All posts by Hutch Morzaria

I am an ITIL Expert and extremely passionate about customer service, customer experience, best practices and process improvement. I have led support, service, help desk and IT teams as well as quality and call center teams in Canada and the UK. I know how to motivate my teams to ensure that they are putting the customer first.
People Management

Do Employees Believe in Core Values?

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Are you aware of your core values or the core values your organization has?  Have you ever tried to know them or have implemented them in your life?

Whether your answer to these questions is a yes or a no, we need to understand the importance of core values and the need to implement them in our lives.

Core values are an essential part of any human or any organization.  Core values are a belief or a principle that helps a person or an organization to give central importance to a view.  We always misinterpret that benefits are only until our families, schools, and social work. But we tend to, not realize it’s importance in the corporate world.

These core values help us to know the highest priorities and beliefs of that organization.  They help the employees to follow the vision that will be presented to the world. Your core values will form an ora around you and will make you fundamental to attracting, being the best and automatically this will make you contribute the most towards your organization. These core values are the ones which form a foundation for your organization.

89% of the companies in the world have written the values.  The research from 2016 shows that only 53% of employees are aware of what are the cores values for their organization. Though the recent web poll says that only 11% of HR professionals reported that 80% of their employees were aware of these value. This result is a bad one. The percentage should be 100%.

A maximum number of employees do not realize that these values can benefit them.

If you believe that these core values will not have any benefit to what you do, these are a few benefits that you can get by knowing and implementing these values to your life and your work.

These core values can improve the performance of the employee. They give a direction to what exactly their role is. They get to know about what the company wants and direct them on how should they work. This also teaches them what attitude is best for them, and what can an employee do if any new or stressful situation is experienced.

This helps to improve the engagement of the employee. This also helps to improve how committed, energetic and focussed an employee is towards his or her work.  All of these factors generally increase satisfaction and workplace morale. It will make work more fulfilling.

 When you follow these core values and believe in them to follow, this aligns them with other members and the views of the company. You do not get diverted to a wrong direction.

You will have to establish a relationship between the company and the employee, involving employees to select what those core values are that needs to be discussed. Involving employees will increase the number of who will know the core values.  It is important to communicate them to everyone.

Company leaders should talk to their juniors and should take it as their responsibility to guide them through these values. It is also essential for them to model good behavior, that is aligning with the core values. As honestly said, actions speak more than words. We cannot order someone to follow these core values until and unless we don’t support them. It is essential for all higher authorities to follow and make decisions according to  the core values of the company

Stress and job are today linked very quickly because of the workload that one has. For a person who does this work with full heart and satisfaction, his work can never be a load for him. Though all employees have to face a  situation in our job which is not at all pleasant, we get stuck to it and are unable to find a way out of it. Core values might not bring a solution to you but will surely show you the best way to come out.

A CEO is amongst the most influential people in the company, and therefore can attract employees to know and inherit the core values within them with their correct meaning and correct way of use. The support from the CEO has been proved to be one of the most effective practices to inherit the values. According to a Booz Allen Hamilton\ Aspen Institute survey, 85%  of the people responded that 80% of CEOs are already involved and 77% says that this is the most effective practice.

 Today the number of people believing in core values is decreasing day by day.  The importance of ethics and values are not only missing from their professional space but has started to decline in their personal space. People are becoming money minded and are ignoring these ethics. They do not have any interest in the core values of their company. 

Information Technology Infrastructure Library, ITIL

Why You Need CSI in Your Business

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If you have been following our blog for a while then you might have come across a term called ITIL. If you haven’t, then it’s fine as well. We’ll explain it to you in a moment. But first, let’s focus on CSI. CSI stands for Continual Service Improvement and you might have heard this term a lot in connection with ITIL. If you’re confused right now, or never really understood what this term means that you have come to the right place! In this article, we’re going to talk about CSI and why it is necessary for you to enforce it if you’re using ITIL to grow your business. But before we go there, let’s recap ITIL.

What is ITIL?

ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure Library and it is basically a framework used to help enforce the best practices you’ll need to successfully deliver quality IT services. This generally covers a broad area. It can be system maintenance, customer experience and so much more. Naturally, a lot of people confuse the different things that come up under the umbrella of ITIL so don’t be sad if you happen to find yourself in those shoes. That’s why we’re here- to help you understand exactly what ITIL is.

As you can imagine, due to the sheer amount of information that comes under ITIL, it is a very broad subject to cover and we’ll do that in future posts. For now, we’re going to focus on CSI.

What is CSI?

CSI, as mentioned, stands for Continual Service Improvement. Once you’ve started using ITIL to impact the performance of your team, you’ll be looking for a way to maintain the kind of bar you’ve set. The last thing you need is to start using ITIL for a while, get your business organized, maybe grow it and then be slumped with deadlines because you can’t put them through.

Believe it or not, but businesses who begin using the ITIL model but then leave it halfway and fail to continuously implement them fail horribly. And you don’t want that. So, in order to make sure that you continue using ITIL services and maintain the quality of your services, it is very important that you use CSI.

CSI allows you to process useful methods that will ensure that you maintain the quality of your work. This includes management quality as well. It keeps managers on their feet so that the entire team does not fall apart.

The ITIL CSI cycle- as it is known- combined will help you continue to maintain the quality of your processes as well as improve effectiveness, efficiency, and output of all the IT services that your company has to offer.

Why Businesses Should Use ITIL CSI?

Now that you know what ITIL CSI is used for, let’s talk about why businesses need them. Several companies delude themselves into thinking that just because they’ve made improvements once, they don’t need to do it again. However, in order to stay on top of things, you need to continuously employ methods to improve your business. Below, we’ll give you a list of reasons why your business should apply CSI.

Improving Quality of Operations

CSI helps you look at your business as a whole so that you have a better understanding of how your business operates. You will be able to look at the whole functioning process of your business, providing you with the bigger picture. This gives you the advantage of knowing how each and every service operates, the various work cycle levels, delivering services and more, making it easier for both you and your team.

Improves Staff Productivity

Since by using CSI practices, you are learning about the entire service lifecycle of your company, it will become so much easier for you to identify staff performances as well as practices which will make your staff more effective. Additionally, it will also help you learn more about the more easily disposable applications and services that are rendering your business ineffective. Sometimes, you need the bigger picture to show you how one or more extra components of your business are affecting others and so you can make sure that all of your business processes are helping you grow your business and not harm it. With this knowledge, you can also look at your workforce and regroup them in ways that will benefit your business.

Keeping Things In Check

One of the biggest advantages of using the ITIL CSI system for your IT services is that you can keep an eye on everything- from accounts to processes to the eventual output and delivery of service. This helps you keep in check with your budget so that you’re on top of your deadlines and can help your staff with issues they may be facing. CSI helps to fix the server errors and issues you may be facing in some IT services so that you can maintain your services accordingly and deliver quality problem.

Conclusion

As you can see, you need ITIL CSI to help you manage and maintain your business. It additionally helps you improve efficiency and make sure that you don’t fall behind the competition. With these practices, you will be able to keep your balances in check, so that you can continue to grow your business and satisfy your customers. We hope you found this article useful! Let us know what you think about this.

Leadership, Management, People Management

The Nine Strategies of an Effective Leader

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You wake up in the morning against the rising yellow sun in the yellow acacia dotted plains somewhere in Maasai Mara, Kenya. The little cubs are staring at you. You just had a good sleep but are still tired.  You’re not particularly hungry, but you must lead the hunt anyway. You’re the fastest lioness in the pride though, and everyone depends on you. You’re the leader. You must lead. Failure to do so means you lose your status in the pride. That’s leadership.

Many people want to become leaders. We live in a competitive world, and the safest point seems to always be at the top. Many of us don’t, however, understand what it takes to get to the top as well as remain at the top. It comes with a whole load of its challenges.

In this article, we are going to focus on the strategies that help you become a leader – the steps you have to take if you ever wish to be seen as a leader and respected as one. These are the steps you should take to earn and maintain the respect of your employees, mentees, and followers.

1. Actively listen

Many people think being a leader is always being the boss. Many times, your employees as well as mentees want somebody who is keen and wants to form a relationship with them. Listening is especially important in a collaborative work environment where you work with a team rather than employees or mentees or followers. Important to note is, you should listen, not pretend to listen. Engage your followers and let them feel you are really listening. Be an approachable person and don’t ever let your followers fear you – just make them respect you.

When listening, make sure you don’t listen to hear what your followers say but to understand what they think. Try to engage your employees about what they think. People respect you more when they feel you value them. They’ll see you more of a leader if you inspire and motivate them

2. Tell Your Story

Story telling gives inspiration. You are a business owner, and you tell your casual laborer that you were once a casual laborer like him, he gets inspired. He starts seeing himself as a big business owner someday. He starts seeing you as a mentor rather than just his boss and immediately, you become a leader to him.

Storytelling is also entertaining and gives morale to people by keeping them entertained. It is also a good way to get something done. You could use a story from your past on how you used to do something to inspire your workers to do something.

Story telling helps transfer complex knowledge in a simple, entertaining way.

3. Always Show Gratitude

Never act the boss who was expecting it to be done the right way anyway. Never be that boss who feels you’re doing your workers a favor by employing them as well as they should be the ones thanking you.

Gratitude is best when it’s done personally and not vaguely. Hold your worker’s hand firmly and tell them you appreciate how well they did the job. Showing gratitude to the whole group is also good. However, never show preference to one person over the others. Show gratitude to everyone who does a good job and never is selective.

When people feel appreciated, they get positive and motivated. This does not only earn you respect but encourage better working culture and more productivity which even earns you respect outside your organization (because your productivity can be felt by non-stakeholders).

Gratitude is also a sign of humility. People always appreciate a successful yet humble human being and more likely to identify such a person as a leader.

4. Point out People’s Strength

As somebody who has been an employer, one thing I have noticed is that many bosses love pointing out their worker’s weaknesses. A worker could do 9 things right, but the tenth task that he does wrong is the very task that will be highlighted. Worse still, many bosses love to embarrass their workers by pointing out their weaknesses in front of everybody thinking they can somehow shame the person into making a better – the wrong approach.

It’s good to point out people’s strength and help boost their self-esteem. Pointing out a strength motivates more than pointing out a weakness. Embarrassing somebody by always pointing out their weaknesses creates a disdain of you in them as well as reduces the morale of the individual.

Finally, it’s good to encourage your workers to focus more on their strength than their weaknesses. If someone is terrible at one task yet exceedingly good at the other, you can have them do the task that they excel at and delegate the other task to somebody else.

5. Get Involved at the Ground level

Don’t be the bossy boss always sitting in your big chair in your office barking orders over the phone. Getting involved at ground level is one of the best strategies of being a great leader. It gives your followers a great sense of belonging and that’s the beginning of them seeing you as their leader.

In the modern age of social media, if you’re popular on social media, take time and engage and respond to people who comment on your posts. If you run a construction company, get down to the site and even once in a while work with the lowest paid worker, have a taste of what they do. It doesn’t only boost their morale, but it also makes you realize the kind of challenges they face which you could improve. It also helps you see what you can do to improve the general productivity of your company.

Getting on the ground helps you build permanent relationships with your followers. A politician for instance who builds a relationship with the average woman or man on the street will create a self-campaigning tool from the people he or she built relationships with.

Some leaders are made while others are born. We, however, have a clique of non-leaders who were once leaders but later were destroyed. Never climb your ladder so high you can barely see the people who built the very same ladder.

6. Delegate Responsibility

Don’t be Mr. Know-all. Don’t project yourself as the only person who can get things done around. A delegation of responsibilities doesn’t only make work easier for you but also earns you respect and admiration.

Delegation of duties downwards also helps grow the skills and confidence of your workers. It enables things to run even when you are not around. Many managers think if things can run when they are not around then it would mean they are not needed. That’s very wrong. If things can run even when the boss is not around, it means the boss leads and teaches well.

7. Always be Honest and Open

Management and government evolved from the military. The silent de facto rule of the military is secrecy. This culture has been carried down for many years and thought it might work in some instances, it’s not the best strategy in the modern business world.

This kind of structure only works in instances where power is paramount, and access to information is directly proportional to the power one holds. The problem with this strategy in business is when people have no information and have to make decisions in the dark, they have to guess and may end up doing contrary to what the business stands for and contrary to its vision. This also undermines the worker’s ability to think, ask questions and come up with ideas. They’ll appear confused, visionless and, you guessed, leaderless.

8. Allow Failure

Don’t be the kind of boss who demonizes failure and makes workers tremble at the thought of failing. Encourage your team to fail several times in order to get it right rather than installing in them a ‘never fail’ attitude.

This will discourage other workers from being creative and trying new methods for fear of failure the repercussions of failure.

A good leader enshrines acceptance and taking responsibility for failure. Strategic leadership involves encouraging failures that lead to success rather than efforts that ensure no failure. No failure doesn’t exist and running on such an idea will only lead to frustrations and lack of faith in you as a leader.

9. Be the Role Model

Never do the opposite of what you preach. Followers do more following than taking of orders. Anyone who takes orders from you is not your follower but your subject. Followers emulate what you do, they don’t do what you say.

If you are a leader, behave in the very same way you want your followers too. If you want punctual workers, be punctual. Your workers will be more punctual if you’re punctual than if you order them to be punctual.

Management, People Management, Planning, Problem Solving, Project Management

Guidelines to Decision Making and Problem-solving in an Organization

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Most of what managers do is to make decisions and solve problems. Often, managers are under stress and with limited time to make critical decisions in an organization. Consequently, when managers encounter a new decision or a problem they must solve, they react with decisions that seemed to work before. Sometimes, this approach can put you in a loop of solving the same problem over and over. It is often more useful to get used to an organized approach to solving problems and making decisions. Not all decisions can be made and problems solved following a rational approach. However, we have a few guidelines that will help managers to get started. You shouldn’t be intimidated by the length of our guidelines because they will make you a better manager.

After you have practiced our guidelines, they will become easy for you. You can utilize them to suit your own needs. It is better for managers to view a problem as an opportunity. Here are the best steps to help managers make better decisions and solve problems effectively.

Define the problem

Most people struggle to define a problem. In most cases, they react to opinions and what they think the problem is. It is better to understand more about the problem before making a decision. You can define a problem with input from others and yourself. Here are a few questions you need to ask yourself and others when defining a problem.

•    What makes you think there is a problem?

•    How is it happening?

•    Where is it happening?

•    How is it happening?

•    Why is it happening?

After asking all the relevant questions, you can write down the description of the problem. Write down what triggered the problem to happen, where the problem happened, why it happened and the people it affected.

How to define complex problems

It is good to understand that problems are different. We have complex and simple problems. Complex problems require more materials and input to get solved. If the problem seems to be overwhelming, you should break it down by repeating the above steps. You should verify how you understand the problem. Use tools like Mindmaps to help you define the scope.

Prioritize the problem

In some cases, managers find themselves dealing with different problems. If this is the case, it is important to prioritize the problems and know which problems to address first. You should know the difference between urgent and important problems.

Often, what most managers consider to be important problems are in real sense urgent problems. You need to give important problems more attention. For example, if you are dealing with phone calls, it is important to design your system to prioritize on urgent phone calls.

Understand the role of people in the problem

The role of the manager in the problem can influence how the manager perceives the role of others. Sometimes, if you feel too guilty about your role in the problem, you will ignore the accountability of other people. Also, some managers get blinded so much by the role other people play in a problem that they forget that they also have a role in the problem.

Find the potential causes of the problem

You don’t know a lot about what you don’t know. It is, therefore, crucial to get input from others because they may be affected by the problem as well. You should collect input from other people one at a time. Write down what you have read from other people and your opinions. Write down a clear description of the cause of the problem in terms of what is happening, when it is happening, where it is happening and why it is happening.

Identify alternatives for resolving the problem

When you get at this point, it is helpful to keep other people involved unless you have a personal employee problem. You need to brainstorm and collect many ideas and screen them to find the best ideas. It is crucial when collecting these ideas to not pass judgment on the ideas. You should write the ideas down as you hear them.

Select an approach to solving the problem

You should choose the best approach to solve your problem for a long time. Some solutions are just for a short time and won’t be helpful to your business. Also, it is important to choose a solution that is realistic to accomplish. You should know whether you have the resources to solve the problem and if you have enough time to implement your approach. Consider the extent of the risk that comes with each alternative.

Have a plan for implementing the best alternative

You should consider what the situation will look like when you have solved the problems. Know the steps that you need to take to implement the best alternative solution. Know the processes or the systems you need to change in your organization to ensure that the solution is effective. Managers should make sure that the steps are being followed to solve the problem. You will need resources in terms of money, people and facilities to solve the problems. It is also crucial to know the time needed to implement the solution and write a schedule to include the start and stop time. In most cases, managers choose other people to be responsible for solving the problem. If this is the case, you should know the responsible persons in solving the problem.

If other people are involved in solving the problem, you should communicate the plan to them and ensure that they follow the plan by supervising them.

Verify if the problem has been solved

Managers should always verify if the problem has been solved and one of the best ways to verifying is to resume normal operations in your organization. You should consider the changes that need to be made to prevent the problem from re-occurring in the future. You should consider training, changing policies and putting procedures in place to prevent the problem from happening again. After solving a problem, managers should learn many things from the process. A brief memo can help to highlight the success of the solution.

Leadership, Management, People Management

Understanding the Relationship Between Management and Organizational Behavior

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A successful business should have a good manager and good management. The manager plays a vital role in different activities in trading and helps the business to make a profit. A successful manager should be able to control employees and acquire his goals from the staff by assigning resources, making a decision and directing activities. A successful manager should also be able to perform the four main functions in a business such as organizing, planning, controlling and leading.

The Role of Organizational Behavior in Business

Apart from what we have mentioned above, organizational behavior plays a vital role in a business set-up as well as in management. Organizational behavior is the study of how groups, individuals and structure effect and get influenced by different behaviors in organizations. The knowledge gained from the study of organizational behavior is applied to groups, individuals and structure to improve or make functions more effective in organizations.

