Tag: customer service

How Self-Service Support Can Improve Customer Interactions and Build Brand Loyalty

Posted on by Nicole Gobbo

Self-Service Support Solutions for Superior Customer Service

In today’s digital world, a key component of customer engagement hinges on fast, accurate, and readily available solutions for customers. According to Salesforce Research, 63% of consumers expect companies to know their unique expectations and needs. Our digital age necessitates instant access to information, meaning customers increasingly want digital-first conveniences for more personalized and empathetic experiences immediately without wait times or obstacles in their way. These expectations from today’s consumers require companies to innovate and provide quick, accurate responses across channels to sustain a competitive edge, maintain customer satisfaction, and improve brand loyalty. This need for instant 24/7/365 support has the potential to overwhelm employees and lead to decreased employee engagement but can also serve as an opportunity for companies to adapt and better meet the needs of their customers and staff. Self-service support solutions offer convenience—giving consumers access to rewarding customer experiences while on the go and freeing up agents to address more complex inquiries.

As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, iQor creates self-service support capabilities on behalf of our clients. In this post, we share our expertise and best practices for incorporating customer self-service options as one element of a comprehensive digital customer experience journey companies can employ as they evolve to meet and exceed customer expectations of today and into the future.

BPOs like iQor employ experts to design self-service solutions that preserve your most precious relationships with customers. Self-service capabilities facilitate online support without ongoing assistance from customer service agents to enable consumers to connect with your brand on their terms. Examples of these self-service options include digital frequently asked questions (FAQs), knowledge bases, online discussion forums, how-to tutorials, and flexible automation features such as intelligent IVRs, chatbots, and access to seamless omnichannel support so customers can escalate their issue with ease if more support is needed. Self-service features enable your customers to work on their own behalf to obtain quick and accurate answers while also allowing frontline employees to focus more time on high-value customer support engagement.

Read on to learn more about the benefits of various types of self-service customer support options iQor can personalize for your brand to create the best customer experiences your industry has to offer.

What Is Self-Service Customer Support?

Self-service customer support represents any activity in which the customer proactively acts on their own behalf without the assistance of a customer service representative. It has become a baseline customer service solution expected by most customers as their first course of action when seeking solutions to questions or concerns. It empowers customers to find answers to their questions through tutorials, FAQs, videos, knowledge bases, conversational AI and other support platforms without the need for a live support agent. These digital transformation self-service solutions typically combine automation of basic tasks like informing a customer of the status of an order, with more advanced answers that customers can access through knowledge bases, forums, videos, and the like. As part of an integrated solution to customer support, self-service options must be optimized for easy access both online and through mobile devices. Businesses don’t have to go it alone. BPOs like iQor provide integrated solutions based on experience and data to offer the most effective and comprehensive self-service approach for your brand.

The Benefits of Self-Service Customer Support

Customer self-service offers a wide range of benefits for customers, companies, and employees alike. They can be scaled and integrated into your omnichannel experience to ensure self-service options align with customers’ needs while delivering seamless interactions across channels to deliver efficient solutions so customers stay connected and engaged.

Optimized customer experience

According to Microsoft, a whopping 90% of Americans consider customer service an important factor when choosing a brand. Customers often prefer feeling empowered to answer their own questions on demand without contacting support. Self-service customer support puts them in control from anywhere, any time of day or night and doesn’t require wait times to speak to an agent.

Increased sales

Self-service solutions may also boost your sales since customers can resolve their own issues 24/7/365, making them less likely to abandon a transaction if they can quickly answer their own question. This positive experience with your brand can improve response rates to your sales offers and may prompt a positive review or recommendation. Data-driven self-service engagement builds brand loyalty through improved customer experiences that create more satisfied customers through consistent outcomes and reduced handle time, increasing Net Promoter Scores (NPS).

On the other hand, when customers only have the option to contact live agents for most inquiries, they can encounter high call wait times, particularly at peak times. This can lead to customer dissatisfaction and increase a company’s call abandonment rate.

Lower operating costs

Self-service options not only provide what customers want, but they enable you to do so for large numbers of customers at a fraction of the cost for live support. Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) can offer additional solutions when needed while live representatives enjoy more time to focus on assisting customers with complex issues, reducing unnecessary spend. These channel optimization strategies make the customer journey a win-win for your bottom line.

Improved employee morale and productivity

Self-service solutions can also help make your customer service representatives happier and more productive. Research has shown that live agents find as much as 40% of support tickets to be repetitive and mind-numbing. Implementing self-service support options and automated processes helps reduce the repetitive tasks and mundane questions human agents encounter and gives them more time to handle complex situations that require human expertise and compassion. Incorporate self-service options to deliver amazing customer experiences that make frontline employees and customers smile.

Competitive advantage

Finally, self-service solutions can help your brand remain competitive. Statista finds that 88% of consumers in the U.S. and around the world expect an organization to offer online self-service support. 

Additionally, Gartner predicts that automated personal technologies will be the default user experience delivery method by 2030. By then, Generation Z—those born between 1995 and 2009—will make up the largest portion of the customer base. More than previous generations, Generation Z digital natives have embraced the flexibility technology offers, choosing what to consume, when, and through what platform. By knowing their customer base and gathering data across channels to use automation where it matters most, brands can design better experiences to promote meaningful customer interactions.

Self-Service Platforms That Work

As one of the world’s largest business process outsourcing companies, iQor specializes in helping businesses assess data-based metrics to better understand customer preferences and needs and develop the most effective self-service options for their brand. The best self-service support strategies often include the following offerings, while also providing integrated resources backed by human support for customers to access with ease if needed. Self-service options that reduce effort and promote positive and accurate results with fast response times make for happy, satisfied customers.

1. Automated chat and messaging support

Intelligent automation customer experience solutions are an essential component of comprehensive self-service support offerings. In fact, 69% of consumers prefer to use chatbots because they deliver quick answers to simple questions. Moreover, utilizing live agents to respond to each individual customer’s digital messages is costly, inefficient, and unrealistic.

To boost your return on investment (ROI), iQor has extensive experience designing, implementing, and managing intelligent automation customer experience solutions that provide cost-effective, efficient means of helping customers self-serve to resolve their own issues. Robotic process automation (RPA) software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to handle high-volume, repetitive, or slow time-consuming tasks reduces human error and enables customer-facing employees to focus on building more rewarding customer experiences. These cost-effective virtual agents that form an integral part of your customer retention strategy include simple and smart chatbots. Although both are able to complete similar tasks, smart IVA chatbots do so with finesse and personalization. Their differences become clearer when we compare how they complete tasks.

  • Simple chatbots handle basic, routine queries. They are available through live messaging tools and can be trained to follow a script to give fast answers to FAQs. Chatbots can simulate a conversational experience to a certain extent but are ultimately constrained by having to work from a limited script—lacking the ability to make contextual adaptations and learn over time.

Examples of support a simple chatbot can provide:

    • Generic product recommendations and availability.
    • Status of returns and exchanges based on inputs from the customer.
    • How can I reset my password? Provide basic instructions.
  • Smart chatbots or Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) are more advanced AI-powered chat assistants that communicate with customers through their preferred communication channels via text or text-to-speech. Equipped with natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, IVAs are able to understand and retain context to have more productive conversations. By combining cognitive computing and analytics, they give customers personalized responses through friendly and humanlike dialogues that align with your brand. Although they can’t resolve complex tasks, they can gather information to refer to later, help human agents interface with customers, and answer simple questions.

