Focus | CSIA Quarterly | August 2018

August 2018 CSIA Quarterly

SH/FTING GEARS CSIA and Brooke launch SH/FT, the design thinking space

Centorrino Technologies

Humanity in Technology

Creating a customer-obsessed service culture in an industry not associated with great service

Why we need to ensure humans remain at the centre during technological changes

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CSIA FOCUS

Welcome to the new look and feel FOCUS magazine.

We look at how organisations can leverage technology to further enhance their customer experience strategies.

As the speed and volume of information around us gathers pace, we thought it fitting to rename our magazine something that reflected our mission to deliver clear, powerful customer experience insights.

We hope you enjoy reading the stories in this month’s issue.

Judging for the 2018 Australian Service Excellence Awards is almost complete and the awards ceremony is just around the corner. You’ll find the finalists listed inside.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the entrants; the calibre and range of participation reflects well on our business community.

Further, CSIA is excited about partnering with Brooke for the awards. Their dynamism and expertise are sure to deliver a wonderful event at The Star on 1 November.

We know that great customer service starts with great leadership.

As such, we are looking forward

to the Certified Customer Service Leader (CCSL) program coming up in Melbourne on 26 September.

The team at CSIA is often asked how organisations can leverage technology to further enhance their customer experience strategies.

In this issue, we look at how digital applications enabled a government department to deal with emergencies and with every day customers and how the IT sector, not generally associated with customer service excellence, can turn the tables on that stereotype.

We’ll be back in November with the next issue of FOCUS. Until then, enjoy our new look magazine filled with tips that are sure to benefit your business’ customer experience strategy.

Anouche Newman CEO

AUGUST 2018

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"One third of Australians prefer digital contact channels over traditional methods.�

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Contents

04

News in Brief

06

2018 ASEAs Finalists

Find out who the finalists are in this year's Australian Service Excellence Awards

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Service in Government Contact Centres

How to satisfy today's customers in the public sector

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Centorrino Technologies

Creating a customer-obessed service culture in the technology industry

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Danielle Larkins

60 Seconds with the lead judge of the 2018 ASEAs

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Department of Transport & Main Roads Queensland

Director-General Neil Scales takes us through the agency's service transformation

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Acknowledge & Inspire: The ASEAs' Future

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Humanity in Technology

Anouche Newman on the need to ensure our humanity remains at the heart of changing technology

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We Recommend

Our top choice of books, blogs and videos

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CSIA FOCUS

News in Brief Sit down for the 2018 Field Service conference Join 200 leaders and decision makers at the Field Service SitDown 2018 this 18-19 September.

The conference aligns field service to the purpose of agility and customer centricity.

Delegates will learn, discuss and debate a variety of topics including how to manage internal and external demand spikes, the successful use of technology for field services including effective integration.

Register

CSIA and Brooke launch SH/FT

"The SH/FT space is designed for those looking to complete specific workshop tasks and plan for technological integration."

Brooke has partnered with CSIA to give you an industry-first look at SH/FT, the Design Thinking space that helps you solve your most pressing problems, faster.

Leveraging the power of cutting edge technologies, the space is designed for specific workshop tasks and technological integration. Targeted use of AR, VR and iPads facilitate the rapid generation, capture and sharing of ideas as well as the development of simulation and prototypes.

SH/FT officially launches in November 2018.

Events chaired and attended CSIA had the honour of chairing the Government Contact Centre Summit in Canberra and partnering with Salesforce Australia to put on the Service Edge Summit in Melbourne and Sydney.

Both events were very keenly attended with insightful speakers and industry experts in attendance, we are privalaged to have worked with some amazing people from across the industry sector.

AUGUST 2018

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Newly certified companies

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CCSL Program in Melbourne The CCSL program will be held in Melbourne on 26 September for all those team leaders, supervisors or customer service managers who are responbile for the customer service performance of those within their consumer facing teams.

This is great opportunity to boost your service leadership skills so secure your place at our Certified Customer Service Leader Program now and we will see you there in September.