Organizational behavior is one of the most critical elements that support management in organizations. Managers can understand different behaviors of individuals in an organization and what groups, individuals and structure are doing as well as predict their actions and realize the effects and causes among relationships in a business setting. With management functions, businesses also use different resources to achieve their goals and objectives. The resources are arranged in four groups namely human, physical, financial, and information resources.

Human Resource

Human resource can be defined as the people that operate an organization. A human resource is an employee or a single person within an organization. Human resources are all the staff in your organization. Human resource can also be defined as the organizational function that deals with issues related to people such as benefits, compensation, hiring and recruiting employees, performance management, onboarding employees, training, advising managers about the impact on people of their planning, financial, and performance decisions on the employees in an organization.

Physical Resources

Every company should have physical resources. Some companies need more physical resources than others. Physical resources are tangible items in an organization, and they are essential for a business to function. The items have value, take space and are used in operating the company. All types of businesses need physical resources. Businesses that are product-based use physical resources to provide goods for sale and to operate the business. Businesses that are service-based use physical resources to deliver services such as having tools and space to work in order to deliver the services.

Financial Resources

The financial resource is the money available in business in the form of liquid securities, cash and credit lines. An entrepreneur should secure enough financial resources before going into business. This helps the entrepreneur to be able to operate and promote success sufficiently.

Information Resources

Information resources are vital for businesses. For businesses to be successful, they need information. A combination of external and internal business information resources can provide the background needed to evaluate current business performance and plan for future progress. It is essential for managers to know the types of information that is crucial for business in order to plan for getting, analyzing and using information effectively. 

When managers understand financial, human, physical and information resources, they can use it and compose the functions with four basic functions (organizing, planning, controlling and leading) with the purpose of getting effective results from the organization. Managers will follow that to show how to apply the above basic resources and functions to the organization and its goals.

Planning is the process established to determine the future position of an organization and decide on how to achieve goals within an organization. Organizing is the process of designing jobs. Leading is the process of motivating workers and resolving conflicts within an organization. Controlling is; comparing, correcting and motoring performance with the objectives of the organization. 

The Role of Managers

Managers have a role of performing effective functions and roles in an organization. Managers have interpersonal roles, and these include the figurehead, the liaison, and the leader. Managers also have the roles of making critical decisions in an organization. They act as the disturbance handler, the entrepreneur, the negotiator, and the resource allocator. These are very important roles in decision making. 

Making high-quality decisions in an organization can be productive. Managers also have an information role. This includes monitoring information, dissemination of information and breaking down of information for easy understanding by the junior employees. Information is therefore very important in an organization, and the behavioral processes help managers to get the right information.

Negative Effects of Behavior

Understanding behavior plays an important role in management. However, some behavior can affect management negatively. Several problems affect managers negatively, and managers should pay more attention to these. One of the main reasons that cause difficulty in organizations is deviant. The deviant workplace may include hostile behaviors and sabotage, insult, theft, and gossip. The organization should put in place proper firing and hiring policies to control such behavior and ensure the organization is running smoothly. A prevention plan should also, and this includes training managers to identify problems early and set up clear rules with respect to threat, violence, harassment and more. Job satisfaction can improve productivity in an organization, but it can also be a negative influence because employees can feel too comfortable and become sluggish.

Conclusion

It is important for everyone to understand the relationship between organization and management when discussing leadership. It also helps managers to face challenges within an organization and find out the best ways to deal with the challenges. Managers should have a thorough grasp of the theory and practice it. It is also important for managers to be able to administrate and face global challenges, manage diversity, improve services, empower people, provide job satisfaction and deviant workplace. From this information, organizations can run smoothly and gain more benefits through components, perceiving roles and their effects in organizations.

Customer Experience, Customer Management

10 First Steps to Improve Customer Experience

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A business cannot grow without their customers; therefore, companies work hard to win new customers as well as keep their existing customers. Customer experience is the complete perception of a brand for the customers through several interactions with the company during the journey. It is more feeling orientated than problem orientated. Providing overall good customer experience by a company can lead to building long term relationship with its customers while being good only in one area but struggling in other areas can result in an overall poor experience.

Customer experience is different from customer service as customer service is only one aspect of the whole customer experience. It can often be about one single point, specific department or individual. A company provides support to customers who are having problems while purchasing its products or services. It plays a significant role because the whole customer experience can be strongly affected by customer service interaction. So, businesses should improve their customer experience if they want to scale.

Build a customer-focused Culture:

Building a customer-focused culture purely means making the customer experience a central part of the company’s goals and values. According to seohosting, it is 5 times costlier to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. So, the main goal of the company should be customer satisfaction rather than growth and profits. They should be in constant interaction with their customers at every phase of the journey. Without a customer-focused culture, companies can not really reach strong customer satisfaction levels.

Every employee has an impact on customers not only the customer-facing employees who interact with the customers so often. The key to a culture change is to Involve all employees. Each person in the company needs to understand how their role can influence customers.

For example, Zappos uses a customer-centric approach which has been established into their culture to deliver the best customer service and improve customer experience.

Know who your customers are:

It is obvious that if you don’t know who your customers are, you will never know what they want, and how you can help them achieve it. All customers do not have the same needs and you can discover several different types of customers with different requirements and expectations.

To know who your customers are, employees should recognize the targeted customers and think of the services from their viewpoint. Having a complete understanding of the customers through customer engagement data plays a great role in achieving fundamental business goals. It also empowers delivering improved customer experiences across the board. As said by Teradata, only 41% of companies use customer engagement data to update their marketing strategy.

Mobile customer support:

As an average user spends more than three hours daily, browsing and using their smartphone. So, the biggest brands offer mobile apps and mobile-friendly websites for their users to capture their attention and engage them. Customers can get their queries resolved on their smartphones that really improve customer satisfaction level. Some of the companies don’t focus on their mobile support so resulting in poor customer experience.

In the U.S, 63% of people use their smartphones to search for products and customer support every month.

Live chat support:

Customers had to wait in a long queue while contacting the company through phone calls so, live chat is now the fastest way for customers to contact a company directly from its website in real time. In the beginning, it was available only in retail websites online but nowadays, this is not limited to eCommerce websites. All well-known brands offer live chat support to improve customer experience.

Gartner predicts that about 85 percent of businesses will provide a live chat facility on their websites by 2022.

Social media support:

Social media support can be an influential communication way for a company to develop strong relationships with the customers, earn trust and build brand awareness. It is not only used for finding more followers or increasing sales, but it is also used for customer experience improvement.

Younger customers, who normally do not check emails will particularly expect social messaging to be their way to get in touch with companies, brands, and artists. So, it is important for companies to focus deeply on social media support and manage it well. Facebook has more than 2 billion users and Twitter has more than 330 million users. It shows how people are involved in social media.

An understanding of what other channels are suitable for your customer base:

Earlier, there used to be only one way to contact a company but now the businesses must provide the most suitable communication channels to make it easy for the customers to get in touch. Customers can use text, message, email, forums and any other way easier for them to contact. Some old age people prefer phone calls to contact while younger people use social media. It is believed that no single communication medium fits for all and depends on the customers.

Self serve tools:

Self-service helps the customers to get answers to their questions without the assistance of a representative from the customer service team. The commonly used self-serve tools include FAQs and online discussion forums. Self-serve tools are faster, hence ideal for saving customers’ time. It allows customers to take control of the way they use the service. Self-serve tools are no more a “nice to have” in the website. It is required to provide a positive customer experience.

Customer self-serve tools also help in reducing the load on customer support representatives and earn enhanced customer loyalty and experience. The study conducted by Dimension Data shows that 73 percent of the customers choose to use self-serve tools provided in the company’s website, instead of using phone calls, live chat, and social media for support.

Someone to be responsible for customer experience:

Nearly all the departments of a company do really influence the customer experience. It is not the job of one individual or department. therefore, everyone uses their efforts and enhance things in their own area.

In most companies, the marketing department helps in improving customer experience as a whole. In some cases, the top management work for it. But there is a customer experience manager that makes a connection between the company and the customer. And this person helps in managing customer experience job across all different departments.

The ability to research and gather data:

A survey conducted by Salesforce shows that 57% of the total customers share their personal data with companies to get special offers and discounts. Businesses collect a huge amount of data through many activities. It is important to analyze this data and utilize it for providing personalized services to customers and enhancing the customer experience. This helps a company keep a loyal customer base.

A report published by ICMI said that 69% of customers pay additional money if they are getting great customer service.

Ability to benchmark and evaluate:

The company should be able to collect and gather data trying out different things. Which support service is effective and which one is not. To know answers to all these questions there must be feedback giving the option for the customers. This will help the company to measure the effectiveness of each customer support method.

Conclusion:

In today’s technological world and constant access to the internet, every customer wants 24/7 exemplary customer services from a company. So, every company must now try to make better customer service their top priority. It helps the company to take an edge over its competitors.

Management, People Management

The Role of Managers in Organizations

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The job of a manager is vital in an organization. The manager is a planner, producer, coordinator, and marketer. An organization’s success will depend on the caliber of managers in utilizing the resources to achieve business goals. Managers are pivotal figures in the task of creating wealth. Technology, methods of production, the financial setup, and marketing techniques change rapidly, and managers should be competent to cope with the changes.

Definition of a Manager

The manager is someone in an organization who directs the activities done by other people. Managers do their work at different levels, and they have different names in an organization. First line managers are called supervisors, or in construction or manufacturing, they are called foremen. Middle-level managers include various levels of management between supervisors and top-level managers in an organization.

The managers may also be called plant heads, functional managers, and project managers. There are top managers near the top of the hierarchy. The top-level managers are responsible for making decisions in an organization. They also set strategies and policies that affect different aspects of the organization. These people may also be called managing directors, vice presidents, chief executive officer or chairmen.

Managerial Functions

Managers have to perform functions like organizing, planning, staffing, directing and controlling. These functions are necessary for running of an organization and achieving objectives. Planning is essential for establishing strategies and setting goals for coordinating activities.

The organization function of a manager helps in determining the tasks to be done, how to do them and how the tasks are grouped. The staffing function of a manager is essential for employing different types of people and doing different activities such as development, training, compensation, appraisal, and welfare.

The directing function of managers requires the giving of instructions and motivating the subordinates to achieve their goals. Managers should perform the controlling function to ensure that they are being done as planned and correcting any mistakes.

Managerial skills

Managers have a number of responsibilities. Managers should have proper skills for them to perform different roles. Managers should have three essential skills; human, technical and conceptual skills. The importance of these skills varies depending on the level of the manager within an organization.

Human skills

Managers should have the ability to work well with others both in a group or individually. Managers should have human skills to get the best from the people working with them. They should also know how to communicate with people, motivate them, lead them and inspire trust and enthusiasm. The skills are essential by managers at every level, but the topmost managers need them the most.

Technical skills

Managers should have the necessary technical skills. They should also be able to work with the tools, resources, procedures, and techniques to achieve the organizational goals. Many middle managers and first-line managers should be involved in a lot of technical aspects within an organization. Some of the technical skills that managers should have include knowledge of proficiency in different specialties such as computers, engineering, manufacturing or finance. Even if the need for technical skills is less when managers go higher the hierarchy but still it is essential for a manager to have technical skills to help in decision making.

Conceptual skills

Managers should be able to coordinate and integrate different activities within an organization. Managers should have the ability to conceptualize and think about abstract solutions. They should be able to see the organization wholesomely and the relationships among the subunits in an organization to be able to visualize how the organization fits in its broad environment. Conceptual skills are also critical in decision-making. It is necessary for all managers to take the necessary decisions. Conceptual skills become more essential as managers make up the hierarchy of the organization.

Qualities of a Good Manager

Managers should be able to undertake different functions from controlling to planning. They have to make decisions for different types of activities in an organization. The decisions that managers take to influence the working of an organization. A manager should have the following qualities:

Education

Managers should have the right educational background. Nowadays, managers should have management education besides other qualifications. Education is vital because it widens the mental horizon and also helps in understanding different things and interpreting them properly. Therefore, managers should be knowledgeable in the business environment to be able to deal with various problems the organization may face.

Leadership

Managers have the responsibility of directing and motivating people working in the organization. They provide leadership to the subordinate staff. The energies of the subordinate employees should be channelizing of properly to achieve goals. If managers have leadership skills, they can motivate the subordinate staff in improving their working and performance to their full capacity in order to benefit the organization.

Intelligence

Managers have to perform more duties than other people in the organization. Their level of intelligence should be higher than other people in the organization. Intelligence is crucial because it helps managers to assess the present responsibilities as well as the future possibilities for the business. Managers should be able to foresee things in advance and take the necessary measure at the appropriate time.

Training

Managers should acquire managerial skills. The skills consist of human skills, technical skills, and conceptual skills. The skills should be acquired through guidance, education, and experience. The skills are necessary for all levels of managers.

Technical knowledge

Managers should have technical knowledge of different activities in the organization. They will be in a better position to inspect and guide if they have the knowledge of those activities.

Positive attitude

Managers should have a positive attitude. Managers have to deal with a lot of people from the inside as well as from the outside of the organization. They should be positive and sympathetic to different suggestions. They should not pre-judge people they deal with. They need to understand people’s problems and try to help them.

There are other skills such as confidence, foresight, maturity, and more skills that a manager should possess. Being a manager is not an easy role and it’s definitely more than just a title. Managers need to be able to make decisions, often with little detailed knowledge, and then they need to deal with the consequences of those decisions.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library, ITIL, Management

What is ITIL CSI?

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If you’ve heard about ITIL CSI and have been wondering what it’s good for, or alternatively, if you’ve been looking at all these professionals recommending CSI and stressing on its importance without ever knowing what it is for sure, then you’re in luck. In this blog post, we’re going to talk about ITIL CSI and what it is. So if you’re a bit confused about what its functions really are or if you’re not sure if you should implement it, then you have come to the right place. In this blog post, we’re going to tell you exactly what ITIL CSI is and what you can hope to achieve from it.

So, What Is It?

ITIL CSI or Continual Service Improvement is a module that provides guidance in creating and maintaining value for customers through better strategy planning, design and operation, and presentation of services. It is basically combing the principles of the firm, practices of the firm and the methods it uses from quality management, change management, and capability improvement. ITIL refers to the management of the firm’s IT services. Whereas, CSI has two main stages. These are

  • service review and
  • process objective.

Service review refers to the reviewing of business services and infrastructure on a regular basis. Whereas, process objective refers to the reviewing of the processes used by the firm on a regular basis. This includes identifying areas where the targeted process metrics are not reached and holding regular benchmarking, audits, maturity assessments and reviews.

Many business analysts believe that ITIL CSI is best practices for a smaller firm. It best fits the practice framework of most small firms and should be used by all. Small firms have smaller resources than larger firms. Due to these small firms often believe that they cannot reach out to the best practices that are otherwise used by larger firms.

Large firms have a lot of resources. They have the capacity to deal with risks and try on newer firm practices. They can use ITIL and CSI as this framework needs resources and its implementation is complex. However, this is not the case. Smaller firms are flexible, adaptable and have improved relationships with their customers. This provides them an edge in implementing the ITIL CSI.

ITIL CSI as a Tool for Small Businesses

Through ITIL CSI, small firms can easily find out where they are lagging behind as compared to larger firms. They can manage and optimize on their IT department much more efficiently using ITIL. It is much easier to detect an online bug found in the company’s server. It is also much easier to mitigate the risk and improve on the performance of their IT services. Small services often search for a steady IT service and they aim towards delivering services to customers. It is true that since smaller firms have lesser resources, ITIL CSI can be implemented more efficiently as smaller firms need to check out the challenges that they need to overcome or face.

Apart from this, ITIL CSI can help small businesses to expand. For smaller firms to expand successfully a clear-cut strategy is often needed. In order to do this, the resources of the firm need to be accounted for, stakeholders need to consult for any concerns assuaged and quantifiable goals need to be set in. The ITIL Service Cycle helps firms achieve this aim. Once the initial goals have been set or reached by smaller firms, the ITIL CSI helps it expand since each new strategy is introduced, experimented and then implemented,

The Framework

The ITIL CSI is a tailorable framework. It is often referred to as the silver bullet solution. This leads to the organization implementing the ITIL as a whole. ITIL causes hindrance in larger firms. However, with smaller firms, they are able to prioritize what is most pressing. The ITIL not only helps them identify the problem that is there within a firm but it also, helps them improve upon it effectively and efficiently. The ITIL CSI also condenses the roles in a firm. For instance, the roles of the incident manager and problem manager can be taken on by one individual. They can take responsibility for minimizing issues before they escalate.

Moreover, the ITIL is not just about processes it’s about people. A company’s good service depends on the dedication of staff who take ownership of their role. ITIL helps promote a culture of responsibility as each staff is assigned a task which they must fulfill at a particular time. The ITIL soon becomes a part of a company’s culture.

Despite improved and increased efficiency, the ITIL CSI has many other benefits which can be very useful for smaller firms. The use of ITIL CSI reduces costs for a firm. The firm no longer has to spend huge sums of money on hiring Professional advisors. It can help develop a strategy without having to hire a great number of Professionals. It also condenses the roles of individuals in the firm which means that less number of workers are hired. It even increases the productivity of workers as roles are condensed making each and every worker of the firm to work effectively. There is high interdependence between workers which again contributes to the productivity of the firm. ITIL CSI also increases customer satisfaction. Since the ITIL provides predictable processes and a set framework, it is easier to meet customer satisfaction, as well as monitor and measure incidents.

As a result, smaller firms should make use of the ITIL CSI in order to function effectively and efficiently.

Conclusion

As you can see, regardless of the kind of business you run, you will find that ITIL CSI is very important for businesses everywhere. Not only can help you understand how to use your resources effectively within a given budget, but it also helps you understand the need for diverting resources or restructuring your business model. A lot of business owners today depend on this to take care of various departments such as logistics and customer service. Given the competition, you should not fall behind and use this opportunity provided to you and implement this method to further your business.

Leadership, Management, Organizational Behaviour, People Management

Why Managers Need To Understand Organizational Behavior

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As managers begin to study organizational behavior, they will be struck by the fact that they can apply what they have learned immediately to the problems they encounter at work. Managers will be gaining a broad view of organizational behavior disciplines, and they will also find different ways they can alter their management philosophy to reflect the knowledge newly found in the study of organizational behavior. The more the knowledge about organizational behavior grows; the more managers will become skilled in understanding and analyzing the behavioral implications of the problems facing their organization. Before we look at the necessity of managers studying organizational behavior, let’s first look at the organizational behavior theories.

