Category: Podcasts

Data-Driven Current and Future State Assessments Optimize Customer Care Programs

This week’s guest is Bhawna Singh, director of Internal Solutioning at iQor. Bhawna is an expert at studying structured and unstructured data to understand what it means in relation to particular problems that need solving. Through business intelligence reporting and applied CX analytics, her work informs better and faster decision-making to optimize performance and create a great customer experience. In this episode, Bhawna unpacks the method by which she and her team conduct current state assessments in order to arrive at future state potential within iQor client customer care programs.

Two Decades of Solutioning in Project Management

Bhawna began her career working for a financial services organization, focusing on project management and process improvement. She progressed through different roles before earning her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification in 2011 followed by her Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification while working for an IT global services firm. She also completed extensive training for CMMI services, ultimately helping her organization earn a Level 5 maturity certification. In 2016, Bhawna joined iQor and helped form iQor’s financial shared services center in India.

She subsequently moved to the Data Science and Analytics team in 2019 and is now the director of Internal Solutioning at iQor. Today, Bhawna focuses most of her time on current state assessment projects. She looks for opportunities to improve outcomes for iQor clients and integrate the human experience with digital technology through any combination of process improvement, digitalization, and automation.

Bhawna leads the team that performs current state assessments for iQor clients, analyzing processes, data, human interactions, technology, and workflows to identify opportunities to improve results. This involves myriad activities ranging from interaction analytics and listening to call recordings to collaborating with operations and data scientists. The process can also entail analyzing the client’s interactive voice response (IVR) to improve efficiency throughout the customer journey.

Current State vs. Future State Assessments

Current state assessment involves conducting an in-depth study of a business process, end to end. Bhawna leverages her Lean Six Sigma training to ask the right questions and distill information into a picture of the current state process based on interviews, work observations, and data collection and analysis. These inputs include data points from the customer journey (e.g., channel options and customer satisfaction), the agent view (e.g., training and coaching), and the management lens (e.g., workforce management and compliance).

By mapping workflows as they occur and analyzing each step of the process along with all of the data involved, Bhawna and her team develop recommendations to improve any inefficiencies that they identify.

For future state assessments, on the other hand, Bhawna and her team identify recommendations for how they suggest the customer service program operate in a future state. They map the current state assessment against process change digitalization and automation opportunities. Future state recommendations cover a wide range of possibilities.

For end customers, process changes can include omnichannel routing and support as well as self-service, for example. The use of interaction analytics and natural language processing allows for an improved understanding of customer engagement. For customer service agents, recommendations can include the use of robotic process automation, unified desktop, and knowledge foundations. For management, the optimizations can offer real-time analytics and proactive alerting, concurrency modeling, and AI coaching. Finally, for brands, future state assessments can guide the voice of the customer, social media engagement policies, and other optimizations to drive customer satisfaction and boost customer loyalty.

Implementation Best Practices

When developing current state and future state assessments, Bhawna follows a few best practices to promote success.

1. Solve one problem at a time.
2. Fail small—establish a baseline, control risk, and look at the numbers.
3. Include results, solicit feedback, and celebrate improvements.
4. Move forward with purpose and direction; evaluate changes against the overall strategy.

Asking Questions to Find the Right Answers

Bhawna and her team draw on their collective experience and background at iQor to ask questions that support their data analysis in the current state of client care programs. These insights inform future state potential to optimize programs or improve results for our clients. iQor’s work with hundreds of clients allows us to share industry best practices and leverage a combination of in-house and best-in-class partner services and solutions. The end goal is to create a great customer experience throughout the customer journey.

The 3 Layers of Current State Assessments

Current state assessments can be divided into three layers, each delving deeper into processes than the previous layer.

1. Assess the Business Model. In this first layer, the solutioning team looks closely at the business model and the aggregate data.
2. Identify Processes and Procedures. Here, the solutioning team looks in-depth at processes and procedures. They look at the practical methods for completing the program work and they collect and analyze the raw data. They unearth everything related to the processes using as many data inputs as needed.
3. Analyze the Data. In the final layer, the solutioning team begins mapping the process by analyzing the data collected as well as the interactions across all levels. They identify low-hanging fruit that needs more analysis and proceed accordingly.  

Sources for Current State Data

Current state assessments include an analysis of at least six months of institutional data and performance data.

Institutional data covers total employee headcount, the number of supervisors, and the ratios of management to supervisors and supervisors to agents, along with all other staffing-related information.

Performance data provides actionable insight into performance targets provided by the client and how well the customer service teams are performing against those targets. This includes analyzing data on the agents’ performance, productivity, quality assurance, turnover, and other performance measures.

The Role of Speech Analytics

The Internal Solution team harnesses iQor’s speech analytics tool known as VALDI. This CX technology is proprietary to iQor and makes the current assessment process more efficient and effective. VALDI enables the solutioning team to process 100% of all our calls. It simplifies the process of filtering down the specific calls the team wants to target for insights.

For example, the solutioning team can search for calls with a negative net promoter score (NPS) or search for a specific call reason such as plan rate questions. They can search for calls with high levels of non-talk time or even a combination of all three queries. This flexibility saves significant assessment time and allows the team to focus on areas of opportunity. It also provides vast amounts of data and trends which Bhawna and her team use to create business cases for solutions such as RPA, intelligent agent assistance, script revisions, or customer self-service handling. By leveraging speech analytics, they are able to develop informed recommendations to improve the customer experience.

Developing Future State Assessments and Recommendations

Once the solutioning team has thoroughly defined, analyzed, and mapped the current state data and processes, they have insights they can use to develop future state analyses to inform recommendations that can result in improvements to the client care program under review. This can include automating certain manual processes to improve efficiency and looking for opportunities to digitize and modernize systems, enhancing the customer experience through digital transformation. These improvements range from modifying scripts to introducing CX technology to optimize performance and increase customer satisfaction.

The team accesses an extensive knowledge base of experience to share industry best practices with clients and partners and present comprehensive recommendations to leadership for future state improvements to business processes.

Examples of Current and Future State in Action

To see how current and future state assessments work in practice for clients, Bhawna shared two examples of how she and her team analyzed current state processes and made recommendations to improve them, while also introducing technology components to improve or optimize performance as well as increase customer engagement. Throughout the process, iQor’s proprietary speech analytics tool provides insights to help inform current state assessments and help determine opportunities for future state improvements and optimizations that support customer success.

In her first example, Bhawna and her team performed current and future state assessments for a retail client that offers customer surveys via email. The survey results were previously sent to a specialist who had to manually scrape the data from the surveys, drop them into an Excel file, review the comments, and categorize the issues as process-driven or customer-service-driven.

Bhawna’s team recommended the use of RPA to automate the entire first part of this data collection process so the specialist didn’t have to perform it manually. With RPA in place,  iQor’s text analysis tool could process customer feedback and automatically categorize it while also providing theme and sentiment analysis. Now, the specialist can focus on analyzing the output and identifying what actions need to take place to help the customer. Bhawna’s team is also working with this client to offer the NPS survey as a simple SMS text instead of an email in order to increase participation rates.

In another example, Bhawna and her team provided disclosure optimization for the same retail client. When a customer accepts a credit card offer, certain disclosures need to be provided to the customer. Previously, the agent would ask the customer to stay on the line and, together, they would listen to a 1–3-minute recording of the disclosure statements.

Bhawna and her team brought this to the attention of the client and recommended a simple pre-recorded disclosure queue that the agent could transfer the customer to. This would free the customer service agent to help the next customer and would enable the team to gather full reporting on the disclosure transfers and listening volumes that could be shared with the client. The next phase of this future state assessment includes collaborating with the client to consider offering the disclosure via a text link to further optimize convenience and efficiency for the end customer.

Using Current and Future State Assessments to Optimize Recruiting

In addition to optimizing client accounts, current and future state assessments can also be used internally to optimize recruiting processes, for example. With the goal of standardizing global recruiting processes enterprise-wide, Bhawna and her team mapped the recruiting processes in different locations to inform recommendations, including opportunities for automation and digitalization.

The future state recommendations to optimize recruiting processes are still in development, but the goal is to increase recruiting capabilities and speed to support client programs without adding additional recruiters.

What Bhawna Does for Fun

In her free time, Bhawna enjoys reading, practicing yoga, and traveling.

