Best Practices SeriesProduced by:CRM MediaCustomer Experience Management (CEM) is all about helping guide a prospect through the customer journeyfrom the first marketing interaction through the transaction to the much longer process of service and support. A formalized approach to CEM acts as an attentive tour guide throughout this journey: anticipating needs, providing accurate and timely information, and engaging the customer proactively, while soliciting feedback at regular intervals.A well-managed customer journey strengthens brand preferences, reduces customer churn, and elevates the brand beyond strict reliance on price. This is the space where brand advocates are created, and profitability is optimized.In the following pages of this Best Practices series, you will notice several themes: truly engaging customers with conversations, engaging employees by empowering them with better information and support, and soliciting feedback from the customers themselves to help stay on course. There is some great information here for any company obsessed with customer service.Bob Fernekees VP/Group Publisher, CRM Media Information Today, Inc.SILVER SPONSORS SPONSORSOne Rogers StreetCambridge, MA 02142617-374-9600www.pega.com 325 Lytton Ave Suite 200Palo Alto, CA 94301+1-877-495-3700 toll-freesales@jivesoftware.comjivesoftware.com400 1st Avenue NorthSuite 300Minneapolis MN 55401763.592.4600calabrio.com1717 W. 6th Street, #100Austin, TX 78703Phone: (877) 483-2777Email: info@bloomfire.comwww.bloomfire.com877.780.4848www.avalara.comJivePAGE 22TRANSFORMING CUSTOMER CONNECTIONSInteractive IntelligencePAGE 23MANAGING THE NEW CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WITH PURECLOUDSMTeamSupportPAGE 25CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT: A THREE-LEGGED STOOLCalabrioPAGE 26UNLOCKING THE CONTACT CENTERS HIDDEN ASSET:How Multichannel Analytics Can Translate the Voice of the Customer into Business IntelligenceVerintPAGE 27CULTIVATING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENTBest Practices to Help You Get StartedKANA, A Verint CompanyPAGE 28EMPOWER AGENTS TO ENHANCE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCELiveOpsPAGE 29HAPPY CUSTOMERS, HAPPY BRANDeGainPAGE 30ENGAGING CUSTOMERSWITH A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT: 10 Tips to Go From Valet to WalletPegasystemsPAGE 31THREE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCEVoltDeltaPAGE 32ENVISIONING AN EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCEFROM THE OUTSIDE INClicktoolsPAGE 33CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT MADE EASIER: Integrate Feedback in CRMIntelliResponsePAGE 34CRUSH YOUR COMPETITORS WITH DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE AvalaraPAGE 35SALES TAX ACCURACY AND CRM: Automating the Quote-to-Cash Process to Increase Customer Satisfaction and RetentionFaye Business Systems GroupPAGE 36SIX WAYS CRM HELPS YOU GET TO KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER AND CLOSE MORE DEALSBloomfirePAGE 37BUILDING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENTTHROUGH SOCIAL COMMUNITIESAND SELF-SERVICE PORTALSWhy isCUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT so important?100 Highland Park Village Suite 200Dallas, TX 75205800-596-2820sales@teamsupport.comwww.teamsupport.com330 South Service RoadMelville, NY 11747Phone: 1-800-4VERINTwww.verint.com2550 Walsh AveSuite 100 Santa Clara, CA 95051info@kana.com800-737-8738www.kana.com555 Twin Dolphin DriveRedwood City, CA 94065Phone: 1-800-411-4700www.liveops.com7601 Interactive WayIndianapolis, IN 46278Phone: 1-800-267-1364www.inin.com/whitepapers1252 Borregas Ave.Sunnyvale, CA 94089Phone: 1-800-821-4358www.egain.com3750 Monroe Ave. Suite 4BPittsford, NY 14534Phone: 1-866-436-1169www.voltdelta.comPoole, UK | Phoenix, USPhone (US): 1-800-774-4065Phone (EMEA): 0800 0432587sales@clicktools.comwww.clicktools.com25 Adelaide Street East,20th FloorToronto, ON, CanadaM5C 3A11-866-454-0084info@intelliresponse.comwww.intelliresponse.comPhone: 818-280-4820E-mail: info@fayebsg.comwww.fayebsg.comtwitter.com/fbsghttps://www.linkedin.com/company/faye-business-systems-group-inc.WP22November 2014|CRM Magazine Sponsored ContentAs marketings quest to accelerate new and repeat sales remains unchanged, the means to that end has entirely shifted over the past few years.This fundamental shift can be tied, in part, to digital innovation; however, its not just about technology. Its about the lifestyle shift, and what could be considered peoples workstyle shift which Ill define as a persons expectation and preference in how they work and engage with a company. This article explores how companies are looking to transform how they engage with customers and partners while connecting to their existing marketing automation systems specifically centering on three undeniable facts that are the crux for the transformation:1. Customer conversations and engagement, not marketingcontent, is kingThe marketing funnel, technically, is dead.Yes, prospective customers still move through a buying cycle, but the difference is that they have many more ways to learn about a company throughout the buying process and to connect with existing customers.Content strategy is still important, but a conversation and engagement strategy is now a pre-req. For example, the majority of customers now expect companies to offer social customer support (as reported in The Social Customer Service Year in Review:Insights for your 2014 Strategy). The best path for companies is to move away from the separate knowledge base, support portal, partner portal, customer blog, idea place, docs system, etc. and move toward creating a central hub, or owned online community for customers and partners. Regardless of the technology used, there are three key elements to a winning conversation and engagement strategy: Connect: Here is where youll build relationships and create value among customers and partners. Youll also empower individuals to discover people and information that matter to them.Communicate: Through open communications, youll ensure customers and partners have access to the right information at the right time. From there, you can turn the communication into accessible and valuable intellectual property.Collaborate: Your customers are the single greatest untapped resource for driving innovation. And by really listening you can not only create better products but also optimize your marketing approaches by adapting to their needs. 2. Within two years, the CMO will spend more on technology than the CIOAccording to Gartner, the CMO becoming the #1 technology buyer is not only inevitable, its right around the corner.CRM, marketing automation, mobile, online communities, customer analytics, and other tech purchases are all driving this shift. Additionally, a shift thats occurred since 2011 and one that continues is the investment focus on cloud technologies where the hosting and technical aspects are provided as a service vs. being handled by the company. This trend means less internal IT involvement while ensuring key systems automatically stay up to date.With this shift, and as the pace of innovation by technology vendors accelerates at an ever-increasing rate, the appetite for building it yourself continues to decrease. An analogy to this trend is this would you prefer to buy a pre-built laptop where you can choose a few key add-ons (memory, etc.) or order a box of parts to then, with a lot of work, build your own computer.Theoretically youd get exactly what you want with the latter option that is, if you didnt make any mistakes as you put the computer together. However, it would require the right skills, a long time to build and custom on-going support. This is where the old adage time is money comes into play, underscoring that marketing leaders need pre-built, cloud-ready, auto-upgraded solutions to drive more business faster vs. being slowed down by systems and support.3. Connectedness between conversations and marketing systems will be requiredUltimately marketers need to make technology decisions that help them stay on top of customer behaviors and emerging market trends.This is where the dots get connected between the marketing automation system and the conversations occurring.Intuitive and seamless connectedness between customer dialog and the marketing automation systems creates a competitive advantage. Heres why companies should connect the dots:Although its hard to actually collect much pertinent contact information from a conversation occurring on Twitter or Facebook, the opposite is true when a company creates an online community, or central customer hub, where they then can more easily connect an engaged persons profile information into the marketing automation system.At that point, tomorrows leading companies will have additional criteria to score and rate leads and contacts. The feedback and thoughts shared by a customer in the central hub is information that can be leveraged for further communications and campaigns. At this point, the company has both profile information and activity data to better segment target audiences within their marketing automation system. Additionally, most companies will soon be automatically tying activity within their marketing campaigns, such as webcasts or click-thrus on email campaigns, to rewards, points, and potentially access to certain places within their community. Where many marketing organizations are failing today is that they are not connecting digital engagement investments to metrics that drive the business - lead generation and opportunity creation.And its not their fault.For instance, all the investment made in social over the past few years has often translated to either little ROI or at a minimum an unknown quantity when it comes to results.The roadmap for customer interaction moving forward will demand major improvement in this area, otherwise marketers will risk showing up at the executive table with little proof that their investments are driving business results.Weve taken a strategic look at the reasons for and value of connecting marketing automation with customer and partner engagement. The rewards for accomplishing this transformation can equate to a company thriving vs. struggling to survive in the coming years.And my last piece of advice is simple move fast but deliberately, and always be open to embracing new workstyles and the technologies that encourage them. Transforming Customer ConnectionsBy Adam Mertz, senior director of product marketing, Jive Software Sponsored Content CRM