Most importantly, council programs are designed to help members conquer key industry challenges. Each year, Council members in North America and Europe vote on the most important issues facing the customer service industry, in their region of the globe. The annual Critical Issues become the key areas of focus for member discussion and Council events throughout the year. Customer Engagement Leadership Council members determined these Critical Issues for 2022:

1. The Future of the Workforce

Areas of focus to include:

• Transforming staffing strategy – recruiting, hiring, retention
• Ensuring technology and processes are in place for successful WFH

2. Enabling First-Class Self-Serve

• Integrating chatbots, mobile apps, and social media messaging into your self-serve strategy
• Balancing self-serve with live agents

3. Optimizing the Customer Experience Journey

• Keeping up with shifting customer expectations across the organization
• Utilizing automation opportunities to reduce customer effort

4. Achieving Digital Transformation

• Leveraging automation opportunities in the contact center to empower agents to focus on the customer
• Advancing agent skills for the shift to digital channels

5. Leadership Driven Culture

• Leveraging the VoE to impact the customer experience
• Developing purpose driven agents who embrace their value and are invested in the future success of the company

6. Employee Value Proposition

• Raising the bar to connect on a human level and engage with WFH team members
• Rising to employee empowered rewards; recognition; benefits; pay; and scheduling

While addressing these issues, the Council helps business leaders leverage the current intersection of business, talent and technology opportunities to deliver a state-of-the-art customer experience, create value, benchmark against peers, and drive results for their organizations.

The launch of this unique Council emerged organically from the Frost & Sullivan International Customer Contact Executive MindXchange series, a highly interactive event eighteen years strong. It was the desire of participants to keep that collaboration – and professional development – going strong 365 days of the year, culminating in the establishment of this rapidly growing Council.

To learn more or apply for membership, visit the council website here. Or contact Brittney Gasca-Pena, Membership Services Manager, Events and Leadership Councils, at brittney.gascapena@frost.com, today. Take advantage of the chance to connect with and learn from industry peers and keep your pulse on emerging best practices and important trends – vital to professional and organizational development.

The post The Customer Engagement Leadership Council to Address these Six Critical Industry Issues in 2022 appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

“Personalization is all about knowing your clients, understanding their needs, and providing the right solutions and services at the right time, based on behavior,” stated Millie Gillon, Global Head of Client Experience at Standard Chartered Bank. Millie recently agreed to share her personalization expertise with us in an interview.

With over twenty years of experience providing best-in-class service for customers across investment, insurance, digital payment, and airlines for North America, Asia, Africa and European markets, Millie’s confidence in her knowledge is instantly apparent.

Personalization is not a new topic

For Millie, personalization is not a new topic. In fact, according to Millie, the concept and practices of personalization have been used for at least 20 years by American Express agents to provide better client experiences and build relationships. For instance, when agents spoke with their clients, they would always note pertinent information and personal details. Agents remembered these details and used them to provide personalized experiences like booking a restaurant for a client’s wedding anniversary, or offering a holiday event based on their personal preference. At the time, data was collected manually. Personalized services were delivered by an individual agent.

With the development of technology, companies with a large amount of client information started to segment clients and provide solutions based on their behavior. American Airlines was one of the earliest companies to use clients’ data and provide tailored services. By analyzing clients’ travel routines, American Airlines was able to send special messages to travelers who flew to Asia frequently, and encouraged them to collect miles while traveling. These miles were redeemed for hotel stays or local shopping at the places where clients liked to visit.

Technology enables better personalization

In the last ten years, internet and smart phones have become accessible to most. Digital companies now collect huge amounts of data and know their clients better than ever through digital platforms.

Millie told us that technology will provide better personalized solutions. One of the examples is a digital concierge solution from the hospitality industry. Hyatt Hotels has been using Twitter as a customer service tool, allowing its guests to send requests 24 hours a day. Intercontinental Hotels has been using video starring individual hotel concierges that can be viewed on social media. Marriott International Renaissance Hotels have launched a platform called Navigator, which offers suggestions for drinks, shopping, and sightseeing that can be accessed from the hotel’s webpage and iPhone app. Just a few clicks away, personalized services are not a privilege for just VIP guests anymore.

