CCW Executive Report: Customer Experience

CCW Digital Executive Report:
Customer Experience
You care about the customer experience.
You’re investing in the customer experience. But is the experience you’re creating the one your customers
actually want? Our CCW Digital Executive Report on the Customer Experience will answer that question.
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www.CallCenterWeekDigital.com · 2
Introduction/Foreword
Customer management thought leaders go nary a second without touting the importance of
customer centricity. They routinely urge businesses to put customers – and the voices of those
customers – first.
In the ultimate irony, these thought leaders then proceed to provide advice from an
internal business standpoint. They ask businesspeople to assess performance. They ask
businesspeople about key customer experience challenges. They ask business leaders about
key customer engagement trends.
This approach is simply unacceptable in the so-called age of customer centricity. Assessments,
analyses and decisions need to be made through the eyes of the customer. What does
the customer want when interacting with a brand? How does the customer feel about the
experience he is receiving?
CCW Digital’s Executive Report on the Customer Experience adheres to this customer-centric
way of thinking. Instead of strictly relying on a survey of business leaders, it asked end-user
consumers to identify their customer experience thoughts, habits and preferences.
It then compared these findings with a survey of businesses to identify gaps in the two modes
of thinking. Do businesses really know their customers? And even if they do, do they really
know how to satisfy them?
In addition to analyzing the research, this report highlights three valuable, practical approaches
for elevating the customer experience – on the customer’s terms.
About The Author
Brian Cantor
Principal Analyst, CCW Digital
Customer Management Practice
Brian Cantor is the principal analyst for the IQPC Customer Management Practice. In his role, Brian
leads all customer experience, contact center, technology and employee engagement research
initiatives. Citing this proprietary research, Brian authors CMP’s series of special reports.
Brian additionally serves as managing editor and director for CCW Digital, which is the largest
web publication and community for customer experience professionals.CCW Digital’s articles,
commentaries, infographics, executive interviews, webinars and online events reach a community
of over 170,000.
A passionate advocate for customer centricity, Brian regularly speaks on major CX conference
agendas. He also advises organizations on customer experience and business development
strategies.

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Key Findings:
Bad experiences cost the business. 62% of customers will consider switching to a competitor
after only 1 or 2 negative interactions.
45% would switch even if the competitor charged more for an equivalent product.
When dealing with a rude or incompetent agent, nearly 50% of customers blame the business.
Customers, on the other hand, greatly value good experiences. 63% of customers would pay
more for a better customer experience.
25% of customers would pay more for a better customer experience regardless of product type.
Customers and businesses both identify first contact resolution as the top priority during
interactions.
Other high-ranking priorities for customers include fast resolutions and friendly agents.
“Wait time before reaching a live agent” is the most frequent source of customer complaints.
Companies, as a general rule, respond to complaints. They are most likely to respond when
similar complaints are being made by many customers.
They may respond, but they do not necessarily respond well. More than 40% of customers
rarely or never receive a satisfactory response.
Proactive engagement is a gateway to a superior experience. It is the #1 way to win back lost
customers.
The “call center” term and concept may be obsolete, but live voice conversations are still en
vogue. Live voice remains customers’ preferred communication channel.
Disintegration is crippling the customer experience. It is the #1 technology challenge and #1
cause of poor productivity.

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To collect data for the Executive Report on the Customer Experience, CCW Digital conducted two
in-depth market research surveys.
One survey involved customer experience, contact center, marketing, operations and IT
professionals answering questions on behalf of their companies.
Example respondent job titles included “Senior Director, National Call Center Operations,” “VP
of Revenue Cycle,” “Director of Customer Care,” “VP of Sales,” “CX Director,” “Head of Global
Outsourcing,” “Vice President of Phone Center Operations,” “VP of CX Operations,” “Manager,
Customer Service,” “Vice President of Customer Support,” “Director of Customer & Compliance,”
and “Training and Readiness Manager.”
74% of those surveyed directly influence their organizations’ customer experience budgets, while
36% either sit-in or directly report to the C-suite.
The respondent pool encompasses a wide range of organizations, including a substantial number
of large organizations. 48% of respondent organizations generate over $1 billion in annual
revenue, and 64% have multiple contact center sites. For 63% of organizations, the average
contact center site seats over 50 agents.
The other survey was issued to consumers, who answered questions about their own preferences.
The respondent pool encompasses a wide range of adult consumers; all age groups (over the age
of 18), geographic regions, and income levels are represented.
Demographics & Methodology

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On the one hand, thought leaders say we are in the age of customer centricity. Organizations
routinely identify the customer experience and associated metrics like customer satisfaction and
customer loyalty as their top priorities.
On the other hand, customer experience problems persist. Customers continue to face issues
when interacting with brands, and they accordingly maintain their stigmatized view of the
customer experience. Despite the persistent challenges and stigmas, our 2017 Executive Report
on Performance & Agents revealed that businesses are only moderately committed to improving
customer experience performance.
Businesses clearly know the customer experience is important, but they may not fully appreciate
the significance of the customer experience.
They need to start; the stakes of the customer experience are very real.
There are legitimate costs associated with poor customer experiences and legitimate benefits
associated with great ones.
Customer Experience:
The Stakes are Real
Upset customers will take their business elsewhere
CCW Digital’s Consumer Preference Survey confirms a very straightforward reality: satisfy your
customers, or they will take their business elsewhere.
A whopping 62% of customers, in fact, consider switching to a competitor after only one or two
bad experiences. Only 10%, moreover, allow for 4 or more problematic interactions before
looking elsewhere.
The data provides quantitative weight behind the notion that every interaction matters. Customers
demand satisfaction from every interaction, and they have little tolerance for failure.
Businesses, accordingly, can have little tolerance for imperfection. They cannot gradually steer
their customer experience strategy in the right direction; they must immediately work to ensure a
great experience at every possible touch point.
Some executives may be unfazed by the aforementioned statistic. Confident in the comparative
superiority of their products, they see little reason to fear the threat of customer attrition.
Customers may want to leave in the aftermath of bad experiences, but will they really switch
to a provider with an inferior and/or more expensive product? Believing the answer to be a
resounding “no,” complacent organizations feel no pressure to act.
These businesses are making a mistake.
In the face of bad experience(s), a staggering 45% would switch even if the competitor charged
more for an equivalent product. A non-trivial 16% would switch even if the competitor offered an
inferior product.

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Only 48% would avoid switching in either scenario.
Even if an organization is correct in its arrogant assumption that no competitor will ever be able to
offer a more valuable product, the organization still has ample reason to care about the customer
experience. 52% of customers will accept a less valuable product in order to receive a higher
caliber experience.
How many bad experiences would it take for you to consider switching
to a competitor?
Suppose you’re upset with the customer experience you’re receiving.
Would you switch to a competitor if...
20% 1
42% 2
27% 3
10% 4 or more
The competitor’s product is not
as good
The competitor’s price is higher
No - wouldn’t switch in either
case
16%
45%
48%

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The cost of a poor experience goes beyond losing a specific customer. These disappointed
customers talk, and their talk may very well cause other customers to take their business elsewhere.
More than 90% of customers share details about bad experiences with others.
A substantial 77% of customers discuss their customer experience woes with close friends, family
members or coworkers.
A staggering 35% will share bad experiences in online review communities (including sites like
Yelp), while 30% will post their negative thoughts on Facebook.
Since 76% of customers make purchasing decisions based on word-of-mouth from friends and
66% consider web reviews, the ultimate cost of a bad experience can be devastating.
Businesses that underperform are not simply risking their relationship with one customer; they
are risking negative exposure before an audience of hundreds, thousands or even millions of
prospective customers.
Upset customers talk about bad experiences
When you have a bad customer service experience, where/with whom
do you talk about it?
No one (I rarely talk about bad
customer service)
Close friends/family/coworkers (in
person)
Review communities (Yelp, etc)
Facebook friends/followers
Twitter
The customer service representative's
supervisor/manager
Other (please specify)
10%
77%
35%
30%
6%
51%
5%

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The aforementioned statistics offer a wake-up-call to those who carry indifference to the customer
experience. They need to take the customer experience seriously, and they need to do so urgently.
A fundamental tenet of taking the customer experience seriously involves ensuring agents
perform impeccably.
When dealing with a rude or incompetent agent, only 16% are willing to look past the situation.
The other 84% of customers care.
Those customers are more likely to blame the business than the agent.
59%, in fact, hold the organization accountable – the agent represents the business, after all. These
customers are not simply upset with the experience they received; they see the poor experience as
a brand failure. That perspective, in turn, is sure to have a detrimental impact on loyalty.
The other 41% are more likely to blame the agent. The business should not, however, assume
it is in the clear in these cases. While the customer may not view the situation as a personal
affront from the entire brand, they still recognize the experience as a bad one. They still left the
interaction at least partially unsatisfied and are almost certainly less loyal to the business than they
would have been had the agent been friendly and knowledgeable.
An inquiry into the stakes of the customer experience need not be all gloom and doom.
While there are serious costs associated with poor experiences, there are benefits associated
with great ones.
Customers value brands that deliver great experiences. A healthy 63%, in fact, would pay more
for a better experience in some contexts.
A still-substantial 25% would pay more for a better experience regardless of product type. Whether
they are buying fast food or a private jet, these customers place a premium on a great experience.
One bad apple ruins the bunch
Customers pay for great experiences
Suppose you contacted customer support, and the employee to whom
you spoke was rude or incompetent. How would you feel?
16% Let it go - everybody has a bad day
35% Blame the employee - but not the
business itself
49% Blame the business - he represents
them, after all

