Engage Focus Groups Supplement - April 2018 by Engage Business Media

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A PLATFORM WHERE LIKE-MINDED PROFESSIONALS COME TOGETHER Our Engage Focus groups allowed senior individuals working in customer and employee engagement to come together and voice their thoughts and share experiences in a structured professional environment.

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THE END OF THE ADVERTISING ERA. HOW TO CONVERT YOUR MOST VALUABLE ONLINE VISITORS. Moderators: Marie Sagarzazu, Country Manager, iAdvize

We are experiencing the end of the advertising model that we have known for years, with 81% of users now often closing a web page because of a pop-up ad or an autoplay video the average click rate has fallen to just 0.06%. Forrester has already termed this evolution as “The End of Advertising, The Beginning of Relationships.” So how can brands provide the best customer experience possible and win the acquisition race? During this roundtable we will discuss: • Why it's no longer about the tech but about the respondent! • How you can deploy a high quality, authentic experience online using independent experts • How leading brands have begun to bridge the gap between Ecommerce, Marketing and Customer Experience departments • How conversational marketing is being used to increase conversion rate and CLTV

Marie Sagarzazu is Country Manager at iAdvize. She has been with the company for almost three years, joining as Key Account Manager, overseeing brands such as Renault, TUI, Oui.SNCF, Monoprix, Decathlon, Christian Louboutin, Maisons du Monde, Canal + Overseas. Prior to iAdvize, Marie was Head of Development at content and inﬂuencer marketing agency Made in. She holds a MSc in Marketing Management from ESADE Business School.

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THE EVOLUTION OF CX: COMBINING THE CUSTOMER AND EMPLOYEE VOICES Moderator: Claire Sporton, SVP – CX Innovation, Conﬁrmit Is your company listening to the Voice of the Customer? Great. Taking action? Better still. What about employees? It may seem like employee feedback is a job for HR, but your teams have a huge amount of insight about the customer experience as well. And sharing those views can be a massive driver for change. In this hands-on session, Claire Sporton, SVP CX Innovation at Conﬁrmit will share a model that will help you to understand ways in which you can combine the employee and customer voice to create a new level of insight. She will cover best practices and well as practical examples that will help you to understand how to use your managers to provide a vital link between the front line and your leadership. Join this roundtable to learn: • • •

How to identify the employee groups you need to work with – and how to engage them How to use nudge theory to make it easier for your teams, particularly those on the front line, to do the right thing for customers Take the ﬁrst steps towards integrating customer and employee feedback to create a clear view of the customer experience.

Claire Sporton is Senior Vice President, Customer Experience Innovation at Confirmit. In this role, she focuses on ensuring that Confirmit provides the technology and expertise that organisations need to build a truly customer centric culture, breaking down silos and empowering individuals to do the right thing for customers, internal teams and of course, the bottom line. Claire has 20 years’ experience in working closely with organisations in listening to the voice of their customers, employees and partners to drive business innovation and sustainable growth. She was instrumental in the development of Confirmit Voices, an engagement model which provides an end to end approach to the Voice of the Customer.

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HOW EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE DRIVES CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Moderator: Dave Ormston, Director of Customer Success, IFS-mplsystems Every day, contact centre agents act as brand ambassadors during their hundreds, if not thousands, of customer interactions. Yet, many brands still don’t value the people on the front line as critical assets of the customer experience. Organisations support an average of eight customer engagement channels per customer query, yet having to support these, often disparate, communication systems, along with accessing customer data from multiple different systems gives rise to many customer service challenges and leads to frustrated agents. At our table, we discuss: • • • • •

The impact of omni-channel on customer engagement Strategies for employee training and incentives The impact of the agent desktop on employee engagement levels & strategies to improve Measuring employee engagement in relation to agent feedback Company culture & the effects of this on employee performance Dave is a veteran of the Customer Engagement wars who has experienced the evolution of both customer requirements and call agent development ﬁrst hand for two decades with service providers both large and small. Currently responsible for Customer Success at IFS-mplsystems, Dave knows all too well that agent morale and retention while managing costs is absolutely vital.

Every day, contact centre agents act as brand ambassadors during their hundreds of customer interactions. Yet, many brands still don’t seem to value the people on the front line as critical assets of the customer experience. Last month, a small team of us had the pleasure to run a discussion stream at the Engage Focus Groups event in London Waterloo. During the day, we met with multiple small groups of key inﬂuencers of customer service, at various different companies, to discuss this topic; why it is such an important issue; how business models need to adapt to deal with it and what may or may not have worked previously for others in the same situation.

WHAT WE FOUND As it turns out, the concern we have, that employees are not given enough focus in comparison to customers, is felt on quite a broad spectrum across most, if not all, of the professionals that joined us that day. That is not to say that the customer centric business model is not correct, just that the employees who are driving the very customer experience that everyone is so hot on right now, are more important than they are currently being lead to feel. The key factors that seem to affect the employee experience were made up of: social aspects and activities; software solutions; training and guidance; involvement from above, and incentives; which all come together to create a particular kind of culture within the working customer service family. In this report, we will explain some of these aspects, giving you a brief taster of the kinds of things that were discussed. If you would

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like to talk about any of these in further detail, please get in touch at www.mplsystems.co.uk.

COMMUNITY FEELS The ﬁrst card thrown on the table was an energiser. Activities such as singing, breakfast raves and yoga before morning shifts were suggested as something to boost energy levels and morale before customer service agents got onto the phones with customers for the day. Having social activities certainly creates an enjoyable environment; bringing people together, they can also act as team building exercises that give them the feeling of being part of a community. One of our guests also suggested that charity days have worked quite well within their company. Employees are given a number of days throughout the year to take as volunteer days, to give back to society and charities by helping out on the company’s time. She shared that taking part in something like this, made staff members feel proud of where they worked, and so this was a feeling that was reﬂected in their support and projected through their enthusiasm for the business when helping customers on the phone. While advocation and feel-good boosts work well to create a community atmosphere, they couldn’t answer the niggling question of whether or not they were direct enough for the actual task at hand. Which lead us onto the software solution.