Sign up

We could like to congratulate V/Line, the Queensland Government Department of Transport and Main Roads, Transport for NSW, Harbour City Ferries, City of Melville, and Smartsalary for maintaining their status as Certified Customer Service Organisations through recertification to the International Customer Service Standard (ICSS 2015-2020).

We would also like to congratulate Transurban for its recent recertification to CSIA's Complaint Handling Framework (CSIA-CHF 2015).

Join us at the Australian Service Excellence Awards on 1 November Tickets are on sale for the Australian Service Excellence Awards gala dinner at The Star in Sydney on 1 November.

Tickets

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CSIA FOCUS

2018 Australian Service Awards Finalists We are excited to announce the finalists for this years Australian Service Excellence Awards and we look forward to seeing everyone on awards night in Sydney on 1 November.

Government, Non for Profit • •

• •

QLeave Smart Service Qld – Customer Contact Branch, Qld Government Service Centres City of Melville University of South Australia

Business School

Customer Service Team of the Year – Small •

•

•

Rockend – Customer Insights and Improvement Team Revenue NSW – Customer Insights Team CMC Markets – Sales Trading

Customer Service Team of the Year - Medium

Customer Service Organisation of the Year – Large

• •

•

•

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Adestra – Support Team Nationwide Corporate Services – Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Brisbane City Council – Customer Services Customer Experience Team

Customer Service Team of the Year – Large • Harbour City Ferries • Challenger Limited – Client

Operations • Wyndham Vacation Clubs Asia Pacific – Customer Experience

Customer Service Organisation of the Year – Small • Ocean Keys Shopping Centre • Centorrino Technologies • Victory Offices • Staff Train and Recruit

Customer Service Organisation of the Year – Medium • Aussie Broadband • Rockend • Stryker South Pacific

HCF: The Hospitals Contribution Fund of Australia Sunsuper Melbourne Cricket Club

Customer Service Organisation of the Year – Retail • Pacific Fair Shopping Centre • Ferguson Plarre Bakehouses

Craigieburn Central • Muffin Break Victorian Operations Team

Service Excellence in a Contact Centre – Small •

• • •

Australian Catholic Supernnuation & Retirement Fund City of Melville Centorrino Technologies Intuit Australia

• Viva Energy Australia

Service Excellence in a Contact Centre – Medium • Link Group – GESB Contact Centre • Rockend – Customer Support, Perth • WEX Australia

AUGUST 2018

Service Excellence in a Contact Centre – Large

Project of the Year - Service Transformation

• American Express Australia

Limited – Consumer Engagement Network • HCF: The Hospitals Contribution Fund of Australia • Link Group – AustralianSuper

Contact Centre • Sunsuper

Project of the Year - Customer Impact • Sydney Water – Customer Hub • Challenger Limited – Electronic Forms • HP Inc – Sth Pac Customer

Support • Adelaide Airport Limited

Project of the Year - Continuous Improvement • Wyndham Vacation Clubs Asia Pacific – 5 Day Project • icare – NPS ‘much more than a score’ program • Assetlink – Assetlink Masterclass Series • Telstra – Customer Centricity Project

• OPTUS – Robotic Process Automation • City of Casey – Bunjil Place ‘One Place One Team’ • Smartsalary – Service Centre Improvement / Restructure • Sydney Airport – Airside Driving Customer Interface Project

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Customer Service Executive of the Year

Project of The Year - Service Innovation

• Adam Centorrino - Centorinno Technologies • Neil Scales- Department of Transport and Main Roads

• Scott Downing - Rockend

Customer Service Manager of the Year • Aoife Roche - Assetlink • Nick Stapleton - Smartsalary • Muzi Ozcelik - Assetlink

• Department of Transport and Main Roads – Transport Talk • Intuit Australia • Stryker – Quality Partner Model • Muffin Break – The Good Moves Game

Customer Service Leader of the Year

Customer Service Advocate of the Year

Customer Service Professional of the Year

•

• •

• Jennifer Tse - Intuit Australia • Donna Coote - Stryker South

Pacific • Georgina Abela - NAB • Nicole Acott - Xero Australia Pty Limited

Yu-hsien Kuo - American Express Australia Limited Raf Marini - NAB Matt Koopman - Rockend

• •

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Jodie Graham - Princess Cruises Matthew Hargrave - American Express Australia Limited Kristiina Bedford - Rockend

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CSIA FOCUS

How to satisfy today's customers in government contact centres With messages between friends, family and colleagues zipping from smartphone to smartphone faster each day, it’s hardly surprising that Australians hope to connect with government with similar speed and efficiency.

