Three terrific thought leader panels from ACCE 2013
Jeff ToisterICMI's ACCE 2013 conference for call center professionals was a customer service extravaganza and a terrific learning experience (see my re-cap here).
One of the best features of the conference was the Thought Leaders Discussion Table. It consisted of a rotating group of panelists who engaged in fifteen minute, freeform discussions on a variety of call center topics ranging from technology to social media.
I was fortunate enough to moderate the first three panels:
Panel #1
Panelists included Tiffany LaReau of Human Numbers, Todd Hixon of Intuit, and Bob Furniss of Bluewolf. They kicked things off right with a great discussion on social media.
Click here if you can't see the video.
Panel #2
Panelists included Katy Wild of Freeman, Ben Paganelli of VIA Unlimited, and Lou Paduto of Satori Software. Incidentally, Lou and I will be co-facilitating a webinar on reducing call center stress on Thursday, June 20.
Click here if you can't see the video.
Panel #3
Panelists included Clare Wenham of New Voice Media, Tristan Barnum of Telcentris, Ruben Moffett of TantaComm, and Dave Bethers of TCN. And yes, astute readers will recognized that a story from Clare Wenham helped inspire my post on how companies are training customers to complain via Twitter.
Click here if you can't see the video.
Reader Comments (2)
Every day I keep seeing where businesses fail at providing adequate, let alone great, customer service. I am always amazed at how terrible it is. It is not rocket science, I don't understand. My latest experience; I went out with a group of friends, there were 12 of us. We had seen a play, were hungry, thirsty and in great spirits. Someone suggested the On Deck Sports Bar, a trendy, cool place in the Pearl District in Portland, OR. The entire experience was horrible (I'll spare you some of the details). It all came to a head when someone in the group asked the question that all in the food industry must detest. . . Can you do separate checks? I totally understand the reasons for hating this request, thus it is not "what you say", but "how you say it". The guy (I am terribly sorry I didn't get his name, would love to point him out) immediately responded and then the conversation went something like this:
Guy: I won't do separate checks
Me: Really?
Guy: I will give you good customer service, but won't do it
Me: But the check process is part of the service
Guy: I can give you "good" service OR I can do separate checks, but I won't do both
Me: [Look of amazement and I think to myself, buddy you’ve already failed to give any kind of service]
Guy: Is anyone drinking anything?
Me: [Processing the interaction] Let us look at the menu
Guy: [mumbling to the other waiting staff]
Me: [To my friends] IF I had my own car here, I would not stay here.
Friends: We don't have to stay here, let's go
We proceeded to get up and walk away, as we did the Guy says: Great! You just made my night! Thank you for leaving.
Really? I don't understand how a business can stay open for any amount of time, when they provide this kind of experience. I seriously felt that I was in the Food Network Channel show "Restaurant Stakeout". My husband and I were watching an episode, he said, it is all acting and staged . . . after my experience on Friday, I can tell him this kind of stuff happens for real.
I'm sorry to hear about that service failure, Rossanna. Yes, it does boggle the mind a bit.
Two things stand out from your story. One, good for you for asking about separate checks up front. Many restaurants (and servers) are happy to do it, but it helps quite a bit to know at the beginning so they don't have to separate everything later.
Second, this guy wasn't interested in providing good customer service. He wanted things to be easy for him.
You mentioned the place is trendy. I wonder how long that will last with service like that?