fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Lab # 1 — Create your Amazon Connect instance
By: Durgesh Gurnani
Tags: Amazon Lex, Customer Experience, Contact Center, Customer Service, Amazon Connect

Navigate to AWS console and login using your AWS account

2. Ensure that your selected region is “US East (N. Virginia)” by clicking on your region in the upper right-hand corner of the AWS console and selecting the region.

3. Select Amazon Connect either from the Customer Engagement section, or by entering “Amazon Connect” in the search bar

4.If this is your first time navigating to Amazon Connect, click Get Started. Otherwise, you will see a list of instances that have already been built with an Add an Instance button. Click either Add an Instance or Get Started.
Embed your how to videos in conversational interface and enrich chatbot experience
By: Pınar Doğan
Tags: User Experience, Chatbots, Chatbot Development, Chatbot Design, Customer Experience

As Jetlink, we are delighted to enrich user experience by adding new features and we keep up working in that direction:

Chatbots can now do various transactions without the need for a customer representative. Of course, first of all, the answers given by the bot should be sufficient for the customer’s question. Fundemental of a good conversations starts with true understanding. Once you manage that the next step is to enrich experience. As Jetlink, we aim to impress the user as well as to give the correct answer to the user’s question.

How embedded videos can contribute to user experience for chatbots?

Video is the king of content and people prefer watching over reading. The same rule applies for chatbots too, people like to consume content with video. For this reason, we’ve started to use videos to respond to the user. Here you can see the images before our development.

A video card with a video link inside and the YouTube page that opens on another page. In this way, user needs to navigate to a different platform to watch the video.

This has some obvious side effects: users might have more questions to ask and they need to return back to the conversation widget, this back and forth type of experience lacks. It brokes the conversation. Furthermore, platforms such as Youtube can cause users to redirect other unrelated videos and users can lose their attention. This will lead to lower engagement levels and decrease the numbers of lead generation.

Thanks to our new feature, our chabots enable us to play these videos in the conversation widget. In this way, the user both receives the answer with richer content, watches the required videos instead of reading, and experience is better, because users don’t need to leave the dialoge. Here is the screenshot after our recent development.

There are two benefits of that:

Firstly, conversations will keep on where it started smoothly. This will enable more engaging conversational experience. Eventually, it will bring better results.

As second, brands will be able to deliver their video content in chatbots. Because some of how to videos are the most convenient ways to help users. They are far better explainers for some of the tasks. Users can easily find out what needs to be done within the help of videos.

We will continue to improve our platform abilities and enrich the user experience in every way. If you would like to learn more how to have meaningful and automated conversations with your customer at scale, shoot us an email via hello@jetlink.io
Make it less shitty to change my kids diapers
By: Daniele Catalanotto
Tags: Customer Experience, Family, Public Space, Service Design

As a new dad there is a lot of tiny customer experience I notice now that I never noticed before. Changing spots for your baby are one of these elements.

Full disclosure: more and more articles focused on families will obviously be posted as I use my personal experience as inspiration for these written pieces. So if you hate babies, as I did before, stop reading here or you might regret it.

A little customer experience story

My wife loves zoos. So each time we have some holidays we go to the zoo. But this time was different. It was the first time we went to the zoo with a baby. And because babies are babies there obviously comes a moment when the little guy shit himself and you have to go change his diaper.

So I take a new diaper and my little diaper change bag, yeah I’m an organized dad, and head up towards the toilets as this is usually the place where companies put the table where you can change your kid. Makes sense in some way. We take care of shit both of adult ans baby shit at the same place. So first I’m really happy that there is a spot in the toilets to change the kid awesome. But then comes the really shitty experience.

Picture this. Each time someone dries his hands a big sound comes out of the machine which makes your baby cry. You are sorting shit right next to where people clean your hands, so as you are polite your try to not share this to visibly to people who are at another phase of their toilet usage. You heave no space because you are placed right next to the lavatory.

How this feels

In short it’s extremely noisy, you have no space and you are disturbing others. Definitely not the best spot to try to calm a shouting baby who is unhappy that he is still full of shit and that you are so slow.

Still today when I remember that zoo I remember the awful experience in those toilets. Even if the zoo was pretty nice and extremely well designed.

What this means for a service designer

If you are designing for families try to imagine spaces where parents can sort out there baby shit both real and metaphoric in a calm and relaxing setting.