Keeping the Loyalty Loop Conversation Going Builds Relationships and Deepens Customer Loyalty

This week’s guest is internationally acclaimed keynote speaker and bestselling author Andrew Davis. Andrew uses his captivating storytelling skills and marketing expertise to inspire and advise business leaders. Before building and selling a successful digital marketing agency, he was a television producer for NBC’s Today Show and worked for The Muppets, among other creative roles. He spent time with Warren Buffet and has crafted documentary films and award-winning content for companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 brands. In this episode of the Digitally Irresistible Podcast, Andrew explains his six-step Loyalty Loop formula for winning and keeping customers through exceptional customer experiences that build customer loyalty.

A Little About Andrew

Andrew Davis has a gift for captivating an audience with his compelling stories and inspiring business acumen. His high-energy keynote presentations are most commonly described as “jaw-dropping” as he guides business leaders around the world on how to grow their businesses. He has earned numerous recognitions—from Meetings and Convention Magazine’s list of favorite speakers (right after President Bill Clinton and Anderson Cooper) to being identified as the second most influential content marketer in the world (between Joe Pulizzi and Jay Baer).

Andrew began his career in the television business and later started his own marketing agency with his friend, journalist Jim Cosco. They ran the successful agency for 12 years and then sold it. Along the way, Andrew began his journey to identify a better more modern alternative to the AIDA marketing funnel developed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898. Andrew wanted an updated marketing model to win new customers, keep customers longer, and help build better customer relationships. Leveraging his 20+ years of experience as a marketer, Andrew developed the six-part Loyalty Loop—his formula for winning and keeping customers. He also writes The Loyalty Loop blog to inspire strategic-thinking executives.

What is the Loyalty Loop?

The Loyalty Loop is based on the idea that building customer relationships and engagement in the modern era isn’t linear like the traditional marketing funnel. It’s not a one-way conversation designed to win a loyal advocate for your brand. It’s really a spiral like a stretched-out Slinky that evolves along a continuous loop of conversations, interactions, and encounters that make customers feel something. The Loyalty Loop builds on the premise that people want to feel a human connection.

As soon as someone calls in for customer service or opens a chat for customer service, it’s important for your brand to understand that these interactions are not restricted to one phone call or chat session. They’re part of a series of small encounters that can build a great customer experience and brand loyalty.

These small encounters add up and are a critical part of the Loyalty Loop for winning and keeping customers. The six core drivers of the Loyalty Loop guide how your brand can build better, deeper relationships and leave a long-lasting impression on the customer base.

These six Loyalty Loop drivers that support customer retention and loyalty are as follows.

1. Raise Anticipation

Andrew says the first step is to get customers excited about the next part of their customer journey with your brand. This could be through a phone call with a live agent, a chat conversation online, or a longer-term encounter like a scheduled call. It’s important to tell the customer what to expect so they can get excited about it; this raises anticipation for the next step in their journey. A great example is the pizza tracker deployed by a pizza delivery brand to get customers excited about the arrival of their pizza. This builds the customer’s connection to the brand and reinforces how much they want the product.

2. Maximize the Honeymoon Phase

The honeymoon phase is when the customer is at the peak of their enthusiasm with your brand. It’s when your brand has provided an amazing customer experience and needs to capture the customers’ satisfaction while it’s at a peak. Time is of the essence. This is a fantastic opportunity for your brand to guide customers on where to write a review or prompt a referral. By asking for reviews at the peak of the customer’s positive emotion, your brand can build on the human connection and the customer’s enthusiasm. This is the “after-party glow” that Rent the Runway harnesses the morning after a customer has come back from a fun event. They know they can make their customer relationship more valuable and lasting by interacting with them at the peak of their enthusiasm about their phenomenal experience with the brand.

3. Reinspire Them

This third driver is really important for customer support and customer service. It extends beyond a transaction and helps guide the customer toward another reason to benefit from your brand. Reinspiring an existing customer to take another journey with your brand right after the honeymoon phase is the start of an upsell or cross-sell for an additional service or product.

Emotion leads to action so it’s important to tell customers what they can do next while they’re at the peak of their interest. In order for this to happen, however, your brand must identify what you want the next step in the customer journey to be—what you can guide the customer towards to enhance a great experience and meet customer needs. For example, a retailer that sells apparel could offer accessories or complementary products the customer may not have already known about. Cross-selling like this can be a win-win for brands and customers when agents are trained specifically in how to recommend products a customer could benefit from.

4. Answer Their Trigger Questions

A trigger question is the first question that pops into a customer’s mind any time they start to interact with a brand. Customer service agents seeking to create an excellent customer experience should anticipate the customer’s first question and answer it quickly and accurately. What a customer really wants is for the customer service agent to understand their question and answer it. Answering trigger questions builds strong customer relationships and elevates customer trust in your brand.

5. Remove Friction

Removing friction is about trying to make the experience feel easier. For example, when requiring customers to fill out form fields in advance of an initial interaction it’s important to require only the fields that are absolutely necessary. By respecting the customer’s time and asking for only necessary information it removes friction and makes for an easier customer experience that helps them feel more valued and connected to your brand. It also leaves the door open for future follow-up interactions for more information with enhanced customer engagement. Customer data is as valuable as money today, so your brand must provide value for all the information you’re seeking from a customer. If there isn’t enough value tied to it, then it’s important not to ask for it until more trust develops between the customer and your brand. This makes for more valuable and purposeful interactions that support your brand and improve customer satisfaction.

6. Scale Camaraderie

Scale camaraderie is about building mutual trust and respect between your brand, the people behind your brand, and the customers you serve. A customer experiences a very thin relationship with a brand if they interact with only one person at a company. The best brands introduce customers to more people behind the brand over the course of the customer lifecycle.

For example, instead of simply transferring a customer from accounting to tech support, the initial representative could actually introduce the tech support agent to build the connection between the customer and the brand representatives. When your brand builds a relationship between the customer and four people at your brand, it builds a great amount of trust at scale. This trust builds loyalty and a deeper relationship with your brand which makes the customer less likely to churn and more likely to become a brand advocate.

Marketing in the Modern Age

Renowned management thought leader Peter Drucker said the most important thing a business needs to do is to get and keep customers. Andrew’s six-part Loyalty Loop builds on that belief and guides businesses in how to realize that in the modern age of digital transformation and technology to provide better and faster ways to interact than ever before.

What Andrew Does for Fun

Andrew loves boating! Whether at home in Florida or globetrotting between countries for speaking engagements, Andrew finds a way to get out on a boat. He loves the water and finds it peaceful, relaxing, and smile-inducing. It doesn’t matter if it’s cold and rainy in England or sunny and beautiful in Singapore, he finds peace on the water no matter what the circumstances. So much so that Andrew encourages everyone to take to the water by boat, kayak, paddleboard, or even a blow-up floatie to relax in nature.

Inviting and Answering Complaints Strengthens the Customer Experience and Improves Satisfaction

This week’s guest is renowned business strategist Jay Baer. A seventh-generation entrepreneur, he has founded five multi-million-dollar companies and is the New York Times bestselling author of six books on customer experience and digital marketing. He has advised more than 700 companies and has been inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame. Jay is most often described as funny, factual, fantastic, and fashionable! In this episode of the Digitally Irresistible Podcast, Jay unpacks the principles he writes about in his book, “Hug Your Haters.” With 80% of companies saying they deliver exceptional customer service and only 8% of their customers in agreement, he shares how businesses can turn things around and improve customer satisfaction.

A Career of Influence

Jay Baer began his career journey as a political campaign consultant before pivoting to traditional marketing and then digital marketing back in 1993 when domain names were still free. Ultimately becoming a trusted advisor on customer service excellence to some of the world’s most iconic brands, Jay started a digital consulting firm that he sold before starting another one called Convince & Convert that he ran for 13 years before selling. Along the way, Jay has created a successful content marketing blog, thousands of podcast recordings, a series of bestselling books, and keynote speeches to inspire digital marketing success.

Welcome the Complaints

In his book, “Hug Your Haters,” Jay writes that in order for companies to improve the customer experience and reduce the number of complaints they must first get more complaints. Jay learned the principle from his friend, Erin Pepper, who was the head of customer experience at Le Pain Quotidien. She implemented a plan to help the brand of cafes and bakeries continue to be better than most of their competitors by tripling the number of complaints they received.

Her goal was to make sure they responded to everything that bothered their customers and the only way to do that was by learning what actually bothered them. She recognized that there were probably some things that their customers didn’t like that they didn’t even know about. So, she created nudges for feedback on social media, the brand’s website, signage, and trained cashiers to seek feedback to make clear to customers that they really wanted to know what they thought about their experiences at the cafe.

Through these efforts they received three times more complaints and identified many things they hadn’t realized they were doing wrong. For example, at one of their top-selling locations someone mixed up the formula for their signature lemonade. Many customers were unhappy about it but no one said anything until Le Pain Quotidien really made a concerted effort to listen. They took this and all the other feedback they received, responded to the problems, and customer satisfaction improved.

