Do consumers prefer text-activated or voice-activated chatbots?

Do consumers prefer text-activated or voice-activated chatbots?

When we talk about ‘chatbots’, we often conflate two different things: text-activated and voice-activated bots. It sounds trite to point out that they are, in fact, very different! Indeed, it’s rare to find a bot that can be activated by text and voice. So, given the...

What the latest Contact Centre Standard BS EN ISO 18295 tells you

What the latest Contact Centre Standard BS EN ISO 18295 tells you

Customer contact centres (CCCs) have an important role in the interaction between organizations and their customers. They vary in their levels of service quality and consumer protection, and work to many different levels of efficiency. BS EN ISO 18295-1 Customer...

Understanding data and statistics: six pieces of guidance

Understanding data and statistics: six pieces of guidance

For those who are loyal listeners to Tim Harford’s More or Less programme on Radio 4, Professor David Spiegelhalter will be a familiar name. He is often interviewed to help listeners make sense of controversial or contradictory statistical results. In a similar field,...

Why is customer service more popular than ever?

Why is customer service more popular than ever?

The promise of digital transformation was automation, simplification and reduced demand failure. Implicitly, and often explicitly, there has been a related prize for organisations providing products and services – that of less need for expensive, people resourced,...

Why are we witnessing the ‘averagisation’ of customer service?

Why are we witnessing the ‘averagisation’ of customer service?

Originally published in MyCustomer Consumer perceptions of customer service offered by most businesses across most sectors are broadly similar and middling – in other words, undifferentiated. Why is this? And what does it mean for your company? Big businesses have...

Strategies for researching CX opportunities in 2019

Strategies for researching CX opportunities in 2019

We live in exceptionally unstable times. To succeed, businesses need to invest in understanding and meeting their current customers’ future needs as well as finding cost-effective ways to attract new customers. As consumers, we pay for organisations’ products and services – our spending is their sales and revenue …

How can housing associations best use Smart home technology?

How can housing associations best use Smart home technology?

Smart home technology is a whole range of products that are changing the way we interact with our home and enable us to control factors like heating and lighting to even the functioning of doors. Coupled with the Internet of Things it includes sensors to monitor...

Customers’ complaints – when there’s an IT fiasco

Customers’ complaints – when there’s an IT fiasco

There have been days of disruption to TSB’s services after a planned migration to a new IT system went wrong. The new system was unable to handle the volume of users, and many customers were unable to check their accounts or monitor payments. The incident follows...

The central role of market research in proposition development

The central role of market research in proposition development

Market research is crucial for the success of developing new propositions. Findings from market research can drive proposition development at several stages of the process. At the earliest stage, research findings can be used to design the product or service...

Why market research is essential for understanding customers

Why market research is essential for understanding customers

The airline steward requested all phones should be switched off. It was this routine request, heard many times before, that alerted my travelling colleague to a problem. Suddenly, he had the unpleasant realisation he’d left his iPhone X in a duty-free shop back in the...

Is it time for outsourcers to reveal their statistics?

Is it time for outsourcers to reveal their statistics?

Most industry sectors have digital disruption at the top of their agendas. Whilst the outsourcing industry has much to offer in terms of Digital services it currently has other priorities. “In the wake of the collapse of the contractor Carillion, it is time to put an...

Personal finance dashboards: What could be better?

Personal finance dashboards: What could be better?

How should financial providers design online sites and Apps to best inform and educate their customers about their personal finances? The growing use of personal finance dashboards to visualise data and the launch of Open Banking in 2018 could be the catalysts to...