Help clients to get their work done

Earlier client experiences focused on removing clients’ pain points. Millie noted that it is the time to go further and move from solving clients’ pain points to foreseeing their needs and providing solutions.

“Get their work done” Millie said, by providing convenience and efficiency through personalized solutions. She referenced Emirates Airlines, who knew about her and her family members even before they boarded the aircraft. They were able to optimally serve them with transport to the airlines, childcare, and Millie stated, “They know me well, just like a close friend.”

Win clients from experience but not price

Millie believes that personalization is all about experience, but not price. Price can attract clients at the beginning, but without experience, clients will easily slip away. According to market study, most clients are willing to pay more for experience. This will be even more critical in the future, as Gen Z seeks experiences more than any earlier generation.

Working to deliver excellent client experiences for the past 22 years, Millie shared that most of the stories she heard from clients about personalized services came from the hotel industry. The stories were all about excellent, but not necessarily inexpensive, experiences. Packing and unpacking luggage for customers, special slippers for children, small surprises for special events, even service recovery when something went wrong, were all important.  Personalized services and unique experiences create great memories.

Continuous improvement

Delivering personalized solutions and personalized services is not a one off solution. It is continuous improvement, achieved by utilizing technology and understanding your clients. The financial industry has not been a leader in this area. As Millie summed it up, she always encourages leaders to look outside, and to learn from best-in-class examples in other industries.

Millie Gillon is a native New Yorker and Singapore transplant who has a wealth of knowledge about innovation and strategy, and combines this with the use of data and design thinking to reshape the client experience.

Millie is currently the Global Head of Client Experience at Standard Chartered Bank. Prior to joining Standard Chartered, she led co-innovation for Citi and American Airlines at Mastercard. Millie has held senior product and innovation roles at Prudential Financial, JPMorgan Chase and American Express, where she concurrently earned her Masters in Communications and Leadership Studies and her Six Sigma Black Belt.

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Market Challenges Signal Hard Choices

The contact center (CC) represents a broad and mature market with almost 40 years of development. It comprises dozens of providers, catering to sites as small as 10 agents to thousands of globally dispersed representatives in a single enterprise. Figure 1.0 shows the variety of principal market segments in contact center ecosystems.

Figure 1.0 shows the variety of principal market segments in contact center ecosystems.

Overall, the premise-based contact center systems market, which still represents the vast majority of installed contact centers today, is forecast to exhibit a timid 1.8% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) globally from 2021-2023. The cloud CC segment is set to enjoy prosperous double digit growth (13% year-over-year) during 2021 and 2022. As a whole, this market is set to achieve 9 billion USD in revenue by 2021.

Listed below are some of the current cloud contact center trends and challenges identified by Frost & Sullivan:

• Growth in the cloud CC market will be driven by end-of-life cycles of existing system platforms, new workforce optimization (WFO) tools, redesigned agent desktops, the continual addition of new channels, richer integrations to third-party applications, and new analytics capabilities.
• Worldwide, the CC market is moderately shifting from on-premise systems to cloud solutions. In this context, leading vendors clearly articulate migration strategies and positioning options to integrate cloud-based applications with on-premise systems to smooth the transition for existing premise-based customers and for those that don’t want to go “all in” to the cloud (hybrid approach).
• By the start of 2020, roughly 84%1 of enterprises were already pursuing digital transformation strategies designed to build agility, security, and resiliency into their business processes and infrastructure. While the ensuing pandemic destabilized many businesses, Frost & Sullivan research shows that it also helped companies prioritize and accelerate the most critical digital strategies needed to reach customer and operational goals.

Over the past five years, Frost & Sullivan research has uncovered a number of drivers of contact center cloud conversion, including:²

• Lower IT costs.
• OPEX (SaaS) model.
• Reallocate IT staff to core business needs.
• Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).
• Easily add applications and capabilities.
• Scale with peaks and lulls of contact volumes.
• Scalability and flexibility.
• Take advantage of new features and capabilities with each new release.
• Focus on core business activities.

