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Posted on April 3, 2017 by West Corporation

E9-1-1 Risk Factors in the Enterprise

Today’s enterprises are complex. First, they often have multiple locations scattered across the nation, from large campuses with multi-story complexes to small branch offices with only a few employees. Second, thanks to the flexibility enabled by Unified Communications (UC), users often move within and between these locations with ease. Third, and finally, in addition to moving around on the enterprise network, users often access the voice network remotely, either from home or from other non-enterprise locations (e.g. coffee shops, conference centers, etc.).

5 Major CX Considerations to Think Through Now

By Dan Gordon, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Development

Consider this: By 2020, customer experience (CX) will overtake price and product in terms of overall value to brand differentiation. Why? Because in today’s mobile world, solid CX represents real money. More than ever before, customers are turning to the Internet to self-serve and conduct research before ever reaching out to your brand. Now, by the time they pick up the phone and dial your IVR or send a text message, they are operating from a level of understanding that requires you to know more too — specifically about them. And if you don’t, they will take their business elsewhere and find someone who does.

As customers continually evolve and fluidly define the types of customer experiences they expect, even some of the most well planned CX game plans are destined to fail because they lack a coherent investment strategy and the necessary resources it will take to execute.

Listen to this recording of my recent CRM Xchange presentation to learn more about what it takes to stay ahead of the curve. Then, check out these five steps to start immediately optimizing your CX: Read More >

Posted on March 14, 2017 by West Corporation

Regulators Open the Door for Utility Investment in the Cloud

By Chandler Harrison, Sales Executive, West Interactive

As technology evolves and changes the way we live our day to day lives, expectations for agile customer service are ever-rising. As a result, customers demand the same speed and personalization from your utility customer experience (CX) as that of their favorite retail company.

Cloud-based technology can provide the flexibility and data-informed insights that utilities need to get ahead of today’s fickle utility customer. Traditionally, utilities have been unable to rate-base associated costs in the same way they can when it comes to on-premises software. In a nutshell, utility leaders would rather (understandably) realize a regulated rate of return from capital expenditures on in-house technology, rather than invest in the cloud and miss out. But things are changing… and fast. Read More >

Posted on March 9, 2017 by West Corporation

Send Your Callers to the Free Throw Line

Whether you are an avid college basketball nut, or were roped into the “madness” and took a more creative approach to team selection (Hey, those jerseys are neat!), there are 9.2 quintillion possible combinations you could have ended up with by the time your March Madness bracket was complete. That’s 9.2 billion written one billion times. You had a lot of tough decisions to make.

Imagine if each of those decisions could have affected the way your company runs— organizationally and on the consumer side. That feeling of the unknown many get while filling out a bracket is a lot like how it feels when making customer communication decisions, with just as many potential outcomes. Even the smallest choices matter in the long run!

Repeat calls, for instance, are an often overlooked source of customer information. Often seen as an organizational “air ball,” a repeat call can actually become a valuable tool in your overall customer experience strategy. (What are a caller’s pain points? Can you apply your findings across other communication channels?) Read More >

Posted on March 6, 2017 by West Corporation

Keeping Remote Users Safe with E911

Employees are traveling across the nation to attend meetings and conferences. Businesses are adopting tele-working policies and corporations are allowing teams to meet and brainstorm off-site. However, what happens when one of your remote employees dials 911 from their soft client? Does your organization know where they are? Can you connect them to the help they need in a timely manner? Though the ability for users to work remotely can provide organizations with greater flexibility, connecting these workers to E911 can represent a challenge to an enterprise.

How Thoughtful Communication Helped Tackle a Hurricane

Utility customers not only crave solutions for more reliable communication, but desperately need them. So when Hurricane Matthew tracked across Florida, a major utility partnered with West to provide the instant peace-of-mind their customers sought. Determined to keep customers in-the-know throughout Matthew’s entire lifecycle, they employed a number of communication strategies to ensure every customer’s voice was heard. When all was said and done, they successfully automated around 34,000 inbound calls, placed 2.3 million proactive outbound calls and saved $1 million along the way.

