Next in Queue

While the disdain Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson has for government is played for laughs, his view of government being inefficient and a lousy place to work is shared by many Americans.  But what if government inefficiency and employee dissatisfaction are, in part, because the software tools available to government employees haven’t kept up with the private sector?  What if Ron Swanson experienced government tools the same way he experienced bacon and eggs?

These are the kinds of questions Marketing professionals may be asking themselves after hearing what Mary Drumond has to say.  She’s focused on being customer centric in her marketing efforts, but her new market, local government, is often ignored.  You’ll be surprised to hear what happens when they’re not ignored. 

We discuss:  

·        What it means to be customer-centric in marketing

·        The importance of Voice of the Customer Data

·        The most cost-effective method of marketing today

·        Astounding misconceptions about government workers

·        The unexpected cost of not investing in technology

·        Mary issues a challenge to marketers

In 1995’s Tommy Boy, Tommy Callahan used a story (rather unsuccessfully) to paint a customer experience, in this case, a B2B2C (Business to Business to Consumer) customer experience.  His effort left more than a little to be desired.  While stories can be an effective way to present the Customer Experience, Jim Tincher learned long ago that stories aren’t enough. 

After cutting his teeth in CX at Best Buy, he fell in love with B2B CX and eventually wrote a book on the subject titled Do B2B Better: Drive Growth Through Game-Changing Customer Experience.  I asked him to join Next in Queue to talk about B2B CX and I didn’t take no for an answer! 

We discuss:  

·       The differences between B2C, B2B, and B2B2C

·       The most critical customer emotions to measure

·       How AI will be incorporated differently in B2B CX

·       What separates “CX Changemakers” from “CX Hopefuls”

·       The potential future of customer surveys

·       One piece of advice regarding presenting to executives

Creed II was the 2018 installment of the Rocky “legacyquel” and in this moment, Rocky is about to take Adonis Creed to the middle of nowhere to begin training for his rematch against Viktor Drago.  Because the variables have changed, Rocky knows that Adonis needs to make big changes to achieve the success he’s grown accustomed to.

Kristi Faltorusso is an award-winning Customer Success Executive, and she has watched Client and Customer Success teams around the world (and on her own team) shrink – yet the needs of customers remain as high as ever.  It led her to ask, “How do you do the work you need to do differently with the resources you have?”

She’s decided it’s about making big changes in how CSMs operate.

We discuss:  

·        The role of Customer Success in an organization

·        Why she hates the phrase “Do more with less”

·        3 strategies for supporting customers with a smaller team

o   Customer Community / Education

o   Incorporating Automation / Creative Thinking

o   Reassessing Roles and Skills of Existing Team Members

·       The biggest skill CSMs (Customer Success Managers) need to master

·        A shocking admission from Kristi and what she plans to do about it

In 1989, Field of Dreams introduced us to one of the most famous quotes in movie history: “If you build it, he will come.”  In this scene, Terence convinces Ray to stop listening to his brother-in-law, who is only focused on one thing – the numbers.  The number of acres, the lost revenue, and the mortgage.  But Terence tells him that when he changes his focus to providing an experience to the people, the people will come. 

Annette Franz believes that building will bring things, too.  Her latest book, Built to Win, is a blueprint for designing a customer-centric culture that drives value for businesses.  During our conversation about employee experience, she said, “When you focus on the people, the numbers will come.”

Oh, numbers will come, Annette; numbers will most definitely come.

We discuss:  

· What Customer Experience means

· One of the biggest barriers to becoming customer-centric

· How employee experience impacts customer experience

· The biggest way you can make an impact on becoming customer-centric

· Brands that Annette is a fan of

· How scale and a dispersed workforce impact company culture

· How companies can leverage fans to deliver better experiences

It turns out that outsourcing isn’t the answer to everything like Homer suggests in this episode of the Simpsons.  But outsourcing can be an effective way for businesses to focus their people on the core functions of their business while ensuring the non-core functions are still taken care of.

But outsourcing isn’t a decision to be taken lightly and finding the right partner, whether they’re onshore, nearshore, or offshore, can be quite an undertaking.     

Tyler Orrell is a CX zealot who’s spent over two decades leading and developing contact centers all over the world. 