Examples of topics an IVA chatbot can assist with:

    • Personalized product recommendations and availability.
    • When will my order arrive? What is the tracking number for this order?
    • Reset passwords—can complete the task for the customer.

Utilizing conversational AI in these ways enables your company to proactively interact with customers through their preferred channels and receive immediate responses at their convenience to drive operational efficiency at scale.

2. Email support

Asking frontline employees to reply to every email can be a taxing and error-prone process. Many emails can easily get lost, particularly after weekends, holidays, and peak seasons. 

Integrating automated help desks and ticketing solutions into your workflow can help human agents gather, organize, and track support tickets through a dashboard. Adding rule-based routing to the inquiries can automatically generate a new ticket when a customer’s self-service attempts go unfilled, seamlessly escalating the request to prompt human engagement. The ticket will contain background information with the customer’s name, email address, and the history of their self-service attempt to ensure an integrated and satisfying experience when the customer speaks to a live agent.

3. Online knowledge base

Besides directly interacting with your site through a chatbot or IVA or sending an email, customers often use your website to find answers to their questions. A strong self-service strategy incorporates a well-organized and user-friendly knowledge base to help customers educate themselves on how to use your website, app, or product.

Your knowledge base can include:

  • How-to guides.
  • FAQs.
  • Video tutorials.
  • Pre-recorded classes and webinars.
  • Free product trainings.
  • Step-by-step instructions.
  • Glossaries.
  • Troubleshooting instructions.

The knowledge base should be clearly organized and accessible. It should include:

  • Categories such as “Account Settings” and “How to Use Our App” to facilitate easy navigation to desired content.
  • A search bar to help customers locate answers instantly, even when they don’t know the overarching category.
  • Different media such as text, video, audio, and annotated images to accommodate customers’ different learning styles.
  • Good SEO to make content easily accessible through search engine queries while also boosting your site’s ranking and attracting new customers.

4. Social media support

Although social media moderation is managed by human agents, it enables customers to access your brand’s support on their terms. It equips you to resolve customer concerns quickly and engage with your followers more effectively than would be possible otherwise. With social media moderation like iQor’s, you can maintain accurate information on your social channels for customers to self-serve for essentials like hours of operation, contact information, menus, service descriptions, pictures, and so much more. It facilitates a seamless, branded customer experience through social media channels at scale.

5. Interactive and community-based discussion forums

Another self-service option is an online community or public discussion forum where customers can interact and help each other. Empowering customers who are experts on your products to answer questions in a digital community is a powerful self-service model that builds brand loyalty. These online communities can be hosted on your website or through third-party platforms.

It’s important to monitor and reinforce the discussion forum with a support team or moderators to help guide customers who may not find answers to their questions or who need assistance navigating the community. Like the other self-service solutions on this list, interactive communities and forums should offer a clear option to contact live agents when the self-service tool does not offer solutions to a customer’s particular need.

Requirements for Self-Service Customer Support

An effective self-service customer support strategy gives customers control. It offers fast access to the information they need through intuitive and accessible platforms with clear paths to a live representative or omnichannel support if needed. iQor can help you develop a strategic self-service customer support solution based on your brand, budget, and customer needs.

When developing a personalized self-service approach for your brand we assess a variety of metrics to partner with you to create a solution that brings smiles to you and your customers. If you are going to strengthen your customer support through self-service options, these are some questions to consider.

1. What resources are necessary to implement self-service customer support?

Adding self-service customer support to your business model may necessitate the addition of new resources, some of which include:

  • Utilizing customer support chatbots and IVAs.
  • Creating a knowledge base and online community of resources.
  • Producing videos and blog posts for your knowledge base.
  • Employing subject matter experts to moderate online communities and help customers help themselves.

After listing the resources needed to implement self-service, consider the impact on your budget. You may find that outsourcing self-service customer support to iQor makes the customer journey a win-win for your bottom line.

2. How many of your consumers currently use customer support channels?

If you have the budget and your customers already use multiple self-service support channels (e.g., email, online chat, existing knowledge base articles, etc.), you are ready to consider implementing self-service options. Seize the opportunity to stand out from your competitors. Provide memorable and optimized customer experiences through unique self-service channels personalized for your brand.

3. How will self-service support impact live customer service representatives?

The primary goal of self-service support is to meet the demands of the modern customer who expects to have access to support through digital methods 24/7/365. iQor can help you meet these expectations while realizing the benefits of providing the quality experiences customers seek and reducing your costs for customer care. It’s our business to set up and manage integrated customer support experiences so you don’t have to create new processes, utilize new resources or train frontline staff.

Experience the iQor Difference

This post provides insights into self-service customer support and its role in providing a great customer experience. Many customers’ first course of action is to turn to a digital tool to search for their own solution before reaching out to a live agent. Brands must meet customers on their digital platforms of choice with the information they seek. With the expanding role of digital in the customer experience regardless of age, this model of support is going to prove invaluable in the years to come.

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences through these and other support options. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

  • A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
  • A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
  • A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
  • The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
  • Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
  • The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers. 

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us directly to learn more about how we can help you create more smiles.

Ep. 33 Crypto Exchange Looks to Differentiate With Client Service

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Putting Client Service at the Center of a Unified Cryptocurrency Exchange

This week’s guest is George Kushner, founder and CEO of H2cryptO. With more than 28 years of experience in financial services and traditional finance, he is on a quest to use his expertise to expand access to cryptocurrency investing and trading. After extensive research, it became abundantly clear to him that tokenization is the future of investing, but a glaring gap in the market is hindering access to millions if not billions of people, namely client service.

Determined to fill this void in the market, George and his partners founded H2cryptO. This unified cryptocurrency exchange serves as a one-stop-shop for investing in and trading different cryptocurrencies. Through an accessible interface, it further sets itself apart by providing true 24/7 omnichannel support 365 days a year to ensure investors have access to the technical tools they need to learn and grow their investments.

The Path to Crypto

George’s career in the financial services sector began nearly 30 years ago on Wall Street in institutional fixed incomes and derivatives sales, working with some of the largest and most sophisticated investors in the world. George worked for more than 12 years with clients ranging from central banks and pension plans to hedge fund managers before pivoting his focus.

For the next decade, George dove into the world of alternate investments, focusing on capital raising for some of the world’s largest private equity, real estate and hedge fund managers. After years in alternate investments, George shifted to traditional finance and private banking. With nearly 30 years of growth in financial services and capital markets, George had a solid grasp on global econometrics and trading before embarking on an extensive knowledge quest to understand cryptocurrency from the ground up.

The Eureka Moment: Cryptocurrency Is the Future

George began his journey with cryptocurrency in 2015 when asked about Bitcoin while working for the investment management firm BlackRock in Manhattan. Bitcoin established the world’s first decentralized digital asset by using blockchain technology to create a decentralized digital asset managed across a network of computers instead of by a single entity.

Unlike traditional currencies, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin don’t have a country’s government backing them as fiat currency does, a central bank, interest rates, or a history of exchange rates.

