by twieberneit | May 5, 2021 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
The Covid crisis had a profound impact on customer service centers, on sales and marketing processes. Personnel needed to be sent to home offices with infrastructure for this not being really in place. Coordination became more difficult, especially in environments that did not base on trust already before. Morale was affected, too. What did companies do to address the challenges that came up? With what success? Did leadership behaviour change? We talked to one of the foremost analysts who cover the customer service and customer engagement arena: Kate Leggett of Forrester Research. Lots of ground to cover in a mere hour. But Kate knows her stuff. Be informed and listen to what she has to say. It is worth the...
by Marshall Lager | Apr 7, 2021 | Blog, Guest Post, Sponsored |
This post is a guest piece from Richard Rosen, CEO and founder of Fastcall, a Salesforce CTI vendor and one of my clients. I was talking with Rich about customer focus for focused businesses in a crowded market, and our talk drifted into how limits aren’t a bad thing.Our chat was fun. It was deep. Quotes from the Tao Te Ching and/or a Star Wars prequel may have been thrown around, and I didn’t want to keep it private. To that end, I asked Rich to turn it into something applicable to other business readers. Fastcall is my client and it’s my job to show its strengths, so of course it’s the example in play here. But Rich presents a much-needed perspective whether you’re a user or developer of business applications. I turn things over to him now.Representing your brand as an owner requires a tricky balancing act in an industry where integrity and thought leadership are highly valued. You want to attract new customers and shout the qualities of the product, of course. But that’s making a sales pitch, and nobody wants to read a sales pitch. Then again, integrity and thought leadership mean revenue in the future, when your company (especially a smaller one) needs revenue now.I’ve been holding back from writing about what Fastcall is capable of—that’s what the website and the AppExchange listing are for—but this is an incredible company and there’s plenty for me to brag about. So here’s my plan: I will talk about what we at Fastcall do best, but with as little reference to our products as possible. It’s about why...
by Marshall Lager | Feb 27, 2021 | Blog |
You don’t buy size 12 shoes for size 9 feet. You don’t get a Bugatti Chiron for grocery store runs. You don’t swat flies with field artillery. And you don’t buy more contact center technology than your business can reasonably grow into.The customer service neighborhood of CRM was the wrong side of the tracks for many years. The contact center could only cost the company money (so it was thought), so the responsible strategy was to cut costs to the bone and never spend anything there unless forced to. Asking for more staff or better equipment was like getting the state to renovate the prison library—impossible without somebody of the calibre of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption. That attitude was changing by the dawn of the 21st Century. Research proved that better customer service led to better retention, loyalty, and advocacy among customers. These led to a strengthened brand and increased revenue in the long term. New integration technology meant the contact center could save and even generate sales in its own right. The rise of online communities and social networking showed the strength of the motivated and well-connected customer. A shout of praise when a company went the extra mile for a customer in need could be amplified. So could a howl of outrage when one was treated callously, with potentially disastrous results. Spending in the contact center was not only necessary, it was the smart thing to do.The freedom to make decisions based on results rather than thrift was never license to burn money, but it meant that customer service had a stronger voice at the...
by twieberneit | Jan 30, 2021 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
Customer Service is changing fast, but is it all for the better? Which changes did the pandemic drive? Does messaging have a value, and if so which? How about the role of agents? What changed for them? Will they see an improvement in their jobs? The CRMKonvos team had the pleasure of a good discussion with Ian Jacobs, principle analyst at Forrester Research who covers customer service and is one of the most knowledgeable persons around this huge topic. Shortly before our broadcast Ian and some more of us were involved into an interesting and fiercely led discussion on LinkedIn around the role of emotions in customer service. Opinions clashed, strong arguments were exchanged. Naturally, this discussion made it into our CRMKonvo – and Ian made a couple of good points about the role (or not – no need for a spoiler here) of emotions and data, and how data can be used. In addition, we of course looked into drivers of the customer service functions, how different industries are able to engage for good experiences and whether happy agents do actually create happy customers – interesting data on that one, I need to say, but then, thinking about it, it is also quite obvious in retrospective. At the end of the day, we also asked him about his major predictions. Big thanks to Ian for this highly engaging conversation and his...
by twieberneit | Nov 15, 2020 | Blog, CRMKonvos |
In this episode we welcomed Lars Brodersen, author, publisher, and long time CRM expert. Lars is the author of the customer manifesto, which he wrote as a reaction to a series of pretty unsettling customer experiences, starting from soured milk in his Latte Macchiato followed by an I don’t care attitude of the waitress via a horribly wrong order confirmation by a car rental agency, a new appliance breaking and the repair service being an awful long time away, or the electrician being available only after various attempts and a long awaited for package finally being lost. It is the story of someone who moved out, just to find traumatic experiences. All in all, nothing that we haven’t experienced. Yet, he reacted differently, by writing the customer manifesto, which emphasises on one simple truth: Companies are there to serve the needs of their customers. This is their sole reason of existence. This “earned” Lars a spot in our CRMKonvos, with us talking about this, his books and what CRM is or should be. Listen in to some worthwhile...