IFS-MPL SYSTEMS REPORT

THE TECHNOLOGY When we talk about the technology, the software solution provided by a vendor, we mean the system that the customer service agents use day in, day out, to fight fires – or change addresses – for their customers. Traditionally, teams were siloed depending on the engagement channel that customers chose to contact them via. Some companies are still being traditional. Other, more modern companies, have invested in a system that deals with all incoming requests on one screen. But the problem remains that the customer service advisors need to navigate a sea of back office systems to find all the relevant information related to a particular query that they are handling at any given time. Let’s say for example, that an advisor is fielding a customer call about a batch order that they received but that was not satisfactory. The advisor would need to access the CRM system to locate the customer’s details, to then be able to cross reference their ID to open the right account that was processed in the ERP window, showing what was bought and when. They then might have to open another tab to see the shipping address and another for billing details; all the while talking to the customer and delivering a pleasant spiel of small talk while the systems all load. They may have covered their pets’ names and latest holidays by the time the advisor has all the information they need to progress the request. Not such an enjoyable experience for them when they have to do it c. 100 times a day. What if customer service advisors were equipped with a system that presented all back-office windows and communication channels in one screen, that appeared automatically upon being connected to the customer? The cross-reference checks were automated and focus could be shifted to dealing with the actual query within seconds. If this sounds like magic, you need to get in touch with us, as we develop customised and off the shelf solutions for contact centres in every industry. With a Unified Agent Desktop like ours, all of the above is possible, and then some. Unfortunately however, this multi-channel mayhem is a reality that so many customer service professionals are dealing with every day. On average, organisations support c. eight customer engagement channels per customer query, yet having to support these, often disparate, communication systems, along with accessing customer data from multiple different systems gives rise to many customer service challenges and leads to frustrated advisors. Breaking down the siloes is an issue and in order to do this, it is imperative to equip advisors with the right tools in software. This will also play a significant part in transforming their experience and ability to deliver personalised and memorable interactions for customers.

People talked at great length about this, mentioning important factors like getting system developers to talk to the advisors themselves, so that the drivers of the car could get involved in scoping the systems required. Everyone also agreed that this is a key affecting factor in making the actual task easier and more enjoyable for them, as they can focus on that, rather than navigating numerous screens and repeating data input.

TRAINING AND GUIDANCE One factor that rang out continually throughout the day was that feeling supported is vital for customer engagement staff. For this reason, it is important that through training and guidance, they also feel invested in, and therefore valued. There are many options available for training your workforce, from physical days out, to online courses and daily wizards in the corner of the screen. This are also software tabs that can be incorporated into your customer service software solution. Through features such as AI prompts on what to say next during a customer request, to Supervisors helping behind the scenes over headsets. Advisors will never feel abandoned as there is always somewhere they can turn to in moments of uncertainty. Many systems champion a knowledgebase feature for root cause analysis to help inform, educate and empower staff members via continual internal training. This can provide the opportunity for employees to use it as a platform to share their own knowledge from real experiences, thus creating that community feel.

SUMMARY Overall, we found there to be a direct correlation between the employee experience and the experience provided to the customers that they are supporting. Culture is important within the workplace place but what came out of all discussion routes every time was that employees want to feel listened to, understood, recognised and valued. In order to do this, companies need to move away from the democratic inertia that is shrouding those at the top; this is what is costing them long term inefﬁciencies and money. They need to be less hung up on seeing the metrics immediately and focus more on how they are going to get to that successful end goal. What your company does needs to be personable to your own workforce. See what drives them, what’s important to them and then create a system that works around that. A one size ﬁts all approach will not work here. Whatever you choose to do though, it is imperative that you value and empower them with the right tools, so that they feel like they are directly making a difference and being heard.

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Making complex customer service simple.

Delivering omni-channel experiences through the uniďŹ ed agent desktop.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT IN FINANCIAL SERVICES: NEXT GENERATION CONTACT CENTRES NOW Moderator: Richard Brown, Head of Financial Services, Connect Surinder Singh, Head of Voice Bio-Metrics, Connect

Today the pressure is on for every executive in Financial Services to drive transformation in their organisation through the 'minefield' of compliance and regulation. To deliver better customer experience, indeed 'delight' through both traditional and digital channels and to have a single customer view. To achieve all this Connect Managed Services has a unique blend of proven Consultancy Expertise delivered with major UK & International Banks allied to unique technology insights for Next Generation Contact Centre Services. However, we do not just 'talk' about these capabilities we deliver the very latest 'best of breed' technologies and solutions i.e. Next Generation now, with compelling business cases and commercial models that fit your organisational needs and strategy. We have delivered not only in the financial sector, but in retail, energy and telecommunications to both large and medium sized UK and Global enterprises and all with Contact Centre Services and value for money solutions that create true long term, mutually beneficial Partnerships. To discuss real insights into Next Generation Contact Centre Services, Next Generation Voice Biometrics and AI, Next Generation Remote Advisors/Lending please come and meet the Connect Team at our roundtables!

Richard has been our Head of Financial Services at Connect for the last 8 years, with time spent previously at Unisys and Cisco. He has been involved in the communications industry for the last 25 years in a variety of sectors including manufacturing, insurance, and retail. The majority of his career has been spent in voice and unified communications for large enterprise financial services clients. Since joining Connect Richard, has been focused in ultimately developing the customer engagement strategy and technology environments to support them for potential customers to develop and enhance their customer experience offering. Focusing on large high street retail banking clients, he has been helping customers better engage with their customers both in terms of communication and security requirements. His specific experience has ensured he is able to give his clients the correct strategy, needed to grow their businesses and mitigate the risks of transformation. Surinder, sits as the Head of Voice Bio-Metrics in Connect and has a demonstrated history of working with clients customer engagement strategies in the financial, information technology and services industries. Prior, to joining Connect, Surinder held senior positions at BancTec and FileNet and MR Group, bringing innovative solutions at both companies and generating them substantial revenue growth. An experienced entrepreneur in setting up growing Fintech Companies, Surinder is an experienced Chief Executive Officer, heading up Voice Secure for the last 6 years. He is a strong business development professional with a Bachelor of Science, in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Glasgow, and an MBA from the University of Strathclyde Business School.