Despite his initial skepticism, George researched all there was to know about this newly emerging investment and trading superpower. Starting at the foundational level, George began by developing a deeper understanding of the technology behind cryptocurrencies, learning the ins and outs of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. After hundreds and hundreds of hours of research on the power of the blockchain and decentralized finance, George discovered how cryptocurrency was on a path to change the world.

Studying the Fragmented Cryptocurrency Landscape

George describes today’s cryptocurrency landscape as a fragmented ecosystem for investing in and trading digital assets. Unlike traditional finance where firms can usually invest in various asset classes, cryptocurrency has a decentralized exchange environment. This means that investors typically need to access one exchange to buy and sell crypto, another to purchase non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and yet another for staking or borrowing and lending, for example.

There is a rapid escalation of hard assets being securitized, but it’s often a piecemeal do-it-yourself endeavor for crypto investors in this decentralized environment. Left to manage their own cryptocurrency investment strategies, jumping from one service to the next, crypto investors and traders can face challenges throughout this process frequently without true client support options.

The Problem With Doing It Yourself

We do it ourselves in so many elements of our lives, from fixing the car to tinkering with the plumbing. So, what’s the difference when it comes to investing in and trading cryptocurrencies? The painful difference is that we can’t simply pick up the phone and call in an expert to save the day if we make an error. One error in do-it-yourself cryptocurrency investing can cause an investor to lose that money forever. This can be especially risky for beginners in the cryptocurrency landscape.

George’s first-hand experience learning about cryptocurrency as a seasoned financial services professional provided him unique insights into the problems in need of solving. There was no one to turn to with technical questions, and this was not a one-off experience.

Shocked by these glaring issues when he first began trading cryptocurrencies and learning the problems other investors faced, a gap became clear: client service and support is virtually nonexistent in the current crypto exchange environment.

Solving the Cryptocurrency Investment Problem

The convoluted methods of investing and trading through various cryptocurrency exchanges combined with scarce technical client support have added to trepidations associated with cryptocurrency, contributing to a relatively low global adoption rate for this type of investment. Lack of understanding about cryptocurrency is a significant reason why the community of cryptocurrency investors is limited to about 220 million out of 8 billion people worldwide. Despite the years that have passed since cryptocurrency technology was invented in 2009, crypto is still in its infancy, comprising a small percentage of global equity.

George’s first-hand experiences, coupled with his deep financial knowledge, gave him the vision and practical know-how to make filling this gap a reality. With the need identified, George and his partners ventured to create a user-friendly exchange platform to address the cumbersome and fragmented trading environment investors often encounter with cryptocurrency.

At the heart of H2cryptO’s exchange is client service to facilitate better cryptocurrency trading and investing experiences. This sophisticated yet simplified interface makes investing and trading in cryptocurrency easy with options in English, Mandarin, and Spanish. The trading platform is accessible online and through a mobile app, both of which are designed with two-factor authentication (2FA) and multiple levels of security to ensure safe transactions.

H2cryptO is ideal for both beginners who want to make their first investments in cryptocurrency and experienced traders alike. Through an intuitive interface, investors can simply select from pre-determined denominations of currency or tokens by clicking on clear buy/sell buttons or they can customize their own token amount. The H2cryptO trading platform also offers traders more technical analyses of each crypto asset and trading volume through sophisticated modern charting capabilities.

The Power of Client Service

The need for support became abundantly clear to George. He was shocked by the widespread dearth of client support across cryptocurrency exchanges when he began crypto trading and investing. He heard horror stories from cryptocurrency investors and clients who were locked out of their accounts or couldn’t access their money or make certain selections and there was no one for them to turn to on the exchange they used.

To this end, H2cryptO was developed to provide a better way for investors from all walks of life to access the market. Its differentiated strategy through unification and client service is improving the future of cryptocurrency exchanges and how crypto is traded.

H2cryptO’s cryptocurrency exchange platform removes the fear of the unknown from trading and offers client support to its clients 24/7/365. Its service-centric approach offers a solution to investors reluctant to get involved with the goal of making H2cryptO the preferred exchange for cryptocurrency investors and traders.

Through seamless and easy omnichannel support, clients can choose the mode of communication that works best for them at any given time. Crypto investors can connect with H2cryptO on their own terms whenever, wherever. Whether it’s live chat, email, or voice, clients can receive answers to their questions in real-time.

By empowering clients to choose the mode of interaction they value most, H2cryptO can stay connected to its clients and provide the support they need. This support utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to streamline service across various channels of communication, combining human interactions with purposeful technology to create the most efficient and effective client experience possible.

Moreover, with data from omnichannel offerings all in one place, H2cryptO can better understand client behaviors and needs to make informed decisions on delivering the best investor experiences possible to optimize performance.

The Future of Cryptocurrency

Cyber trading of cryptocurrencies is still in its beginning phase and George believes we will likely see broad global adoption of trading in cryptocurrencies over the next five years as more cryptocurrency regulation takes shape. Indeed, George believes the digitization across assets is ultimately the future and everything will eventually be tokenized, from artwork to real estate.

Cryptocurrency offers people control over their financial well-being, regardless of how much they are able to invest. It has the potential to move beyond tech-savvy investors and act as the great equalizer to tackle the disadvantages felt by the unbanked and underbanked populations. This is significant considering globally 31 percent of adults are unbanked.

Crypto is available to all and is becoming increasingly accessible every day. By providing a streamlined interface and convenient client support, H2cryptO is helping to democratize the future of crypto investment.

George and his team identified a void in the market and have addressed it through an intuitive exchange that improves access to cryptocurrency investing and trading while providing comprehensive client service to increase confidence and boost outcomes. Through simple, equitable access and client service, H2cryptO’s innovations are designed to make it an exchange of choice for crypto investors and traders.

What George Does for Fun

When not working, George enjoys exercising and reading. He is a voracious reader of nonfiction, especially focused on financial services, cryptocurrency, blockchain, and the like.

Learn more at hello.h2crypto.io and sign up to receive information about this next-generation cryptocurrency exchange.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

The Role of Intelligent Virtual Agents in Customer Service

Posted on by Bernie Borges

As the world becomes increasingly digitized, many forward-looking businesses have started deploying intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) in their customer service delivery model. iQor has extensive experience designing, implementing and managing intelligent automation customer experience solutions for brands. We’re sharing our expertise and best practices on IVAs in this post.

IVAs are artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chat assistants that give customers personalized responses by combining cognitive computing and analytics. Unlike chatbots, which follow a given script, IVAs start humanlike, context-based dialogues to reach out to customers. For instance, if a customer enters an order number and asks a question about the order, the IVA will save this information so it can refer to it later in the conversation.

IVAs offer many benefits. They’re cost-effective, efficient, and they form an integral part of your customer retention strategy. IVAs can also help human agents interface with customers and improve customer service and loyalty. Additionally, they can be integrated with human agents through Customer Experience as a Service (CXaaS), a cloud-based solution that empowers organizations to deliver a cost-effective and hyper-personalized customer experience.

Read on to learn more about how IVAs work, how they can improve customer service, and how you can start integrating IVAs with human agents.

