Featured Friday Articles: Week of October 29, 2018

By The Editors | Date Published: November 01, 2018 - Last Updated December 10, 2018 | Comments

There's never been a more exciting time to work in customer service, but delivering exceptional customer experiences requires continual learning. At ICMI, we're committed to equipping you with the tools, resources, and knowledge you need to lead your team to success. In this weekly article roundup series, we'll highlight five articles you should read to keep your skills sharp and stay ahead of the trends.

#FridayFive Featured Reading for the Week of October 29, 2018

1. Don't Let This Employee Phenomenon Undo Your Positive Customer Service Culture by Micah Solomon

Featured Customer Experience Articles

Most contact center employees genuinely want to help customers. But what happens when one or two team members start to spread negativity? How can you prevent toxic employees from harming your culture and your customer experience? In this Forbes article, Micah Solomon shares advice on hiring for culture fit, enforcing and upholding that culture, and driving change when you need to.

2. 5 Tips to Go from Scary to Scary Good Customer Service by Jeremy Watkin

We've all been on the receiving end of bad customer service. The good news? Mistakes fuel learning opportunities. In this blog post, Jeremy Watkin shares five examples of poor customer service, along with tips that can prevent similar instances from occurring.

3. Bill Gessert: The skills sets to be a leader are completely different by Jim Rembach

While this is technically not an article, we wanted to shine a spotlight on this Podcast interview with the late Bill Gessert. Bill was scheduled to speak at ICMI Contact Center Demo but sadly passed away unexpectedly last month. He was a beloved member of the customer experience community and a wealth of insight. Please help us share this interview in his memory.

4. Customer Conversations Guide: 10 Questions You Should Add to Your Script by Andy Hanselman

Conversations with customers can strengthen brand loyalty and lead to better experiences. But are you making the most of those conversations? In this post by Andy Hanselman, you'll learn how to ask more profound questions and glean the insight to enable service improvements.

5. Quality and effort by Seth Godin

At first glance, this might not seem like a post about customer service. But how much of what we do in the contact center is reactionary rather than anticipatory? How often do we cringe when we make a mistake and vow never to make it again? Might that be the wrong approach? This short post by Seth Godin is worth the read.

We are all striving to be better. Whether it’s being better people, better leaders, or better organizations, improvement and advancement is at the heart of our daily intentions. For the contact center, this mission of constant improvement is fundamental to every interaction. We need to meet the expectations of our customers in ways that improve their satisfaction and brand loyalty. We need to improve employee engagement as we build their skills, knowledge, and experience in ways that grow their own loyalty and improve retention. We need to improve our organization’s operational efficiencies in ways that drive revenue and improve the bottom line.

No one understands the contact center’s focus on improvement like ICMI does. We champion contact centers and their people, and our mission is to make both better every day. Through training, consulting, content and events, we unite the community and empower contact centers to serve their customers better, engage their employees more, and improve the customer experience.

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