We discuss:  

·        The nebulous nature of the terms onshore and offshore when it comes to outsourcing

·        Reasons you might want to consider outsourcing

·        Things to consider when making an outsourcing decision

·       The various types of work that a BPO can handle for organizations

·        How an organization can navigate finding an outsourced partner

·        How technology impacts any outsourcing decision

·        How to create a successful relationship with an outsourced provider

In this scene from Season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David tries to invoke the Golden Rule at the airport.  The concept of the Golden Rule is to treat others the way you would want to be treated and its origins are at least 2500 years old.  The concept is present in all the world’s major religious traditions.

Despite the long history and widespread usage of the Golden Rule, Milan Batinich says there is an even better rule to apply during our interactions with others – The Platinum Rule®.  The Platinum Rule says to "Do unto others as ‘they'd’ like done unto them."  This concept originated from the 1996 book of the same name written by Dr. Tony Alessandra and Dr. Michael J. O’Connor.  Because each of us has a preferred communication style, the Platinum Rule suggests that we “flex” our style to better interact with others who have a different preference.   

Milan Batinich is a motivational speaker and contact center leader who moonlights as a storm chaser.    

We discuss:  

·        Why understanding communication styles is important

·        Different options for evaluating communication styles

·        Characteristics of the 4 primary styles

·        Why modifying behavior leads to success in relationships with others

·        Real-world examples for how communication styles impact people at work

·        How Ikigai changed Milan’s professional path

In Searchin’, this 1957 Lieber and Stuller hit performed by the Coasters, Billy Guy, sings about his determined search that has yielded no results to this point.  While he’s searchin’ for his love, searching for specific, reliable, and up to date information to support customers can often feel just as challenging.

The promise of the internet was the world’s knowledge at your fingertips.  According to the latest estimates, 328.77 million terabytes of data are created each day and the amount of data is growing exponentially.  Speaking of exponentially, in 2022, two new prefixes, ronna and quetta, representing 1027 and 1030 were added to the metric system because the vast amount of data that exists was approaching the top range of the existing prefixes.  All this data has contributed to the challenge of locating exactly what you’re looking for.

Sariel Moshe saw this issue sifting through data during his days in military intelligence.  Eventually, he saw the same issue during his time at PayPal and he set out to improve search by making use of context.   

We discuss:  

·        Why keywords will become a thing of the past

·        Why enterprise knowledge base search bars work so poorly compared to Google

·        How “promptability” will change how knowledge is stored

·        Why he expects support teams to change focus from case-solving to knowledge creation

·        Why “trust” will become the key to the next level of search

In the 1999 cult classic, Office Space, Peter Gibbons has just been requested by his awful boss, Bill Lumbergh, to work the weekend to make up for the recent layoffs their software company is going through.  This might ring a little too true for a lot of people lately, but hopefully, they don’t have to deal with a Lumbergh. 

Layoffs, or Reductions in Force (a.k.a. RIF), impact not only the people who are let go, but also the people who are left behind.  Lumbergh represents the kind of management unskilled in navigating these types of situations (or any situation, for that matter), but Andrew Rios joins the show today to talk about how to successfully navigate these challenges as a leader so you’re not remembered as a Lumbergh.

We discuss:  

·   Why layoffs aren’t always caused by poor management

·    How to effectively lead through a Reduction in Force

·    The unexpected opportunities presented as a result of a RIF

·    Effectively implementing cross-functional training

·    Handling demotions resulting from less employees

·    One mistake to avoid when dealing with smaller teams

With more than a little influence by the Beatles, U2’s The Showman (Little More Better) from 2017 is a lighthearted warning to their fans – don’t trust the performers too much.  Before the term “brand” was even coined, “influencers” existed.  In fact, celebrity endorsements go all the way back to the 1700s when the UK company, Wedgewood, makers of fine Chinaware, used royal endorsements to promote their products.  While these celebrity endorsements have existed for hundreds of years, the social media age has created both “influencers” whose performances involve hawking just about anything you can imagine and their “followers” who pay an outsized amount of attention to what they have to say. 