How an Intelligent Virtual Agent Works

An intelligent virtual agent is an AI virtual assistant that leverages various AI technologies to understand customers’ concerns. Using natural language processing (NLP) technologies, IVAs can understand answers that they haven’t been explicitly programmed to understand. That’s because NLP technologies — which include natural language understanding (NLU), text-to-speech, transcription, and speech-to-text — enable IVAs to find insights and meanings in spoken and written conversations. They also empower IVAs to understand the meaning of conversations without a predefined syntax and build their knowledge base.

Deep learning, speech recognition, and machine learning also help IVAs build up a large vocabulary, understand different accents and colloquialisms, and provide correct and accurate answers to customers.

Because they’re powered by so many different types of advanced AI technologies, IVAs can understand:

  • Free text
  • Speech
  • Multiple-choice selection of answers

What IVAs are used for

IVAs are used to answer and resolve simple customer requests. They come in two forms:

  • Messenger apps: This form is the most common. It’s the chat box that pops up at the bottom of your screen when you land on a website.
  • Virtual customer service agents: These IVAs give interactive voice responses during customer calls. 

How an IVA can reduce operating costs

An intelligent virtual assistant can help you reduce operating costs by:

  • Reducing wait times for calls. Without IVAs, your call volumes can get increasingly high, which will lead to call abandonment and frustration for your customer. Some customers may even give up on your brand due to long wait times. To prevent customers from abandoning and get them to continue interacting with your company, you could deploy IVAs to engage with them. Giving people instant answers and possible solutions will significantly improve the customer experience.
  • Automating repetitive tasks that don’t require human ingenuity. IVAs can deal with routine tasks and inquiries to give human chat agents more time and energy to deal with more pressing issues. This frees up more time and resources for agents to address customer questions and concerns that require more effort to answer and resolve. In other words, IVAs accelerate workflows.
  • Acting as assistants for agents. If an IVA can’t resolve an issue, it can gather key information from customers and pass that along to human agents.

Ways That IVAs Help Human Agents Interface With Customers

Although IVAs can do a lot of the things that human agents can, they don’t replace human agents. There are still a number of things that only human agents can do. These include resolving complex issues that require empathy and compassion. In such scenarios, IVAs act as assistants for human agents and help human agents become augmented agents. 

Here are some ways IVAs can help human agents become better ambassadors for your brand:

  • Keep human agents in the loop: As mentioned above, an IVA can gather and pass vital customer information on to live agents. For example, if a customer wants to talk to a human agent about a warranty on her laptop, she can leave her order number with the IVA. The IVA will then pass the order number and a summary of her concern on to a human agent who has the skills, empathy, and compassion to help the customer understand her warranty better. 
  • Show human agents key metrics: Unlike chatbots and virtual assistants (VAs), IVAs have access to an entire ecosystem of software, services, data, and products. They also understand how these parts interact and how customers have interacted with them so far, thanks to machine and deep learning. This means human agents can use IVAs to:
    • Get a better and more accurate understanding of how customers have been interacting with the business so far
    • Develop a strategy to attract and retain clients based on existing statistics

How Intelligent Virtual Agents Improve Customer Service and Loyalty

IVAs can also improve customer service and loyalty. 

Due to their conversational AI capabilities, IVAs can attract and retain customers by creating positive, helpful experiences that stick in people’s minds. Think about that helpful store employee, museum guide, or IT professional who wants to guide customers to more resources. IVAs are like that, only they can work 24/7.

By creating these memorable experiences for customers, IVAs can help you improve your service design. Service design is based on the simple idea that customer service excellence is the most important concern when delivering a service or product. By putting your customers’ concerns and feelings at the forefront, you’ll be able to offer value and promote your brand every time you interact with customers. 

Integrating IVAs With Human Agents for CXaaS

Another way you can use IVAs to your advantage is to integrate them with human agents for CXaaS.

CXaaS is a cloud-based holistic solution for the design, planning, and implementation of activities that make up the customer experience. Specialty service providers such as iQor specialize in managing such cloud-based solutions for brands at scale. CXaaS solutions combine automation with customer experience (CX) strategy and data integration. In other words, CXaaS is the backbone of digital transformation. It’s not just a patchwork of the newest technologies — it’s also a foundational shift to digital. CXaaS deconstructs and re-imagines CX to ensure customer satisfaction.

What makes CXaaS special?

CXaaS leverages AI technology and massive amounts of customer data to give you a deeper understanding of customers’ specific needs in real-time by providing analytics to gather and analyze customer data, automating simple employee and customer tasks, and segmenting customers to give them personalized experiences. It also helps you create a CX roadmap that smooths out the customer journey and helps you initiate tools like automated IVAs, customer self-service apps, and proactive alerts to improve CX and customer engagement.

CXaaS also makes your brand future-proof. After you’ve created a CX roadmap and enhanced customer interaction and engagement by using CXaaS’ actionable insights, you can use CXaaS tools to expand your brand to other customer channels.

How does CXaaS work?

CXaaS comes with critical components for intelligent virtual assistants that you can integrate with human agents:

  • Online engagement: CXaaS lets your IVAs respond to customers immediately through text or text-to-speech. This allows you to keep your customers engaged, even if you can’t solve their problems immediately.
  • Personalized services: CXaaS tools let you and your agents create hyperpersonalized experiences for different types of customers. This will make customers feel cared for, so they’ll be more likely to visit your site again.
  • Cloud computing: Cloud computing makes everything more flexible and accessible. Instead of working from contact centers, your live agents can work from home and use screen sharing, Google Docs, and other cloud-based apps to communicate with customers.
  • Detailed metrics: CXaaS solutions come with detailed messaging and voice analytics to gather insights for improvement. Your human agents can access these metrics to determine:
    • Ways to improve CX
    • Prevent bad CX from happening again
    • Make adjustments to IVAs if they aren’t getting the results you want
  • Creative omnichannel experiences: CXaaS will help your IVAs and live agents reach your customers on the channels and platforms they use the most, whether it be Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or WhatsApp.

Experience the iQor Difference Today

All in all, intelligent chatbots like IVAs are a future-proof, cost-effective part of your digital customer experience strategy. IVAs can help your brand compete and stand out among your competitors and ultimately build more loyalty. Powerful, streamlined, and intuitive, IVAs can be used alone, with human agents, or as part of a full-suite CXaaS solution.

If you’re interested in improving your brand’s customer experience, consider working with iQor.  We help brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. We offer the following: 

  • A diversified technological suite that maximizes and scales performance across multiple geographies.
  • A secure private cloud platform that extends the call center experience into remote agents’ homes. This lowers costs while boosting customer satisfaction and agent loyalty.
  • Work-from-home solutions that blend IVAs with on-site and remote agents.
  • A partnership approach. Besides our agents, our Business Development Executives, C-Level Executives and Data Scientists will work with you to provide a consultative partnership focused on your success.

Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? Learn more by listening to our podcasts. If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, you can contact us directly to learn more about how we can help you create more smiles.

Ep. 30 How iQor Launches a New Customer Program Implementation

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Project Managers Are Focused on Our Customer’s Success  

This week’s guest is Maribel De Leon, Sr. Director Customer Integration Team. Maribel has an extensive background in the BPO industry, most notably in project management, which is the heartbeat of a BPO business. She has been a project manager (PM) and now as the Sr. Director of the Customer Integration Team, she leads the team of PMs. In this episode, we discuss what new customer implementations look like, the role of the PM, and most importantly how they ensure success for our clients. 

