Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

I see the Summit as a great opportunity to network and discuss best practices with peers that share a similar passion around delivering a world class CX.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?

Most of my time at Capital One has been spent managing analyst teams that are embedded within Operations and help drive the CX agenda. Responsibilities have included setting goals, identifying opportunities, building business cases, leading implementation activities, monitoring performance, etc.

What kind of shift are you seeing in organization-wide strategy as customer service becomes integral to attracting and retaining customers?

Assessing the CX impact is a foundational component of all business decisions and something that is top of mind for all associates regardless of department, level, or job family.

How are you gaining investment buy-in?

We seek to quantify the impact of a positive or negative experience in terms that will resonate with the decision maker while also leveraging the voice of the customer to humanize the experience.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?

As the head of Treasury Management Client Services, I am lead a team of approximately 620 Team Members responsible for the day to day servicing needs of our Wholesale Treasury Management Clients.  My team members also perform back office research and provide advice to clients on how best to maximize the products they’ve purchased.

What are your top three customer service priorities in 2019/20?

My top 3 priorities revolve around making it easier for our clients to do business with Wells Fargo.  Our focus is on digital self-service, team member development, and the offering of additional channels for our clients to use to interact with our team.

What are the top three trends and challenges facing customer service leaders today?

Our biggest challenge in customer service is the evolving technologies in the payment space.  (1) staying current with the different payment options are clients need (2) developing the next generation of Team Members (3) bringing the consumer experience to the B2B space.

How are businesses going to have to transform their customer operations to meet the needs of the customers in the future?

Our clients in the future will rely heavily on self-service and digital technology to meet their business challenges, therefore we need to make sure we have strong self-service options along with omni-channel support.  Legacy phone systems along with increased digital self-service will present the challenge of finding the right mix of people and technology in the future.

What kind of shift are you seeing in organization-wide strategy as customer service becomes integral to attracting and retaining customers?

As we offer more digital solutions for simple customer service needs, we are shifting to providing more advice to help our clients succeed financially.  In addition, by making it easier to do business with us our clients will look to us when new business needs arise.

Why is the Customer Service Summit an important event?

The Customer Service Summit is such an important event because it will allow you to visit your colleagues and peers in this space.  You will hear new ideas from some of the leaders in the customer care field.  These events allow you to build relationships that go beyond the Incite Conference.  It will also allow to develop a network that will help you and your business succeed.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?  Social Care is embedded in our Customer Service department.  We are able to engage with our guests while providing immediate feedback for the organization.  The reason we put it in Customer Service is for a few reasons 1) Care agents know our business and our guests.  2) Care agents allow us the ability to scale.

What kind of shift are you seeing in organization-wide strategy as customer service becomes integral to attracting and retaining customers?  We are seeing a shift with guests moving from brand shaming public conversations to private messaging that can provide a quicker, more consistent response.

What are your top three customer service priorities in 2019/20?

1) GX – Moving away from typical reactive guest care solution to providing more proactive solutions

2) Be where the guest is, not where you want the guest to be.

3) Modernization – Moving away from expensive to service channels into channels that provide a lower cost solution while at the same time, increasing the guest experience.

What excites you about the current direction of customer service, experience and support?  Guest Care is moving away from traditional models that provides customer care departments very little feedback.  With the direction of new tools and methods, we are moving into a new model that will provide company and guest with immediate results.  Companies can immediately identify pain-points and solve those issues “in the moment”.

Why do you think the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

I'm looking forward to participating in this year's Customer Service Summit. CX is a fast evolving discipline and, when done right, is the lynchpin to unlock account-based success and same store growth in the B2B market. I look forward to comparing strategies, org design, and technology used with CX peers and growth experts.

With the historic reputation and “cost center” mentality, how is your team gaining investment buyin?

At WeWork, we see member (read: customer) experience as critical to member success and therefore to unlocking account-based growth. Being able to demonstrate the tight correlation between success and account growth builds a strong case for investing in this area as a revenue driver rather than a cost center.

How well can you measure ROI on your customer support and care initiatives? 

In a B2B business like WeWork, we're able to track the performance of accounts that are actively managed. These accounts receive personalized attention and, as a result, see outsized growth and performance. This builds the case for making greater investment in proactive, personalized member success and growth consultation support.

How well would you say your customer service team are leveraging data and analytics to understand your customer better? 

We are leveraging data to identify and solve member-specific opportunities and challenges. We are also looking at aggregate data to understand the big initiatives we can rollout to support members in their success and growth in the WeWork platform.

