LiveOps Blog
UK Borough Engages with Residents in the Cloud
Sarah Barrow, Head of Customer Services & Administration, Wokingham Borough Council
As head of customer services & administration at Wokingham Borough Council in the UK, I’m responsible for ensuring the 160,000 residents, as well as businesses, of Wokingham Borough are well-connected to the Council. This is not just done via phone or in-person meetings anymore. Communication has modernised with the shifting culture, so we’re finding more of our customers now prefer to use email, mobile devices and social media. So we’ve been mirroring their preferred forms of communication with the cloud-based LiveOps Platform, which I recently spoke about at the IQPC Call Centre Europe conference in London.
Communicating with such a diverse customer base is always a challenge. Modern communication methods dictate much faster response times and with resource pressures from Government, we had to find a solution that improved the organisation and efficiency of our responses. LiveOps gave us the ability to manage all types of customer contact in a holistic way. The LiveOps Platform enables the Council to monitor and respond to residents’ comments and questions in real time via email, SMS, web chat, and social media. Utilising cloud technology in our contact centre facilitates and encourages home and flexible working, saving 50 percent in office space, increasing productivity and decreasing sickness and absenteeism. The way in which we have engaged with our residents using Twitter during a recent major change to their council services has had a very positive impact on public perception.
By working with LiveOps, Wokingham Borough Council has reduced costs and administration, shrunk its environmental foot print, increased the quality of communication with our residents and has been recognized nationally for outstanding customer service communications. By enabling real time interactions with our residents, we are making people’s daily lives better — a powerful and wonderful outcome of moving to the cloud.
Sarah Barrow
Head of Customer Services & Administration
Wokingham Borough Council
Is Your Contact Center Keeping Up with the Shifting Social Media Landscape?
Eric Salas, Director, Product Marketing
Earlier today, Facebook announced their $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, and last week Pinterest skyrocketed to become the third-largest social network behind Facebook and Twitter. When you consider how quickly the social media landscape can shift, you also have to wonder how companies can keep up with all the new and different ways customers want to interact with their brands–not to mention the sheer volume of interactions that could potentially be generated by them. Are customers going to be “pinning” a photo to initiate a service request any time soon? Perhaps they already are in some cases. But no matter what the latest trend might be, it’s clear that companies have to be better prepared to engage with customers wherever they choose to be.
One of the reasons to choose a cloud-based, multichannel technology platform in your contact center is to ensure that you are better prepared for the ever-shifting social landscape. At LiveOps, we’re seeing more companies utilize our cloud contact center platform to enable their contact centers to engage more effectively with customers in social media, and work more closely with their marketing teams to deliver a better customer experience in social channels. And, by leveraging a social-enabled cloud platform, enterprises can deliver customer service more quickly in new channels. Look for another post in a few weeks from Keith McFarlane, Chief Architect, that will go into more detail about how LiveOps cloud contact center technology can help you meet the challenges of the new social media landscape.
In the meantime, here are a few more “must-reads” from the past week on social customer service:
Pinterest Is Now the Third Most Popular Social Network in the U.S. …
socialtimes.com4/6/12
Marketing wants to own ‘Social Engagement?’ Think again.
blogs.gartner.com4/9/12
20 Tips on How to Deliver an Amazing Customer Service Experience
thesocialcustomer.com4/4/12
Not All Fun and Games: One Call Center’s … – Social Media Today
socialmediatoday.com4/4/12
Clearing Up the Customer Service/Customer Experience Confusion …
www.1to1media.com4/6/12
Some Thought-Starters on Social Customer Service
Eric Salas, Director, Product Marketing
Just last Thursday, we were at the Cloudforce event in San Francisco listening to Marc Benioff ask an audience of 17,000 people, “how does your enterprise bridge the social divide?” Well, the week has definitely flown by very quickly, but here at LiveOps we continue to have conversations around this topic. We are passionate about learning more and sharing ideas to help companies become social enterprises. More specifically, how can we help guide companies as they look for ways to bridge their contact center to their customers via social and mobile channels?
Below are some recent articles and blog posts I came across this past week that you might find useful on the topic of social customer service. I’ll be back soon to share some more!
Eric Salas
Director, Product Marketing
10 reasons why customer service has failed to wake up to social …
econsultancy.com3/14/12
Stop Making Mistakes with “Social Media Mistakes” by Brian Cantor
www.customermanagementiq.com3/12/12
The State of Social Customer Service [Infographic] | Our Social Times
oursocialtimes.com3/16/12
It’s a Brave, New, Social World
blogs.gartner.com3/8/12
Raising the At-Home Service Standard (For Best Results, Add Cloud Technology)
Sanjay Mathur, VP of Product Management
In a recent article in 1to1 Magazine, “Setting the At-Home Service Standard,” author Mila D’Antonio cites the higher overall quality of home agents as the critical reason why companies today are delivering better customer experiences as they transition customer service to a home-based workforce. But the real question is: Will better talent alone (aka better skilled agents)lead to the best results?