Maribel has nearly 20 years of experience in the BPO industry. She was a project manager for several years, where she honed her customer implementation skills. Her experience is very valuable and as such, she was very instrumental in building the new customer implementation process at iQor.  

The focus of each PM is to execute the client’s vision to ensure the client’s success. On each new client kick-off call, the PM asks the client to articulate what defines customer success in the customer experience program we’ll be managing. These conversations extend beyond what is written in the statement of work (SOW). These kickoff calls include all key stakeholders from the client and from iQor including representatives from workforce management, training, operations, IT, legal, and sales. This conversation allows the entire iQor team to gain a deep understanding of the client’s goals and the resources needed to achieve them. 

New Client Program Implementation 

When a PM is kicking off a client program, it could be a new customer care program for an existing client who is expanding their use of our outsourced customer experience services, or it could be for a new client just getting started with iQor. Maribel says the process does not change much in either case. When it is an existing client, the PM is the same individual to maintain continuity with relationships and familiarity with the client’s business. During the kickoff call, the scope of the program is discussed in detail. PMs regularly leverage their previous experience in disciplines such as HR, Operations, or IT to discuss solutions that may include tools and technologies such as a self-service IVR or some other form of intelligent automation. She cited an example of a client for whom we are building a custom CRM solution. PMs recognize when there is a need that can be addressed by a digital solution within our portfolio and raise a discussion about it.  

Whatever it Takes Collaboration Mindset 

Sometimes a client has unique circumstances that call for a unique collaboration between us. Maribel shared an example of a client who was transitioning to iQor from another BPO. The client asked iQor to project manage the transition. The iQor PM assumed dual responsibilities including managing the new client project as well as the transition of activities from the incumbent to iQor, which the client appreciated as above and beyond collaboration.  

Maribel shared another example of a client who launched a new healthcare offering that is in high demand which needed a lot of customer service out of the gate with the initial launch of their offering. Within 72 hours of the launch in the summer of 2021, the iQor customer implementation team launched with 75 customer care agents to handle the demand. Since the initial launch, their offering has been well received, creating more demand for customer support staff resulting in an expansion to more than 500 call center agents on the frontline responding to customer interactions. The success of this program is attributed to the collaboration between the PMs, the Ops team, and the client.  

Leading Project Managers 

Maribel’s extensive project management experience and deep knowledge of new customer implementation processes guide her to lead the PMs on her team with a consistent focus on helping the client achieve their goals. The client’s success is always the main focus of the PM beginning with the kickoff call. PMs collaborate with the operations team to deliver on the client’s KPIs drawing on their own background in HR, IT, etc., to meet the client’s expectations. Additionally, PMs are always advocating for the client to help meet their customer experience goals.  

What Maribel Does for Fun  

Maribel spends a lot of time with her two sons on the soccer field and basketball courts, which she enjoys greatly. She also has rekindled her love of knitting during the pandemic. She says it’s a terrific way to unwind.  

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 29 Digital Transformation Starts with Customer Experience

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Your Customer is on Their Own Digital Transformation Journey

This week’s guest is Howard Tiersky, Wall Street Journal best-selling author and founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency. His latest book is Winning Digital Customers – The Antidote to Irrelevance.  IDG says that Howard is “One of The Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today.” The Digitally Irresistible podcast is focused on the integration of digital technology and customer experience. Hence, this episode features Howard’s thought leadership on the premise that digital transformation starts with customer experience.

Howard began his career in theater and quickly got involved in the technology side of production. He became immersed in it and soon found himself consulting for businesses in the 1990s on digital strategies. Over the last twenty years, he has consulted with companies such as Airbus, GE, GM, Office Depot, NBC, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and others guiding them in their digital transformation strategy.

Howard says that today’s most successful companies are aligned with their customer’s digital transformation. He observes this across several industries in his client base with patterns common across large enterprises that are challenged in driving transformation.

A Proven Approach to Digital Transformation

Howard says his approach is not the only approach to successful digital transformation, but it is proven to work. It starts with a binary perspective of the challenge.  

The first layer starts with understanding that your customer is undergoing a digital transformation of their own. All consumers have an increasingly digital lifestyle. We shop, plan vacations, and connect with friends digitally.

The other layer is internal. Every business needs to know how to transform to stay relevant to the customer. About fifteen years ago, Sears was the number one retailer in the U.S., representing 1% of GDP. Today Sears has just a few hundred stores compared to more than 30,000 stores in the height of their glory. Sears didn’t adapt to the changing behavior of their customer fast enough. This layer is about understanding how to be more relevant to your customer. That’s why the subtitle of his book is The Antidote to Irrelevance.

What is Meant by The Customer Experience?

The customer experience is everything the customer experiences when they interact with your brand. It starts with your marketing. Customers see your ads, pass by your store, hear about you from a friend, read a review, and use your website or your mobile app. Everything a customer does in the context of your product or service gives them a reason to interact. The entire customer journey is often made up of many touchpoints, some of which you can control and some you cannot. Howard says that improving the customer experience is the single most important thing any business can do to impact success.

Omnichannel Customer Experience

We know the biggest trend in customer experience is the use of digital channels to interact with the brands they buy from, often referred to as the omnichannel customer experience. Howard’s book explains the “strategic customer experience model.”

The model enables executives to architect the customer experience in a manner that explains why it’s important to the business to get the funding needed to deliver ROI in CX. It explains how the customer experience delivers business results.

The model answers the question what difference does customer experience make to the business? Start by looking at your company’s revenue and profit goals. Then, examine what are the causes of the results? Consider how we can get customers to behave the way we want them to behave to create the results we seek.  

The Psychology of Customer Behavior

Customer behavior is driven by the same two things that drive human behavior: thoughts and feelings. We’re all consumers. We think we need a product to meet a need and we consider how it makes us feel when the need is met. The business strategy tied to this psychology is to determine what are the thoughts and feelings our customers have that influence their behavior with our business?

If you can create experiences that produce the thoughts and feelings which result in the behavior that results in the purchase outcome we seek, we stay relevant with the customer and enjoy success. For example, homeowners need insurance to protect against catastrophic events such as fire or inclement weather. A common feeling associated with a homeowner’s insurance policy is peace of mind.

It takes research to determine the thoughts and feelings of your customer. For example, if you’re a provider of homeowner’s insurance, research what thoughts people have about companies in this space. Research what emotions they feel when planning to purchase homeowner’s insurance. Once you have completed research, the creative process begins to produce ideas to influence those thoughts and feelings and test them to learn how they impact the customer’s behavior.

When the people who make these decisions determine which touchpoints influence the customer’s behavior this insight has the potential to drive the desired business results.

Maximizing the Opportunity

Your customer research should also help you understand where the customer experiences friction in their journey with your brand. It’s critical that stakeholders internalize the importance of customer experience to achieve the company’s goals. Embracing proven practices such as design thinking and agile dev-ops can enable companies to go from understanding customer behavior to creating the kind of experiences that customers desire. New ideas should be tested.