SYNOPSIS Connect Managed Services was delighted to have chaired a number of round-table workshops focused on Financial & Insurance Sector clients. The attendees were all experienced within Customer Engagement & Contact Centre environments. Our remit was to allow open debate for the attendees to share their experiences in how they have met the challenges related to Customer Engagement and Digital Transformation. The sessions highlighted several themes and challenges which resonated with all those that attended.

1. Technology & Managing Transformation 2. Measurement of Customer Experience (Retention) & Resources 3. Roles of Management The “Roundtable” unlocked some critical insights from people in the Industry and allowed Connect to draw on our 25 years’ experience as a ‘hands-on’ proven specialist in Contact Centre & Customer Engagement. Our consultancy and technology practices can assist in addressing many of these challenges.

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CONNECT REPORT

OVERVIEW With these challenges, finding the “silver bullet” for success is proving very difficult for organisations that rely on client interactions through traditional Contact Centres. However, in addressing the above challenges, some common themes occurred. 1. Technology & Managing Transformation Connects approach to managing Technology is unique. We are not prescriptive about technologies and platforms. We believe in an agnostic approach to technology to ensure the best solution is tailored to the customer’s needs. Our Innovation lab allows us to derisk key technology decisions and provide an improved ROI. During all sessions there was a strong theme that the Traditional IT departments are keen to promote Next Generation technology e.g: • AI • Omni-channel However, their impact on the “Business Needs & Business Culture” is more difficult to determine. 2. Measurement of Customer Experience (Retention) & Resource The Contact Centre Agents and Branch staff are fundamental in delivering a quality customer experience. Staff & Customer retention is a key concern, and the correlation of business success can be traced to how well an organisation develops their agents and branch staff. This makes staff in each organisation just as important as the Transformational Technology in delivering a true Customer Engagement that is fit for the 21st Century. In an age of total disruption, it becomes mandatory to understand the value of both staff and customers in the changing environment so that commercial value to the organisation is maximised. There are many programs which have been used to track customer experience including “Customer Demo” experience suites. This involves evaluating a customer journey under a controlled environment and allows businesses to evaluate first hand new service

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introduction, this is a mechanism which Connect fully supports in ensuring an organisations business objectives are met. Note: It is important for organisations to understand where repetitive customer requests take place and introduce self-service into these channels. 3. Roles of Management A question asked of all participants was whether they had a specific individual responsible for customer experience. In many cases, this was not a specific role but performed as a duty within other job functions. These roles are not necessarily at the highest level, e.g. board/director. Connects experience has shown that organisations that create senior positions for individuals have been able to provide an improved customer journey due to the focus in this specific area. Within the roundtable, one client was concerned that they had moved away from employing customer experience specific roles and were convinced it was a backward step. Connect believe consistent analysis of customer experience is paramount if businesses wish to improve their customer growth and retention.

SUMMARY Connect has a wealth of technology implementation experience to support all of the above concerns including: • Strategy Creation • Business Evaluation • Transformation. Connect looks forward to the next roundtable sessions where we would hope to focus on “Success Stories”.

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CX STRATEGIES FOR THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY Moderator: Mark Walton, Vice President Europe, Arise Virtual Solutions

Perennial problems of the contact centre remain the same and don’t appear to have changed over the past twenty years despite all of the advances in technology. We’ll be looking at: •

• • •

How do we recruit enough agents to support customers? If we can recruit, how to recruit agents of the right caliber to ensure the highest quality customer experience? And if we can recruit, how do we minimise attrition and absence? This appears to be as relevant as ever in an environment where individuals now have more career choice in an economy approaching full employment and where the ‘living wage’ is increasingly the norm. In an environment where customers have increasing expectations of the brands that they interact with, are more demanding than ever, being quick to take to social media when things go wrong and the number of communication channels available continues to increase. How do we keep up and evolve customer journeys to protect and maximise brand potential? Do Home Working; AI or a different approach to recruitment and training practices provide the ‘Holy Grail’?

Mark has been involved in Customer Service all of his career and has specialised in the BPO & direct marketing sectors for the past 20 years, working with leading brands in the telecoms, mobile, utilities and financial services sectors. He was a Director at HEROtsc for six years and led its spectacular growth from regional player to market leader, recording a turnover of £100million, through two private equity sales leading to its eventual sale to Webhelp. Mark built and grew the Aquira Group of companies from 2008 which became a market leader in Sales through Service outsourcing and a pioneer of the intelligent data model and ‘Data Cyclone’ for marketing which helped many brands such as ‘3’ ‘Vodafone’ ‘Sky’ and ‘Scottish Power’ to grow significantly and compliantly. Mark was founder and Chairman of not for profit company Reviive which donates all of its profits to the homeless and oversaw its dramatic growth to eventual merger with the Wrekin Housing group. Mark has worked with or advised many of the largest BPO companies in Europe and in 2017 joined Arise Virtual Solutions to replicate the incredible success that Arise have had in the US Home Working sector, across the UK and Europe.

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WHAT’S THE WINNING FORMULA FOR DRIVING ICONIC CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE? Moderator: Arkin Salih, Learning Director, NKD If you’re working within the retail sector and looking to enhance customer experience, don’t miss this focus group session. We will explore the following themes: • • •

The importance of deﬁning your brand promise – who are you and what do you stand for? Does your customer experience reﬂect this? If not, what needs to change? What do you want the service interaction to actually look and feel like? How you drive the customer experience through your people – how are you engaging your teams? How do your learning interventions drive service behaviour? What is in place to support the delivery of service excellence? The role of the manager – what are they doing to embed and sustain your desired customer experience? Are they coaching the right behaviours, in order to drive genuine customer engagement?

