Customer Interaction

Rapid advancements in technology are redefining the ways in which customers and organisations interact. This infographic explores seven digital CX trends in the contact centre for 2024, that present opportunities to enhance customer experience. The Importance of Digital Conversations - 94% of consumers are frustrated by disjointed encounters with organisations. Messaging as a Primary Service Channel - 70% of UK consumers feel more connected to businesses they can message. Service Simplification Increased Personalisation - 78% of consumers express an intention...

Insurance companies are facing more pressure than ever before, in particular when it comes to handling insurance claims. As competition increases and customer expectations rise, it is essential to stay ahead of the curve. One way to do this is to improve the claims journey for customers. Currently, customers are not always updated about the status of their claim, and they may make choices that increase the cost of the claim. This can lead to a negative customer experience and...

Over the next 10 years, AI will become a more and more important part of our lives. But for AI to be successful, companies need to use it in a way that is helpful and not creepy. Dr. Nicola Millard, BT's Principal Innovation Partner, calls this the "butler, not stalker" analogy. Butlers are nice to have because they anticipate our needs. Stalkers, on the other hand, are creepy. The businesses that will succeed in the future are the ones that...

The UK's tough economic climate is making it difficult for insurance companies to renew policies, especially in the motor, home, life, health, pet, and SME sectors. Consumers are cutting back on discretionary spending, and insurance is often one of the first things to go. Research shows that many UK customers have already reduced or plan to reduce their insurance coverage, with life insurance being the most affected. UK insurance leaders are well aware of the challenges of renewing policies in...

Insurance companies are facing more pressure than ever before, in particular when it comes to handling insurance claims. As competition increases and customer expectations rise, it is essential to stay ahead of the curve. One way to do this is to improve the claims journey for customers. Currently, customers are not always updated about the status of their claim, and they may make choices that increase the cost of the claim. This can lead to a negative customer experience and...

How well do you actually know your customers? I’m talking about understanding each and every part of their purchasing journey. What frustrated them? What made them happy? Which part made them buy from you in the first place? If you can answer these, you’re way ahead of the curve, because  according to Microsoft, 53% of consumers believe their feedback doesn’t go to anyone who can act on it. From my experience of working in multiple contact centres, understanding customer intent...

In the early 2000s when automation first started gaining momentum, call centres businesses saw it as an opportunity to reduce costs and improve agent efficiency and less about improving customer experience. However, this business logic has changed over the years as businesses now deem customer experience as the most important reason for investing in call centre automation. The change of mindset has been a result of two megatrends that have reshaped the business world for good. Firstly the widespread adoption...

The mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance was the first to highlight a need for banks to improve monitoring of customer-agent interactions to ensure compliance was being upheld. Moreover, after the 2008 global financial crisis, consumers have became more aware and open to complain about the service being delivered when and if they feel they are being miss-sold too. Figures published by the FCA regarding consumer complaints in 2018, show how important it is for banks to re-engineer the way they...

On the 12th of May we held a joint webinar with Call Centre Helper discussing the best ways to introduce and maintain agent empowerment. One thing that was emphasized by all panellists was that to achieve employee empowerment an organisation needs processes, technology and leadership.

Failing to deliver on service can be extremely costly. 93% of people will take action following an inadequate experience. US Businesses felt the truth of it reporting a $41 Billion loss each year due to poor customer service. With a customer satisfaction score of 100% achieved monthly, we asked Lil Lambert Willis from Business Systems’ Customer Service team to share their approach to customer service. How long have you been working in customer service for? I have been dealing with...

With the New Year almost upon us, it’s always a good time to reflect on the year gone by and channel some inspiration to help see us through the year ahead. That’s why we’ve put together a list of motivational customer service quotes that you’ll want to print out and stick on your office wall and perhaps even share with your team to help foster a positive attitude to kick start the New Year. After much debate in the marketing...

The most successful organisations recognise the importance of establishing a strong emotional connection with their customer, in order to acquire and retain customers over time. It is the overall customer experience with an organisation that evokes the perception of value that will subsequently determine brand preference.With this in mind, it is important to remember that employees are at the forefront of building an emotional connection with a customer. Any interaction with an employee, in a retail space or contact centre,...

From the plethora of performance enhancing systems that no self-respecting Contact Centre should ever be without, it is always a little challenging for the discerning Contact Centre manager to find their way through the maze. How do you filter the ‘useful from the hype’, the ‘practical from the pretty’ and can you really believe all those ROI calculators? If you are not too sure whether your ‘voice biometrics’ are in tune with your ‘interaction analytics’ or whether your ‘real time...

Adopting a multi-channel approach to collecting customer feedback is a must with today’s fickle, mobile customers seeking engagement on their terms, which is why Business Systems has recently added NICE Fizzback to the portfolio. Industry stats suggest that response rates from customer feedback tools like Fizzback can be as high as 55% particularly if SMS text surveys are incorporated in your channel feedback strategy alongside email, web, phone, chat, social media, IVR and in-store mechanisms. As well as improving response...

Business Systems attracted over 280 delegates to the 10th annual Improving Performance conference last November which focused on the need for real time customer engagement in the social age. Customer Service Fact! Some topical areas covered included; ‘the top 2011 call centre issues’ presented by Call Centre Helper Editor, Jonty Pearce who pointed out that it typically takes 24 hours for call centres to respond to an email enquiry. Subsequently more and more customers are turning to internet chat and...

Steering your agents in the right direction Imagine you could apply the principles of a sat nav system in the context of a contact centre to ensure your agents travel from point ‘a’ to ‘b’ taking the most direct possible route, without error and in the shortest time possible. This is essentially what real time impact (RTI) delivers by capturing interactions across multiple channels, analysing past interactions, identifying the root causes, applying workflows and business rules and consolidating that output...

Experience shows the way... The success of the Leeds conference ‘Improving Performance 2007’ proved yet again that those in the Contact Centre industry are determined to raise the bar on performance and that the stated goal of the Customer Contact Association:- “to drive professionalism in customer contact centres”, was indeed the objective for many. There is no doubt that knowledge is the key and the combination of benchmarking and experience are invaluable. Promotional Logistics (Prolog) probably run one of the...

Business Systems has joined with the Institute of Customer Service (ICS), becoming the first associate member to provide interaction recording technology and consultancy to help measure, manage and improve customer service levels. "Customer expectations are high and constantly changing, and for this reason the ICS provides a support framework for its members to develop and improve the service they offer by learning from the experience of others and from industry research. We welcome Business Systems as an associate member. They...