According to the Government’s Digital Transformation Office, more than a third of Australians say that digital means of communication would be their preferred link to government agencies.

This number is only expected to grow as more customer service operations in both the public and private sector are digitised.

CSIA joined 40 Government Departments and Agencies at Konnect Learning’s Government Contact Centre Summit this past July.

Across four-information packed days, speakers and delegates discussed

how to positively leverage technology in contact centres and provide a captivating customer experience.

There were an abundance of conversations around excellence in customer service from Service NSW, Queensland Police and Healthdirect Australia, and we heard private sector perspectives from the general manager of Customer Care at Schneider about how to bring the customer’s voice into the business.

It was a highly interactive event and proved that many government organisations are in the process of streamlining their digital communication channels.

However, government organisations are still under unique pressure to become more citizen-centric in their service delivery and operations.

Cultural change is needed to build customer service champions across organisations and to design services

and processes around customer’s needs. Furthermore, innovative omni-channel strategies are needed to tackle the long wait times and lack of efficient resolution that have been some of the main customer complaints in the public sector.

Many large government organisations have seen a vast improvement in customer satisfaction and service delivery by centralising the customer’s journey with the organisation into a single view of the customer. At the City of Gold Cost, Malcolm Angell, Manager of Customer Contact is using technology to move towards a single view of the customer that he calls “the Holy Grail”.

“The CoGC LGP Project has been one of the largest IT implementations in Australia and replaces multiple legacy systems with a single unified platform for multiple enquiry types,” Malcolm says.

AUGUST 2018

Government Customer Service Summit 2018 This December, the 2018 Government Customer Service Summit provides a space for the best in public sector customer service leadership to collaborate and present innovative case studies about: • Streamlining digital strategy for increased efficiency and higher customer satisfaction in customer service • Fostering a culture of high engagement throughout your customer service teams to drive positive change in organisations • The future of innovation in customer service delivery

Summit Highlights Attend the Government Customer Service Summit 2018 to hear these expert case studies on digital innovation and exemplary customer experience.

“One third of Australians prefer digital contact channels over traditional methods.”

“It will allow us to better manage and track customer requests, applications etc. as well as providing significantly enhanced digital/online/self-service functions for our customers. We also focus heavily on the customer

experience and track customer satisfaction via post-call surveys and website feedback options."

"Critically, the data collected is then used to generate improvements and new initiatives.”

Centralisation, along with digital infrastructure, provides a streamlined service informed by customer insight.

Investing in AI and machine learning tools such as web chats and virtual assistant provide an engine for more sophisticated customer mapping.

By designing processes with a customer-centred approach, departments can transform service channels into quick, user-friendly experiences. Thus, innovating customer service remains of high importance in the public sector as a way to optimise service delivery and enhance public trust.

Government Customer Service Summit 2018 will be held on 11-14 December 2018.

Employee engagement – The formula!

Malcolm Angell Manager Customer Contact, City of Gold Coast

Balancing hype and reality in the future of customer Sue Ferguson Manager – Contact Centres, Service NSW

Establishing dedicated customer service programs to streamline customer interactions Kirsten Garwood Group Executive and Chief Customer Officer, Business Solutions

Use the code CSIA at checkout for a 20% discount.

Book now

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CSIA FOCUS

Creating a customer service centered culture

Paying attention to the people behind the IT tickets has helped Centorrino Technologies develop a customer service culture in a technical and complex industry.

The Melbourne-based IT service provider has received Australian Service Excellence Awards for Service Excellence in Small Business and Small Contact Centre for two years running; both 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Managing Director, Adam Centorrino, recently chatted to CSIA about his strategy for embedding a customerobsessed culture in an industry rarely associated with customer service excellence.