How are you ensuring you deliver a seamless customer experience? Describe your omnichannel strategy and how you are synchronizing channels.

We design omni-channel experiences based on the segment, persona, and use case. We deliver these experiences in person and via Digital, leveraging the Simon Data platform to join our data and drive delivery of key messages.

What excites you about the current direction of customer service, experience and support?

I don't view CX as a cost center. Done well, it delights customers and is the a key engine for same account sales and growth, which is the most efficient and effective way to grow a business.

Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

CSS is a gathering of industry professionals passionate about Customer Care. It’s not just about delivering great customer care, and of more great customer care means predicting the need before the customer realized/needed it.

What kind of shift are you seeing in organization-wide strategy as customer service becomes integral to attracting and retaining customers?

The recognition that Product and Support are not 2 separate things but rather one Service that we provide to our customers. (yin/yang).

Customers want and expect both, not one or the other.

Both must be integral parts of each other and not 2 broken experiences.

What are the top three trends and challenges facing customer service leaders today?

Personalization - customers expect us to know them and to help them with their needs. We want to respect their preferences, give them the treatment they prefer. This will drive loyalty and engagement.

Intent Prediction - if we understood what the customers need, we can help them before they have to ask or share details. We can help them faster, by surfacing guides, policies and suggested replies to the agents to answer queries more effectively.

Natural Language Processing - to determine what our customer are telling us, their sentiments, topics they care about.

What are your top three customer service priorities in 2019/20?

Omni-Channel

Proactive Support

Intent Prediction

With the historic reputation and “cost center” mentality, how is your team gaining investment buyin?

Proving with metrics that Customer Care at Uber is driving top line growth as well as bottom line savings.

My team is able to double-size 3 years in a row.

Cultural shift takes time.

Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

This event brings customer experience leaders together to share challenges, ideas and best practices for improving the customer experience. This event provides a look outside our organization and will help us stay a step ahead!

Tell us a little bit about your session and who it would be most valuable to?

In this session, we will discuss what employee engagement really is, why it is important and ways to engage contact center employees. If retaining great talent is important to your organization, you must attend.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?

I am passionate about turning customer insights into action. In my role, I consult contact center leaders on ways to improve the customer and employee experience.

What kind of shift are you seeing in organization-wide strategy as customer service becomes integral to attracting and retaining customers?

We are listening to our customers, prioritizing and becoming more and more agile in meeting their needs. We are customer centric with a close eye on innovation.

How are businesses going to have to transform their customer operations to meet the needs of the customers in the future?

To meet the needs of customers, businesses must transform their operations to be more agile, and adaptive to evolving needs. One size does not fit all. People, processes and technology must continue to evolve to meet and exceed the customer’s needs. While businesses stand up digital self-service channels, they must also invest in contact center agents. Automation and artificial intelligence will not replace the human touch.

Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

The CSS event is important to leaders who are seeking to find innovative and proven ways to improve customer service and satisfaction. The mix of presenters and speakers is across many industries and types of support. The networking, ability to ask questions in an open forum, and opportunity to share experience is invaluable.

Tell us a little bit about your session and who it would be most valuable to?

The session I will be presenting on shares new ideas to answer age old problems in the contact center arena. Routing calls and incidents to agents who can answer them professionally and timely has always been an issue. By creating a new culture, process, and empowerment, we have found a way to increase satisfaction, resolution rates, and employee satisfaction, while saving money at the same time. It has truly been a game changer for Ricoh.

What are the top three trends and challenges facing customer service leaders today? Why is that?

a.  Automation: Automation allows for quick, succinct, detailed, and consistent support.   Less errors occur with automation.    We never want to take away from great personal customer service, but there is an opportunity to some of the “low hanging fruit” use “auto-bots”, allowing for the more complex support to give more time.

b. Self Service: As more and more customers are in the “self service” generation, the demands for the type of assistance that allows them to review, troubleshoot, fix, or repair on their own goes up.    Customers seek more videos, “how-tos”, electronic operator guides and strong FAQ type knowledgebases.

c. Incident Routing: This has been a pain point for inbound for many companies.  It is critical to get the incidents for support to the right people for the highest likelihood of resolution.   It is the reason we invented our patented process.   Even with our new process, there is still a need for inbound, hence the need for the best routing possible.