It’s rare for an influencer to come right out and tell you to be wary of the “influencer” system, but Alex Mead doesn’t consider himself an influencer even if LinkedIn does.  Alex drives CX innovation from within regardless of the industry.  Airlines, Banking, Whisky, Logistics – Alex has done it all, but he wants us all to understand that some “influencers” are more marketing fluff than substance.

We discuss:  

·       The issues with the CX “Influencers” and Awards ecosystem  

·       How Alex approaches every new project

·       The missing piece in most CX organizations

·       Why personalized and contextual customer service still isn’t common

·       A few myths about Customer Experience

·       How an “outsider” can bring value to CX design

Do you need to rush out and adopt new tools like ChaptGPT to improve CX?  Should we be more focused on the human-to-human connection?  Are we simply not being strategic with our Customer Experience efforts delaying maturity?    

On this episode of Jump the Queue, I talk with 3 CX pros about where their focus is right now.   

We start in the home of Laverne and Shirley (yes, this is a test) with Murphy Fraser, Senior Consultant at TTEC Digital, who warns that with all the new and exciting tools out there, some may be executing tactically but not strategically.

In the 1984 film, Revenge of the Nerds, the stereotype of the nerd eventually emerged as the hero, possibly inspiring nerd culture as we know it today.  The term nerd was initially a pejorative, but beginning in the late 90’s, the interests of “nerds” and nerds themselves became more popular, in large part because of the rise of personal computers.  Silicon Valley now wields an incredible amount of influence over both our work and personal lives.  Data, once relegated to the realm of men with pocket protectors, became a critical part of business, media, and marketing.  Today, data is now considered the most valuable resource in the world.  But ensuring the integrity of data is in the hands of Business Intelligence professionals like Jaclyn Herr. 

Jaclyn leads Business Intelligence and Customer Experience at TeeTurtle, maker apparel, toys, and games, featuring both in-house designs and licensed characters from Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars.  Yeah, nerd culture stuff. 

We discuss:  

·        The Zendesk support platform

·        Why customer data is important to businesses

·        How data-driven stories affect change

·        Dealing with bad data

·        The biggest driver of customer expectations today

In 1969, Brian Wilson came out of semi-retirement to write and record Break Away, an often-overlooked Beach Boys hit song. It’s a life-affirming song about positive change in one’s life and the feelings that accompany that change.

Paula Naeff is a Performance & Productivity Coach who helps busy professionals break away from burnout and arrive at balance.

We discuss:

· How one of Paula’s passions led to a new professional direction

· How burnout manifested for her

· Peeling away the masks and confronting burnout

· How dance coaching is like life/business coaching

· A simple strategy for avoiding burnout

· One tip for changing your energy level

This scene is from the 2006 movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, inspired by the true story of Chris Gardner. Homeless with his young son, Chris was desperate to get a different job that would change his situation. But how does a salesman of bone density scanners transition to being a stockbroker?

Transitions to any new role are challenging and that holds true in CX – whether you want to get into a CX role or out of one. Jenny Dempsey, CX Thought Leader and Chief Learning Advisor for CX Accelerator, joins this week’s episode of Next in Queue to talk about these transitions.

We discuss:

· What a typical CX involves

· Functions that often lead to CX roles

· Key skills needed for CX roles

· Do CX Certifications matter?

· Free resources for CX aspirants and CX practitioners

· What does a CX career path look like?

Nelson Mandela would spend 27 of his 95 years of life in prison. When The Ska revival band, The Specials (under the name, The Special AKA), released Nelson Mandela in 1984, he had already been in prison in apartheid South Africa for over 20 years and it would be another 6 years before he saw his release. He became the father of the modern, democratic South Africa, bringing an end to apartheid and becoming the first black head of state in South Africa. Winner of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, Mandela became a revered figure worldwide.

He is credited with saying, “I never lose. I either win or learn.” This mindset of growth and a redefining of failure is a key to accelerating performance and innovation, says Neil Pretty, the CEO of Aristotle Performance.

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss:

· How leaders create psychological safety and trust

· What corporations can learn from the military

· The key conditions for driving innovation among teams

· Why leaders often default to managing

· A simple strategy to improve your leadership presence

Organizational Change can be difficult, especially when you’re a new leader. And while some skills like engaging with those who may be resistant to change should be encouraged, a top-down approach to change management can be lonely and frustrating effort.