It became clear that in order to get fewer complaints, a company must first get more complaints and then respond to them. Celebrating having only a few complaints doesn’t necessarily reflect excellent customer experiences, it often means the customers aren’t talking or can’t be bothered to share their concerns with the brand. Complaints are necessary in order to gain insight into where improvements can be made.

Statistically, only five out of 100 unhappy customers will register a complaint. Out of these complaints, there’s about a 50/50 mix of offstage and onstage complaints. Some customers prefer offstage remarks like personally speaking with a manager or sending an email for an individual response. In contrast, customers who have undergone their own digital transformation journey are often more likely to make highly visible onstage public remarks on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter or post a negative review on Google or Yelp. These customers prefer an audience for their dissatisfaction that will commiserate with them or show sympathy. Onstage complaints can be detrimental to a brand if people start to pile on and if the brand doesn’t respond.

Answering Complaints Drives Customer Satisfaction

In preparation for his book “Hug Your Haters,” Jay and his team conducted a large national study on customer attitudes around dissatisfaction and discovered that the number one driver of customer satisfaction over the mid- and long-term is not actually fixing the problem, its simply answering the complaint. Jay finds it shocking how few customer complaints actually receive responses, even by large multinational corporations with extensive resources.

Brands don’t even have to fix the problem to see improved satisfaction. If they just answer the complaint they will see a 40% increase in advocacy, depending on what the complaint is and where it was waged. On the flipside, not answering just makes it worse. As customer service and experience expert Shep Hyken says, a customer you ignore is a customer you should be prepared to lose.

But often, unhappy customers are written off. No response is a response. It says the brand cares so little about the customer that they’re going to ignore their concerns because it’s easier and less expensive to replace said customer than to respond.

Part of the problem, Jay finds, is that in thinking about customer satisfaction, brands are sometimes led astray by how customer satisfaction and customer success are measured. For example, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is often used as a key number to measure CX in many organizations. An NPS in the 50s is generally considered very good, but that means only about seven or eight out of every 10 customers would actually recommend the brand. Likewise, a customer satisfaction rate of 90% is considered excellent, but looking at that same number in a different way can give a different perspective. It wouldn’t be viewed as a great success if one out of every 10 customers hates the brand. So why aren’t companies aiming for 99% or 100% customer satisfaction rates?

Because sometimes the math gets divorced from the reality. Some executives see the numbers and commit to responding to complaints universally and uniformly. But many others see challenges in responding to customer concerns in high quantities across multiple channels with limited customer service resources.

Marketing and Customer Experience Go Hand-in-Hand

According to recent research from Salesforce, marketing departments lead customer experience initiatives in eight out of 10 global enterprise companies. In Jay’s experience, most marketers are really good at branding, increasing awareness, and developing new customer acquisition strategies. He finds that many marketers, however, aren’t as good at answering complaints and improving customer satisfaction and customer retention because historically that’s a different part of the business with a different skillset and even a different educational underpinning.

The goal then is to help marketers truly understand the totality of the customer journey so they can invest the same level of thought leadership and effort around customer retention that they do for customer acquisition.

An added layer of complexity to the relationship between marketing and customer experience is the complexity and volume of the tech stack related to each. When you add a CX tech stack with speech analytics into an already complex marketing tech stack, it expands tools available to marketing professionals but also requires a higher level of understanding.

That said, the tech stack a business uses for customer success and retention is often owned and powered by the same company that develops their tech stack for customer acquisition. This foundation can provide a holistic understanding of the customer by streamlining the management of data and preferences throughout the customer journey—from customer recruitment and customer onboarding to customer interactions over time.

In sum, structuring the customer experience team to report into the top marketing leader for complete ownership of the customer journey allows for an integrated understanding of the customer. Additionally, utilizing unified technology to track customer engagement further enhances a brand’s ability to ensure high customer satisfaction rates.

Turning Lemons Into Lemonade

Haters are not the problem. No company is perfect. There will always be customer complaints. The key is to quickly respond to those complaints with empathy and turn lemons into lemonade.

Many brands treat people who are unhappy as if they are the least important customers, but in many cases they’re the most important customers. People who take time out of their day to give feedback to a company deserve a response, especially when the majority of unhappy customers say nothing.

When people care enough to share what they think can be done better in a business, it’s worth listening and providing the dignity of a response, and maybe even making some operational changes. If a company does this often enough, they will improve their business intelligence to grow and ultimately improve their brand.

Outsourcing CX to a business process outsourcing (BPO) partner like iQor can provide customer service expertise and omnichannel resources to respond to concerns through voice, social media monitoring, chat, and other channels quickly and uniformly so all customers receive a response that makes them smile.

What Jay Does for Fun

Jay is all about fun! Sports. Barbecue. Tequila. Plaid suits. He has curated a collection of 16 plaid suits in different shades and colors. He’s a certified tequila sommelier (a catador) and creates tequila lessons on TikTok and Instagram. He’s also a certified barbecue judge.

The Convergence of Effective Brand Storytelling and Positive Customer Experiences

This week’s guest is Miri Rodriguez, senior storyteller – Future of Work at Microsoft and author of the bestselling book Brand Storytelling – Put Customers at the Heart of Your Brand Story. Miri travels the globe sharing insights on the power of brand storytelling. In this episode, Miri discusses the correlation between effective brand storytelling and positive customer experiences and how brands can think about the convergence of the two within their company culture and in how they communicate with customers to build brand loyalty.

Where the Story Begins

Miri’s senior storyteller role didn’t exist when she joined Microsoft 10 years ago. But with her passion, insights, and experience she built the foundation for a brand storytelling job at one of the top brands in the world, and she loves what she does! She believes in it so much that she wrote a book about it and travels the world sharing her insights to help brands elevate their narrative and create valuable customer experiences.

Brand storytelling wasn’t an academic discipline when Miri majored in communications in college. Now Miri’s book on the subject serves as a textbook in many colleges and universities. Throughout her experiences over the years, she learned to pivot communications and connectedness strategies as they continue to evolve in the digital age. As Microsoft went through its own digital transformation, Miri’s job changed and she believes that will continue to happen as new roles and positions emerge.

Miri began her career working for various tech companies before joining Microsoft on the operations side and then moving into the emerging area of social media at the time. She and the rest of the social media team navigated channels and determined which ones to develop a presence on. She quickly noticed that they were telling Microsoft’s brand story on the support side, but they were telling a different story through digital marketing on social media channels. Miri determined that it was essential to develop a unified voice so she began telling stories that connected the customer experience across their entire journey.

That led to a series of creative ideas as she navigated the look and feel of storytelling with a unified voice across channels. She accepted the opportunity to become senior storyteller for Microsoft’s digital transformation. She relishes her role in guiding Microsoft’s brand story and influencing how everyone at Microsoft collectively thinks about the narrative and how it is positioned across channels for a consistent brand identity.

Why Brand Storytelling Is Important in CX

Brand storytelling is more than general marketing or communications content or social media posts. It’s a culture-shifting strategy for brands to think about the way that they’re communicating their values and connecting on a human level with consumers.

For today’s consumers, purchasing from a brand means investing in something bigger than just a product or service—they need to know if the brand aligns with their own core values. Brand storytelling empowers companies to share their core values, their origin stories, their why, and continue to remind customers why they exist beyond their product or service. It must be an authentic brand story that begins with an individual’s first interactions with a brand, before they’re even a customer, and extends throughout their customer lifecycle and loyalty to a brand.

Miri explains that because today’s customers look beyond a brand’s products and services to assess the brand entity and what the company represents, brand storytelling is essential to improve customer engagement and advance the customer experience. Customers want to know the brand’s voice, its political stance, and whether it’s socially responsible. Is the brand worth friending and following?

Because the customer experience is no longer solely about the quality of the service or product, but also about the entity the brand represents, the story of the brand enables opportunities for customers to connect with the brand on a human level. But brands can’t just talk like a human, they must actually behave like a human. Brands need to recognize that they have a voice and a stance, and what they say and don’t say carries weight in the customer experience.

Many things impact the ways in which consumers look at a company or a brand and determine whether or not they want to purchase from them. This has intensified the relevance and importance of the messages a brand communicates to its constituents and potential customers. A company’s stance on social justice issues, climate change, and the like is important to consumers and essential to customer loyalty and the brand’s success.

How Brands Foster Effective Storytelling

Effective brand storytelling centers on designing—not just telling—the story because it’s more than just telling a compelling story. The storytelling must align with the company’s core values, mission, and the overall narrative of the brand itself.

