Customer Management IQ  

Chad Richter, Partner of Jackson Lewis LLP, knows the host of issues his call center clients have with social media. Richter’s phone is ringing off the hook. Richter joined Customer Management IQ’s Blake Landau to discuss how call centers can deal with some of the challenges and opportunities brought by social in the call center. Richter sees an increase in discrimination, harassment claims, disability issues, family and medical leave act issues. If you have policy or practice that aren’t compliant with federal or state law in a call center, where all of the call center employees are performing the same type of work, it is easy to misclassify the call center representatives as exempt vs. non-exempt. This breeds class action law suits. Richter is also familiar with wage and labor issues, as is prevalent in the call center industry and beyond. Call center management comes with its own challenges and opportunities. In this podcast Richter talks about recent developments in labor and employment law specific to the industry. He sheds light on trends he has seen as well as call center problem areas. Richter guides us through some preventative strategies including training programs and practices to reduce exposure to liability.

In this podcast with Lon Safko, author of The Social Media Bible, we show you how to build or transform your business into a social media—enabled enterprise where customers, employees, and prospects connect, collaborate, and champion your products, your services and your way of doing business. Using Safko’s systematic approach presented in this podcast you will hear the latest and greatest tools on increasing your company and brand value by engaging people in new forms of communication, collaboration, education and entertainment. Find out how to determine which social media tactics you should be using with your customers and employees and evaluate and categorize the tools and applications that constitute the rapidly evolving social media ecosystem. Do you know how to make social media tools such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, blogging, podcasting and hundreds of others a part of your business strategy? Do you know how to do a social media analysis inside your company to improve internal operations and outside your company? Create and monetize relationships with customers and prospects by implementing social media micro- and macrostrategies to give your business the competitive edge it needs to survive and thrive. Virtually every business can use social media to increase sales and profits, and Safko shows you how. In this podcast we introduce you to social media, give you a helpful framework and present practical and tactical tips for using some of these tools. We introduce you to over 100 social media tools and applications in 15 different categories, giving you a quick rundown of the features and functions of the tools that should become part of your social media strategy. Lastly conduct a social media audit of your company, your competition and your customers, so you can craft the perfect strategy for your business.

Eric Blinderman thinks we are sitting at a good time right now for the crossroads of customer service and social media. Blinderman presented at the American Teleservices Association’s New York chapter on Social Media and customer service and further unpacked these ideas in this podcast interview with Customer Management IQ’s Blake Landau. Gone are the days of three martini lunches and spending on branding at golf tournaments because the CEO likes to golf. Now companies need to re-focus on creating a brand that customer trust and delivering on that brand promise. Blinderman wants companies to focus on marrying their corporate branding efforts with their customer service offerings. He is concerned that companies segment customer service, branding, and marketing and that departments should focus on finding synergy. By delivering on the brand promise and taking care of the customer—you improve your customer retention rates. This is not rocket science however the path to customer creation can appear convoluted. People shop Nordstrom for the experience not because of products that are superior to Neiman Marcus or Sak’s Fifth Avenue’s. It’s the customer experience. There is no more intimate experience than with the company’s customer relations program. It’s the ultimate opportunity. With the advent of social media tracking services they can act as a giant listening booth to become organically part of the conversation. Before you set out to measure what is being said a company must question their social media strategy. What about the strategy does the company want to bring alive? A company needs to have the stomach to give up control in the name of social media. Customer conversations will unfold whether the company is there for the conversation or not. In this podcast Blinderman gives a forward-thinking perspective on PR, branding and becoming a part of the customer service conversation.

Congratulations! You have just been elected CEO by the board of directors of your company. Now you need to go into the next room to present to all of your stakeholders, some of your competitors, some of your shareholders, and a group of people who live in the community do business in the area that you represent. Your audience wants to know the purpose of your business, in other words why is the world a better place because your organization is in it. This is the scenario Linda Ireland gives her students at the University of St. Thomas. This is the scenario she gives you in this podcast interview to address the important issue of customer experience and why most CEOs don’t get it. Like a line of falling dominos, daily actions across your organization form a sequence of events that, if aligned correctly, build momentum and culminate in what every business wants-outstanding financial performance. Establishing a target customer experience-your front domino—to drive daily decisions within your organization will determine the fluidity of that chain of events and the level of profit outcome you achieve. Customer experience is one of the most crucial factors in differentiating your brand and your product and service offerings. Linda Ireland in her new book Domino: How Customer Experience Can Tip Everything in Your Business Toward Better Financial Performance shows you how to drive behaviors in your organization to increase revenue and bottom line results. Customer experience drives better financial returns. Although business leaders know this intuitively, few understand how to translate target experience requirements into the actions that generate those returns. Ireland in this podcast defines what customer experience is and empowers viewers by providing tools, questions, and peer examples to unpack customer experience. Hear the path to realizing the financial performance reward of a clearly defined and well understood customer experience in this podcast interview.

Janet Le Blanc, Director of Customer Value Management for Canada Post was inspired by Bradley Gale. Le Blanc, a presenter at IQPC’s Call Centre Canada conference, recognized that many of Canada Post’s executives and sales account teams were unable to communicate. They were unable to clearly communicate the value the company provided to customers. Le Blanc set out to create value for the customer by identifying what made the company different than its competitors. Why choose Canada Post instead of an alternative? Now Canada Post customers have noticed improvements that make their customer experience better and more valuable. Le Blanc is regularly asked “how were you able to have such an impact on an organization like Canada Post”? Le Blanc recognizes the challenges of a public sector company complete with a unionized workforce. Sometimes this doesn’t provide for an environment that is conducive to a customer-focus but Le Blanc has led Canada Post to realize the link between customer experience improvements and bottom-line results and recognize the many important benefits. Le Blanc focuses on linking improvements to customer value metrics; process improvement initiatives need customer feedback for validation. The Canada Post performance management system is integrated within their organization so that employees assign accountability across the entire organization for the customer experience. Her team built a framework that examines the customer experience across factors such as product features/benefits, product delivery, price, customer service and the overall branding of the business. Janet Le Blanc will be speaking on Tuesday August 18th at 3pm at Call Centre Week Canada at The Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Canada.