Michael Corleone found this out the hard way after taking the reins of the family business. And while most of us aren’t dealing with an organization like his (nor do we have a title like Godfather in that organization), we are all impacted by organizational change efforts. Some of us are even tasked with leading those efforts.

While she’s not a boss in the way Michael Corleone was a “boss”, Sally Mildren is the CEO of Boss Lady Consulting, and she joins the show to discuss how Change Management affects Customer Experience (CX) and how to humanize change efforts.

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss:

· The most common mistake in managing change

· How to deal with vocal opponents of change

· The antidote to change fatigue

· Keys to sustaining change efforts

· How to measure the long-term impact of change efforts

After over 160,000 employee layoffs in the tech sector in 2022, 2023 has already followed up with over 100,000 layoffs in the first two months of the year alone. While this pales in comparison to the number of jobs being created in the overall economy, mass layoffs have a huge impact on those affected and the psyche of people in the affected industries.

This first episode of Jump the Queue, I talk with 3 people with interesting angles and insights on this subject and over the course of these 3 related yet distinct conversations, you’ll hear what’s foremost in their minds right now.

We start with Michael McMillan, a CX insider and entrepreneur who literally grew up in a call center.

In the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, we were introduced to HAL 9000, a supercomputer with advanced AI who decided the mission was more important than the lives of his human crew. 16 years later, in The Terminator, we were introduced to Skynet, an AI developed by Cyberdyne Systems that began seeing humanity as a threat to its existence and triggered a nuclear holocaust that would forever change the earth and its inhabitants.

These two seminal films, nearly a generation apart, engendered a distrust of AI in successive generations that are now grappling with how much to trust AI in their everyday lives. Today I visit with Carlos Kemeny who has a passion for data and how people use data to make decisions.

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss:

· The progression of the adoption of AI

· What decisions people are willing to put in the hands of AI

· The best way for humans and AI to work together

· CX situations where AI will only make things worse

· The reasons people often don’t trust data

When most people think of the 1990 film Pretty Woman, they think of Richard Gere playing Prince Charming to Julia Roberts’s Rapunzel. But the real hero of that story (at least in my eyes) is Barney Thompson played by Héctor Elizondo. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that character. Let me refresh your memory.

You may remember that Vivian (Roberts) was tasked with buying a dress for dinner but couldn’t get the stores on Rodeo Drive to take her seriously. It was in this moment of desperation that she ran into Barney in the hotel lobby. Once he understood the situation, he arranged for her wardrobe. Later in the movie, it was Barney that said to Edward (Gere), “It must be difficult to let go of something so beautiful,” prompting Edward to realize he was in love.

In short, it was Barney who enabled the experiences that made Pretty Woman the fairy tale we all remember, even if we don’t remember him.

My guest this week is Patrick Ignacio, CORE Assistant Manager at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago. He has been in the hospitality world for two decades, a world that is about making memorable experiences to drive customer loyalty.

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss:

· How the reservation process impacts Guest Experience

· How Franchise Branding provides both risks and rewards to owners

· How “Word of Mouth” is dramatically changed by social media

· How to drive loyalty by customer segment

· The pros and cons of technology for guest experience

· A lesson for other industries

In the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s dog, Toto, pulls back a curtain to reveal the Wizard to be just an ordinary man, operating machinery that projects a gigantic, ghostly, and intimidating image of his face. The Wizard had built his reputation using technology that no one in the merry old land of Oz understood.

Today, there’s a technology impacting Customer Experience that few understand – algorithms.

My guest this week is Dennis Wakabayashi,  and he is on a mission to help people understand how marketing fits into modern CX and how technology is changing the landscape.

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss:

· The 3 Algorithms that shape CX

· The fundamental change in Social Media marketing professionals need to be aware of

· The surprising name that might become the next MySpace

· How ChatGPT will change CX in unexpected ways

· Where Revenue “Leaks” Occur in the Customer Journey

· The CX Leadership Alignment Strategy that Works

In 1990, Public Enemy released “Fight the Power” from their third album, one of the most popular and influential songs in hip hop history:

People, people we are the same

No we're not the same

'Cause we don't know the game

What we need is awareness, we can't get careless

You say what is this?

