CUNA Strategic Services (CSS) announced a market feasibility pilot with startup Cue, an innovator in sales and service scripting software. The Cue solution offers credit unions turnkey access to make call center staff more effective and productive, improving employee turnover, reducing training costs and enhancing overall member experience.
“Cue offers a powerful solution that aligns with our mission of helping credit unions improve their bottom line while enhancing their member relationships,” said Barb Lowman, president, CSS. “We are excited to offer credit unions an opportunity to work with an innovative startup that provides a platform to address member experience and staffing; key components of any successful call center.”
“For the past 3 years, credit unions have been challenged to meet increasing member expectations,” said Michael Wilson, founder at Cue. “We’re on a mission to help credit unions do what they do best—improve financial lives and strengthen communities. We do that by equipping the credit union’s first line of service, their call center staff, with the tools to improve their work and member experiences.”
Cue software allows call center staff to simplify what they do so they can focus more on what they say. Credit unions that use Cue are able to orchestrate all systems needed before, during and after calls. On average, Cue’s overlay has resulted in a 50% decrease in call times and a 21% increase in conversions.
Instead of forcing call center staff to hop from system to system while servicing a member, Cue brings all solutions to the representative, resulting in better call compliance, 5-star performance reporting and an overall streamlined process producing powerful stats.
Sales, service, and support teams are on the frontlines navigating prospects and customers—at every stage of their journey with your organization. These teams are uniquely tasked with the responsibility of solving other people’s problems—with a product offering, troubleshooting, or other resolution.
The people on the other side of the phone are usually in the weeds trying to identify a solution. They might be frustrated, upset, or angry, and your reps have to navigate that while remaining professional and efficient.
When a frustrated or dissatisfied customer calls, the number one goal for the rep is to solve the problem. But nobody likes being berated or accused of doing a poor job. Our nerves can get the best of us when we are confronted with another person’s anger—even if it’s just on the other side of the phone.
No matter how much you reassure your teams there’s nothing to be worried about, it’s not directed at them, or this is a learning opportunity, the frustration and flustered feeling can still ripple out into the rest of their work. They might struggle with simple tasks or feel thrown off in other calls throughout the day. And the fear of making mistakes can lead to more mistakes.
Your agents sit through weeks or even months of training and nesting, yet there are still so many unknowns when they hit the floor. You can offer all the encouragement in the world, provide endless scripts and flowcharts, but you have to equip your reps with dynamic solutions in order to boost their confidence and help them navigate the fear of the unknown. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how often they say the right thing if they don’t know what to do next or possess the resources to guide their next step in the conversation.
With Cue, you can adapt your existing workflows to eliminate nesting mistakes, customize engagement and increase consistency, provide clarifications and visual prompts to simplify the journey for your agents—from increased one-call resolutions to reduced onboarding time and stronger compliance.
Putting the right tools in their hands helps your reps’ mental well-being and mindset at work, and ultimately improves CSAT and reduces turnover for your organization.
We’d love to know: What keeps your team up at night?
Talk to a rep today and learn how we can help you have more peace of mind, improve the customer experience, and give your agents confidence, no matter what’s thrown at them.
Over $6.5 billion in funding awarded to date; leading tech investment conference continues to select large and diverse lineup of innovators from the Southeast’s hottest tech markets
ATLANTA – September 22, 2021 – Cue Intelligence, Inc. announced today that it has been chosen out of a record-breaking 400-plus applicants as one of the top technology companies in the Southeast to be showcased at Venture Atlanta 2021 being held on October 20-21. For 14 years, the annual conference has been selecting the most promising tech companies and bringing in top investment firms from across the nation to hear them pitch. The annual conference has helped launch more than 500 companies and raise $6.5 billion in funding to date, serving the needs of the region’s vibrant tech community.
“We are honored that Cue was selected as a Venture Atlanta Showcase company and are looking forward to participating in its 2021 conference,” said Cue Co-Founder and CEO Michael Wilson. “This is an incredible opportunity for us to present the dynamic way we’re improving the agent experience for companies of every size, and we look forward to creating new partnerships for growth.”
Cue’s robust overlay makes customer service, support, and sales agents more efficient with their time and energy by streamlining processes, reducing redundancy, reducing call times, and ensuring process consistency.
“Venture Atlanta has become the authority for recognizing technology innovation across the Southeast and beyond, connecting the best and brightest innovators with top-tier, national investors and other leaders in our tech ecosystem,” said Venture Atlanta CEO Allyson Eman. “We again set a new record with over 400 applicants for Venture Atlanta Momentum 2021—it’s our most competitive year ever and reflects yet another raising of the bar in terms of presenter quality.”
This year’s Venture Atlanta will be held in person with a limited number of tickets available and will also be offered online for those who wish to tune in virtually. For those attending in person, Venture Atlanta is back with its always-great sessions, company presentations, networking opportunities, and outdoor dinner events.
Building off last year’s successful virtual model, Venture Atlanta’s online experience offers a high-production-quality option that mirrors the benefits of the live conference. Virtual attendees can connect with others at the conference, set up one-on-one meetings, stroll the virtual show floor, watch pitches in real-time, and use features like live chat and audience polling. Each ticket purchased provides attendees with on-demand access to all Venture Atlanta pitches and content for a full year.