Human Relations Behavioral Theory

This theory states that organizations function well when the staff feels empowered and valued. The theory is based on studying the productivity of the employees under different circumstances of work. Human relations behavioral theory also states that the staff in an organization are likely to increase efficiency and productivity if they feel validated and satisfied at work.

For example, things such as free lunch could help employees feel content and secure because their company meets their needs. When the staff believes that management cares about their needs and wants, they feel a sense of loyalty, and this boosts their productivity in return.

Decision-making Behavioral Theory

This is the most applied theory to supervisors and managers because they can make more of their decisions that affect their company. Decision making behavioral theory states that people within an organization can only make decisions based on the available information. However, the information must be complete and accurate for the decision to achieve a specific goal.

The person making the decision should have the ability to sort through the process and information correctly. Inadequate or insufficient information leads to bad decision making. Also, managers who are not strong in information synthesis are likely to make bad decisions.

Servant Leadership Behavioral T

The servant leadership theory has gained a lot of influence over the past few decades. The theory states that the leaders in an organization will achieve success only if they become servants of their employees. Leaders wield influence in an organization, unlike servants. They are therefore able to create the principles and vision that drives the company forward. The servant leadership theory allows executives to view all work protocols and processes from the point of view of their employees. If you own a company, then your primary job is to view the needs and the wants of your employees as more important as your needs and wants.

This simply means that you provide employees with all the necessary resources for them to achieve performance standards that you have established for your company. Servant leadership behavior can help you create a stronger bond with your employees, but it is important to remember that your main focus should remain on the wants and needs of your employees and not on their feelings. Managers who focus too much on the feelings of their workers may be restricted from making hard decisions and from providing honest critiques of their work.

Benefits of Organizational Behavior to Managers

There are many benefits of knowing organizational behavior for leaders and managers in any organization. We have listed the three main benefits for you to understand.

Employee Training

Organizational behavior is very important in the process of training employees. Employees with the right backgrounds get hired to do relevant jobs in an organization. However, often the background is not enough to ensure that there is effective performance over time.

Organizational behavior affects the training provided to employees internally through resources. Employee training is focused on strengthening and improving the existing skills, regulatory requirements or learning about new technology that can impact how work is done in an organization and staying updated on changes in the environment that can change how employees do work.

Engagement

Managers and employers are concerned about developing a conducive environment where employees can feel connected to their work and to the mission of the company. Managers are also concerned about their ability to offer ideas and insights to help improve the production and the work environment. The work rules in an organization affect the engagement as well as the culture.

Conclusion

Organizational behavior is an important subject. It helps leaders and managers to understand, and plan for an individual’s actions. Organizational behavior is the study of perception, attitude, and moral ethics of individuals in an organization.

Leadership, Management, People Management

How to be a Good Boss and a Leader

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Many discussions have come up concerning bosses and leaders. We have seen many people discourage individuals from being bosses and becoming leaders. The question though is, are bosses inherently bad and are leaders inherently good?

First, we will look at the definitions of the two words.

Who or What is a Boss?

A boss can be defined as a person who has and exercises authority or supervises workers.

A leader, on the other hand, is somebody with the ability to lead or create a following and inspire and motivate people.

Generally, a boss tends to be more of a manager and a leader. A boss must have some authority over some people to get the title while a leader doesn’t need to.

A leader has positive connotations. The moment anyone gets the ‘leader’ title means he is respected and appreciated by those who follow him and draw inspiration and motivation from him. We, however, note that the word boss comes with negative connotations.  A boss is generally seen as someone who is controlling and doesn’t care about other people’s feelings.

Can Somebody be a Boss and a Leader?

Sometimes it’s hard to be a boss and a leader considering the different responsibilities bosses and leaders have. Bosses mostly are managers and trying to be a manager and a leader at the same time could be detrimental to your business.

Managers, for instance, are supposed to not feed their emotions when doing their job. Managers are supposed to dismiss when they should, give a pay cut when they should, be hard on the workers when they should. A leader is however like a good teacher who gives inspiration and motivation. A leader listens to his/her juniors. He/she can break the rules just to endear themselves to the juniors.

A manager can’t do that and doing that could see them make some really bad losses. Normally, I like to compare a leader to a grandparent of a child and a boss/manager to the mother of the child. Most of the time, grandparents are nice to grandchildren. They smile at them, play with them, tell them stories, and many kids love being around them. A parent, however, has to discipline the child. Once in a while a parent has to show a stern face, give a stern warning, ground a child, and in some countries and among some people, they even have to spank them. It is thus quite a challenge of a task trying to be a boss and a leader at the same time.

It is, however, possible to be a boss and a leader. In fact, whenever a boss is described as good, he’s already a leader because you can’t be a good boss and fail to exhibit most of the characteristics of a leader.

We are thus going to look at some characteristics of a leader and how a boss can use them to become a good boss thus becoming a good boss and a leader at the same time.

Don’t have Favorites

Good leaders care about the emotions of their followers. They use emotions to create inspirations and attach themselves to their juniors. This means good leaders avoid doing things that may hurt some of the workers. One of these things is being unfair to particular individuals. Luckily enough for the bosses, you don’t really have to run on emotions to achieve this. You can completely run on logic and still be able to be impartial. Of course, as a human being, it’s quite impossible never to have a favorite – the point is – never show it.

Always Remember your Employees are Human.

In business, managers are advised not to run on emotions. This has led to many managers completely disregarding the feelings of their employees. Some bosses only focus on production – anything else is out of the question. You can, however, pick this leadership trait of being human without compromising your work standards and production. Happy workers are more productive than unhappy ones. Treat your workers humanely, and they’ll be happy.

Listen to your Workers’ Ideas and be Open to Change

One characteristic of a good leader is the capability of listening to their workers or juniors or followers and trying out the ideas they come up with. However, leaders interact with their juniors way less than their bosses, and this is a tricky thing to try out like a boss. We, therefore, advise bosses to moderately listen to their juniors once in a while. This creates an environment of harmony and a feeling of belonging among the workers.

Accountability Shouldn’t be Limited to your Workers

A leader is someone who motivates and inspires. A leader can lead by simply being there and not actually interacting with their followers on a one on one basis. A leader just makes themselves the golden standard which he/she wants his/her followers to emulate.

A boss however also has the responsibility of instilling the discipline he/she expects in the workers. Many bosses end up just shouting orders and giving punishments to their juniors without even looking at the person. A good boss who wishes to be a leader should make sure they live up to the standards they intend to instill in their workers. If you want a corruption free organization, don’t be corrupt. If you want a clean environment, be clean. Always be accountable for your mistakes and never project mistakes you did to your workers. You’ll be shocked how you’ll have an easier time implementing your standards when you live up to them yourself.

Be Polite

Leaders create a connection with the people. To have people follow you, you must inspire them. You can’t inspire people if they fear you. Bosses, on the other hand, need to create a professional environment with their juniors which in many cases can’t be compromised with too much familiarity. Familiarity breeds contempt. However, a boss loses nothing by being polite.

You can exhibit leadership qualities by being polite when you speak to your workers. Sometimes always barking orders projects you as insecure and trying too hard to stamp your authority.

Support your Team

This leadership quality doesn’t necessarily mean you hold your worker’s hand. You can simply give them guidance where necessary and acknowledge their hard work.

Remove Obstacles for your Team

Good leaders make it easier for their followers to progress. Good leaders can accept temporary discomfort for the benefit of their followers. Generally, managers are forced to limit the choices of their workers. For the sake of productivity and meeting deadlines, managers may be forced to increase the working hours of the workers and be strict on reporting time for instance.

A good boss, however, can try their best to remove obstacles for his workers rather than increase them.  Providing a better working environment, improving their working conditions and generally showing care is a good step. A small task like ensuring the computers used by the workers are always in good condition can see you go a long way.

Don’t Just Ask, Demonstrate

Good leaders can be good leaders for just being there and being themselves. They don’t have to make orders or ask for anything to be done. They create a kind of lifestyle such that just being there inspires the workers to do something.

Many bosses just bark orders without understanding what the workers go through. Some workers may be going through challenges and may not exactly understand what they should do – a boss wishing to be a good leader demonstrates rather than ask or order. Once in a while pick that tool and start working with your workers.

Avoid Micromanagement

One prominent characteristic of a good leader is the ability to trust and have faith in his/her followers. Some bosses, however, don’t understand that it’s the people under them that make a company successful. They act as if they are the only ones who know what they are doing in the company and would want to supervise every little thing happening in the company.

Micromanagement slows your team, demotivates your team, slows the growth of members of your team and causes you not to perform more important tasks that you should be performing rather than micromanaging your team.

A good boss delegates duties to juniors. This improves their self-esteem and respect for you.

Develop People Rather than Using Them

I once worked for a construction company and was the supervisor of the casual laborers. One day I noticed that the workers had left some of the tools outside the store. I took them back to the store. My immediate boss came and found me opening the store and was very mad that I was doing a casual laborers job. I explained to him that they had already left, but he barked and insisted I should have called one of them back because he pays them to do that job and they must do it. I later realized many bosses have a similar mentality – they pay their workers and thus must use them as much as they like.

That’s really a bad approach to business. A worker is a human being who just like you also wishes to progress in life. Developing your workers earns you respect and makes you an example surrounded by successful people who respect you. Good leaders support, they don’t use.

ITIL

Why Should You Care About Continual Service Improvement?

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If you have been following our blog for a while then you might have noticed that I’m a fan of something called ITIL. If you haven’t, then it’s fine as well. We’ll explain it to you in a moment. One of the modules of ITIL is CSI. CSI stands for Continual Service Improvement. If you’re confused right now, or never really understood what this term means that you have come to the right place! In this article, we’re going to talk about CSI and why it is necessary for you to enforce it if you’re using ITIL to grow your business. But before we go there, let’s recap ITIL.

What is ITIL?

ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure Library and it is basically a framework used to help enforce the best practices you’ll need to successfully deliver quality IT services. This generally covers a broad area. It can be system maintenance, customer experience and so much more. Naturally, a lot of people confuse the different things that come up under the umbrella of ITIL so don’t be sad if you happen to find yourself in those shoes. That’s why we’re here- to help you understand exactly what ITIL is.

As you can imagine, due to the sheer amount of information that comes under ITIL, it is a very broad subject to cover and we’ll do that in future posts. For now, we’re going to focus on CSI.

What is CSI?

CSI, as mentioned, stands for Continual Service Improvement. Once you’ve started using ITIL to impact the performance of your team, you’ll be looking for a way to maintain the kind of bar you’ve set. The last thing you need is to start using ITIL for a and then stop after implementing some improvements.

Believe it or not, but businesses who begin using the ITIL model but then leave it halfway and fail to continuously implement them fail horribly. So, in order to make sure that you continue using ITIL services and maintain the quality of your services, it is very important that you use CSI.

CSI allows you to process useful methods that will ensure that you maintain the quality of your work. This includes management quality as well. It keeps managers on their feet so that the entire team does not fall apart.

The CSI cycle- as it is known- will help you continue to maintain the quality of your processes as well as improve effectiveness, efficiency, and output of all the IT services that your company has to offer.

Why Businesses Should Use ITIL CSI?

Continuous improvement

Now that you know what ITIL CSI is used for, let’s talk about why businesses need it. Several companies delude themselves into thinking that just because they’ve made improvements once, they don’t need to do it again. However, in order to stay on top of things, you need to continuously employ methods to improve your business. Below, we’ll give you a list of reasons why your business should apply CSI.

Improving Quality of Operations

CSI helps you look at your business as a whole so that you have a better understanding of how your business operates. You will be able to look at the whole functioning process of your business, providing you with the bigger picture. This gives you the advantage of knowing how each and every service operates, the various work cycle levels, delivering services and more, making it easier for both you and your team.

Improves Staff Productivity

Since by using CSI practices, you are learning about the entire service lifecycle of your company, it will become so much easier for you to identify staff performances as well as practices which will make your staff more effective. Additionally, it will also help you learn more about the more easily disposable applications and services that are rendering your business ineffective. Sometimes, you need the bigger picture to show you how one or more extra components of your business are affecting others and so you can make sure that all of your business processes are helping you grow your business and not harm it. With this knowledge, you can also look at your workforce and regroup them in ways that will benefit your business.

Keeping Things In Check

One of the biggest advantages of using the ITIL CSI system for your IT services is that you can keep an eye on everything- from accounts to processes to the eventual output and delivery of service. This helps you keep in check with your budget so that you’re on top of your deadlines and can help your staff with issues they may be facing. CSI helps to fix the server errors and issues you may be facing in some IT services so that you can maintain your services accordingly and deliver quality problem.

Summary

As you can see, you need ITIL CSI to help you manage and maintain your business. It additionally helps you improve efficiency and make sure that you don’t fall behind the competition. With these practices, you will be able to keep your balances in check, so that you can continue to grow your business and satisfy your customers.

Customer Management

Some Simple Steps to Improve Customer Experience

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Let’s take a simple example that everyone is familiar with – Email. Email is a fact of life now and many organizations have switched to email as the only way in which they provide support to their customers.  However humans are social animals and we are built to make judgments based on visual clues – this is called Body Language – and when these clues are removed from a conversation, the most innocuous and innocent topic can quickly escalate out of control.

With email, it’s impossible to understand body language, so what can you do to ensure you are getting your point across? How can you improve customer experience when you do not get a chance to meet your customers? Some things that you can do to improve this though are as follows:

Personalize

If your company uses templates or something similar to respond to customers, take the opportunity of personalizing them.  It is not just a matter of adding a name to the top of the email, but rather sprinkle their name throughout the discourse you are having with them.  Think about it as if you were having a normal, face-to-face conversation with that person.

Add a bit of personalized text to your email and you can make the customer feel that you care about him; his needs and that you are there for him. Everyone in this world wants to feel special, keep that in mind when writing emails.

Empathize

If a customer tells you about something in the body of their email, make sure you have actually read it and understand what he is saying.  For example, if you are informed that the reason the internet is so important is due to a disability, you can use the words “sorry” in the body of your response without it being offensive.

A few words showing empathy and well wishes do not take long for you to type but might make all the difference – keep in mind, if they are contacting your support department, it is because a service they are paying for is not working to their expectations and at this point, customer service is where you need to put your focus.  The golden rule definitely applies here and you should treat them the way you would like to be treated in similar circumstances.

It’s important with customer experience to focus on removing roadblocks. The more barriers there are, the more difficult your customers will find it to work with you.

Tone

What is your customer actually telling you?  Does he sound happy/sad/angry?  Is this his first email about this issue or has he sent many others?  How many emails has he sent to your company on other similar issues?  Here’s where a decent CRM comes into play as the more information you have about a customer the better.

All of these are clues to help you in determining the type of response you should send to your customer.  While you might be restricted in the message due to the circumstances and the response you can give, HOW you tell the customer something is completely different WHAT you tell the customer.

K.I.S.S.

An old, old acronym is KISS – Keep It Simple (Stupid) – and this definitely applies here.  Remember who your target is and what their skills are.  If you are supporting a technical product, it should be fairly obvious that your skills in this area are going to be higher than someone not working in that field and without access to your tools and resources.  There are a lot people with no or very little experience with computers. They may not use computer daily, are elderly, technophobic… when a person like this contacts us, they might have already exhausted everything they were able to do and are already feeling frustrated with the lack of a resolution.

Your response to this person should be aimed at not only resolving their reported issue (in a KISS way!!), but based on your experience what their NEXT question would be also.  In addition, you should take this as an opportunity to educate your customer also on where they can find this information in the future.  You will not stop receiving emails from everyone by doing this, but gradually education is the best tool to ensure that your issues are resolved.

The Terminator

A fairly famous film that you will have probably heard of is The Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  In that film, machines have taken over the Earth and are currently at war with Humanity.  This is NOT the case here. 

While AI implementations are increasing around the world, you are dealing with real people and NOT machines so the way in which you speak to them should be appropriate to that.

Project Management, Tools

Top 3 Project Management Software Options for the Small Business

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Small business owners, freelancers, and entrepreneurs are probably one of the most overlooked group when it comes to marketing, software management and more. In fact, not many companies aim their customer service or work efficiency products and software towards them because the consensus is that this sector of the private industry cannot pay much. Neither do they have a lot of requirements like big businesses either so there’s no multi-million-dollar business contract to be signed.

Just because this sector cannot throw millions of dollars for software development does not mean that they should not enjoy the benefits of doing business in the twenty-first century. Below you will find a list of of the top software packages that I think you can use if you are in the SMB sector.

Wrike

First on our list is Wrike. This is because it’s a very robust project management software which helps you keep track of your projects from start to finish, allowing you to manage multiple projects at the same time. It will make multi-tasking much simpler for you and your team.

This software is designed with small teams in mind and is made up of very good features which will aid you in your journey to create the best project solutions. This software is built in a manner that will allow you to grow your business. It includes a very flexible feature on managing multiple teams, so you can assign more people to different projects. This is actually very helpful as it will help you divide work between your workers so that you can distribute the workload in a way which will benefit your business and cause your staff to hone their best skills.

The software also allows you to keep track of individual contribution to a project so that you can keep track of all your employees, which will make it easier for you to decide on things like bonuses and help you identify each staff’s strengths and weaknesses.

The only downside of this software is that you can only have up to five employees on the software and you will find that the user interface is not very interesting, making it more difficult for those who are not very tech-savvy to operate.

MeisterTask

Next up on our list is MeisterTask. This is a cloud-based project management software. Freelancers will find this more useful than small business owners because it helps to keep track of individual tasks and keeps you updated with your progress. It does not offer individual progress but it’s fine because you can keep track of how your team is performing.

In addition to that, the features of this software include giving the administrator full control of the direction and tasks of the project so if your staff is untrained or newly appointed, it might be useful to use this software to help them understand how to do work. The software also allows you and your team to communicate in real time via a feature called MindMeister.