Being a parent with a shouting baby sometimes sucks. So as a company or service who targets families you can provide calm spaces. Such calm spaces will help parents remember that this zoo or shop was awesome because not only did they see fancy exotic animals but also when the kid went crazy you could take care of him and feel that the space was helping you to do it in a relaxed way.
Service Design Books and Guides
By: Daniele Catalanotto
Tags: Customer Experience, Books, Customer Service, Service Design

Service Design Books

Outside of the 500+ articles written on this magazine I have written also a few books on the topic of Service Design. Here is a collection of these books.

If you have to read one Service Design book, read this one

So you are looking to read a book about service design or service design thinking. Cool. You don’t shit about it and don’t want to learn all the basics but would rather get all the juicy tips to improve the customer experience right now. Good. I have the book for you, it’s called Service Design Principles 1–100.

It is a very practical book that gives you tips, tricks, ideas and principles about how to make your customers hate you less, and hopefully sometimes love you.

This book takes the best articles I have published on this magazine. I have re-written every article and so that your service design loving eyes don’t bleed a proofreader spent a shitload of time correcting all my mistakes.

And as you might see from the name of the book, more of these principles will come in the next years.

Free books to discover service design

Don’t like to pay? But still want to learn something about Service Design? I’ve written two books that you might like, because they are free, and as always with me, about service design.

The first book gives you a broad overview of what service design is, what are the tools that service designer use, what’s the impact of the practice, etc.

The second book is a more philosophical book that shares the mindsets that make in my opinion a good service designer

If you are a service design nerd you’ll like this book

Oh and if you still want some Service Design books you can read this little, not too serious, history of Service Design. It’s a collection of dates, events, books and people who might have influenced what service design is today.

And here a little sneak peak of what you can find in the book from a presentation I did at the Global Service Design Conference in Canada:

Don’t like my books, read Service Design books from other authors

I write in a particular way, I write as I think and speak to my friends in a bar, so it’s simple and it has a lot of swear words. The benefit is that it’s pretty simple to understand. But some people don’t like that type of poetry, so if you are looking for more SFW variants there is an awesome website that collects all books that can be interesting about service design:
Survey Sparrow — Client onboarding Tool
Tags: Marketing, Surveys, Surveysparrow, Social Media Marketing, Customer Experience

“Do more than just surveys”

SurveySparrow lets you turn surveys into conversations. With a conversational interface, SurveySparrow enables users to create and share highly engaging, mobile-first surveys that offer a chat-like experience.

It is the world’s first survey software to offer both a conversational and form-like output, increasing the survey completion rate by 40%.

Surveys can be embedded on websites or in other software tools through integrations with Zapier, Slack, Intercom and Mailchimp. An offline survey app is also available, along with access to an audience panel in more than 80 countries.

Read Full Article:https://sites.google.com/view/surveysparrow/home
Customer Experience and AI: a long-lasting relationship
By: Red Public
Tags: Covid 19, Mobile, Artificial Intelligence, Customer Experience, AI

Mobile banking, online shopping: Information Technology is part of our everyday life.

According to a recent case study by Capgemini Research Institute, COVID-19 is making companies adopt AI-based solutions with more intensity.

Capgemini’s report is revealing that 54% of the customers are increasingly becoming familiar with technology and making use of digital services, 21% over 2018 (Italy 25% in 2018 and 36% in 2020).

Covid-19 is speeding up customer usage of non-touch systems based on AI, such as vocal assistants or facial recognition. 77% out of the interviewed are expecting to increase the use of these touchless instruments in order to avoid human touch and thus collect bacteria.

Andrea Denaro, Customer Experience Lead of Capgemini Italia, indicates that: “The use of AI in customer experience is not just a temporary trend. Covid-19 has been changing people habits, representing opportunities for companies to improve AI- based systems.”

Do you agree that Artificial Intelligence is actually the future of Customer Experience?

Read more: https://lnkd.in/e7PFKZk
Financial Services firms are increasing their adoption of AI to take advantage of the data from new digital channels. An Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) research report shows that 86% of Financial…
By: Red Public
Tags: Finance, Artificial Intelligence, Customer Experience, Information Technology, AI

The State Of AI Adoption in Financial Services

Financial Services firms are increasing their adoption of AI to take advantage of the data from new digital channels.

An Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) research report shows that 86% of Financial Services executives expect to increase their AI-related investments by 2025.

The EIU study «The Road Ahead: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Financial Services», analyzes the sentiments of 200 business executives at investment banks, retail banks and insurance companies in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

The following are the key points:

📌 Investment banks are the main firms in Financial Services adopting AI, followed by Retail banks.

📌 37% of Financial Services firms globally adopt AI to reduce operational costs.

📌 Customer and stakeholder satisfaction is the most important KPI for measuring an AI strategy success in Financial Services.