What are your top three customer service priorities in 2019/20? How are you going about implementing them?

a. Increase resolution rates: Better routing, data analytics, peer reviews, and increased use of our patented process.

b. Allow customers many types of support through different platforms (text, social media, phone, chat, and augmented reality.   Continue exploring partnerships in multi channel arenas. We will be seeking a great text partner in this calendar year.   We have solid processes for all others, but are working on expansion and promotion of these abilities.

c. Improve customer self service options We are working internally for stronger linkage of our website and knowledgebase, as well as exploring auto bot capabilities.   Our new units have self service options built into the control panels, so we will expand the usage and back end support for them.

What excites you about the current direction of customer?

The wide variety of customer types, and expectations. The range of support options continues to grow, which allows for greater customer satisfaction. It also presents challenges in opening up new ways to meet these expectations. The excitement comes when you meet these new challenges with options customers ask for, and do not even know whey want yet.

Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

Events like the Customer Service Summit are great opportunities to learn from each other in ways the improve the overall ecosystem of customer service.  I believe this benefits our customers, our companies, and ourselves as we are also customers.

Tell us a little bit about your session and who it would be most valuable to?

My session will be Using Predictive AI to Drive Customer Service Excellence in Social; I will cover the objectives underlying our use of predictive AI, an overview of how we setup and established our predictive model, how we maintain the model over time, how we act upon the predictions, and the results we see from having implemented the process.  The conversation should be valuable to any organization with a moderate to high volume of contacts of sufficient complexity that monitoring conversations and outcomes manually for consistent, high quality results is not practical.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?

My organization is separate from traditional order support.  We fall into the Technical Service & Support group, however, as we are the only support for social media platforms we also do order support.

Where does customer service sit in your organization? And how are you working with other departments to deliver the best possible customer experience?

Traditional order support sits with sales operations.  We engage them as an escalation route when required.

What are your top three customer service priorities in 2019/20?

a. Expand to cover additional channels – e.g. WhatsApp, Line

b. Leverage Peer to Peer support

c. Promote channel shift away from phone

With the historic reputation and “cost center” mentality, how is your team gaining investment buyin?

We pay for investments by delivering cost reductions paired with improved customer experience vs. traditional channels; benefits that technology paired with full visibility to the support experience due to the nature of social permit.

To what extent are you leveraging social media support? And how are you benefiting?

Social support volume has grown 4.5X over the last 3 years; we expect it will become a majority of future volume; see answer above for benefits

What KPIs do you use to measure the success of your social media support?

Customer experience (from customer survey data), first contact resolution, speed of answer; a host of traditional (voice) shadow metrics.

Why is the customer summit important?

The customer summit is a crucial opportunity to meet with fellow CX leaders and share the latest insights, learnings and technology in the rapidly advancing field of CX.

Which technology are you exploring for CX?

We are exploring all new technologies as a means of enhancing CX, whether its predictive experiences using AI or augmented reality experiences for front-line associates to share with customers, technology is critical to a great CX.

How are you gaining investment buy-in?

We are leveraging two paths. First is quantifying the value impact of a good (and bad) customer experience. The other is finding ways to make "the things we have to do" (e.g. answer the phone) into rave-worthy experiences.

Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

As a customer service professional with over 15 years under my belt, the most important thing from me about this conference is the opportunity to improve the way we serve our customers. I'm looking forward to being exposed to how others are trying to solve the same problems and to learn from others' successes and mistakes, discover new approaches and tools, and build relationships to assist each other in our quest to reach customer satisfaction.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?

As the VP of technical support at DreamHost, a web hosting company, my main focus is reducing customer churn by assisting customers 24/7, through various channels and multiple languages, including live chat, email, and social media. I am also responsible for incoming sales and assist with customer onboarding.

Where does customer service sit in your organization? And how are you working with other departments to deliver the best possible customer experience?

We are part of the Operations group, reporting directly to the CEO. I’ve created an ecosystem of product support coordination, and my team members sit in on and actively contribute to the product rollout process. This includes decision-making to help build the best customer experience at any product change or rollout, creating training to keep the tech support team updated on our services, and maintaining the customer-facing knowledge base.

What are your top three customer service priorities in 2019/20?

Improved service times, Latin-American expansion, and moving away from being a cost center to instead be a source of revenue generation.

Which technologies are you exploring, or investing in, to meet evolving customer expectations in 2019?

AI! We are using Solvvy's technology on top of our vast customer-facing knowledge base to provide instant resolutions to a multitude of customer issues. We have gradually grown from a solid 13% IR rate to almost 17% at this point, having made great and effective use of on machine learning and customer feedback.

Tell us a little bit about your session and who it would be most valuable to?