MeisterTask also allows you to classify tasks according to your staff. This means that each staff on your team will only be seeing their part of the project and not the task assigned to others. This may come in handy if your team works in the systems security service or simply if the task requires discretion. Furthermore, MeisterTask will easily connect to third-party apps like Zendesk and Slack.

The downside of this software is the limited functions when it comes to team tasks and listing. As we mentioned earlier, it will be quite difficult for you to keep track of each individual and may be problematic if you’re trying to keep track of each individual’s performance.

Paymo

Last, but not the least, is Paymo. Like MeisterTask, Paymo is a cloud-based project management solution but, unlike MeisterTask, it specifically caters to small business owners. Of course, freelancers can also use this software, but it does not leave businesses out. This is why out of the three we’ve mentioned so far. We personally recommend Paymo because it’s the best one around.

Paymo offers not only just project management features but also allows the users to create, divide and assign projects to their teams. It also allows team members to engage in discussions related to the project(s) they’re working on and helps them stay updated with the progress of the project.

What makes Paymo stand out though, is its key feature: The Visual Kanban Board which allows all the users working on a project to see the progress of every task and track the estimated time it will take for their project to finish. Furthermore, you can customize time and work reports for things like auditing, billing and reporting purposes.

It also includes an accounting function which allows you to keep track of expenses, invoices and estimate profits. In fact, users can even manage and customize each project’s accounting and budgeting requirements. Unlike the two mentioned above, Paymo has a per-user-per-month subscription plan so you don’t have to pay for a whole year in advance and can add members each month as your business flourishes.

Conclusion

As you can see, each of these packages has a specific audience in mind and it’s not just focused on big businesses. Wrike is aimed mostly at small business owners and entrepreneurs while MeisterTask is better for freelancers than anyone else. However, as we mentioned, Paymo is our favourite software because it’s great for all three.

Customer Management, People Management

How Positive Feedback Influences The Bottom Line

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Positive feedback matters. It makes a difference in employee morale and motivation. As someone in the support and operations area of business, I cannot emphasize this enough.

Let’s be honest, it’s easy to complain online if and when services that you expect do not get provided correctly or on time. To be completely frank, with tools like Twitter and Facebook at our beck and call, this has become even simpler than it ever was before. Not only can you complain about a company, but you can shout it from the rooftops and you’ll have hundreds if not thousands of people joining in the conversation.

The Power of Positive Feedback

Don’t ever underestimate the power of positive feedback. We are quick to point out to someone when they make a mistake. Sometimes we forget to acknowledge them when they do something right. As a leader, I have to often deal with the negative complaints about the service my team provides. While part of solving that problem is an additional process through things like post-mortems and RCAs, the flip side is acknowledging that there are some rare customers out there that take the time to recognize good work also!

Don’t ever underestimate the power of positive feedback. We are quick to point out to someone when they make a mistake. Sometimes we forget to acknowledge them when they do something right. As a leader, I have to often deal with the negative complaints about the service my team provides. While part of solving that problem is an additional process through things like post-mortems and RCAs, the flip side is acknowledging that there are some rare customers out there that take the time to recognize good work also!

To those rare customers – THANK YOU!! Giving positive feedback can be a powerful tool for employee motivation and your time is sincerely appreciated. For the managers and leaders lucky enough to have received such feedback, here’s how to use it most effectively:

  • Do it now. Positive feedback is too important to let slide. Say something right away.
  • Make it public. While negative feedback should be given privately, positive feedback should be given publicly. Do it in front of as large a group as appropriate.
  • Be specific. Don’t just say “Good job, Sally.” Instead say something like “Hakim, that new procedure you developed for routing service calls has really improved our customer satisfaction. Thanks for coming up with it.”
  • Make a big deal out of it. You don’t want to assemble the entire company every time you give positive feedback, but do as much ceremony as the action warrants.
  • Consider the receiver. It is important to consider the feeling of the person receiving recognition. For a very shy person, thanking him in front of his workgroup is probably most appropriate. For another person, you might hang a banner, balloons, and streamers in the department area.
  • Do it often. Don’t wait for the big successes. Celebrate the small ones too.
  • Do it evenly. Big successes need big recognition; small successes need smaller recognition. If you throw a party for every small success, you diminish its effect for a big success.
  • Be sincere. Don’t praise someone for coming in on time. Don’t congratulate someone for just doing their job. People will see right through you. Really mean it when you give positive feedback.

The Importance of Surveys

If you’re not getting positive feedback, are you sure that you’re asking for it? This is where surveying your customers comes in really handy. Many companies wrongly make the assumption that the Customer Service Team is completely disparate to the rest of the company and has no bearing on new business or in serving their existing customers aside from when they have a problem or an issue. In reality they are the face of your business and often know about new problems in the field before anyone else.

Customer Surveys allow you to collect valuable data from your customer base while simultaneously reinforcing perceptions that your organization genuinely cares about their opinions and welcomes their feedback.  If your organization does not have a process in place to gather this invaluable information, it should do so quickly with the help of a customer survey.  By listening to the voice of your clientele, you are ideally situating your organization to develop or maintain a competitive advantage.

Why Customer Experience Matters

Historically having siloed departments perhaps made sense in some industries. While this might have been historically true (and even then, not so much) customer experience has taken on a renewed focus in the industry. Many companies actually acknowledge that it is a key differentiator for them so anything that a business can do to improve this should be emphasized.

The impact of employee experience on customer experience has been explored in great detail. In fact, “happy employees equal happy customers” has become a motto for some of the world’s biggest brands.  While this might be an old argument, it has validity and is a mantra worth remembering.

The same companies invest in employee happiness year after year. The rest continue to not invest. There’s a clear line between companies that get it and companies that don’t and there’s not a lot of .

Education, Education and Training, Management, Organizational Behaviour, People Management

An Introduction to Organizational Behaviour

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I’ve spoken earlier about OB and how it is used within businesses, but I thought that it might be useful to be a lot more detailed. So, over the course of this year expect regular posts on this topic which you can use in your own learnings.

Organizational behaviour can be defined as the study of how people interact within groups. This study is generally applied in an attempt to come up with more efficient business organizations. The main idea of the study of organizational is that organizations can apply a scientific approach to manage their workers. Generally, the theories of organizational are used for human resources to maximize the individual output of people from group members.

A Breakdown of Organizational Behaviour

There are different philosophies and models of organizational behaviour. The focus on these different areas of study is:

  • Increasing job satisfaction,
  • Improving job performance,
  • Encouraging leadership and promoting innovation.

Managers may adopt different management tactics to achieve the desired results. These tactics may include modifying compensation structures, reorganizing groups and changing the evaluation of performance.

Brief History of OB

The field of organizational behaviour dates back to the late 20s when a company called Hawthorne electric company set up experiments. The experiments were designed to discern how environmental change changed employees productivity.

Between 1924 and 1933, various studies were conducted by Hawthorne electric company. The studies included the study of the effects of different types of breaks on the productivity of employees. The most famous finding from the studies is what is known as the Hawthorne Effect, the change in people’s behavior when they know they are being observed.

Some people have argued that the focus on the finding is to ignore a wider set of different studies that would be credited for the development of organizational behaviour as the human resources professional and as a field of study. The idea of looking at behaviour and productivity in an organization scientifically with the aim of increasing the quality and amount of work an employee can do was backed up with the idea that employees were not resources to be used interchangeably. Instead, workers are unique regarding their potential fit with the company and their psychology.

Organizational behavior has focused on different topics. During the 1940s, organizational behavior focused on management science and logistics. The emphasis was mainly on statistical analysis and mathematical modeling to find the best answers for problems that were deemed complex.

In the 70s, theories of institutions and contingency, as well as resource dependence, organizational ecology, and bounded rationality, came to lead the study as the field concentrated more on quantitative research. These sets of theories and findings helped organizations to understand how they can improve decision making and business structure.

Since the 70s, a good amount of work being done in the field of organizational behaviour has based on cultural components of organizations, and this includes gender roles, class, cultural relativism and gender roles and their unique roles on productivity and group building. The studies take into account the ways in which background and identity can inform decision making.

Focusing On The Academic

You can find academic programs that focus on organizational behavior in business schools. You can also find them in the schools of psychology and social work. They draw from the field of leadership studies, anthropology, computer models and ethnography and use qualitative, computer models and quantitative as methods of exploring and testing ideas. One can study different topics within the field of organizational behavior depending on the program.

Organizational Behaviour in Practice

Human relations professionals and executives can use organizational behavior to understand better the culture of the business and how the culture can hinder or facilitate employee retention and productivity. Executives and human resource managers can also use organizational behavior to evaluate the skills of candidates and the candidate’s personality during the hiring process.

The knowledge or theory application from the field of organizational behaviour can be narrowed down to the following sections:

  • job satisfaction,
  • personality,
  • leadership,
  • reward management,
  • power,
  • authority, and
  • politics.

There is no single way of assessing the suitable way of managing any of these things, but researching organizational can be used to provide topics and guidelines to follow.

  • Job satisfaction theories are different, but some people dispute that a satisfying job is composed of compelling work, concrete reward system, satisfactory working conditions, and good supervisors.
  • Personality plays a significant role in the way people interact with groups and do work. You can know the personality of a person through a conversation or a series of tests. Knowing the personality of a person can give you an idea of whether they are the perfect fit for the particular environment you want to hire them into. You will also know how best you can motivate the employees.
  • Authority, power, and politics depend on each other in an organization. It is therefore essential to understand the appropriate ways and adhere to the rules at the workplace, and the general ethical guidelines in which the elements are used and exhibited are the main components of running a cohesive business.

Why Managers Should Study Organizational Behaviour

The pressures on firms continue to mount, and companies around the world need to utilize their resources in the best way possible.

The success of every organization depends on the effectiveness of the management of the employees. The people’s behaviour in an organization is governed by feelings, ideas, and activities. For businesses to effectively manage people, it is vital to perceive their needs. However, the behaviour of people can differ from one individual to another. This makes it impossible to come up with standard solutions to the problems in an organization.

For this reason, it is crucial to consider the social and psychological aspects when designing solutions to solve different issues in an organization, and that is why managers should study organizational behaviour.

Leadership, Management, People Management

How Leadership and Management Differ

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We always have considered leadership and management to be similar things – most people can’t even tell the difference. To them, a leader is a manager, and a manager is a leader hence leadership is management.

Practically, we are not far from the truth. Leadership and management are two concepts with quite a range of overlapping areas but they are still uniquely different. No matter how much we try to ignore it, the difference is very important.

Leadership Versus Management

Leadership Defined

Many definitions of leadership have been suggested over time. Leadership can be seen as a skill that when possessed, provides an individual with the ability to guide others. ‘Lead’ is an action that is an example for other individuals to follow.

A leader can in simple terms be defined as an individual whom others follow or an individual who is a good example to other individuals. Leadership thus goes hand in hand with social influence – individuals who are leaders normally have high social influence. The unclear understanding of leadership has led to many arguments on whether leaders are born or made.

Management

The definition of management goes hand in hand with that of administration.

Management can be defined as the coordination and organization of tasks in an organization for the purpose of achieving the organization’s goals.

Management is thus a factor of production in business.

Is Management Different From Leadership?

Managers are people to which a task is bestowed – the task of management. The task of coordination and organization of tasks in an organization or company. The task of planning, hiring and firing in the organization.

Leaders on the other hand help set the way and direction for others to follow. Leaders don’t necessarily have to be of higher job level to lead while managers have to be on a higher job level to manage.

A leader’s most important quality is wisdom while a manger’s most important quality is rationality and logic.

We are now going to look at roles management and leaders play at different levels of business hence bringing out the difference.

Establishing a Vision

Manager

  • In the quest to realize the vision of an organization, a manager will plan and budget in such a way that the organization invests in projects and tasks that work towards realizing the vision.
  • A manager does not develop an emotional attachment towards any particular project or against it. Once the vision of the organization has been set, the manager works towards it.
  • A manager will develop the schedules and plans towards realizing the vision. For example – if a transportation company decides to buy 100 new trucks by the end of the year, the manager will set the timelines of buying those trucks putting the financially inflows and outflows of the organization into consideration such that by the end of the year, all 100 trucks are bought.

Leader

  • A leader will decide the direction the business takes and set the vision and mission of the business. A leader of a transportation company will, for instance, decide that by the end of the year, the company needs to expand and buy 100 new trucks.
  • A leader develops an emotional attachment to the vision of the company – or at least should appear too. A leader is supposed to be an example thus loving the direction the business is taking and acts as a motivation to the rest of the organization’s stakeholders.
  • The leader will develop the strategy required to achieve the plan. For example, if the transportation company intends to buy 100 trucks by the end of the year, the leader might ask the shareholders to contribute towards it or use some of the previous year’s profits or take a business loan to fund the expansion.

Personnel & Networking

Manager

  •  A manager staffs the organization. They hire and fire. This includes doing the research on the kind of staff required and the optimum number of staff while identifying the non-productive staff and dismissing if need be.
  • Maintains the organization structure. A well-maintained organization structure ensures the business retains its quality and does not veer from its goals and direction.
  • A delegation of responsibilities to juniors. A manager assigns tasks to his/her juniors, creates deadlines and follows up making the person to who a task has been delegated is responsible for that task.
  • Other than delegating responsibility, a manager also delegates authority to their juniors. A delegation of authority involves shifting the task of decision making from one organization level to the other. For instance, if the manager is supposed to chair a meeting on a specific date and he happens to have to attend to a more important task on the same date, he/she can delegate the authority to any of his juniors.
  • A manager implements the organization’s vision. Managers have bestowed the task of transforming the organization’s vision to reality thus given that authority. A manager is thus allowed to come up with the procedure of ensuring the organization’s vision comes to fruition, and the company has to give them the resources of doing it.
  • A manager runs on logic rather than emotion. A manager is the brain of the organization and sometimes may have to make radical or mean decisions to make sure the company remains standing and achieves its goals. A manager, for instance, might have to lay off workers if that’s the most prudent decision to ensure the business remains standing
  • manager many times is not the most liked person in an organization. A manager’s responsibilities limit the choices of workers due to their do what needs to be done policy.

Leader

  • A leader, on the other hand, aligns the organization. This involves setting the goals and deciding what direction the business should take.
  • A leader will present to the rest of the organization’s stakeholders the vision and the mission of the organization.
  • A leader is the networking tool of the organization or company. He/she spearheads the coalition and partnering of the organization with other organizations
  • a manager, a leader runs on emotions. A leader has to influence people and convince them he/she is worth following hence hurting anyone’s feelings won’t work in their favor, and they have to check that. A leader thus is seen as someone who increases the choices of other stakeholders in the organization.

Vision Execution

Manager

  • The manager regulates and controls the processes towards the execution of the vision. The manager, for instance, might have to introduce overtime in order to increase production so as to realize the organization’s goal of expansion.
  • The manager identifies the problems in the organization and obstacles towards the vision and comes up with the solution of solving the problem.
  • The manager’s approach to problem-solving is always low risk considering he/she has a limited say in the establishment of the vision. The manager is more like the executioner of the leader and always works within a limited space.

Leader

  • During the whole process of vision execution, the leader’s main role is to motivate the stakeholders towards it and help inspire them. This involves simple gestures like:
    • Showing confidence in the workers and stakeholders
    • Seeking input in decisions.
    • Giving you opportunities to shine.
    • Rewarding high-performing workers.
    • Respecting everyone in the organization.
    • Giving credit to anyone that deserves it.
    • Encouraging low Performers.
  • The leaders approach to solving problems is high risk. A leader might decide to take a high-interest bank loan in order to fund the organization’s vision for instance.

Vision Outcome

Manager

  • The manager’s role in vision outcome is results. The organization’s leadership expects the manager to provide consistent results that are consistent with the organization’s vision on a regular basis. The manager is thus bestowed with the task of ensuring an ‘all is well’ environment and will have to prepare themselves during the organization’s meetings to convince the leadership that all is going according to plan.
  • If and when the leadership is unsatisfied with the results, the manager is forced to take control measures and bring the organization back in line. If the task proves to be a mountain to the manager, the leadership might come in and make riskier decisions like dismissing the manager or pumping more funding into the business which may involve taking a loan.

Leader

  • Leaders react to vision outcome generally by either establishing a new vision and rewarding the stakeholders where the vision is realized or is moving towards being realized and making risky decisions where the vision isn’t getting realized. A leader might decide to give the shareholders and the stakeholders an end of the year treat or increased dividends. He/she might set another vision for the next year.
  • Accountability shouldn’t be limited to your workers.
  • A leader is someone who motivates and inspires. A leader can lead by simply being there and not actually interacting with their followers on a one on one basis.
CRM, Customer Experience, Customer Management, Helpdesk, Tools

How Help Desk Software Increases Your Customer Support ROI

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If you want to invest in customer support software such as Freshdesk, you may be wondering if the cost of the software will pay off. It can be tricky to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of your new tools.

One of the things you need to consider is if it will bring in revenue. Most help desks are cost centers, but if the software reduces the cost of doing business it is still a benefit. This is one of the most important questions that you must get answers before you start using the software. The software can be effective in measuring the impact of your actions on the business metrics. It is possible to make customer support into a revenue generator and not just a cost center.

Nowadays, things are changing, and more customer support teams are focusing on driving growth in businesses and proving their worth to the business. Using the right software can make your customer care more effective in generating revenue. Freshdesk, for example, can help you streamline your customer conversations, automate your repetitive work and collaborate with other teams to solve problems faster. Software for help desks should save money and bring money into the business in order to create a return on investment.

How to Measure Your Investment in Software

If you are at the stage of putting processes into place to support your business’ customer of if you want to fix some gaps in your system, the right help desk package will ensure that you get back to all clients in a timely manner.

This is an important baseline to meet. If you miss one email just once, you can cause your customers to stop doing business with you. 86% of customers quit doing business with companies because of poor customer service. 51% of customers quit doing business with a company for one poor customer experience. All the lost customers lead to lost revenue. Read on to understand different ways of investing in help desk software, save revenue in your business, and increase your customer service team’s ROI.