Let’s face it, talent is just the beginning. It’s having fuel without an engine. Sure, it’s why many companies are discovering the advantages of an at-home workforce. In reality the engine behind at-home success is the combination of cloud-based technology with cloud-based talent that is producing even better performance—the cloud is the difference to achieving better results faster and more consistently.
Moving to cloud-based technology means rethinking how you’re working with talent, in addition to identifying and sourcing talent. (I’ll save identifying, sourcing, and profiling for another blog.) Simply implementing the same traditional, on-premise approaches and tools doesn’t work when you’re striving to get the best out of a cloud workforce. Cloud-based talent requires new tools and new ways of managingremote workers to inspire performancethat is superior to an on-premise environment.
Take collaboration, for example. Home agents are already adept with online chat and forums to stay connected and access information. But there are times when real-time voice and face-to-face interactions can have a huge impact on the ability to more effectively communicate complex issues or deliver critical feedback. Just look at the recent launch of group video chat via Skype on Facebook or the new Google+ “Hangouts” feature, and you can see how similar technology could be implemented to take collaboration to a whole new level in the cloud-based work environment. We are at the forefront of a consumer-inspired, collaboration technologies boom that will change how we work. Smart cloud application developers are positioning themselves now to take full advantage of this opportunity to enable the workforce to perform better, faster, and more consistently.
And let’s not forget how cloud-based applications can transform how agents assess and improve their own individual performance. At-home workers require greater connectedness and more visibility into how they are performing against their peers, and this concept of “reputation” can lead to new and powerful motivation tools and techniques. The use of gamification feeds into human nature to compete on the basis of performance and then be rewarded for doing well and
reaching new heights. Those agents who compete well in the “games” that defines their work also provide a higher standard of service. Trust me, I’ve seen the proof.
The shift to higher quality home agents is well under way. With this shift is a new standard of excellence for customer service. If you haven’t moved to the cloud yet, what’s going to help you keep up with the new standard of customer service excellence?
Blooming Mother’s Day Performance by LiveOps Sprouts New Business Opportunities
Tim Whipple, VP Agent Services
Flowers and Mother’s Day go hand-in-hand. But celebrating so many moms on a single day can create an overwhelming spike in demand for a flower company. So when one of the largest online flower retailers came to LiveOps again this year to handle calls for the flower-heavy holiday, we understood the challenge.
In addition to the huge call volume that comes in every year, the other thing we can count on is that our community of independent agents loves this opportunity and can’t wait to start taking calls for the occasion. As we have done previously, we created a special community of agents focused on this specific retailer. (more…)
Five questions to ask when choosing a cloud-based contact center
Jeremy King, EVP of Technology and Products
“Truly tested” is a phrase I don’t throw around lightly. But LiveOps’ decade of experience in managing a cloud-based workforce amounts to a virtual lifetime in our increasingly digital world, making LiveOps’ platform one of the only “truly tested” cloud-based contact centers in the industry.
Sifting through the moving parts of a contact center can be daunting but we’ve weathered enough storms at LiveOps to know what to look for. In an industry where needs change quickly, experience matters.
Here are five key questions to ask when deciding to migrate to a cloud contact center provider. (more…)
Solving the Dilbert Paradox: Be the CEO of Your Domain
Tim Whipple, VP Agent Services, "The Mayor"
Recently I was invited to the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program Roundtable on Talent Development, where the theme was Solving the Dilbert Paradox. The paradox, in a nutshell, is that while managers claim that their highest priority is the selection, retention and satisfaction of high-quality employees, many of the most talented contributors feel under-appreciated and under-utilized. And those who are the most passionate about what they do often end up being the most frustrated and dissatisfied with their jobs.
The Power of Giving Back: Nothing “Yeah, But” About It
Maynard Webb, CEO
I just returned from Aspen where I participated in Fortune Brainstorm: Tech, an annual gathering of tech leaders, media visionaries, entrepreneurs, and a variety of other big brained folks to talk about trends and changes in technology, culture and society as a whole.
The event, and particularly the public discussion I participated in about how technology can supercharge a new generation of nonprofits, left me newly inspired. It also further convinced me of the role giving back has in empowering businesses. (more…)
The “Spirit of And”: Part 2
Maynard Webb, CEO
Miracles don’t only happen on the ice—they happen every day in the workplace.
I’ve been lucky enough to experience several in my career. When I went to eBay in 1999 the company was battling some significant technology issues. Many people said I was crazy to join in the midst of such turmoil. Certainly during those dark days at eBay, no one believed it would evolve into the world’s largest online marketplace and transform the world of e-commerce. But the real miracle I witnessed was not eBay’s rise to greatness, but rather the many moments when I saw teams unleash their potential and brilliantly solve what was previously deemed impossible. (more…)