Call Center

How the Hotel Industry is Changing Customer Service Patterns Forever

By Jordan Maxwell on July 17, 2019

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Customer service has always been the linchpin that determined success or failure in the hotel industry. Whether it’s housekeeping, restaurant and bar service, or events, members and stakeholders have always had to put customer service first to ensure the health of its bottom lines. With the emergence of Airbnb and its threat to hotel business, coupled with the evolution of technology and its role in the way guests enjoy their experiences, the industry is developing new customer service practices and applications to stay relevant. Tony Elenis, president and CEO of the Ontario Restaurant Hotel and Motel Association (ORHMA), spoke to the changing demographics and issues that are impacting customer service trends in the hotel industry.

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A Call Center Glossary: The A-Zs

By Astrid Monge on July 16, 2019

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Often, we use terminology and abbreviations that we become accustomed to in our everyday lives, especially within the call center space. Given that the average person spends one third of their lives at work, it is no wonder that we develop whole worlds of vocabulary to use within our professional environments. After all, it is simpler to say, “Where are we with AHT this week?” than to say, “Where are we with the average handling time metric this week?” It may seem insignificant, but cutting words down to vowels or single syllables is evidently preferable to a mouthful of phrases, particularly if they must be used regularly within the workplace. Just look at our use of acronyms and abbreviations in everyday life – ASAP (as soon as possible), LMK (let me know), TTYL (talk to you later), and the list goes on.

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Who Will Control the Customer Service Messaging Channel?

By Shai Berger on July 11, 2019

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Text or talk? Voice conversations are still critical, but data shows that the former is becoming a bigger part of customer service interactions. This trend is driven partly by consumer preferences and partly by companies striving to lower costs. Companies are also leaning towards text because of the promise of increased automation, which is easier to do once a conversation has shifted to text.

To facilitate text conversations, you also have to ask the question: “Which channel?” There is SMS, of course. And then there are the big messaging platforms: Messenger and WhatsApp (both from Facebook), Apple’s Business Chat, and Google’s offering called (for now) Google My Business Chat. Among those platforms, a big battle is raging.

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How MEC Put the Customer First During its Rebrand

By Drew Wilkinson on July 10, 2019

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Ah, the great outdoors. In Canada, we are blessed with an abundance of wildlife, majestic mountains, pristine lakes, and seemingly endless forests. Since the 1970s, if you were an experienced outdoorsman seeking to explore the authentic, raw, outdoors, then a trip to your local Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) was in order. Customers came to MEC stores to buy the best hiking, rock climbing, and back-woods skiing gear.

Back in 2008, then CEO David Labistour looked at the tea leaves and saw that “the times they were a-changin.’” The granola-powered, anti-consumerist community MEC relied on post-inception was steadily being replaced by a more diverse, urban cohort. As a result, they engineered a shift away from their original mission statement of encouraging “self-propelled wilderness recreation” to one that wanted to “inspire everyone to get off the couch and out the door.” The gambit paid off: For the second year in a row, MEC topped the list of Canadian companies with the best reputations, compiled by market research firm The Reputation Institute.

This is the little-told tale of how MEC put the customer first during the company’s transformation from niche purveyor of mountaineering equipment to hub for outdoor lifestyle enthusiasts. The results speak for themselves: In the intervening years, MEC has doubled its brick-and-mortar locations and nearly doubled its membership, which currently tops five million people, during this period of transformation.

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Training Customer Service Reps: Best Practices to Form a Loving and Successful Environment

By Lindsey Patterson on July 4, 2019

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Good training teaches employees in the customer service realm how to handle complex customer issues in the most efficient and customer-friendly way possible. This is important, as customer service is the touchstone for all kinds of customer-facing interactions. In training CS representatives, it’s crucial to help them understand a) what they are doing; and b) why they doing the job. It’s also important to encourage them to form strong relationships with customers through consultative communication, and ensure the customer is taken care of through the life of their relationship with a company.

