’s a common myth among people that installing and setting up a cloud-based phone system is a time-consuming and painful process with a high upfront expenditure. 

But the fact is––shifting to a cloud-based phone system is time-saving and cost-effective at the same time. 

Many cloud service providers offer hosted phone systems at competitive prices using which you can deliver superior customer experiences and handle all your business operations effortlessly. In fact, the advantages of cloud-based phone systems for universities significantly exceed the pain of upgrading. 

In this article, we will talk about how hosted phone systems can be a game-changer for educational campuses.

So, let’s dive into some benefits of hosted phone systems that you’ll love for your educational institution.

8 ways the education industry can benefit from hosted phone systems

Communication plays a significant role throughout the admissions process. Institutes need an efficient phone system that can solve their day-to-day communication needs. 

A hosted phone system will be the best option for not only overcoming any communication barriers but also managing administrative operations effortlessly. Here’s how they can help.

1. Scalable solutions

Scalability is an important concern for universities. As student enrolment fluctuates, a traditional set-up will drive the overall expenditures of a platform owing to its limited scalability. 

A cloud-powered phone system allows administrators to easily reconfigure virtual classrooms and faculty offices as per changing needs and easily decrease their workload. With cloud solutions, they don’t need to invest in a scale they won’t use. On the other hand, there’s no need to pay extra when it comes to scaling up––they only have to pay for what they use.

The learning and development departments of educational institutions require higher bandwidth to operate seamlessly. 

2. Mobility

On a university campus, hundreds of operations take place day in and day out. All the faculty, employee and student operations are connected at every step, no matter where all the stakeholders are.

Regular operations such as adjustment classes, rescheduled practicals, and on-site projects collapse against the potential of conventional phone systems. The majority of traditional phone systems fail to offer the mobility feature, due to which it becomes very hard to operate off-campus. 

The hosted phone system fulfils this lack of functionality of conventional phone systems. It allows everyone to connect to the centralised system from anywhere and at any time. They can even access information and data on the go, communicating seamlessly as they do.

As the world is moving towards wireless technology, wireless mobility has become one of the essential requirements of educational campuses. 

3. Seamless security

Big educational institutions are not just meant to provide education; they are also meant to deliver healthcare services, research facilities, and counselling sessions to their students, faculties, and employees.

In order to carefully handle such a massive amount of university records, the university needs to maintain high-end security controls. A cloud-backed phone system with advanced Contact center features offers various measures to manage campus communications in a secure manner. . These measures include two-factor authentication, end-to-end encryption, firewalls, and role-based access to data.

4. Disaster management

Disasters never come with prior notice. The majority of traditional phone systems fail whenever a disaster strikes. 

A hosted phone system is disaster-proof. Your provider will ensure that your data is backed up securely on several servers across the world. They also provide instant recovery of your data, facilitating business continuity and eliminating loss of revenue or reputational damage. This offers high-level stability and peace of mind to administrators even in case of an emergency. 

Once you move from your traditional phone system to a hosted phone system, no matter even if the system encounters any disaster or emergency, communications will continue seamlessly.

5. Improved productivity and connectivity

At the time of admissions, connectivity is the most important thing for universities. In order to connect with new students and to smoothen their admission procedures, universities need productivity apps that help them handle bulk operations.

Hosted phone systems offer reliable and efficient connectivity tools that save both time and money. They can also improve the productivity of the admission staff with features such as call conferencing, call monitoring, and more.

These phone systems also offer communications over multiple channels, allowing procedures such as data and media sharing, counselling using video conferencing, and many more functionalities. 

6. Easy to set-up

It’s a common myth among people that migrating from a traditional phone system to a cloud phone system is a complicated task. But the truth is that cloud solutions are quite easy to install.

These phone systems do not require bulky hardware and heavy set-ups. Everything happens over the Internet. Even at the time of installation, the university can work in a hybrid environment. When the migration process starts, the institute must keep some of its users on the existing phone system until the installation of the new cloud-based phone system is completed.

The maintenance, too, is the cloud provider’s responsibility. Institutions don’t have to worry about timely upgrades, compliance with the regulations, security checks, and regular maintenance activities.

7. Strong communication even at the time of emergency

Traditional phone systems are static in nature. So, when you call 911, the phone system will announce its location address. In case of an emergency, when 911 is dialled on the traditional phone systems, a correct PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point) connection is needed to reach the correct location address.  