Howard points out that companies are made up of people and they need to have the right people on board through good hiring and training on practices such as services-based architecture, design thinking, and agile dev-ops.

Howard’s book: Winning Digital Customers – The Antidote to Irrelevance is available wherever you buy books. You can download a free chapter at his website: https://winningdigitalcustomers.com/

Howard’s Passion for Scuba Diving

What Howard does for fun is adventurous. He is an avid scuba diver. He has five kids, most of whom follow in his footsteps. His 19-year-old is certified and has traveled the world with him to explore deep waters. He describes scuba diving as “flying underwater.” That’s a transformative experience of its own.  

Learn more about iQor’s digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 28 The Three Pillars of Digital Transformation in the Customer Experience

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Keeping the Agent at the Center of Digital Transformation in Customer Experience

Today’s featured guest is Tarn Shant, Senior Vice President, Transformation and Governance at iQor. Tarn leads a team of digital customer experience experts, engineers, and security analysts focused on building out the technology infrastructure by which iQor delivers outsourced customer services for our clients.

Tarn has been in the BPO industry for more than twenty years. He began his career as an agent handling customer phone calls. This background inspires Tarn to keep the agent at the center of the conversation when planning technologies that enable them to deliver great customer service.

As Tarn’s career has progressed, he’s held different roles achieving a Certified Black Belt Six Sigma along the way. Many of his roles were business-centric responsibilities while leading large-scale operations. About seven years ago he got the opportunity to move into technology, which he embraced.

Earlier in 2021, Tarn was heading up infrastructure and operations technology. Around the middle of 2021, he got the opportunity to lead transformation and governance. His team is devoted to helping customers optimize the CX experience for their end customers.

iQor’s Approach to Digital Experience Transformation

Tarn’s team is focused on deploying technology that results in a great customer experience along with a happy and productive contact center agent. Their approach to building CX technology is built on these three pillars.

Call Deflection

This entails creating an end customer experience that is as effective as possible through self-service to reduce the chance of a customer calling to speak with an agent to resolve simple questions such as “where is my shipment?” This can be achieved through intelligent automation such as IVR technology, chatbots, in-app messaging, etc. The result is a great experience for the end customer that also benefits the agent by resolving simple questions before they get to an agent through a voice call. This allows agents to get more fulfillment from their customer interaction by helping them solve more complex issues.

Digitization of the infrastructure that enables the CX experience.

Tarn is extremely proud of the iQor private CX cloud. It provides stability and scalability that delivers great value for our clients and for our business.

He explains further that we are moving toward a hybrid cloud that enables us to choose workloads that can be executed better in a public cloud, and keep certain workloads on our private cloud, within our data centers. We are accelerating the hybrid cloud model because it’s paying dividends for our clients.

The Agent Experience

Every decision we make considers the impact on the contact center agent. We ask how will this technology impact the agent? It starts with the hiring process.

Once an agent is hired, the onboarding process is all about training the agent. There are technologies that help agents train faster, reducing their learning curve. Once training is completed, the focus is ensuring that we enable them to perform well. Agents want to be productive, meeting the KPIs established by and for our clients.

Agents benefit from tools such as chatbots, knowledge management tools, speech analytics and AI-powered coaching as well as feedback from their supervisors. The combination of these tools and the human supervisor element enables our agents to perform at a high level of performance and job satisfaction.

The iQor Differentiator is Speed and Security

Tarn points out that successful execution comes down to speed and security. When it comes to speed, he shares an example of a client who had a need to stand up 500 agents in 7 days. Due to our established technology infrastructure coupled with our robust and proven recruiting processes, we got it done, much to the thrill of the client.

Naturally, clients want to know that our customer care service delivery is secure. In today’s hybrid CX delivery model where some frontline staff are located in an iQor facility and others are work-at-home agents, security is paramount. Tarn explains our approach to data security is partnering with best-of-breed partners such as Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, NICE and Thinscale to deliver endpoint security that scales.

He ensures that his staff gets proper training, so they are up to speed on the technology ensuring effective deployment of secure CX service delivery regardless of an agent’s location. Collaboration with our partner’s security team ensures the right controls are in place for us to deliver highly secure customer service to our client’s end customers.

Balancing People with The Technology Infrastructure

Another element that exists as a layer above the four pillars is change management. As technology is planned, Tarn works closely with his team to ensure that cultural change is inclusive so that everyone is part of the common story.

For Tarn, it’s always been about people, making sure everyone understands what they are trying to achieve. People ask is each technology initiative aligned to the company goals? Investing in people’s skills development, giving them the proper tools and an environment where they can share their ideas and flourish is an important part of the culture. He regularly reaches out to frontline staff to have skip-level meetings to give them an opportunity to be heard.

Another important consideration is technology training. Whenever we sign up for a new technology, we ensure the partner offers training directly or through an authorized partner to train our team.

What Tarn Does for Fun

Tarn started playing tennis for exercise and fun during COVID. Since he lives in the northeastern U.S. where outdoor tennis is not available six months of the year, he also enjoys going for long walks and listening to podcasts to stay up-to-date on topics of interest.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 22 Three Reasons NICE Powers iQor Global Workforce Management Solutions

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Workforce Management Enables Operational and Human Capital Efficiencies

David Wasserman is in Product Marketing and Sales Enablement at NICE, a global provider of next-gen digital customer experience technology enabling companies like iQor to maximize the operational efficiency of front-line employees responsible for customer interaction. This episode discusses three reasons iQor selected NICE as our technology partner in workforce management (WFM) solutions.

David is in the portfolio marketing group, responsible for brand storytelling, helping customers achieve better engagement with NICE solutions. He also helps sales teams articulate the brand story clearly, allowing customers to understand how NICE solves their business problems.

iQor’s WFM Evolution

iQor manages millions of interactions between agents and customers in many different circumstances around the globe. We previously managed a significant percentage of our customer care teams on a workforce management solution across our 50+* contact centers. Still, some employees could not easily be scheduled because of system limitations and scaling issues. Meanwhile, iQor was adding thousands of employees per year, increasing pressure on our WFM capabilities. 

When the pandemic disruption occurred, more than 18,000 thousand iQor employees suddenly became work-at-home employees, putting more pressure on our WFM capabilities.  

iQor searched for a WFM solution to address the pain points of size and scale while also providing mobile access and improved reporting for supervisors and managers.

We needed a workforce management system that could 1) allow for maximum operational efficiency, ensuring the right amount of people are staffed at the right times to deliver excellent customer experiences, and 2) ensure that agents are engaged, allowing for a smooth work-life balance.

The WFM system must also understand customer experience outcomes and forecasting outcomes, allowing iQor to manage our business efficiently and meet the KPIs we need to meet for our clients.

We determined three primary criteria for our WFM partner selection:

A Centralized & Unified WFM Solution 

When iQor moved thousands of employees to a work-at-home model, the traditional peer-to-peer interaction was shifted from in-person to virtual. We needed to extend the as-usual capabilities for agents to be happy.

One essential element of contact center agents’ morale is the ability to manage their schedules. When agents want more time scheduled or time off for vacation, the NICE WFM mobile app provides agents 24/7 access. The system decides the best time for agents to work and take time off, and it does so in an employee-friendly way.