Move to a Streamlined Queue

Help desks were originally made around the idea of tickets. This can still be seen at the butcher. You take a ticket number and get services in the order that you came in. Nowadays; your businesses shouldn’t treat customers like tickets anymore.

It is important to adopt a nuanced approach to organizing questions from customers. You can become adept at managing messages from customers by using modern help desks. You can achieve this by prioritizing customers who seem to be more upset or customers who have a high opportunity of converting to paid customers. Businesses should invest in help desks that offer better management of queue. This will make customer support teams to more effective.

Self-service Should be Part of Your Customer Service

Businesses should have the ability to offer content in the form of FAQs and knowledge base articles to help customers be able to help themselves. Businesses should understand that self-service is another form of customer service. Self-service carries the highest ROI for different reasons.

Customers like being able to help themselves. 70% of customers like to see an option on your website where they can help themselves. If you don’t offer this service, your customers will be frustrated and will need to contact you. On the other hand, 73% of customers prefer researching for answers on their own instead of talking to a human over social media and live chat. 81% of customers also try to help themselves before contacting human support.

Investing in software that allows self-service keeps the customers happy. Customers will keep coming back when they find it easy and convenient to do business with you. Apart from customers helping themselves, self-service also benefit you as a business owner or manager. Self-service is a cost-effective way of helping customers to resolve issues versus other business help channels. When you get self-service right, it is a cost-effective way of making your customers happy.

Personalize Each Transaction

You can build your customer loyalty by investing in your customers. You can focus on building good relationships with your customers beyond transactions. We should form holistic relationships with customers instead of treating the problems of our customers as a series of events that don’t relate to each other.

You should, first of all, know who your customers are before you think beyond the transaction. If all your customer service team can see is the question at hand, they won’t have a nuanced and personalized conversation about their customers’ needs.

Your help desk can provide additional context with different conversations. For instance, they might show you the last four conversations the customer initiated. If you have integrated your help desk with your CRM, you can see when the renewal date is coming up. You will also see how many users they are paying for. When the context revolves around the history of the customers, you can tailor your approach. You can easily see what your customers need and offer it.

Provision of valuable data

The return of investment of customer support is not always tied to sales . Businesses can also use customer support for research on users. This includes knowing what customers think of your product and how they use the product. You can also know what your customers think of your competition. You need help desk reporting that will capture trends for you to get all the information you need from your conversations.

You can use important data from your customers to enhance the efficiency of service delivery and improve the quality of your products to suit your customers’ needs.

Investing in Helpdesk Software – Money Well spent

Calculating the customer experience return on investment is a critical requirement for frontline teams. It is important to know how our actions affect the business. When we connect our customer support goals to the business goals, we move from making our customers happy to the value we create.

A Help desk plays a crucial part in the journey of connecting customer interactions and making money. This can be through increasing the power of your support team, improving the loyalty of your customers or uncovering important data. With all these, a help desks can deliver a huge ROI.

CRM, Customer Experience, Tools

The Top 3 CRM Software Packages You Need to Consider if You Want to be Successful

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For the success of a business, managing the customer relationship is essential. For any company, the client is seen as a potential resource. Therefore, it is essential to stand out from the competition while responding to your client in a timely and effective manner. As a company, we must not forget that the criteria for choosing a client are not always financial, even in times of crisis.

Whether it is to acquire a product or a service, the client also requires account recognition, responsiveness, and listening. With customer relationship management system, the company must be able to handle difficult customers and claims, to be responsive and communicative, to be satisfied by meeting their needs.

Here is where the role of CRM comes in! Now if you’re not in the support and operations industry, you might not be familiar with CRMs so perhaps we’ll start with an introduction first.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the set of tools and techniques for capturing, processing, analyzing information on customers and prospects, with the aim of creating loyalty by offering services.

With regard to a computer application, these include software packages that allow you to deal directly with the customer, whether in terms of sales, marketing or service.

Why Use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software?

Customer relationship management software (CRM) is considered to be a modern version of the “client file”. It is a tool that allows the updating and storage of prospects or contact lists as well as associated customers or target companies. It is possible to use an Excel file and a simple database to maintain your customer records, however, modern CRM software goes further. Here are some examples of its features:

Increase the Satisfaction of Your Customers

Be more efficient in business processes (by better managing your after-sales service, being more responsive and intervening at an opportune moment),

Have a closer relationship with the customer by developing a privileged relationship with them (by registering their preferences, birthday for example, etc.),

Develop competitiveness by providing more services and personalized advice.

Increase the Profitability of the Company

Increase sales through targeted actions on defined segments of your customers and prospects (Example: retain your customers through specific offers based on each customer population),

Optimize the profitability of commercial investments, marketing, and customer service thanks to a better calculation of the return on investment,

Have a clear vision of the commercial activity to optimize the processes (report on the sales, the follow-up of the appointments of the salesmen, the advancement of the objectives, etc.),

Save time by automating recurring tasks (automatic results tracking, automatic client recovery).

Improve the Internal Organization

Calendar shared between the collaborators (tasks to do, events),

Centralization and sharing of all customer data (all important customer information is sorted in the same place and easily accessible),

Structuring information and business processes. You have a structured customer file with relevant information that can be used for marketing purposes (Example: paper mailing, e-mailing, phoning, etc.),

Keep the history of your customer data.

Top CRM Solutions Available In the Market

Your relationships with your customers are sometimes complex, but the tools you use to manage them must remain simple. Created with the needs of customers in mind there are many CRM solution software available in the market. Some of them are mentioned below:

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is the only cloud-based support center software that offers you a feature-rich package that’s easy to use and affordable. Freshdesk is a full set of features including social networking capabilities with   Facebook and Twitter support. The list of integrations includes services like Capsule CRM, Google Contacts, Google Analytics, Freshbooks, Harvest, and JIRA.

All this combined with the exceptional support of Freshdesk gives you an unbeatable, reliable and incredibly affordable customer support experience.

1. Advantages:

  • Setting up Freshdesk is easy
  • The support team is available to help you
  • No hidden clauses, no hidden fees
  • Freshdesk is the only support center that allows you to chat with your team directly from the ticket thanks to Team Huddle
  • Customize your workflows to fit your needs

Disadvantages:

  • Limited data transfer
  • Premium Package is expensive

2. Zendesk

Zendesk is one of the best customer service software packages in the market. With its ticketing system, live chat, telephone support and intelligent knowledge base in one solution, providing effective customer service have never been easier.

Advantages:

  • Reduces the total number of views that agents must view
  • Allows you to see the total number of open tickets at a glance
  • Very easy to configure

Disadvantages:

  • Agents need special training to respond to tickets on a brand
  • Difficult interface

3. Salesforce

Salesforce is your sales order center that takes the form of a Customer Relationship Platform (CRM). The solutions work together to help you manage your sales, marketing, and customer service from one central location. It is intuitive, personalized and designed to support your growth.

With Salesforce CRM, treat each of your customers as if they were the only one. By managing your customers’ information and their interactions with your business on a single platform that is accessible anywhere, anytime, you can understand their needs, solve their problems, and identify areas for which they need help.

Advantages:

  • More than 150,000 companies are on the road to success with Salesforce
  • Ensure the satisfaction of all your customers
  • Manage your business from a mobile device

Disadvantages:

  • Salesforce is the most expensive option in our list! You will need to pay consultants to customize the CRM for you, the interface and the applications
  • As Salesforce does everything, it has many – too many – views and its reporting and dashboards are clunky.

Final Verdict – Freshdesk Wins!

Out of the three discussed CRM solutions; Freshdesk is my and useful option available. Freshdesk is SaaS-based customer support software used by more than 100,000 companies worldwide. It is a comprehensive helpdesk that provides excellent customer support thanks to its many features and integrations.

Freshdesk is positioned primarily as a hub that centralizes all customer requests whether they come from the ticketing platform, incoming phone calls, chats, emails or social networks. This hub allows you to be present at each place where your customers are and it also allows assigning the tickets automatically or manually to the agents who will take care of them.

Freshdesk’s Strengths against Salesforce and Zendesk

In view of the exceptional functional coverage of Freshdesk and its ergonomics, the creator offers an ultra-competitive rate.

The tool is also very well connected to social networks. Freshdesk allows you to master all incoming and outgoing channels without leaving the tool.

Finally, Freshdesk offers you the opportunity to purchase one or more phone numbers and manage calls from this online software.

Conclusion

The use of good customer relationship management technique within a company gives you the opportunity to boost the marketing strategy by targeting and segmenting your contacts. These efforts will enable the company to evolve by conducting targeted marketing campaigns, with the sole purpose of raising the awareness of customers according to fairly precise criteria.

Business Planning, Education and Training, Project Management, Tools

DIDs and SIP Trunking for Dummies

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With regard to real-time communications, there are two aspects that businesses focus on. They would like a system that not only saves them money in the long run but is more efficient than the system they already have in place. This way, they can seamlessly upgrade their system while at the very same time keep their more sophisticated users happy.
 
Earlier, a PBX telephone system and later PRI (Primary Rate Interface) Line, integrated with TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) interface. This allowed 25 to 30 individual voice lines for a single connection and was the most used business telco system in place. It was easy to use and manageable at the time.
 
Various employees connected to the same system could call one another using the employee specified extension or use a programmed digit – “7” for instance – if they wanted to get an outside line. The way these lines were connected to one another is how branches of a tree are connected to the trunk of that tree, hence the term “trunking”. Even though the system worked for decades, it was not cost-effective and it had problems. Thus, as soon as companies saw a way out, they took it and what we call SIP trunking emerged.

How Does SIP Trunking Work?

As mentioned, the PBX and later the PRI system worked well for a long time, but as soon as SIP trunks utilizing VoIP (Voice over IP) was introduced businesses realized that additional alternatives existed. SIP trunks, coupled with VoIP, were faster since it used a data connection to connect users to a network, often the same data connection that the business used to access the internet for other reasons also.
With the development of technology in use, SIP trunks with VoIP services could easily-manage voice signals through a data connection. This helped businesses realize significant cost savings as they were able to make a call and video connection as well as hosting cloud services and managing an e-commerce business all through the same network.

ITSP

SIP trunking used a carrier called the ITSP i.e. Telephony Service Provider that offered the VoIP Services. It relied on internet services and protocols as opposed to circuit-switch voice protocols in use for the purpose. This enabled businesses to merge their voice connections and data usage under a single data connection, allowing them to save serious amounts of money annually. Additionally, it also provides a private system with public access, serving the purpose fulfilled by the traditional circuit-switched voice i.e. transport and termination of SIP trunk calls.
 
 

SBC

The key purpose of using SIP trunking services is to provide a seamless transition between different VoIP gateways. Here, VoIP is the device handling the calls and video conferences, while SIP is the protocol that enables smooth handling of both calls and video conferences. The one element here that keeps this system running smoothly is the SBC i.e. the Session Border Control. It is the device that protects a private network by managing traffic and preventing spammers and blacklisted users, such as telemarketers from gaining access to the network. This keeps the system running smoothly.

What Role do DIDs Play In the Process?

DID or Direct Inward Dialing is a series of numbers that are primarily used to dial into your PBX i.e. Private Branch Exchange or networks. These numbers are allocated to the customer and then forwarded to your respective PBX through SIP trunking services. 
 
The PBX is distinguished on the basis of the last three or four numbers in the series. These digits are known as DNIS i.e. the Dialed Number Identification Services and are responsible for routing the information to the correct telephone extension directly.
Presently, DID services are provided on a PRI circuit. DID services also play a similar role with VoIP communications, using PSTN to reach users directly. It works as a gateway to route and translates calls between the two networks. It is also worth mentioning that with a DID in place, your business can get the much needed local presence which plays a significant role in increasing your profit margin. Not only does it enable number portability but it also provides you with local number availability lacking the toll-free 800 number. This can help you build a local presence without having to change your number.

Why Prefer SIP Trunking Services?

When all has been said and done, as a business owner, your primary concern is probably how the service could best benefit your organization. Thus, here are a few reasons to prefer SIP Trunk Services for your business.

SBC and Networked Policy Management

SBC is the one element of your SIP Trunk Services that keep all the spam at bay while securing your network and keeping it from overloading. Thus, it goes without saying that many SBC based solutions require hands-on policy management as well as configuration, especially if you require a big deployment.
 
This may cost a bit in the initial stages, but if you keep your needs in mind and choose wisely, it will definitely be money well spent for you and your business. Plus, they handle bulk traffic, which makes your entire system run efficiently.

Media Support and scalability

With trends in the world of communication changing on a daily basis, it is a given fact that business will continue to move into better, more efficient forms of media which can improve the pace of business. This includes video conferencing and high-definition audio among the few things.
Thus, equipping your business with state of the art SIP trunk services will ensure that it is always able to keep up with the changing megatrends of the telecom world, keeping your business a step ahead of the competition.
 
Additionally, most SIP Trunk Services are scalable. Meaning, as soon as you have more traffic that needs to be handled, you can easily just upgrade a few components and you are ready for that extra capacity.

Ironclad Security

Most highly ranked SBC and SIP trunking services have a network firewall in place which is backed up by a highly efficient intrusion prevention system. These not only keep spam at bay but also deter data based attacks, enabling it to work with various different systems.

Robust Session Management

As you increase the range of your PRI to SIP services, expanding to VoIP apps, one thing that you will notice immediately is the robust session management of the new system you have in place.

The Bottom Line

At this point, you have a general idea of what of the various aspects of real-time communication dealing with business SIP Trunking services. It is one of those efficient and always evolving systems that can be modified at any time to fit the needs of your expanding business. 
Management, People Management

Management and Technical Problem Solving

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Managers are often stuck in a very hard place. Organizations depend upon them for their ability to manage the teams, but at the same time, they are often called upon to be the escalation point when a problem inevitably goes sour. This is quite difficult as managing people often means giving up managing technology simply due to the pace of change.

Some of this can be mitigated by offering tiered support levels where agents with increasingly more complex and technical skill sets handle customer issues prior to the management level, but unfortunately, not many companies can afford this level of complexity or cost.

I’ve worked in a variety of industries around the world and this pattern tends to repeat itself in almost every organization I’ve worked in. Frequently businesses assume that by promoting managers from the team working the issue, then the problem should solve itself. After all,

“the individual was a great technical resource so they should easily make the transition to management – right?”

Management & Technical Skills

Unfortunately, this rationale simply does not work. During the time the manager was simply a technical resource, they were rewarded for gaining new and more complex technical skills. This reward could be in the form of compensation, but it could even simply be by the peer recognition of skills. While continued growth in technical skills might work in lower level management positions, it simply will not suffice in more senior positions, where managers are expected to demonstrate more strategic abilities. If managers demonstrate conceptual and human skills as well, their promotion prospects and, more importantly, their performance potential are both greatly enhanced.

A great example of this from the early days of my career was working with a senior network administrator – the manager of that team. As the leader of the support organization, I was frequently forced to interact with him when dealing with complex customer issues. I quickly learned to dread those conversations as his initial reaction was always the same:

“It’s not us! The customer is doing something wrong!”

Internally we started to call him Dr. No. However, he was simply doing what he was used to which was defending his team and department, instead of realizing the larger issue. The customers pay all of our bills and if we lose them, we have no team or department, or company! With Dr. No, there was a simple solution – have him meet the customers. Once he understood the problems and could actually see the impact our service (or lack thereof in this case) had on their business, he was able to conceptualize it in different terms.

Over time I’ve come to realize that many organizations have a “Dr. No” or the equivalent. Someone woefully lacking in people skills but a superstar in the technical department. Unfortunately, individuals like this tend to reduce a firm’s operational effectiveness. 

Perspectives on a Manager’s Job

We’ve talked previously about a manager’s role and their importance in greasing the wheels of operational effectiveness. Businesses in today’s more decentralized workforces need these skills even more than in year’s gone past and manager’s need to evolve from an authority-derived ‘issuer and interpreter of rules and orders’ to a role responsible for creating an entrepreneurial work climate that facilitates teamwork regardless of where a person physically sits while doing the work.

As someone interested in management and managing teams in general, I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that research has stated a manager’s day is “a series of discrete, fragmented episodes.”  What this means in simpler terms is that managers are often pulled in hundreds of different directions at the same time! Managers are often unable to spend more than 5% of their time on a single discrete task and technology in the modern office with tools like Slack, Chat and Chatter only make the interruptions more frequent.

To understand what managers do, it’s important to realize their job comprises the following:

  • Managing employee performance (supervising).
  • Guiding subordinates (teaching and training).
  • Representing one’s staff (advocacy).
  • Managing team performance (facilitation).
  • Allocating resources (decision making).
  • Coordinating interdependent groups (collaboration).
  • Monitoring the business environment (scanning for adaptations).

Regardless of where you are in the management hierarchy, these tasks are common across all companies. What does change is the amount of time spent at each level as strategic planning (tasks lower in the list) tend to take a greater amount of focus as you rise in levels in your career. As companies and employees continue to migrate to digital tools and remote working, managers that are only comfortable with exercising authority and command are being retrained or replaced by those who know how to coordinate the work of interdependent teams.   Customer expectations are changing. Now and in the future customers will support only companies that deliver high-quality goods and services at the best price anywhere in the world. All firms have easy access to the tools of total quality management (TQM) (continuous improvement) and use it as a principal method to sustain operational effectiveness. The successful twenty-first-century manager moves easily in the environment of continuous improvement and develops in his subordinates the dedication to improve products and customer services.   

How can Managers Grow and Evolve?


Well, that’s really the point of these series of articles! While there isn’t a single “magic bullet” that can solve all problems there are things that can be done to improve managerial skills in a timely and effective manner.

When managers are interviewed about the problems they face, they invariably turn to annoying workplace issues. They talk about the fact that their employees “won’t go that extra mile”, or they simply “aren’t customer focused.” Many managers talk about their teams basically being “seat warmers” and complain about the siloed organizations they work in where teams simply do not talk to each other! If you’re in that type of an organization you have my pity. I’ve been there but I’ve also managed to turn things around. Feel free to reach out if I can help.

Customer Experience, Management

What is Customer Journey Mapping and Why is it Important?

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Most people have the wrong view of customer journey mapping, and that is why they get intimidated by it. They think that it has to be an accurate representation of every degree of customer’s experience. This is impossible.   