My beloved let’s get down to business

Mental self-defensive fitness

Don't rush the show

You gotta go for what you know

Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be

The song is, among other things, a call to recognize and mitigate the bias that guides our decisions and attitudes.

30+ years later, our recognition of our own bias is still suspect and can impact basic functions of support and service organizations like Quality Assurance.

My guest this week is Ines van Dijk and she is on a mission to build better quality programs and Fight the Bias along the way.

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss:

· The Strategic Purpose of QA (Quality Assurance)

· 3 Common Types of Bias in QA

· How AI can both Mitigate and Amplify Bias

· Strategies for Mitigating Bias

· The First Step to Building a QA Process

“Everybody lies.”

Recently, I started re-watching the TV series House on Netflix. Probably the most famous quote and theme from the show is, “Everybody lies.” As diagnosticians, Dr. House and his team had to use the data presented to them to find the truth about what was really happening to their patients.

Surveys may be the voice of the customer, but as Dr. House says, “Everybody lies.” But we have access to other forms of data to inform us about what’s happening with our customers.

My guest this week is Craig Stoss, Director of CX Services at PartnerHero, and he believes organizations should use their customer support data to deliver the best possible experiences for customers.

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss at:

· 4 Types of Customer Data

· The biggest challenge related to utilizing data

· Quantitative vs. Qualitative Data

· Next Issue Avoidance

· Why Product Teams should listen to Support data

Have you ever had a customer experience that made you think, “There’s got to be a better way?” An over-priced oil change did that for Adam Alfia and it led to him opening his first company. His entrepreneurial spirit led to a variety of businesses, including a concierge service and a variety of restaurants and night clubs.

Increasingly, he realized customers stopped engaging when there were service issues and simply took to reviews to express their displeasure. Once again, he thought, “There’s got to be a better way.” How do you facilitate a dialogue between the customer and management in real time so issues can be resolved?

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss at:

· The most important lesson when dealing with customers

· Why customers avoid engaging when there are problems

· How he leveraged technology to begin the conversation

· How instant feedback can improve workforce management

· How instant feedback can improve Employee Experience (EX)

Nearly every startup wants to grow. At certain milestones of growth, however, the structure of customer support must change to successfully support the business. And while change is never easy, knowing what and when you’ll need to change as you scale can help smooth out the process.

Over the past 13 years, Reagan Helms has grown from the solo support agent in a start-up organization with less than 10 employees to the Director of Customer Experience leading a support organization of 30 agents.

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss:

· The required shift from being an individual contributor to a leader

· The change in support recruiting that comes with scale

· The new problems in support organizations that come with growth

· Why you need to introduce structured processes before they feel necessary

· Maintaining culture with team growth

· The impact scale has on training new support agents

There’s a tendency to see mental health issues through a different lens than physical health issues. Whether it’s depression, anxiety, PTSD, or neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, mental health challenges are often hidden from even close friends and family members. Because of the stigma around them and the fact that they often manifest with no outwardly visible signs, they are often not addressed until a breaking point with severe and potentially dangerous consequences.

This week, I’m talking with Erika-Taylor-Beck, the VP of Client Support at Relias. Her own personal journey dealing with mental illness inspired her to advocate for others and lead with authenticity and vulnerability.

This week on Next in Queue, we discuss:

· The fear and stigma around discussing mental health issues

· Why she decided to discuss this publicly

· The specific challenges in Contact Centers

· Tips for identifying vulnerable employees

· Ways to foster connection in a remote work environment

The chasm between the promises of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the reality of what AI can accomplish is closing faster than ever. Whether it’s creating uncanny images, writing poetry, providing better information in a chatbot, writing code, or creating original video from text prompts, the output of AI is increasingly disrupting long-established domains relegated to humans.