One way to accomplish this is by integrating the origin of the brand into the storytelling, consistently reminding the audience why the brand exists and how everything it does aligns with its core values and original mission. Weaving this nostalgia into everything from marketing campaigns to products provides a strong and consistent foundation for storytelling that shapes the customer journey.

Indeed, ensuring that products and marketing campaigns complement the narrative strengthens the storytelling. Incorporating stories from employees, partners, and customers that confirm how the core values are alive throughout the brand’s ecosystem provides credibility and enhances the message. It’s critically important to make sure that the brand narrative itself as well as the messages across channels are congruent and true to what the brand actually says and does.

Embedding Storytelling Within the Company Culture

Storytelling must reflect the company’s culture. Owning the mission of the company and embodying it from the inside out builds a strong company culture and validates the storytelling.

When Microsoft updated its mission to reflect its commitment to empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more, it captured a feeling of empowerment that provided a clear universal truth and intangible feeling at the heart of all of its storytelling.

Empowerment is a universal feeling that everyone knows. It’s embedded in Microsoft’s culture to empower people. Everyone at Microsoft is focused on empowerment at their core, even if the tasks themselves vary.

These core values must either come from the top of the organization or be supported by the top and permeate throughout the organization. Microsoft’s employees all live the brand mission in some way. Effective brand storytelling reflects this culture as employees, partners, vendors, and anyone else who touches the brand owns the story and makes it theirs as they live out the company’s mission. They become the brand storytellers rooted in the company’s culture as they realize the core values in their day-to-day experiences.

Once an organization determines the core values of its story and commits to telling that story, the next step is to build resources that empower people to tell the story, owning it and making it their own. To this end, Microsoft has built a storytelling community with a global council. Miri builds content marketing capacity for storytellers at every level and vertical, from finance to engineering. Providing employees with resources to tell their stories yields powerful narratives and a hub of information that sales, marketing, and finance teams can access and share to build brand awareness.

Advocating for Young Women in Tech

Starting out as a Latina woman in tech wasn’t easy. In fact, it was lonely at times without a significant presence of women in the field. As Miri navigated the tech industry, she encountered other women who felt the same way. Because women represent a small percentage of the tech workforce, Miri wanted to become a resource that she didn’t have for herself—she wanted to be a friend and a coach to young women entering the fields of STEM and tech.

Empowering and inspiring young women in tech is a passion project for Miri. As a mentor in the industry, she has coached young women one-on-one for years, supporting them and guiding them so they know they aren’t alone. Her support has encouraged many women to stay in the industry and pave the way for future generations.

What Miri Does for Fun

Miri is a self-professed workaholic. She loves what she does and she loves to work! So, when she’s not working on brand storytelling, she starts working on something else for fun. She keeps many smaller projects in the background and picks one up when she’s not working on things that require immediate attention. Whenever possible she works on these projects at the beach or the pool, soaking up the fresh air and sunshine.

Her extra projects range from researching topics relevant to her work, assessing market research, or even launching a new brand! Keeping busy with work gives Miri a satisfying feeling of productivity and importance. She enjoys making valuable contributions in any way she can.

iQor Qares Charitable Giving Nonprofit Supports Employees and Communities in Times of Need

This week’s guest is Caity Morder, human resources generalist at iQor. Her career journey in human resources led her to iQor where she has been a key player in the iQor Qares 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization designed to help iQor employees in times of special need. Serving as a resource to so many people in times of unforeseen financial hardship has been a rewarding and humbling experience for Caity. In this episode, she discusses what led her to iQor, how the iQor Qares program works, examples of how it helps employees across the world in their times of need, and how individuals both within and outside of iQor can help.

The Road to iQor

Caity joined iQor in 2016 with a background in human resources and recruiting with a focus on meeting seasonal ramps in contact center environments. In her work and in her personal life, giving back to the community has always been a key element for Caity. The iQorian Values and iQor’s commitment to creating rewarding experiences that make employees smile while also supporting them in times of special need have played a significant role in Caity’s time at iQor. Her involvement with the iQor Qares nonprofit has provided a valuable outlet for Caity to connect with employees and help make a positive impact in their lives in addition to the work she does through human resources. She is embedded in the irresistible people and culture of iQor.

All About iQor Qares

iQor Qares embodies the iQorian value to give back to employees, their families, and the local communities in which they live and work. In the past, when iQor employees faced extreme hardship, iQor organized fundraisers to help. Determined to make a broader impact in the lives of about 35,000 employees worldwide, iQor decided to initiate a dedicated year-round approach to provide a faster and more unified response to employees in need.

As a result, the senior leadership team at iQor created iQor Qares, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization with its own board of directors, independent from iQor. iQor Qares provides financial support to employees, their families, and their communities facing unforeseen hardship due to natural disasters, family health issues, and more. Loren Dennis, senior vice president of operations at iQor in charge of special projects, is on the iQor Qares Board and oversees the iQor Qares program. He spoke in-depth about it on Digitally Irresistible Episode 26.

Stories of Hope

iQor Qares has helped many employees in times of special need since its creation in 2019. From providing financial support to help employees rebuild after devastating natural disasters, to providing death benefits so family members could receive proper care, to helping families recover after house fires—iQor Qares is there.

As hard as it is to look through the applications for support and hear the heart-wrenching stories of intense need, Caity is continually moved by the courage and hope she sees. She is grateful to play a role in helping employees through some of the most challenging times in their lives. Through her work, Caity has supported iQor Qares in helping many employees make it through a variety of difficult situations.

Rebuilding After Typhoon Odette

In the wake of Typhoon Odette’s crushing impacts on the Philippines in December 2021, iQor Qares helped more than 30 employees recover from widespread devastation caused by flooding, wind damage, and the like. With financial assistance from iQor Qares, employees and their families were able to complete necessary repairs to their homes’ foundations, roofs, and walls in order to get back on their feet.

Recovering From a Winter Storm in Texas

When a winter storm wreaked havoc in a part of southern Texas unaccustomed to such weather, iQor Qares was there to help meet essential needs. The below-freezing temperatures caused pipes to burst in an employee’s home, leading to significant damage. With financial assistance from iQor Qares, the employee was able to begin rebuilding their kitchen so their home could once again be habitable.

Caring for a Child After a Heartbreaking Diagnosis

iQor Qares’ support addresses all types of unforeseen special needs, including support requests due to healthcare. When an employee’s child was diagnosed with a serious health condition that required treatment, iQor Qares assisted with unreimbursed medical expenses to ensure the family was able to provide the care their child needed.

Affording Medication Necessary for Treatment

In another case, an iQor employee who was a single mom supporting and caring for five children needed help covering one month of her prescription medication costs in order to help her get back on her feet and return to work. iQor Qares was able to help cover the costs so she could afford the medication she needed to heal.

Receiving Essential Care During COVID

On Digitally Irresistible Episode 35, Kevin Anthony Paredes shared his experience with iQor Qares when he became seriously ill with COVID-19 and needed hospitalization. At the time in the Philippines, it was challenging to find available ambulances and hospital beds for treatment. His local leadership team at iQor arranged for an ambulance and found him a bed in a hospital so he could receive the medical care he needed. iQor Qares provided financial assistance with his medical bills to help him get back on his feet.

How to Apply for Support From iQor Qares

iQor Qares is committed to helping employees through challenging situations that present unique needs for unforeseen financial support. As with so many of the stories we’ve heard, Caity feels like iQor is a family committed to helping when needs arise.

For employees facing unforeseen events that present the need for financial support, they can turn to iQor Qares. Employees can visit iQorQares.com to learn more and apply. Employees are encouraged to contact their local human resources support team for confidential help with the application process and supporting documentation. Employees are not alone and iQor Qares is there to help every step of the way.

How to Donate to iQor Qares

iQor Qares welcomes donations from everyone, employees and community members alike! One hundred percent of all donations raised go directly to providing assistance to employees in need.

iQor employees can easily set up a donation commitment. It’s simple and secure. If all employees donated just $1 a month, we’d raise $35,000 every month to help our colleagues in need. Caity recommends donating the same as the cost of a cup of coffee each week to truly make a big impact in the lives of others.

iQor employees can set up one-time and recurring donations at iQorQares.com. These can be made either through payroll deductions or credit card payments. Payroll deductions are made pre-tax so your dollars go further!

Contributors outside of iQor can donate on this website, making one-time or recurring credit card donations.

5^th Annual iQor Qares Charity Golf Tournament

On May 10-11, 2022, iQor Qares will host its largest fundraiser of the year—the 5^th Annual iQor Qares Charity Golf Tournament. The event will take place at the world-renowned Copperhead Valspar Classic Golf Course at Innisbrook in Palm Harbor, Florida. One hundred percent of the funds raised will go to iQor Qares, supporting iQorians across the globe in need of financial assistance due to events beyond their control.