WFM Should Provide a Platform for RPA 

We needed robotic process automation (RPA) to eliminate mundane tasks to allow employees to focus on value-added tasks. The pandemic accelerated the need for agents to handle customer interactions in higher quantities and often under emotional circumstances. Enabling agents to eliminate “cut and paste” activities is key to empowering agents to manage meaningful customer engagements at a higher level of helpfulness for more timely results. ‘Workforce Management-as-a-Service’ (WFMaaS) powered by NICE enables iQor to leverage the NEVA Robotic Automation Platform to identify manual data tasks that can be automated to improve employee and customer satisfaction. 

RPA drives improved efficiency of contact agents’ time while relieving stress. The job becomes more of a knowledge job, and it is more fulfilling to the agent. Workforce management and RPA have enabled both customers and agents to have a more satisfying experience.

Enable iQor to Deliver WFM as-a-Service 

iQor delivers a service that is in demand known as Workforce Management as a Service. Partnering with NICE enables us to leverage their platform by adding our in-house expertise in customer care delivery for clients who don’t want to manage their own contact center operations. This allows iQor to enter into new client relationships through WFMaaS and expand existing client relationships.

iQor Wins Judges Choice Award from NICE  

Each year NICE puts on the Interactions Live (virtual) event inviting its 25,000 customers around the globe. In May 2021, NICE recognized winning organizations for driving innovative customer interactions resulting in next-gen, digital customer experiences. iQor received a Judges Choice Award for successfully deploying NICE’s enterprise-wide solution across 200+ clients, 21,000 employees, 50 global contact centers, and a sizable and growing work-at-home platform during the pandemic. 

What David Wasserman Does for Fun

David combines fitness and his vegan diet to create a healthy and enjoyable lifestyle which he points out is very gratifying in pandemic times.

Learn more about NICE workforce management solutions.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

*As of November 2023, iQor has 40+ contact centers located in 10 countries worldwide

Ep. 21 Becoming a Top Certified Trainer Against All Odds

Posted on by Blake Graves

Helping Others Succeed Motivates Top Certified Training Certification

This episode features Stephon Griffin, a certified trainer who has shown remarkable initiative and results in his four years at iQor. In his first role, Stephon proposed a solution that was approved and implemented under his leadership. It is still delivering phenomenal results. In this episode, we discuss what inspired him to propose this solution, how he got it approved and implemented, and how he became a Top Certified Trainer at iQor.

Stephon is located in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2018 Stephon was employed at another company, and he was ready for a new challenge in his young career. He noticed an ad on Facebook posted by iQor. After applying, he met his future manager over a phone interview, who made a quick impression on him. On the second interview, he was shown the facility in person and was offered the position on the spot. He later learned that his manager was exploring Stephon’s potential to grow and develop as a leader.

Stephon’s new manager taught him how to be an effective leader of customer care employees. He learned how to develop people who can grow in his absence. This approach to leadership changed his mindset about modern leadership practices. He came to understand that career development comes in many different forms.

Helping People Be Their Best

As an Operations Supervisor, Stephon reviewed the current processes used to measure the client customer experience program’s success. He studied key performance indicators (KPIs) and recognized room for improvement. He came up with the idea that would become a program called the Agent Mentor Program. He worked on his new idea over an entire weekend. Stephon is that type. When he gets excited about an idea that he believes can impact many people, he dives in with both feet.

While devoting a weekend to writing the business plan for his program idea, he anticipated the questions he could receive from his leadership team. He presented his plan on a Monday morning to his manager. The response was an overwhelming approval to go ahead with the program under his leadership. This vote of confidence helped to skyrocket Stephon’s own confidence. He appreciated the belief demonstrated in him by his leadership team. His leaders never micromanaged him, giving Stephon full authority to roll out the program from A to Z.  With the go-ahead to roll out this Agent Mentor Program, Stephon extended many opportunities to his coworkers.

The Path to Trainer Certification

One day, a training manager asked Stephon to run a seven-day training program in her absence. He enjoyed the experience so much that at the end of the week, he learned more about the journey to becoming a certified trainer at iQor.

Stephon approached his manager to ask for guidance on how to embark on the path to trainer certification. As previously shown, Stephon desires to impact many people at iQor and now as a trainer. He embarked on the trainer certification program, which has four levels. He was certified on Level 1 and Level 2. When the time came to consider getting certified on Level 3, he learned that it requires curriculum development. That’s when he asked for advice. A supervisor told him that getting Level 3 certified is itself a significant accomplishment. However, to achieve Top Trainer Certification is a tall mountain to climb. In fact, many trainers who earned Top Trainer in Level 3 were previously corporate trainers, which Stephon was not.

This challenge inspired Stephon. The fact that his journey to Top Training in Level 3 would be somewhat of a unicorn motivated him to go after it.

The Level 3 trainer certification is a four-day program. At the end of three days, he stayed up all night to develop a new training curriculum. During his all-nighter, he went through four drafts of his new curriculum until he was satisfied it was good enough to earn Top Trainer Certification. He presented it to Tarisse Grant-Shelton, Lead Trainer. He waited to hear back from her with great anticipation. When Tarisse contacted him the same day with the good news that he was to be awarded Top Certification in his class, he was thrilled. He achieved a massive milestone by aiming high, working tirelessly with a can-do attitude. He slept well after getting the good news.

Stephon’s Advice for iQorians on their Career Journey

Stephon is currently the Assistant Manager of Quality and manager of a sales program for a client supported at the Charlotte facility. His career advice is to take advantage of all the resources available at iQor. Anyone who wants to grow has access to valuable resources through iQor University. Leaders want to help employees learn and grow to develop their careers in different roles. His advice is to let your manager know that you want to grow, and they will guide and coach you. Stephon’s drive and tenacity are very inspiring. You’ll notice his enthusiasm and the smile in his voice, as well as the smile on his face. It’s downright contagious!

Stephon’s Fun

Stephon is a gamer. He enjoys relaxing and playing games on his computer. I have a hunch he wins many games that he plays – his can-do attitude never seems to fail him!

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 19 How ThinScale Technology Transforms the Work-at-Home Experience for Call Center Agents

Posted on by Blake Graves

Work-at-Home Contact Center Agents are Secure and Happy

This episode features Andrew NcNeile, Chief Customer Officer, ThinScale Technology. Andrew is responsible for sales and marketing operations. His team focuses on helping BPOs deliver endpoint security to bring-your-own-device (BYOD) employees through Secure Remote Worker. Secure Remote Worker allows BPOs to improve security, manageability of IT, and recruit agents from different locations, resulting in a better agent experience.  

Background

At the start of 2020, iQor had a stable, robust work-at-home solution in place, having deployed it years earlier to various domestic and offshore customer care programs. But as COVID-19 began impacting global operations in March of 2020, the company saw the demand for work-at-home solutions expand rapidly and took the opportunity to strengthen its infrastructure with a BYOD solution.

A large segment of iQor’s work-at-home team now utilizes a BYOD work-at-home solution. We researched the marketplace for a technology enabling Work-at-Home employees to secure their personal PCs to work remotely as frontline agents for our clients’ customer experience programs. We selected ThinScale Technology as our partner for BYOD endpoint security.

