We’re Back: Join Fonolo at the 20th Annual Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas

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Fonlo at CCW 2019If your feet are firmly planted in the customer service and experience industries, you’re probably as excited as we are about next month. Fonolo is pleased to announce that we’ll be making our triumphant return to Customer Contact Week (CCW), held this year from June 24-28th at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now in its 20th (yes, 20th!) year, the conference, considered the #1 event in the industry, is synonymous with education and inspiration in the customer service ecology. We can’t wait to return.

While Customer Contact Week began as a forum for call center managers to gather annually and discuss best practices, over the course of two decades it has evolved to become the place where customer service leadership can excel professionally, engage with colleagues, and educate themselves, all through community-oriented networking and interactive experiences.

 

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Show and Sell: 3 Ways Customer Service can be Used as an Effective Marketing Tool

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Show and Sell 3 Ways Customer Service can be Used as an Effective Marketing ToolCustomer service is often not seen as the effective marketing tool that it is. It’s no surprise: on the surface, the two departments and their goals seem distinct from one another: Marketing is all about customer acquisition (or, attracting new customers), while customer service is all about customer retention.

And yet, limiting customer service’s definition to that superficial definition ignores a big part of its potential. If you scratch beneath the surface, it becomes apparent that these two seemingly separate functions have significant overlap. The bottom line is this: Providing excellent customer service isn’t just a matter of answering customer’s questions and solving their problems. It should also be a key part of an organization’s marketing strategy.

 

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Survey Shows Call-Back Deployments Have Doubled in Some Regions

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Survey Shows Call-Back Deployments Have Doubled in Some RegionsMore and more call centers are offering a call-back option as an alternative to putting customers on hold. At Fonolo, we see this trend through the increased demand of our own call-back solution. We also see it in survey results such as this one from Contact Babel last year. We just received an early copy of a new report, by Ryan Strategic Advisory, that surveyed 491 enterprise executives who had decision-making authority of their company’s contact centers. The data results show impressive growth.

 

 

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“Forever Better”: Miele Canada and the Pursuit of Customer Service Excellence [Interview]

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Miele Canada and the Pursuit of Customer Service ExcellenceMiele. Its brand promise is “Forever Better.” It’s a household name. And, as it turns out, it’s a new university.

As Miele evangelists know, the company stands for two important things: Quality and customers. So, it is fitting that its customer service reflects this, too. The brand, its products, and its thoughtful engagement with customers and employees remain difficult to match in an increasingly competitive marketplace (both instore and online). As I sat down with Miele Canada’s VP of Customer Service & Operations, Eric Esguerra, it became clear that the company’s strides in innovation come from the long-standing mission articulated by its founders: “Success is only possible in the long term if one is totally and utterly convinced of the quality of one’s products.” This, too, applies to the quality of its customer service. Joined in conversation by CSPN’s VP of Business and Customer Service Strategy, Jessica Cryer, and Dolly Konzelmann, CSPN’s President and CEO, it was also revealed how Miele and its partnership with CSPN created a unique and unmatchable program which both optimized customer service operations, and transformed the Miele Canada employee experience forever.

 

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Battle of the Airlines, Round II: United Airlines and Going Beyond in Customer Service

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Battle of the Airlines, Round II United Airlines and Going Beyond in Customer ServiceThis blog series explores two separate experiences related to the airline industry. In Round I,  we looked at our COO’s experience with Air Canada. This week, Fonolo’s Digital Marketing Manager describes his interaction with United Airline’s pre-flight customer service. And the experience is quite different indeed.

While the airport and in-flight experience have United, Delta, and JetBlue offering guided meditations to help you chill out and destress, airlines have yet to find an antidote for their, politely put, inadequate customer service.

According to onholdwith.com, airlines are the second worst offenders when it comes to hold times. Customer service has become such an issue for the industry that frustrated lawmakers have given airline industry executives an ultimatum: Improve customer service on their own, or congress will impose tough new customer service laws for them.