Magazine|November 2014 WP23Everything about the customer experience is changing, continually, and at a faster pace than many companies can keep up with. Its Gen X, Y, Z and Millennial. Its mobile, social and global. Its more interaction channels to choose from, Big Data to gauge consumer behaviors, and tools like faceted searches that make online experiences easier and more enjoyable. And like it or not, the whole experience must be instant.The trick for businesses, then, is managing it all to engage customers completely, on their terms.Managing the new customer experience is the approach Interactive Intelligence has taken with its PureCloud suite of enterprise-grade cloud services. In using the power and breadth of Amazon Web Services, PureCloud delivers just about everything a business needs for effective communications, collaboration, and customer engagement. But what makes PureClouds collective services so different is the way theyre aimed at todays consumers, and what they want their experience to be.MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF INTERACTIONPureCloud allows organizations to handle all channels of customer engagement in one integrated service: inbound calls, outbound calls, email interactions, web chats, text messages, instant messages, social media, and faxes. Organizations can easily engage customers in whatever way suits them, while tracking all interactions centrally. PureCloud also offers strong integration to popular social media services, making it easy to monitor your organizations Facebook page and the Twitter stream and quickly respond as needed.CONTACT CENTERThe PureCloud Contact Center automation service handles every aspect of customer interaction. Speech-enabled voice self-service (IVR). Automatic call distribution (ACD). Skills-based queuing and routing of phone calls, emails, web chats, text messages, and video interactions. Recording and archival of all interaction types. Real-time monitoring and supervision, insightful data analytics, speech analytics, and more.MOBILITYFor customers, incorporate customer service into existing mobile apps, or create new apps. Customers can then access self-help services and request callbacks or other customer service interactions. For employees, PureCloud provides native apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8. These apps enable workers to access the corporate directory, instant message other employees, manage phone calls, search and view corporate documents, and complete workflow assignments. In effect, employees are able to manage work, along with any associated customer service functions, from anywhere.SOCIAL MEDIAPureCloud Social Customer Service is a unique way to provide VIP or concierge-level service to your best customers. It allows these customers to see photos of and information about your agents and then to choose the agent with whom theyd prefer to interact. You control what information you expose for each agent. Customer interaction requests are queued and routed just like an incoming phone call or other type of interaction. Customers can access Social Customer Service from a web page or from their mobile devices, and choose to interact by phone call, email, web chat, or video.CASE MANAGEMENTHandling customer interactions in contact centers is only the first step in providing an exceptional customer experience. Case management allows organizations to pull customer interactions of all types together into a single, integrated view of the customer experience. For example, your organization might send an email generating a phone call from the customer. This might later lead to a web chat from the customer on the same topic, followed by a call to the customer from your organization. Without an overarching case management solution, theres no way to tie all these interactions together to understand the customers experience and how well your organization achieved the customers original goal. PureCloud Case Management provides this birds-eye view, allowing you to optimize into customer experience results. Case Management works in conjunction with PureCloud Contact Center, Content Management, and Workflow to offer a level of insight not possible with less capable services.CUSTOMER PORTALThe PureCloud Customer Portal is the ultimate destination for customer engagement. With this service, organizations easily create a customizable customer engagement platform accessible via standard web browsers and directly from mobile devices. The Customer Portal leverages the latest in social media and gamification techniques and provides:Registration and login for customers requiring authentication with integration to your CRM system.FAQs that allow customers to search for answers to frequently asked questions.Knowledgebases and collections of content including documents and videos.Direct access to customer service representatives with PureCloud Social Customer Service available as a configurable widget. This provides a dynamic view of the agents currently available who meet the customers requirements, with configurable display of agents names (or Managing the New Customer Experience with PureCloudSMWP24November 2014|CRM Magazine Sponsored Contentpseudonyms), photos, skills, and other selected background information.Direct access to PureCloud Case Management as a configurable widget from which customers can open and manage trouble tickets and other types of cases.A complete social media interface for employees, affiliates, and even expert customers. Topics of interest (product lines, etc.) can be configured with comment threads, attached documents, and so on.INTERACTION RECORDINGMonitoring customer interactions for quality these days requires a business to record all interactions across all channels, yet still be able to choose exactly which interactions are to be recorded. PureCloud provides these capabilities. Organizations can record voice calls, web chats, text messages, instant messages, and social media interactions. As importantly, an organization can configure policies to determine whether (and which) interactions are stored in the Amazon cloud or on-premises. Cloud storage can take advantage of Amazon Glacier to store recordings and keep them available for years at low cost. All recordings are encrypted for maximum security.SPEECH ANALYTICSA newer aspect of monitoring customer interactions for quality and customer sentiment is speech analytics. PureCloud provides built-in real-time speech analytics that automatically send alerts when various words and phrases are detected during a customer service interaction. Alerts can be triggered differently for utterances detected on the customer side of a call or the agent side. Speech analytics results are stored with recordings, and are usable for searching or data analytics. PureClouds speech analytics capabilities are available for a variety of languages, meaning they can be used for consumer markets globally.BIG DATA ANALYTICSBusinesses require powerful data analytics capabilities to spot customer trends and unlock value in the masses of data they collect. PureCloud logs every facet of customer interactions, plus critical information for document access and cross-company workflow. Organizations can additionally use visualization technologies and analytic tools such as Hadoop and Google Analytics to make sense of valuable information, and even to make predications based on it.FACETED SEARCHIf youve used Amazon.com, youre familiar with faceted search whether you know the term or not. Faceted search allows you to quickly cull through a large set of search results by clicking on various attributes to dynamically narrow the results. For your online customers, they may only be interested in results that apply to a particular product line, a certain timeframe, or even an individual employee. PureCloud employs faceted search throughout its suite of services in order to provide a consistent customer experience, and to make sure your business derives value from all the data it collects.KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTCollecting knowledge and making it available to customers and employees is increasingly a requirement for the customer experience. PureCloud Content Management allows you to automatically create and maintain knowledge management services in the form of intelligent search and FAQs. This knowledge can be selectively made available to customers, partners, and other third parties for self-help, and for the creation of social communities.DISTRIBUTED CONTENT MANAGEMENTPureCloud provides an optional content management service that provides a centralized, cloud-based index of important documents spread throughout the enterprise. Organizations also get support for Amazon-based storage of selected documents in the cloud, with rapid access from anywhere in the world, and with document encryption for maximum security. PureCloud further provides the ability to store documents on local file servers or storage networks, or in existing systems such as SharePoint or FileNet, while still taking advantage of centralized management and searching.WORKFLOWRecall that todays customers come from generations in which technology has made everything instant. Automating key business processes helps keep that pace. PureCloud Workflow is a powerful means of visually laying out business processes and then automatically pushing work to employees throughout the organization. PureCloud Workflow uses the same advanced queuing and routing technology available in PureCloud Contact Center to choose the employee to whom a given task is assigned based on skills and availability. Employees can automatically be alerted to assigned work, and then complete many assignments even from mobile devices. PureCloud Workflow operates synergistically with other PureCloud services such as Content Management to provide a comprehensive solution for process automation. This article is adapted from the PureCloud white paper by Don Brown, CEO of Interactive Intelligence, Inc. Note that the white paper, as well as this article, are forward-looking narratives intended to help the reader understand the vision for Interactive Intelligence PureCloud. Neither narrative makes the attempt to differentiate those services and features currently available in PureCloud from those that are still under development. Download the full PureCloud white paper at www.inin.com.Sponsored Content CRM Magazine|November 2014 WP25When it comes to your business, its a no-brainer that customers are the successful ingredient to success or failure. So