The Shortlist

Is chat better than phone for customer service? - by “Crack the Customer Code”

Crack the Customer Code is hosted by Adam and Jeannie, who have been in the customer experience industry for over 15 years. In their podcast channel, they discuss some of the best and worst customer experience practices and interview Fortune 500 CEOs and prominent entrepreneurs.

This episode from ‘Crack the Customer Code’ draws a comparison between the two support mediums — voice and text, each with its own pros and cons. Chat is fast picking up as the most preferred medium for getting support simply because chat has now become the medium of everyday communication, also with chat customers feel in control and it offers convenience.  People have also gone through many not so great experiences with the phone. However phone is a richer channel and more complex problems can be solved on phone. So is it a matter of execution? Does the question of better channel depend on the context? Explore the trends in customer experience in this short episode and see what it has in store for the future.

Essence of this podcast :

• Which is the better medium for customers?

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of both text and voice?

• What does the future look like for these channels?

What is the road to customer loyalty? - by “Call Talk”

If you work in the call centre industry, then this podcast is for you. Call Talk is a resource to improve your call centre performance - it features episodes on various topics from agent training and empowerment to building a customer-focused culture in your call centre. Each episode features a special guest with expertise in the field of customer service.

For this particular episode, the hosts interview Bob Kobek, the President of Mobius Vendors Partners. He is also a board member of Professional Association for Customer Engagement (PACE). Bob is also a regular speaker at various marketing, hospitality, and telephone compliance events. In 2009, he founded Customer Count, an online customer feedback system with real time reporting and dynamic data collection. It is also the only system specifically designed for the leisure travel industry.

In this episode he shares his opinions on call center feedback technology such as CSAT, NPS, and CES. He also talks about the recent rise of social media and the importance of leveraging AI to measure customer sentiments.

Essence of this podcast :

• Understand call center feedback technology

• Measure customer sentiment

• How customer experience translates to customer loyalty

Why customer experience programs fail -  by “The Intuitive Customer”

“The Intuitive Customer” is hosted by Colin Shaw, a leading expert on customer experience, and Ryan Hamilton, an award winning professor of consumer psychology at Emory University. Their podcast focuses on the often overlooked psychological aspects of consumers such as: how do you understand the spending pattern of customers? What are the rules customers make for themselves that influence their buying behaviors? How can you understand and evoke consumer emotions?

Having implemented hundreds of successful customer experience programs, in this particular episode, they examine the reasons why most customer experience programs fail. They discuss common issues plaguing customer experience programs such as senior executives making unsupported assumptions about the structure of an ideal program and the lack of research on the subconscious and psychological experience of customer, amongst others.

If you are looking to enhance your customer experience, consider listening to this podcast as it will equip you with the knowledge you require before implementing such a program.

There are a number of other interesting episodes in their channel that reveal the mental workings of a consumer. A thorough understanding of the subconscious and emotional aspects of the customer will help you sell to and serve your customers better.

Essence of this podcast :

• Understand the psychological drivers of customers

• Step into the customer’s shoes

• What can go wrong while implementing customer experience programs

Get your call centre out of the basement! - by “Frank Reactions”

Frank Reactions is a podcast channel hosted by Tema Frank who has been working with organizations to help  market themselves better since the 1990s. Her podcast focuses on helping businesses better their customer experience. For this episode, she brings on board Blake Morgan, a customer experience futurist who has worked with companies such as Ericsson, Verizon, and Accenture. In this podcast, they discuss the importance of a call center and what businesses should be doing to make them more effective. With inspiring examples from Zappos and Amazon, they explore the importance, challenges, and future of phone support in this episode.

Essence of this podcast :

• Why call centres are information centres?

• What are some mistakes large organizations make and how to avoid them?

• How to hire the best agents?

• Management challenges at such organizations

“More is More - How the Best Companies Go Farther and Work Harder to Create Knock-Your-Socks-Off Customer Experiences” by Blake Morgan

This book is written by the same guest as in the previous podcast suggestion. In this book, Blake Morgan breaks down complex topics such as AI and Machine learning and their relevance to the customer experience industry.

This book is for those looking to stay relevant in a dynamically shifting landscape. It is replete with case studies from companies such as Snapchat, Facebook, and Airbnb and what they are doing to provide a ‘knock your socks off’ customer experience. The main acronym in the book is ‘D.O.M.O.R.E’  and each letter stands for a particular principle. For example, for a company that stands by the ‘D.O.M.O.R.E’ principle, D stands for ‘ Designs something Special’, O stands for ‘Offers a strong employee experience’ and so on.

Why should you read this book?

• Cultivate a forward thinking approach with regard to customer needs

• Understand the shift in customer technologies

• Stay relevant and ahead of the curve through changing times

• Know what works from case studies and real life examples

“Would You Do That to Your Mother?” by Jeanne Bliss

With this provocative and thought provoking question, Jeanne Bliss grabs the reader’s attention. For example, would you ask your mother for her card details three times in the same call? However, this is what we see happening regularly when it comes to banks or credit card providers. By asking us if we’d treat our mom the same way we treat our customers, Jeanne Bliss adds a very human and personal element to the subject because it can be easy to forget the faces when we are busy looking at the numbers.

Each chapter is titled after a piece of advice our moms would have given us at one point or another — such as “be the person I raised you to be” and “put others before yourself.” Bliss draws from our childhood lessons and shows how we can apply them to business — for example, she shows how by acting with fairness, Virgin Hotels became number one in Chicago within just a year after its opening.

Business books can be dry and filled with jargon but with this one, Jeanne keeps it jargon-free, simple, and incredibly relatable. With empathy at its heart, this should be your go-to book if you are focused on building a great customer focused culture in your organization.

Why should you read this book?

• Learn to equip agents with empathy

• Take inspiration from the best through numerous case studies

• Defeat bias and understand what your customers really need

• Evaluate your current behaviours and truly transform culture