Category Archives: Retail

The Top 4119 Animals to Hire for Your Call Center

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The Top 4119 Animals to Hire for Your Call Center

The Top 4119 Animals to Hire for Your Call CenterHere at Fonolo, we understand the many issues call centers face in regards to staffing, spikes, hold times, call abandonment, and more. That is why we’ve tasked ourselves to research the best solutions to deal with these problems head-on. While nothing can beat call-backs in improving your call center experience for both customers and agents, we are happy to announce the findings from our years of research.

You might already be thinking you know the answer:

Artificial Intelligence?
No.

Internet of Things?
No.

Bots?
No.

What is it?
Animals! 

From furry to feathery, and everything in between, they are here to take your animal farm of a call center to the next level. Our latest report will show you how, now.

 

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The Contact Center Guide to Managing Spikes in Call Volume [Industry Report]

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Managing Call Volume Spikes Industry Report

Contact center managers are, at their core, problem-solvers. One of the most challenging problems they often face is dealing with unpredictable spikes in call volume. Sometimes the causes of call spikes are understood, even anticipated. Yet, in many cases, these periods of peak call volume come as a real shock to everyone in the contact center. For example, a marketing event promoting a product sale would be an easy predictor for an influx in calls, whereas an unexpected power outage or sudden bout of the flu in the contact center isn’t something that can be readily planned for. Or is it?

This guide will tackle those questions, and more, head on!  Continue reading →

How to Successfully Manage the Post-Purchase Customer Service Experience

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Amid Messaging Channel Jungles SMS Stands AloneThe buying experience often gets the most attention in customer service. Conversions are the name of the game for most businesses, so it would make sense that importance is placed on the process leading up to a purchase. For example, retail brands focus heavily on ensuring that sales associates help shoppers find the right sizes, greet guests warmly, create quick and easy checkout processes, and include thoughtful touches like water bottles in change rooms.

These are all important components of a great customer service experience, but so are the processes that take place after the fact. Indeed, the post-purchase experience can be just as important, if not more so, in securing customer loyalty. Customers want to feel that they are important even after they have handed over their money. So, how do you ensure you make your clients and customers feel valued after they’ve purchased something from your company? Here are a few strategies that can help.

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How Trader Joe’s Makes Customer Experience its Competitive Advantage

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Trader Joes and Customer ExperienceAfter graduating from university, I spent a sun-soaked 18 months living in Southern California. Having moved from Ireland, my family and friends back home were interested to hear what I liked and disliked about my new life “state side.” They did not expect to hear about my adoration for the supermarket chain Trader Joe’s, which happened to be conveniently located two blocks from my apartment.

I never considered trips to supermarkets to be transcendent experiences. So, why was I suddenly enjoying this erstwhile chore? It’s because Trader Joe’s (or “TJ’s” as it’s affectionately known) is no ordinary supermarket. It’s quirky. It’s affordable. It stocks good products. There is an essence of good vibes, partially attributable to the Hawaiian-shirt-attired employees and handwritten signs. Plus, when you’re in a crowded store after a long day of work, the friendly folks that work there lighten your mood.

I’m not the only TJ’s fan. In fact, there’s a dedicated fan club for people who are as equally smitten as me. TJ’s has also picked up some notable awards for customer experience, most recently ranking first among multichannel retailers in Forrester Research’s 2018 U.S. Customer Experience Index. So, how has TJ’s turned CX into its competitive advantage?

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Telltale Signs: How to Identify Call Center Agent Burnout

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How to Identify Call Center Agent BurnoutCall centers have become notorious for possessing one of the highest employee attrition rates of any industry. According to Talkdesk, call centers have a turnover rate ranging from 30 to 45 percent. This is a staggering number, given that the average employee turnover rate in 2015 for all industries in the United States was 16.7 percent.

This isn’t entirely surprising: Call centers are stressful work environments. Agents are required to deal with challenging, frustrated customers, with the knowledge that the calls (and their performance) are being monitored and timed. On top of this, a U.S. News Careers report found that customer service representatives suffer from below-average job flexibility.

We’ve previously discussed ways to combat agent burnout, but today we ask: What are the symptoms? How do we properly make an early diagnosis? Identifying the symptoms of burnout as soon as possible can significantly boost your service quality, workplace satisfaction, and bottom line. Continue reading →

The State of Bots in 2019: Successes and Failures

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The State of Bots in 2019 Successes and Failures“We are in the Era of the Customer,” says Shep Hyken.