why are companies still struggling to keep their customers happy?Its because most companies fail to view the customer experience as a multifaceted strategya three-legged stool, with each leg of the stool an equally critical component in finding and retaining customers, hopefully for a very long time. Without one of the legs, the stool would fall. LEG #1: MARKETING.Companies often invest most heavily in their marketing and sales functions. After all, these are the folks whose positions exist solely to acquire more customers. Most marketing teams use innovative and sophisticated systems to find prospective buyers, then they hand them over to the sales team.LEG #2: SALES.The sales team will often go to the ends of the earth to develop relationships with qualified prospects and, over time and with great care, convert them to paying customers. In many respects, sales is an obvious part of any companys customer experience strategy. LEG #3: CUSTOMER SUPPORT.Once a customer signs on, its up to the customer support team to understand their unique business needs and care for them throughout the rest of the relationship. In many companies this stage is the weakest link in their customer strategy, yet its arguably the most critical. Customer service (if done well) will have the longest relationship with a customer.It is during this stage of the customer experience where customer issues are most resolvable and relationships the most recoverable. It is also where customer turn-over happens the most. If you lose a sale, you never really had the customer anyway. But if you lose a customer, youve lost not only todays business, but also future sales and possibly even reputation.So how can you equip your customer support team with the tools and resources to make customer service an equally strong leg of the three-legged customer experience stool? Here are a few best practices:Understand the whole customer.Most customer service teams are built around individual interactions, focused entirely on tickets. A customer reaches out to the support team with an issue, a ticket is assigned, the issue is addressed, and the support representative moves on to the next ticket. In a business to business environment, this limits visibility at the customer level.Imagine 5 different people at the same company open tickets about the same issue.A ticket-based model means 5 different agents are addressing the 5 different tickets, and no one is aware that this is a recurring issue for the customer, because they cant see tickets at a customer level.So when the customer leaves them for a competitor, everyone is surprised they never even knew there was a problem.By contrast, the most strategic customer support teams manage issues at a customer level - not just one problem at a time. Automate operations.Bringing your customer support operations together within one unified system ensures that every customer support representative has the information they need at their fingertips - and that the information is the most current.Cloud-based software is especially vital for companies whose support agents are spread among multiple offices or even multiple regions of the world.Collaborate as a support team.Customers want their issues resolved as quickly as possible. They dont want to be escalated through multiple agents. The best customer support teams use a collaborative approach where support agents can get answers from colleagues; internal groups can have conversations about customers or tickets; and product developers and sales team members are kept apprised of customer issues. Exceptional service draws upon the collective wisdom of the group and enables first-call resolution. Anticipate the customers needs before they happen.Superior support teams anticipate customer pain points and develop solutions before the customer even realizes it. Look for customer support software for your team that helps you track issues by product, user, or company to identify trends as theyre developing, and manage your customers at a company level. Even if your customer experience stool is a little wobbly right now, by moving your service team to a more collaborative and customer-centric model, youll deliver support thats as integral to the customer experience as marketing and sales. After all, better support leads to happy customers, and happy customers lead to more sales.TeamSupport is an award winning, Web-based service-desk solution optimized for team collaboration. For a free two-week trial, visit www.teamsupport.com/web-help-desk-support-free-trial/.Customer Experience Management: A Three-Legged StoolWP26November 2014|CRM Magazine Sponsored ContentThink talk is cheap? Not in the modern contact center where multichannel analytics solutions are unlocking a wealth of wisdom hiding in plain sight: the voice of the customer!A business information revolution is underway. Thanks to sophisticated new analytics programs, vast stores of previously ignored customer data are being transformed into business intelligence gold. Business decision-makers are reaping exponential rewards, from operational efficiencies and product development to customer interactions and management processes. At the center of this revolutionthe spring from which this rich data flowsis the modern organizational contact center. Theres just one problem. The vast majority of contact centers ignore the ocean of unstructured data they collect. Most organizations only analyze 12 percent of their total customer data (Forrester), with other estimates putting the number closer to a mere one percent. WHY THE DISPARITY? In the past, analyzing customer data was difficult, if not impossible, to convert to useful information. This was especially true with voice data. Customer calls that, by their very nature, are unstructured and complex: full of meaning, but also extremely varied in syntax and structure.Times have changed. Todays analytics programsfor speech, text and desktopnow provide cost- and time-effective methods for analyzing data. Instead of employing overwhelmed contact center managers to manually slog through a tiny portion of available data, analytics programs quickly and efficiently filter enormous amounts of organic data to determine what is useful. In fact, analytics programs, such as Calabrio Analytics, can convert 100 percent of a contact centers data into useful information that can be easily analyzed and used for better decision-making enterprise wide. Best of all, these programs are intuitive and easy to use. Executives and managers in all areas of the company can reap the rewards: from the contact center all the way to the executive suite.KNOWLEDGE IS POWER: APPLYING MULTICHANNEL ANALYTICS TO BOOST CONTACT CENTER PERFORMANCEContact centers benefit tremendously from sophisticated analytics software. Compliance and quality management improve with the addition of Workforce Optimization tools, such as the integrated suite from Calabrio, which Gartner positioned as a Visionary in its Magic Quadrant assessment of similar tools on the market today. Monitoring call compliance is easy with pre-defined searches, enabling compliance managers to reduce risk thanks to automated precise findings. Multi-channel analytics solutions also allow managers to swiftly identify the most relevant conversations and agent actions for evaluation. In addition, analytics solutions improve the customer experience through agent and operation optimization, as well as reduce call escalations and increase first contact resolutions. Beyond the contact center, voice analytics yield business intelligence for the entire organization to help executives recognize and act on industry trendsbefore competitors. Not only can analytics provide marketing campaign and messaging validation, it can support customer retention by detecting early signs of defections. MAKING MULTICHANNEL ANALYTICS ACCESSIBLE For all of these benefits to be realized, in the contact center and enterprise wide, data analysis from multiple channels must be accessible. In other words, analysis must support problem solving by being easy to obtain, set up, understand and share. If that sounds like a lot to expect from a single workforce optimization and analytics solution, consider Calabrio. One of the fastest-growing analytics providers, Calabrio designs its integrated suite to deliver all of these benefits and more. Calabrio ONE provides direct value to front line agents, supervisors, specialists, customer experience executives and other key stakeholders, including sales, marketing, human resources, legal/compliance and operations. With an intuitive personalized dashboard, Calabrio Analytics, part of the Calabrio ONE Workforce Optimization Suite, highlights priorities, pinpoints problems and uncovers opportunities. Powered by a series of clear, intuitive, analytics-enabled widgets, the solution enables everyone with a stake in the company to clearly see whats critical. Flexible, user-oriented reporting allows users to easily customize the form in which information is presented. A unique web-based architecture allows contact centers to easily integrate new applications and features as business needs evolve.Dont be left in the dark. Use multichannel analytics to shine a light on the voice of your customer and accelerate your organization ahead.About The Calabrio Innovation CenterInnovation requires a commitment to continuous improvements. Resources like the Calabrio Innovation Center provide customer service organizations with keen insights derived from thousands of customer service organizations, practical technology knowledge, and expert resources to help you bring innovation to your contact center. Calabrio can help you make vision and innovation the driving force that takes your business to the next level and gives you the competitive edge. Thats the standard we hold ourselves to each and every day, and the commitment we bring to each customer engagement. Were inspired by results driven by that standard every day, working with innovative organizations just like yours.Contact Uscalabrio.comUnlocking The Contact Centers Hidden Asset:How Multichannel Analytics Can Translate the Voice of the Customer into Business IntelligenceSponsored Content CRM Magazine|November 2014 WP27Todays customers can switch brands with the swipe of a screen or a click of a button, making it critical to develop strategies for engaging them. But customer engagement requires more than just surveying consumers, sending out tweets, or rolling out rewards programs. Cultivating true customer engagement requires a multifaceted approach that involves many areas of your business. Here are some best practices that can help you lay the groundwork for developing a customer engagement program:1. Identify your assets.You arent likely to engage anyone without knowing something about themand the more you know, the better your chances of success. Valuable data exists in many places within your organization, and you want to be able to tap into it to develop a clearer, more defined view of your customers. Identify the different types of information you have, such as customer identity data, transactional information (online and offline), online activity information (including social media), customer feedback, and customer value and history. Dont overlook billing, ERP, and service provisioning systems. If your organization operates multiple lines of business, youll also need to factor this into your assessment. Be sure to note where the data resides, in which formats, and which stakeholders are responsible for collecting and maintaining it. If you can identify the most useful subset of data sources across your enterprise, you can use it to help you deliver much more targeted, contextual servicea critical component for building customer engagement. 