For more details, follow the link below:

https://bit.ly/32oMME7
How to create Emotional Connection in order to be competitive?
By: Iasmina Craciun
Tags: Marketing, Emotional Connection, Brand Advocacy, Customer Success, Customer Experience

‘Emotional connections no longer have to be a mystery — they can be a new source of real competitive advantage and growth.’ — Magids, Zorfas and Leemon, Harvard Business Review

Emotional connection represents the secret key for companies to become competitive. In order to gain a competitive edge and create value, there is a need to connect customers with the brand. When it comes down to strategy, it is well-known that most companies shy away from showcasing how their customers feel.

‘Given the enormous opportunity to create new value, companies should pursue emotional conections as a science — and a strategy.’ — Jeffrey Rum, CEO Ignite

Why Emotional Connection matters?

1. People are influenced by experiences and emotions. They are driven by ideas and positive thoughts. Emotional value is brought to light when people are inspired or connected with a purpose, person or brand. How many times have you found yourself buying a product based on your emotions? Exactly. That is the reason why organisations should not turn a blind eye upon its importance.

2. Moreover, turning dissatisfied customers into pleased ones leads to an increase in revenue, demand and market share, as well as, continuous growth.

3. Aid towards building brand loyalty.

So, it is important that their voices, opinions and ideas are listened, in order for companies to deliver what the customers desire.

How is Emotional Connection created?

Emotional Connection is a journey that requires several steps:

· Staying true and honest — creation of better experiences which enhances relationships with their customers by introducing unique practices based on values such as mutual trust and honesty.

· Staying consistent — consistency is key when it comes to building a stronger intimacy; it also increases credibility. Customers want brands that are willing to go the extra mile to meet their needs.

· Feel of community — when I think about community, Starbucks comes to mind as it is the go-to place between work and home; it has developed a deep sense of community.

· Reciprocity & giving back — brands connect with like-minded customers by supporting different causes they care about. A classic example would be Patagonia which creates emotional connection using social activism.
Customer Service Experience Doesn’t Begin with the Greeting | Shep Hyken
By: Shep Hyken
Tags: Business Tips, Business Strategy, Customer Support, Customer Experience, Customer Service

Most people think it’s the first words that come out of the actors’ mouths, but it’s more than that. It’s the moment the audience sees the actors walking onto the stage. It’s how they are dressed, how they make eye contact with the audience, the anticipation they create, and more. So, when the actors speak their opening lines, it is actually the end of the opening.

It’s the same in business. You call the customer service hotline. A pleasant customer support agent picks up the phone and enthusiastically greets you, ready to help resolve your problem or answer your question. This is who you want taking care of you. Isn’t that the way it should always be?

But that’s not the opening. Consider this. The friendly voice comes on after you, the customer, may have already spent 30 minutes holding. The hold time consists of music interrupted by the occasional recording that claims, “Your call is very important to us. Due to heavy call volume, you may experience longer than usual wait times. The next available agent will be with you shortly.”

Now, how long is “shortly?” Two minutes? Five minutes? Or fifty-five minutes?

So, this isn’t to complain as much as to make you aware. The friendly greeting to the customer comes after the customer has experienced a problem. That problem may have just happened, or maybe it happened a week ago and the customer is finally able to find time to call about it.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say the problem just happened and the customer immediately phones the company. Still, the friendly greeting from your amazing people comes after whatever you put in front of the live interaction. That could be a brief intro leading to an almost immediate connection with the employee. Or, it could come after a series of menu prompts and hold time. I think we know which scenario our customers would prefer … give the customer a fast and quick way to the agent — with as little friction as possible!

Here’s the short version of this lesson. When customers have problems or questions, connect them with your amazing employees as quickly as possible, with little or no friction. The employee’s opening lines, similar to a stage performer, are not the opening. They are the end of the opening and the beginning of their “show.”

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. For information, contact 314–692–2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

(Copyright © MMXX, Shep Hyken)
Will a Chatbot Improve Your Customer Service?
By: Jennifer, The Chatc Group
Tags: Chatbots, Business Development, Business Strategy, Customer Experience, Customer Service

Short answer: Yes, but…

The longer short answer: You have to do it right from the get-go if you want it to deliver the results you’re hoping for. A chatbot needs to be focused, relatable, genuinely helpful, and give your customers real value. A cookie-cutter chatbot is not going to help and could even harm your customer service levels.

How Do You Make Sure Your Chatbot Maximizes ROI?

Your best bet is to work with a dedicated chatbot consultant who’s contacts and team members are experts in conversational AI, web and app development, information architecture, and design.