This week, I’m talking with Boris Cergol, the Regional Head of Data at Endava. He has spent over a decade in the AI and Machine Learning (ML) space, and we discuss:

· The attention-gathering abilities of AI

· Use-cases for AI and ML in Business

· The risks that AI technology poses

· Balancing centralized and de-centralized AI systems

· The challenge of overcoming bad or lack of data

· How AI could change the “attention economy”

Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, “The contact center is not a cost center.” The idea behind that is great contact centers drive customer loyalty and revenue by creating great experiences. But that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be efficient or that they should be immune to cost-cutting measures. Every company should be mindful of costs. But cutting costs for the sake of cutting costs can end up *costing* a lot more in the long run.

To discuss how to cut costs responsibly, I talked with Brad Cleveland, author, speaker, and consultant known globally for his expertise in customer strategy and management. Brad was a founding partner of ICMI, International Customer Management Institute, and served as the CEO for more than a decade.  His most recent book, Leading the Customer Experience: How to Chart a Course and Deliver Outstanding Results, is a guide to shaping experiences that win loyalty and deliver outstanding business results.

Brad and I discuss:

· Customer Access Strategies

· The value of cross-training / pooling

· Deflection beyond self-service

· Different methods to listen to Voice of the Customer (VOC)

· How Workforce Optimization relates to organizational culture

NPS® (Net Promoter System℠ / Net Promoter Score℠) was originally designed for B2C (Business to Consumer) as a predictor of loyalty. After working at Satmetrix Systems, the originator of the research behind NPS®, Steve Bernstein helped found Waypoint Group to tackle how to use NPS® in a B2B (Business to Business) environment.  B2B has a significantly different buying cycle (both in length and complexity) from B2C, and often, many stakeholders influencing the buying decision.

Steve joins Next in Queue this week to discuss:

· The difference between Net Promoter System℠ and Net Promoter Score℠

· Sampling Strategy and why Response Rate is a critical metric

· The issues with “transactional” NPS®

· When and how often to engage with customers on NPS®

· Why he hates the term, “survey”

· And why NPS® should not be part of an agent scorecard

Remote work is not a COVID-era invention – it has been evolving for decades. But the COVID era forced many companies to adopt remote work with little preparation. Today, the debate rages inside companies – do we bring people back to the office? Do we continue with remote work? Is there a workable middle ground?

Anne Bibb has spent the better part of the last decade advising companies on remote work strategies and this week, she joins Next in Queue to discuss:

· How new remote work tools can contribute to mental health issues

· How work from home has impacted productivity

· Keys to leading a remote workforce

· The two things employees want

· The most important considerations before outsourcing / hiring off-shore

· What fractional workers are and why you might want them

· The future of remote work

Customer Experience is impacted by the decisions companies make, the systems they build, and the people they hire. A fully formed CX strategy requires buy-in from the C-Suite because it affects every part of the business. To drive CX projects forward, practitioners need to be able communicate in “C-Suite Speak” to have an impact on the business. Diane Magers has worked with some of the most recognizable brands in the world and this week she helps us think about the ROI of CX and how to communicate it effectively.

This week on Next in Queue, we touch on:

· Customer Experience vs. Experience Management

· CX Indicators vs. CX Measures

· Why Employee Experience affects Customer Experience

· Why a formalized decision-making process is critical to success

· What journey mapping accomplishes and who should be involved in the process

· The power of questions and change leadership

Much like cooking, company culture is an art. It requires a lot of ingredients, time, and tools. But a culture with the wrong ingredients can leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Growing up in a successful family business in the service industry, Jill Raff is very attuned to the importance of both Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) and has made her business to help companies with both.

This week on Next in Queue, we touch on:

· Why company culture matters

· Visible signals of culture issues

· How EX impacts CX

· How to gauge company culture during an interview

· Strategies to improve your company culture

· The one ingredient to company culture that you can never have enough of

Chatbots are about as popular as cable companies, but every new technology needs time to mature. The continued evolution of Conversational AI (Artificial Intelligence) and NLP (Natural Language Processing) is making both “low-code” and “no-code” chatbot deployments successful, both from a customer standpoint and a business standpoint. But a successful deployment requires a solid strategy, appropriate measures of success, and great conversational design. This week, I talk with Jim Rowe, who has been helping businesses with their chatbot deployments for years.