2. Leverage your internal resources.Employees can greatly impact the quality of the customer experience. Since training and coaching staff can be critical, now is the time to assess the effectiveness of your efforts. Are you providing employees with the opportunity to extend and enhance their skills? Do your key performance indicators measure behaviors that actually foster customer engagement, or are they focused solely on delivering service at the lowest cost possible? Staff empowerment is another key factor. Employees need to have some level of input and control over their work to be able to engage customers effectively. This can mean being able to go off script and make decisions without always having to ask a supervisor. It also means being able to access information quickly and easily to make decisions that are appropriate for the customer and situation at hand. Customers dont want to wait for extended periods of time while a service representative hunts down information or struggles to decide the next step in the process. Give your employees the tools and skills they need to drive engagement. 3. Pick a starting point.Even if you offer customers a variety of ways to interact with your organization, it may be more practical to focus on optimizing customer engagement in one channel at a time. Maximize the benefits you get from that insight, and then move on to the next channel. Begin by systematically capturing and analyzing data from the channel youve selected to obtain key insights that can be operationalized across your business. Plan ways to leverage this information, and be sure to engage the stakeholders you identified back in step one to help facilitate the internalization of the data. By gathering and assessing data both structured and unstructured across channels, you can gain actionable insight into customer sentiments and the overall customer journey, then use it to drive customer engagement.4. Take advantage of technology.Verint Systems and KANA, A Verint Company, offer a portfolio of customer engagement optimization solutions to help transform customer engagement in todays omnichannel service environment. It includes workforce optimization, customer analytics, and customer service solutions that can provide your organization with valuable insight for enriching customer interactions, optimizing the workforce, and improving business processes. These powerful solutions can help your organization engage customers across multiple channels and deliver consistent, contextual, and personalized experiences that can drive sales and revenue. Contact Verint today to learn more. Verint. Powering Actionable Intelligence.Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: VRNT) is a global leader in Actionable Intelligence solutions for customer engagement optimization, security intelligence, and fraud, risk and compliance. Today, more than 10,000 organizations in over 180 countries use Verint solutions to improve enterprise performance and make the world a safer place. 1-800-4VERINTwww.verint.com 2014 Verint Systems Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.CULTIVATING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT Best Practices to Help You Get StartedWP28November 2014|CRM Magazine Sponsored ContentOrganizations know the value and importance of exceptional customer service. And, todays customers expect that exceptional service to be available at any time and on any channel. This is why companies have implemented tools to help with this, such as Web self-service, live chat and others. But, sometimes, while focusing on improving the technology, organizations can overlook a still-critical piece of customer service the agent.Organizations must ensure that the agent doesnt get overlooked when implementing new and improved customer service initiatives, and should also look to implement an agent desktop to improve agent efficiency and provide a better customer experience.IMPROVE AGENT EFFICIENCYDespite all of the available ways to interact with an organization, many customers still prefer to contact a live agent, sometimes while shopping but usually when they have a problem. It is just comforting to speak to a person in a time of need.However, that comforting feeling can quickly turn into frustration and anger if the agent isnt able to provide answers or solve an issue in a timely manner. Or if an agent cant find the necessary information and has to keep transferring the customer from one agent to another.An agent desktop can help eliminate these issues, as it helps provide unified access to all the applications and information required by the agent across different channels. Agents no longer have to switch from screen to screen and application to application while searching for answers. In addition, all of the various types of customer cases, be it a service outage, billing issue or another, are presented to the agent so he or she can quickly open a new case. Agents shouldnt have to switch from one screen to another to simply open a new case.An agent desktop can also provide scripts that guide agents through the entire customer service process. The information in these scripts can be updated live and in real time on the agents screen, helping the move through the customer request quickly or solving the issue on first contact.Finally, managers can also take advantage of an agent desktop. Process management steps can be created to ensure that all customer cases are logged and monitored using service-level agreements. In addition, managers can monitor live interactions between agents and customers, helping ensure that the agent is not only working efficiently, but also providing the quality experience that your customer expect.PROVIDE A BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCEOrganizations know that providing an exceptional customer experience is critical to their business. By empowering agents with an agent desktop, they can provide a better, more personalized customer experience. When a customer contacts your organization, the agent can quickly and easily access all of that customers information, including the customers profile, a list of all previous interactions, and all of the products and services used by the customer. Armed with this information, agents can avoid asking redundant questions and quickly get to the heart of the customers issue. An agent at a financial institution, for example, wont need to ask which type of account the customer has with them. That information will automatically be presented to the agent.In addition, with a full customer profile, the agent can become a potential salesperson, providing proactive service or targeted offers. For example, when a customer contacts his or her wireless provider with a question about paying a bill online, the agent can see the customers data plan and offer an upgraded plan based on the customers usage.Finally, with the myriad channels available to customers, an agent desktop can route a customer from one channel to the agent who is most skilled for that channel. When a customer contacts your organization via a live chat, for example, the customer expects that the agent on the other end is experienced in live chat and can quickly and efficiently navigate through the session.CONCLUSIONProviding an outstanding customer experience is more critical than ever to a companys success. While numerous tools and solutions are available to help improve your customer experience, overlooking the role of the agent could be costly. Provide your agents with the tools they need to give your customers the experience they want and deserve.Contact KANA, A Verint Company:info@kana.comNorth American Sales: 866-672-3791North American HQ: 800-737-8738EMEA: +44 1628 509 006APAC: +61 2 92 649 566www.kana.comConnect with KANA, A Verint Company:@KANASoftwareKANA SoftwareKANA Software, Inc.KANASoftwareEmpower Agents to Enhance the Customer ExperienceSponsored Content CRM Magazine|November 2014 WP29By Ann Ruckstuhl, SVP & CMO, LiveOps Disney. Zappos. Nordstrom. Apple. Trader Joes. State Farm. Amazon.com. Recognizable brands, yes. But different industries, different products, different target customers. What do they all have in common? Widespread acknowledgement of providing top-notch customer service for every customer, every time.Theres an old saying: Happy wife, happy life. It also applies to customers: Happy customers, happy brand. The customer service experience can vary greatly among companies. Brands must remember that customers usually have a choice, and will do business with the organization that treats them best. What can brands do to treat their customers better than the competition? Here are five best practices in customer experience management.ACT, DONT REACTBrands and their agents must engage with customers in real timeand real-time contextual routing can help them engage. Whether its responding to a tweet, sending an automatic follow up email when a customer has left the website with product still in their shopping cart or opening a live chat session to keep the customer from leaving the sitethere are many things brands can do to engage customers and save sales. Real-time customer experience management may seem like a mouthful, but it pays dividends.PROVIDE AGENTS WITH MULTICHANNEL INSIGHTHappy customers will stay with a brand for their lifetime