What Caity Does for Fun

Caity loves spending time with her family and friends, especially her nephews. She also recently became a therapy dog team with her dog, Callie. Together they visit local nursing homes, schools, and other organizations to bring comfort to those in her community. Community service is a part of who Caity is. And, spreading smiles is what she does, both inside and outside iQor.

Learn more about iQor’s digital transformation capabilities.

The Appeal of South Africa in the Customer Experience

This week’s guest is Ron Dull, founder and managing director of Lookout Advisors, a customer experience (CX) consulting practice that specializes in CX transformation and contact center optimization as well as strategic services for CX solution providers. With more than two decades of experience in CX with brands, business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, and as a consultant, Ron brings global insights and valuable perspective to his practice. In this episode, Ron discusses why South Africa is an emerging location for CX delivery, the unique benefits South Africa offers, and how impact sourcing creates positive ripple effects throughout South African communities.

A Diverse Background in CX

Ron began his career journey in CX more than two decades ago. A few years out of graduate school with a background in engineering, Ron worked for a consulting and systems integration firm. He was tasked with helping companies design their voice and data networks as they created more centralized contact centers in the 1990s.

In the beginning, Ron did very technical work for clients but within a few years he expanded to work on customer relationship management (CRM) solutions as well as self-service solutions for clients. This ultimately led to a fulfilling career consulting with companies on CX and customer care strategy and operations with midsize and enterprise organizations.

Ultimately, Ron wanted to expand his CX experience in a more hands-on role, so he joined a large customer care contact center global outsourcing company where he ran operations, managed client relationships, and performed several other functions.

After working in this capacity for a number of years, the entrepreneurial bug bit him and he formed Lookout Advisors, combining his passion for CX with his background in consulting. Lookout Advisors is a boutique CX-focused consultancy comprised of experienced professionals who focus on CX transformation and contact center optimization for global companies. He consults with companies that run their own contact centers supporting their own customers as well as businesses that provide CX services such as outsourcing firms and CX technology companies.

The Top 5 Unique Benefits of South Africa in CX

Having worked in CX in virtually every geography around the world, Ron noticed multiple unique and powerful benefits of South Africa in delivering rewarding CX for many types of companies.

These unique benefits became increasingly clear several years ago when Ron was working with a client and with the Business Process Enabling South Africa (BPESA) industry association which represents the customer care and outsourcing services industry.

Among the many advantages of bringing customer experience work to South Africa, Ron has categorized them into five primary merits.

1. South Africa Is a Low-Cost Offshore Geography for CX

South Africa is an offshore geography that offers low costs only modestly higher than traditional offshore geographies. These costs are typically significantly lower than nearshore locations with close proximity to the Americas.

2. Sophisticated and Stable Business Environment

Plain and simple, South Africa makes it easy to do business. The regulatory structure encourages investment. It has a sophisticated and stable business environment along with an infrastructure that facilitates high-quality business offerings to diverse clients. It has a world-class banking industry and an innovative technology infrastructure with widespread fiber optic network connectivity. The government and customer care outsourcing industries have collaborated to create a supportive environment to bring new jobs to the country while attracting businesses and investors.

3. Strong and Educated Labor Market

With a population of 60 million people and more than 30% unemployment, especially with the young adult population, South Africa offers a strong labor market with a high demand for jobs. It is estimated that more than 250,000 people in South Africa work in the customer care and outsourcing industry with significant room for growth to attract and retain more talent.

The South African labor market is also well educated, with high-quality primary, secondary, and university opportunities along with a number of trade schools and two-year colleges that provide talent to the customer care and outsourcing industry. Indeed, South Africa offers a valuable opportunity to attract and retain high-quality talent.

4. A Well-Distributed Population

Although there are three primary metropolitan areas in South Africa (Johannesburg Durban, and Cape Town), the population is well distributed throughout the country with several second and third-tier cities that also offer work-in-office and work-at-home employment opportunities.

5. Native English and Diverse Language Capabilities

Finally, South Africa offers strong language capabilities to build human connections throughout the customer journey. English is the native language for millions of South Africans and it is the primary language for education and business in South Africa.

Similar to the British accent, the South African accent is also a strength that many customers find appealing. Moreover, the significant European influence in South Africa presents a wide availability of other languages such as French, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Indian, and more. Because of its stability and opportunities, South Africa also attracts employees from neighboring African countries where other European languages are spoken, further increasing the language offerings and capabilities of its diverse workforce.

How South Africa Has Evolved in CX Delivery

For the past 15-20 years, South Africa has served as a well-established outsourcing destination, primarily for the European market with excellent connectivity to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany.

About 10 years ago, U.S. companies began exploring possibilities in South Africa. Over the past five years, the customer care industry in South Africa has taken off in global markets, particularly in the U.S. and Australia.

South Africa has emerged as a destination for offshore English language customer care services and in 2021 it was named the most favored offshore CX delivery location according to the Ryan Strategic Advisory Annual Front Office BPO Omnibus Survey, placing first out of 53 locations.

Today, a diverse set of global companies offer CX from South Africa, both in-house and outsourced. There’s a good balance of South African owned outsourcing firms of various sizes in locations throughout the country. This is combined with the presence of large global entities. The growth continues as new investors, companies, and outsourcers are attracted to South Africa.

Providing CX Across Industries

Although there is a presence of diverse and emerging industries turning to South Africa for CX support, there is a particularly strong presence and long-standing expertise in financial services, travel, tourism, and retail.

Much of the CX talent brings an expertise in the travel and retail industries because of the significance these industries play in the South African economy. That said, the well-educated South African labor market is skilled in providing excellent customer support to diverse clients, ranging from European retailers to local South African utility providers.

Who Should Set Up Shop in South Africa?

Although South Africa is not the right fit for CX delivery for every situation in every company, it offers many benefits for a variety of companies across industries. To evaluate whether South Africa is the right option for any given company, Ron recommends considering a few key questions.

Where Do You Want to Serve Your Customers From?

Consider onshore, nearshore, and offshore benefits. Cost, language, outsourcing providers, education, and technical capabilities are all important elements to evaluate when choosing the best location for CX offerings.

If South Africa Is the Right Fit, Should You Build, Buy, or Partner With a BPO?

If a company decides that South Africa is a viable destination for their CX offerings, the next consideration is whether they will be providing internal or outsourced CX. It is important to assess the marketplace and identify the right strategy for each operation.

Is it worth buying in South Africa to set up internal operations, as multiple Fortune 500 companies have done to service their own customer? Or, is it better to partner with an existing outsourcing firm that already operates in South Africa? This option offers varied choices, from local and regional to global players.

It is also important to consider location within South Africa, with each of the three major metropolitan areas offering different strengths and opportunities. Through it all, Ron and his team at Lookout Advisors help clients identify the right partners and vet them to determine the best fit.

Impact Sourcing to Support Communities

As part of the considerations in determining the best location and outsourcing options for CX, it is important to factor impact sourcing into the equation and its ability to create a positive effect on local communities through jobs, infrastructure, opportunities, and the economy.

Impact sourcing is the concept that CX is more than simply opening a contact center and employing individuals with competitive wages and fulfilling careers. There is a broader impact beyond those direct employees, and the ripples are felt by their families, their communities, and beyond.

This broader impact is important to consider as part of socially responsible business practices. BPOs can empower global brands to improve outcomes by providing career development and growth opportunities to individuals in areas with limited employment prospects. This carries significant weight in South Africa, for example, given the high unemployment rates and the need for work.

This impact is evident in an example Ron shares from one of his clients who is investing in a small rural city outside Kruger National Park in northeast South Africa. Although a fairly rural area, it offers several sizeable population centers well-suited to customer service with an educated workforce and strong English language proficiency. Opening a contact center in this area generates career and job opportunities for the community. But the impact extends beyond the employees and their families to include such things as technology infrastructure improvements. The city center, for example, didn’t have fiber optics but with the new contact center locating there they will have fiber connectivity in the city center, creating new technology opportunities for the entire community.

What Ron Does for Fun

Fun is all about family for Ron. With a large extended family and four children of his own (one at home and three dispersed throughout the United States), Ron enjoys much of his free time with his family.

He also has a great affinity for travelling and experiencing different cultures and places. His travel expeditions have been limited with COVID, but he looks forward to more travel in the future.

He’s also always up for the occasional run. Learn more about iQor’s digital transformation capabilities.