Reimagining the Customer Experience

Improving the customer experience (CX) is a requisite competitive factor for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations. While many customer interactions had been migrating to digital experiences, the 2020 pandemic accelerated this for nearly every industry. This viral epidemic caught many businesses unprepared to withstand a natural disaster of such magnitude. Government and organizational mandates for social distancing forced many workers out of their offices and into their homes with limited or no ability to use business-class communications tools. The worldwide quarantines and lockdowns revealed a general lack of business preparedness to maintain operational continuity when access to physical office spaces became limited.

Organizations with the means to adapt quickly turned to cloud services to keep remote workers productive and business operating. In this time of need, cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions proved most effective at bridging people across geographic distances.

Frost & Sullivan has researched CX trends for many years and recently spoke to several CX executives. Industry challenges include disaster and continuity planning, system integration across disparate data silos and how the events of 2020 impacted future plans. Enacting a robust cloud strategy can help mitigate many of these issues, and many organizations are exploring, if not fully engaged in, cloud implementation.

Bernie Sides, Director of Customer Contact Center, Southern California Gas, told Frost & Sullivan, “We’re still a holistic enterprise seeking out a cloud strategy. So we’re still trying to determine what it looks like for us.” David Funck, Chief Technology Officer at Aspect Software, agreed that the cloud trend is important to contact centers. “One of the reasons you want to move to the cloud is to take advantage of the distributed computing, the big data capabilities,” he said.

“You’re going to unlock a tremendous amount of additional power and capability, and you really need to re-look at those business processes, and that’s hard to do. It can be a painful step and another thing to consider when your move to cloud is best in breed versus a suite. At Aspect, we like to offer both because it depends on the size of the customer and the needs of the enterprise customer.” —David Funck, Chief Technology Officer at Aspect Software.

Wanda Taylor, Director, Command Center & Business System Support for Blue Cross North Carolina, discussed with Frost & Sullivan the topic of cloud migration planning. She noted, “Whatever decision you’re making, think more futuristically instead of [only in] the present, because I believe sometimes that’s where we hold ourselves back. Where do you want your service delivery to be over the next three to five years? Not what it is today.”

Along with cloud and mitigating disaster recovery, business continuity planning must be considered. Aarde Cosseboom, Senior Director, GMS Technology and Product at TechStyle, said, “The Philippines doesn’t have very reliable at-home internet. So we’re thinking about diversifying our workforce to business process outsourcers (BPOs) that have agents that are already in the work-from-home environment in other countries so that if, due to the pandemic or some other national disaster, we have to shut off the internet or shut down a major part of their economy, we’re not putting all of our eggs into one economic basket.”

What to Do Next

The goal in assembling this group of thought leaders was to stimulate ideas and exchange useful, practical advice as companies continue moving contact center technology to the cloud. All of the panelists agreed that before choosing a cloud technology or mode of approach, companies need to consider:

• Mapping your strategic cloud initiative.
• Choosing the right cloud technology.
• Key benefits of the cloud.
• Typical length of migration.
• How to minimize disruption when moving to the cloud.
• A phased approach versus a quick “light switch” approach.

It will be interesting to see how priorities and businesses goals, and the challenges they face, continue to evolve. No doubt, customer experience and agent efficiency will remain high on the list of priorities, along with new, competitive ways to leverage data and insights. While 2020 was a difficult year in many regards, the sharp growth in cloud adoption likely means that many organizations are now much better positioned to address new challenges and to be more competitive and innovative.

Endnotes
¹ Frost & Sullivan’s December 2020 report, “Trends and Opportunities in the Enterprise Contact Center Market.”
² Ibid.
³ All quotes are from Frost & Sullivan’s Virtual Think Tank series, “The Contact Center’s Journey to the Cloud.”

