Contact Shep (314) 692-2200

Embracing Technology: Key to Improved Customer Experience

There are some very cool and amazing technologies that are helping companies deliver an improved customer experience.  It’s more than Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.  It’s more than the cool CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software that is available.  Even if you feel you aren’t technologically savvy, don’t currently use any type of technology […]

There are some very cool and amazing technologies that are helping companies deliver an improved customer experience.  It’s more than Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.  It’s more than the cool CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software that is available.  Even if you feel you aren’t technologically savvy, don’t currently use any type of technology or apps to provide customer service, or if you aren’t involved in a call center, you should still be interested in this article.  It indicates that if you aren’t already doing so, you must embrace technology to augment and enhance your customer service.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Dave Stamm, CEO & President, and Joe McFadden, Senior Director, Marketing at Enkata. We’re all familiar with this recording: “This call may be recorded for quality purposes.”  This means the company may go back and listen to your call. This will teach them what worked and what didn’t and use it to help train other customer service reps.

Enkata analyzes why successful calls are successful and why unsuccessful calls aren’t.  Their technology listens to the call to pick up on keywords that are common between successful calls. It also listens for certain phrasing, certain dialects, and the cadence of the customer service reps’ voices.  The goal is to get as close as possible to the perfect call, going beyond just using the right words and also looking at how they are phrased.  Using analytics and measurement, it reports that the corporate training department can use to help get their customer service reps closer to success.  The goal is to model success and minimize failures by teaching customer service reps to, for lack of a better term, mimic the successful call.  How cool is that!

Lauren Carlson is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) analyst for Software Advice.  According to Lauren, a recent report from the “Call Center Times” showed that 78 percent of consumers use mobile apps for customer service.  Apparently, using mobile phone apps is a good alternative to picking up the phone, dialing a number, and waiting on hold to talk to a live person.  She posted an article on the company’s blog that described several customer service apps that consumers are using to get information and help quickly, as well as what apps some companies are using to provide support to their customers – all from their smartphones.

Not long ago, I wrote about how social media and technology are combining to create great customer service. My friend Vala Afshar, Chief Customer Officer of Enterasys, was the focus of the article.  I was with him the other day, and he made a great comment.  Social media is not just for people.  It is now for “things.”  A thermostat that controls temperature can use social media to communicate to a computer that will relay a message to a maintenance engineer.  It’s all done in the spirit of taking care of customers.

Technology is here, and it is continuing to play a bigger part in our lives. You can’t ignore it.  You must embrace technology, especially if it leads to an improved customer experience.

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.

(Copyright ©MMXII, Shep Hyken)

Want to receive Shep’s latest customer service and CX research?

Sign up for instant access to Shep’s research report on customer service and customer experience.

"*" indicates required fields

Name*
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

© 2024 Shepard Presentations, LLC.
All Rights Reserved.

Legal Information | Sitemap Legap

Site by: digitalONDA