During this session participants will have the opportunity to explore if they truly have the right ingredients to deliver the customer experience they want for their brand, driving differentiation, customer loyalty and ultimately sustained proﬁt and growth.

Arkin is a Learning Director at NKD. He has 20 years of experience working in retail, hospitality and talent development at some of the world’s most well-known brands. He was previously Head of Learning & Development at Harvey Nichols group, and Learning & Development Manager at Harrods, where he was responsible for sales and service training and developed the U.K.’s ﬁrst BA (Hons.) Degree in Sales exclusively for the luxury retailer.

THE WINNING FORMULA FOR ICONIC CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Imagine a world where you have the winning formula; where your brand, customer experience and employees all come together to co-create moments that matter. The result? Experiences that drive emotional connection and true customer engagement. Discussion at the ‘Customer Engagement in Retail’ Focus Groups sought to explore exactly what the winning formula for iconic customer experience is, and whether the participants felt that their organisations had the right mix. Conversation revolved around ﬁve key themes: 1. A Great Brand A great brand is instantly recognisable and known in the marketplace for the service and product it provides. Customers love it, and so do the people who work there – they become living breathing adverts, ambassadors championing everything you do. For many of the participants, their brand absolutely is identiﬁable – big brands who are known for their product both within their industry and also with consumers. For some, the challenge was for their brand to maintain its place in the marketplace during challenging trading conditions, economic uncertainty, and when so many new brands are vying for their customer’s share of wallet. There was also the challenge of the brand behind the brand – how do they ensure that their brand is recognisable? They may be recognisable within their industry and their peers, but how do they make themselves known to the consumer?

And finally, there was the franchise – how do they ensure that the brand remains recognisable and delivering the service and product they are known for, when it is entrusted with third parties operating under the brand’s name? Over the course of the discussions, these questions led us to the same answer: the importance of truly defining your product and customer experience. 2. Iconic Products & Customer Experience An in-demand product, and most importantly, world-class customer experience will define a brand and differentiate it from its competitors in the market. This doesn’t just happen by chance – it has to be defined, shaped and nurtured, ensuring it reflects the brand and most importantly, reflects the customer. “Customer experience is the battleground” noted one participant early on, and it’s fair to say that this sentiment was echoed throughout the day. While everyone acknowledged the importance of having a clear strategy when it comes to customer experience and product offer, and that this will be the real differentiator for a brand, many participants acknowledged that this was not defined clearly, if at all, for their organisation. Without clearly defining what the customer experience should look, sound and feel like, how do you communicate this to your customer? How do you make your point of difference clear? And crucially, how do you bring it alive within the organisation? If you can’t describe it or demonstrate it, how can you engage your employees to deliver it?

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KCOM REPORT

3. Engaged Employees Engaged employees means lower absenteeism and higher sales, service and profit results. They love the brand, they love their manager and their team, and they value being part of the brand and giving it all that they’ve got. “We’re here to talk about customer experience, yet we’ve spent all of our time talking about our teams” pointed out a participant at the end of the first Focus Group. This was the conclusion for the subsequent two sessions too. It was agreed by everyone across all of the Focus Groups that engaging employees was vital. Ensuring that they have the tools required, that they know the direction the brand is going in, and feel included in decisions and the future of the organisation was the key to bringing alive customer experience. For some, employee engagement was strong. Investment in people through learning and development, career opportunities, and clear and deliberate internal comms was reaping positive results and proving what we talk about time and time again – that investing in your people really does make a difference to business results and customer engagement. Simply put, employee engagement equals customer engagement. For others, they had what they described as ‘residual engagement’. A love for a brand that is recognisable and has been loved by customers for many years, but that was starting to fade due to a lack of direction and clarity. In these instances, the very fact that the customer experience was undefined meant that employees were unclear about what they were supposed to be doing, what good looks like, and where the business is going. The feeling for these organisations was that unless the leadership team took control, this residual engagement and commitment would soon disappear for good. 4. Inspiring Leadership Employees join a company, but leave a manager, or so goes the

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familiar adage. Great leaders know how to inspire their teams, to paint a picture of where the business is going, and ensure that their teams have the tools required for the journey ahead. They rolemodel, living the customer experience. Across all of the Focus Groups, the message was the same – the responsibility for deﬁning the customer experience, engaging teams, and truly creating genuine customer engagement lies with the leadership team. Some of the participants included themselves in this. They saw it as their role to ensure that their organisation was pro-actively deﬁning and shaping the customer experience strategy and engaging their teams to be part of the journey. For others, there was a strong desire to see their senior leadership doing this.

5. Sustained Profit & Growth What does this all mean? There was agreement in the group that you need to have all of the elements, the entire formula, in order to achieve true customer engagement. Only by having a strong brand with a product and customer experience that is clearly defined, an engaged team, and a leadership team who are inspiring, will you see the results you want. The overwhelming conclusion was that you can only survive for so long with only parts of the formula. With high engagement but no clear strategy, the engagement soon slips. A clearly defined service approach with an unmotivated team means there is no one to bring the brand to life. Without all of the elements, the ones you do have will soon diminish. But get it right, and the outcome is incredible. Goals are met, profit and growth are sustained, and benefits are reaped. All of this feeds straight into investing back in to the formula, ensuring that the employee engagement and customer experience maintain momentum, and that customer engagement becomes a way of life.

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DEFINING THE HUMAN AGE - A REFLECTION ON CUSTOMER SERVICE AND WORK IN 2030 Moderator: Graeme Gabriel, Strategic Back Ofﬁce WFO Consultant EMEA, Verint

Technology is changing the workplace. In this workshop we will outline the results of our global research study and explore 3 key areas: 1.

Automation: Tasks and processes are increasingly being automated by technology; AI, algorithms and other automation technology (e.g. robots). How will this help people to do their job more effectively?

Robot concerns: Will robots or artiﬁcial intelligence take over jobs in the next 10 years?