On the other hand, cloud telephony set-ups work with a unified communication system. Users can connect with each other using any channel.

In case of emergency, using a mobile with 911 compatibility, a professor can dial 911 from their laptop from anywhere on the campus. It will announce the professor’s location to PSAP. In this way, instant help can be sent to anyone on the campus caught in an unfortunate incident. 

Conclusion

A shift to the cloud phone system can be a game-changer for universities. It is an irresistible combination of value and service for every penny-pinching administrator. 

A hosted phone system smoothens everyday operations and communications at these institutions. It is also an efficient tool to handle the daily records of hundreds of students out there on or even off-premises.

The post Hosted Phone Systems: A Game-Changer for University Campuses appeared first on Blog | Acefone.

Thus, investing in customer service is one of the most crucial decisions you can take for the success of your business.

Delivering great customer service means valuing your customer’s time. This can be achieved by providing them with real-time solutions and meeting their expectations. You can also invest resources to build effective strategies that help you elevate the customer experience your business offers.

In this edition of our ‘Expert Opinion’ series, we spoke to Adrian Swinscoe, customer experience advisor, author, and speaker. A best-selling author, Forbes contributor, blogger, and podcaster, he will share his experiences and give you tips that will help you gain an edge in the CX domain.

Here are some excerpts from our exclusive interview with Adrian.

1.What has your journey as a customer service expert been like?

First of all, I don’t consider myself an expert. I believe that I am a student of what it takes to deliver great service and experience. This approach has allowed me to learn a bunch of things over the years. This, in turn, helps me act as a navigator or guide for organisations that wish to deliver great service and a standout experience to their customers.

However, my journey has taken different forms at different times. Initially, I spent a lot of time building a number of business propositions to provide an excellent experience to customers. But, over the last 12 years, I’ve spent a lot of my time researching, writing, and talking about customer service and experience as well as advising a number of brands and vendors.

To be honest, I’ve always been more interested in the customer’s experience rather than the topic of customer experience (CX).

2.What are some of the biggest obstacles that most businesses face while delivering customer service?

Some of the biggest obstacles that most businesses face while ensuring good customer service are:

• Insufficient investment in self-service tools and resources for their customers
• Seeing customer service as a cost despite it being an asset
• Limited understanding of their customer base
• Lack of trust in their agents or employees’ capabilities

  3.Is there a common tip that can help different businesses streamline their customers’ journeys?

I suggest that you figure out how you can spend more time with your customers, paying close attention to details. If you do that enough and on a regular basis, these tactics will tell you where the problems lie. Then you can go about streamlining their journeys. Don’t guess. Go and find out.

4.Tell us about some changes and trends you’ve noticed in these past years?

The possibilities of technology have exploded in the last few years. While many of them are very exciting, many are also concerning. In my opinion, the danger and challenges of technology lie in our obsession with it––it has become the answer for everything. Amid this, we lose out on the importance of the human touch and miss out on what is important for the customer.

5.Share some CX insights that businesses should follow while serving their customers.

Here’s a quote from the chapter ‘Customer behaviour is changing: check your assumptions’ from my book ‘How To Wow’ that I think might be helpful:

“When we set out to design, build and deliver a great customer experience––or anything else for that matter––we tend to make assumptions about who it is for, what they like, what they prefer, and what they enjoy.”

However, in the face of ever-changing consumer behaviour, can we be sure that our assumptions are correct?

Alan Alda, the famous actor, offers some sage advice: Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.

Here is how to use this idea—old assumptions about what different demographic groups do or prefer are no longer as valid as they were. Therefore, companies need to be careful not to make outdated assumptions about their customers.

This has implications for the design and delivery of customer experience. To understand this better, here are a few things that you should do:

• Be clear about the assumptions about your product/service and your target market
• Make your assumptions explicit and list them out
• Then, go and check them against what your customers actually do, think, and value

After applying these, you will surely be surprised by what you find out.

6.You’ve authored ‘How to Wow: 68 Effortless Ways to Make Every Customer Experience Amazing’. What are some key insights you’d like readers to take from it?

There are too many things to pick. What I would say, though, is that there is no one answer or one solution to providing a great experience. The answer will always depend on the customer and the business.

