I love celebrations! It is always great when we have an “excuse” to tell people important to us that we appreciate them! Our top “excuse” is here! It is National Customer Service Week. The official theme this year is Essential to Success. I don’t think that message could be more spot-on!
In a recent Microsoft survey, 90% of Americans use customer service as a factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a company. There you have it! This is the biggest reason to highlight and celebrate our customer service initiatives and the people who make it happen day in and day out!
Our weeklong dedication to customer service gives us the perfect opportunity to treat our agents to surprises, perks, and other engagements.
Hopefully, this celebration doesn’t just last for a specific week, but something we practice every day. Just as much as we expect our agents to practice good customer service and make our customers happy every day, so should we celebrate them and the job they do!
Have a great week! Looking for ideas? Check out the official site for customer service week for ideas and tools; www.nationalcustomerserviceweek.org.
Our October issue is filled with great topics, advice and insights. We explore contact centers and the new interactive world, angry customers, best practices and trends in retail, the cloud, work from home vs. hybrid, chatbots, branding yourself, retail customer service, holiday hiring and conversational AI engagement platforms. I know, right? How do we fit all these topics and more into one issue? You won’t want to miss it!
Enjoy the issue!
Please note: Contact Center Pipeline is a subscription magazine. To view the digital issue, please consider a subscription.
FEATURE
Welcome to the Metaverse
By Brendan Read
How contact centers can help in this new interaction world.
IDIOM INSIGHTS
How 2 Brand U
By Kathleen M. Peterson
10 Ideas for Managing Your Personal Brand
CHATBOTS
Meet Your Future Contact Center Superstar
By Mike Myer
How AI bots retain, attract customers and grow revenues.
REMOTE WORK
Work From Home vs. Hybrid?
By Michele Rowan
What Will Contact Centers Decide
PRODUCT DELIVERY
Four Ways to Turn Delivery Problems into Good CXs
By Chris Tranquill
Simplifying customer and agent processes are the routes forward.
AGENT EXPERIENCE
Hold Times, Hostility, and Hang-Ups
By Puneet Mehta
How to handle the anger plaguing customer service.
RETAIL
How the New Normal Impacts Retail
By Nick Jiwa
Contact center customer service issues, best practices, and trends.
DISRUPTION
Cloud+Remote=Profits
By Simon Dealy
Communications, software efficiency, gig working, start-up thinking add up.
PAYMENTS
Canada’s Modernizing Payment Systems
By Brendan Read
Customers, companies, and workers alike will benefit from these improvements.
MANAGEMENT
Welcome to the Great Surrender
By Trey Briggs
Why many call centers have given up on customer service training.
COACH’S CORNER
Improve CX by Celebrating Front Liners!
By Mark Pereira
Management must make the time to appreciate all agents.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Setting up Your Reps for Success
By Giuseppe Ficarra
How to manage increasingly complex retail customer service.
STAFFING
How to Make Holiday Hires More Productive
By JD Dillon
Savvy training, development, and yes fun can win the season.
FULFILLMENT AND RETURNS
How to Prepare for Peak (and Return) Season
By Sebastian Reeve
Conversational AI engagement platforms can help shoulder the load.
A heartfelt thanks to our authors this month for sharing their insights and wisdom: Trey Briggs, Simon Dealy, JD Dillon, Giuseppe Ficarra, Nick Jiwa, Punteet Mehta, Mike Myer, Mark Pereira, Kathleen M. Peterson, Brendan Read, Sebastian Reeve, Michele Rowan and Chris Tranquill.
A special thank you to all our sponsors: 2Ring, AirCall, AWS Marketplace, Briggs Consulting International, Calabrio, Centrical, Cognigy, eGain, Human Numbers, Khoros, NICE CXone, PowerHouse, Procedure Flow, RingCentral, ROI-DNA, Scorebuddy, Strategic Contact, Text Expander, ThomsonReuters, WFH Alliance, WiserOwl and Verint.
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