But in addition to that, The ChatC Group brings in industry-specific chatbot consultants that blend cutting-edge chatbot technology knowledge with their own years of experience in various business units and industries.

A chatbot consultant brings a highly beneficial experience and a proven process to ensure successful implementation.

Each and every one of The ChatC Group’s consultants have the following superpowers to unleash on your company’s chatbot solution:

Teamwork: developers, designers, project managers, writers-the knowledge of many for the price of one. Agility: agile methods deliver better solutions faster because they encourage out-of-the-box thinking, expecting change and creativity. Adaptability: every client has unique needs and goals. Our system adapts to your business to get the ROI you need. Passion: we are passionate about helping you achieve your business goals and refine your operations/processes. Our experience allows us to help you. Growth Mindset: there is something to learn from every project. We are collaborative, humble and driven to continuously improve. Vision: our proven process provides the roadmap of the big picture, and each step along the way gets you to your goals as efficiently as possible.

Real Results You Can Count on with a Chatbot Consultant

These skills, and the collective knowledge of a team of experts, mean you can confidently develop a chatbot that will meet your specific use case. Examples from past clients’ results include:

Improved customer experience

Built trusting customer relationships

Increased sales with warm leads

If you’ve been considering adding a chatbot to your website, take a little time to do some research. Don’t rush into it, or you could end up with software and systems that need to be improved and changed. Instead, find the right team the first time that will work with you to layout the process, goals and KPIs to success.

Our proven agile project management style will help you identify how a chatbot can best support your customers (or employees). We’ll work with trusted partners to build a relatable bot that people feel comfortable conversing with. And our solutions will guarantee results.

If you’re not sure where to start with chatbots, book a free call with our consulting team today. Our passion is discussing high-tech solutions for businesses eager to set themselves apart from the competition.
How to improve customer satisfaction?
Tags: Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, Satisfaction, Customer Success

How can companies improve their customer satisfaction? While in small organizations it is relatively easy to track customer satisfaction, in larger companies, there are multiple touchpoints and a multitude of employees from different departments interact with customers on a daily basis.

All of them can be sources of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. In this case, the most reliable way to monitor and improve customer satisfaction is through the implementation of large-scale satisfaction management solutions.

But there are also other ways to increase customer satisfaction.

Improve your customers’ satisfaction by ACTUALLY listening to them

Show your customers that their satisfaction is your priority. The best way to find out what’s working well for them and what needs to be improved is by asking them directly.

Calling your customers one by one to ask for their opinion would be great but let’s be honest, nobody has time for that.

Feedback tools are here to save your day. Building a feedback form can be a very effective way to gauge customers’ satsifaction.

“52% of people around the globe believe that companies need to take action on feedback provided by their customers” According to Microsoft

Want to learn more about Feedback tools? Read our article Top Feedback tools: A Features Comparison

Know your customers

Knowing your customers is beneficial to your business in many ways.

Knowing your customers allows you to personalize customer interactions, improve the customer experience, and build customer loyalty by offering products and services that are compatible with their needs.

But to be fully useful, this data needs to be shared with all teams, from customer-facing staff to marketing, customer relationship management, customer service, and product teams.

By taking into account each customer’s unique characteristics and behaviors, you will be able to provide offers, products, and services that meet their own expectations and that will generate customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Provide Constant and Efficient Support

This is certainly obvious, but many companies tend to unintentionally neglect the “ support “ side that they should provide to increase customer satisfaction.

As your organization grows, you will need to anticipate this “distance” that occurs with your existing customers and address it by always keeping them close.

If this is not already the case, create a customer success/support department within your company and process each request as quickly as possible.

Have a proactive mindset

The best way to avoid unpleasant surprises? Anticipate the needs of your customers. It always comes back to the point mentioned above: ask for feedback and show that you actually care about what they have to say.

You will then be able to develop processes and solutions that will improve your service offering in the future.
What is the Colour of your Customer Experience?
By: Gianluca Amato, Lato Società Benefit
Tags: Retail, Design Thinking, Retail Technology, Service Design, Customer Experience

Photo by Caroline Attwood on Unsplash

Let’s try a game.

Think about one of the customer experiences that you offer as a business.

What colour would it be?

I know, it’s a strange question.

How can a complex, living, dynamic process like a customer experience be defined by one attribute (and even a subjective one?!).

You’re right, it’s difficult.

Almost stupid.

But we should try the same.

Maybe you’re thinking a bold, solid colour… That’s great.

…Or maybe, in the back of your mind, a rainbow formed.

Or a dark spot, or white field that contains all the colour possible...