How AI Provides Insight Into Customer Motivations at Scale 

This week’s guest is Mary Drumond, chief marketing officer at Worthix, a leader in voice-of-the-customer technology solutions. Over the course of her career, she has developed a deep understanding of the challenges that brands face when surveying their customers to glean business intelligence and learn the motivations behind their purchase decisions or why they sometimes decide to abandon the brand. In this episode, Mary shares her insight into effectively listening to the voice of the customer while harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to do so at scale as part of a digital transformation strategy. 

Developing an Expertise in Customer Engagement 

Mary has built an expert knowledge of the value of understanding the customer’s voice, both from her perspective as the chief marketing officer at Worthix and as an entrepreneur herself. She spent the first 15 years of her career as an entrepreneur focused on building her brand, assessing the voice of the customer, and meeting their needs. 

With this strong knowledge base and a drive to continually learn more, she sold her company and moved to San Francisco in 2016. She really enjoyed marketing and decided to focus the next phase of her career on advancing the customer experience through the marketing lens. She joined the Worthix team surrounded by brilliant minds and further developed her expertise in understanding the voice of the customer. She is grateful not only for her Worthix colleagues but also for the collaborative nature of individuals throughout the customer service industry. 

Why Brands Need to Listen Effectively to Their Customers at Scale 

Mary is keenly aware that in order for a company to be successful it must be connected to its customers. She says companies exist for the sole purpose of everyone within the company working together to reach a common goal: to solve a pain point or a customer need. 

Understanding the customer’s needs is absolutely crucial to the success of any organization. And, the best way to learn the customer’s needs and expectations is to listen. Listening effectively to assess customer satisfaction can seem attainable for small operations, but the larger the business, the more challenging it becomes to listen at scale to the customer’s voice. 

Harnessing modern technology solutions enables business process outsourcing (BPOs) like iQor as well as brands themselves to listen at scale, regardless of the number of customers or markets. This supports one-on-one connections with each customer and enables brands to truly understand what matters to their customers and tailor their customer experience strategy accordingly. 

Traditional Customer Survey Methodologies Often Hinder Meaningful Results 

Technology has come a long way since the days of Henry Ford’s ability to listen to his dispersed customers. Yet, despite the availability of widespread advanced technology, many companies still struggle with listening to the voice of the customer and doing so at scale to accurately assess customer satisfaction. 

Despite tremendous strides in the digitization of soliciting customer feedback at various points in the customer journey, there is still a lot of room for growth not only in how this feedback is collected but in how we listen to and analyze it. In many instances, the systems in place don’t yield actionable feedback. Brands need deep insight into customer needs, expectations, and motivations. 

The crux involves identifying the essential need the customer is trying to solve through their interactions with a brand. To meet those needs, brands must align their value propositions accordingly with the customer’s most urgent needs. 

To gather customer feedback on customer needs, many companies have traditionally used complex systems with long questionnaires that require high levels of effort from customers.  Further, the surveys typically limit customer responses to the questions the company asks and it’s truly impossible for the company to ask all the right questions. This process involves a lot of guesswork and doesn’t yield the most insightful results. In fact, most of the data collected go unused. 

Despite best efforts, trying to empathize with customers and understand their pain points creates many blind spots in surveys because the feedback is limited to only the questions that are being asked. But what if the customer sees things in an entirely different way? 

What if the customer has needs that aren’t even showing up in the survey questions? What ends up happening is that companies extract enormous amounts of data, exhausting customers with survey requests instead of efficiently assessing customer interactions and customer needs in order to understand which pain points matter most in the relationship with the customer.  

Indeed, with complex surveys yielding troves of data, identifying what truly matters to customers to create actionable change ends up being like finding a needle in the haystack. That’s where speech analytics and dynamic surveys powered by AI technology come in. 

How AI Empowers Brands to Listen Effectively to Customers 

With antiquated and cumbersome systems that often miss the mark in identifying the true customer need, it’s time to overhaul voice of the customer technology. Sometimes the customer being surveyed or solicited for feedback doesn’t actually know how to articulate valuable insights that are relevant and actionable. 

Artificial intelligence applied to the front-end of the customer survey can help streamline surveys to yield more purposeful and individualized questions in response to customer interactions. This, in turn, produces insightful results based on the voice of the customer. This is especially helpful with concepts that customers have difficulty expressing and explaining. 

Worthix created an AI methodology based on behavioral science to truly understand customer motivations, even the intangible ones. This approach also provides insight into customer feedback and concerns that may not actually be deal-breakers that cause them to churn and abandon the brand. 

Using AI technology to deliver open-ended questions and determine follow-up questions based on customer responses provides deeper insight into customer experiences and yields shorter, more dynamic, and more effective surveys. It empowers customers to share feedback that is actually meaningful to them. This generates more actionable data to enable brands to take meaningful action that can reduce churn and improve the overall customer experience. 

This truth calls attention to impact vs. frequency, which is essential for companies to understand. Frequent complaints don’t necessarily mean the impact will cause customers to churn. AI technology can help sort through the noise of the complaints to identify the actual issues customers experience with a brand and what their true deal breakers are. Using AI technology to support churn analysis and prevention empowers brands to identify root causes and improve their customer experience. 

AI Simplifies Access to VoC for Improved CX 

How do companies assess the voice of the customer (VoC) to identify impact over frequency and prevent churn? Moreover, how can companies turn dissatisfied customers into happy and loyal customers? 

Mary uses the example of a magazine subscription client that experienced massive churn in a region of their distribution area. Customer service and VoC feedback seemed to indicate that customers were churning because the magazine arrived at newsstands before arriving in subscribers’ homes. The company was prepared to make a massive investment to improve logistics and ensure the magazine arrived at subscriber residences before landing on newsstands. 

But with the power of AI, Worthix determined that even though the number one complaint was that the magazine arrived at newsstands before being delivered to subscribers’ homes, that wasn’t the most urgent issue that needed to be addressed because it wasn’t the reason for customer churn. 

What truly caused customer churn was a complaint that ranked seventh on the list of survey responses. The seventh-place issue doesn’t typically get the most attention from executives who study the data, but it was of the most critical importance in this case. The real issue causing churn was a credit card dispute in which customers expected to pay a certain amount but were actually charged a higher amount. The solution to reducing the customer churn was simply to speak to the sales team and have them correct the selling price numbers.  

Accurately informing customers what they would actually be charged cost nothing to fix and prevented the expectation that a massive overhaul of distribution logistics would’ve mitigated the churn. 

This highlights how important it is to use AI technology in the front-end of customer surveying to listen at scale to more accurately assess customer feedback and customer sentiment. This helps brands identify customer needs and glean insights that empower decision-makers to prioritize the actions to take that boost customer engagement and satisfaction. 

Voices of CX Podcast 

Mary hosts the Worthix Voices of CX Podcast focused on the voice of the customer, providing the CX industry with access to the voices of diverse CX practitioners. She speaks to thought leaders, authors, and practitioners on the front lines creating positive customer experiences. 

She and her team recently reached a milestone with their 100^th episode and an all-time high in listeners, downloads, and streaming. They also launched a new video series based on the podcast called CX and Summary. 

The Evolution of Women in CX 

Reflecting on the evolving role of women in CX, Mary draws on research that shows the majority of people working in customer experience are women. 

What she finds alarming, however, is that most of the CX roles currently occupied by women are operational in middle to lower management positions. She finds very few women in executive CX positions responsible for decisions in customer experience solutions. 

When women tend to be empathetic, compassionate, and connected to customers on a one-on-one level, Mary thinks that should be reflected through a stronger presence of women in executive leadership roles in CX. 

With the root causes for this discrepancy going back hundreds of years, she advocates for change. She has encountered many brilliant women in the customer experience space and she goes out of her way to shine a spotlight on these amazing women in her podcast. Her focus is on helping individuals and CX practitioners to feel represented and to know there is a clear career path to leadership. 

What Mary Does for Fun 

Mary loves being active and spends a lot of her free time at the gym. She practices Olympic weightlifting as a sport, lifting heavy weights over her head. Not only does she find it incredibly exciting, but she has also applied much of what she has learned throughout other aspects of her life.  

One thing she’s learned is to constantly push her limits, knowing that if and when she fails, she will grow from it. 

Another thing she’s learned from weightlifting that has helped in her career and in her personal life is the strategy of constant practice and decreasing the weight to increase the repetitions while focusing on her technique. This reminds her that once she’s reached her limit it’s time to scale back, work on her technique, tweak it, and then go back and try it again. 

She fully embraces a growth mindset, knowing that failure is not the end—it’s a hiccup along the path to success. 