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Is your customer’s experience more important — or valuable — than your product? Opening headliner Tracy Robertson, Global Enterprise Vice President, Digital, Stryker, and former Global Vice President, Kimberly-Clark, explored this thought-provoking question in her signature presentation, CX 1.0 to 3.0: New Journeys for New Customer Expectations.  Declaring that the customer experience (CX) was a very high-stakes topic, she briefly defined it as the customer’s perspective on all their interactions with an organization, both online and off. Noting that customer expectations are rising and that many customers will leave after just one bad experience, she stated that, today, the customer experience is as important as the product. She added that both needed to “bring it – the product and the experience must be excellent.” To support this statement, she shared the results of a recent survey: “4 out of 5 customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services.” (Source: 4^th Edition State of the Connected Customer Salesforce)

The well-known innovator and change agent also shared highlights of Kimberly-Clark’s Customer Journey revamp process, which included collecting voice of the customer, voice of the organization and voice of the data. Leveraging organizational assessments, rigorously defining the mission, strategy and timeline (five years) and hiring for critical skillsets – including outside of the industry – were key components of the ultimately successful undertaking. Tracy concluded her presentation by telling participants that it pays to be an experience driven business, as brands with a superior CX have been shown to bring in five times more revenue.

2. Capturing and leveraging data is essential to a winning customer strategy

Derrick Dickens, Chief Customer Officer and Senior Vice President, Customer Operations, PEPCO Holdings (PHI) An Exelon Company, shared a Case History – Unleash the Full Potential of CX Technologies. Derrick examined the role that analytics can play in understanding the customer journey and the benefits those insights can bring. Explaining how the company’s 2018 analysis had identified the “case for digital” and opportunities to improve customer satisfaction across journeys, he shared five Customer Strategy Outcomes identified by PEPCO and some of the digital technologies needed to support them. The desired outcomes were:

1. A world class CX –  supported by creating  memorable moments through a personalized experience
2. Affordability – achieved by partnering with customers to provide programs and pricing that helped them access affordable energy, for example
3. Strong community value –  lift up communities and their economic development by promoting beneficial policies and legislation
4. Innovation and value driven growth –drive investment growth, beneficial regulatory programs and innovative solutions
5. Clean and environmentally sustainable communities – facilitate community access to clean energy, products, and services; support environmental and sustainability goals

Derrick identified specific strategic outcomes that were achieved. These included improving first contact resolution (FCR), reducing the customer effort needed to register for online accounts, and increasing self-service adoption, among others. In closing, Derrick reminded participants that being customer focused is an ongoing process that should be supported by ongoing data collection and analysis.

3. There is no one size fits all omni-channel CX – only the right combination of channels and touchpoints for each customer

Day one of the Executive MindXchange concluded with a Capstone – Managing Customer Expectations in a Post-COVID World, delivered by Jennifer Borchardt, Vice President, Omnichannel Experience and Strategy – Wealth Management, US Bank. Jennifer discussed the many ways that customer needs and expectations, which were rapidly changing before and during COVID, continue to change as the world changes – and faster than ever! Jennifer described how customer experience transformation has moved from digital-first, to mobile-first, to experience-first. She explained that, although mobile has become almost ubiquitous, customers ultimately seek a combination of digital applications and human assistance. This should culminate in an “experience-first” approach built on creating holistic relationships across channels and cohesive, powerful experiences. As she stated, there is no one size fits all omni-channel experience; all touchpoints must work together to serve customers in different, unique ways.

Jennifer noted that many companies developed innovative customer touchpoints during the pandemic that will now become part of their ongoing omni-channel experience. She cited telehealth functions like virtual visits and apps used by patients as a good example of technology innovation from an industry that was not previously or traditionally technology-centric. Other examples included the banking industry, which began offering video chats with virtual bankers for complex transactions during COVID, and new, smart chat options offered by United Airlines to customers who needed to cancel or reschedule flights during the pandemic; this function is still available to United’s customers.

4. 2021 is poised to become the year that will differentiate brands who adopt a TOTAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE mindset

Day two headliner Michelle Emerson-Russell, Executive Director, Workplace & Customer Experience, Verizon Business Group, opened her presentation, The Success Mantra: Enabling Brand Recognition Through Total Customer Experience, by stating that 2021 would be a pivotal year for implementing a total customer experience. Noting that adopting key technologies will continue to be an important part of creating a sustainable competitive advantage, Michelle shared a recent survey showing that, by 2022, more than two thirds of customer interactions will involve emerging technologies like chat bots, machine learning (ML) and mobile messaging.