and become brand advocates. The best way to create those loyal for life customers is to provide outstanding customer serviceand agents need outstanding tools and technologies to do so. Empower your agents with the right tools, like an integrated, multichannel agent desktop. When agents can quickly and easily access information, they can respond to customers quickly and effectively. Being able to view customer information and the history of interactions across channels, and then respond on any of those channels can be effortless. The ability to pivot a customer interaction from one communication channel to another (from a public tweet to a phone call to a private message follow up), all from the same screen, means a 360-degree view and response across channels is not only possible, but simple and efficient.KEEP THOSE TOOLS SHARPThere seems to be no end to the tools brands can implement to help with excellent customer service. CRM integration with customer service operations can improve the customer experience with integrated screen pop, which provides insight into each customer, such as a customer profile, case details and interaction history. Agents are able to offer personalized service when they can access more information in one place. There is also co-browsing, which allows an agent to connect to a customers browser and show them around a brands website or even help them fill out and submit a form. The right tools help create the best customer experience.LIVE SERVICE IS OFTEN THE NEXT BEST ACTIONNot all customer interactions are the same. They can take place on different channels, with wildly different issues at different times of the day. While its helpful to have scripts to respond to and interact with customers on various issues, sometimes those scripts just dont fit the situation. Thats when its essential to have live agents interacting with customersnot chat bots or automated systems. A live agent can dive into an issue and work to get the customer to the next best action, whatever it may be. That may be the difference between saving a customer relationship and losing itand we all know its easier and more cost effective to keep a happy customer than gain a new customer. Check out this handy Customer Experience ROI calculator to learn more (http://www.cxengage.com/customer-experience-roi-calculator). MAINTAIN A CULTURE OF CUSTOMER OBSESSIONThose brands mentioned at the beginning are known to be obsessed with customer service. Most brands have some level of obsession with their customers, since customers are the reason they are in business. Soon, customer obsession will become a mandate for brands to survive and thrive. Brands will have to walk the talk to keep satisfied customers.Happy customers, happy brand. There is some work involved to reach that goaland now youre prepared. Like the best things in life, it may not be easy, but it will be worth it. For more information on tools and technologies for outstanding customer service, visit http://www.liveops.com/why-choose-liveops. Happy Customers, Happy BrandWP30November 2014|CRM Magazine Sponsored ContentTrick question: Who works 24x7, engages customers and answer questions in a smart and fun way, gives website tours, offers relevant web pages, and never calls in sick? Answer: A virtual assistant (VA)!Also called chatbots, avatars, and concierges, VAs help businesses wow customers with distinctive self-service, increase brand equity, and cut costs. eGains award-winning VAs are even multilingual and, unlike other alternatives, integrate with human-assisted interaction channels for a seamless customer journey! As a pioneer in this domain, eGain has compiled best practices in VA deployment over the years. Here are some popular ones:1. GET AN ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYHOW VALET. Deploy the VA not just on your website, but also mobile and social channels. VAs are perfect as personal attendants. They can greet customers, chat with them (good VAs can discuss the weather, too!), show customers around, and answer questions. 2. MAKE THE VA YOUR BRAND AMBASSADOR. VAs are meant to represent your brand. Best-in-class VA solutions include off-the-shelf avatars, letting you choose from cartoon or realistic characters, and static or animated options. You could choose to design your own VA, even model it on your spokesperson if you have one for the brand. Good solutions also let you easily create a conversation style and tone that is unique to your brand.3. DONT BURY YOUR VA IN THE HELP SECTION. Lead with the VA. Make it available on every page. Better still, make it proactively offer help and tours of your website. On your mobile app, you could even use the VA to start and guide all customer interactions.4. KEEP IT SNAPPY. One of the main reasons consumers like VAs is their speed. Pick a solution whose infrastructure will allow performance to scale with system load.5. BE UNDERSTANDING. VAs can do their job only if they understand natural language queries. Make sure yours is also tolerant of bad spelling and grammar. Enable various modes of conversation: modern VAs support text to text, speech to text, text to speech, and speech to speech communication modes.6. BE POLITE. This is most important when the VA is unable to understand the question. The following real-life example borders on rudeness: Please, one idea at a time. Instead, say, Im sorry, but that is a rather complicated request. It will be easier for me to help, if you could break it up into a series of simple questions.7. SHOW RATHER THAN TALK. Keep answers shortespecially for mobile and speech interactions. Instead, push relevant pages. Many customers dont know their way around; in fact, that may be the reason they summoned help!8. BE CONSISTENT. The VA should talk the same talk as your other agents and self-service options. Make sure your VA does not run off a siloed, inconsistent knowledge baseit should be based on a unified platform for multichannel customer engagement and knowledge management. Provide longer knowledge base articles as links to keep the VAs answers short.9. BE CONNECTED. For complex questions, make sure that the VA knows its limitations and can escalate seamlessly to live agents. The customer should not have to repeat context in escalations. The VA should also be able to direct the customer to more advanced self-service methods such as guided help.10. PERSONALIZE. Good VAs can remember a detail such as the customers name, once it is given to them, and use it through the conversation. In authenticated portions of your website, you could integrate the VA with other systems to provide account information such as details of the customers phone plan if you are a telecom company. The next step would be to make targeted offers to the customer through the VA.A good virtual assistant is like PG Wodehouses famous butler, Jeeves: Always present yet never in the way. It is knowledgeable, capable of keeping up with the workload, and able to summon additional help when needed. Top-rated VAs provide all this and more, and are an integral part of a unified multichannel customer engagement hub. Isnt it time your sites valet added value to the customer experience and your business?About eGaineGain customer engagement solutions power digital transformation for leading brands. Our top-rated cloud applications for social, mobile, web, and contact centers help clients deliver connected customer journeys in a multichannel world. To find out more, visithttp://www.egain.com.Engaging Customers with a Virtual Assistant: 10 TIPS TO GO FROM VALET TO WALLETSponsored Content CRM Magazine|November 2014 WP31Delivering an excellent customer experience is now important across all phases of the customer lifecycle.Increasingly, it is service organizations involved in these touchpoints.Unfortunately, most organizations neglect to monitor and improve their customer service experience.If your service organization is like many others, you actually do damage to your customer experience every time a customer contacts you for help.Customers are dissatisfied, because they have a disjointed, disconnected customer experience when they make contact, especially across more than one channel.Employees are inefficient, because they deal with multiple, overly complicated systems that get in the way of delivering a high-quality customer experience.Inconsistent systems bog down IT teams struggling with changing business requirements and an interminable backlog of requests. We often fail to deliver customer service suitable for this digital age, putting up obstacles that require sometimes Herculean levels of customer effort to work through internal deficiencies.So how can you deliver a satisfying, efficient, and consistent customer experience?To deliver a great customer experience and overcome these obstacles, your customer service should invest in three areas: the Power to Engage, the Power to Simplify, and the Power to Change.THE POWER TO ENGAGECustomer service has long stopped being confined to phone calls.Nearly three quarters of all customers use three or more channels for customer service issues.Whether its mobile apps, social media, instant message, video chat, co-browsing on your website, or even in-person your customer service needs to be able to switch between these channels without restarting their conversation with you each time.You need to break down the organizational silos that detract from your customer experience.If you can empower your employees with the right information, guidance, and authority, and connect them to centralized information no matter what the channel, then your agent can connect the dots instead of hoping the customer can do it.THE POWER TO SIMPLIFYTake a walk around many contact centers and youll see some decidedly un-digital artifacts.Screens are crowded with way too many applications.Sticky notes and workarounds get tacked to cubicle walls.Many have binders full of company policies, procedures, or special product offers.Manual processes and paper shuffling take care of whatever agents cant by themselves. To solve this problem, at a minimum your contact center needs a unified desktop that pulls all your customer information into one view.But even thats not enough simplifying, because youre still overwhelming your agents with information.You should provide intelligent guidance to your agents so they can make sense of that information.Tell them what to say next, step by step, based not only on the customers issue but also based on your business goals for that specific customer.Automate busy work and