Putting people first in a tech environment

a customer recognised they were facing a technical issue right through to the moment our service desk analyst completed the task.

Very quickly, we discovered the customer was often left completely out of the communication loop, which created a lasting sense of frustration and negatively shaped their entire experience. While the technical issue might have been resolved, the customer support during this process was lacking.

It became our mission to redesign the support process and place the dynamic needs of our customers as our central priority. Once we had decided that, we redeveloped our corporate values and purpose statement to reflect this customer-centric approach.

At Centorrino Technologies, we understood very early on how frustrating it can be to get support from the technical service desk.

It was an incredibly busy time for us; we were experiencing rapid growth within our contact centre and our staff ballooned out from just three in 2013 to 15 employees as of May, 2018. We worked hard to ensure our service standards did not slip while we went through this period of rapid growth and we believe we’ve managed to achieve a level of customer service unrivalled in the technology industry.

We wanted to understand the customer experience journey and map out every touchpoint from the moment

This can all be attributed to putting the customer first in all we do.

Operating in the information and communications technology sector often means technical people are fixing technical problems, with customer service often only a secondary consideration. Or not one at all.

AUGUST 2018

Maintaining elite service standard

Centorrino’s Australian Service Excellence Awards success

Keeping our team focused and enthusiastic about creating great customer experiences takes a companywide approach. Internally, we champion individuals who have gone above and beyond to ensure the customer has a positive encounter.

2013 Winner Small Business

The one quality we look for above anything else is patience. We’ve found patient people deliver a higher standard of service every time, regardless of the issue.

Incidentally, we realised patient people prove to be our best learners. They are constantly finding ways to improve themselves technically and emotionally.

2015 Highly Commended Service Excellence – Small Contact Centre 2016 Winner Service Excellence in a Small Contact Centre

There are little things that people do everyday that really go a long way.

2017 Winner Customer Service Organisation of the Year – Small Business

“The one quality we look for above anything else is patience. We’ve found patient people deliver a higher standard of service every time, regardless of the issue.”

We went right back to basics: promptly answering calls, the friendly way we great our customers, our ability to make sure we understand the problems from the customer’s perspective and doing our very best to resolve the issue during the first call.

We have established an internal recognition system to ensure that positive actions like these never go unacknowledged. Every time we witness a staff member going the extra mile for the customer, we communicate that to other team members and throughout the entire company.

Everything we’ve achieved wouldn’t be possible without the right people in the right roles. Even with forward thinking policies and procedures in place, maintaining our standards wouldn’t work if our people didn’t have a customer service mindset.

That said, finding the right people is the biggest challenge. Having to decide between someone with great technical ability and someone with finely developed emotional intelligence is difficult, but putting our customers first is genuinely better for our business.

Adam’s top ten tips to creating a customer-obsessed culture

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Define what customer experience means. What does a great customer experience look like?

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Communicate the message.

Does everyone in the organisation have the same expectation?

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Hire the right people. Do you have the right people in the right positions?

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Train to the standards. Is everyone ready to create great customer experiences?

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Make it compulsory. Why should I do it if the CEO doesn’t?

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Be a role model. Are your leaders setting the right examples?

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Empower your team. Does your team have the right workflows to make the customer smile?

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Recognise, recognise, recognise. Are you letting your people know they are doing a good job?

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Keep improving. If someone is not up to standard, are you giving the support they need to get better?

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Celebrate the wins! Do your employees truly feel they are appreciated when they provide excellent customer service?

Our path to being customer obsessed Centorrino Technologies has always strived to be different, both internally and to differentiate us from our competitors. We had to do this if we wanted to deliver customer experiences that just aren’t seen in the IT industry.

Adam Centorrino Managing Director Centorrino Technologies

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60 SECONDS WITH

Danielle Larkins CSIA talks to Danielle Larkins, returning lead judge for the 2018 Australian Service Excellence Awards to share her customer service insights.

In one sentence, what does your role involve?

I run a business called ServicePeople.

We identify and secure career opportunities for Customer Service Professionals.

How long have you worked in the customer service industry?

Since 1993. It feels like 10 years ago, but it’s actually 25! That said, while industries and businesses change, high quality customer service remains vital to sustainable success.