Need for Speed

iQor needed to meet our client’s needs while meeting our employee’s need to work remotely during the pandemic. In the early days of COVID, iQor moved 18,000 employees to work-at-home in three weeks! An amazing achievement that preserved both the employee and customer experience.

BPOs who adopted an early relationship with ThinScale could make rapid transitions of agents to work-at-home, as mentioned above.

For example, in Trinidad and Tobago, iQor moved 95% of our team to work at home in a matter of days. The move was applauded by the Minister of Trade, Gopee-Scoon

“iQor Trinidad Limited, a global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) which offers support for several international telecommunication and retail companies, has managed to retain its employee base over 1,000 persons and has transitioned 95% of its workforce to work-at-home providing an internet allowance to support team members who required that extra support.”

More Robust Recruiting

iQor needed to expand recruiting beyond where the company has a physical presence (domestic, nearshore, and offshore) and into untapped labor pools in non-urban areas that offer equally irresistible talent looking for an opportunity to work from home. A survey in 2020 reveals that 51% of knowledge workers reported a productivity boost working from home during the pandemic with fewer meetings, no commute time, and fewer interruptions.

ThinScale worked with BPOs for more than one year before the pandemic to provide a validation link for the agent during the recruitment process. Agents download a validation link to their device, and they are ready to go. This allows us to recruit people who reside far away from our physical facilities. We can now recruit from remote towns with talent pools, allowing us to source agents at speed.

For example, iQor is a leader in seasonal staffing services for retailers, utilities, catalog companies, and other segments, with on average year-round teams representing roughly 3,500 employees. When holidays or events for a business drive customer interactions higher, iQor proactively grows the employee base by 164% in anticipation of the demand. This may not sound like much until you realize that’s it’s adding about 5,000 new employees who need to be experts on day one, bringing the total to over 9,000 employees for a window of time. And this can repeat itself throughout the year in planned and unplanned ways. With our secure work-at-home model, we’re very efficient at quickly recruiting and onboarding frontline customer experience employees.

Non-Invasive to Employee’s Device

The ability for agents to configure their devices with Secure Remote Worker without physically installing software is very productive. A single link installer eliminates shipping costs and complex logistics. The agent simply clicks a link to install the ThinScale Technology Secure Remote Worker product, and they are available to work securely immediately.

Once an agent logs out, the agent is completely disconnected from all work-related functions, enabling the agent to fully disconnect and unwind from work. This is an example of iQor’s commitment to creating happy employees.

Security

We needed to mirror security to the same level of security at iQor facilities as required by our clients.

The Bring-Your-Own-Device solution allows iQor to leverage our agents’ devices by temporarily using ThinScale’s Secure Remote Worker platform to lock down a device. Once locked down, the employee cannot access personal programs or software and logs into iQor’s secure cloud environment—the same environment accessed as when the employee is on-site. 

Our Working Relationship

Andrew says that working with iQor has been very cooperative from the beginning. Led by Tarn Shant at iQor, the relationship has been a sense of partnership. We’ve mutually built an operation that is working well for both of us.

Andrew’s Fun

At the time of this recording, Andrew had just returned from holiday, where he surfed in Ireland in cold weather in the rain. During non-COVID times, he loves to travel and enjoys skiing. He is also an avid reader and enjoys the theater.

Visit thinscale.com to learn more about Remote Worker Security. Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 18 How to Get Customers to Come Back Again & Again

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Six Steps to Get Customers to Keep Coming Back

On this episode, you’ll meet Shep Hyken, a renowned customer service expert and author of eight books, as well as a Hall of Fame speaker. Shep’s latest book is titled I’ll Be Back – How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again and is the focus of this episode.

Shep learned the importance of taking care of customers when he started his first business at the age of twelve performing magic shows at kids’ birthday parties. His parents encouraged him to send thank you notes to his customers asking them which tricks they liked the most. He learned that by asking a specific question he could discover what his customers liked the most and he could plan to serve his customers best. He also learned that listening to his customers is a way to deliver good customer service.

His parents taught him valuable life lessons that transcend to how any business can create customer experiences that compel them to come back again and again. The principles his parents taught him boil down to three pillars:

Show appreciation

Get feedback

Take action on the feedback

Shep learned these customer service lessons at a young age which convinced him that delivering a great customer experience is anchored in good-mannered common sense. Yet, he is quick to say that such common sense is not always common. If only companies harnessed what we learned from our parents at a young age, more brands would succeed at delivering good customer service, resulting in customers returning again and again.

When asked what is new in his eighth book on customer service, I’ll Be Back, Shep admits the title has a connection to The Terminator movie through sections of the book that discuss reasons a customer might terminate their relationship with a brand as well as when it makes sense for a brand to terminate a relationship with a customer. A whole chapter is devoted to “The Arnie” which is a reference to getting customers to say, “I’ll be back.”

Shep also points out that customer service has never changed when you consider that a customer starts with a need and desires to be happy with the outcome. That will never change.

What has changed is what happens in the middle. Now, the customer can buy a product online, and get help through omnichannel support options and have a wonderful experience without ever talking to a human.

Shep challenges the conventional way of measuring effective customer service which is commonly measured by the Net Promoter Score – how likely are you to recommend us to a friend? He refers to the NPS data as history lessons with valuable insights. While this metric is useful, he encourages CX professionals to also measure customer behavior. How often do customers come back? Do they become loyal customers or are they just a once in a while repeat customer?

Where the Rubber Hits the Road

In the final chapter, he lists six steps to creating an “I’ll be back” experience. The following six questions should be studied and discussed among the CX team members.

  1. Ask, why you? Why does the customer do business with you? Your goal should be to identify true differentiation, not generic reasons such as our staff, or our product.
  2. Ask, why them? Why would the customer do business with your competitors? Your goal is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competition.
  3. Keep pace. What did you learn about the competition exercise in step two that warrants you doing something like them? He is clear to explain not to copy a competitor’s customer service tactic. Instead, make it your own. He mentions the newspaper example in the hotel industry. One chain offers guests a newspaper upon arrival, another chain delivers a newspaper to each hotel room.
  4. Look outside your industry. Ask your team which companies they enjoy doing business with whether it’s B2B or B2C. Collect stories about different businesses explaining what they do that is special, whether it’s a restaurant, a movie theater, a bowling alley or a grocery store. No matter the business type, collect stories of best-in-class customer service. Write down their customer service practices and explore how your business could do some of them tailored to your business.
  5. Implement some of the ideas you learned in step four.
  6. Ask, why you? again. After implementing new ideas following these steps, your goal is to get a different answer than the first time you asked “why you?” in step one.

These six steps summarize the methods in his latest book to get customers to become loyal, so they return to a business again and again.

Shep and his team publish an annual report called Achieving Customer Amazement which is available for download at his website hyken.com.

Shep Has Fun on the Ice

As you see in the video, Shep’s office is filled with guitars, which is one of his passions. Another of his passions is playing hockey. He tells the story of the time he made a guest appearance with the NHL’s St. Louis Blues at a charity event where he was introduced to the home crowd. He re-purposed the picture taken of him dressed in the St. Louis Blues’ uniform into a “rookie card” which he shares as a bookmark. He still plays hockey three or four days per week with friends. 

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.