It is better to think of it as a persona. Customer maps are like personas. The only difference is that they focus more on the questions and tasks. They express the experience of customers over time and not as a snapshot. This means that they work together. A customer journey map focuses on the customer experience while a persona focuses on people or the person.  

The Meaning of Customer Journey Mapping

According to Forbes, customer journey mapping can be defined as a way of visualizing the experience of customers and how the customers interact with your business. The primary goal of mapping the journey is to remove any obstacles and improve efficiency while also making the process intuitive. The customer experience will improve if you create a seamless experience. Laterally, it is mapping out the best way for the typical journey of the customer.   We can refer to it as an archetype representing the underlying complexity and nature of a real journey. There is no way a customer journey map can be 100% accurate. This can leave a lot of people wondering about the importance of customer journey mapping.

Importance of Customer Journey Mapping

It is not easy to create a customer journey because it requires a lot of effort to create. For this reason, you will create fewer of them. People often create customer journey maps for each of their primary audience. Rather than digging into too many details, they focus on the overview of the whole journey. You can polish out the journeys over time. You can also think of customer journey map as a story designed to give insights into the journey of the customer.   

Companies Can Refocus With an Inbound Perspective

Customers can discover your company with the aid of inbound marketing rather than using outbound marketing to discover your customers. Using outbound marketing is not effective because it involves using tactics that are poorly targeted at uninterested audiences and it can interrupt customers from their activities.  

  You can spend a lot of money on outbound marketing and achieve undesirable results. This can annoy customers and deter them. On the other hand, inbound marketing involves creating interesting content that potential customers are already looking for. This can grab the attention of the customers at first and focus on sales later.   By mapping out the journey of the customers, you can understand the helpful and interesting things to your customers about your website and company. You can also understand things that are turning your customers away. You can also create vital content to attract the customers to your company and improve customer trust.

The New Target Customer Base

You won’t be able to know the psychographics and demographics of your customers if you don’t understand the customer journey. This can be dangerous and can waste a lot of resources to target an audience that is too broad repeatedly. It is important to target people who are likely to be interested in your content, products, and services.   You will get a good picture of the types of people trying to achieve a goal or get services and products from your company if you research the needs of your customers and map out their journey.

Creation of a Customer-Focused Culture 

It can be difficult to coordinate different departments in your company as it gets large. This will make it difficult to be customer-focused. Your company will, therefore, have marketing and sales goals that are not based on what the customers want.    You can share a clear customer journey map with everyone in your department. The maps will help you understand every step of your customer’s journey from the first time they interacted with your company to the post-purchase support. You cannot deny the importance of customer journey mapping based on this rationale. 

Timing

Timing is an essential factor for businesses to focus on when looking at the customer journey mapping. Businesses can use the maps to observe the time it takes customers to complete specific actions.

Identifying gaps in Communications and Service

Businesses can use customer journey maps to reveal gaps in customer service. This can enable business managers to make the necessary adjustments and improve service delivery. For example, one department may prove to be understaffed, and this can cause frustration to customers who interact with that department. Problems in communication between departments and among employees may be revealed and solved accordingly.

Reduced Costs

Businesses that use customer journey maps reduce costs. Research done by the Aberdeen group indicated that brands that use customer journey maps improve in the cost of customer service more than ten times. The research also found out that brands that use customer journey mapping grow by 21% within a year while those that don’t use customer journey maps experience a yearly decline of 2.2%. Customer journey mapping also increases referral marketing, and this reduces the costs of marketing.

An Example of Customer Journey Mapping

This is an example of a customer journey map, and it clearly shows the steps that dapper apps believe customers go through as they interact with them. The company goes beyond the purchasing phase and incorporates the post-purchase needs and initial research.   

  The map helps employees to get into customer’s mind and understand the questions they have and their emotions. This makes the map effective. The dapper apps take incremental actions in response to the customers’ questions and feelings, and this helps it to solve the current problems that customers have.

Reasons why Customer Journey Maps Fail

There are many different reasons for failure when it comes to customer journey mapping. Here are some of the most common ones that you need to be aware of.

Speaking to Like-Minded Colleagues Alone

When employees are expressing their views on customer journey, they can gravitate towards views that only reflect their own opinions and common wisdom. This can lead to employees expressing their opinions, and not views backed up with concrete evidence.    This can be very dangerous if the opinions of the employees are taken and accepted as facts. It is therefore important to seek out a wide range of opinions from different groups of employees.

Lack of Clear Governance

Customer journeys cut across different organizational structures. This makes it useful to form a functional group that cuts across all the structures to reflect different departments’ experiences of the customer journey. It is important to have proper governance in place for this to be successful.

Failure to Involve Stakeholders

It is important to involve all parts of the business to participate in the creation of the map. Strong support should come from the senior leadership to ensure that customer journey mapping is successful. An initiative such as customer journey mapping will fail without executive sponsorship.

Not Speaking to Customers

During customer journey mapping, it is important to take the opinions of your employees. But as we had earlier seen, some employees will only give you their opinions and not hard facts. To solve this problem, it is crucial to validate the views of your customers by talking to the customers and not relying on your employees to give you information.

Spending too Much Time on Research

It is important to do enough research, but this doesn’t mean that you should spend too much time on research. You can result in a lot of problems if you do too much research. Researching for too long can make the project too be too expensive and complex. You only need research to create a detailed and helpful map and not to improve functions.

Conclusion

The process of customer journey mapping creates an overview of customer experience. It also maps how your customers navigate through the sales funnel. Customer journey mapping is useful across both refinement process and iteration as new elements get designed while the old ones get refined or discarded. You can use customer journey mapping to identify opportunities and enhance the overall experience of your customers.   Customer journey mapping can help content creators create the best way to approach the creation of their content. For the designer folks, customer journey mapping can help them to identify the missing connections in the navigation and help to eliminate various customer frustrations.   With customer journey mapping, you will be able to put your customers at the center of everything you do. You won’t only look at your needs and priorities and make assumptions about ways you can motivate your customers to meet your business goals. It gives you a reason to consider the customers first.   To get started with customer journey mapping, you will first need to choose the processes you want to analyze and deconstruct each step taken to complete each process. This sounds easy but you there are some challenges. Nevertheless, every business needs customer journey mapping, and you need to make a decision now because there are numerous benefits that you will enjoy later.

ITIL

The Impact To Your Business of “Unplanned Work”

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You can’t feel it, you can’t see it, you can’t touch it, but unplanned work is silently killing your business. How many times have you finished your day at work, very exhausted yet unable to cross anything off your list of high-priority to do things? This can make you feel robbed. It is impossible to tell where your time went to. This is a sign that you are falling victim to unplanned work.
 
Unplanned work is not evident in our metrics of performance, so it is difficult to analyze. However, the impact of unplanned work is great. It can mask dependencies and block and stall important priorities. Risk will accumulate across your system if you receive more work and start it late. The risk will continue to yield more risks in the form of unknown dependencies, neglected work, too much WIP and conflicting priorities. This can jeopardize the ability of your organization to deliver predictably.
 
 

Effects of Unplanned Work

You can encounter unplanned work in 2 different flavors:
  • The requirements that you have to change in the middle of a project
  • The defects you find during testing. 

You can deal with both of them if you have an agile team that is run well. It is important to understand the cause of unplanned work if you want to make your project cheap and predictable.

 
It is also important to understand that unplanned work steals valuable time from planned work. Most people see unplanned work as a norm instead of seeing it as a significant problem. 

When solving a problem, you should ensure that the problem will not occur again, but if you solve the symptoms of a problem rather than the problem, then the problem is likely to occur again. The main problem that is left unattended will lead to more issues which will lead to the allocation of more resources, and this can worsen things.
 
Every organization, department, team, and individual should measure the amount of unplanned work that is being performed. You can even forget about solving problems that come later and get a sense of how much time is allocated to work that isn’t adding any value to the business and rather spent on fighting the status quo. 
 
Let us consider release management as a concrete example to explain unplanned work. You take a piece of software and deploy it to the market and spend a lot of time trying to diagnose why a certain release didn’t work as expected. The time you spend trying to diagnose the problem is unplanned work. You can easily solve some of these issues through deployment, continuous integration and automated testing. You can be proactive and resolve a lot of (future) unplanned work as you try to diagnose and debug why things didn’t work as you had expected.
 
It is difficult to get rid of unplanned work, but we can easily learn how to plan for it. The only concern is how to plan and tackle unplanned work. Before we go deep and discuss how you can handle and mitigate unplanned work, it is important to discuss incident management, problem management, and post-mortems because they can help plan for the unplanned.
 

Incident Management and Problem Management

Problem management and incident management are key components of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library service model, and they have been created to provide a more streamlined service to consumers.
 

Incident Management

Incidents are things related to customer contacts. They can be account updates, information request, and issue reporting. There are different methods that incidents can be reported through, and this includes email, phone, and chat. Incidents can also be generated by automatic monitoring tools. There are different incidents that come through/from different sources. They would get routed to your tool for incident management. This could be something simple for smaller teams, but larger teams may need enterprise level tools or in-house customer-built applications.
 
Your business should have the responsibility of reviewing information about different incidents and check if there is a solution available to the customer. An example of an incident is when a customer wants to change their account password. The helpdesk will receive the incident, get the necessary information and make sure the customer has passed all the security checks, facilitate the changing of the password and inform the customer that the password has been changed and then close the incident. Some incidents can be managed with automatic tools while others have to be managed manually.
 

Problem Management

Incident management is repetitive in nature and can get tedious. This can exhaust the more skilled employees in your organization so if you have such employees in your organization, consider moving them into managing problems.
 
Problem management is deeper than incident management. This is where a single problem causes multiple incidents from multiple clients or customers. Problem management needs the best people. The role of these people is to find out why a certain problem happened and find the best ways to fix it and prevent the problem from happening again.
 

Post-mortem

A post-mortem is usually performed after a project has been concluded. The process helps to determine and analyze different elements of the concluded projects that were successful or unsuccessful. The main purpose of project post-mortem is to inform improvements in processes to mitigate future risks. This helps to promote best practices in an organization. Post-mortem helps to manage risks in an organization.
 

Mitigating unplanned work

As we had already seen, unplanned work is time-consuming, expensive and can negatively impact other projects in your organization. 
 
It can also drain all your skilled resources. This can be the rarest and the most important resources you have in your organization. This is why unplanned work hurts more. Two main methods you can use to mitigate unplanned work are:
  • Widening the bottleneck to moving configurations down and upstream without having to tie down your constrained skill base.
  • Increasing communication flow between producers and developers to relevant changes.

 

When you widen the bottleneck, it turns hours of work into a few minutes. If something goes wrong, you can always roll back and mitigate the impact of unplanned work. You can widen the bottleneck by creating a build of configurations, automating activities of migration of configurations and creating other jobs.
 
When the flow of communication is increased, your developers will know any changes to production that impacts their activities directly. They will be able to run comparisons instantly against critical systems and see if they have to consider specific changes as they perform their work. This helps to prevent failed deployments or reduce the likelihood of failed deployments. 
 

Customer relationship management

This is somewhat self-explanatory. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a strategy used by a business to execute business objectives and meet the requirements of their customers. 
 
The service strategy can be used to improve the customer relationship strategy within a business and ensure that the business can create value for its shareholders and customers by contributing to the value. The strategy ensures that businesses are able to organize their operations in an appropriate manner to deliver services that will enable the success of customers. 
 

Document Objectives

 
The business objectives are the results you want to maintain and achieve as you run your business. Every business should have clear and attainable goals. 
 
The goals may include productivity, profitability, customer service, core values, employee retention, growth, change management, marketing, maintain financing, competitive analysis and more.
 

Document Requirements

If you want to arrive at a solution that will ensure the continuity of your business, you need to map out every application; server, data, and software solution set in your environment. You should assign a downtime tolerance that is business-driven for each of the requirements. Map out the application interdependencies as you do this.
 
 

Test Your DR Planning

 
Disaster Recovery is never a onetime event. This is a constant process, and it is important for disaster recovery to keep up with the changes in the environment and evolving service-level agreements. The truth is that the data center is rapidly changing and it is almost impossible for the change control processes and operations to keep up. It is also very hard to conduct disaster recovery tests with enough frequency to be meaningful. This leads to most companies considering disaster recovery and tools for monitoring to allow analysis that is a near-real-time of the disaster recovery processes and setup.
 

 

Every business should conduct disaster recovery tests to determine the people who need more training and also know the disaster recovery processes that need to be refined. Some of the main disaster recovery things that a business should have include monitoring, environment awareness, hardware, and software independence and work from a knowledge base. 
Customer service, CX, Outsourcing, Training

How To Align Your Customer Service With Your Company’s Values

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Many companies have value statements and company goals, but they often miss the mark when they try to determine how to align a specific team to these statements. When you think about how to align your customer service team with your company’s goals, what comes to mind? Do you only think about the staff on the phones or taking those emails and trying to make the customer happy or do you visualize all of the other parts of the business? Do you think about sales, marketing, and product development side-by-side working with customer service, for example, learning from the frontline team and working together to retain customers? If you do, you’re probably on the right track, but sadly you might be the exception!

Traditionally, the perspective was that each of these groups worked in a silo, each having different objectives and methods of achieving them. However, with new tools and technologies in place, it’s possible for many different parts of the business to have information about a prospect/client and what their circumstances are. The new paradigm is that all parts of the company work together as a whole to create a great customer experience. 

 This doesn’t happen by accident. It takes strong leadership and good planning to get everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction. But thorough execution pays off. 

 Companies who have successfully aligned department goals have seen up to 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales win rates. 

Promote Integration Within Your Company 

When the different departments within your company don’t communicate, each department might have a narrow-minded idea of its function within the company. For instance, if your sales team just worries about meeting its targets by any means necessary, they might promise customers product features that are only in development – or not even planned. Aside from the disappointment, this causes to the customers, this has a significant impact on the support organization also.  Customer’s do not want to call, they are most interested in a product that works and delivers the features they were expecting and have paid for. When there is a discrepancy between expectation and reality, you tend to negatively impact customer loyalty and any short-term gains in sales, are not worth the reward.

A similar problem is when a product is released to the field without involving support at any stage of the process. If a customer has a new product/service or feature that the support team is unfamiliar with, their experience will be less than optimal. While support is often able to find the solution, this experience, is less than professional and will only frustrate your customers.

 Clear communication is vital when solving the problem of how to align your customer service with the other divisions in your company. 

Have a Clear Idea of Who Your Customers Are 


 A great way to unite all your departments is to promote the idea that they all have the main goal of creating a great customer experience. In order to do that, you have to know exactly who your ideal customers are. 

 Customer profiles can help everyone get a clear idea of your target demographic and see them as real people, not just abstractions. 

  • Align your customer service through cross-team training sessions – When everyone in your company has some understanding all the different processes in the organization, they’ll be able to address problems from a new perspective. For instance, if your sales team sits in on a customer service call and sees for themselves the consequences of creating customer expectations that can never be met, they’ll be able to see how they need to re-align their actions. Most of all, shared experiences increase understanding among all your teams. Your customers can only benefit. 


  • Similarly, having developers and other senior technical staff, work on cases will only benefit the customers. Often features are created and designed without a clear understanding of the end user and how they will utilize the solution, if the developers are forced to solve these common user problems, they’ll actually work harder to build a product that meets real-world situations. Everyone benefits from an improved product, and customers love to see their that their voices have been heard. This creates brand loyalty and improves your reputation.


  • When thinking of how to align your customer service with your greater goals, maybe you should really be thinking of how to align your greater goals with your customer service. Your customer service team knows your customers and is plugged into your customers like no one else. In some ways, they have the best knowledge of customer needs and desires, which is a valuable resource to guide the rest of the company. However, there can be a problem with too much information. How can your customer service team identify what is important and needs to be passed on to the product team? An important part of how to align your customer service is to have a clear mission and product goals that are communicated to everyone in the company. If your customer service team has access to your product roadmaps, specs, and design mockups, they’ll be able to tell what customer feedback the product team needs to hear, and what is not relevant to the product in question. 

    Keep Your Brand Consistent 

    Your customers don’t care about your internal organization schematics. They expect a consistent experience whether they’re dealing with sales, marketing, customer service, or any other section of the company. They also expect you to remember them across channels. If they gave information to a sales rep, your social-media guru should be able to access it if the customer sends a Facebook message. 

     There are few things customers hate more than having to repeat themselves, and a good CRM and good inter-departmental communication means they won’t have to. 

     Organize everything in one easily accessible place This could be an extensive software system or a Trello board – the important thing is that everyone has access and can see how the company as a whole is doing. Omnichannel CRM tools like Freshdesk are excellent in this respect as they are simple and easy to use with everyone on the same page.

      Accessible measurements for such things as 

    • customer satisfaction, 
    • team performance for all divisions, 
    • productivity,
    • the number and subject of support requests, 
    • and team member suggestions; 

    let everyone keep in mind the real numbers, making it easier to track trends and implement improvements. 

      Everyone can see the real numbers across the board, so action can be taken based on real data, not emotionally-based motives. For instance, if a few customers are really upset over a new feature, it might seem that it’s not been received well when the reality is that most customers love it. 

      Give Your Outsourced Teams In-House Training 

      It’s very common for a company to outsource at least some of its functions, especially customer service responsibilities. This is fine as long as you make the effort to maintain the quality of your customer experience. Make sure everyone follows the same standards and meets the same KPIs. 

       Show that you value everyone’s hard work and set up rewards for outstanding performers whether they’re outsourced or work in your main office. Aligning your company departments with a shared vision allows you all to work together, which increases engagement and improves your bottom line.

      internet of things, IoT

      Beyond Imagination – The Real-Life Cases of IoT Security and Failures

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      The Internet of Things (IoT) has changed the way businesses operate. By integrating technology into our daily lives, we have opened a door to an entirely new level of innovation. Start-ups, massive conglomerates and everyone in between is doing the best they can to push their IoT devices out into the market, making competition fierce. This era of technological innovation has been dubbed “the IoT gold rush” by Emerald and others. With projections of twenty-four billion IoT devices existing by 2020, this technology is quickly taking over the globe.