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Customers do not simply have a proclivity to complain about bad experiences. They also tend to
share great ones.
Per the preferences survey, 91% of customers communicate details of great experiences.
Customers, the data confirms, are slightly more inclined to talk about positive experiences than
they are negative ones.
More than 77% of customers share stories of great experiences with friends, family and coworkers,
while 31% and 27% post positive outcomes on review website and Facebook, respectively.
Not simply havens for complainers, web communities are vessels for tales of stellar service.
When the business delivers an exceptional experience, these web channels end up becoming
invaluable marketing assets.
Would you be willing to pay more for a product that offers a better
customer experience?
No
Only for products based on the
experience (like restaurants, hotels,
amusement parks, etc)
Only for products that are already
expensive (cars, jewelry, etc)
Only for products that are important to
your life (banking, insurance, etc)
Only for products that typically require
support (computers, phones, etc)
Yes, for most or all products
38%
20%
11%
18%
19%
25%
Happy customers talk about great experiences

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What Customers Want
When given what they want, customers commit their loyalty to a brand. They also become
advocates by communicating their great experiences to “real-life” friends and online followers.
When not given what they want, customers aim to cease doing business. They consider switching
to competitors (even if doing so involves a trade-off in product value) and share damning thoughts
with their peers.
Businesses, quite clearly, have an incentive to give customers what they want.
Their road to success, therefore, hinges on a fundamental question: what do customers want
when interacting with brands?
Efficiency, Efficacy Reign Supreme
While some thought leaders stress the importance of dazzling customers with a magical,
incredibly personalized experience, others argue that customers are demanding something far
simpler. They simply want their problem to be solved quickly – and correctly.
The latter school of thought more accurately reflects consumer preference.
Today’s customers are looking for a fast resolution on the first contact. A sizable 70% of
customers identify first contact resolution as the most important factor when interacting with a
brand; 69% say the same of a fast resolution.
Other key factors include the friendliness of the agent (66%), time spent on hold before reaching a
live agent (65%) and the agent’s knowledge (65%).
Speed of resolution and hold time directly reflect a demand for efficiency. Customers subscribe
to the notion that time is money, and they expect organizations to share in that belief. The brand
must share in the customer’s goal of delivering the desired information or resolution as quickly as
possible.
Speed cannot, however, come at the expense of quality. In declaring first contact resolution the
most important factor, customers are demanding valid, valuable resolutions. They are not looking
to be brushed aside so the agent can maintain his call time – they are looking for a resolution that
truly – and sustainably – solves their problem.

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They simply do not want to wait any longer than is necessary for that interaction.
Similarly, they are not looking for robotic, impersonal agents whose expertise runs no deeper than
the company’s standard scripts and documents. They are looking for the agent to be cordial and
knowledgeable – for proof that the agent values the customer, cares about the issue, and truly
knows the best way to resolve it.
Indeed, the Top 5 factors essentially provide a system of checks-and-balances on interactions.
Agents motivated solely by speed may be unable to meet the knowledge, affability and first
contact resolution requirements of the call. These agents should not, however, mistake the idea of
“connecting with customers” for a need (or excuse) to make unrelated chit-chat and prolong the call.
Comparatively unimportant priorities for customers include getting to interact with the same
employee every time 16%), receiving an opportunity to offer feedback (26%), receiving an
apology from the company (27%), receiving a bonus, coupon or other “make good” (31%), and a
personalized conversation (32%).
The hierarchy, at its core, confirms the goal-oriented nature of customer interactions. Customers
may see value in support from a dedicated agent and personalization, but those factors are
ultimately secondary to receipt of a fast, accurate, sustainable resolution. Personalization
enhances a call; first contact resolution makes it.
The same logic explains why feedback, apologies and make goods are low on this particular
totem pole.
The previous section reveals that customers want to be heard, so they clearly do care about
feedback. Upcoming sections, meanwhile, confirm the importance of apologies and “make goods.”
Those factors are not, however, paramount priorities during the actual interaction. The interaction
is about receiving information or solving a problem; assessing blame and delivering apologies are
not as essential in the given “moment of truth.”
Increased emphasis on this goal-oriented approach to interactions may, at least in part, be driven
by the rise of low-touch conversation channels. Whereas voice conversations lend themselves to
covering deeper issues like blame, apologies and “make goods” (as survey data will prove), digital
channels like live chat, mobile SMS and social media are more inherently transactional.
They are still conversational channels, which means scripted, simple, robotic answers are
generally not appropriate. But they are lower-touch channels, which means they are not
particularly well-suited for complicated arguments.

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Which of the following are IMPORTANT when receiving customer service?
You receive help from the same
employee every time
Company gives you a chance to offer
feedback
Company apologizes to you
Company gives you a bonus coupon,
offer, credit, etc
Conversation is personalized to you
Company follows up to make sure
everything is still okay
Service is in your preferred channel
(phone, social media, e-mail, etc)
How many times the representative
puts you on hold
Company responds to your feedback
Whether you have to repeat
information about yourself/issue
Number of times you’re transferred
Service is available 24/7/365
How “easy” it was to get the
information/solution you wanted
Knowledge of customer service
representative
How long you wait on hold before
speaking to a representative
Friendliness of customer service
representative
How long it takes to get your problem
solved
Issue is resolved the first time you
contact support
16%
26%
27%
31%
32%
34%
37%
38%
41%
47%
47%
55%
64%
65%
65%
66%
69%
70%

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By no means are businesses perfect when it comes to customer experience strategy. Customers
and thought leaders routinely acknowledge their shortcomings. Business leaders, themselves,
even identified weaknesses in conjunction with CCW Digital’s Performance Agents Report.
Businesses do, however, have a very accurate understanding of what customers want.
In addition to asking consumers to state their top priorities when interacting with businesses, CCW
Digital surveyed business leaders on the factors they feel are most important to customers.
The two hierarchies are very consistent.
In scoring its importance a 4.53/5, businesses identified first contact resolution as customers’ #1
priority during interactions. Given a score of 4.48/5, agent knowledge was labeled the #2 priority.
Other high-ranking factors included “effortlessness” (4.29/5), the agent’s personality and
demeanor (4.28/5), and speed (4.18/5).
Comparatively low-ranking factors included “make goods” (2.47/5), channel spanning without
repetition (3.58/5), the opportunity to provide feedback (3.64/5), personalization (3.70/5), and the
ability to connect in a preferred channel (3.76/5).
They may not be mirror images, but the two hierarchies reflect the same basic approach to
customer interactions.
Interactions, above all, should involve friendly, knowledgeable agents providing fast resolutions
on the first contact. Factors like personalization, “make goods” and opportunities to provide
feedback are not irrelevant, but they do not truly make or break the interaction. They are side
dishes, not main courses.
A cynic may accuse businesses of a self-serving approach to the question. The factors they
identified as important – speed, accuracy, first contact resolution – tend to lead to lower operating
costs. They have clear benefit to the business.
The factors they identified as comparatively unimportant – personalization, make goods, channel
spanning – require time, resources and monetary investments. They are less conventionally
“business-friendly,” at least in the short-term.
Did businesses select the factors they truly believe are most important to customers? Or, did they
pick the business-centric options they hope are most important to customers?
There is likely some merit to the cynical viewpoint; there are likely some respondents who did
adhere to the latter philosophy.
The immense alignment between the hierarchies nonetheless renders the point somewhat moot.
Since customer demands may change over time, businesses definitely should attempt to assess
priorities through the eyes of their customers.
Whatever approach they did take, however, ultimately led them to make the right conclusions
about what customers want. They know what matters to customers and thus have the proper
framework for building a customer service strategy.
There may, moreover, be a bigger lesson here.
Businesses Know Their Customers

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Feedback about Feedback
Businesses generally know what customers want. That knowledge does not itself yield great
experiences.
CCW Digital’s Performance Agents report revealed that organizations are, for the most part, only
moderately successful when it comes to key performance metrics.
First contact resolution, as an example, is customers’ #1 priority when interacting with businesses.
Only 10% of businesses, however, believe they are “excellent” at delivering first contact resolution.
There are other areas in which businesses are not – despite their inherent customer centricity –
actually delivering the experience customers want.
Customers care deeply about the speed of an interaction, and they hate waiting for a live agent.
When made to wait, they opt to complain.
They are evidently made to wait fairly frequently.
“Wait time before reaching a live agent” is the most common cause for customer animosity; 29% of
businesses identify it as their top source of complaints.
Other comparatively popular complaint drivers include strict policies (22%), issue recurrence (21%),
pricing and billing issues (21%), agents taking too long to solve the problem (16%) and lack of agent
expertise (16%).
Four of the top complaint drivers – wait time, issue recurrence, agents taking too long and
agents lacking expertise – directly align with customers’ top priorities. Customers hope to wait
minimally before reaching knowledgeable live agents who can solve the problem quickly – and
on the first call.
On the one hand, it is therefore fairly intuitive that issues like wait time, issue recurrence, slow
service and uninformed agents would prompt frequent complaints. Since customers care about
these factors, they are more likely to be upset – and thus more likely to complain – when they do
not receive them.
Why customers complain
Some thought leaders love to declare that what is good for the customer is what is good for the
business.
The statement conventionally serves as justification for customer service costs. It argues that
because satisfying experiences increase customer loyalty (and subsequently increase revenue),
businesses have an incentive to deliver the best possible customer experiences. When
customers are happy, the business wins.
This data puts a new spin on that notion. Great customer experiences do not simply produce
long-term revenue growth. They also require efficiency, which can yield short-term cost reduction.
Customer centricity benefits the business on both sides of the income statement.