It can be an incredibly effective exercise, in order to realize that your customer experience it’s not complex — it’s complicated.

Tradition + Innovation = A big mess.

Often, especially in big companies, Customer Experiences are a mix of legacy practices and designed/desired ones.

Very few companies, especially in Italy, design, test, and launch on the market a new experience altogether.

That mix has its reason to exist.

Why changing what is working?

we hear this question A LOT.

But it is a dangerous one.

It assumes that the world we live in is a static ecosystem; it assumes that what is working today, will work tomorrow.

But 2020 vividly explained to us that the entire worlds can change direction in a matter of days.

I would try a different question, then.

What can we change in a world that is changing incredibly fast, in order to stay relevant?

The omnichannel curse

For the past 15 years, many Italian retailers, “simply” tried to add the word omnichannel to every conversation about any part of the system. In every context.

The only problem is that what gets defined as omnichannel is often just a sum of parts, glued one on top of the others.

Those pieces stay together only because they have to.

Not because they are working well.

And that’s why customer experiences get complicated.

And that’s why, If you ask people to select one concept to define their entire customer experience, they often don’t know how to get it.

Because they can’t.

The experience many retailers offer consist of a lot of things moving around and inside the customer’s mind.

A lot of things that he or she has to know in order to really enjoy the experience; a lot of space for mistakes or malfunctioning parts that turn into frustrations or failed checkouts.

Your customer experience is your most important asset. Without it working well, you’re losing customers and revenues.

So, what is your customer experience really about? What is primary, what is secondary? If you should strip all the unnecessary elements from the journey — and still retaining a satisfactory experience — what will it remain?

As IBM states: can you define the who, the what, and the wow that you’re offering?

Especially if you have no idea how to improve, grow or build next, don’t start from the technicalities. Start from a clear vision.

P.s.: Pro level: can you try defining it without any buzzword?
Make the first interaction feel like a date
By: Daniele Catalanotto
Tags: Moments, UX, Sales, Service Design, Customer Experience

In the book The Power of Moments, there is a great analogy about the importance of the first moment. In my own words I would say it like this:

Imagine that the first time you meet your customer would be a first date. Would you treat your customer differently than what you do today?

This is a pretty strong analogy and question that can help service designers and service owners out there.

It should fell like a date

Often the first moments of a service are pretty administrative. Imagine if we did the same for our first dates:

I there, before we can go to the movies I need you to fill out these forms. Oh and you need to send them by mail within the next 24 hours.

What seems absurd for the start of a private relationship is often the norm in the customer experience.

So when it comes to designing the first moments of an interaction between your brand, product or service and your customer ask yourself:
Customer Service: Quick Replies, Yay or Nay?
By: Citizen Z
Tags: Customer Experience, Chatbots, Customer Service, Tech

I had a semi bad customer service experience with Amazon yesterday and it got me thinking.

Having gone through their help / support pages and their usual FAQ rigmarole before you can actually speak to a person, I finally get through to what I was lead to believe was a live chat, to find myself going in circles answering and being asked the same questions. I soon came to the conclusion I had been passed onto a chat-bot and having spent about 20 frustrating minutes feeling like a stuck record, I tried to see if it would react to some commands; something I have had success bypassing automated systems with in the past.

I asked it if I could be put through to a person, and much to my surprise… and embarrassment, it turned out that it was in fact an actual person… sorry!

I believe a part of the issue was that they were using predefined quick replies, thus seeing a lot of identical repetitive responses; which just became confirmation bias.

I have previously built Twitter bots to try and automate as much of a company’s interaction with customers via the Twitter platform as possible, and I soon realised automation can only take you so far, then a human becomes necessary to be helpful and for a better customer service experience.

Thus, Amazon have, like many others, have automated as much of the customer service experience as possible but then have the human to fall back on when necessary. So why pay so much to provide the human touch and then make them unconvincing as a human? This could have got worse if I had been forwarded to another agent or department, or had I called upon their services again in the future, to find the exact same repetitions. You would be convinced it was just another bot, since it’s become the norm to speak to AI, or “not so AI” FAQ chat-bots. While I understand it can be time saving as agents try to balance numerous simultaneous conversations… it just feels self-defeating to make them unconvincing and samey.

I think a lot of people can relate to the frustration of a poorly designed automated phone system or chat-bot, with plenty of GIF’s and such to remind us of the pain… PhoneJacker comes to mind. So I do wonder if quick replies are more harmful for your customer experience than helpful… convenience seldom means quality.