Michelle also stated that Total Experience = Employee Experience + Customer Experience and underscored that employees affect the brand and the customer experience in significant ways. Enabling differentiated customer experiences with analytics, 5-G connectivity and adherence to data privacy and security guidelines are other tools needed to help ensure a successful, state-of-the-art customer experience.

5. All businesses must adapt at the speed of the market or customers. (And leadership must implement change with compassion for employees)

In his Capstone – Effective Change Management Across the CX Ecosystem presentation, Michael “Coop” Cooper, Founder, Innovators + Influencers, reminded participants that customer  needs and requirements are changing faster than ever before.  In fact, most of these evolving customer requirements are shifting faster than many in the C-Suite understand. Coop underscored the importance of organizational change as a means to keep up with evolving customer demands and shared common challenges organizations face when implementing change.

Beyond the natural human resistance to change and the complexities of driving organizational change internally, Coop emphasized that it is employees who must implement changes, and their success often depends upon ongoing managerial support and compassion. No doubt, this approach is frequently overlooked by leaders and front-line managers who are so often under pressure to accomplish corporate objectives or implement new ways of working in a very short time. Coop channeled his years of experience counseling and coaching business leaders to emphasize the important truth that compassion and employee support are key components of organizational change. Words of wisdom to heed as change and customer-experience driven business models become the order of the day for so many companies.

These are just a few of the many timely insights from this content-rich virtual event. You can find more customer contact industry articles and trending best practices here. Or, check out our next in-person customer contact event, Customer Contact West: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, taking place October 24-27^th, 2021 at the Hyatt Huntington Beach California here.

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As individuals, in the workforce and at home, we are often confused about how to balance the impacts of society with our daily work and life.   How do we find the energy and initiative to make change, and be inspired?

Environmental challenges and global warming have put a huge focus on economies and organizations to think more about their impact and make changes for the future.  These challenges have led many organizations to look deeply into re-defining their purpose, and to make bold moves towards positive change.

With so much going on around you, how can you keep your teams focused on what matters to them?  How can you make people feel fulfilled at work, provide the right balance and get to the heart of what matters?

Through this pandemic, people have changed and our views have changed.  In the past eighteen months, everyone has become a Millennial!  Your grandparents and parents now get a grade of “B” in technology and how to use it.  They order online, create Tik Tok videos and FaceTime with their friends and family.  As people, we now seem to expect more of each other, and expect even better of ourselves.

These times, and the times to come, are going to impact us as individuals more and more.  It will force organizations to make changes that are not comfortable, and these changes will go against the working models of old.  Trust and collaboration will be put to their toughest test yet.

Looking to the times ahead, there are foundational pieces that will help you support and aid your employees (and yourself) as we head off on this journey:

Values – Your values are the things that you believe are important to the way you work and live.  These values, when clear, aid in your decision-making process and guide you through life’s journey.

1. Find your own values – take the time to reflect and, using a large list of values, find the 3 core values that mean the most to you.  Values are not a one and done thing.  As we change, our lives change, and so do our values.  Make it a regular cadence to review your values and realign as your world changes.
2. Help others to find theirs – as leaders the best thing we can do is help to guide and inspire others.  By discussing values we, as individuals, start to understand more what motivates us and why we struggle so much with decisions or changes being made. It helps in opening up your capability for understanding and learning.  Keep each other accountable to the values that are core to you and that guide you.  This will bring you happiness and fulfillment.
3. Practice your values and live by those values, don’t compromise.

Purpose – Is an aspirational reason for being that is about making life better now, and in the future.

1. Find your purpose – This can be a deeper and intense conversation with yourself, about more than values.  Yes, values are important and will definitely help support you in identifying purpose, as they are the foundational blocks for you.  In the journey to finding your purpose, keep in mind it is both an introspective exercise and a reflection on the external view.  It shouldn’t be what you do for you, but what you do for others, why you do it, and how it influences, inspires or enables positive change in them.  This provides you a deeper sense of meaning, as with those that always had great purpose (Ghandi, Dali Lama, and Nelson Mandela).  Not all those who wander are lost.
2. Help your employees find theirs – The exercise and support is more of enlightenment then of dictating. Like finding your own – what makes you happy and brings you joy.  This shows, like your purpose, you do acts for others, to inspire others and show a sense of belonging with each other.
3. Live by your purpose and reflect regularly on whether you are truly living it.