What was your first job in customer service?

My first role was as a Checkout Operator at Safeway, now Woolworths. Being on the front line meant positive body language was the one of the most important factors in ensuring positive customer service interactions.

If I looked happy and energetic, I found people responded well and were much easier to deal with. A good energy also indicated I was capable, which meant I could solve much more difficult problems. Not much has changed since then.

What is your most memorable customer service moment?

There are so many! But recently, an airport valet misplaced my car keys. I waited half an hour for my keys to be found, before embarking on the 1.5 hour drive home that evening.

When I arrived home there was an email waiting for me. I was offered three months of complimentary valet parking and a written apology from Senior Management from within that business.

I was really impressed by the speed at which this business sought to resolve an unsatisfactory customer experience and the fact a non-front line leader took ownership of it.

What is one characteristic you believe is a core value of customer service?

Empathy. If you can relate to and connect with people, you can really influence their lives.

It’s like American poet and singer Maya Angelou said; “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

It’s a very useful trait to build your business or career on.

What advice would you give someone wanting to start out in customer service today?

Be yourself and actively listen to your customer.

If you pretend to be someone else you’ll come across as disingenuous.

The more you listen to people, the more you’ll work out how to actually help them. Even with things they might not be saying.

Danielle's tips for the Australian Service Excellence Awards Finalists

Top five tips when preparing for a site visit 1. Be creative 2. Facilitate interaction 3. Adhere to timeframes 4. Support your presentation with factual data 5.

Know where your

future opportunities to improve your customer service experience exist.

Top five tips for individuals preparing for an interview 1. Be yourself 2. Feel proud 3. Don’t be afraid to self promote 4. Have specific examples of your achievements 5.

Have a strong understanding of your personal customer service methodologies and beliefs

AUGUST 2018

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CSIA FOCUS

Shifting customers into the fast lane Neil Scales OBE, takes us on a drive through the agency’s customer experience transformation since its first engagement with CSIA in 2016.

In a region familiar with natural disasters and remote communities, TMR is tasked with not only providing accurate and timely information but with also fielding urgent customer queries.

In 2015, TMR kicked off its strategy to put the customer at the centre of everything they do by genuinely changing its culture through their core ‘customers first’ value and attitude, embedding a set of eight customer-centric behaviours called the ‘8 Ways We Work’.

The department worked with CSIA to continue its evolution in being an agency that builds tools that empower their customers, and their people.

The size of the challenge With the Queensland population now surpassing 5 million, TMR accounts for over 80 per cent of the state government’s transactions.

In the past financial year, they managed over 30,000 KMS of roads, provided regulatory oversight of 20 ports, and facilitated over 124 million bus, 52 million train, 9 million light rail and 9 million ferry trips across Queensland’s extensive public transport, road and rail networks.

The department is also responsible for ensuring the safety of the state’s many school children, employing close to 2,000 school crossing supervisors who service nearly 1,240 school crossings across 680 schools.

To revolutionise the way customers interacted with the department, TMR established the Customer Experience Transformation Program. One of the first orders of business under the new program was establishing the Customer First Program and building the state-of-theart Customer Experience Lab (CE Lab).

The CE Lab supports and facilitates customer-centric human-centred design and customer focused outcomes, such as customer research, journey mapping workshops and usability testing, improving customer and crossgovernment collaboration dramatically.

A set of eight behaviours are central to the Customer First Program and TMR has dubbed them the ‘8 Ways We Work’ or WWW. The behaviours and the broader program provide context and a shared understanding, and language across the whole department’s functions and teams.

AUGUST 2018

To date, over 98 per cent of the department’s 8,500 employees have participated in a WWW awareness session, designed to foster a genuine culture around the core value of ‘customers first’.

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Total social media followers - 2017 calendar year 54000 53000

Harnessing digital transformation

52000

Naturally, digital technologies have played a role in how the department sees itself in the community, and how they ultimately interact with it.

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Under the Next Generation Travel and Traffic Information (TTI) initiative, the department revolutionised their web presence; replacing the old, outdated website and adding a smartphone app called QLDTraffic.