As our industry continues to evolve, it has never been more critical to share best practices, understand the industry landscape and establish points of contact with subject matter experts. The Incite Group does a terrific job of bringing thought leaders together to share, learn and collaborate. Thank you, Incite Group!

Where does customer service sit in your organization? And how are you working with other departments to deliver the best possible customer experience?

I am fortunate to work for a company that understands all strategy begins and ends with the customer. At The Home Depot, we focus on delivering the most convenient experience and best value for our customers – something we call our Orange Promise. We know that in today’s retail environment, delivering convenience and value requires creating a seamless interconnected experience across all touchpoints, and creating this kind of customer experience requires a cross-functional approach.

How are businesses going to have to transform their customer operations to meet the needs of the customers in the future?

In today’s fast-paced environment, it’s become apparent that the customer must be at the center of all operational and strategic decisions. I believe the most successful strategies are built on empowering frontline associates to operate dynamically in order to meet evolving customer demands. It’s crucial that these strategies are built upon resourcing, training and supporting frontline associates with positive reinforcement and a robust development program.

With the historic reputation and “cost center” mentality, how is your team gaining investment buyin?

In my opinion, pitting operational efficiencies and outstanding customer service as opposing goals is an outdated approach. Organizations that effectively focus on the customer will leverage their culture to achieve the company’s vision. It’s important to provide the optimal organizational structure and technological resources to support the vision, but efficiencies will come naturally when culture and operational objectives are aligned.

How well would you say your customer service team are leveraging data and analytics to understand your customer better?

Leveraging data to improve the customer experience is central to The Home Depot’s success. Not only do we in Customer Care use data to better understand our customers and their needs, we share information to identify opportunities to improve across the enterprise. By partnering cross-functionally, we are able to eliminate points of friction from the customer journey, which ultimately improves the customer experience and strengths our customer-centric culture.

What excites you about the current direction of customer service, experience and support?

We live in an exciting time where customer touchpoints and channels are coming together to provide customers with a unique, valuable and convenient experience when interacting with an organization’s brand. Companies are placing the customer at the center of their core operations and strategies, and technologies that enable personalized interactions continue to evolve. We’ll see these trends strengthen, and true omnichannel experiences will emerge. This is good for our bottom lines, our industry, and most importantly, our customers.

Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

CSS puts you ‘in the room’ where some of the top minds in customer care are having discussions and creating ideas for what’s next. You have the chance to network with peers from a wide-range of industries, learning best practices from a diverse group of thought-leaders. Plus, you have the opportunity to ask direct questions to those who are expanding the world of customer care.

Where does customer service sit in your organization? And how are you working with other departments to deliver the best possible customer experience?

AskTSA sits in our Office of Public Affairs office. We see it as a communications channel first, one capable of delivering a wide range of information that is helpful to the traveling public. And part of delivering that information is making sure we are working with all the internal groups to ensure we have the ‘latest and greatest’ information. Thankfully, we have established a network of contacts allows us to respond quickly when a new, unexpected situation arises.

What are your top three customer service priorities in 2019/20?

When I look at 2019/2020, I see the priorities being: Availably (in multiple channels and time of day); speed of service (not just first engagement time); and expansion (to new languages and new markets).

To what extent are you leveraging social media support? And how are you benefiting?

Through our AskTSA Customer Care Team, we are providing direct responses to traveler questions and providing real-time assistance when problems arise. This is providing us with voice-of-the-customer insights on what travelers are experiencing when the travel and interact with our officers.

What excites you about the current direction of customer service, experience and support?

What excites me the most is the amount of data that we’re able to generate. By analyzing what our customers are saying, we can learn more about their expectations and how we change our approach to best serve those who rely on us to keep travel safe.

Tell us a little bit about your session and who it would be most valuable to?

I’ll be talking about a Premium Service we launched in our Global Customer Experience team over 2 ½ years ago at eBay. We dramatically improved the customer experience for these eBay buyers and sellers in our 4 biggest markets around the world.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?

I lead our NA Customer Experience team for eBay and have direct responsibility for the experience of our customers, our employees, operational performance, and strategic planning. I am consumed with making sure our customers and employees have great experiences with eBay and being a good steward of the company’s investment.

Where does customer service sit in your organization? And how are you working with other departments to deliver the best possible customer experience?

I report directly into our SVP of Global Customer Experience, who reports directly to our CEO, Devin Wenig. Being a marketplace, we rely on our buyers and sellers to be successful and take our responsibility of creating great experiences for our buyers and sellers very seriously. I work very closely with many other departments within eBay to continue to improve the customer experience, including Product, Business Unit, Training, Recruiting, Work Force Operations, Analytics, People Management. Marketing (to name a few).