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Which aspects of your experience seem to cause frequent complaints/
problems from customers?
Limited support hours
Limited support channels
Customers have to repeat info
when switching agents or channels
Product quality
Marketing/sales/customer service
messages not aligned
Messages not aligned between
customer service agents/channels
Agents cannot explain issues
clearly
Agents lack expertise
Agents take too long to solve
problem
Pricing/billing issues
Recurring issues
Strict policies
Wait time before reaching a live
agent
11%
13%
13%
13%
15%
16%
16%
21%
21%
22%
29%
12%
7%
On the other hand, businesses know these factors are important to customers. Despite that
knowledge, they are failing to deliver them on a fairly frequent basis.
The complaint data further underscores the fine line between knowing what to do and actually
doing it.
The other two areas – strict policies and pricing – are also intuitive sources of complaints. Since
strict policies can directly prevent customers from achieving what they want, they inherently cause
complaints. They involve telling a customer “no” at a time when “yes” is the only acceptable
answer.
Because pricing issues directly impact customers’ money, they carry clear stakes. Customers
may overlook minor product or experiential issues, but is hard to imagine them ignoring an
unexpectedly – or unfairly – high bill. The heightened stakes breed complaints.

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Insofar as perfect customer experiences are impossible, complaints are inevitable.
A business’ strategy for handling complaints therefore plays an instrumental role in the success of
the overall experience.
Today’s businesses universally recognize the importance of responding to complaints; no
organization, in fact, generally refrains from responding to complaints.
Nearly 54% of organizations will respond to a single complaint from a single customer. They are
even more likely to respond if the same complaint is made by many customers (73% will respond
in these cases), if the business is clearly to blame for the issue (67%), if the issue has high financial
stakes for the business (67%) or if the complaint is already going viral (66%).
When the business responds
What kind of customer complaint would make your business take action?
(check all that apply)
Single complaint from any customer
Single complaint from a high-value
customer
Same complaint made by a few customers
Same complaint made by many customers
Complaint is clearly justified/the business
did something wrong
Complaint is trivial but has the potential to
go “viral”
Complaint has high financial “stakes” for
the business
Complaint is going viral/being reported on
social media
None (we generally don’t address
complaints)
54%
58%
57%
73%
67%
47%
67%
66%
0%
Businesses generally respond to customer complaints, but what does that response entail?
For the greatest percentage of businesses (38%), it involves a “personalized message for most
issues.” Just under one-third of businesses (32%) actually go one step further; they confirm action
has been taken in their response.
How the business responds

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Businesses do not simply make it a policy to respond to complaints. They strive to offer legitimate
responses.
More than two-thirds of organizations actually offer personalized responses, while nearly one-third
confirm action has been taken in response to the complaint.
In short, businesses take customer complaints – and the need to respond – seriously.
A business’ confidence in its complaint management strategy is not, however, confirmation that
the business is actually good at responding. Such confirmation can only come from customers.
Customers, it turns out, have a lukewarm perception of the responses they receive.
Only 5% of customers say they always receive a satisfactory response to their complaints or
feedback. Sixteen percent are often content with the way the business handles their complaint,
while 37% believe businesses “sometimes” offer a proper response.
The other 42% are rarely or never pleased with the response.
Virtually all businesses respond to complaints, but they are failing to routinely satisfy more than
40% of complaining customers. The failure may be conscious (the business may not feel all
complaints warrant high-effort responses) or unconscious (the business may truly believe it is
responding sufficiently), but the point is that it exists.
How customers feel
When a customer submits feedback or a complaint, how does your
organization typically respond?
3% No guaranteed response
6% Thanks customer, no promise of follow-up
6% Thanks customer, promises follow-up,
doesn’t always deliver
3% Follows up with form/generic message
13% Follows up with personalized/specific
message for serious matters only
38% Follows up with personalized message
for most issues
32% Follows up, confirming that action has
been taken
Others (13%) of businesses limit personalized responses to serious matters. Some thank
customers for their complaint but do not guarantee a follow-up (6%), while others thank customers,
guarantee a follow-up but admittedly do not always deliver (6%).
Just over 3% offer a generic response to customer complaints.

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Proactive Engagement:
An Opportunity
Per the CCW Winter executive report, only 34% of organizations plan to increase proactive
engagement this year. Only 5% consider proactive engagement to be a top priority.
The majority of organizations, therefore, are not planning to make notable investments into
proactive engagement.
These organizations are missing an enormous opportunity.
When the experience goes wrong, customers leave. The earlier data reveals that nearly two-
thirds of customers consider switching after just one or two bad experiences.
An organization can back many of these lost customers.
Under the right circumstances, more than 85% of customers would continue returning to a brand
with which they stopped working.
A proactive bid from the company reflects the most effective of these “right circumstances.”
Nearly one-third of customers (32%) say the best way to win back their business is to proactively
connect, apologize and ask for a second chance.
Customers are more likely to react to that proactive bid than they are to proof that the past issue
was corrected (27%), an improvement in product quality (14%) or a reduction in price (8%).
Evidenced by their preference for fast, easy experiences, customers ascribe value to time
and effort. A brand that takes the time and effort to proactively engage with its customers is
demonstrating the extent to which it values those customers.
That showing of appreciation goes a long way in righting a customer experience wrong.
Proactivity: How to win your customers back
When you give customer feedback to a company, how often do you receive
a satisfactory response?
10% Never
32% Rarely
37% Sometimes
16% Often
5% Always

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Suppose you stopped working with a company due to a bad
experience(s). What would be the BEST way to win you back?
15% Nothing - you’ll never work with them
again
14% They improved the quality of the
product
5% They offer more/faster customer support
options
8% They lowered their price
32% They reached out to you personally to
apologize/ask for a second chance
27% You can tell they fixed whatever
customer service issue went wrong in
the past
Proactivity is not simply effective as a winback strategy. It is also a way to demonstrate a
premium-quality customer experience.
Twenty-four percent of customers say they would be willing to be pay extra for proactive
engagement. By comparison, only 17% would pay extra for 24/7/365 support. Only 15% view a
dedicated account manager as a premium component, while only 12% would pay more for service
in their preferred data.
The numbers should not necessarily encourage organizations to start offering proactive
engagement as a premium add-on. The majority of customers will not specifically pay for
proactive engagement, and it is possible that those would theoretically would pay would only do
so in certain circumstances.
The data does, however, reveal the comparative value customers associate with proactive
engagement. Since many customers view proactive engagement as a premium feature,
organizations that incorporate it into their experiences stand to positively differentiate themselves.
Proactivity: Sign of a “premium” experience
Would you be willing to pay extra for any of the following?
Reduced hold time
24/7/365 support
Dedicated account manager
Support in your preferred channel (phone,
email, etc)
Proactive care (they contact you when
they notice something might be wrong)
No - wouldn’t pay extra for any of these
10%
17%
15%
12%
24%
58%

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Customer management thought leaders may concur that the “call center” is obsolete.
The telephony channel on the other hand, continues to endure.
It remains the leading customer service channel; 37% of customers identify live voice as their
avenue for customer service, while an additional 16% say they most commonly receive customer
service through automated menus and/or IVRs.
One may be inclined to attribute the statistics to tradition.
Because customers have long viewed telephony as the primary contact channel, they may
habitually gravitate toward the phone when interacting with businesses.
Since telephony has long been the primary contact channel, businesses are more likely to
offer engagement in the phone than any other channel (with the exception of email). By giving
customers few, if any, other options for making contact, businesses cause the habit to persist.
There is surely some truth to this notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Habit and convention are not,
however, the only reasons why seek engagement in live voice channels.
Customers, it turns out, actually prefer live voice conversations to other forms of engagement.
If given the voice to engage in any channel they wanted, 37% would choose phone conversations
with a live agent. Voice by far ranks as the top engagement channel.
Other comparatively popular selections include e-mail (18%), in-person (17%) and live chat (15%).
It is important to note that preference for live voice conversations is not tantamount to a
preference for telephony. While 37% would ideally engage in a voice conversation, only 3%
would use an IVR or automated phone menu.
Phone: Justifying its Persistence
Customers most frequently engage with businesses via live voice conversations, and the behavior
is not merely the result of situation and circumstance. A substantial number of customers would
choose the voice channel even if they had a legitimate choice.
Why are voice conversations so special?
Customers, quite simply, believe they offer unique experiential elements.
A whopping 85% of customers will call for the purpose of getting their problem solved quickly.
Forty-six percent value the opportunity to communicate their complaint to a real person, while
30% believe a voice conversation is the best way to receive the correct information or resolution.
Whether fairly or not, customers do not believe businesses operate with the same efficiency,
resolve and accountability in other channels.
Why customers call