7.What is the most remarkable leadership lesson you discovered while writing your book ‘Punk CX’?

The most remarkable leadership lesson that I discovered while writing my book ‘Punk CX’ was that if you want to be a well-connected and insightful leader, then you need to commit time for it.

Martijn Gribnau, Chief Transformation Officer at Genworth Financial, spends a third of his time with his own employees to better understand their work and how he can help them. Then, he spends an additional third of his time just walking around, getting a better understanding of the business. Only the remaining time of his day is used to get work done.

8.Are you working on any new book? If yes, we’d love to know more about it.

I have a few ideas floating around in my mind but nothing concrete that I can share right now.

Wrapping up

Adrian Swinscoe has been working as a CX advisor for several businesses for the last 16 years. He’s also the author of Amazon’s bestseller book ‘Punk CX’.

Needless to say, the insights brought out in this interview can help you build customer loyalty and enhance the customer experience. The strategies shared with us by Adrian will help you deliver a ‘wow’ customer service and take your business to the next level.

Acefone understands your technology needs. Our global cloud communication solutions can really help to boost business communications and customer experience.

The post Expert Opinion: It Takes Months to Win a Customer But a Second to Lose One appeared first on Blog | Acefone.

The omnichannel approach has set a new benchmark for offering exceptional customer service. 

Omnichannel support for popular platforms is one of the most efficient ways to hook your customers to your services. This allows customers to easily start a conversation on any communication channel. 

Omnichannel is on the rise also due to customer expectations. A report from Forrester revealed that 73% of the customers say a smooth customer experience is built on businesses “valuing their time”. Thus, an omnichannel approach can help upgrade your customer support experience. 

Sounds interesting? Read on for some mind-blowing statistics about omnichannel communications. 

An omnichannel approach has become the need of customers

Your customers will try to reach out to your brand through different platforms and channels. They require immediate action on queries, whether it is submitting a ticket on the website, writing a tweet, or mailing an agent. Thus, it really becomes necessary for your business to engage on different platforms. 

Omnichannel provides customer satisfaction

Offering an omnichannel customer experience is not just an option anymore, it is mandatory. Every brand should realise that today’s customer is browsing on different channels at all times. By including an omnichannel approach and providing a quick resolve, you will be able to establish a lasting relationship with your customers.

Shoppers engage with brands having a variety of channels

Omnichannel retail is a multichannel approach to sales that focuses on providing a smooth experience to customers wherever they may shop from—mobile, desktop, or brick and mortar stores. 

This revised approach not only increases sales but also improves your customer loyalty.

Read Our Blog: Omnichannel Contact center

It’s contagious

By understanding the growing customer satisfaction levels, many businesses are going the omnichannel way. Old ways—multichannel— are being replaced by a more centralised approach of communicating with customers and building relationships.

Conclusion

Businesses must be present on the channels their customer is most comfortable with. Since customers now use several channels, omnichannel communications help businesses succeed in reaching customers where they are. Finally, using an omnichannel approach provides your customers with a level of service that will set you apart from your competition.

If you want to learn more about the omnichannel approach to grow your business and improve customer experience, connect with our experts today at 1888-859-0450 for a consultation.

The post 18 Mind-Blowing Omnichannel Statistics That Every Business Should Know For 2021 appeared first on Blog | Acefone.

Why won’t they be; customer-centricity is the key to business success in the modern landscape. With customer expectations evolving rapidly, you need to create a culture around the customer and their needs. Businesses that take steps to please customers in every encounter—from email drips to phone calls—only survive in such a mutable market. 

The good news? Research conducted by Deloitte revealed that customer-centric companies are gaining 60% more profit than those that aren’t. This means you too can increase your revenue by pleasing customers—in a way nobody else can. 

Customer experience is the summation of a brand’s impact on a customer’s mind during all the interactions throughout his journey. Right from the first search that helped them recognise their need to the final purchase, CX at each and every moment matters. 

Mosun Shasore, who has been serving as a customer experience expert over the past 25+ years, is a certified customer experience professional (CCXP). She has created CX strategies for various multinational companies—Accenture, ARM Investment Managers, and Procter & Gamble. Enveloping her 25 years of experience, Mosun has shared some of her best customer service insights with us.

Read on to discover more about her exciting journey and get a plethora of expert tips and insights on customer experience.