take care of decisions that dont require their experience, so they can spend less time escalating or chasing workarounds and more time delivering a quality customer experience. THE POWER TO CHANGEAny failure to adapt to changes limited time offers, new policies and procedures, exceptions to the rules is a terrible blow to your customers expectations.Yet every customer service organization faces change.Whoevers maintaining your systems, in traditional do-it-yourself software development, is constantly struggling to keep up with the requests.You need to eliminate the lag time between when your business decides it needs a fix in place, and when you can deploy those changes to your business.You want those changes those new products, decision points, and processes to propagate across all channels, so you arent simultaneously reprogramming how you interact with customers across separate silos of disjointed customer experiences.For that to work, you need an environment in which business and IT can work together, with a common understanding of the steps in place from point A to point B.That way your team can rapidly adapt and quickly deploy changes.Your service organization is at the heart of most touchpoints in your customer journey.But to deliver a superior customer experience, youll need to meet the increasing expectations of this digital age.By engaging customers, simplifying operations, and quickly adapting to constantly changing market needs, you can deliver a satisfying, efficient, and consistent customer service experience for your connected customers. About PegaPegasystems Build for Change Platform is the heart of Better Business Software. It delivers business agility and empowers leading organizations to rapidly close execution gaps and seize new opportunities. Pegasystems leverages its recognized leadership in Business Process Management (BPM), Multi-Channel Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Rules, and Adaptive Analytics to uniquely give its clients the power to engage customers, simplify operations and Build For Change. For more information, please visit us at www.pega.com. Three Ways to Improve Your Customer ExperienceWP32November 2014|CRM Magazine Sponsored ContentEnvisioning an Exceptional Customer Experience from the Outside InOrganizations often develop a customer service strategy based on internal resources and budget constraints. A more successful approach is to first determine what type of experience you want customers to have when interacting with your organization. The customer experience should be one that sets your company apart from the competition and is not bound by resource or budget constraints. Then determine what you will need to realize that goal. With the advancement of cloud contact center technology, the gap between the exceptional customer journey and your current deployment may not be as cost or resource prohibitive as you might think. Here is how one VoltDelta customer successfully approached this challenge:CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE VISIONThis customer is a pharmaceutical provider that offers cost effective prescription medication for an underserved population with exceptional customer care in all 50 US states. They refused to accept the notion that economically challenged individuals do not deserve premium support. Service metrics that were implemented by this pharmaceuticals provider put customer satisfaction first with cost savings as an important, but not primary driver.SITUATION ANALYSISThe pharmaceutical provider evaluated their current service and determined they needed to do the following to meet their goals:Reliably answer every call. Frequent outages occurred with their existing contact center technology vendor.Improve the efficiency of their voice self-service menu options and integration to other communication channels, such as the web or live agent support, to provide a more satisfying customer experience.Add channels of communication such as SMS as the company grows.Create a feedback loop to continually improve quality of service.THE SOLUTIONVoltDelta provided the following solution:Reliable Cloud Contact Center Platform A pay per use hosted contact center with no capital investment provided a cost-effective solution. A platform with a history of proven reliability and security was essential to the customers business success. VoltDeltas cloud platform answers over two billion calls per year with exceptional reliability.Voice Self Service Expertise The new voice self service intelligently anticipates the reason customers are calling. It uses their phone number and name to check whether they recently placed an order, are up for re-enrollment, or various other issues. Menus dynamically shift based on that knowledge to more quickly resolve the call. Also, IVR dialogs incorporate built-in patience for explanations and caller input which VoltDeltas voice user interface designers determined was needed for an older demographic.Integrated Multi-Channel Solution Agent insight from past interactions regardless of channel enables immediate problem anticipation. It allows customer care to be more effective at converting frustration to success.Surveys For process improvements, automated voice surveys have been implemented post-call or as part of an outbound campaign. The ability to capture specific answers from a menu and free-form recorded comments adds metrics and subjective analysis for evaluating customer care success. Voice of the Customer Call and Screen Recording VoltDeltas technology records every call at no extra cost to the customer. It provides agents and managers with evidence to identify a problem and improve quality. Recorded calls are also reviewed with agents for training. The ability to track a call as a single entity from voice self service to an agent also makes it easy to pinpoint any issues at transfer.Real-Time Reporting Instant access to voice recordings, survey data, and other metrics provides an important mechanism for timely process improvements. Real-time centralized management allows supervisors to quickly assess agent performance.RESULTSThis VoltDelta customer creatively uses cloud technology to reach a larger population of prescription medication users with more frequency. In the first few months of implementation, the results were:Calls completed without agent assistance have risen between 7%-12%.Overall prescription refills have increased.The survey results show positive feedback from customers. In fact, happy customers occasionally provide unsolicited donations to assist this organization with future endeavors. About VoltDelta VoltDelta is a global cloud-based contact center provider with 35 years of experience.We rapidly tailor and integrate our multichannel contact center solutions to enable you to increase revenue, boost retention, and reduce operating costs with proven scalability and reliability.Contact Us Phone: 866-436-1169Email: info@voltdelta.comwww.voltdelta.comtwitter.com/voltdeltanewslinkedin.com/company/voltdeltayoutube.com/voltdeltachannelSponsored Content CRM Magazine|November 2014 WP33The bulk of companies are beginning to rise to the challenge of formalizing customer experience management. As they do, many are also quickly discovering that measuring customer experience comes with its share of difficulties. For one, customer feedback comes through a larger number of sources than ever before and two, sentiment can be tough to accurately assess even when properly captured.A recent MarketingProfs blog explains that ...with the ubiquity of social channels and mobile devices, customer behavior is becoming increasingly fragmented, complicated, and hard to track (February 2014). Similarly, Giles House, CMO, CallidusCloud, blogs that customer experience is the most elusive metric in B2B (September 2014). The simple days of summarizing customer experience with the results of marketings annual customer satisfaction survey are long gone. True customer experience management is complex to say the least. It requires company-wide representation, strategic planning and processes, and the right mix of technology components.WHICH REPORT TRACKS CUSTOMER EMOTION?Customer experience is different from other business metrics. Counting dollars is simple enough. Counting loyalty is another story. It can change very suddenly and unlike hard numbers, customer feedback leaves room for variance in interpretation. To successfully manage customer experience, companies must collect, centralize, and act on customer feedback from numerous sources, along the entire customer journey. They must blend the human aspects of business (customer emotions and reactions needing personal attention) with technology systems to monitor and automate responses whenever possible. The technology at the center, experts agree, is CRM. By channeling all customer feedback into CRM, you leverage existing processes and familiarity with the system, and can establish appropriate workflows for feedback requiring one-on-one attention versus input that can receive automated communications. Plus, CRM provides a powerful hub for secure, role-based visibility, direct customer interactions, and flexible reporting across the organization.HOW DO WE INTEGRATE FEEDBACK INTO CRM?To lay the groundwork for solid, long-term customer experience management, choose a solution that meets enterprise requirements for end-to-end, multi-channel feedback management. This solution MUST deeply and easily integrate with your CRM system. It should let you control every aspect of your feedback program, especially how and where data can be mapped into CRM. Next, define an outside-in customer journey map and establish key points along the way, at which youll ask customers for input via surveys, call scripts, and various web forms. Not all input points, however, will be defined by your organization. Youll also need intelligent data loading capabilities to integrate feedback from customer-driven points, such as social media, and potentially from other cloud applications into CRM. Beyond the basics, be certain that the feedback solution also supports this short list of technical criteria:Deployment Power & Flexibility: Since your customers are on-the-go, your feedback mechanisms need to keep pace. Consider new options for reaching customers wherever they are, beyond the standard web and email deployments for surveys. Look for progressive delivery options such sending SMS (text message) surveys, IVR (interactive voice response) surveys, and allowing users to take surveys in offline mode all with