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Who are YOU #OnHoldWith? The Top 10 Worst Companies to Call in 2019

By Ben Ringshall on December 11, 2019

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HOLD IT: If you’ve ever sent a tweet complaining about being on hold, then chances are you’ve been featured on the Fonolo-powered website: onholdwith.com. It collects and curates the millions of Twitter complaints about being put on hold, and it has just released its annual list of hold-time offenders.

The site, launched by Fonolo a few years back, this year collected over a whopping hundreds of thousands of posts mentioning the phrase “on hold with” from Twitter. As we noted last year, Twitter has inreasingly become a go-to customer service platform for those wishing to air out their frustrating customer service experiences.

Tellingly, this year’s list indicates that brands are still leaving their customers hanging by forcing them to wait on hold. Lessening hold times should be a priority, as it will no doubt grow customer loyalty and faith in brands.

This year, some big surprises: Virgin Media, Verizon, and United Airlines are among the top culprits in the annual list of The Worst Companies to Call in 2019.

Did your company make the list?

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4 Metrics Your Call Center Needs to Track in 2020

By Ben Ringshall on December 5, 2019

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As we head into 2020, data is becoming more crucial for successfully running a call center than ever.

In the past, the efficiency of a call center hinged on management’s ability to identify flaws in their processes and opportunities to improve the running of the center.

In the coming year, we expect to see AI take on more of these responsibilities in the contact center: Handling routine tasks, routing inquiries to the best place, and suggesting areas for improvement.

But, which areas are we to measure?

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2020 Vision: What Customer Service Looked Like in 2019

By Jordan Maxwell on December 4, 2019

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Good customer service can be hard to find. Conversely, bad customer service is easy to spot and, when especially ugly, it can go viral. With social media becoming a worldwide connector and a general display of the way modern generations communicate, the performance of customer service agents is increasingly hitting the internet as a result.

Whether it was good, bad, or ugly, 2019 was a heck of a year on social channels. From outbursts in restaurants, to caring agents looking after customers in airports, to racial incidents between customers that agents have to diffuse — all have had a place on the world stage, serving as instructive examples.

In this article, we round up some of the good, the bad, and the ugly customer-service interactions of 2019, and detail what people and companies can learn about the incidents to do better in 2020.

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Checking In: JetBlue and Gladly Partnership Improves Customer Service

By Jordan Maxwell on November 28, 2019

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Airline services have been scrambling to improve their customer service strategies and initiatives, making key investments to elevate the overall customer experience. JetBlue is one of the companies that has been actively looking to add value to its customers, using loyalty programs and other means to draw passengers on an international scale. The company recently partnered with Gladly Inc. in an effort to shave time from its customer service call volumes.

By partnering with the technology startup, JetBlue instantly became more customer-facing, and in doing so differentiated itself from other, less than stellar competitors. The airline introduced its software on flights so that the cabin crew would have a bird’s-eye view of information about customers on-board.

And customers are ‘on board’.

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Having a Crisis Contingency Plan for Your Call Center

By Jessica Suezin on November 26, 2019

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Let’s face it: There are bound to be unpredictable, negative circumstances that any organization will bravely face at some point or another. It’s why it’s been said that you should always “hope for the best, and plan for the worst.” When a company or organization is facing any sort of crisis, whether that’s something as serious as a company data breach, a natural disaster, or even a power outage or water break in your building, it’s important to have an established plan or course of action for your customer service team or company call center to execute.

When crisis strikes, it’s critical that everyone is on the page, working together, and ready to take action to alleviate the problem and get back to business as soon as possible.

Here are some tips and tricks that can help your call center and customer service agents ensure that they bounce back quickly and efficiently after a crisis. Continue reading →

5 Brand Websites Doing Customer Service Right

By Ben Ringshall on November 21, 2019

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Zappos. Apple. Wistia. Netflix. Whatever your business or its size, the first place your customers go when seeking help is your website. And if they can’t find the information they need there, you’re going to lose them.

You don’t have to be reachable by phone 24/7, but you do have to give your customers a way to solve their problems or get in touch when they can’t help themselves.

Here, we look at some major brands that are doing customer service in all the right ways, but most especially on their websites. We take a magnifying glass to these websites and give you the means to up your website game, too.

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The Power of SMS Technology in Call-Back Communication

By Jessica Suezin on November 19, 2019

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People are busy, often going from meeting to meeting at work, chasing after their kids, running errands, or out and about with friends and family. Moments when they have to get in touch with the customer service call center of a company is met with dread, because they don’t have the time or energy to call, wait on hold, and be passed around from one customer service agent to another to solve their problem. Sometimes, even a simple phone call can seem inconvenient, and the best way to stay up-to-date, or to communicate with a company, is through a simple SMS, or Short Message Service, text message.

Here is why and how your company can implement simple, convenient, and effective SMS call-back technology into your customer service and call center strategy. Continue reading →

Eco-Friendly Sustainability: Give your Customer Service the Competitive Advantage

By Jordan Maxwell on November 14, 2019

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Where does your brand sit on the green-o-meter?

It’s worth asking yourself this, as more and more millennial customers are starting to pay attention to the environment, and holding businesses accountable for their services, company vision, and strategy to cut waste, pollution, and plastics. Customers seem to care about it – so perhaps you should, too.

For the food service and hospitality industry, this is definitely the case. Many governments and global companies are making moves to eliminate single-use plastic items from their inventory and are appealing to their customer base in doing so. The need for environmental sustainability is adding a new element of customer service demand to its customers in the industry and companies are developing strategies to not only keep customers, but also draw in a new labor force that is vital to a sector with a millennial audience.

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Workforce Management Tips for Call Centers During the Holiday Season

By Drew Wilkinson on November 13, 2019

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With Black Friday and Cyber Monday nearly upon us, the vast majority of retail call centers have welcomed new agents in the last few months. For example, in 2016, Radial hired 20,000 seasonal workers for its call center, customer service, and freight fulfillment operations – three times its permanent staffing numbers.

This rapid scaling of staff happens because retailers know they need to offer a consistent and pleasant customer support experience, even with the drastic increase in demand. If they don’t, they risk losing sales and leaving consumers disgruntled, potentially hurting future business. Despite the hiring of seasonal call center agents, the average number of support tickets per agent can still increase by 17% during the holiday season, putting much pressure on retailers, their stressed full-time staff, and new seasonal agents.

Optimizing schedules to meet the demands of the holiday season is crucial to ensuring that average wait times across your voice and live chat channels do not get out of hand. This is where workforce management comes in. Continue reading →

How Chatbots Can Support Your Live Chat Customer Service Strategy

By Jessica Suezin on November 7, 2019

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People often hear the word ‘bots’ and immediately think about some dystopian science fiction flick they’ve seen where robots ultimately take over the world and usurp humanity. There is still a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication in the marketplace about bots, and artificial intelligence generally, which explains in large part the resistance some people have in adopting bots for their lives and businesses.

The truth is, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and messenger bots are a new frontier in technology that can be an excellent tool to support our businesses, particularly when it comes to customer service. When used and integrated into your call center and customer service strategy correctly, messenger bots have the potential to relieve backed up call center queues, assist busy customer service agents, and ultimately help serve more customers and increase sales and revenue for the long term.

This is how messenger bots can increase the efficiency of your customer service call center, improve customer satisfaction, improve the workflow of your customer service and call center agents, and increase the overall value of your company. Continue reading →