1. How did you enter the field of CX? Was there a specific reason behind it?

Mosun: Yes, there were a couple of specific reasons. First, I have always felt strongly about the need to understand people. Second, empathy with internal business stakeholders and customers is crucial for mutually rewarding relationships and, ultimately, productivity.  

However, the quote by Oprah Winfrey, “turn your wounds to wisdom”, best applies when describing my path to CX.  

Earlier, I managed client relationships at an investment management firm, where I was responsible for growing the client base and deepening relationships. 

Since clients expect efficiency in executing their financial plans, I had to often interact with my colleagues for support functions. As a result, there was friction on many occasions, which was an aspect of the job that I didn’t look forward to.  

There were situations when both the front office and support staff had conflicts regarding the customer experience. 

The front office believed that the support unit didn’t understand customer needs, while the latter thought their colleagues disregarded compliance issues. Client services even resented operations for the way they missed deadlines and for their ‘hard to decipher’ customer reporting formats.

Of course, the staff in both departments cared about customer needs. Still, they were putting pressure on one another without realising the impact of their arguments on the actual customer experience. 

As time passed by, I observed that often, but not always, non-customer-facing units are one of the most significant obstacles that prevent a company from becoming customer-centric. This is because organisations focus more on the frontline service delivery teams and less on creating the required mindsets, behaviours and processes for the entire organisation. 

There is a disconnect between strategy and vision required to deliver an enriching customer experience. This is usually caused by siloed business units and weak executive buy-ins. 

To compound matters, client-facing people, like me, often blamed the awful client experience.  

Instead of getting entangled in arguments at a micro level, I decided to take a wider approach to solve the problem.   

I started looking into ways to help the organisation break down silos and improve the client experience. 

My interests resulted in my move from client relationship management to an area called business support. After a while, I moved to strategy, where I could convene idea-generating sessions across functions and follow through with required actions to bring about impactful change.    

I then joined Accenture and discovered that it wasn’t just my former place of work that needed to strengthen customer-centricity. Many businesses require a total transformation of CX practices. 

Unfortunately, what one often finds is that operational constraints dilute a well-intentioned strategy (whether real or perceived) as well as a loss of focus over time, resulting in little more than lip-service being paid to the concept of customer-centricity.  

All of it happened in the ‘90s and early 2000s, before CX, as a discipline, gained the clear definition it has today. Fast forward about ten years down the line, circa 2016, I came across the acronym ‘CCXP’ in an email that I had received from a fellow strategy person, and the rest is history. 

2. After working 25+ years, what do you feel is a common mistake businesses make while delivering customer support?

Mosun: Ensuring that customers have a memorable experience with a brand is everybody’s job. However, I have seen businesses with the mindset that supporting and serving the customer is the job of a single department.

Placing the customer at the center of the decision-making process requires similar thoughts and culture in an organisation. Given that values drive behaviours and culture, managers and executives should actively and continuously entrench the organisation’s values in ways that go above-average commitment to deliver satisfaction.  

3. You have written a book, Serve Them Right. What was the inspiration behind it?

Mouson: The thought emerged years ago when I was in the queue to report a lost sim card at a service location of a telecommunications service provider. Several minutes ticked by as the frontline staff occupied themselves with tasks, completely ignoring the waiting customers. 

After a while, a senior officer who noticed that I had not been attended to, loudly remarked, “What is it that you actually want?” 

A similar experience occurred at a bank a few days later. While speaking to my so-called ‘relationship manager’, we were constantly interrupted by her colleague who came by with some doubts. 

Again, it came across as my matter being accorded lower priority. Even when I avoided physical interaction and preferred resolving the issue over the telephone, I found staff asking me to repeat my problem each time I was transferred to another department. The justification for that was usually, “oh but madam, I was not the one who attended to you initially” or “I was not around at that time, I just resumed”.   

There are much worse examples, from the inability of airline ground staff to address challenges related to flight delays to pharmacists not wanting to attend to simple enquiries on pricing and pointing me to the cashier. 

I find it absurd that it has become standard practice to ask one’s friends for their contacts in an organisation where you seek to procure a product or pay for a service to be assured of satisfactory treatment.  

The truth is, delivering a superior customer experience is far from easy. 