We are indeed. It’s a modern reality where customers call the shots, armed with the knowledge that they have options. This includes their expectation of a certain level of customer experience, one that is seamless, omnichannel, and with bot offerings. In fact, according to Forrester, today’s “consumers have more tech at their disposal than ever before and it has fundamentally changed how they experience brands.” With more than 50% of companies already using chatbots, and 80% of businesses wanting chatbots by 2020 ( says Oracle), bots have been, and will be, rapidly transforming the customer service and customer experience landscape, especially in retail. In an article by Retail Dive, “Juniper estimates that by 2023 over 70% of chatbots accessed will be retail based.” Think about how many digital assistants, chatbots, and IVR’s that actually refers to, and in what capacity.

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Life Lessons: What IKEA Gets Right About Customer Experience

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What IKEA Gets Right About Customer Experience

Live Unboring.

It’s an IKEA slogan. It’s also IKEA’s raison d’être.

At a healthy 75 years’ old, the Scandinavian born-and-bred brand has well surpassed middle-age and earned its place among retail royalty, continuing to thrive and expand its utilitarian-while-whimsical offerings into the online world. Its products are nestled in households across the globe. Phrases from its brilliantly funny ads have crawled into common parlance. IKEA isn’t simply a store: It’s a cultural force.

IKEA’s long-running epic success is the result of its allegiance to a specific set of principles that guide its every move: To nurture loyalty, a company must dare to be a fixture at every stage of customers’ lives. It must consider their every want and desire. It must meet their needs with products, online and in-store experiences, and customer service offerings.

The proof is in the pudding: Loyal consumers continue to flock to the imposing blue mecca in their town centers (and soon, urban centers) because of IKEA’s ability to hold a customer’s familiar hand throughout their lifetime. With seven decades under its belt, the company has much to teach us about how offering powerful customer experiences can make a brand a force to be reckoned with.

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5 Fascinating CX Predictions to Inform Your 2019 CX Strategy

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5 CX Predictions to Inform Your 2019 CX Strategy2018 has been a pivotal year for customer experience (CX). Industry wide, there is now a deeper understanding of CX as a multi-faceted, complex, incredibly important piece in the success (or failure) of any brand.

With this in mind, we’ve rounded up the most important and fascinating CX predictions for 2019, and provided our own thoughts on what they mean and how they will impact businesses in future. To stay at the top of your game in the year ahead, it’s essential to understand larger CX trends and how they are shaping our world and our industry. Read on as we detail five fascinating CX predictions to inform your 2019 CX strategy.

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Hold It!: The Top 10 Worst Companies You Called in 2018

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On Hold The Top 10 Worst Companies You Called in 2018HOLD EVERYTHING: The results are in.

Onholdwith.com, the Fonolo-powered site that mines Twitter for real-time complaints about being put on hold (and folks, there are many, many complaints), has today made its annual list of hold-time offenders available for all the world to see. And you may be surprised by who made the list.

OnHoldWith.com, launched by Fonolo a few years back, this year collected over a whopping 165,000 posts mentioning the phrase “on hold with” from Twitter. And as those of us in customer service know to a sobering degree, Twitter has quickly become a go-to platform customers use to shout about frustrating customer service experiences. The tweets informing the report this year confirm that: a) customers are increasingly turning to social media to publicly out companies for poor customer service handling; and b) a benchmark of this poor service is placing a customer on hold.

While the companies on this year’s top 10 list are doing exquisite things in their industries (and trust us, we are big fans of all of them), the results of this year’s report signal that brands could be doing things even better, starting with sprucing up their customer service offerings.

So, here’s a good question: Did your company make the list?

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Why You Should Empower Your Customer Service Team

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Why You Should Empower Your Customer Service Teams

Good customer service is crucial to the success of any business. It also happens to be one of the hardest things to ‘get right’, even for the most seasoned of brands. Imagine spending eight hours a day fixing problems you didn’t cause in the first place. Now imagine that your hands are tied in a million different ways and you’re unable to resolve the bulk of the customer complaints that are on the rise. This scenario is real, widespread, and is likely the reason for high attrition rates in the customer service industry.

This is why empowering a customer service team can be key to the overall success of any company. While we could go on for days about the benefits that come from giving your call center employees autonomy, here are the top three reasons you should actively work to support your customer service employees.

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