Talk about passing the Turin test!
Think Cross Promotions
By: Chirantan Joshi
Tags: Marketing, Customer, Promotion, Customer Experience, Network

Most of us have experienced the power of cross-promotion when we buy something online. If you buy a new phone you will most likely get a recommendation to buy a screen-guard or a fancy protective cover. Browsing a book of a particular author or genre will most likely result in recommendations for similar books.

This is being powered by Artificial Intelligence and the recommendations are so finely tuned that a large percentage of customers who would have gone away with a single item in their cart are coaxed into buying one or two more items. Sometimes the recommendation come from complimentary categories and sometimes from an altogether different category that have in the past resulted in greater conversions.

At E-Movers, when a customer moves home we know that they will require new curtains and hence we always cross-promote our curtains’ business. We also know that people may want to fix their leather furniture, so we also steer them towards our Leather Doctor website. This is quite natural, but I want to suggest a similar cross-promotion activity for products and services of colleagues in your peer network.

I can think of five different ways in which we can cross-promote our peer network

Website: On your website check-out page or your contact-us thank you page, you may want to redirect to a page that lists the logos of companies in your peer network. Add a little detail for each logo to evoke action. Email Footer: In your email footer, you may selectively position logos of your friends. Care has to be taken that it does not wean away your prospects, hence do this only once you have converted the lead into a customer with a confirmed sale. Event: Organize an event to invite customers from each of the company from your peer group and showcase the products and service of each member. A celebrity speaker would be a good attraction for customers, or a Suhoor event during Ramadan. Promotional Offers: Encourage customers to checkout services and products through a promotional offer such as a discount or free sample. Share Database: Share your customer email database with each other to directly approach your customers with relevant offers. You must strictly agree on single-use to ensure that customers are not spammed.

CorporateConnections members in the UAE chapter have access to the experience and knowledge of co-members, but can also think of the potential of the extended community of the customers.

Try it out and see if this works for you in your peer group, and let me have your comments. And if you are interested in knowing more about CorporateConnections, get in touch with me. We have regular info-sessions on the benefits of membership and the modalities for joining the UAE Chapter.
CH Consulting Group has partnered with one of the nation’s largest hospital and healthcare…
By: Ch Consulting Group
Tags: Marketing, Customer Service, Sales, Customer Experience, Directors

CH Consulting Group has partnered with one of the nation’s largest hospital and healthcare organizations, to fill a valuable executive role in their company as Director of Sales & Marketing. This company provides turnkey solutions to improve patient engagement and outcomes, enable operational efficiencies, and add incremental revenue to the bottom line. See below for more details:

Brief Job Description

As a wholly owned subsidiary of a $3B healthcare giant we enjoy the flexibility of a small organization and the support of a large one. We’re seeking an experienced Sales and Marketing Director to join our team, develop strategies and marketing programs to effectively market our products, build the team and lead the growth of our organization. Our organization offers a wide array of contact center services in the health care space including Answering Services, Appointment Setting, Nurse Triage, Remote Patient Monitoring, Transitional Care Management, Disease Management and Outbound Health Campaigns. We are looking for an experienced Sales Leader who has sold solutions similar to ours to ACO’s, physicians and physician groups, payers and healthcare technology companies. You’ll be a member of our Senior Management team and fill a key role in helping to grow and brand the organization. If you’re interested in building something from the ground up with the support of a strong parent company behind your efforts this a tremendous opportunity for you. See below for specific job details:

Identify and drive strategy and initiatives to effectively market and grow the business

Hire and lead the Inside Sales team focused on driving growth

Identify areas of opportunity with clients where our products solve a need or problem for them

Assist in developing

Requirement gathering from prospects & customers

Fee negotiation and closing of deals

Provide data-driven insight for decision making and investments

Initiative execution and success

Present on KPIs related to, but not limited to sales, operating results, forecasts,

Requirements

5+ years of Sales and Marketing experience preferably in Inside Sales

4–5+ years of Managerial experience leading a Sales or Marketing team

Proven and demonstrable business development, sales, or marketing experience in similar industry

Demonstrated knowledge of sales processes and developing customer relationships

Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.

Exceptional leadership and management skills.

Effective communication and negotiation skills.

Strong business acumen.

Detail-oriented and persuasive

Bachelor’s Degree required

Proficient in all Microsoft Office applications.

Interested?