The workplace: As technology improves, how will workplaces need to adapt to suit employee preferences?

Since joining Verint in 2014 as a Strategic Back Office Workforce Optimisation Consultant, Graeme has worked with organisations to streamline and optimise Back Office processes with a specific focus on Resource Planning and Contact Centre Training. Graeme’s experience in contact centres stretches back over 20 years, at nearly every level, ranging from working as an agent on the phone to providing strategic business consultancy at the senior management level. This unique insight gives Graeme the ability to identify inefficiencies; design, implement and reengineer workforce management processes and systems. Having worked across every level he has an understanding of the business issues from an agent up to senior management perspective.

ENGAGEMENT CHANNELS & ROBOTS We talked about multiple topics in the sessions but started with the type and number of channels offered to customers. Webchat was something a number of delegates were actively offering to customers. However it’s fair to say the majority of attendees were not offering it but were considering it. Those that were blazing a trail talked about how it’s still a learning process with technically having the capability for agents to manage multiple chats concurrently, but in reality the feeling was one or two at a time was appropriate. Web chats were initially seen as a more cost effective solution that voice as it would require fewer agents to handle them. Channel shift was the perceived benefit however the consensus in the room was that they had seen no channel shift but rather the emergence of a new requirement with no visible impact on reduction in other media channels. This may be because the option to chat was offered off the website and the feeling was that many customers would opt to chat instead of persevering with the website to find the information they required. Getting a feel for predicting when customers want to webchat is still difficult with organisations only offering the option to customers if there was capacity to manage them. We talked about the possibility of robots managing web chats. The key here was to be upfront about when a robot was being used. The example Vanarama gave of naming the robot in-Van was an indicator of that. It was felt that this kind of transparency had a positive impact on whether customers used the service or not. The

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Vanarama story was an interesting one as the robot was actually used as a 24 hour sales channel. This has been so successful that they are now building the knowledge base used by the bot to allow them to roll it out into customer services. Even those customers deal with a robot and then opt to drop out and speak to a human, give high customer satisfaction scores. This is because when they do speak to an agent they are better informed and transact really quickly as the hard work has already been done. We are still in the early days for robots and as technology improves, organisations will face the dilemma as robots become more sophisticated and become harder to spot, whether or not to reveal that the customer is in fact conversing with one. Understanding your customer and their preferred engagement channels is key. Offering channels that were appropriate and in demand by the customer, rather than pushing channels that were of beneﬁt to the organisation from a cost perspective need to be the priority. One delegate remarked ‘the key is to offer customers the channel that best suited them and not force them to use a channel they don’t want to’. The introduction of Robots not only has customer implications but also agent implications. Those organisations who had introduced them, advised that part of the process was to educate the staff that the robot was there to assist and deal with basic queries and not - as was the fear - replace humans. The delegates in the room explained that whilst this wasn’t easy, but were now in a place where, in these particular organisations, they are comfortable with it.

VERINT REPORT

Even with the successful implementation of other disparate channels such as web chat and social media, most of the organisations in the session still placed a high value on the Voice channel. One delegate stressed that they obtain all the highest customer experience scores from the customers who speak with agents, even if the reason for the call was a negative one.

ETHICAL COMPANIES & EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

DATA & PERSONALISATION

The introduction of multiple self-service channels and AI processes is also changing the type of query coming into the contact centre. A fall out of the AI process is that complex queries require ‘human’ intervention and the people resolving those issues are now more valuable to the business than ever before.

In light of the recent Cambridge Analytica situation, we did spend some time discussing the impact of data and personalisation. It’s fair to say customers are now more aware of the data that organisations hold about them. There is a massive difference on the quality of data organisations hold and how it’s used. An interesting take from one delegate was that we take data and track habits from customers and then use that, rather than ask customers what they are interested in. A good example of this was someone bought a toilet seat off Amazon, and now they receive emails from them asking if they want to buy more toilet seats. A poor example of the use of data. The range and type of data being collected is continually growing with more and more biometric information added to the mix. Passports include biometric data, in-phones uses facial recognition and prior to that, ﬁngerprint recognition. This is now expanding to voice prints for biometric identiﬁcation of customers when calling the contact centre.

Ethical organisations were also discussed, with the rise of available information on companies, and how they behave. Business must now be aware that the way they choose to conduct their business will have an impact on customer loyalty and whether a customer decides to stay with them or not.

Employee engagement initiatives such as reward and recognition programs, developing staff internally and offering them real career progression was something that was recognised consistently across all of the delegates who attended this session. Part of this was an acceptance that nobody enters an organisation and stays forty years waiting for the god watch on retirement, the workforce of today is more transient. It wasn’t just about career progression though, and this ties back in to being ethical. One company does a lot of work for charity within the local community and actually allows staff away from the operation to pursue some of this charitable work. This further reinforces the culture that the business is trying to cultivate across the business.

FOCUS GROUPS 2018 SUPPLEMENT

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Consumers want a humanised customer experience tailored to them and their preferences But nĂ&#x17D;ÂŻ of consumers want to know organisations are keeping their personal information secure Consumers want the latest technology to be available at work as at home Â&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;i Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;>Â&#x2DC; > Ă&#x152;Â&#x2026;Â&#x2C6;Ă&#x20AC;` iĂ?ÂŤiVĂ&#x152; Ă&#x153;Â&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;Â&#x17D;ÂŤÂ?>ViĂ&#x192; Ă&#x152;Â&#x153; Li Â&#x201C;Â&#x153;Ă&#x20AC;i y iĂ?Â&#x2C6;LÂ?i to suit employee preferences

Latest research from more than 36,000 consumers across 18 countries reveals the key challenges organisations face for engagement in the future info@verint.com +44(0) 1932 839500