DIGITAL
Collectively, the previous sections lay out numerous requirements for businesses. They must
foster customer experience interactions that are fast, friendly, resolute and accurate. They
must manage feedback and complaints in a personalized, actionable manner. They must offer
proactive engagement. They must continue to deliver stellar voice customer service while
elevating the efficiency and efficacy of lower-touch channels.
Save for proactive communication, none of these imperatives are surprising to businesses.
Businesses generally know what customers want. They know responding to feedback is
important, and they know the importance of omnichannel engagement.
That knowledge, as confirmed empirically and anecdotally, is not readily transforming into results.
Businesses may be taking action (albeit to a less urgent extent than they should), but they are still
not performing as well as customers desire. Business leaders, themselves, rarely identify their
customer experiences as “excellent.”
Organizations need to elevate their performance.
Operationally, they need to ensure they have the right systems. Technology empowers agents
and customers to achieve the results for which they are looking. An organization cannot deliver a
great experience without the right technology.
They also need to ensure agents are in position to be productive. If agents cannot perform in
accordance with customer demands and operational needs, the experience will suffer.
Performance: Driving Productivity
Customers may not like making calls in their personal lives, but brand engagements are not
equitable. Customers have clear objectives when interacting with businesses, and they are going
to select the channel that best meets those objectives.
Other channels exist, but their adoption will be determined by one of two scenarios:
} Customers accept them as legitimate alternatives to voice conversations.
} Customers believe they are better-suited for simpler, transactional matters while the phone
remains the best option for complicated matters. Channel selection will hinge on context.
The notion that systems “need to talk to each other” is not empty marketing rhetoric being used
to sell integrated platforms. It is a statement of immense relevance in today’s contact center
landscape.
Disintegration is actually the most widespread technology challenge facing today’s customer
experience functions. A healthy 36% of businesses identify disintegration as their top challenge.
For 22% of businesses, disintegration is problematic within the contact center. The other 14%
believe their issue comes from contact center or customer experience technology not aligning
with systems in other departments.
Other key challenges include out-of-date technology (12%), limited monitoring and analytical
capabilities (9%) and limited flexibility or scalability (7%).
Technology Challenges

DIGITAL
Which is the biggest problem/challenge with your current contact
center technology?
Cost - subscriptions/recurring
Security
Uptime/reliability
Not enough support from vendors
Too much data/poor presentation
Cost - administration/management
Experience for customers
Experience for agents
Ease of use/learning curve
Not enough flexibility/scalability
Limited data/monitoring/analysis
Out-of-date/lacks modern features
Contact center technology not integrated
with systems in other departments
Too many disparate systems within the
contact center
0.5%
0.5%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
5%
5%
7%
9%
12%
15%
22%
The out-of-date and flexibility challenges concern the functionality of the systems. These
businesses do not feel their systems are up for the tasks.
Technology with limited monitoring capabilities may be acceptable from a purely functional
standpoint, but it is problematic in a customer experience context. Businesses need granular
insight into performance.

DIGITAL
Customer experience technology has ramifications for customers and employees. Customers rely
on the systems to access a great experience, while employees use the technology to deliver said
experience.
Cognizant of this reality, businesses value the “voice of the customer” and “voice of the agent”
when making technology decisions.
The “voice of the customer” matters slightly more.
On a scale of 0-5, organizations rate customers’ influence at a 4.48. They assessed the agent
impact on technology purchasing at a 4.30.
Disintegration is the biggest technology challenge facing today’s customer experience functions.
It is also the biggest productivity challenge.
Nearly 26% of organizations say disintegrated systems and/or channels are the biggest threat to
productivity.
The finding supports the idea of “technology” being a bottleneck on people and process. An
organization can hire the right people, provide the right training and instill the right mindset,
but that effort will be for naught if these well-trained, customer-centric agents face difficultly
navigating systems during customer interactions.
Granted, organizations are not entirely satisfied with their existing training. More than 10% of
businesses blame poor productivity on a lack of ongoing coaching and development, which
positions it as the #2 challenge.
Other comparatively widespread productivity challenges – complicated desktops (9%), insufficient
knowledgebases (7%), improper training (6%), and improper performance measurement –
generally tie into one of the aforementioned themes.
Technology Purchasing
Productivity Problems
When selecting new CX or contact center technology, how important is
the impact on the customer? Agent?
Customers
Agents/employees
0 Not
important
1 2 3 4 5 Very
Important

DIGITAL
Which, if any, of the following are preventing your contact center/CX
agents from being more productive?
Improper training (on processes)
Improper training (on specific product/
issue knowledge)
Improper training (on systems)
Improper “onboarding”
Lack of ongoing coaching/development
Lack of real-time coaching/training
Insufficient knowledgebase
Channels/systems not integrated
Calls not being routed to the best agents
Scheduling issues
Complex desktop
Performance not properly measured/
communicated
Issues tracking changes in performance
over time
Poor workflow management
3%
6%
1%
2%
10%
3%
7%
26%
3%
0%
9%
6%
3%
5%

Practicality Guide
Dive into concise instructions for big ideas that you can bring
back to the office, with case studies, expert tips and practical
exercises on a range of customer experience topics.

DIGITAL
Customer management thought leaders repeatedly discuss the correlation between productive
agents and satisfied customers.
It should therefore come as no surprise that 89% confirmed training as a top strategic focus for
the next year. It should similarly come as no surprise that coaching and learning management
systems will be investment priorities for 86% and 76% of contact centers, respectively, over the
next two years.
A company’s belief in the importance of learning is not, however, a guarantee that the company
will excel at training.
Several common mistakes plague today’s contact center learning strategies. Agents are left
disengaged, without necessary knowledge and powerless to adapt based on customer need.
They, in turn, struggle to deliver customer satisfaction, let alone increase loyalty and advocacy.
Companies invest in agent development to improve customer satisfaction, yet their flawed
training systems end up yielding the exact opposite. The resulting experiences are impersonal,
slow, inaccurate and inconsistent – the kinds of interactions that prompt customers to leave for
competitors.
Luckily, there is a way to easily and substantially elevate your approach to learning, training and
agent development. Through a combination of refined strategies and intuitive technology, you
can foster a more engaged, knowledgeable, versatile and productive workforce. The agents
interacting with your customers will be assets rather than liabilities; they will be the kind of
engaged brand ambassadors that consistently yield customer delight and loyalty, factors which
ultimately lead to higher revenue and profit.
In today’s age of customer centricity, businesses that deliver the best customer experiences stand
to achieve the greatest success.
By following this blueprint for next-generation contact center learning, you will help your
organization become one of those businesses.
Rethink Contact Center Training,
Elevate the Customer Experience

DIGITAL
The most fundamental goal of the contact center function is to deliver a great customer
experience.
The most fundamental goal of contact center learning and development is therefore to empower
agents to deliver that great experience.
Given that reality, the first step in creating a great training strategy is to understand exactly what
today’s customers want.
CCW Digital’s consumer preferences survey reveals the answers.
First contact resolution (Priority for 70%): If customers object to spending a few extra minutes
on the phone, they surely take issue with needing to call back. First contact resolution, indeed,
represents a top priority. Regardless of the time, channel or nature of their inquiry, they expect
the organization to provide a valuable, accurate, sustainable resolution.
A customer-centric learning and development program positions agents to
successfully identify, interpret and resolve the customer’s issue during the first
contact.
Speed (Priority for 69%): Efficiency is not simply an operational concern. Customers also demand
efficient experiences.
Wholehearted believers in the notion that “time is money,” customers place immense importance
on the speed of the interaction. They expect to receive their desired information or resolution as
quickly and effortlessly as possible.
A customer-centric learning and development program is one that fosters fast
interactions.
Knowledgeable, friendly agents (Priority for 66%): Customers have no interest in interacting with
lifeless robots who strictly read from a script. They expect the agents with whom they engage
to be affable experts capable of delivering accurate information in a personalized manner; they
desire a meaningful connection. This demand is becoming especially important amid the rise
of AI and self-service platforms. Customers are becoming less reliant on agent assistance for
transactional manners; the issues they present to live agents are complex and unique.
A customer-centric learning and development program prepares employees for
this new customer service normal in which agents are responsible for deeper,
more nuanced, more personalized interactions. Organizations cannot simply
train agents to parrot back common solutions to common problems; they
need to empower agents to meaningfully connect with unique customers who
possess unpredictable issues.
What customers want
2
1
3
First
contact
resolution
70% 69%
66%
Speed Knowledgeable,
friendly agents

