Last week’s Verint Engage 2017 Global Customer Conference (#Verint17) brought customers and prospects from across the world together to address the rapidly changing customer care environment. As a first-time Engage attendee and staffer the event left a positive impression on me – directly from informed and inquisitive customers, from C-level to technical to operations, and across many industries. Running an effective contact center is not all rainbows and unicorns, but there are certainly inspirational moments that create a rainbow or two. Here’s how I sum up the content of the conference and the direction Verint and industry-leading customer service and customer experience experts see as the optimal way to deliver exceptional customer service through your evolving contact center operations:
- Lead the evolution of the Enterprise
- Clear the path for the best Customer Journey
- Embrace the value of Employee Engagement
As made clear at Engage, it’s never going to be one-size-fits-all, but it doesn’t need to be complex. Let’s dig deeper into each area.
Lead the evolution of the Enterprise
One Engage attendee stated it simply and accurately in his social media post, “Best thing I learned was that everyone else seems to have the same challenges as myself.” Many enterprise challenges, while unique to the function in their organization, are universal across enterprises and industries.
Too many demands, too little budget, too many disparate technologies...too much!
As Mary Wardley (@MWardley), program VP of loyalty and customer care at IDC, stated, the state of omni-channel is an evolution and CX and Digital are key parts of the process. In fact, she cautions enterprises about using the term omni-channel too loosely. Many are not there yet and only 22% consider omni-channel as “a necessary cost of doing business.”
Clear the path for the best Customer Journey
Inspiration led the day with a keynote from legendary photographer Dewitt Jones (@dewittjones).
Dewitt recommended four rules to live your life by both personally and professionally, and then everything will be in sync:
- Vision
- Passion
- Purpose
- Creativity
Dewitt is himself a unique individual, his photography is visual poetry, but his words inspire poetry as well.
As he walked us through his journey throughout his career supported by incredible images from around the globe, Dewitt shared with us visuals in different perspectives, with this thought:
“See the ordinary and the extraordinary in everything. Embrace different perspectives to GET IT.”
Getting it is the key. If you lock your mind to only one perspective, you will miss out on the whole picture, or in the case of customer service, the whole customer journey – and all we need to do to support it.
As Iain Daws (@IainDaws), Verint Product Marketing, discussed in his Digital First session, “Think big, and small. And high and wide. Be prepared to let go. Think like a customer.”
Together Dewitt and Iain provide solid advice. Open your mind to what the customer needs and then figure out how to get there. Combine customer perspectives with your internal objectives to redefine how you will better support and improve the customer journey. If you don’t, you will be missing the mark, or in Dewitt’s case, you’ll miss the perfect shot.
Embrace the value of Employee Engagement
Many Engage sessions were led by Verint customers providing real-life issues and steps they are taking to make improvements that engage their valued employees and help to meet their business goals. This is an area of critical importance to us as a contact center technology provider. We want your business strong from the outside in and the inside out, with technologies that look at the core of the engagement activity through data analysis to meaningful action.
Ian Jacobs (@iangjacobs), Forrester principal analyst, concurred in his session on customer and employee engagement trends. And, I was pleased to see Employee Engagement as a category during the customer awards ceremony. UPS was recognized for their dedication to improving employee engagement in the contact center.
At the end of the rainbow
Rolling it all together, there’s much to celebrate and more to do for customers, employees and the organization overall. Connecting the dots with data, technology, priorities and purpose is the key to implementing an effective best practice to stay engaged.