WILL AI WORK FOR YOU? Moderator: Fran Fish , CEO, Mazaru Dr David Naylor, CEO, Humanotics This interactive focus group will cut through the Artificial Intelligence (AI) hype and help you explore practically how it will support your service organisation — reducing costs, boosting sales and improving service for customers. AI has the promise to support service in new ways that’ll benefit both your customers and business. But, with high profile failures at even the most tech savvy companies such as Microsoft and Facebook, the talk about what’s possible is running ahead of what’s practical. This session offers down-to-earth advice to help you find out whether AI is right for you and how. You’ll get the opportunity to talk to other service leaders, share your experiences and learn / talk about: • • • • •

What all the jargon means — AI, Chatbots, RPA, Machine Learning etc. what it all means and why it’s important The top ways AI can help — how organisations are using AI to support customer operations right now and what the benefits have been How to make a big difference (without taking too much of a risk) — The risks and returns on investment for the different use cases How AI can be used in your organisation — a chance for you to create your own use case priority list and discuss it The golden rules for getting the most from your AI investment — including using conversational language / user experience design, creating content, selecting the most appropriate technology and developing your organisational capabilities. Known for her breadth of knowledge — and uncommon good service sense — Fran has lived and breathed contact centres and customer service for the best part of 25 years. Starting on the frontline at USAirways, she progressed quickly to help launch the first customer service focussed magazine within the UK as well as innovate in the area of contact centre and communication consulting. Fran is now CEO of service communication experts Mazaru. Here she helps public sector organisations and global brands — including Microsoft, Sky and Vodafone — talk to their customers better through digital service channels and retain customers, boost sales as well as reduce costs. David has over 25 years’ experience in customer operations, insight & analytics as well as experience design and has worked with many leading FTSE 100 companies including Vodafone, Lloyds Banking Group and Severn Trent Water. With a PhD for his pioneering research in AI, David’s mission now is to help demystify the area and enable organisations to realise the many benefits of its use in customer applications from chatbots to predictive sales analytics and contact handling.

Our workshops at the Engage Focus group saw delegates from many sectors discussing whether AI will work for them. Many are, or have, focussed on AI for chatbots to start with. This was because of the simple cost reduction (i.e. removing the need for advisor contact) business case. And, the maturity of off-the-shelf technology that — in principle at least — makes successful implementation easier.

OVERCOMING KEY CHALLENGES Two of the secrets to a good chatbot are making it easy for customers to communicate with. And, ensuring that it’s language represents an organisation successfully in this new “space” for their brand. For example, would it be right for the famously plain-talking smoothie makers Innocent to have a bot that referred to their produce as “liquiﬁed fruit-based comestibles”?! Also, the ability for bots to provide correct answers is dependent on the content that’s the basis for these. Helping organisations optimise their bots using natural language. And, creating content that’s easy to understand (for both bots and customers), are two of the AI areas Mazaru focus on. From discussions with delegates (and work with service organisations previously) it’s also clear that although IT departments understand AI well on a systems level, often they don’t have all the skills needed to use the technology successfully. For

example, their experience may be limited when it comes to identifying suitable applications, deﬁning good business cases and implementation people — as well as process — best practices. As a consequence, vendors are ﬁlling the gap. This may mean that organisations are tied to applications because of the technology available — rather than being able to look at what applications will give them most return on their investment (ROI) and choosing a technology to suit. A bridge between operational aspirations / expectations and technical reality (as well as capability) is needed. One delegate also noted they have a data science and analyst team of 300. But, communicating what the team can do to support the business was hard. There’s an important point about organisational models to think about here — analysts who understand both operations and data science are required. Helping businesses choose the best applications (as well as technology to support this). And, providing resources that understand both data science and service operations are key AI challenges that Humanotics can help with.

WORKSHOP DISCUSSIONS During the session we polled the delegates on a number of key questions and discussed their answers. Over page is a high-level summary along with other issues discussed and our own thoughts on AI best practices. If you’d like to know more information, just drop us a line.

FOCUS GROUPS 2018 SUPPLEMENT

MAZARU REPORT

DISCUSSION KEY THEMES

6 BEST BOT PRACTICES

• People who have live AI solutions, have almost as many questions as the those who are just starting to explore AI • Many organisations are looking to understand the potential for AI, beyond chatbot applications • On-brand user experience design for chatbots is a critical aspect, that requires significant input from your frontline experts • As with most technology, cost reduction benefits are at the forefront of most business cases for AI • Most people are questioning the quality of their organisation’s data and therefore planning small, incremental steps for AI AI is so much more than chatbots and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Few people appreciated that. Prediction is also a very powerful application that is often overlooked. Anywhere in the contact centre where decisions are needed — proactive outbound contact, predicting next best offers, forecasting contact volumes — these have great potential to benefit organisations, consumers and employees. The use of RPA for simple process automation will mean that as time goes on, fewer and fewer exceptions will need to be handled by humans as the AI will be able to make more of those decisions. Delegate Quote: “Is there more to AI than answering FAQs?”

WHERE ARE YOU ON YOUR AI JOURNEY?

A question that created a lot of discussion was who should manage chatbots. Do they come under the .com team or the contact centre? One of the attendees was ‘managing’ the bots / RPA with a team leader in a similar way to a group of agents. Questions like this need to be considered carefully as it’ll change the operating model. And, may create tension between marketing/web/service teams — making the creation of smooth customer journeys more difﬁcult. Delegate Quote: “We have a fast growing student population that will see AI as the norm”

WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE?

Interestingly, many of the attendees who have chatbots ‘live’ also put themselves in the beginner’s camp. The learning point here is that going live quickly may be useful. Then, allow time to tune and develop the AI as the data that’s needed to make it successful might not already exist and has to come from customers. Another point to note is that there are very few ‘industrial strength’ applications out there that are fully integrated with the operation.

WHERE WILL AI MOST HELP YOUR ORGANISATION?