DIGITAL
A successful learning and development program goes beyond the what and
focuses on the why and how. Why are customers truly interacting and how can
the agent best deliver the outcomes for which they are looking?
Not built for the “moment of truth”: No matter how thorough the initial training, there will come a
time in which the agent lacks the answer. Many learning systems fail to take this reality into account.
“When agents encounter a problem that is specific to their company, they either ask a colleague or
search a bunch of different internal systems, trying to find the answer,” explains Burt. “More often
than not, this exercise costs them a lot of time.”
This upsets the customer who is left waiting and negatively impacts the contact center’s overall
productivity. It can also be emotionally frustrating for the agent, leading to the disengagement and
even attrition that further harm the customer experience.
There is nothing surprising about customers’ demands for fast, effective, warm and accurate
interactions.
Their predictability does not, however, make them simple to attain.
Due to flaws in their philosophies, errors in their strategies and limitations in their technologies,
organizations routinely fail to cultivate agents capable of delivering productive, customer-centric
experiences.
Nearly all businesses identify training as an investment priority for the coming year, but their effort –
and money – will be for naught if they succumb to these very common, very problematic mistakes.
Compliance over practicality: Contact center training is often focused on static information rather
than functional capabilities. Worse, it is often directed by leaders from the broader HR function
instead of those who sit within the contact center. Agents are taught basic knowledge, rules and
scripts, but they are not empowered to apply the learning in an efficient, productive, customer-
centric manner.
“There’s no denying that training has a negative stigma,” notes Conner Burt, COO, Lessonly. “In
many people’s experience, it’s been focused on compliance learning, which tends to feel like some
combination of suspicious and patronizing.”
Not simply a philosophical issue, the “compliance” mindset is also a time management concern.
Managers spend so much time developing “information” training that they have limited opportunity
to coach agents on valuable skills
Where training fails
1

DIGITAL
A successful learning and development program does not simply focus on what
happens inside the training session. It also accounts for the ease of attaining
valuable, useful information during the interaction.
Not adaptive: When it comes to the customer experience, change is the only constant.
Customers will begin to demand different things – in different channels. Certain best practices
will prove ineffective, and new ones will emerge.
Many contact center trainers are ill-equipped to deal with this reality. Some focus on core, dated
knowledge and turn a blind eye to emerging developments and nuances. Others want to adapt
but lack a means of efficiently developing new lessons and re-training agents; their option is
to “pull” agents from the floor and stick them in a room where the same lesson is taught 6 times.
Either way, the training falls behind – and short of its goal to empower agents to satisfy customers.
A successful learning and development program allows for constant adjustment
and evolution. It is married to the goal of perpetually creating productive,
customer-centric agents rather than to the specific lessons and best practices
that happen to make sense right now.
Not collaborative: In many contact center environments, training is something agents “receive.” It
is not something they help create.
This approach presents several negative consequences. It makes the training less resonant;
without ownership in the material, agents are less likely to absorb all the requisite knowledge. It
makes training less effective; agents have no ability to tailor the lessons to their own strengths,
weaknesses and learning styles. It makes training less valuable; since agents are the ones on the
front lines speaking to the customers, omitting their insight is to operate without a real sense of
what customers want.
A successful learning and development program enables – and, actually,
encourages – collaboration from all key employees and stakeholders.
Not tied to performance: Agents should not be trained for the sake of passing tests; they should
be trained to become more productive agents.
Many training programs – and platforms – ignore this distinction. They view training strictly
through the lens of knowledge acquisition and pay no mind to how training is impacting metrics
related to efficiency and customer satisfaction. Their “calibration” involves ways to make agents
learn more rather than methods of making them better.
A successful learning and development program is predicated on performance.
It provides the organization with robust insight into the connection between
training and key performance indicators. It also allows the organization to
make changes that can optimize the connection.
2
3
4
5

DIGITAL
Training, quite clearly, is not perfect in the status quo. Organizations are not enabling agents to
quickly, accurately and memorably interact with customers; satisfaction and productivity numbers
are less than stellar.
These imperfections need not persist.
Through a combination of innovative technologies and real-world best practices, organizations
can dramatically elevate their learning and development. They can help the contact center
function steer away from the aforementioned pitfalls and toward the kind of experience that
produces happy agents and loyal customers.
“When training is relevant and helpful, it ceases to feel like training and begins to feel like a friend
helping your team get better,” adds Burt. “It reduces stress, creates better results, and gives your
employees confidence.”
The best learning and development programs – the ones that truly foster agent and customer
centricity – boast some key features.
Engaging lessons: Contact center agents spent well over a decade in the academic classroom,
and they are going to spend their days working hard to address complicated customer issues.
They absolutely do not want training to feel like school – or additional work.
The ideal training platform allows leaders to create lessons that are engaging, media-rich and
accessible across platforms. Agents perceive them as a convenient way to get better rather than
a chore they are forced to endure.
Through a drag-and-drop interface, Lessonly allows leaders (and team
members) to create resonant lessons and courses with attached documents,
images, audio files and videos. The white-label platform allows the
organization to include its own branding.
Easy course development: As the business engages with its customers, it will learn how to better
meet their needs. Upon doing so, it will want to transform these insights into training material.
This process should be quick and seamless. Leaders – and team members – should be able to
easily develop new lessons, courses and associated assignments.
Not simply the best way to adapt to customer demands, easy course development makes sense
from an operational standpoint. Training is supposed to boost productivity; that cannot happen if
supervisors are asked to spend countless hours putting courses together.
Making training better
IN THE
REAL
WORLD

DIGITAL
Lessonly users assign creator access to individuals they deem experts on
specific material. That knowledge is then automated and assigned to the rest
of the team. Instead of getting bogged down creating lessons, the team will be
able to focus on developing – and applying – the new knowledge.
Guidance in the “moment of truth”: Great learning programs do not end once the course is
completed; they empower agents through each and every interaction.
One notable avenue for empowerment involves intra-call assistance. Instead of leaving agents to
blindly navigate company resources (or waste time asking colleagues for answers), the platform
provides guidance through the knowledgebase. It intelligently directs agents toward the information
best-suited for quickly resolving the customer’s issue – and winning the customer’s satisfaction.
“Equipped with the right knowledge, you can quickly and confidently move back to the task at
hand, focused on closing more deals, elevating the customer experience, and doing better work,”
touts Burt.
Call whispering is one way to provide such guidance, but it can be distracting to both the agent and
customer. It is also inefficient, as it requires a second employee to join the call. A more agent-centric,
productive approach involves the use of low-profile technology: a knowledge GPS, if you will.
The Lessonly Chrome extension “recommends the critical information you need
to do better work—when and where you need it.” Supervisors are able to map
learning material to the websites and applications agents use during their
everyday workflow. When users browse these pages, the extension pops up
material relevant to the task at hand. It ensures accuracy, boosts productivity
and maximizes customer satisfaction.
Two-Pronged Performance Management: Agents do not learn at the same rate, but they have the
same pressure to perform. The best learning platforms take this reality into account in two ways.
First, they provide leaders with vivid insight into how well agents are learning. By showing the
extent to which agents are successfully completing their assignments, optimal platforms reveal
gaps in the learning process. They demonstrate which agents may need one-on-one attention
from coaches and which agents may be best-suited to coaching others.
More importantly, they provide leaders with a sense of the correlation between learning and
performance. Lessons may make sense on paper, but they are only valuable if they empower
agents to consistently satisfy customers.
Robust analytics are a focal point of Lessonly. It provides granular and
aggregate insight into “training performance,” vividly revealing which agents
are getting the most and least out of the training. Through CRM integration,
Lessonly also offers an insight into real-world productivity. The organization
is able to measure its “return on learning” in terms of customer satisfaction
and efficiency.
IN THE
REAL
WORLD
IN THE
REAL
WORLD
IN THE
REAL
WORLD

DIGITAL
By allowing organizations to easily create engaging courses, guide agents through key moments
of truth, build team lessons based on winning support strategies, tailor (and automate) knowledge
based on specific contexts, measure the impact of learning material on agent knowledge and
customer-oriented metrics and align training with the existing CRM system, platforms like Lessonly
create the ideal bridge between a learning program and a customer-centric experience.
They yield faster, more productive agent performance, greater consistency of support and,
ultimately, more customer satisfaction.
Not simply theoretical, the aforementioned benefits are readily attainable in practice.
“One of the five biggest companies in the world is a Lessonly customer with thousands of Learners,”
says Burt. “[Its] senior executives are creating Lessons in minutes from airport terminals.”
Several other organizations have also witnessed the agent-centric and customer-centric benefits
of incorporating Lessonly into their learning and development programs.
In Action: Elevated Training Truly Does Elevate
The Customer Experience
Vox Mobile
Challenge:
Since its founding in 2006, Vox Mobile has helped define enterprise mobility. Today, more than
900 companies worldwide depend on Vox Mobile to address every aspect of their mobile
technology planning, management, and support.
Full Contact Center Integration: If great learning material is supposed to make things easier for
agents, it should not be inconvenient to obtain.
It needs to integrate with contact center and CRM software.
Not simply more accessible for agents, integrated learning material also makes for a better
leadership experience. Trainers can assign courses to specific contact center groups, analyze real-
time customer insight to revise course material and assess the impact of training on performance.
In the real world: Lessonly is predicated on integration, and it shows. In addition
to the aforementioned Chrome extension, which empowers agents in moments
of truth, Lessonly integrates with Salesforce. Agents can access training
material from within Salesforce, and trainers can develop material based on
actual customer and agent intelligence.
“With Salesforce + Lessonly, your learning content becomes predictive,” adds
Burt. “Use business-rule automation to trigger helpful step-by-step lessons as
soon as your sales and support reps need them.”
Contact center leaders
identify integration as
the #1 way to drive
productivity; great training
platforms accommodate
that notion.
IN THE
REAL
WORLD