Using these as base platforms, the department then added features like journey planning services and an interactive map showing real-time incidents affecting traffic on Queensland roads.

Customers can now plan their journeys by address or landmark and select their preferred route and transport mode from multiple options, along with estimated arrival times. Since the new QLDTraffic website went live in August 2016, it has generated over 3,757,000 visits and in the first year, the QLDTraffic app generated over 73,000 downloads and over 866,000 visits.

Creating valuable tools that assist customers to help themselves allows staff to concentrate on ensuring TMR is a trusted, official source of traffic and travel information.

49000 48000 47000 46000 45000 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul

Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Includes Join the Drive, TransLink, and QLDTraffic

More broadly, the department has developed an extensive social media presence across all of the major platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Snapchat, and has seen engagement levels increase sharply.

Total Facebook engagement - 2015-2017 14000 12000 1000 8000 6000

Visits to QLDTraffic website and app Tropical Cyclone Debbie

Nov 17

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As communities reeled from the disaster they turned to the QLDTraffic app that was downloaded approximately 30,000 times and the website’s unique page views increased to 1 million in just six days.

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Customer trust and engagement was never more evident and important than during Tropical Cyclone Debbie in early 2017.

Jan 15

Trust and engagement

Includes Join the Drive, TransLink, and QLDTraffic

It’s clear that social media will remain a key platform supporting such critically important TMR initiatives as ‘Join the Drive to Save Lives’ and ‘If it’s flooded, forget it’. These are excellent examples of how TMR uses digital tools and social media to spread key safety messages in the community in cases of emergency.

Initiatives such as these have helped TMR completely transform how it views and interacts with the community, and they can confidently say they are embedding a meaningful customer-driven culture that supports better and more responsive systems for one of Queensland’s most trusted public services.

150000 120000 90000 600000 300000

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Neil Scales OBE Director General Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads

Acknowledge and inspire: The future of the Australian Service Excellence Awards Celebrating customer service excellence is a classic cultural technique, and it’s one we love applying to the entire industry.

AUGUST 2018

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"Those who have successfully fostered relationships with their loyal and returning customers will know, only when a business acknowledges its own values can it pass those on to staff and then customers."

Anouche Newman

Time and time again we see thoughtful and visionary customer service strategies play out in the Australian business community.

Skydiving companies, IT business, enormous sprawling government departments all have varying resources and endlessly disparate customer needs; but despite this variety, there is one method that is consistent throughout all of them.

Acknowledging good customer service within their own organisations builds powerful cultures. Praising those who go above and beyond to fix a problem, put someone at ease, explain a complicated issue or simply greet someone with a smile.

These actions form the bedrock of any customer-centric culture in any business, and at CSIA it’s something we take both seriously and proudly.

The Australian Service Excellence Awards (ASEAs) are a magnification of each successful customer-centric culture we come into contact with.

It’s a celebration - a loud and proud one - of customer service excellence performed by people all throughout Australia’s economy, from all kinds of industries, and it’s a unique opportunity to recognise the powerful work that underpins successful business.

For the last 16 years CSIA has gathered together organisations from ASX200 legacy corporations to local family offices - to pay tribute to those operating in the customer service profession.

At CSIA, not only do we formulate education programs for those wanting to reorient their existing cultures to capture the rich value of true customer satisfaction, we also spend a great deal of time learning from our members and absorbing new ways and techniques to deliver optimal service.

We believe that understanding oneself first is key to working towards understanding the customer. There is a lot of lip-service paid to our industry, but those who have successfully fostered relationships with their loyal and returning customers will know, only when a business acknowledges its own values can it pass those on to staff and then customers.

Rapid technological innovation has swept through industries, revolutionising traditional roles and forcing some businesses to reevaluate their core value proposition. While this might cast a shadow for some, we believe customer service is a profession that will blossom using these new and powerful tools.

We believe it frees up the knowledge economy, enabling us to tap into our people’s thinking and ideas.

We believe the automation of rote administrative tasks can open up the workflow of our teams and we acknowledge the broader global trend of individuals looking to solve their own problems. We also recognise the strong, lasting trend of customers deeply valuing a warm and intelligent employee who assists when friction occurs.