The volume of good quality data needed to make predictive AI work effectively is the key challenge for most businesses. Prediction is often done with toolsets (eg MS Azure ML), algorithms (Neural Nets) and large data manipulation exercises — there is no easy path to getting these beneﬁts at present. There are no magic applications, just lots of trial and error to determine how well the algorithms can discover patterns in your data — which may or may not be there. The message here is not to expect too much — start with small experiments, key the work low key. One company said we can’t do any of this because our data isn’t good enough yet. Quite often it never will be. So, it’s as well to make a start and learn from there. Delegate Quote: “The biggest barrier to AI in our company is culture”

Not surprisingly “cost reduction” was the beneﬁt that most organisations were seeking from AI. However, this shouldn’t constrain thinking about applications and one public sector organisation said they were looking for something very different — how AI could better serve vulnerable groups that have acute need for help 24x7x365. Delegate Quote: “Even a small AI to answer our top 20 FAQs could help enormously”

FOCUS GROUPS 2018 SUPPLEMENT

6 AI GOLDEN RULES • • • • • •

It’s a journey for the whole organisation not a race Fully understand the business questions ﬁrst The right data is more important than the method Build and deliver success incrementally Use good design principles – focus on your users People make this work, not just the technology

ŝŐŝƚĂů ƐĞƌǀŝĐĞ ŵĂĚĞ ĞĂƐǇ ^ƚƌĂƚĞŐǇ ͮ dƌĂŝŶŝŶŐ ͮ ŽŶƚĞŶƚ ͮ y ĞƐŝŐŶ ͮ ĞŶĐŚŵĂƌŬŝŶŐ We help leading brands — including Allianz, Sky and John >ĞǁŝƐ Ͷ ĐƌĞĂƚĞ ďĞƩĞƌ ĐƵƐƚŽŵĞƌ ĞǆƉĞƌŝĞŶĐĞƐ ƚŚĂƚ ƐĂǀĞ ŵŽŶĞǇ͕ ďŽŽƐƚ ĐƵƐƚŽŵĞƌ ƐĂƟƐĨĂĐƟŽŶ ĂŶĚ ŝŶĐƌĞĂƐĞ ƐĂůĞƐ͘ hƐŝŶŐ Ă ŵŝǆ ŽĨ ƐĐŝĞŶĐĞ͕ ĐƌĞĂƟǀŝƚǇ ĂŶĚ ƐĞƌǀŝĐĞ ŬŶŽǁͲŚŽǁ͕ ǁĞ͛ůů ŝŵƉƌŽǀĞ ŚŽǁ ǇŽƵ ĐŽŵŵƵŶŝĐĂƚĞ ǁŝƚŚ ǇŽƵƌ ĐƵƐƚŽŵĞƌƐ ƚŚƌŽƵŐŚ Ăůů ĐŚĂŶŶĞůƐ ĂŶĚ ŵĞĚŝĂ Ͷ ĨƌŽŵ /͕ ǁĞďĐŚĂƚ͕ ƐŽĐŝĂů ŵĞĚŝĂ ĂŶĚ ŽŶůŝŶĞ ĂŶƐǁĞƌƐ ĨŽƌ & YƐ ƚŽ ^D^͕ ůĞƩĞƌƐ ĂŶĚ ƚŚĞ ƉŚŽŶĞ͘ KƵƌ ĂǁĂƌĚͲǁŝŶŶŝŶŐ ǁŽƌŬ ŚĂƐ ƌĞĚƵĐĞĚ ĐŽƐƚƐ ďǇ ĐƵƫŶŐ ƌĞƉĞĂƚ ĐŽŶƚĂĐƚ ďǇ ϵϬй ĂƐ ǁĞůů ĂƐ ŵŽǀŝŶŐ ϰϳй ŽĨ ĐĂůůŝŶŐ ĐƵƐƚŽŵĞƌƐ ƚŽ ƐĞůĨͲƐĞƌǀŝĐĞ ĐŚĂŶŶĞůƐ͕ ŝŶĐƌĞĂƐĞĚ ^Ăƚ ďǇ ϯϳй ĂŶĚ ďŽŽƐƚĞĚ ƐĂůĞƐ ŽƉƉŽƌƚƵŶŝƟĞƐ ďǇ Ϯϰй͘ tĂŶƚ ƚŽ ŬŶŽǁ ŵŽƌĞ͍ ƌŽƉ ƵƐ Ă ůŝŶĞ͗ hello@mazaru.com w: mazaru.com t: 0330 123 9930 t: @mazaruspeaks

ƐĞƌǀŝĐĞ ĐŽŵŵƵŶŝĐĂƟŽŶ ĞǆƉĞƌƚƐ

OUR SPONSORS

Arise is a pioneer of on-demand customer management technology and business process outsourcing. Our powerful cloud-based enablement platform connects companies seeking outsourced BPO solutions to a nationwide network of virtual service providers. Built to scale, Arise provides a superior solution for innovative enterprises from startups to Fortune 500 companies. M: +44 (0)7876 641422 E: mwalton@arise.com W: www.arise.com

Confirmit enables organisations to develop and implement Voice of the Customer, Employee Engagement and Market Research programmes that deliver insight and drive business change. Confirmit’s clients create multi-channel, multi-lingual feedback and research programmes that engage customers, empower employees, deliver a compelling respondent experience, and provide high Return on Investment. Confirmit’s customer engagement model provides the power to listen to the Voice of the Customer, integrate it with financial, operational and free-form text data to generate powerful insight, and take action that will deliver effective business change and create competitive advantage. T: 020 3053 9333 E: info@confirmit.com W: www.confirmit.com

Connect Managed Services delivers 24 x 7 high availability and pain free transformation of business-critical Contact Centre and UC environments for global businesses. We have developed a bespoke set of monitoring and automation tools, which combined with our differentiated approach to service management, ensure we deliver a consistent service level performance, typically over 25% above industry standards. Our unique ‘Stabilise, Enhance, Transform’ programme enables a seamless journey from disjointed, legacy technologies and suppliers to a uniform, modern environment with consistent service levels under a single contract. We continue to bring innovation to the market and we are a Platinum Partner of ZOOM a market leader in workforce optimization software. The company has received world-class customer satisfaction honors – 86 NPS for 2017, has 1600+ customers, and 300+ partners across 90+ countries. ZOOM’s software helps contact centers improve the customer and agent experience – by capturing, analyzing, and improving the quality of all interactions – while addressing back ofﬁce compliance and risk. ZOOM’s suite includes call, video, and screen recording with omnichannel quality management, advanced analytics, workforce management, elearning, and more T: 01628 610 000 E: gordonr@connectmanaged.com W: www.connectmanaged.com www.zoomint.com