responses integrating directly with CRM. This is a surefire way to increase response rates and tap into a broader pool of customers than just your most vocal, usual suspects.Device -first Approach: In a multi-screen world, surveys need to adapt to different devices without sacrificing look and feel. Verify that your feedback solution enables advanced branding and design capabilities to reflect your companys image accurately and consistently across platforms, whether respondents are at their desks or on their mobile phones. Theyre more apt to share their opinions if they see a familiar, cleanly presented brand.Strategic Insight: Ensure that your feedback solution has built-in, real-time reporting and analysis. This can not be overstated. The end-game is to make sense of feedback and use it to gain insight into the wants and needs of your customers. Text analytics must be part of the equation, as well, so look for an out-of-the-box, text analysis solution integrated with CRM. Remember that the whole point of asking for input is to translate that information into meaningful intelligence to better manage and improve customer experience.About ClicktoolsClicktools develops cloud applications that integrate with CRM to help businesses better understand and serve their customers. Since 2001, companies have relied on Clicktools flagship offering, SURVE, the premium survey software for business, to integrate customer feedback in CRM. Syncfrog, Clicktools low-cost, intelligent data loader, empowers non-technical users to centralize data from multiple cloud applications. Clicktools is owned by Callidus Software Inc. (NASDAQ: CALD), which operates as CallidusCloud, the leading provider of sales and marketing effectiveness software.Customer Experience Management Made Easier: Integrate Feedback in CRM WP34November 2014|CRM Magazine Sponsored ContentTHE DIGITAL ECONOMY IS MERCILESS: THERE WILL BE EITHER CLEAR WINNERS OR ABJECT LOSERS NO SPLIT DECISIONSThe modern digital era brings two characteristics that organizations find enormously challenging to manage. First, the volume of knowledge being created in digital form each day is astronomical. And second, todays consumers expect to be able to go online and self-serve for answers to their questions. This puts the onus on organizations to ensure their digital channels are equipped to accurately match every incoming customer service question with its single correct answer. Not to mention, provide this answer instantly, with no live agent interaction.The only way to achieve this with any accuracy is with technology that understands the intent behind every customer question, regardless of how the question may be phrased. For organizations that fail to deliver an accurate and complete digital self-service experience like this, the news is not good...Organizations that win in the digital economy are those that clearly understand the new expectations of todays consumers when it comes to digital self-service. GETTING DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE RIGHT HAS TO BE JOB ONEThe consumer of today is discerning, impatient, self-reliant and intolerant of being let down. Considering the modern consumers unforgiving attitude toward service missteps, securing and protecting customer loyalty with superior online self-service is mission-critical. But meeting customer expectations is just the first step...The second step is to capitalize on the earned goodwill of a satisfactory resolution with a RELEVANT marketing offer that naturally opens the door to online purchases.And the third step is to systematically extract data from these transactions into actionable customer insight, to continually refine your customer offerings. This is the 1-2-3 punch you need in order to knock competitors out of contention. And todays leading Virtual Agent solutions combine all three capabilities in a single technology.WHAT ARE VIRTUAL AGENTS?At their core, Virtual Agents are software services that answer customer questions in self-service environments across multiple interaction channels like the corporate web, mobile, and social. The best of them combine a unique front end consumer experience and conversational style with advanced knowledge management platform capabilities to help enterprises manage and utilize their vast stores of knowledge.WHY DOES TRADITIONAL SEARCH FAIL IN SELF-SERVICE ENVIRONMENTS?Traditional website search algorithms are not optimized to interpret questions. As a result:Less than 50% of traditional website searches actually return expected results. Users must parse through a list of potential options that may contain the information they requested in customer self-service environments, task-oriented customers want the one right answer to their question, which requires specialized search methodology. Virtual Agent software uses a combination of machine learning technology and Natural Language Processing to match the intent within a question to a specific answer. As a result, it consistently delivers the one right answer an unbeatable 80% to 90% of the time.PRIMARY BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL AGENTS1. Leading Virtual Agents equip your customer interaction channels with the ability to answer customer questions by intelligently recognizing the intent behind each question. In this way, a Virtual Agent can deliver the single accurate answer to a question regardless of the hundreds of ways a question can be phrased.2. Using this same intent-recognition technology, Virtual Agents can deliver relevant marketing offers to your customers, right alongside the delivered answer.3. Virtual Agents provide high-value voice of the customer insight, by automatically capturing every question asked, in the natural language of the customer and delivering this insight in a highly visual, interactive way.NEXT STEPS?Gartner predicts that by 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. The time to deploy a virtual agent solution is now. IntelliResponse Virtual Agents deliver cost savings, revenue opportunities, and voice of the customer insight to hundreds of organizations worldwide. Contact us today to see how we can help your organization meet the needs of todays digital customer.Get a Free, No Obligation Analysis of Your Websites Self-Service Performance Compliments of IntelliResponse and Forrester Research, Inc. Contact us at info@intelliresponse.comor call us at 1-866-454-0084Crush Your Competitors with Digital Self-Service Sponsored Content CRM Magazine|November 2014 WP35Quote-to-Cash (or QTC) is the information technology term for the integration and automated management of an end-to-end sales process. More and more businesses are automating key elements of the QTC process, extending their CRM to automate the entire order lifecycle.The result is higher revenue optimization and better customer satisfaction scores. Even with the most technologically advanced CRM systems, however, sales tax accuracy is often overlooked. Without accurate sales tax calculations, quotes submitted to a customer can be lower than the actual final invoice. And project estimates and pricing that dont match initial quotes can ruin a deal before its finalized. This inaccuracy is an especially important problem on large orders or high-ticket goods. On many deals, an invoice 9 or 10% higher than the initial quote can cause customers to walk away.Too often, businesses are stalled on their climb to the top of the deal mountain. Knowing how to navigate the critical steps between quote generation and revenue collection can be what gets them over the hurdle. Ensuring correct sales tax calculation is important at several steps in the QTC cycle:Pricing products to reflect current exemptions, discounts and inventory levelsQuote creation for a prospect or customer, and price/project negotiationChanges to the orderSupporting credits/returnsContract and order managementInvoicingPayment receiptFor omni-channel sellers using a robust automation and CRM environment, the customers expectation is that the quote theyre given will match the invoice.THE PRICEQuoting the correct price and securing approval for that pricing is trickier than it seems. Depending on the technical sophistication of the seller, pricing resources may be manual or automated. Key questions include: What products should be offered at what price point. How does the sellers internal approval process for pricing work? Is it clunky and manual, or is it automated? Providing incorrect pricing impacts everything from the initial deal, to returns and credits. Using a high quality CRM provides a consistent flow that should include sales tax and supports the sales tax management process. The customer experience is improved, and deals close faster and more frequently as the customer sees full price (including sales tax) up front. The nuances of sales tax might include sales tax holidays, accurate sales tax exemptions, product taxability needs and bulk purchase discounts.Revealing the true cost including the right sales tax all the way from quote to final invoice can make or break a deal. THE QUOTEIn order to create a quote that includes any tax-exemptions, sales tax holidays, and applies the right sales tax where applicable, the sales team needs real-time sales tax information. When managed manually, quotes can take an inordinate amount of time and are prone to error. An automated system for sales and sales tax, that takes into account not only the product or service purchased, but any product taxability rules, sourcing rules, and whether or not shipping is taxable, can make for better quotes and more customer satisfaction. Without accurate sales tax calculations, quotes can be lower than final invoice. Project estimates and pricing that dont match initial quotes will doom the deal before its finalized.THE APPROVALSGetting approvals from supervisors to move ahead with deals can stall a deal-in-motion. Like the car salesman running upstairs to speak to the manager about the car price hes quoting, the process of manually getting supervisor approval can seem like a bait and switch to a customer waiting on estimated price.THE FULFILLMENT PROCESSHow tax applies to the whole fulfillment effort is one of the more complicated parts of the process.This includes stock level maintenance, order tracking, shipment and various approaches to tracking customer data against product levels. If any of the customer or product data is incorrect, it could result in the wrong order being shipped to the customer and have cascading inventory mistakes. THE INVOICEWhether generated