If it were so simple, we would find more business owners and senior executives demonstrating exactly how customers should be treated. Instead, we see frontline operations being left to people with little experience in the business world. They are unaware of the repercussions of weak service, so we are affronted by customer service officials saying ‘good morning!’ as loud as they possibly can while asking obnoxious questions such as, “how was your night?” 

My work as a business adviser involves helping my clients with business strategy development and delivering workshops designed to support strategy execution. 

My firm has helped clients win customer service awards with our bespoke workshops, and as such, the intention is to make the same content available to more people. Therefore, Serve Them Right is a compilation of workshop notes and exercises that I have delivered over the years.       

The purpose of Serve Them Right is to serve as a handbook for staff at the frontline and a guide for training managers and heads of customer experience departments. The scope of this book, therefore, primarily covers customer service practices at the frontline. 

I believe that service delivery is not only of importance to business stakeholders. Our customer experience standard is of strategic significance for the collective wealth of the people of any nation, as business partnerships are sought from various parts of the world.  

When it comes to helping businesses make progress on their customer experience maturity, there is still much work to be done by CX professionals in the world. Exceptional service begins with the enthusiasm from each individual, across all ranks. Without purpose and confidence, service will always be below expectation.   

4. You have worked as a Contributor at the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) HCDC. Kindly throw some light on what your role was all about and your experience.

Mosun: The Nigerian Economic Summit Group runs several policy commissions, including financial services, infrastructure and Human Capital Development Policy Commission (HCDPC). 

The purpose is to identify areas where policy changes are required so that members can recommend ways to achieve progress and advocate for change. Work is still ongoing; however, there is no doubt that the key to success is to align our education system with the nation’s core strengths and allocate financial resources that support our strengths. 

For instance, given the trends, we can see our success in drama, music, animation, technology and entertainment, and this is where we should focus.  

5. Could you share some challenges that you have faced in the industry?

Mosun: Frankly, there are a few challenges that I’ve seen; however, one fundamental challenge is the C-suite disconnect from the customer experience function. 

When I start discussions with CEOs around CX, my team and I are often referred to whatever they view as the most appropriate department. After that, CEOs partially or entirely disappear from the scene. This is a recipe for putting customer experience consistency at risk.  

Having the CEO and other C-suite leaders articulate what customer-centricity means and what it looks like in practice is critical to embedding customer-centric behaviour in an organisation. And so, one crucial area C-suite leaders should pay attention to is creating a customer-centric culture and here are three things to focus on:   

• Recruiting the right people

Achieving behavioural change is costly, so the starting point here is to be clear on core values and behaviours that demonstrate them, followed by recruiting people that fit in. While ensuring you have the right people in the business, be prepared to lose people also. This is easier said than done but worth the painstaking effort.    

• Creating a structure that supports cross-functional collaboration

CEOs should make the customer experience an active priority by creating a layout where the Chief Customer Officer is a direct report. Giving the CXO a seat at the management table will ensure that senior people in non-customer facing roles are aware of the commitment to customer priorities.    

• CX measurement and progress tracking at the executive level

The essential purpose of measurement is to interpret the implications and take action that drives a culture of accountability and continuous improvement. CX KPIs are leading indicators of financial performance results and, as such, just as necessary. 

In simpler terms, customer experience is a leadership issue. 

6. Tell us about some of your achievements and awards in the customer experience domain.

Mosun: I run Quramo Advisory, a trusted brand for customer experience, staff development and capacity building in the asset management sector. Over the last 24 months, we have facilitated customer experience workshops for all the frontline staff at 5 of the top 10 pension fund managers that collectively control more than 40% of the market.   

7. Is there any advice that you would give to people who are planning to start a business?

Mosun: For me, the most important thing is to nurture and nourish your mind. One thing is sure in entrepreneurship, there will be challenges of all kinds, and many people get overwhelmed, panic or even give up at the first sign of difficulty. 

One’s mental preparedness is, therefore, significant at the beginning and along the entire journey. Therefore, my message to all entrepreneurs is to develop the disposition of persistence and perseverance consciously.  

You’ll face great difficulty when a key initiative fails. The ability to admit failure and start over again is crucial. It requires positive thinking, determination, persistence, and an entrepreneur’s faith in her ability to succeed.  