Learn more about iQor’s private CX cloud capabilities. 

Designing Employee Training Programs to Build Human Connections in Customer Service

This week’s guest is Sonia Rosario, director of operations at iQor in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Sonia oversees client programs in the insurance vertical. Known for delivering an amazing customer experience, Sonia and her team developed a unique training program to understand the customers’ needs on a personal level and provide empathetic and responsive customer service. In this episode, Sonia discusses the CX strategy her team took with their extraordinary customer service agent training program. She shares how they achieved incredible results, meeting customer needs through human connection and personalization which elevated the employee experience as well as every step of the customer journey.

Decades of Experience in Customer Relationship Building

Sonia’s career in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry began more than 20 years ago when she started as a customer service agent on an outbound dialer campaign. Over the years, she progressed through various leadership roles which ultimately landed her in her current position as director of operations. Today she is responsible for multiple insurance clients along with a client in the utilities vertical. She oversees hundreds of full-time work-at-home and work-in-office customer support employees across five centers in the United States and Trinidad and Tobago.

Customer relationship building through human interaction has been essential throughout all of her roles. Sonia has seen how connecting with employees fosters their individual growth, how partnering with clients leads to trust and success, and how understanding the customer with empathy leads to an exceptional customer experience.

Getting to Know the Customer

Sonia’s team specialized in providing customer service primarily through outbound calls in commercial verticals. In 2009, however, her team began supporting their first insurance client through friendly outbound reminder calls to elderly members. In order to best support the insurance client and the elderly customer base of their outbound Medicare program, Sonia’s team needed to truly understand the customer and their needs to provide the best customer experience. This level of understanding also elevated the customer support they were able to offer to elderly members during the annual Medicare open enrollment period.

To do this, they developed an innovative training program to create human connections with customers and understand their needs on a personal level. Drawing from iQorian values centered on customer dedication and giving back, the team learned all they could about the elderly customer base they were serving on the insurance program. Sonia and her fellow team leaders knew they had to engage the younger generation of agents to understand how speaking with customers on this program would be completely different from the interactions they had with a majority of the customers on their commercial programs.

Sensitivity Training to Strengthen Understanding

Sonia and the team developed a sensitivity training that put contact center agents in the shoes of the elderly members they were serving. They engaged all five senses to learn different aspects of how a member of the elderly community experiences the world—from potential hearing difficulties, to vision impairment, to challenges grasping a pen with arthritis, and more.

By better understanding the experiences of their customers, agents were more equipped to identify with them, be more patient, and offer more thoughtful solutions. Simple accommodations such as speaking loudly, clearly, and concisely could make a significant positive impact on the customer experience. This took on even more importance when agents knew their conversation with the customer may be the only human interaction the elderly customer had that day.

These accommodations aren’t typical intuitive solutions in contact centers when clients are generally focused on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as low average handle times (AHT). But customer satisfaction is always paramount and, on this program, moving slower and taking the time needed with each customer was essential to create a compassionate experience that fostered loyalty.

Building Relationships Through Community Service

In addition to the sensitivity training, Sonia and her team established connections with local area organizations that served the elderly community. They sought out volunteer opportunities at nursing homes and independent living centers so that each member of the customer support team could build human connections with individuals similar to those in their customer base. Everyone on the team embraced the opportunity to not only serve their community but also build relationships that would inform their approach to customer service and create experiences that made people smile.

Agents looked forward to their volunteer work with older members of their community, whether it was bingo, crafts, charity night, weekend dances or a range of other activities that supported understanding and human connection. They built real relationships with community members and looked forward to seeing them.

The sensitivity training and community service opened agents’ eyes to the lived experiences of others and generated positive results for the program. It enriched each interaction to best address customer needs and create a great customer experience that fostered brand loyalty.

The client loved the approach and was impressed by how it elevated the quality of service through personalization that made customers feel valued. They appreciated it so much that they began the same sensitivity training and community service approach with their own internal customer support agents.

Team leaders knew these proactive measures were important to promote patience and understanding with agents interacting for eight hours each day on calls with customers similar to their grandparents. Knowing that the agents may be the only person their customer spoke to that day set the tone for the kind of work they were doing. It made clear the need for agents to genuinely care about the end customer they served.

Finding Inspiration From Brave Women

In light of Women’s History Month, Sonia has reflected on the many women that have impacted her life and contributed to her focus on relationship building and human connection.

Helen Keller is one such inspiration. Sonia admires her determination to realize her dreams through hard work. Keller became the first deaf-blind person to earn a college degree when she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904.

Another woman she greatly admires is her grandmother. She emigrated from Glasgow, Scotland to the United States at the age of 17. She left her entire family to move to a new country where she didn’t know anyone, but she was determined to build a better life. With the courage and the will to succeed, she persevered and began her journey in the United States.

Both of these women have inspired Sonia to work hard, build human connections, and define her own path to success.

What Sonia Does for Fun

For Sonia, free time is all about her family. She is an all-out sports mom rooting for her two children. Whether taking her daughter to dance, cheer, or softball or supporting her son in football, baseball, and wrestling, Sonia wouldn’t have it any other way. She treasures these experiences and the memories they’re building together.

Sonia and her family are beach goers too. Living in Pennsylvania, they take every opportunity they can to make their way to the beach. Lots of good times ahead!

Learn more about iQor’s digital customer experience capabilities.

Providing Customer Experience Solutions Tailored to Business Needs

This week’s guest is Kristen Kuyatt, Ph.D., vice president of business development at iQor. Kristen represents iQor in the western United States, specifically in the Silicon Valley area of California. She has more than 15 years of experience in the BPO industry and a doctorate in global leadership with an emphasis on emotional intelligence in employee and client engagement. She layers this knowledge into all of her client engagement opportunities. In this episode, we learn the recent trends Kristen is seeing in outsourced customer experience management and digital transformation among the leading brands that she works within Silicon Valley.

The Top Three CX Trends in Silicon Valley

Work-at-Home: A big trend Kristen has experienced among Silicon Valley companies interested in outsourced customer service since the start of the pandemic is the increase in work-at-home (WAH) solutions. As a leader in outsourced CX services, the early days of COVID-19 necessitated iQor to quickly and securely adapt. iQor transitioned more than 20,000 employees from work-in-office to work-at-home environments when quarantines were mandated in certain geos. WAH solutions allow the onsite experience to be easily mirrored at the agent’s home, while boosting agent retention and customer loyalty. With robust end-point security protection, happy, skilled customer support experts scaled easily and securely to WAH environments so customers kept receiving the same great level of service.

Compliance: Within the tech and healthcare industries, compliance is a hot topic right now. iQor works closely with clients to ensure compliance in all areas, from secure customer data management to training agents in complex issues. Additionally, iQor works closely with government agencies in geos such as the Philippines and Trinidad and Tobago to ensure that our outsourced CX services comply with their mandates, including but not limited to COVID-19 directives.

Omnichannel Support: Clients are on a digital transformation journey that includes the need to offer omnichannel support to their customers as part of strategic digital CX solutions. The customer experience needs to include personalized and seamless interactions through a variety of channels such as email, chat, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered bots, SMS and more that align with customer needs. The solutions must resonate with clients and support customer engagement from all demographics, especially the tech- and social media-savvy younger groups.

The Evolution of the Outsourced Customer Experience Buying Process

In recent years, many businesses have revisited their customer experience solutions and this is evident throughout the evolution of the outsourced customer experience buying process in Silicon Valley.

Kristen notes that smaller companies tend to seek all-inclusive solutions that include an expansive committee of experts from marketing, technology, engineering, legal, and operations. Decision-makers are looking for innovation in all of these elements throughout their outsourced CX experience when working with business process outsourcing (BPO) partners like iQor.

There’s a focus on technology-enabled digital solutions that meet compliance requirements and create happy customer experiences. Businesses and their BPO partners are asking, how do we address emotion throughout the customer journey? How do we master the complexity of creating experiences that make people smile and bring moments of delight? The answers to these questions stem from an integration between customer service experience, emotional intelligence, and harnessing technology in meaningful ways.

iQor has some of the most amazing thought leaders and subject matter experts (SMEs) to strike this balance. They are able to talk tech and provide insight while also adding empathy and personality to create unique customer experience solutions personalized for each client to meet their CX needs.

The Role of Business Development for the Modern Outsourced CX Buyer

The modern outsourced customer experience buyer seeks trusted relationships with their BPO partner. Kristen has cultivated these types of relationships for years.

With a doctorate in global leadership, Kristen has been empowered in business development across all industries, but particularly with clients in the healthcare and technology industries. Clients value Kristen’s knowledge in CX and how she uses her expertise to best address their needs. Meeting clients where they’re at and offering a sort of concierge approach to their business engagements, builds connections and enables clients to speak their industry language comfortably with Kristen.