FOCUS GROUPS 2018 SUPPLEMENT

We believe in conversations that spark curiosity, questions, reflexion and action. iAdvize’s first conversation was between founders Julien and Jon when they first chatted about how a chat solution could add a human touch to online customer service. Well that conversation never ended and now, there are 180 of us. We’re still conversing and the chat tool’s become a conversational marketing platform. Join the conversation is iAdvize’s rallying cry. It’s an invitation to hack the established, to design the unexpected, to ship the unsinkable, to delight the customer and to join the party. W: www.iadvize.com

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT SUMMIT 2018 MONDAY 12 & TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2018 W E S T M I N S T E R PA R K P L A Z A , L O N D O N

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OUR SPONSORS

At IFS – mplsystems our vision is ‘to make complex service simple’: we design and deliver Omni-Channel Contact Centre, CRM Customer Service desktop and AI enabled Virtual Assistance solutions. Our unique, configurable unified agent desktop solution has transformed customer engagement for many of Europe’s top businesses by providing a 360-degree view of the customer, whilst managing voice; email; chat; social and mobile channels as a seamless omni-channel experience. Our pioneering intelligent self-service solution is enabling customers to introduce Artificial Intelligence into customer service: automatically answering and processing email, chat and social media requests whilst also providing online virtual assistance. As a Visionary in Gartner’s Contact Centre as a Service Magic Quadrant for the last 3 consecutive years, we are trusted by many leading European organisations to manage their end-to-end Omni Channel Customer journeys.

We help leading brands — including Allianz, Sky and John Lewis — create better customer experiences that save money, enhance service and increase sales. Using a mix of science, creativity and service know-how, we’ll improve how you communicate with your customers through all channels and media — from AI, webchat, social media and online answers for FAQs to SMS, letters and the phone. Our award-winning work has reduced costs by cutting repeat contact by 90% as well as moving 47% of calling customers to self-service channels, increased CSat by 37% and boosted sales opportunities by 24%. We work with you to ﬁnd opportunities for improvement, create strategies to make the most of these and make it easy to maintain better communications as well as boost team performance. T: 0330 123 9930 E: fran.ﬁsh@mazaru.com W: www.mazaru.co.uk

Contact: Tina Ladd T: 01926 623 500 E: tina.ladd@ifsworld.com W: www.mplsystems.co.uk

We believe that employee engagement is as vital to company performance as external customer engagement. Over the last 12 years our solutions have impacted the performance of close to 1 million people across 220 countries. We specialise in helping you identify and solve your unique people challenges. Our success is built on delivering practical and engaging people solutions that make a difference to the bottom line. Our solutions work because they are grounded in rigorous science using proven methodologies. Vitally, we wrap them up with an engaging communications story that inspires behaviour change and ensures the results we deliver really stick. Contact: Nab Kalsi, Business Development Director T: +44 (0) 203 4700 230 M: +44 (0) 7768 045 609 E: nab@nkd.co.uk W: www.nkd.co.uk

FOCUS GROUPS 2018 SUPPLEMENT

Verint is “The Customer Engagement Company.” We help organizations simplify and modernize the way they engage customers through their contact center, branch, back ofﬁce and marketing departments. Our market-leading broad portfolio of cloud and hybrid solutions is designed with the latest artiﬁcial intelligence and advanced analytics technologies to deliver greater automation and shared intelligence that drives real business impact. Verint is your partner to make customer engagement a strategic advantage and a strong competitive differentiator for your organisation. With over two decades of experience helping more than 10,000 organizations worldwide create lasting value, we’re a global leader in customer engagement. Together with our vast global partner network, we can help you evolve and modernize your entire customer engagement operation, while protecting your legacy investments. Together with our customers, we’re looking to the future—imagining, planning and developing innovative ways to take customer engagement to new heights. T: 01932 839500 E: info.emea@verint.com W: www.verint.com

TESTIMONIAL

“THE FOCUS GROUPS PROVIDED THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO DISCUSS THE TOPICS THAT WILL ULTIMATELY DRIVE OUR ORGANISATION FORWARD. THE FORMAT WAS BRILLIANT – SMALL GROUPS OF INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS SHARING OUR IDEAS. WHAT I DISCUSSED TODAY WILL BE EXTREMELY VALUABLE WHEN MAKING STRATEGIC PLANS. THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE INVITE AND I CAN’T WAIT TO ATTEND AGAIN!”

FOCUS GROUPS 2018 SUPPLEMENT

2018 EVENTS INCLUDE

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT TRANSFORMATION CONFERENCE

EVOLUTION OF WORK CONFERENCE

JUL 2018

SEP 2018

THURSDAY 12TH JULY 2018

THURSDAY 20TH SEPTEMBER 2018

12/13 NOV 2018

28 NOV 2018

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT SUMMIT 2018 MONDAY 12TH & TUESDAY 13TH NOVEMBER

ENGAGE FOCUS GROUPS

20 SEP 2018

THURSDAY 20TH SEPTEMBER 2018

FUTURE OF MARKETING CONFERENCE

OCT 2018

MONDAY 1ST OCTOBER 2018

ENGAGE AWARDS 2018

NOV 2018

MONDAY 12TH NOVEMBER 2018

CUSTOMER ROBOTICS AND AI DIRECTORS FORUM

NOV 2018

WEDNESDAY 28TH NOVEMBER 2018

INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE

FRIDAY 30TH NOVEMBER 2018

BOOK YOUR PLACE 01932 506 300 (press 1)

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