8. Lastly, are you working on a new book? If yes, can you please tell us a little about it?

Mosun: I intend to start working on the revised edition of Serve Them Right later this year. So thoughts around a new book are still evolving. However, I am equally excited about my podcast on customer experience, which should take off in the third quarter of the year.    

Wrapping up

The insights highlighted in the interview can surely help you transform your business’s customer experience approach. 

The post Expert Opinion: How to Deliver Remarkable Customer Experience (and Why it’s so Important) appeared first on Blog | Acefone.

FinancesOnline is a respected platform, where one can read detailed reviews of B2B and SaaS software as provided by industry experts. Well-curated and comprehensive, these reviews offer a deep understanding of different companies and their services. 

FinancesOnline also allows you to compare popular tools and find the perfect software that can fulfil your business needs. 

The experts at FinancesOnline reviewed our software and left us an excellent review. They found our services highly remarkable and awarded us for delivering a great user experience too. 

Acefone’s features that grabbed their attention and appreciation:

• Easy-to-use online portal to fulfil all contact center needs
• A scalable and flexible alternative to traditional phone systems
• Intelligent call monitoring and call tracking 
• Dedicated round-the-clock customer support
• Connecting with multiple participants using conferencing tools 
• Innovative cloud solutions for seamless business communication
• Effective cloud-hosted solutions for remote working 

The B2B and software experts of FinancesOnline were extremely happy with Acefone’s robust features. 

Receiving an outstanding score of 8.5 and 92% in user satisfaction, Acefone has proven to be a great and rising force in the cloud telephony industry. Acefone is growing to become the first choice for all businesses that require unparalleled and quality cloud communication services.

FinancesOnline uses a special algorithm to identify its award recipients. They evaluated our user experience and the feedback of customers who leave comments, ratings and opinions on the FinancesOnline website. 

With our reliance on a customer-centric approach, Acefone soared through the 100% customer satisfaction mark. This exceptional score helped us land the “Great Customer Service Award”. 

About FinancesOnline

FinancesOnline is a reliable software directory and is well-known for providing unbiased and honest B2B and SaaS software reviews. They operate on an efficient rating system that uses multiple algorithms to calculate a company’s overall score. 

By using a SmartScore system, their software experts do an in-depth analysis and take a comprehensive look at the features and functionality offered by a solution. 

Features like scalability, collaboration, flexibility, customisation, and mobility, among others, are considered while calculating the user satisfaction score. 

Apart from the features, the score also depends on comments, opinions and social media reviews of the particular software.

Visit the FinancesOnline website to get a detailed and honest review of Acefone. 

Sign up for Acefone if your business is struggling to establish seamless and uninterrupted business communications. 

The post Acefone Takes Home Two Appreciation Awards From FinancesOnline appeared first on Blog | Acefone.

A survey conducted by Bloomberg Businessweek found that delivering a good customer experience is among the top strategic objectives for 80% of businesses. Moreover, a Customer Management IQ survey revealed that 75% of the customer experience executives and professionals rated customer experience a rating of ‘5’ on the scale of 1-5, five being the most important.

Customer experience is a domain that requires consistent effort along with a sharp focus. Delivering a great customer experience creates a positive impact on customer loyalty, higher retention as well as increased lead generation. 

In continuation of our ‘Expert Opinion’ series, today we have Shane Goldberg, Founder and Principal at CustCore Consulting, a specialist consultancy firm. He will be sharing with us his CX journey and valuable opinions in the customer service domain. Shane is also an experienced advisor at Healthscope.

Here are some great insights from our exclusive interview with Shane, where he shares his best advice to businesses on how to deliver the best customer experience.

1. What sparked your interest in customer experience? How did you enter this field?

I have always been interested in what makes customers use certain products and services over others throughout my career. 

I started out as a product manager, trying to attract customers to my products and get them to keep using those products. I then moved into a program manager role, overseeing large corporate programs, and realised I really did enjoy the programs that focus on customer experience. 

Later, I took a role in CX and eventually left my employer to set up CustCore Consulting––a boutique customer experience consultancy that I have been running for the past six years.

2. What is your approach while interacting with your customers?

My clients are small, medium and large organisations at various stages of their customer experience journey. 

A significant part of what I do with less mature organisations is focussed on education––showing them why customer experience matters to their success and how to focus on it. By using a few easy-to-understand frameworks, I help them to become more aware of their customers and significantly improve their experiences. 