We need to find deeper meaning to derive the “why” behind what we do, and determine if it aligns with who we are.  Societal, racial, and diverse issues are coming at us, and our teams, all the time.  When we were together in a room, or building, we could see each other, have a conversation and observe when someone was troubled or needed to talk.  As we move to this hybrid, or remote work model, those times are going to be harder to come by.  People will lose their way and also lose connection to each other and the why.  Through regular conversations and a deeper pursuit of values and purpose, we can at least connect with each other, and ourselves, in our journey to understanding.

With over 25 years of leadership experience, Martin has led a variety of teams across multiple geographies and programs.  In addition to driving top SLA and KPI performance he has also been intently focused on building highly engaged and dynamic cultures within organizations.  This speaks to his purpose of encouraging, supporting and guiding others to elevate their ability to achieve more.  Today, he leads a fantastic team within BCLC in their pursuit of being the leader in Employee and Customer Experiences.

The post Looking for the Why? Stay Engaged by Finding Value <br>and Purpose appeared first on CustomerContactMindXchange.

Yet, until recently, I have seen very few discussions around the topics of “leading a hybrid team.” 2021 could be the year of the hybrid team as organizations transition to a stable, “post COVID” environment. What will be needed to lead in this new environment? At Gant Travel our team members have been remote since 2007, and we continue to challenge the organization with how we can do better.  Our two strategic partners in Guatemala and the Philippines were 100% bricks and mortar and are now navigating the hybrid environment.   Like so many other organizations, we are asking: “Where are we now, and what elements can we lean into as we move forward?” Culture, investing in people, and management tools and techniques are three keys I would like to discuss:

1. Culture – Very few organizations’ culture remains unchanged. Take the time to evaluate what cultural attributes need attention. Your plan to re-onboard or hire staff in a hybrid environment needs to be well thought out and aligned with your current culture. One critical element we at Gant Travel continue to discuss is how to regain trust with our re-hire team. What impact did large-scale virtual hiring have on your culture?    Now more than ever, the front-line leaders have more influence on culture.  As you evaluate a hybrid work environment, look at how you deploy your front-line leaders.
2. Invest in your people – this is a reflection of your organizational culture. If you invest in your people and make their professional development a priority, you build trust, which is critical in the hybrid environment. You also build confidence and capability within the organization. The investment must be multi-tiered and address front-line team members, supervisors, mid-level and senior leaders. Supervisors are the youngest leaders on the team, yet they are the most critical to the engagement and success of the team. Thrust into a remote work environment, were they set up for success? Moving to a hybrid solution, are they set up for success? We can control how this solution is deployed across our organizations.
3. Virtual Management by Walking Around (VMBWA). Many of us are familiar with the MBWA technique as a tool in leading our teams.  What does this look like in a remote and hybrid environment? What tools and processes are needed for leaders to be successful?  First, a leader must have trust; a common thread in this discussion. Also, video and a centralized messaging platform are key tools we introduced at Gant Travel.  We found these and daily huddles to be critical to our successful transition to a fully remote workforce. As of 4^th QTR, 2019, we required that all internal interactions take place on video, and we expect our leaders to conduct weekly one- on- ones and team meetings. We embrace the Marcus Buckingham 52 weekly sprint methodology. We also introduced an interaction analytics tool that completely changed how our leaders coach their teams. Our team understands the most important activity they can accomplish on a daily basis is to touch their people.

As senior leaders, we must look over the horizon and provide clarity on how the organization navigates this transitional period. Your culture has changed, the need for stronger, more autonomous, yet collaborative leaders is more important than ever. A hybrid organization must have a learning, innovative culture to embrace the continued investment in people, processes and tools. We cannot return to “pre COVID” cultural norms and expect to succeed. The war for talent is upon us and we must do everything possible to create a culture which inspires the best talent.