Every day we meet inspiring organisations leveraging new technological tools to empower and enrich their customer service experiences.

The age of the customer-centric business approach is here and it’s something CSIA - will again celebrate again this year.

Just like the simple power of acknowledging good work within an organisation leads to an overall shift in staff thinking, we believe that acknowledging the good work within the customer service industry will flow throughout the rest of Australia.

The ASEAs are a public and confident recognition that customer service professionals are the rock stars of the future and we’d like to thank you for giving us new inspiration, year in and year out.

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CSIA FOCUS

Ensuring our humanity remains at the heart of new technology changes There is an explosion of innovation around customer service, support, and success.

The progress of real-time messaging, video, chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, self-service and a raft of others, offer enormous potential in the day-to-day workings of customer experience professionals.

But the pace can be dizzying when thinking of the scope of technological change sweeping industries from hairdressing to government to IT to education.

At times like these, when there seem to be more solutions than problems, I find it’s best to come back to what keeps our industry at the heart of wide spread business success.

Care about the customer. Own their problem. Make them feel welcome.

It’s still the same formula, it’s just the tools are changing.

And it’s up to us, as customer service professionals, to make sure our people are empowered to use those tools to better serve our customers every day.

One of CSIA’s mantras is, “manage yourself before you manage others”. In other words, in order to take control of a customer service interaction you first need to understand yourself and your own behaviour.

What are your organisation's greatest strengths? How can you best focus your people’s energy on utilising their skills? How you can you help them upskill so they can interact with your customer across channels? What technologies would actually be helpful? And what are you attracted to just because they are in vogue?

We live in a world where customers want to be able to solve their own problems. Think how often we Google

a question rather than ask someone around us. If a chatbot or an algorithm manages to retrieve the right information for a low-level query, fast, the customer has had a positive experience.

While many fear robots and automated processes are taking over the jobs of customer service staff, I believe their introduction is alleviating the mass data collection and low-level administration that have consumed large swathes of employee time for decades.

Now we can give our people support to innovate and understand technology themselves and concentrate on the human relationships, a priority for any business, and I’m sure they’ll tell you, the part of their job they enjoy the most!

We expect more of our customer service professionals than ever before. Business products and services themselves are become more technical and more complex. As such, the problems are evolving and the volume and scale of demands are ripe for introducing new processes. This allows people to concentrate on building relationships and customer service strategies to flourish.

Secure in the knowledge good technological processes are managing positive customer experiences without their persistent oversight, people are able to turn their minds to developing experiences that surprise and delight the customer.

Anouche Newman CEO Customer Service Institute of Australia

AUGUST 2018

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How do we manage AI and ethics? Will machine learning wipe out the labour market?

Could a robot fall in love? In this TED talk, venture capitalist Fai-FU Lee explores the future of AI and how it is changing the world that we live in. With both China and US driving the AI revolution, Lee discusses the effect that AI will have on jobs and the human condition.

Knowing that knock-yoursocks off customer experience requires going that extra mile is one thing, breaking down the strategies to actually do that is quite another. Blake Morgan's "More is More" explores the practical outlook, leadership and policies needed to transform your business into one that nurtures customer relationships.

Flavio Martins' Win The Customer blog is a mustread for those dedicated to creating positive customer experiences. Martins, longtime VP of Operations and Customer Support at DigiCert, explores the ins and outs of new customer service innovations and the powerful trends driving our industry.

As humanity grapples with just how to implant basic decency wihin automated algorithms, Lee raises powerful questions for the customer services industry.

Especially the need for more compassionate and human based customer experience.

Her techniques for deciphering and understanding the customer and practical tips for ensuring they value their relationship with you make this book a must-read for any customer service professional.

The phrase "Less is More" is rightly turned on its head when it comes to customer experience.

His clear and concise tone allows him to explore complicated subjects, from the use of mobile based customer service platforms to managing public relations. As a resource for relevant and real time customer service information the Win the Customer blog should one to keep on your weekly read list.

Watch the video Visit the Blog

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Level 32 101 Miller Street North Sydney NSW 2060

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