3. Is it tricky to deliver excellent service while interacting with a large number of customers? How do you prioritise your customers’ needs?

If organisations have a large number of customers, a customer-centric culture is what is needed to ensure that excellent service is delivered to all. A customer-centric culture means everyone in the organisation understands how they impact CX and knows how to deliver a great experience. More than that, they actually want to deliver a great experience and strive for the same.

4. What are some qualities that a person needs to be able to deliver excellent customer service?

While excellent customer service can be trained into someone, it’s much easier for a person to deliver exceptional customer service if they have some innate qualities. These include a healthy dose of empathy, excellent listening skills and the ability to talk to customers in a way that puts them at ease.

5. In your opinion, where are businesses lacking in providing a good customer experience?

Too many businesses focus only on certain parts of the customer experience and miss out on the true end-to-end experience of customers. 

For instance, enterprises focus only on the sales experience and forget the fact that post-sales service and support are critical for customer retention. Many businesses also forget things like returns and billing as essential parts of the experience. 

6. Tell us about a scenario where you had to give advice to a business keeping in mind their sales operations, strategy, process improvement and cultural change, all at once.  

I had a client where the focus before I came in had been all about revenue and very little about the customer. This organisation was bleeding customers and losing a lot of money (ironic given the focus on revenue). 

The work I did with the organisation focused on all the aspects you refer to in your question. We developed a revamped strategy focusing on customer experience as a key component. Then, we reviewed the customer journey to identify key moments and redesigned processes (including both sales and service). 

Along with that, we created a practical cultural change programme. This included working on both top-down (working with their leadership to focus on customers) and bottom-up (rolling out customer-focused training and changing scorecards) components to drive real change in the business.    

7. As a customer experience specialist, what are some of the challenges that you look for and aim to solve?

I like to work with companies that are fairly early on in their customer experience improvement programmes. That way, I can help shape their strategy, and drive real change in the business. Specifically, if an organisation doesn’t really understand its customers or has a culture that is not very customer-focused, those are the challenges I like to solve.  

8. What strategies would you consider while creating a business plan for an operations group?

There are a number of things to consider here, and the context is very important, so the answer will be from a generalised point of view. The key strategies I would consider include: 

• Developing ways to gather customer feedback quickly and easily to understand what is working and what is not working
• Identifying moments that matter to customers and optimising these as much as possible through the process and system improvements
• Deploying a customer-centric service programme ensuring all staff understand the importance of focusing on customer experience in everything they do
• Develop real-time scorecards showing how key processes, systems and journeys are performing
• Rolling out a continuous improvement programme, gathering input from employees and customers regarding what needs to be improved

9. Are businesses always receptive to your advice? If not, how did you handle it?

Businesses are not always receptive to feedback, especially if it highlights issues in management, as they are the ones who often commission the work. In these cases, I still present my findings and recommendations and leave it up to the business to decide.

10. How important is a technology for customer experience?  

Technology is extremely important in customer experience. The context once again is essential as technology is more important for some organisations than others. 

In general, though, self-service is becoming more and more important for customers, and the capabilities in this space are driven primarily by technology. Additionally, back-end integration of systems allows B2B customers to do more in an automated fashion. 

Furthermore, back-of-house automation will enable organisations to speed up and improve processes. The other key to consider here is employee experience which is also becoming more and more impacted by technology.  

11. In the last few years, which revolutionary factors have defined the way businesses tackle CX?

A number of factors have come to the fore in impacting customer experience for businesses. These include: 

• Automation – Back-end processes have often proved to be weak links for organisations, with lots of paperwork and manual processes involved. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is changing all this and allowing organisations to streamline these processes for themselves and their customers. 
• Digital – There has been a strong move to online as a channel of choice for both B2C and B2B customers, and the pandemic has only accelerated this. Customers now definitely have migrated to digital as a preferable way to transact with businesses.

Wrapping up

With this conversation, Shane Goldberg has given out tips that will help you boost customer service and build long-lasting relationships. Backed by 12 years of experience with Telstra across customer experience, sales operations as well as product management spaces, Goldberg has helped many unlock new growth areas.

We hope his tips help you achieve the same for your business. 

The post Expert Opinion: Conquer The Battleground Of Customer Service Challenges With Shane Goldberg appeared first on Blog | Acefone.