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4 Takeaways from Our Live Discussion on AI and Natural Language Processing [Video]

By Drew Wilkinson on July 2, 2019

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Last week, Fonolo hosted an insightful live discussion on the current state of AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). The expert panel discussed how NLP relates to the general field of AI, the pros and cons of different approaches to NLP, and more. To save you some time, we’ve extracted video snippets showcasing highlights from the discussion.

First, let’s take a quick look at the panel of speakers: Frank Schneider, Tobias Goebel, and Shai Berger.

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How to Prepare Your Call Center for Open Enrollment [Guide]

By Astrid Monge on June 27, 2019

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Open enrollment is one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year for healthcare insurance providers and consumers alike. In fact, many healthcare insurers start planning for open enrollment the minute the last season has come to a close. This is good thinking, as no company wants to find themselves getting ready only a few weeks before November 1st. Regardless, one of the main challenges during this time period is communication, with the cumulative call center volume in the federal marketplace totaling more than 14,569,000 in 2016 alone, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medical Services.

It makes sense: Customers are likely to be overwhelmed by the information they need to sift through in order to make serious decisions about their healthcare coverage. They are bound to have questions for call center agents. This, compounded by their desire to obtain the same level of customer service as they would from their favorite retail and tech brands, leads to massive spikes in call volume for most healthcare call centers. And while it might be tempting to forgo quality customer interactions and neglect the customer experience during this extremely stressful time of year, it’s of the utmost importance that call centers aim to please. After all, this is how customer relationships are made or broken.

How can your call center improve customer interactions during the most important time of year for consumers’ healthcare choices? That’s easy. In our latest tip sheet, you will learn the most important steps to take to get your call center into gear.

(Get the full tip sheet here!)

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The Lowdown on Downloads: 3 Customer Service Apps to take on your Summer Travels

By Drew Wilkinson on June 26, 2019

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Back in 2009, Apple filed for a trademark on its buzz-worthy phrase, “There’s an app for that.” Almost a decade later, there’s no shortage of apps cluttering up the Android and Apple marketplaces. While many factors are at play here, the growth of the mobile app market has been partly driven by the fact that more and more businesses are integrating mobile apps into their customer service strategies.

When it comes to travelling, people are increasingly reliant on their smartphones. From last-minute flight changes to on-the-ground local expertise, there truly is always “an app for that.” With the Transportation Security Administration calling 2019 the “busiest summer travel season ever,” these three customer-focused apps are not only worth downloading, but can provide valuable insights into what customers expect from businesses.

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Fonolo Investigative Report: Hold Time in Real Time: Booking with Air Canada

By Jordan Maxwell on June 20, 2019

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Picture it: A young American family booking a flight to a city in another country via Air Canada. Imagine them having to wait for more than 20 minutes before a customer service agent gets on the phone, only to then be transferred to another department.

Picture this, too: Imagine trying to get a flight changed at the last minute and waiting on hold for more than 50 minutes until you finally get through.

And, imagine this: You receive a gift card for Christmas and it doesn’t work, so you have to wait for customer service to get back to you. And in this scenario, it feels like that takes days.

These three situations have all been experienced by people just like you and I looking to connect with Air Canada customer service professionals to either book flights, change flight times, or simply access information about travel requirements and needs. According to onholdwith.com, a community-driven website aiming to end hold time for good, website Air Canada is among the most notorious hold time offenders. In addition, data from the website shows a real-time view of Twitter complaints for Canada and research shows more than 119 complaints in just the last week alone.

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CPaaS Expands but Boundaries Getting Vague

By Shai Berger on June 19, 2019

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Six months ago I wrote that “CPaaS is a victim of its own success. The founding principle was to free communications from the grip of the carriers. But now many carriers have a CPaaS offering.”

Some folks responded that the point of CPaaS was not to demote the carriers, and that its success should be judged by the new products that it enables and not by whether it’s a net plus or minus for carriers. I admit it is easy to get wrapped up in, “inside baseball” type discussions. Maybe I spend too much time with analyst types.

So, what is the right way to judge success? What lasting impact do we expect CPaaS to leave?

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