What kind of shift are you seeing in organization-wide strategy as customer service becomes integral to attracting and retaining customers?

We have made an organizational shift to be more customer centric with all planning. We are having more meaningful dialogue around how to improve the customer experience, both for new users as well as existing users. And, the customer experience is more than when they need help, it is their entire experience with eBay that may start with shopping or thinking about selling an item all the way through completing a purchase or sell that includes post transaction.

What are the top three trends and challenges facing customer service leaders today?

The first challenge is creating an engaged team in an ever- changing workforce – you can’t create great customer experiences without having engaged and great employees. The second is prioritization – the world is moving at a rapid pace with very high demands. It is very important for leaders to stay focused and prioritize the things that matter most. The third is creating great experiences for customers, which includes listening to and understanding your customers, leveraging data and conversations with your customers to know what matters most to them and then working within your company to fight for the changes needed to drive the right improvements.

Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

The only way for service culture to evolve and improve is to come together and talk about what is and is not working. Though we all offer different products and service, we have so much to learn from each other. How great would it be if consumers felt good about dealing with service departments? This can be accomplished by attending events like this!

Tell us a little bit about your session and who it would be most valuable to?

Our session is valuable to anyone aiming to add or enhance live chat on their website, communicating the right things relative to your specific customer and how to keep your employees engaged in a chat role.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?

My team helps caller from all over North America learn about the Jenny Craig program and aims to get them started towards their goals of a healthier lifestyle. The sales team is the frontline, the very first encounter with Jenny Craig. We get one chance to set the bar high for service expectations for everyone starting our program. If our department did not function from a place of good intent and truly caring about helping people live their best lives, our service department would be flooded with complaints.  

Which technologies are you exploring, or investing in, to meet evolving customer expectations in 2019?

IN 2019 we are looking to continuously improve the chat experience. More and more people are reaching out to us online before they call. We want that experience to be flawless, we are looking to add new features from RapportBoost.ai. We will use RapportCoach which offers enhanced agent scorecards, ChatScript which identifies and optimizes poor and high performing scripts by providing context-aware recommendations. In addition, we are thinking of adding in technology that gives real-time suggestions to live agents of what to say for best possible outcomes.

Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is important?

The basic principles of Customer Service don’t change, but the way we execute them is an ever-changing landscape. It’s important for business to get together once in a while and share best practices. We all benefit from benchmarking.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?

At Southwest Airlines, we refer to everyone as either an Internal or External Customer, and by that standard, we are all part of the Customer Service Department, whether we sit directly in the Customer Service Department or not. Our perspective is that every Employee is responsible for serving his or her Internal/External Customers with warmth, hospitality, and a sense of personal pride.

What are the top three trends and challenges facing customer service leaders today?

The demand and expectation for instant rectification, photo/video culture, and the anonymity of the internet. More and more, Customers expect an instant solution to a problem. We should always strive for timely solutions, but sometimes research and fact-gathering is necessary, and that can present a challenge. The added components of the ability to take photos and video of nearly any situation and publish in public forums also adds a dynamic that business need to be mindful of and prepared for as they seek to address Customer Service issues.

What KPIs do you use to measure the success of your social media support?

Certainly we’re looking at how long it takes us to respond to a Customer. On Channels like the Southwest Community, which is a peer-to-peer discussion forum, we’re also looking for how long it takes a post to receive its first reply, and how many subsequent comments are made on the thread. We’re interested in knowing how many times people are posting, how long they’re spending on a certain page, and how many of them go on to make a purchase after finding the answer to a question. 

Why is the Customer Service Summit an important event?

The Customer Service Summit will bring together multiple Service leaders from many different industries. It will be a unique opportunity to learn from initiatives that have driven success in some of the top brands today. During this conference, my hope is that engagement from my fellow leaders in other companies will spark innovation on how we evolve customer service for the future, making it a source of delight for consumers and a primary strategic differentiator for customer experience.

In your company, how does your role fit into the customer service department?

I am Senior Vice President of Customer Care at Samsung Electronics America, responsible for the company’s post-sales support and service in the US. Since joining Samsung in 2015, my focus has been on building stronger, more meaningful relationships with customers, and ensuring that they always have an awesome brand experience. It is my goal to make relationship building part of the value proposition Samsung offers its consumers. 

What kind of shift are you seeing in organization-wide strategy as customer service becomes integral to attracting and retaining customers?