manually or within an ERP or accounting system, or an integrated tool, the invoice needs to be accurate and correct. This accuracy must be presented to the customer throughout the QTC process in order to maintain customer satisfaction and grow the customer base.THE PAYMENT RECEIPTWhether automated or manual, payment receipts must be in place to handle the inflow and capture of payments from customers, as well as booking and categorization of customer receipts. Also crucial is the capturing of additional discounts the customer may have after the fact and include the impacts that would have on sales tax liability.About AvalaraAvalara makes sales tax compliance simple and automatic for thousands of customers every day. Its SaaS-based, sales tax and compliance automation software solutions span the compliance spectrum; each year thesesolutions deliver billions of tax decisions, manage millions of exemption certificates, file hundreds of thousands of sales tax returns, and remit billions of tax dollars to states nationwide.More information at: www.avalara.comSales Tax Accuracy and CRM: Automating the Quote-to-Cash Process to Increase Customer Satisfaction and Retention WP36November 2014|CRM Magazine Sponsored ContentBy Jesse Heller, Marketing Director, Faye Business Systems Group, a SugarCRM platinum partnerAccording to the US Golf Association, a golfer may have as many as 14 different golf clubs in their bag for a given round. It seems like a lot clubs, doesnt it? Why would anyone need 14 different clubs when most holes can be completed in less than 5 shots? If you asked a professional golfer, theyd tell you they would love to add more clubs to their bag if they could. Golf is game of millimeters, and the more options a golfer has to achieve precision the better chance they have at shooting a lower score. Even if a golfer carries a club that may only be used once per round, just having the right club available to them at every moment makes it so that they have the best chance at shooting the lowest score in the field.When it comes to giving you the best opportunity to increase sales and productivity, having the right tools, and knowing how to use them, is the simplest way to enhance your ability to become an expert on your customer, thus giving you the best chance of closing more deals. If the CRM platform by SugarCRM were a bag of golf clubs, youd have more clubs than you needed to win business.There are more than 100 different functions in Sugar that can give you the ability to get toknow your customer better and close more deals.Here are six ways Sugar by SugarCRM can help you:1. Increase sales growth and productivity2. Turn customer support into customer satisfaction3. Improve marketing and sales collaboration4. Collaborate with activity streams and social integrations5. Stay connected anywhere6. Experience the benefits of a flexible platformINCREASE SALES GROWTH AND PRODUCTIVITYSugar enables you to control every stage of the sales lifecycle.Track and share contacts and opportunities, manage and upsell into existing accounts, and monitor performanceImprove revenue forecasting and make sure you stay on top of quotes and contractsHelp sales reps connect and sell, not get bogged down with data entryFocus sales reps on the right opportunities and tasks to helpmake quotaProvide expertise and team collaboration to sell more efficiently and effectivelyTURN CUSTOMER SUPPORT INTO CUSTOMER SATISFACTIONImprove service and reduce handling time with Sugars customer insightProvide consistent service across customer touch pointsDeliver expert service backed by the power of shared knowledgeIMPROVE MARKETING AND SALES COLLABORATIONBuild customer mindshare by using personalized information across your business to engage and drive responsesCreate, manage, and analyze sophisticated marketing programs Deliver results by placing useful prospect insight in the hands of the sales organizationIncrease lead conversions by understanding which campaigns, leads and accounts contribute the most to your sales pipelineCOLLABORATE WITH ACTIVITY STREAMS AND SOCIAL INTEGRATIONSVisibility into data updates, activities and interactions with Sugar activity streamsEngage customers socially through TwitterMeet and collaborate from within Sugar using IBM SmartCloud Engage, Google Docs, Cisco WebEx, GoToMeetingSTAY CONNECTED WITH SUGARCRM MOBILEWork seamlessly with no-cost native apps for iOS and Android as well as Sugars mobile browser support for any smartphone or tabletReduce training and boost productivity with Sugars shared interface for desktop and mobile devicesEXPERIENCE THE BENEFITS OF SUGARS FLEXIBLE PLATFORMCollaborate your existing business applications with Sugar by integrating seamlessly with: Sage 100 ERP, QuickBooks, NetSuite, Authorize.Net, Intacct, Act-On, Constant Contact, Box, Jira and ShoreTel. Run Sugar anywhere: on premise oron demandTake advantage of Sugars developer and partner ecosystem to grow Sugar with your businessCRM is about enabling businesses to build deeper and longer-term customer relationships that is, enabling businesses to optimize customer engagement. CRM software addresses the needs of the individual user who interacts with the customer, the needs of the customer who interacts with the business and the consistency of that interaction.With Sugar, your entire organization can build better customer relationships that set you apart from your competitors. Start your free Sugar trial today.About Faye Business Systems GroupSoftware and technology specialists with over 25 years of expertise in CRM and ERP software. FayeBSG is a leading SugarCRM Platinum Partner and 2014 Inc. 5000 honoree. Contact FayeBSGPhone: 818-280-4820E-mail: info@fayebsg.comwww.fayebsg.com FayeBSG LinkedIn FayeBSG TwitterSix Ways CRM Helps You Get To Know Your Customer and Close More DealsSponsored Content CRM Magazine|November 2014 WP37Customer support and post-sale service is a component of sales enablement that many companies overlook even though solid customer relationships are one of the most important factors in driving revenue growth. Happy customers recommend your products, provide key insight into how or why they do business with you, serve as critical indicators of what you should (or shouldnt) be focusing on, and can often become your brand champions and evangelists.How do you derive that kind of value from existing customers? By being proactive and providing mediums that give them a voice and allow them to access the information they need on demand, wherever they are. Proactive community engagement via forums, portals and/or training sessions can be a highly effective way to deliver information to a wide swath of customers without having to engage in time-consuming one-to-one interactions.Two relatively simple tactics your business can use to optimize its sales enablement function and create portals in which customers largely self-service themselves are:1) Creating branded communities that encourage many-to-many conversationsAccording to Jonathan Spira, Chief Analyst and Founder of knowledge management consultancy Basex, just 20% of the knowledge in an average enterprise is explicitly recorded and shared, while the other 80% typically exists in the heads of employees. Generally, the bulk of that knowledge goes untapped, or its shared in mediums where the information isnt recorded and cannot be digested by the masses.Online customer forums and social customer support communities change that. An open forum approach allows questions to be viewed and answered by larger communities of experts and peers, and dramatically improves the time to resolution. It both eliminates duplicate support questions and equips customers to more easily help one another creating a virtual encyclopedia of rich customer support content that can be easily indexed, searched and consumed on demand.2) Delivering on-demand, self-service training that helps customers access information when and where they need itOn-demand customer training can help customers access the information they need, when and how they need it like when theyre working against a deadline on a major project or in the field and need to quickly find a way to come up-to-speed on a new offering. By creating videos, webinars, step-by-step instructional content or hosting regular online customer support sessions, youll encourage customers to use your product more effectively and give your business a better chance of developing a legion of brand loyalists.That wont just help your business improve the customer experience. IBMs Institute for Knowledge-Based Organizations suggests it can also lead to lower customer churn and more frequent customer upsell opportunities, as well as help you build a much stronger brand reputation.Transform your customer experience when you employ these two techniques using Bloomfires social customer service software. Equip customer support representatives with quick access to up-to-date documentation and expertise, dramatically improve customer engagement with branded communities and self-service portals, and employ powerful analytics to continually decrease time to resolution and improve customer satisfaction.Companies who implemented Bloomfire realized the following benefits:20% improvement in customer satisfaction35% reduction in customer support costs20% drop in call escalations15% decrease in call response times30% reduction in support call volumes About BloomfireBloomfires easy-to-use enterprise knowledge and collaboration software enables people to efficiently share and leverage group expertise. With rich analytics and strong content creation and curation tools, we connect people with experts, facilitate social interaction, amplify knowledge and power teamwork at new levels. Our software fosters increased employee engagement, higher sales productivity, more responsive customer service, and strong communication.Visit www.bloomfire.com for more information or schedule a demo with a Bloomfire expert today. To read the complete 3 Phases of Value Driving Sales Enablement eBook by Bloomfire and MarketingProfs, click here.Building Customer Engagement through Social Communities and Self-Service PortalsKnowledge Management (KM) and Customer ExperienceSocial communities and self-service portals are a piece of the bigger Knowledge Management picture. Full KM enables sales and customer support representatives to efficiently and effectively share information, locate experts, ask questions, easily find answers and more. This capability reduces time to resolution and increases customer satisfaction.