      However, as manufacturers rush to make their products the next big thing, they have overlooked one major detail that may end this IoT gold rush soon; the lack of security in IoT devices. In hindsight, it can be considered to be a simple mistake. New technology excites people; it would not be such a far stretch as to say that innovators wanted people to see their new idea before looking into security details. However, with half a billion IoT devices vulnerable to security threats, one wonders if corporations have done everything in their power to protect consumers. In this article, we will talk about some instances where IoT devices failed to provide sufficient security, its consequences and what has been done since to improve security in IoT devices.




      Case #1: Hacking At An Austrian Hotel

      This case is the first of many cases that have emerged in the last few years that have essentially outlined the security shortcomings with the use of the IoT technology. As the case goes, an Austrian hotel’s computer network was hijacked by something called ransomware. For those that don’t know, ransomware is a form of malicious software (or malware) that, once it’s taken over your computer, threatens you with harm, usually by denying you access to your data.


      The attacker demands a ransom from the victim, promising — not always truthfully — to restore access to the data upon payment.–       CSO from IDG

      Victims are given instructions on how to make the payment- this usually costs somewhere between a few hundred to thousands of dollars, payable by cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.

      In the hotel’s case, it was email demanding two bitcoins- the equivalent of $1800. The hotel was at full capacity and had to pay up as its reservation system, key card system and even its database were all locked up. Customers were complaining and there was nothing that the manager could do.


      After the incident, the hotel went back to using the mechanical lock and key system in fear of another attack. This story is the classic example of how the lack of security in the IoT network might actually open a whole host of opportunities for hackers and criminals alike to exploit. The hotel went back to basics after that incident; is this a foreshadowing of how our lives will be affected by IoT?


      Case #2: The Mirai DDoS Attacks

      Another disturbing incident occurred in late 2016 when the entire east coast of the United State lost access to the internet due to a botnet called Mirai. Even though it was essentially created to make a few quick bucks off of Minecraft, the idea quickly ran wild and after its code was uploaded online – something that hackers do to shroud their digital footprints – a hacker used it to attack an IT infrastructure company named Dyn which led to the disaster in the east coast.


      The FBI got involved and even though the creator of Mirai was caught and pled guilty- the foundation of Mirai is out in the internet forever. Experts believe that criminals might even use its code as a basis for a stronger attack. In fact, there have been reports of many botnets inspired by Mirai that have affected countless people worldwide.


      From these attacks, we can determine that the threat is very real but there are still many unprotected IoT device worldwide. Thankfully, in the wake of these attacks, many people have come forward asking tech companies to be cautious of security failure.


      After the Mirai incident, researchers have stepped forward to make the case of security in IoT devices. In fact, Eric Zeng, Shirirang Mare and Franziska Roesner of the University of Washington carried out their own research on individuals that have smart homes to understand the security concerns and bridge the gap in information. Their finds were interesting and helped to explain and understand consumer mindset, security concerns as well as mental models for their security systems. If anything, this study helped to understand many safety concerns which had previously simply been there. This study was able to give recommendations for future updates and is just an example of how all hope is not lost for the IoT business.


      It’s new; there have been security problems, but experts are doing their best to keep up with the rapid advancement in this sector and have begun to find solutions for security problems.


      Case #3: The Tesla IoT Car

      Luckily, all is not as bleak as it seems. As seen in the case of Tesla vehicles, not all IoT devices are doomed for failure. In this post, a group of MIT alums in Northern California have talked about Tesla automobiles – the benefits and potential threats that comes with them and what it means for the world.


      Interestingly, unlike the previous case studies, we find that the overall tone behind this article is positive with a few words of caution because, well, Internet of Things is still relatively new today and therefore, it is quite difficult to predict the problems we might face in the future. Nonetheless, this case study highlights how – when security is taken into consideration – IoT can be an awesome thing.


      One of Tesla’s key policies to ensuring that their security system remains up to date and free from malicious hacks is by rewarding any hacker that is able to hack into the system. This means that its team is constantly improving its network. In fact, the car has been called one of the safest vehicles ever created by the NHTSA.



      Case #4: Stanley Black & Decker

      Stanley Black & Decker is an S&P 500 company that has shown us how well industrial IoT can work if used correctly. As per inductiveautomation.com, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the application of the IoT to the manufacturing industry is called the IIoT (or Industrial Internet or Industry 4.0). The IIoT will revolutionize manufacturing by enabling the acquisition and accessibility of far greater amounts of data, at far greater speeds, and far more efficiently than before.


      Managing a production line as complex as Stanley Black & Decker’s manufacturing factory is no joke. This is why it would make sense for the company to utilize IoT for production. Cisco presents a case study that takes us deep into the heart of production and outlines the challenges and the benefits of the use of IoT technologies.  Stanley Black & Decker’s manufacturing plant opened in 2005 and operates around forty multiproduct production lines and thousands of employees, producing millions of power tools per annum. With the help of IoT, the factory has been run efficiently that promotes flexibility, showing us the benefits of IoT when done right.


      This is just one of the many, many positive reviews we will find on IoT technology when it is done right. From these case studies, we are able to see just how beneficial IoT can be for businesses if the technology is cared for properly.


      Both Tesla and Stanley Black & Decker have achieved success in the utilization of IoT because they spent the time in advance to look into vulnerable security threats and instead of ignoring them, they chose to address them. This care and management have led them to improve systems security which has only served to improve their products.


      Conclusion

      In this article, we have looked at both sides of IoT related case studies – two where things went downhill because of negligence or simple ignorance, and two where the right efforts paid off massively in the form of success. IoT technology is massively underestimated by people. Many people don’t understand it which is why it is easy for people to overestimate the security of such devices which leads to frightening real-world consequences.


      However, the way things are going, it does not seem that IoT will forever be held back by security threats. After all, Android has joined the fight against security issues in IoT devices by launching Android Things to help create more secure IoT devices. Similarly, computer experts have called for more consideration into the security of IoT devices to prevent any malicious activities. Therefore, it is safe to say, that while there have been security problems with IoT devices, organizations and experts are doing what they can to overcome it so we can embrace this new chapter in tech history without concerns of being hacked.

      Customer service, KPI, Management

      WHAT IS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT RUNNING A CALL CENTER?

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      Customer Service

      Customer Service – the simple explanation from Wikipedia (here) is that it is “… is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.”
      Now regardless of the type of Call (Contact) Centre you run you are always providing Customer Service. You can call the center a NOC (Network Operations Centre) a Technical Service Desk or a Help Desk but regardless of its name, its purpose is the same. The people that make up that team are there to provide a service to your customer and they are there to do it in the most efficient and useful way possible.

      The 4 Types

      Depending on the stage of the transaction that you customer is, with your organization, they will be dealing with one or more different types of customer service teams.  At a high level, they fall into the distribution below:
      1. Support: Including dealing with account issues (billing information, new account setup, order taking etc…).  This team ties closely together with the technical team and often provides a first level support function if it is in their remit.
      2. Technical Support: More detailed troubleshooting is carried out by this team.  Often referred to as “after Sales” Support they ensure that existing customers have a useful and worthwhile service and deal with any problems or issues that they may have.
      3. Sales & Marketing:  Inbound and Outbound sales teams, web chats and email responses.  In addition to this, offsite events, telemarketing, surveys, and other events are handled by this group.
      4. Quality Control: Review of customer interactions and problem analysis.  In addition to this, this team would also ensure that the company was compliant with standards in dealing with customers and would perform random audits.

      Measure, Do, Act

      Now, depending on the type of call center you are running, your first and probably most important starting challenge is determining the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you wish to have in place in your organization.
      Once you know what you want to measure and why you can then set about ensuring that you meet, exceed and surpass those requirements in short, medium and long terms.  To determine the most important KPI though, you need to know what services are important to your customers so that you can ensure that your teams are in the right place with the right knowledge to provide those answers to your customers to minimize any service disruptions or service impacts. 

      Once you’ve determined KPIs the next step is determining how you go about achieving and surpassing those requirements.  To do this, you need to ensure that you have the right caliber of candidate with the right skill set available and the right tools in place to expedite a speedy resolution for your customers.

      • What is a Helpdesk?

        In its simplest form, a helpdesk is a group of people assigned to assist customers in solving their problems. There are many different types of helpdesks and they are called by a variety of different names…

      • Should you Outsource your Helpdesk?

        To outsource or not to outsource … while not exactly a question that plagued William Shakespeare (hence the lack of any really good quality plays about it!), is a very valid question for the small and…

      Practice, Practice, Practice

      Just like athletes, your staff needs to have the appropriate skills and knowledge to ensure that they are able to resolve your client’s issues as quickly as possible.  The best way to do this is via training.  This includes initial training – ie. when they first join your company – and ongoing training to ensure that their skills do not get rusty.  It is possible to throw them into the deep end and see if they swim, but this is hardly an efficient use of your resources and should be minimized if at all possible.
      Appropriate teams and methodologies need to be in place to ensure that information flow and tools are available to your frontline staff so that customers get the appropriate answer as quickly as possible – things like FAQs and Knowledgebases are great, but they need to be kept up to date. You must also ensure that you have a robust and effective system to track customer interactions.
      Top CX Blogs

      Top CX Posts of 2018

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      Customer service blog posts and/or articles are non-fiction pieces of literature that require extensive research and experience in the field. Therefore, the general expectations that you should expect when reading such an article are for the writer(s) to have at least some years of experience or familiarity with the subject.


      There are hundreds and thousands of customer service articles written every week with the sole intent of guiding all those who need help with customer support. The topics are wide, ranging from customer service basics, such as setting up a customer support division for a small business, to unique experiences that companies and teams face when dealing with customers, to the more technical side of operating a customer relationship management system. A variety of topics comes under the umbrella of customer service posts. In this article, we’re going to list the top customer service posts for the year 2018 on a monthly basis. So, let’s get started.

      1. January: Jumpstarting Your CX Strategy

      At the very beginning of the year, Annette Franz kickstarted the year by talking about a bunch of blog posts intended to help newbies to get started with a CX strategy that will help their business.

      Titled, “8 Must-Read Posts to Start Your CX Strategy on the Right Foot”, the post is meant to familiarize those who are only just embarking on their journey to creating a CX plan that will work for their business. The post itself has three main categories:

      • leadership, 
      • culture, and 
      • employees. 
      Each category has important blog posts dealing with issues like toxic work environment and the kind of leadership required to help your business. If you’re absolutely clueless about customer experience or are simply looking for a place to start, begin by reading this post and its related contents before moving on. 

      2. February: Customer Service As the New Marketing Tool

      Micah Solomon’s Forbes article, “Customer Service Is The New Marketing”, makes the case for why having a quality customer service is important. His simple yet informative article talks about how marketing patterns have changed and how we, as consumers, prefer experiencing a company’s offer instead of depending on advertisements or promotion. 


      By doing so, he rightly presents a good introduction to customer service for his readers, as well as highlighting why this is the next big thing in marketing. It’s quite a good place to start, especially if you’re a business owner who isn’t quite sure how to start a customer service unit in your company. Even though his article is introductory, Solomon does list the key essentials that a company must have so do give it a read.

      3. March: Make It or Break It

      Steve DiGioia’s article, “Are Moments of Truth Really Worth All The Fuss?” talks about ‘moments of truth’ in your customer experience- where your service can make or break the deal for potential customers. 


      These are super important moments that every person operating a customer service should be wary of because often times, it’s actually quite easy to overlook the experience of one customer when dealing with a large magnitude of customers. As a result, only 10% of business executives agreed that the results projected from CRM were achieved. 

      This means that 90% of executives don’t see the results they want to see, which means that, for all the technology businesses are implementing into their customer experience, there’s actually a key ingredient that everyone’s missing that is stopping their business from reaching full potential. DiGioia explores this in great detail in his article, as well as pointing out tips and questions that companies should be asking themselves when dealing with customers.

      4. April: Survival Mode Is NOT Good

      In their article titled, “Why Survival Mode Kills the Customer Experience”, writers Kevin Hurt and Nate Brown talk about how the “survival” mode can actually damage your business. They do so in a relatable manner, describing in detail how monotony in your service sector can actually cause your customer service representatives to hate their job and fall into the infamous survival mode.

      This has damning consequences for your business as the general bored, gloomy environment of your service can affect customer experience, thus driving customers away from your business- and nobody wants that. Luckily, the writers also took the time to list and talk in detail about the five steps you can take to move your business away from this stage and begin to thrive again. This one is definitely worth the read!

      5. May: Customer Success and Its Implications

      We already featured this article by Michael Pace on our Top Seven Great CX Blogs from May to June’18 post but due to its relevance and importance, we’ve decided that it’s probably the best CX post that came out in the month of May. Pace’s post, “Why Customer Success is the Future of Customer Service” highlights the importance of focusing on a company’s churn rates. If you are able to successfully manage to gain a large number of people to sign up for your service, you’re good. But how do you do that?

      Pace talks about it in an analytical way, giving examples of companies like Netflix and Microsoft and how they’re able to not only get numbers on the first go but how they did it. The answers, of course, lies within the first impressions. You need to make your customer service so good that people are bound to get hooked from the get-go. You can learn specifics about that in his blog post. Have fun!

      6. June: Dealing with Difficult Customers

      Anyone in the customer service industry will tell you that dealing with difficult customers is actually quite frustrating. There’s really no way around it- you can’t be rude to them because it ruins their customer experience and ultimately ruins your customer service’s reputation. You can’t let them feel undermined or undervalued either. So what do you do with them? Elizabeth Wellington does a great job of explaining how to deal with difficult customers in her article, “How to Deal With Difficult Customers.” There’s actually a way to deal with such customers without risking upsetting them or jeopardizing their experience with your firm. Read her article and you’re bound to be set on the right track to satisfying even the most difficult of customers!

      7. July: Case Study on Japan

      July’s article titled “Japan: The Land of Amazing Service Culture” by Nate Brown is a little different from the articles we’ve covered so far. Unlike previous posts which look at a company or two as a case study, the author decided to write about an entire country and how customer service there is different from the rest of the world.

      To be fair, when thinking of Japan, most of us do think of the fun services the country has to offer. Everyone loves Japan because, overall, it has the air of a really fun place to live in. But that’s not all, Japan is actually one of the tech capitals of the world. Android bots serving people food, small yet extremely smart homes- all of this makes up the Japanese landscape. The author noticed all of this and more in his trip to Japan and subsequently wrote a piece about Japanese customer service and why it’s much, much better than virtually everywhere else in the world, thus providing a unique perspective into the Japanese service industry.

      8. August: Focus on Mental and Physical Well-Being of Your Staff

      This article is also referenced on our top CX blog posts for the month of August post as well. It refers to an article titled “Promoting Mental and Physical Well-Being in Service Roles” written by Nate Brown and Jenny Dempsey that talks about the mental and physical health of staff in the customer service industry. We found this article to be particularly interesting because it deals with the issue of being mindful of the staff’s well-being. In the customer service industry, the concept of “customer first” prevails which is why it is easier to ignore the staff’s well-being.

      This article talks about that and also presents the case of why it is necessary to focus on your staff’s mental and physical well-being. Among the many reasons is the fact that healthier staff are far more efficient at their job. The article further talks about how leaders can implement policies that benefit their staff’s health including the initiating of a “code lavender.” We highly recommend that you give it a read.

      9. September: Tech Advancements That’ll Enhance Your Customer Experience

      For the month of September, we have a very interesting piece by Kelechi Okeke. Titled, “6 Tech Advances That Will Enhance Customer Experience”, this article talks about the technologies being integrated into customer service that is bound to benefit you- if you add them to your CRM system. The author talks about the following:

      1. Virtual reality
      2. Location-based computing
      3. 3D Printing
      4. Chatbots
      5. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
      6. Internet of Things (IoT)

      These technologies are integrated into customer service. More details are provided on the blog post, so do check it out.

      10. Oct: Understanding NPS

      NPS stands for Net Promoter Score and was developed by a man named Fred Reichheld. It was created to get a clear image of how satisfied your customers are with your service. In order to get your customer satisfaction score, you need to subtract your promoter audience with your detractors. It’s actually a pretty interesting concept and can accurately help you compare your business against others in the industry if you get it right. If you’re interested in finding out how NPS works, check out our blog post on it.

      11. Nov: Service Training, or Service Education?

      For the month of November, we decided to delve into the difference between customer service training and customer service education. Many CX blogs stress on the importance of one or the other, calling each integral to enhance the customer experience. But exactly what is it? 

      In her article, “Customer Service Training, or Service Education. What’s the Difference?”, Divya Bhat looks for the key differences between these two terms and how each has a lasting impact on the customer experience.

      The reason behind these two terminologies might not matter right now. But in situations of crisis, the difference of training and education of a particular team member or representative can change the overall result of the crisis.

      12. Dec: Future Trends

      We end our year with future predictions to watch out for in 2019. The article, “2019: Three CX Trend to Look Out For” predicts possible trends that we might see in the customer service sector. Through analysis and observation of trends, cxm.co.uk was able to pick up on three trends that are likely to take over in 2019. What are they?

      Well, you’ll have to read them to find out!

      Conclusion

      So, here was our list of the best customer service blog posts for the year 2018. We’ve tried to cover a large variety of topics from mental health to dealing with the most difficult of customers and finally, to future trends to look out for in 2019. 

      These articles are based on a large volume of CX posts we’ve viewed online. We’ve tried to keep them as diverse as possible, hoping to attract the attention of a diverse audience. You don’t need to be a CX expert in order to read this article. All you need is to have experienced customer service once, or have worked in the service industry once, to understand what we’re talking about. 


      Customer Experience, Customer Trust

      How to Maintain A Good Customer Experience

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      We often talk about how we should create a satisfactory customer service experience in order to impress first-time comers and regulars to any company. However, once you’ve established a good customer service, one that impresses anyone who comes across your business and manages to keep them hooked to your products and/or services, what’re you going to do then?




      This is a question that baffles many business owners. No one wants their business to have a peak season, wherein the beginning you’re doing a lot of business because you’ve successfully created a good customer service, and then have no customers later because, well, there was a decline in your customer experience standards which drove customers elsewhere.