Historically, customer care at Samsung meant “fixing broken products” and while that’s an essential element, it’s only the beginning of the job.  Stellar customer care goes beyond fixing problems, it’s about helping consumers get the most out of their Samsung products.  My focus is on transforming Samsung from a company that produces hardware, to a company that also places emphasis on the softer side of the business—the people who buy Samsung products, and the Samsung employees who ensure consumers have a great experience with those products.  People buy once because of a great product, but they become repeat customers because of great service. Samsung has recently started to view customer care not as a cost center, but as a strategic differentiator.

Where does customer service sit in your organization? And how are you working with other departments to deliver the best possible customer experience?

The Customer Service org at Samsung Electronics America reports directly to the President & CEO of Samsung Electronics North America. Because Samsung is a global company, we work very closely with our colleagues in South Korea, as well as other Samsung subsidiaries around the world, frequently sharing best practices, innovative projects and thought leadership. We also partner frequently with other departments like Sales, Marketing and Technology. We are driving initiatives throughout the customer journey, not just post sales.

An example of our collaboration across other departments is Premium Care, which can be purchased at the point of sale on our website and shop app. It is a white-glove program that empowers customers to get the most out of their device, providing them with protection, support and assistance whenever, and wherever they need – be it in their home, office, or local coffee shop, thanks to a nationwide network of Samsung-trained experts who can provide around the clock, on-site help.  This radical and personalized new approach to customer care is a game-changer for the industry, truly delivering on the promise of an unparalleled customer service experience.

What are your top three customer service priorities in 2019/20?

My top 3 priorities this year are:

1. Control Service Delivery – Improve Samsung repair operations, from both a speed and quality perspective, while at the same time making sure our technicians are trained and branded consistently.
2. Transform the Contact Experience – Drive a shift to a Customer First and Digital First experience for our customers that is highly personalized.
3. Hyper Differentiation – Enhance our Premium Care offering, connect our service with Samsung’s Product IOT capabilities, and develop the next generation of our Customer Experience Management and Design.

Why do you feel the Customer Service Summit is an important event?

Hallmark Business Connections is delighted to be exhibiting at the Customer Service Summit to present how Hallmark is helping companies show their employees and customers how they #CareEnough. Stop by our booth (and pop-up card shopping experience!) to learn what Hallmark touchpoints have a measureable and signification impact to customer satisfaction scores, employee engagement and marketing ROI.

What kind of shift are you seeing in organization-wide strategy as customer service becomes integral to attracting and retaining customers?

As the division of Hallmark that supplies Hallmark products and services to some of the largest brands in the world, we’ve shifted even more focus to innovation in the customer experience arena. Creating a great experience is wired into Hallmark’s culture. We’ve channeled that to create products and solutions that help brands differentiate from their competition by creating extremely meaningful and moving moments for customers.

How are businesses going to have to transform their customer operations to meet the needs of the customers in the future?

AI (artificial intelligence), data insights and analytics, and advanced technology all support a transformation to be more intimate and personal with customers. Transforming customer operations to include systematic, efficient ways to connect in a meaningful way with customers will pay dividends now and in the future.

Which technologies are you exploring, or investing in, to meet evolving customer expectations in 2019?

Innovating in “speed” and “ease” is essential to deliver exceptional personal experiences via employees. For our Customer Care solution, we invented a user interface that allows customer service associates to send a real Hallmark card to a customer in a matter of seconds. We continue to evolve the experience from both the employee and customer perspective, finding unique ways to help companies creating raving fans.

With the historic reputation and “cost center” mentality, how is your team gaining investment buy-in?

Any time an organization devotes budget to a customer experience initiative, it is imperative to be able to measure the performance compared to other initiatives. In Hallmark’s solution that is built specifically for contact centers and front-line associates, we’ve built in measurement and analytics to measure the financial, customer satisfaction, employee engagement impact. One of our clients, KCP&L – a utility company – determined that they would pay three times more for the solution just for the impact on employee engagement, not to mention the impact to brand reputation and customer satisfaction with the service experience.

What excites you about the current direction of customer service, experience and support?

At the heart of business are customers who are so happy with your company that they tell others. Creating customer testimonials in social media, product reviews, recommendations and word-of-mouth marketing is vital to success in today’s environment. It’s not a new concept, but one that is experiencing resurgence. That’s exciting not only for customers, but employees and shareholders as well. Any time we can add meaning to our brands and workplace, it has great impact to customers, employees and the growth rate of our companies.