DIGITAL
Birchbox
Challenge:
Birchbox became an overnight hit in 2010, with its shipped-to-your-door boxes of beauty-
product samples. Since then, growth has continued at a breakneck pace, with over 1 million
subscribers worldwide.
With business booming, Birchbox began efforts to expand its remote workforce. This led to an
online training need; in short, Birchbox needed to ensure that employees could stay on top of
the company’s ever-evolving processes and systems.
Leslie is the Senior Discovery Specialist, Training at Birchbox. When she started, her training
role was brand new to the company. She was tasked with ensuring that all new hires were
onboarded quickly, with up-to-date information, all while providing continued education to
more-seasoned team members.
At first, Birchbox’s process-training materials were composed across Google documents. They
were, in Leslie’s words, “out in the ether.” Additional training occurred on-site and “the option to
train remotely,” said Leslie, “seemed like it didn’t even exist.” To overcome this obstacle, Leslie
needed employees to have remote access to organized training materials that she could track.
With more than 10 years experience as a professional trainer, Chris Lewis, Vox Mobile’s Director
of Training and Quality, firmly believes in instructor-based training. “Face-to-Face interactions are
far more engaging, content is better received, and there’s real-time feedback and allowance of
questions with immediate answers,” he says. But the team at Vox Mobile really needed a great
supplement to their classroom-based training.
Before Lessonly, Chris had used other online learning platforms with previous companies—both
as a trainer and learner. “From a student perspective, it was a 40 hour class,” Chris says. “It was
awful. After 45 minutes I was bored. I was reading the same slide multiple times and still not
comprehending it––not because it was complex, but because it was boring. And I clicked through
slides as fast as I could just to finish.” As a trainer, his department used a solution with robust
reporting—and a high price tag. “The downside, though, is that it was expensive.”
Solution Result
Vox Mobile first implemented Lessonly for communicating quick client updates within its technical
support center. Next, it utilized Lessonly as part of every new client training, and then it expanded
Lessonly to other departments and for company updates. Currently, Vox Mobile uses Lessonly for
all five of its operations departments and plans to expand it to its sales/revenue teams.
“Any time we have to take our techs off the phones, it’s a minimum of 30 minutes,” reports Chris.
“By the time everyone gets to the training room, uses the facilities, and gets coffee, even 10
minutes of content gets extended to 30 minutes. Lessonly allows us to disseminate information
that may only take 5 to 10 minutes to a large amount of people at one time, with little-to-no
significant impact to our service levels.”
“Specifically in our environment of the technical support center, taking techs off the floor for an
extended period of time has a direct impact on our service-level agreements,” Chris continues.
“Simply put, if we don’t have our techs on the phones, we can’t help our end users, and that
impacts our bottom line.”
Trainers like Chris report that Lessonly increases efficiency in their learning process by 52%, and 90%
say that our learning automation software makes their training more consistent and better organized.

DIGITAL
Solution Result:
“That’s what I love about Lessonly, you’re able to compartmentalize. I don’t have to track down
literally hundreds of different documents or presentations.”
Lessonly allows Leslie to effectively train remote employees while also tracking department and
learner’s progress. Before Lessonly, Birchbox wasn’t able to track learning retention; there was
an assumption that by merely attending training, each trainee knew what they were doing. Leslie
wasn’t satisfied with this. With the help of Lessonly’s quizzing features, Leslie can now identify
patterns in the learning: “If a whole group misses something, that’s a trigger. It’s like a red flag.”
She said, “It tells me there’s something we need to review.”
“Lessonly makes tracking effortless. Actually, there’s a lot about Lessonly that’s effortless.” In
regards to building out content, Leslie said, “I never thought, ‘I have to sit down to learn this.’ I
just did it. It is so intuitive.”
Today, with Lessonly, Leslie doesn’t have to worry about gathering training materials in Google
Drive and other sources each time a new employee comes on board; instead, she has a plug-
and-play, always fresh database of learning content that tells her when team members need to
be reminded of specifics. On top of that, Lessonly allows Leslie to provide individualized training
programs based on each employee’s learning results.

DIGITAL
Why are customers connecting? What do they want to achieve? What do they hope to avoid?
In today’s era of customer centricity, these questions must be at the center of all customer
experience decisions. If an organization cannot articulate why a particular strategy or
technology will benefit the customer, it has no business undertaking that initiative.
This customer-centric mindset has particular relevance when it comes to channel strategy.
Instead of viewing channels as locations in which customers choose to connect, organizations
need to view them as platforms customers use to achieve objectives.
The mindset will ensure the best possible experience; channels will not be halfheartedly
“offered” for the sake of giving customers options but wholeheartedly leveraged to give
customers a better experience.
Organizations that adopt this philosophy will surely recognize – and want to harness – the
power of messaging.
Far more than a mere communication option, messaging empowers organizations to eliminate
common customer complaints and satisfy key customer demands. Upon doing so, the business
will enjoy considerable rewards.
“A good customer experience provides quick resolutions without customer friction,” explains
Gary Brandt, Founder and CEO of TEN DIGIT Communications. “Success results in productivity
gains for both the business and the customer, and the creation of an advocate for the company,
eventually creating referrals and growth.”
This guide reveals why messaging is uniquely suited to delivering a quick, frictionless
experience. It starts by revealing what causes customer frustration. It then reveals why certain
contact center “worst practices” actually compound that frustration, before sharing eight
reasons why messaging will right the ship.
Sending a Message of Customer
Centricity

DIGITAL
In order to pave the road to success, businesses must be able to identify – and avoid – the issues
that cause failure.
They need a firm understanding of common customer pain points.
By surveying contact center professionals about their most frequent complaints and consumers
about their most important preferences, CCW Digital has identified the greatest sources of
customer frustration.
Wait time: Customers do not like waiting to speak to a live agent. They do not enjoy waiting while
that live agent pulls up information about their account. They do not appreciate waiting on hold
while the agent consults with his or her colleagues. They do not love waiting as the agent figures
out the solution to their problem.
Customers, quite simply, hate waiting. Contact center leaders identify it as the #1 source of
complaints, and consumers identify it as their #1 issue when interacting with a brand.
A business that makes a customer wait is considerably more likely to face that customer’s ire –
and then lose that customer’s business.
Effort: A conceptual cousin of waiting, effort also drives significant customer frustration.
Because products are supposed to “just work” and brand messages are supposed to be “just
obvious,” customers are not supposed to require support.
When they need to contact the business for assistance, customers are already committing undue
effort. A difficult engagement process compounds that effort – and amplifies the frustration. This is
further amplified when the customer is reminded that “their call is important,” yet nobody answers.
Unprepared agents: Reaching an agent should be a reason for customer delight. It should
confirm that the waiting is over – and a resolution is imminent.
Reality can be drastically different.
Overworked, undertrained, unprepared and incented to move through calls as quickly as possible,
agents are often not equipped to deliver the experience customers are demanding. Their language
is curt and impersonal, their knowledge is lacking and their attention is compromised. These agents
leave customers wishing they had another, easier means of attaining their desired outcomes.
The aforementioned pain points carry major consequences; 90% of customers share bad
experiences with friends, family, coworkers and/or social followers, while 62% consider switching
to competitors after just one or two bad customer experiences.
Making matters worse: customer pain points are often the direct consequence of business’ own
decisions. Through misguided strategies and improper technology investments, organizations
that are aiming to satisfy customers end up frustrating and alienating them.
Voice as the centerpiece: No, the phone is not dead. Voice conversations are still ideal for
resolving certain issues and desirable for certain customers. They absolutely have a place in the
modern-day contact center operation.
Customer pain points
“Worst” practices

DIGITAL
Messaging is technically one of many means through which a business and customer may interact.
It is not, however, a mode of communication like any other mode of communication.
Messaging is uniquely suited to the needs of today’s businesses and customers. Not merely a
communication option, messaging is a strategy for elevating your entire contact center operation.
By making messaging a key (if not your primary) contact channel, you will eliminate the
aforementioned “worst practices.” You will remedy the aforementioned customer pain points.
Through a myriad of different mechanisms, you will improve agent performance and grow
customer satisfaction.
A Message of Customer Centricity
That place should not necessarily be at the center of the operation.
Because it is fundamentally inefficient – agents can only assist one customer at a time – the voice
channel limits productivity and increases wait times.
It is also an inherently high-effort channel. Voice conversations require substantial attention,
thus limiting the customer’s ability to multi-task. The “opportunity cost” of a voice interaction is
uniquely high.
Voice calls are not native to the web platforms so often used by today’s customers, which means
contacting support is not a seamless process. This issue even applies to mobile devices; it is
difficult to concurrently use a mobile application and talk on the same mobile phone.
Poor user experiences: The experience a customer receives upon reaching a live agent is important.
The challenges a customer endures while reaching a live agent are also important.
Businesses often neglect the latter reality.
They coach agents to deliver personalized, productive conversations, but they fail to consider
what happens prior to the interaction. They fail to truly assess – and optimize – the user
experience journey.
Slow, difficult, unintuitive IVR platforms can contribute just as significantly to customer frustration as
cold, incompetent agents. Often, the IVR and wait time can collectively be over a minute long before
finding the ‘right selection’ and retracing through the IVR is painful if a customer misses a step.
Disintegrated systems: Misaligned platforms are the #1 bottleneck on productivity and #1 driver
of agent dissatisfaction. Without a window into the rest of the business (let alone each customer’s
individual journey), the agent lacks the insight to perform efficiently and effectively at key
moments of truth.
“Transferring a call [also] requires customers to re-tell stories to the new agent and often results
in dropped connections,” elaborates Brandt. “These dropped connections invariably are lost for
good, forcing the customer to start over from the beginning.”
This burden of repetition drives dissatisfaction.
In today’s omnichannel world, the health of the operation and merit of the customer journey
hinge on the creation of a seamless, unified, consistent experience across all touch points. When
fragments emerge, customer frustration arises.