These experiences have offered Kristen enriching opportunities in her business development role as well as with the relationships she builds with SMEs at iQor. In turn, these trusted relationships facilitate connections between the SMEs and clients to enable open communication and information sharing to develop the custom CX solutions that address their specific needs.

Building trusted and loyal relationships is key with the modern buying committee in CX. Knowing the people and truly understanding client and customer needs creates myriad business engagement opportunities. These digital customer experience solutions range from personalized data and speech analytics to chat and email, and are developed in concert with clients’ needs and expectations. Kristen works with iQor SMEs to provide clients the information they need to make informed decisions.

When developing cost-effective CX solutions within a variety of budgets, trust between the client and BPO business development partner is essential. iQor’s experts see things through the eyes of the end customer and communicate directly with the client to articulate how their customers feel; this resonates with clients and creates new opportunities for growth and success.

Women in CX

Over the past five to seven years, Silicon Valley has seen an evolution of more women in leadership roles within the customer service career path, from boards of directors to executive teams.

Traditionally, roughly 80% of the demographic in Silicon Valley was male. There’s been a shift, however, and today Kristen sees women making up about 50% of the demographic in Silicon Valley. The inclusion of more women in tech has driven client engagement in customer service outsourcing and has contributed to more women excelling in leadership roles.

This shift, in turn, has led to more exciting business opportunities overall for women, which translates to more rewarding experiences throughout all levels of CX work environments as well as with the clients and customers served.

In the spirit of Women’s History Month and the essential role of computer science and digital technology in the customer experience, we celebrate the first computer programmer. Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was an English mathematician and writer, best known for her work on a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer known at the time as the “analytical engine.” She was the first to recognize that the machine had applications beyond pure calculations and she published the first algorithm to be carried out by the machine. Consequently, she’s often regarded as the first computer programmer. Her innovations set the stage for the many analytical and soft skills women bring to CX throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.

What Kristen Does for Fun

Kristen is always up for anything active. In her free time, she enjoys making the most of all that sunny California has to offer. She relishes her time spent skiing, running, jumping, and traveling during any season.

Learn more about iQor’s digital customer experience capabilities.

The Two Essential Components of Great Customer Service

This week’s guest is Jim Down, senior director of operations at iQor. Jim runs two contact center sites in the Philippines and oversees four client programs. He is responsible for the well-being of hundreds of full-time employees (FTEs). Over the course of his 19-year career at iQor, Jim’s leadership style has been built on two key pillars of customer service excellence. His consistent application of these strategies has yielded such great success he was recently recognized with the iQor Hero Award. In this episode, Jim shares the two core pillars of great customer service that have served as his North Star for nearly two decades at iQor.

Leading With Core Values From the Start

As senior director of operations at two iQor contact centers in Davao on the Philippine island of Mindanao, Jim oversees four client programs for customer service. He manages the two sites along with all other details to ensure his employees are taken care of, knowing that happy employee experiences build strong customer service teams that provide superior customer experiences that make people smile.

He works closely with the facilities team and the managers of other programs to ensure everyone has what they need to be successful. The environment he creates for his team enjoys high employee morale and well-being in support of all customers.

It has been this way since Jim moved to the Philippines in 2003. A retired U.S. Marine with a master of science degree in education, Jim brought with him a background in training and education.

Although he was a licensed teacher in the United States, when he moved to the Philippines Jim saw an open position at Cyber City Teleservices that appealed to him. It was an up-and-coming call center in the Philippines and when he interviewed with the CEO and other senior leaders, Jim was impressed by how they didn’t evaluate him on his skill set or experience. Instead, they focused on learning more about his values and how those values aligned with Cyber City’s core values.

Customer Is King and Strength Is in People

During the interview, the CEO shared with Jim two things he needed to be successful, which were the same two things the organization needed for success. His two pillars for success in customer service were (1) the customer is king and (2) our strength is in our people.

Jim knew he wanted to be part of a company that bent over backward to take care of customers and twice backward to take care of employees. These pillars built a strong customer service culture.

Jim joined the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry through Cyber City and began creating amazing experiences in the customer journey. The call center industry was relatively new in the Philippines when Jim began working for Cyber City in 2003 and he embraced the potential to make a positive impact in the employee and customer experience.

Jim managed Cyber City’s 30-day training program designed to provide basic call center skills to prepare new agents for product training, nesting, and then into production. Jim managed recruiting and training, scouring the Philippines for great customer service talent that aligned with the organization’s values and then flying recruits to the call center facilities in Clark. Cyber City provided housing for the trainees for three or four months until they were able to establish their own individual housing after discovering the area and saving a few paychecks.

Jim cared for each customer service agent and advanced their customer support skills; in turn, they became loyal employees committed to the company’s mission to provide excellent customer service.

The pillars for success were undeniably evident to Jim throughout his early experiences at Cyber City and those values continue to guide him to this day.

Jim was promoted to various positions managing quality assurance and training before becoming senior director of operations. Cyber City was acquired by iQor in 2012 and Jim’s leadership style aligned perfectly with the iQorian Values and company culture. His leadership continues to be guided by his belief that the customer is king and our strength is in our people.

Building Community With Work-at-Home Agents

These core values focused on people and customer service have had a lasting impact on Jim, guiding him through changing work and customer service landscapes. With increases in the work-at-home employee base over the past few years due to COVID, Jim has continually found ways to create environments that prioritize his people and customers. He pays extra attention to every detail with work-at-home agents to ensure their happiness and connection to iQor.

He utilizes iQor’s digital technology capabilities to unify his work-at-home and work-in-office teams so it feels as if everyone is together. Work-at-home agents have cameras providing them opportunities to connect virtually with work-in-office employees. Jim and his team also visit work-at-home agents in person to build connections, conduct friendly compliance assessments, and present performance awards such as Agent of the Month for providing superior customer service.

He cares for his employees whether they’re at home or in-office—building one collaborative team. To do this, Jim focuses on details to ensure his team experiences an environment that promotes their well-being and satisfaction. He regularly walks through his facilities and takes pictures of things that can be improved. He builds employee engagement and loyalty through relationships, talking to agents so they feel comfortable sharing whether or not they have what they need to be successful.

Jim’s team knows he takes pride in their well-being and they share with him their ideas for improvement. Jim, in turn, shares this feedback with relevant departments to guarantee details large and small promote a positive and rewarding employee experience. This supports an exceptional customer experience with each customer interaction.

Jim goes out of his way to take care of iQor’s people. If a seasonal ramp ends, Jim goes above and beyond to make sure employees from that program are moved to another program. He taps into the potential within individual employees to build their performance with improved key performance indicators (KPIs) fostering effortless customer experiences to help them realize greatness. Whenever a situation arises in which an employee needs support, Jim is there because he wants to be and he knows that when people are taken care of, they are loyal to the company in return. His efforts have not gone unrecognized and in 2021 he was presented with the iQor Hero Award.

Words of Advice

In addition to embracing his former CEO’s advice on the two pillars of customer service, Jim also draws on his experiences as a former Marine to guide his leadership philosophy.

The Marine Corps instilled in Jim core values that make for success in life as well as one’s career. These guiding virtues are honor, commitment, and courage.

Honor is doing what’s right, holding oneself and one’s team to the highest standards. It’s being responsible and fulfilling obligations, whether at work or at home.

Commitment is taking ownership. Whether it’s taking ownership of interactions with customers or how one interacts with and takes care of the people on their team.

Courage is navigating obstacles in a positive way. It’s recognizing struggles, owning them, and persevering. Things don’t always go as planned and it takes courage to course-correct and get back on track or embrace a new direction. Jim believes that when people do that, they will be successful at work and successful in their personal life.

When these core values guide our interactions with everyone in our life—family, friends, peers, bosses, customers, and others—Jim believes we can find success in every aspect of our life.

For Jim, it’s all about relationship building to ensure iQor’s people and customers are taken care of and empowered by sought-after customer service experiences.

What Jim Does for Fun

Jim enjoys lots of things in his free time, but the one thing he finds most important for a healthy work/life balance is exercising. Every day when Jim gets home, he spends an hour and a half working out. He looks forward to this because it not only feels good, but it keeps him healthy and fit and it clears his mind. It’s a part of his routine that provides space for him to reflect on the day—what went well and what he can do better tomorrow. It also supports his daily transition from work to family life, creating a great balance bridge. It’s a simple pleasure that brings him joy.

Learn more about iQor’s digital customer experience capabilities.