Kurt has over twenty years of leadership in Contact Center Management, Reverse Logistics Operations and Quality Program Management in North America, Asia and the Middle East. He is a proponent and practitioner of the servant leadership model and brings a passion for excellence in  exceptional customer service to Gant’s employees and customers. Prior to joining Gant, he was a program manager with Lexmark. He is a former Army Infantry Officer and a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

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Innovative Ideas for Agent Social Engagement, Incentives, and Rewards

Linda Milone, Senior Director, Reservations and Customer Care, Hilton, was the highest rated presenter at the virtual event. Linda provided an overview of the evolution of the virtual agent workforce at Hilton, and described some of the specific engagement and training processes that have helped the enterprise keep their agents happy and productive. Linda shared that Hilton moved a majority of their agent workforce home in 2016, and most of them loved it. To support the move, they implemented a virtual learning model with certification and rewards comprising a key part of the process. More recently, short, interactive training sessions delivered three to four times a week via video or other channels have worked well for the organization.

A key part of Hilton’s current agent engagement strategy can be found in a 5-4-3-2-1 structured communications approach consisting of:

5 days a week of agent/employee outreach via a daily phone call, email, text or even a DM

4 team communications per month, around performance, achievement or celebration

3 coaching sessions are scheduled with each agent per month. Topics and time (from 15-60 minutes) vary by coaching needed but they must take place

2 contests or team incentive activities monthly – these have proven to be particularly fun and successful

1 moment of deliberate fun per meeting; every meeting must start with or include one bit of light personal sharing, celebrating, etc. to help foster social connections virtually

Demystifying Digital

Ken Gregory, Vice President, Customer Service and Digital Operations, Pearson, headlined Day 2 of the 3-day virtual event. Throughout his presentation, Leading with Digital First Capabilities, Ken discussed the importance of ensuring that your digital capabilities deliver real value to your business and enable a true connection to your customers. He encouraged participants to demystify and define what going digital really means, beyond the obvious use of digital tools. As Ken stated, actually experiencing or taking your customer’s journey can really help you pinpoint and understand areas for improvement. Once you have done so, he recommended picking two or three key areas to focus on and then operationalizing improvements. Finally, citing Amazon’s three to four click buying model, he reminded CC leaders to make the digital experience easy, not time-consuming or complex.

Mastercard’s Lance Gruner on riding the “evolution revolution”

Lance Gruner, Executive Vice President, Global Customer Care, Mastercard, headlined Day 3’s session, An Eye-Opening Lens on Contact Centers as the Foundation of Customer Strategy. Like so many other businesses, Mastercard and its contact centers effectively managed “five years of transformation in a matter of weeks” when the pandemic hit. As Lance noted, this “evolution revolution” provided new insights into customers and how to provide greater value, quickly. Lance reminded CC leaders to shore up partnerships across the company and to align all contact centers with evolving customer needs like speed, security and faster delivery methods. Lance stated that to succeed today, companies must focus on three things:

1. Create an organizational mindset that understands and embraces customer service. Voice of Customer (VoC) must be at the center of the value proposition. All employees must understand how their customers live and work. Lance believes this goal is the hardest to achieve.
2. Optimize how you measure the customer experience: push your insights upstream too. Look beyond traditional KPI’s and focus on the “what and why” of what’s happening with your customers; doing so will bring greater gains. Lance shared that the way Mastercard looks at data has recently evolved; they have shifted from a diagnostic focus and are moving towards providing more prescriptive solutions – which often bring greater value.
3. Tell the story of the value customer service brings to your brand and to the customer experience. Create an organizational mindset that seeks out actionable insights to help tell your company story.

Strategic Rockstar Insights

Other highlights from the event included a Rockstar Insights session, Employee Owned Strategy: A Framework for Connecting All Work to Strategic Objectives and Outcomes, led by Robert Gofourth, Vice President of Operational Strategy & Performance, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina. Rob provided a detailed take on tying employee performance objectives and measurement to corporate strategy, often a tricky or less-than-successful undertaking. Rob outlined the process needed to achieve this goal. He shared frameworks to help connect employee capabilities and initiatives to company strategy and enterprise initiatives. Rob reminded participants about the importance of sharing relevant corporate strategies, aligning them with individual roles, and then tracking progress in tangible ways, resulting in an eye-opening and truly valuable presentation.