Download this case study to learn more about this Florida utility company’s success during Hurricane Matthew. Read More >

Posted on February 10, 2017 by West Corporation

Natural Language and Your CX: The Perfect Match?

Finding the right combination of communication solutions to drive the ideal customer experience (CX) can feel a lot like getting back into the dating pool… exciting, confusing, intimidating. To pursue or not to pursue? That is the question. This is especially true when checking out a speech-enabled Natural Language (NL) application.

NL is gorgeous on the outside looking in, but a fickle mistress to organizations that jump into the relationship without getting to know the deeper nuances. Luckily, companies thinking about introducing a NL solution to their IVR can avoid a disastrous blind date: Click here to learn When to Use Natural Language – and When to Avoid It. Read More >

Posted on February 8, 2017 by West Corporation

The 10 New Rules of the Inbound Contact Center

Things have changed in the contact center. Customer experience is no longer bound by the limitations of legacy on-premises system capabilities. In their place, new cloud-based solutions offer a more flexible and agile approach, resulting in considerably more rewarding customer interactions.

But while new cloud-based technology can play a major role in an organization’s ability to deliver a more effective customer experience, it needs to be grounded in solid strategy. “The 10 New Rules of the Inbound Contact Center” provides a playbook through which any brand can get the most from their cloud-based platform: Read More >

Posted on February 2, 2017 by West Corporation

Data Can Be Your Customer Experience MVP

You’re gearing up for Super Bowl 51 this weekend, right? Imagine if you were settling in with your Best Buds (“King of Beers,” pun definitely intended) and discovered that it was aired via Pay-Per-View (PPV)…

Okay, don’t fret—this isn’t the case—but there are plenty of big TV events that are PPV-only throughout the year.

One leading cable/satellite company seized the opportunity for PPV viewership using proactive communications to promote an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event that would likely pique the interest of many subscribers.

It worked.

This client’s goal was to increase self-service to improve the customer experience – and capitalize on automation to increase revenue. West’s expert data analysts helped them achieve both by drawing parallels between customers’ behaviors and their likelihood to purchase UFC PPV fights. Informed by that data, subscribers received proactive notifications two days prior to the event that gave them the option to purchase the fight right then and there.

Predicting which customers would most likely purchase the next fight, and prescribing how to deliver an individualized, attention-grabbing message to them at the perfect time resulted in a 40 percent increase in revenue compared to previous efforts.

Analyzing customer data is the key to getting into the mind of your audience and taking their experience to the next level. Read More >

Posted on January 25, 2017 by West Corporation

Consumer Survey Offers Key Insights to Improve CX

Not long ago, grocery shopping happened solely in-store and banking was done with the help of a human teller. But in the blink of an eye, the internet, social media and mobile devices changed the relationship between company and customer as we knew it. Now, the quality of every interaction with a brand plays into a larger customer experience lifecycle that evolves with every conversation, across multiple channels.

– 89 percent of customers have switched brand loyalties due to poor CX. 69 percent will pay more for products and services from brands with a good CX reputation.

West surveyed more than 500 U.S. consumers to understand how they define high quality CX, gauge how communication preferences shift across self-service and proactive interactions, and identify which industries are leading and lagging in CX delivery. Download this whitepaper to explore customer expectations for your CX and learn: Read More >

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Blog

E9-1-1 Risk Factors in the Enterprise

5 Major CX Considerations to Think Through Now

Send Your Callers to the Free Throw Line

Keeping Remote Users Safe with E911

How Thoughtful Communication Helped Tackle a Hurricane

Natural Language and Your CX: The Perfect Match?

Data Can Be Your Customer Experience MVP

Consumer Survey Offers Key Insights to Improve CX

– 89 percent of customers have switched brand loyalties due to poor CX. 69 percent will pay more for products and services from brands with a good CX reputation.

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