      Everyone wants a stable business- one with a good number of customers coming in and using the services you have to offer, and all the while attracting a steady number of people as well. If this sounds like you- and it probably does because everyone wants a business plan like that- then you have come to the right place. In this blog post, we will talk about the maintenance of a satisfactory customer experience. But before we move on, let’s address the following:


      Good vs. Satisfactory customer service

      This is a key difference which may lead to customers coming into your business well after you’ve established the accommodating customer service you envisioned for your business. It’s actually not that hard to differentiate between these two terms. In a previous blog post, we’ve covered the key difference between Happy Customers vs. Satisfied Customers.


      This is exactly what happens with customer service. If you’re providing your customers with satisfactory service, it means that they’re fine with it. They won’t necessarily complain about anything but they will not recommend your customer service (and by extension, your business) to anyone else. However, if you’re providing your customers with good customer service than that means that they’re happy with your service. In fact, you should try to have a good customer service so that more and more of your customers will be happy with your service and recommend you to their friends and family members. It is very important to remember that while advertising is great, the word of mouth is still a very powerful way of attracting new customers.


      What Next- Guide to Maintaining your Customer Service

      Now, after establishing a good customer service, the next step is quite obvious. How do you maintain it? There are many ways to do so but in this article, we’re aiming for the maintenance of a good customer experience so while there are plenty of tips out there, we’re going to focus on the ones that will not only maintain the bar but also makes sure that your customer experience is renowned for being great for everyone.


      #1: Customer Trust 

      We’ve talked about consumer trust multiple times here but we cannot stress the importance of it enough. In order to maintain your customer service and make sure that it’s a good one, you need to have complete trust from your customers. This is particularly important in the event that you face some kind of emergency. Maybe a disaster or a fire burned down your warehouse or shop where you keep your goods, maybe your office is being moved- if your consumers trust that even though there’s been a delay, that you will deliver your services to them- that’s automatically great for your business. In such situations when you’re getting bad attention from some third party, your customers will come to your defense. Similarly, if your customers are going to be recommending you to someone then they must have complete faith in you that you will deliver a product or service as good as the one you’ve provided to them. This is extremely important. In past blogs, we’ve talked about how consumer trust is at an all-time low and one of the causes of this is poor customer service experience.


      #2: Engage With Your Customers

      You need to make sure that your customers are happy- not satisfied; happy- with your business each time they use your product. This can be something simple like a quick chat at the door (if you own a store), asking them about their day, or maybe a handwritten thank you note if you have an e-commerce store. This is particularly important in the retail business. You need to engage with your customer in such a way that they feel appreciated- which is important because the success of your business depends on your customers. Make sure that your staff does the same. Don’t leave customers hanging on the phone for too long, try to solve their problems as best as you can, make compromises- the list goes on. A good service brings an element of personalization to your customer’s experience with your company, and people love to support friends as opposed to strangers.


      #3: Value Your Regulars

      Any successful business owner will tell you that their business expanded because of their regular customers. These are the people who’ve been there for the business since the beginning. One way to maintain the standard of your customer service is by making sure that you value your old ones. It is easy to get scores of one-time customers by advertising or having a discount or mid-season sale. However, do remember that these customers might not come back; in fact, a large number of them will probably not come back to your business. Therefore, it is important that you value your regular customers. There are many strategies as to how you can do that but some great ideas include giving them special discounts or maybe create a loyalty card. This is also a great advertisement for your business itself as people will hear about these special cuts and will definitely be wanting to give your business a try.


      Conclusion


      As you can see, there are a lot of tips available- online and offline- on how to maintain your customer experience. However, there’s a fine line that turns your customer service from satisfactory to good. In order to be known as the business with good customer experience, you need to make sure that your clients are happy and more than willing to support your business. There are many ways to do this but by establishing a trusting relationship, engaging with and providing your customers with a personalized experience where they feel valued for supporting you, you can definitely maintain your customer service and become known for being a great service!

      CRM, Freshdesk

      Why Does the Right CRM Make a Difference

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      If you run a business that relies on customer experience to grow, then chances are that you have probably heard about CRMs multiple times in your life. If you haven’t and this is the first time you have heard of it, then you’re in luck! In this post, I’m going to talk all about what a CRM is, its importance as well as explore some of the most popular CRM solutions in the market, and also tell you which one of these you should definitely use to enhance customer experience.

      What is a CRM?

      For those who don’t know, CRM stands for customer relationship management. As its name suggests, it is one of the most (if not, the most) efficient method for maintaining a strong relationship with your customers. It helps create a strong, healthy, personal relationship with your clients and can even help form brand loyalty. 

      This is why a CRM is very important for your business. A CRM allows you to monitor and analyze your interactions with your customers. This helps the team understand more clearly what customers are looking for.


      Additionally, by using CRM, as a company, you’re able to understand what your clients want rather than what you think they want. This is actually a really good way of doing business as you’re looking to satisfying your clients completely- this will build customer loyalty in the long run, something which is very important in today’s very competitive market.


      In order to understand what the client wants the CRM will use a number of ways to collect data regarding the customer’s preference. This may be in the form of a survey or a series of pop-up questions that come as the customer browses your website. By filling in what they’d like to see, or what they didn’t like, on your website, the CRM system collects this information and provides raw, accurate data for analysis. When the analysis is complete, you’ll be able to tell exactly what your customers want and then provide it to them. It’s a really simple concept with quite a lot of benefits. 

      This is why it is absolutely essential that you have the right CRM solution for your company. In order to understand why you need the right CRM solution, you must understand the benefits that come with them.


      The Benefit of the Right CRM System

      Every company will have a different CRM system to meet its requirements. With the right CRM solution, your company can be quite successful. In particular, the benefits will include:

      An Increase in Profit Potential

      This is brought about by a strong, healthy relationship with your customers. If your customers are happy with your service, you’ll find that you don’t really need to do much marketing. You can stick with your current clients and then use the money set aside for marketing for other development prospects. 

      You’ll be investing more in areas that need improvement instead, and you’ll know that clients will be there for you because, by meeting their needs, you will have developed a trusting relationship with them which will significantly reduce their chances of leaving your services for another’s.

      An Increase in Productivity

      A CRM solution is, for all intents and purposes, a computerized system. This makes the job easier for your team. Instead of allocating monitoring and analysis jobs to individuals, your team can use the CRM system to do the job. 

      This increases workplace productivity as less time will be spent in gathering information since it is now automated, and more time will be spent on understanding your clientele’s needs and moving in the right direction to satisfy their needs.

      Enhanced Customer Experience

      With a CRM solution, engaging with customers in real time takes place a lot more quickly than it would without one. Additionally, the experience also becomes as personal as possible. This enhances the chance of converting a visitor to your website into a customer by a large margin. 

      A CRM solution will provide links to the customer as well as showcase its social media presence to attract the customer. By doing this, and using other methods, a CRM is able to enhance the customer experience and bring in more clients to your company.


      Examples of Some CRM Solutions

      Of course, now that you know all about the benefits of the CRM solutions, let’s move on to inspect the best-known ones in the market.

      Freshdesk

      First up on our list is Freshdesk. It is a cloud-based CRM platform with the goal to allow companies, no matter how big or how small they are, to be able to provide superb customer service. It is a CRM solution which integrates traditional support systems like live chat, emails and telephone support with the new social systems like Twitter and Facebook.


      Pros:
      • Has a built-in knowledge base
      • Has a self-service portal as well as multi-channel support that includes all major social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
      • Includes a community portal for management and sharing of ideas
      • It’s automatic so ticket routing is managed easily
      • Quick follow-up and initial response


      Cons:

      • Reporting module has room for improvement
      • Premium packages (which provides excellent service) is on the costlier side.

      Zendesk

      Zendesk is a similar CRM solution that also supports multi-channel support and has a quality ticketing system. Furthermore, it also has a great reporting and analytics module and offers a self-service portal, much like Freshdesk.

      Pros:

      • A flexible ticket management system
      • Multi-brand support system with linked accounts
      • Unlimited, free ‘light agents’
      • Public and private forums
      • CSS rebranding

      Cons:

      • Does not include answers from its knowledge base app
      • Not enough guidelines provided in the forum for users when submitting a ticket.
      • Zendesk has a harder user interface.
      • Tickets’ workflow isn’t natural.

      Salesforce

      Lastly, we have Salesforce. Like the other two, it is also a cloud-based CRM solution which companies use to help manage their customer service. Salesforce was one of the first CRM solutions to come up on the internet. Truly, before this, companies had to create their own CRM solution. In a way, Salesforce paved the way for the other two CRM solutions on this list.

      Pros:

      • It has an easy-to-navigate user interface
      • Multi-channel support and links to all major social media sites like Facebook.
      • Customizable dashboard so you can log in and check your company’s performance from a bird’s eye view.

      Cons:

      • It is very complex and this can be problematic if you’re a small business using a CRM solution.
      • It is actually far more expensive than the other two CRM solutions mentioned on this list even though it has a range of different prices- the features offered are limited if you choose the cheaper options.

      Ultimate Verdict: Freshdesk is the better choice!

      As it might be a bit obvious for you, we personally believe that out of the three, Freshdesk is the best CRM solution. 

      While Salesforce delivers good service as well, you’re more inclined to use Freshdesk because of its better pricing policy. This is because Freshdesk’s features make it worth the price you’re paying whereas Salesforce limits feature according to the pricing and that is enough to put a lot of people off. 

      Similarly, Zendesk does not have the same number of features and user-friendly interface as Freshdesk does. As a result, Freshdesk is a CRM solution that caters to every type of business- be it big or small.

      Conclusion

      CRM systems are very important for your company. We hope that this article was able to help you understand why so many companies are turning towards them to help them establish a greater customer experience as well as decide which CRM solution you should use for your business.

      Job Boards, Job Search

      How to Land the Perfect Job – Part 5 (Interviewing)

      1 Comment
      Check out the previous posts related to the Job Search.

       Part 1 – Job Boards & Recruiters
      Part 2 – Networking & Other Job Search Methods
      Part 3 – LinkedIn
      Part 4 – The Resume & Cover Letter

       

      Confident Interviewing 

      Before you even consider the tips and bits of advice that will make the interview less stressful, you must, first of all, fit the role. An interview is intended to give you a chance to prove why you are the best fit for the job at hand. 

       You should have a clear understanding of the company’s operation and objectives instead of telling them where you think you would fit. An interview requires confidence in order for the interviewee to convince the interviewers easily. Nonetheless, it is important to practice. 

       Practicing and playing out the interview in your mind will help you avoid small mistakes that can affect your interview. A good preparation will also make you confident as you enter the interview. 
      You can use the STAR exercise to present your career accomplishments briefly during the interview. It is also important to prepare questions concerning the role you are applying for. The questions should not be confronting but as a way of knowing more about the company.
        

      Executing a Great Interview as a Senior Level Professional 

      Most executive professionals are the ones who usually hire employees. When it comes to getting hired, you have to be prepared as well. 

       Every executive panel will be difficult despite your job position so it is up to you to prepare and give them a worthy reason to hire you. 

       First of all, you have to be able to sell your skill and not simply tell it. The difference between the two is that with telling you are just pointing out what you have accomplished while with selling it is quantifying your achievements in an orderly manner. This is more or less providing the best definition for your career accomplishments. 

       Be sure to turn negative comments to positive comebacks that will show you are competent in coping with your weaknesses. You should, however, avoid being too confident and boastful to avoid putting the employers off. 

       Getting an appointment booked means you have already passed the first test and the employers want to hear from you and even give you a chance. All that is left to do is taking the initiative and making sure the interview is smooth and streamlined. 

      Good Leadership Skills 

      If you are looking for a senior level job position, then you should know that leadership is one of the main aspects that is usually tested. 

       An employer will want to work with someone who can get the job done and also have the appropriate managerial skills to make work more efficient. Focusing on your leadership skills and accomplishments can help you ace your interview especially if the employer is looking for a manager and not simply a technical employee. 

       Being a leader is not something simple. In a business setting, you will find many different pressures that can sometimes make you less effective in your managerial duties. Employers look for employees who can undertake managerial duties and not be overwhelmed. If you can portray these qualities in your achievements, you can be sure to land the job. 

       Learning how to Maneuver ‘Deep’ Questions 

      For top-level professionals being vetted for a job, the questions that are asked during the interview may differ a lot as compared to other technical employees. 

       Some interviewers may want to know how you dealt with your worst or biggest challenge and which is the biggest mistake you have ever made. 

       These and other similar questions are aimed at determining how you respond to situations. As a senior level professional, you should prepare yourself for such questions during an interview. 

       For you to effectively answer these questions, you have to be self-aware. These deep questions test whether you have really understood the cause of your mistakes in the past or if you still are not certain as to what may have caused the problem. 

       Top level management jobs are prone to more intensive grilling compared to other technical employment since the job has larger responsibilities that affect the company largely. In most cases, these deep questions are what causes most people to either lose or win the interview. 

      Your Ambition is Priceless 


       Being open and vocal about your ambitions can be very important in winning over an interview. Employers usually opt for someone who is passionate and goal oriented. 

       If you can prove to the employing board that your ambition in the company would bring them more benefits they will be more inclined to give you a chance. 

       Openly discussing your ambitions may be sensitive but you should be able to bring out your true nature which is one of the factors that employers look for. Your ambition should be linked or tuned towards the company’s objectives to bring more impact to your pitch. 

      Feel free to continue this series of posts or skip ahead to a section that is more relevant to yourself by choosing one of the options below:

      ITIL, Service Catalog, Service Design

      ITIL Service Catalogs

      1 Comment
      By this point, you hopefully realize that I’m a bit of an ITIL and process junkie! The ITIL Service Catalog is part of the ITIL Service design module, but while it seems very focused on the design side, it has implications in many other areas. Basically, its aim is making sure reliable, accurate information from all aspects of operations are easily available and understandable by others.



      What is the ITIL Service Catalog?


      If you’re unfamiliar with the ITIL Service Catalog, you should know that, at its very center, IT service delivery includes a list of services from the IT portfolio that are accessible for client usage. Inside this IT list, you will locate a digital summary of the majority of the IT benefits that your organization gives – from resetting forgotten passwords to the more complex, financial requirements of the system.


      The ITIL system has been created based on the fundamental concepts of Service and Customer Care. Therefore, the Service Catalog is at the center of these essential ideas. Numerous IT companies are able to deliver a Service Catalog as a major aspect of their ITIL Service Level Management. Others see the chance to use the Service Catalog as the point of focus for cooperation among IT and the business, as endorsed in the latest ITIL Business Perspective catalog. Wherever you are in your ITIL activity, the Service Catalog is fundamental to progress, providing the establishment with key defining points and business material.


      To be compelling, the Service Catalog must be comprehended, grasped, and utilized by the business. However very frequently, IT divisions contribute innumerable hours to make Service Catalog documentation that only a couple of clients will ever use. The greater part of these Service Catalogs are infrequently observed or perused by either clients or business leaders – and in this way have practically zero effect. With the end goal to guarantee an effective and client cantered ITIL activity, IT associations can pursue three rules for their Service Catalog:

      Prioritizing the Customer


      The Service Catalog ought to be made with a relentless spotlight on client needs. The most well-known misstep IT associations make is to explain their work from an IT point of view. Clients would prefer to be explained these processes in a way which they can easily understand. Fruitful Service Catalogs are characterized from the client’s perspective rather than from an IT standpoint.


      A Service Catalog should resemble web-based customer inventories, with straightforward depictions and an instinctive retail interface with accessible services available for the clients to look at. A powerful Service Catalog additionally provides clients who may get to the list – regardless of whether it’s the clients or specialty unit executives – and gives distinctive substance dependent on capacity, jobs, needs, areas, and privileges.


      This client-centered methodology guarantees that the Service Catalog is embraced by clients, and gives the premise to a reasonable, business-level discourse on administration quality and cost exchange offs with business chiefs.




      It Should Be Usable


      Next, the Service Catalog ought to be something beyond a static archive of data. A shopper seeing an online index of things expects that when they find something they like they can interact with it. This means that they can view it, separate from the catalog, view it and then if it meets their expectations, then they can order it. Moreover, the Service Catalog for clients ought to be providing similar features – with a web-based shopping basket for online purchases (if you’re operating an e-commerce website) such that it empowers end clients and allows them to use services in a way that satisfies them and allows them to keep track of their activities and so on.


      Also, specialty unit officials should have their own one of a kind perspective of the Service Catalog that gives more straightforwardness into the IT spending things, benefit levels, and the business effect of each service that IT gives.


      The IT service is important to workers when they need to update their workstation or when they have to include their email inbox. IT makes a difference to business officials when they are looking into spending plans or when they get their IT bill. It is at these times that the Service Catalog should be accessible and significant.


      To guarantee success, the Service Catalog must turn into the single passage that clients will turn to for all their IT service deliverance, and promptly accessible whenever your business clients need to understand what IT does and how well it is.


      Empowering a Record System


      At last, a significant Service Catalog must fill in is that of record system that empowers IT benefit associations to be overseen like a business inside a business. The Service Catalog can give access to oversee client request, delineate procedures for each administration, guarantee benefit level consistency and drive process efficiencies.


      No service sector business can flourish without such operational and financial information available and effectively accessible. By giving inside the main issue for asking for administrations, IT can use this information to all the more successfully control utilization.


      With institutionalized and recorded information, IT groups can implement repeatable and quantifiable service delivery applications that eventually results in solid service quality.


      Conclusion


      The Service Catalog is the foundation for accomplishment in any ITIL activity. By characterizing and distributing a standard arrangement of business-significant administration contributions, IT can all the more adequately advertise its esteem and set up a system for correspondence with the business. Also, by making the Service Catalog operational and value-based, IT activities can help institutionalize benefit satisfaction forms, oversee utilization, and drive ceaseless enhancement.


      Services that are not frequently used can be suspended. Delivery applications for high volume services can be streamlined. Key execution markers can give more insight to control costs, guarantee ideal administration quality, and support planning discussions with IT chiefs.


      With a significant and client-centered Service Catalog set up, IT associations can genuinely work as an administration arranged supplier to adequately address the issues of their business clients.