If you are interested in this exciting, new opportunity, send your resume and cover letter to resumes@thechcg.com.
Customer Journey Mapping — Where to begin — Part 3 What and How to Measure
By: Robert Thacker
Tags: Dashboard, Key Performance Indicator, Customer Journey, Process Management, Customer Experience

In my past 2 articles we have discussed How to Identify and Catalog Customer Journeys and The Importance of Connecting the Business Architecture. Now that we have a catalog of customer experiences and a set of journeys defined, having specific measurements will provide visibility of pain points in the customer journey.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) connected to the customer journey and the supporting processes helps to establishes a baseline for tracking improvements and proving results and ROI later. To do this, we will need to identify what you currently measure and what may be useful. Now ask — does my customer agree that those are the important metrics?

Note: According to a recent report 82% of brands think they are delivering a quality customer experience. However, only 10% of customers agree that brands meet their experience expectations.

Sample Customer Experience Dashboard

Create key performance indicators (KPIs) for these measurements and begin capturing data to establish your baseline metric.

· Helpful Hint: You may utilize technologies such as process mining to help extract these data points as well as possibly identify systems, resources, or activities not previously identified when performing your mapping exercise.

These KPIs will also help identify process deficiencies that may be impacting overall customer experience, which brings us to the next step. Focusing on Process Improvement.
How to Position Your Retail Brand for Success in the 2020 Holiday Season
By: Martin Hildgen
Tags: Retail Analytics, Occupancy, Peoplecounting, Customerjourney, Customer Experience

How to Position Your Retail Brand for Success in the 2020 Holiday Season Martin Hildgen ·Dec 21, 2020

🎁 The 2020 holiday season will happen regardless of the pandemic situation, and people will still want to celebrate and buy gifts.

🎄Holiday shopping is going to look different this year, but retailers that aren’t afraid to lean on people counting technologies will find themselves better able to cope with a shifting retail scene.

Learn how to optimize your retail operations while providing a safe customer experience in the 2020 holiday season. 👇

https://v-count.com/how-to-position-your-retail-brand-for-success-in-the-2020-holiday-season/

#PeopleCounting #RetailAnalytics #Occupancy #CustomerJourney #Retail #CustomerExperience #StaySafe
Your customers always have options.
By: Linda Mtambo
Tags: Customer Experience, Small Business Marketing

There are two realities we need to accept as creators and business owners.

The chances that what we sell is a unique, never-been-done-before product or service are close to zero. Customers always have options — they could purchase what you and I sell from several other places.

So, what we’re all truly selling at the end of the day, is just a better experience. It’s the only way your business can stand out, be remembered, be preferred over competitors, and get recommended.

Please commit to continuously improving your customer's journey in 2021 — that’s your true Unique Selling Proposition.
Going the Extra Mile for DC Residents and Businesses
By: Department Of Consumer, Regulatory Affairs
Tags: Customer Experience, Washington DC, Small Business, Consumer Protection

Across the Bowser Administration, District Government agencies are working hard to support Mayor Muriel Bowser’s vision of providing every resident with a Fair Shot. At DCRA, we work with thousands of business owners and residents each month, but the people who reach out to us for help aren’t just cases to us. We know that going the extra mile has a big impact on the people and businesses we serve.

Among the people DCRA helped last year was a family in Georgetown who paid a contractor to install solar panels on their roof. The family spent $19,000 to make their house more energy efficient, only to have the contractor disappear and refuse to complete the job or give the family a refund. With limited options, they turned to DCRA for help. An investigator from our Consumer Protection Unit was assigned to the case, and in less than 20 days, our investigator was able to recover $17,000 for the family. Our Consumer Protection Unit was able to recover more than $150,000 last fiscal year.

DCRA’s Small Business Resource Center (SBRC) specializes in simplifying complex situations for customers. Take Charlton Woodyard for example. He started his lifestyle and fashion business, Avi8ted Thoughts in 2019, but had trouble with some of the paperwork needed to get things up and running. He came to the SBRC to help get his business in good standing, and to apply for a grant that could give it a financial boost. In short order, the SBRC helped Mr. Woodyard get a corporate registration and general business license, register with the DC Office of Tax and Revenue, and receive a home occupation permit to allow him to operate his business from his home. Within a month, Woodyard’s business was in good standing and he was able to apply for the grant before its late September deadline.

These are two examples of some of the thousands of residents and businesses DCRA helped last year. Despite the challenges fiscal year 2020 presented, DCRA met or exceeded the goals we set for successfully delivering core services. Take the area of business licensing for example. During the last fiscal year, our goal was to review license applications and process them within one day of submission at least 80% of the time. We met this goal 95.08% of the time, ensuring that entrepreneurs could make their vision a reality as fast as possible.

We’re proud of our staff’s hard work in the last fiscal year, but we’re not slowing down. For example, in the first two months of the new fiscal year, DCRA received nearly 10,000 permit applications — 97% of which have been reviewed, with permits issued.