This week on Next in Queue, we touch on:

· Why people hate chatbots

· What Conversational Design is and why it matters

· How Conversational AI has allowed the chatbot to evolve

· Chatbot mistakes to avoid

· When you should and should not name your chatbot

· The biggest opportunities for chatbots

Employee Experience (EX) and how it relates to Customer Experience (CX) is a hot topic, but an often-overlooked aspect of EX is the workspace environment – layout, colors, scent, etc. As more and more people work from home, the environment these employees work in can become an afterthought. At the risk of sounding “woo-woo”, Claire Boscq set out to improve working environments (even if it’s also your home) by fusing traditional Feng Shui, neuroscience, and modern business principles like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, to form the BIZSHUI Method.

This week on Next in Queue, we touch on:

· How falling down allows you to move forward

· How environment affects human behavior

· Practical and simple modifications you can make to your work environment

· How to deal with a bedroom-based workspace

· Why the position of your desk matters

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is deployed in a variety of ways in contact centers. But can AI improve hearing between customer and agent? Jacobi Anstruther, founder and CEO of IRIS Technologies, originally sought to improve F1 driver performance by inducing flow state through sound. This quickly shifted gears (!) to more low-hanging fruit: improving communication between driver and pit crew during races. As the pandemic began and the team migrated to remote work, Jacobi realized the technology he was working on solved problems for all kinds of people now working from home, including contact center agents.

We touch on:

· How sound works in your brain

· How AI can change the way we experience sound

· The impact of sound on “Flow State” and focus

· The challenges of affecting sound in real-time

· The impacts of poor audio on contact center retention

Whether you believe in The Great Resignation or The Great Reshuffle, recruiting and hiring has become as important as ever. With an unmatched enthusiasm for the contact center business and over two decades of experience, Matt Beckwith shares insights on how to improve the recruiting and hiring process.

We touch on:

· Why recruiting and hiring is so important for contact centers

· How Recruiting and Hiring has changed since the pandemic began

· The biggest opportunity in contact center recruiting and hiring

· How technology may be impeding your recruiting efforts

· Why new hires shouldn’t start on Monday

· How your contact center can become an employer of choice in your market

We’ve all heard of Uber. Maybe we know multiple people participating in what’s been dubbed the “Gig Economy,” whether it’s for Uber or some other type of gig work. Megan Neale founded Limitless in 2016 to help create the brand support model of the future – GigCX. While gig work is a significant trend in the workforce, GigCX is more than just workforce flexibility – it’s a way to leverage loyal customers who are experts in your platform to help other customers and get rewarded for doing so.

We touch on:

· How GigCX differs from flexible work like delivery services

· How GigCX improves efficiencies in ways impossible in traditional support models

· How training / certification works in a GigCX model

· How AI enhances the effectiveness of GigCX

· How size of customer-base affects GigCX

· And the 3 primary factors that drive “experts” to participate in GigCX

David Powers, host of Caffeinated CX and CXO for Rooter Hero Plumbing, and Drew Gorringe, Contact Center Technology Consultant at C-lect Consulting, join this bonus episode to discuss the future of the Contact Center, including emerging technologies.

Mark Levy got into technology in the late 90’s – the early days of the internet. In the years that followed, he’s worked with some of the largest brands in the world on their Digital and CX strategies. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s an evangelist of improving the Digital Customer Experience (DCX).

We touch on:

· What Digital Transformation means

· First Steps for Digital Transformation

· How to measure the success of your digital transformation efforts

· The role and future of Conversational AI

· How Digital Transformation impacts the Contact Center

· Pitfalls to avoid for successful transformation efforts

Sandy Murphy started her own offshore BPO in 2021 after years cutting her teeth in the industry. But she found her true purpose after Typhoon Rai (Odette) hit the Philippines in December of 2021 and impacted her team members.  Her mission became to change the way customer engagement professionals are treated. We touch on:

· How cloud-based systems have lowered the barrier to entry for starting a new BPO

· How low overhead allows for higher agent pay

· Hiring and promoting people who care

· Leading with kindness

· The impacts of leading through fear

· The importance of having clients that align with your culture

Amy Smith, VP of Effortless Experience at Challenger, has been involved in best practices research and implementation her entire career and has been focused on Effortless Experience implementation since 2016. We touch on:

· What is (and what isn’t) coaching in the Contact Center

· The barriers preventing effective coaching and how to overcome them

· Communication Styles

· Building a Coaching Competency Framework

· Identifying behaviors and skills to develop

· Developing Bench Strength

· The most impactful and easy thing you can start doing tomorrow to improve your coaching

Dave Derington’s started his career as an analytical chemist, but it was teaching people how to use computer systems used in the lab that really excited him.