DIGITAL
Personalization: Because text messages are tied to a customer’s phone number, messaging
allows for a unique degree of mass-personalization. Contact center systems and agents can
identify the customer upon contact, thus leading to a quicker, more customized, more effective
support experience.
TEN DIGIT Communications’ platform ensures low-touch is not a synonym for
impersonal. It may be as efficient as any text-based channel, but messaging is
also highly specific to customers and their issues.
Conversation-oriented, yet versatile: Text-based channels like e-mail and Twitter fail to replicate
the value and accountability of a live conversation. Customers cannot determine if and when their
inquiries reached a live agent capable of helping.
Messaging, on the other hand, is conversational in nature. There is an expectation of instant,
back-and-forth responses.
Customers therefore receive a “best of both worlds” scenario. They receive the convenience,
comfort and discretion of a mobile, text-based channel with the urgency, accountability and
directness of a voice phone call or live chat conversation.
TEN DIGIT knows that preference for messaging is not tantamount to disinterest
in urgency, accountability and human connection. It simply makes it easy
for businesses to efficiently deliver the type of experience customers want –
exactly where they want it.
Channel-neutral: Due to current user preferences and adoption rates, it may make sense to
conflate “messaging” with SMS texting. SMS, more often than not, is how customers will message.
“Messaging” is not, however, restricted to the SMS channel. (although SMS, because of its telephony
ties, certainly has some distinct advantages including, but not limited to, delivery receipts)
It is channel-neutral, and its same benefits can be applied to other text-oriented channels. This
unique versatility ensures the business can adapt to changes in customer behavior without
needing to dramatically overhaul its systems or completely re-train its staff.
Channel neutrality also presents another benefit: smoother escalations. Neither the customer –
nor the customer’s history – is locked to the messaging channel, which means the customer can
move to a new channel (or pause and return to the same channel) without needing to restate key
information.
TEN DIGIT makes messaging its #1 priority. It is built with SMS in mind, but it
can conceivably apply to channels like Facebook Messenger and Twitter DM
should those prove relevant for certain businesses and customers.
Efficient for agents, effective for customers: Messaging lends itself to multi-tasking. Whereas a
voice agent can only speak to one customer or colleague at a time, a messaging representative
can interact with multiple customers all while seamlessly receiving guidance from the
knowledgebase or fellow employees.
Messaging drives efficiency in the contact center. By doing so, it elevates customer satisfaction.
Increases in productivity yield decreases in wait times and resolution speed. It takes less effort –
and less time – for customers to get help.
IN THE
REAL
WORLD
IN THE
REAL
WORLD
IN THE
REAL
WORLD

DIGITAL
TEN DIGIT is a rare solution that is both good for the business and good for
the business. It yields efficiency increases not for the sake of blindly trimming
contact center costs but for the sake of making agents more productive, which
in turn makes them better-equipped to serve customers. It also brings the
conversation into a convenient channel. By interfacing with automations and
CRM databases and feeding this information to agents, TEN DIGIT enhances
the “Natural Intelligence” of the agent.
Native to their lives: In a recent CCW Digital survey, customer management professionals
identified “the effortless experience” as the number one trend.
Messaging is built for an effortless world. In addition to being a fundamentally easy, convenient
way to converse, messaging is native to customers’ lives. It is how customers generally
communicate – and the required device is almost always in their hands or pockets.
Messaging thus epitomizes the notion of engaging on the customer’s terms. It epitomizes the
notion of customer centricity.
TEN DIGIT makes it easy to “be where your customers are.” It integrates with
major existing contact center platforms, thus adding capability – and customer
centricity – without requiring overhaul. It is a low-effort way to reduce customer
effort.
Contextually appropriate: Messaging offers tremendous convenience and efficiency benefits, but
it is not merely a “convenience play.” It is not merely an “acceptable” alternative to a live voice
conversation.
In some cases, it is the most appropriate – and most logical – way for customers and businesses
to communicate.
Messaging, as an example, is particularly valuable in a medical context. Customers may be
uncomfortable describing their symptoms over the phone or in person.
Messaging removes this element of discomfort. It ensures customers will not have to choose
between their health and their pride.
There are many other scenarios, including nearly all forms of “proactive engagement,” in which
messaging is well-suited.
TEN DIGIT does not simply add a communication option to your contact center
mix; it ensures you are offering the best possible channel for a certain array of
issues.
Proactive opportunity: Customers value proactivity. According to the CCW Digital consumer
preferences survey, a whopping 25% would pay extra for proactive engagement.
Messaging makes proactive alerts easy for businesses and convenient for customers. It
provides organizations with a low-impact, convenient way of communicating outbound messages.
Customers receive the information they need where they like to get it.
IN THE
REAL
WORLD
IN THE
REAL
WORLD
IN THE
REAL
WORLD

DIGITAL
Aligned with what today’s businesses and customers are demanding, messaging carries immense
promise. The previous section identifies eight benefits – all of which can dramatically elevate the
contact center operation.
Does messaging live up to the hype?
Numerous TEN DIGIT customers would answer that question with a resounding “yes.”
These customers, three of which are highlighted below, have enjoyed increases in contact
center efficiency and customer satisfaction. They credit messaging with improving the agent and
customer experiences, and they have the results to support their belief.
Big Promises, Real Results
In the real world: TEN DIGIT opens a line of convenient, effortless communication
between the company and customer. It allows the company to communicate
information – offers, alerts about system outages or even notes about a specific
customer service issue – without adding to its payroll or annoying customers.
Ready for omnichannel: Not simply a valuable mode of communication in its own right, messaging
fits nicely into an omnichannel operation.
By enabling agents to quickly and conveniently handle transactional matters, it ensures voice
representatives can devote considerably more time and energy to complex, unique customer
service issues.
It also allows for seamless integration with other channels. Messaging conversations can be
shifted to other media – including voice – as needed.
In the real world: TEN DIGIT’s helps organizations deliver a legitimately
personal experience. It increases efficiency, which ensures greater staff
availability when and where it is needed. TEN DIGIT messaging data is also
accessible to agents in all platforms, which means customers can seamlessly
escalate to a new channel (and even talk to the same agent).
Tier 1 Telecom Carrier
Goal:
Reduce contact center costs
Solution Result
After developing a proof of concept, TEN DIGIT
deployed its solution across ten sites. In addition
to achieving the immediate goal of reducing costs,
messaging also drove an increase in customer
satisfaction.
“When customers start
conversations over text
messaging, they or their
agent can ask to continue
the conversation over voice.
Unlike traditional chat
solutions, the customer is
not tied to the browser.”
“The history of the text
conversation is available
to all involved,” adds
Brandt. “As the customer is
transferred between agents,
the history is transferred
with them, so the customer
doesn’t repeat themselves.
Dropped connections
are easily re-established
using messaging as the
coordination.
IN THE
REAL
WORLD
IN THE
REAL
WORLD

DIGITAL
Healthcare
Goal:
Improve patient engagement
Bullying and abuse hotlines
Goal:
Allow customers to discreetly
report abusive behavior
Solution Result
The provider used messaging to communicate with
customers after discharge from the hospital. Patient
engagement rates increased, and re-admittance
rates declined.
Solution Result
Text messaging campaigns allowed customers to
more privately and comfortably share information
about abuse without retribution. Constitutes
reported positive feedback to the messaging option.