To learn more about DCRA’s performance and keep track of our progress, check out our agency dashboard.
Why small businesses don’t prefer big internet agencies?
Tags: Customer Experience, Business, Agency, Business Strategy

I’m the owner of a SEO agency in Germany and in the past few months, a couple of new clients contacted me with a strange wish…

I was just wondering what’s the reason behind? Why they do not want to be supported by a big professional agency, why they are explicit looking for a small one or even for a freelancer.

After the third request I asked simply:

Why are you looking for a small agency?

The answer was so simple but logical, I couldn’t really believe it.

If I contact them, I used to be advised by a very talented salesman. He promises me everything and convince me that they offer everything for a reasonable price. Once the contract is signed, I’ll be supported by a trainee. This is not the biggest problem. But all the requests and challenges of mine will not be handled, as “I’m not authorized to decide”. Even if he asks internally it takes too long.

So, I decided to make an advantage and a USP out of it that I can cover all the needs of my customers. With other words: I offer an integrate solution for them. They do not have to go to a programmer to compile the changes which are proposed by the SEO expert.

I can manage them from the hosting over the webdesign up to reaching the first page at Google from one hand.

Why?

Because I had the same challenges and I picked the best solution for me. Now I provide the same solution for my customers. And of course they are pleased with.

But there is a basic question mark behind this business model: how can I scale? If my strength is that I’m not big, how can I grow? Is it anyway possible?

Drop me your opinion in the comments!
How Businesses Are Redefining the Customer Experience in Healthcare
By: Andreea Bodnari
Tags: Startup, Healthcare, Innovation, Medicine, Customer Experience

How Businesses Are Redefining the Customer Experience in Healthcare

Photo credit: Hush Naidoo

“Healthcare is broken” — a cliche investors commonly hear from well-intended founders. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of this cliche skyrocketed as many helping hands tried to figure out how to relieve the pressure from an inefficient healthcare system. But claiming that healthcare is broken is equivalent to bestowing one star to your neighborhood car repair shop. Which part of the delivered services failed to meet your expectations: the customer experience, service cost, quality of outcome, all of the above?

“There is only one boss. The customer.” — Sam Walton

Customer experience is driving digital disruption across industries. For example, companies like Amazon and Uber redefined what it means to purchase toys and games or hail a cab across the city. In healthcare, customer experience is the next unknown frontier because we don’t have a clear sight of how we will get there. Also, we’re still experimenting with the contour of the destination.

Fixing the US healthcare system is a challenge greater than life, but it’s a top priority on many executive desks. Based on a 2018 PwC study, 81% of executives at insurance companies say their company is investing in technology to improve the member experience, while 49% of provider executives say customer experience is a top strategic priority over the next five years. Venture capital has been fueling healthcare innovation from the sidelines.

Amid a global pandemic and a lurking recession, US digital health companies raised $5.4B in venture funding across the first six months of 2020 — a record high.
Your descriptions of the people and scenarios makes me laugh.so relatable
Tags: Judgement, Kindness, Attitude, Customer Experience, Customer Service

So, are you afflicted with the little man syndrome? Are you the plebeian snob? Or, are you the royalty o…

If You Are Any of These, You Must Quit Your Job
Jornadas: como fazer acontecer o processo de fidelização?
By: Out Of The Box
Tags: Fidelização, UX, Customer Experience, Experience, Medium Brasil

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Executive Summary
By: Lisa Schneider
Tags: Customer Empathy, Organizational Culture, Customer Success, Customer Centricity, Customer Experience

The emergence of customer-centricity is demanding businesses to put the customer at the centre, bringing with it the need for customer empathy, or an operationalised, deep understanding of the customer. As humans we build empathy through human connections, listening and putting ourselves through the other’s experience.

Yet, for large organisations, getting everyone in direct contact and ‘closer’ to the customer is a challenge in practice. This research study aimed to explore how empathy for the customer can be cultivated amongst those that often sit far removed from the customers, such as head office employees in large organisations.

This publication is the result of a Master research for the MA Digital Management at Hyper Island, Stockholm. The pilot for this research was tested at a global fashion retailer. Any company-related findings or internal information is, however, excluded from this publication.

The following findings were drawn from this research:

Connecting non-customer-facing staff with customer-facing staff already increases the perceived closeness to the customer

The ability of companies to digest customer empathy and qualitative insights is a foundation for operationalised customer empathy

Customer empathy needs companies to value the right balance of quantitative and qualitative insights

Employees need to see the value behind qualitative insights and initiatives that cultivate customer empathy

The full overview of findings from primary and secondary research can be found here.