This led to a role known as Customer Support Scientist. He honed his customer experience skills hosting LAN party events in the early days of online gaming and eventually got hooked by video game design and how games “help us define the experience we want to have and iterate upon it.”

He uses his deep understanding of gamification to design customer learning experiences that are compelling and effective as the Director of Customer Education at ServiceRocket. He also furthers the conversation with his podcast, CELab. We talk about how agile development and SaaS has changed how we need to look at customer education and how to keep it up to date.

Luke Jamieson got sick of the hours of being a pastry chef and ended up in the Contact Center world in Melbourne, Australia. He became an advocate employee engagement through gamification which led him to start his own consulting company. Today, as the Global Content Director at Centrical, he still advocates for great gamification in contact centers. He’s also a certified LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator who uses LEGO to help groups solve problems.

Sean Ilenrey, VP of Support at Dutchie, got his start in fast food while dreaming of becoming a professional musician. While music didn’t pan out, his work ethic led to opportunities that eventually led him to the contact center world where he could finally “sit down” while he worked.

He shares his journey into the world of workforce and operations, the differences between outsourced environments and captive (insourced) environments, why he said yes to getting into the software support side of the cannabis industry, why he began coaching working dads on financial success, and his potentially divisive opinions on the best and worst Star Wars movies.

After cutting his teeth at Marriott, his idea for a hotel training manual eventually turned into a decades-long career traveling the world and training hotel and lodging professionals.  Doug Kennedy shares some of his experiences, beginning with his first job manning the register of his mother’s local craft supply store in Lexington, Kentucky. 

When he’s not singing for The Lone Rangers, Brett Jones is leading Product at ItsaCheckmate. His path began in an outsourced contact center. But after being rendered homeless after the 2nd total loss from flooding inside a year, he decided to take a leap with a startup.

We discuss the stresses of working in a tech startup, the pros and cons of working with family, and how product management is like writing a song.

Contact Center Security is ever more important, but Matt Smallman says that the processes used by most contact centers are merely “Security Theatre.”

During his time in the British Army, he was focused on Counter IED Search Operations. But when he left the military, he ended up in Financial Services and that’s when he began to see problems with security processes that technology could fix.

He’s made it his mission to “get rid of ridiculous, pointless, frustrating, time-consuming, insecure security processes,” and his book explains exactly how to do that for your organization.

Bogdan Surdea-Blaga dispels the notion that there are vampires in Transylvania, shares his secret to career progression, and discusses how RebelDot acts as the “guardian” of new applications they support.

From the “microphone” at Club Med to building the first ISP in Paraguay to media relations for the Ferrari Panamerican 20.000 Expedition, Marcos Tatijewski has led an amazing life filled with generosity, risk, luck, and preparation. He shares his CX insights along with some incredible stories in this episode.

Gemma Colby grew up in South Africa and began her career in customer service in the freight industry. She then moved a continent away to the UK, changed industries, but always kept the Customer Experience at heart. She is a founding member of Women in CX, the 2021 CX Leader of the Year winner (UK Customer Experience Awards), and the Head of Customer Experience at Yell.

Randy Johns began his career on the phone as an agent during college, eventually leading teams of over 10,000 employees.  We discussed:

· The power of employee engagement to drive company success

· How online customer support communities can drive Net Dollar Retention and NPS

· Lessons he learned pioneering work at home in the 2010s

Entrepreneurship, geek culture, and gruesome hockey injuries are just a few of the topics I discussed with Travis Curnutte, Principal at Volli Communications. Connect with him on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/traviscurnutte  

Find out what Next in Queue is all about!

Startups, Coaching, and the gig model for Contact Centers are just some of the topics I discussed with entrepreneur and co-founder of ShyftOff, Trevor Clark, who was previously a corporate executive responsible for Contact Center Operations, Finance, and Analytics.