DIGITAL
These days, our interconnectivity has opened up endless avenues for people to send and
receive information. This new digital landscape has given rise to a new level of transparency in
business where customers can develop opinions about a product or even an entire company
without ever having to set foot in a store.
A newfound customer sentience has been ushered along by rapid advances in technology
in recent years; now, 40 percent of consumers have multiple digital touch points and devices
where they can access information at any time and from any place. This means that businesses
are being tasked with creating a unique shopping experience beyond their storefront—it is now
imperative for businesses to extend their offerings across multiple electronic platforms.
All of the parts have to be there. Whether it’s your website, app, advertising, or customer service,
every piece of the puzzle is now thought of as one streamlined experience. This paradigm of
business has become known as the unified customer experience: being able to provide your
customer with catered messaging and communication for your products and services.
In theory, it is now easier than ever for a business to get the word out about itself. On the outset,
it may seem simple to do. However, as a result of the many channels there are to navigate,
marketing and customer retention have also become vastly more complicated and strategic to
execute.
To hope to remain relevant in today’s market, nearly every company and business needs to
begin thinking in the realm of the unified customer experience. The aim of this e-book is to help
you understand the unified customer experience—what it is, what you need to begin, and how
to properly execute the strategy.
Unified Customer Experience:
How To Connect Convert

DIGITAL
What is the Unified Customer Experience?
The Right Leadership
Welcome to the age of the connected customer. Thanks to all of our computers, tablets, and
smartphones, your buyers now have their eyes and ears fixated on every aspect of your business.
They are no longer limited to singular channels; a connected customer interacts with your brand
across many channels—in your store, online, and on the go.
That means that businesses are charged with creating a connected experience that is uniform
across all of those channels of contact. And this doesn’t mean creating a one-for-all marketing
strategy that blankets over the entirety of your target audience; it means exacting relevant content
at the right time for each and every person that interacts with your business. As stated before, this
process has become known as the unified customer experience, and it is an integral part of the
staying power of businesses today. The idea is simple in concept, but it can be tricky to execute.
This is why many in the marketing industry have come to refer to the process of the unified
customer experience as a unicorn.
Business owners often pose the question, “Is the adoption of this strategy right for my business?”
If you are selling a product or a service, there is no question—you absolutely should be
implementing a unified customer experience. Even those who aren’t selling a traditional product
or service—such as universities and hospitals—should look at adopting this concept. Having
a website simply isn’t enough anymore; it is just one part of a grander scheme in order to get
people to convert to your service.
Why is it important?
With 70 percent of B2B buyers’ journeys happening with no human interaction whatsoever,
it’s critical that you be able to help your prospects and customers make influenced decisions.
Technology has created a new data field that empowers both the customer and the business to
take advantage of this. Being able to capitalize on this phenomenon is paramount to success—
by the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand
differentiator. Before this transition can take place, however, you need to have a keen grasp on
where you already stand in the process.
Most businesses today exist in at least one digital form or another. They provide a unique
customer experience for that one form, but most fail to interweave a complete experience to all
points of access. And with customers having access to multiple channels of interaction, this single-
channel mindset is no longer viable, so the burden falls onto businesses to adapt to the situation.
Ideally, you want to be in a situation where a prospect or customer can jump from channel to
channel, with unique pieces of relevant content and information appear to them as they do, thus
feeding their business further down the sales funnel.
The difference between where you are today and where you want to be is known as your gap.
Only under a leader with proper insight can you hope to bridge the gap to reach that end goal.
This cross-functional person will be more likely to build a team of other like-minded, cross-
functional people. Having a culture of adaptation and progressiveness will be the ultimate factor
of building a clairvoyant plan, executing it, and perhaps phasing it out if not fruitful.
Once your team has been defined, there are six key components to implementing a unified
customer experience: strategy, governance, technology, business process, analytics, and
refinement and management.
70% of B2B buyers’
journeys happen
with no human
interaction
whatsoeverissue
went wrong in
the past

DIGITAL
Strategy
Discovery Phase—Depending on the size of your business, it might be wise to begin with a
discovery project before you even start to lay out a course of action. This involves working
with business leaders to lay out any resource constrictions you may have, and then conversely
defining the requirements of the project.
The First Steps—Once the project has been defined, you can now start to devise a course of
action for implementation. Almost any success in business can be drawn back to an effective
plan that considers both present obstacles and aspirations as well as future complications and
adaptations to those problems. It is important to draw out the roles and responsibilities of every
key player in the project and know that you are putting the company first and not just individual
business functions. Focusing on interdepartmental KPIs is crucial to showing the “little victories”
and overall value to the endeavor.
Segmentation/Buyer Personas—Knowing your target audience and who you are trying to sell to
is perhaps the most vital component to your success. Creating profiles or buyer personas of your
ideal customer will help you develop relevant messaging to increase your chance of conversion.
Each persona you create will have a “hot button” that you will want to address in your messaging.
Content/Value Pieces—If buyer personas are the engine that will drive you to your end goal, the
content you create is the fuel that powers the process. Content takes many forms— whether it be
video, blogs, or white papers, the content is the primary source of information for your prospects
and customers.
It is highly recommended that you first adopt a content workflow process. The content is the
lifeblood to nurturing the needs of your customers, and creating a workflow gives you the ability
to edit, promote, and polish content across multiple platforms from a single, centralized place.
The good news is that if you are already using a single-platform CMS, you more than likely can
continue to use that process.
Governance
As stated above, the shift to a multi-channel marketing plan can be challenging from a cultural
standpoint; you must build a team that is unified in vision, passion, and goals. Additionally, it
also takes time and money to break through that innovation barrier. However, when it all
comes down to it, success ultimately falls on your culture. To quote the late Steve Jobs,
“Innovation has nothing to do with how many RD dollars you have. When Apple came up
with the MAC, IBM was spending at least one hundred times more money on RD. It’s not
about the money. It’s about the people you have, how you are led and how much you ‘get it.’”
Farcer says only 23 percent of B2B marketers today claim to have implemented a unified
customer experience. Instead, most marketers are still focused on a single channel, product, or
organizational structure. For those already jumping on the train, the lines between roles such as
marketing and IT have been blurred in the wake of the unified customer experience. As a leader,
it is important to embrace this change and look at your business from a cross-functional mindset;
when customer data lives in silos, it can negatively affect a department’s ability to hit KPIs and
business objectives.
Only 23% of B2B
marketers today
claim to have
implemented a
unified customer
experience

DIGITAL
Technology
Technology is the force that is driving the unified customer experience concept. As a result, there
have been a few backend technologies that help create, automate, and make sense of your
journey.
SEO—Search engine optimization is the ability to attract the right customers (buyer personas)
through the use of effective keywords and phrases. Whenever someone searches for something
on a search engine, he or she will enter a series of words to pinpoint exactly what they are
looking for. It is in your best interest to optimize your content to include these hot phrases so your
business is seen first. For many, it’s the foundation into which all applications plug.
Marketing Automation—Marketing automation is an essential tool because it automates many of
the marketing actions, such as sending triggered e-mail that nurtures prospects and customers.
On average, it takes between seven and nine interactions to convert someone into a lead. That’s
a lot of work for someone to do when done manually.
E-Commerce—Internet-based stores are nothing new, but they are an integral part of the unified
customer experience and customer conversion. E-Commerce solutions may not apply to every
business, but it does help drive the customer to take some sort of action.
Analytics—You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you can’t know if you’re successful if
success isn’t defined. An analytics solution will help you make sense of your data and numbers.
Social Media Management—Implementing a plan for managing your social media will be
important to sussing out prospective business. It’s also a great strategy for “keeping your ear
to the ground” to analyze what people are saying about your industry, company, and brand.
Furthermore, social media gives you a platform to interact with your customer to drive sales or to
ensure retention. The latter is important here—customers expect their complaints to be addressed
quickly via social media, so it is in your best interest to maintain a social media structure that
meets those expectations.
Business Process
Once you have developed your plan of attack and identified the technology that will be key in
your implementation, you’ll want to begin cementing some business processes. That is, you want
processes that define an activity or set of activities that will accomplish a specific, organizational
goal. Here are some examples of business processes you should consider.
Deep Integration—Today, all of your various technologies are capable of communicating with one
another. It’s a must to recognize that and use this capability to your advantage. By interconnecting
all of your technology, information can be monitored and sent across departments in real time to
drive informed decision-making.

DIGITAL
Cross-Channel Personalization—This goes back to market automation technology and ties back
into the importance of deep integration. You want to be able to build real-time experiences for
each individual viewer and persona, but to do this manually would take a massive amount of time
and resources. Deep integration combined with automation will ensure your customers, brand
advocates, and even your partners have positive experiences with each interaction.
Analytics: Behavioral vs. Prescriptive
When measuring success, data is king. It helps you understand what you are doing right and,
perhaps more importantly, what you’re not doing right. It is the quantifiable measurement of your
business. Understanding how to make sense of it all is imperative to the longevity of your plan
implementation.
In business, you want to be in a place of reaction. Due to its complicated nature, behavioral
analysis doesn’t lend itself to a position of reactiveness. Unlike its counterpart, prescriptive
analysis leaves no room for interpretation.
It’s not enough to show off how many website views you are getting or how much time your
customers are spending on your platforms. It’s about how quickly you can draw conclusions
that help you manipulate your audience. You can measure things like quote requests, product
purchases, or key asset downloads.
Management and Refinement
The last component of the implementation of a unified customer experience is your ability to
adapt and adjust the various moving parts of your plan. There is an ongoing process—it is critical
that you continue to test and refine in order to improve your results.
A/B Testing—One way to test and improve is through A/B testing (or split testing). When it comes
to determining landing pages and what messaging converts more prospects into customers, this
really is an effective strategy. It’s good to be in a position where you’re making objective
decisions as opposed to what you think might be working.
Content—You must also analyze the reception of your content and make changes where
necessary. The best way to do this is to look at page views, social shares, and reach of various
content topics. Essentially, when you’re able to attribute success at the topic level, you
continuously maximize engagement level through the creation of compelling content pieces.

CCW Executive Report: Customer Experience

CCW Executive Report: Customer Experience

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