Executive Brainstorming: The Contact Center as a Profit Center

An Executive Brainstorm panel session, Transitioning from Cost Center to Profit Center Based Service KPI’s, tackled the topic on almost every contact center executive’s mind today. Jonathan Shroyer, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Officium Labs, moderated as three savvy CC executives from different industries shared insights and recent contact center success stories. Brett Frazer, Vice President of Customer Service, Sunbasket stated that a superior customer experience will help keep customers coming back and provide retention revenue too.  He also shared that using the FOGG Behavior Model had helped his company improve customer buying behavior. Sourjo Basu, Director, Program Management and Business Operations, Samsung Electronics, America, emphasized the importance of an “amazing post-sales experience” to customer retention and revenue. Sourjo shared that a recent post-sale initiative at Samsung had exceeded expectations.

Amanda Misilo, First Vice President of Call Center Operations, Berkshire Bank, discussed how adding sales incentives to her company’s customer service center operations had increased revenue. Smart technology investments and quantifying customer value were other examples shared; both had a positive impact on her company’s bottom line. Other revenue-generating approaches discussed by Jonathan and the panelists included leveraging VoC data to help drive better (and more profitable) business decisions; measuring customer loyalty, which affects and drives revenue; and speaking the “language of leadership” to ensure  that the contact center – and its many contributions to the bottom line – is understood.

These are just some of the key insights and new practices shared at this very successful virtual exchange. Click here to learn about our next event, Customer Experience Ecosystem: A Frost & Sullivan VIRTUAL Executive MindXchange, taking place July 13-14, 2021, so there’s still time to register!

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Joining the Customer Engagement Leadership Council is a great way to connect with a network of people and places, collaborate, and check in with peers to see who’s doing what. Membership offers countless opportunities to explore best practices and lessons learned, it’s an investment that can bring both tangible and intangible value and progress to you and your organization.

With dozens of ongoing virtual events led by industry experts, site tours hosted by leading companies, and in-person events returning in the fall…now is the right time to join the Customer Engagement Leadership Council.  Although we’ve always prided ourselves on our top-notch member programs we have exceeded even our own expectations recently with events like:

• A Virtual Site Tour led by Merchants and Webhelp, two of South Africa’s most successful CX organisations
• A Virtual Event Watch Party: Leveraging Data Driven Insights hosted by Yuko Araki Prichard, Vice President, Customer Experience Change Capability and Metrics, AARP
• A Virtual Event: An Inside View into Bristol-Myers Squibb Global Contact Center Operations hosted by Council Member Christopher Keenan, Head, Worldwide Medical Customer Engagement, Medical Capabilities, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Get ready for Customer Experience Ecosystem: A Frost & Sullivan VIRTUAL Executive MindXchange this July… and a return to in-person events in the fall!

Membership will bring a full year of touchpoints for you and your team to create value together. Highlights include our Annual Meeting and networking event where you can play an active role in defining the Critical Industry Issues the council will focus on in the year ahead.

Ongoing in-person and virtual events form a key part of your membership. This includes access and invitations to an array of roundtables, case histories, site tours and more, all focused on relevant industry topics and growth opportunities, and led by customer contact pros and colleagues.

As a member you can attend our Customer Experience Ecosystem: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange VIRTUAL event in July and take advantage of the return of our flagship events in-pereson including Customer Contact West: A Frost & Sullivan Executive  MindXchange and Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive  MindXchange in the fall, with all post-COVID precautions in place.

Click here to learn more or apply for membership today.

About the Customer Engagement Leadership Council

The Customer Engagement Leadership Council, a Frost & Sullivan Professional Development Community, is the world’s foremost member-driven, global business leadership network for senior-level executives in customer experience, marketing, and customer care. The Council enables business leaders to deepen customer engagement by focusing on the intersection of critical business and technology issues that will drive growth for themselves and their organizations.

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