So, how can airlines get their pre-flight customer service experience right? While United Airlines is certainly guilty of customer service transgressions (broken guitars and lost children to name a few), a recent United Airlines experience highlights the power of going a little further.

 

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4 Brands Providing Amazing Customer Service with Social Media

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4 Brands Providing Amazing Customer Service with Social Media-450While call centers continue to be a crucial component to a company’s customer service strategy, digital avenues are also becoming increasingly popular. In order for brands to remain competitive and provide the level of service consumers are expecting, they must take a multi-pronged approach to their customer service tactics.

The call center remains the ideal avenue to funnel in customers who are less tech-literate as well as those with more complex concerns. However, social media is an excellent avenue to resolve less complex concerns that a buying public are hoping to resolve quickly.

Let’s take a look at a few brands that provide great examples of how to effectively use social media for customer support. Each company uses a different strategy and tone; however, all are notable examples of how companies can offer up great digital support.

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The Avaya-Mitel Tie-up: The Ghost of Nortel Comes Home

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The Avaya-Mitel Tie-up: Ghost of Nortel Comes HomeNews broke last week that Mitel is proposing an all-stock buy-out of Avaya. The week prior, rumors were circulating that Avaya was engaging bankers to find a buyer. This is the latest twist in a long, zig-zagging road for the company. It’s only been 16 months since they emerged from bankruptcy.

There’s a tasty irony to an Avaya-Mitel merger. Part of Avaya’s call center business was the result of an acquisition of Nortel assets, following the latter’s bankruptcy in 2009. That collapse is still a psychic wound for the Canadian tech industry. It’s one of those “Where were you when you heard?” kind of moments.

Mitel too holds a special place in the Canadian tech world. Co-founder Sir Terry Matthews is an actual gosh-darned knight. The company is now owned by private equity but is still headquartered in Ottawa.

While the Canada angle is entertaining, the impact of a Mitel-Avaya merger would have very material affects on the contact center world.

 

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Battle of the Airlines, Round I: Air Canada and the Customer Service Question

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Battle of the Airlines, Round I Air Canada and the Customer Service QuestionThere are some amazing benefits to living in Canada (socialized health care, an abundance of maple syrup, and plenty of expressions for foreigners to mock, eh?). However, one clear downside is a lack of competition in the airline industry (that, and the proximity to polar bears).

This is where our story begins.

By all counts, Air Canada is an award-winning airline, a brand built on the notion of customer service. However, they are no stranger to customer complaints: According to Onholdwith.com (a site that catalogs hold time complaints on Twitter), they rank fifth worst.

Obviously, airlines are often at the mercy of forces beyond their control. But even the most unpredictable events can result in predictable responses.

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5 Customer Service Stories that Will Shock You (In a Good Way)

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5 Customer Service Stories that Will Shock YouIt’s not often that you get to hear exceptional and positive customer service accounts, so today we bring you five that will shock you – but in the best of ways. With each one of these encounters, one can see how brands can foster and forge loyalty with their customers. The individuals in the following stories were so moved by their experiences that they felt compelled to share them with the vast digital world, and of course with their family and friends. And now we are compelled to share them with you, too.

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The Undercover Customer: Inside the Apple Store

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Customer Service Insights_The Apple StoreIt seems like, every month, Apple is coming out with a new product or service for its customers to take advantage of, a gadget or a gizmo to “improve” their lives. A steady stream of people visit Apple stores to view, purchase, or try out some of its convenient gadgets hands-on. If you’ve ever walked through a mall where an Apple Store is present, you’ve seen the phenomenon: A mass of people congregating within its glass walls, standing at the product kiosks, handling items with interests and speaking with customer service professionals about the latest and greatest in Apple technology. When you have hundreds of people walking through the doors at any time, one can only imagine the demand on its customer service professionals.

Common practice in a retail environment dictates that you use a customer’s name, greet them at the first available opportunity, and smile whenever possible. But in an environment like an Apple store — where you could have up to 10 customers at any given time — there’s more to consider. We went onsite to investigate their customer service practices and to see how they respond to such high-volume demands every day of the week.

 

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