Invesco is this year’s premier sponsor, with Mailchimp and Stax as presenting sponsors. Venture Atlanta will conclude with Atlanta Startup Battle, in which the top five ASB companies will pitch on stage against one another to win a $100,000 investment.
To learn more about Cue, visit www.itscue.com. For additional information about Venture Atlanta, to register for the event or to view the conference schedule, please visit www.ventureatlanta.org.
About Venture Atlanta
Venture Atlanta, the Southeast’s technology innovation event, is where the region’s most promising tech companies meet the country’s top-tier investors. As the Southeast’s largest investor showcase helping launch more than 500 companies and raise $6.5 billion in funding to date, the event connects the region’s top entrepreneurs with local and national investors and others in the technology ecosystem who can help them raise the capital they need to grow their businesses. The annual nonprofit event is a collaboration of the Atlanta CEO Council, Metro Atlanta Chamber, and the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG).
Cue aims to help customer service, support, and sales agents and their customers become more efficient with their time and energy by streamlining processes, reducing redundancy, reducing call times, and increasing one-call resolutions. To learn more about Cue, visit www.itscue.com.
From the point of first contact all the way through the enrollment process, it’s critical to stay compliant with guidelines from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and avoid noncompliance.
Noncompliance costs everyone money. Here are a few important ways to prevent and correct noncompliance:
Make Sure You Have Permission to Contact & Monitor Calls
According to CMS guidelines, agents cannot make unsolicited phone calls. Additionally, many parts of the U.S. require consent for calls to be recorded. It’s important to be up to speed on state and federal regulations and ensure your agents are using the right language to obtain consent—in both incoming and outgoing calls.
Follow CMS Marketing & Language Guidance
CMS has clear guidance on their website about presenting information to potential enrollees. Avoid any potential to mislead contacts and refrain from using absolutes or superlatives to describe Medicare plans and benefits. CMS also advises that the term “free” should be avoided when speaking about reduced costs or $0 premiums.
Keep Health Information Safe
The Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) exists to ensure security and privacy of patient health information, including Social Security numbers, IP addresses, images of their faces, account numbers, and more. It’s important to make sure you all of your agents regularly receive proper training on HIPAA, and that your internal guidance restricts the ability to share personal health information with others.
Conduct Regular Reviews & Training
Training agents once and expecting them to remember every detail isn’t sustainable. Through regular compliance training and access to updated knowledge about policies and procedures, you can ensure that your staff is knowledgeable about policy, and also knows where to look for relevant information if they have questions.
It’s also important to monitor and audit adherence to the standards and programs in place. This helps inform your training, internal protocols, and other guidelines.
Streamline Your Processes
Often, reps get bogged down working with static scripts and navigating between screens or tools that aren’t talking to each other. But there’s a way to reduce stress, increase productivity, improve customer experience, and drive sales—all while ensuring compliance.
Cue offers a simple, integrated solution that streamlines workflows and tracks adherence to compliance requirements for insurance companies with phone-based sales and support reps. With dynamic and personalized scripts and real-time call and conversation analytics, both reps and their managers can operate with more support and peace of mind.
About the Author
Scott Klonowski began his journey in insurance as a captive agent in 1993. In 2002, he started Klonowski Agency where he focused primarily on selling and servicing group health plans to small businesses in Northeast Ohio.
After 10 years of growth, Scott recognized that a Human Resources Administrative platform that companies could use to manage their benefits, payroll, timekeeping, and paid time off all in one place was missing from the market. With just a concept and no prior experience in building software, Scott started My1HR in November 2011 with his friend and business partner Glenn Leppo. In 2013, they built connectivity to HealthCare.gov for individual quoting and enrollment, and soon after built a quoting enrollment platform for independent agents, INSXCloud. After helping thousands of independent brokers and agents, Scott sold The Klonowski Agency in 2015 and My1HR in 2018.
Scott now uses his experience working with companies of every size to help business owners find success. From new companies gearing up for rapid growth to mature ones looking to sell (and every stage in between), Scott mentors and provides professional support and guidance to business owners to help them set and achieve their goals.
We know, it probably doesn’t feel like reading a blog is the best way to help you meet your targets. Time scrolling or swiping through a blog is time you aren’t coaching your team or refining your sales strategy, reaching out to a prospect, or updating your framework for qualifying leads.
But whether you’re an executive, a sales manager, an account executive, or a customer success rep, gaining wisdom and insight from others can help you reach your goals more quickly and effectively.
Here are a few blogs we’re reading these days to help us learn new skills, stay motivated, and refine our strategies:
Sales Hacker is great for reps, managers, and executives in B2B organizations. Rich with everything from blog posts to ebooks, webinars, and more, there are options for a variety of learning styles to get the latest strategies. On this site, you’ll find an abundances of tips for everything from social selling and sales enablement to qualifying, prospecting, and calling.
The content on this blog has one purpose—to help you meet and exceed your quotas. With insights, articles, and reports on diverse topics and a variety of industries, sales managers and leaders should bookmark and return to SBI frequently.
Barrows write in an engaging and relatable way, peppering his blogs with interviews and stories from his days as a salesperson and current work as a sales trainer with top brands. The topics he covers include addressing and anticipating common objections, giving better presentations, and more. He also has a podcast, Make It Happen Mondays.
The title gives away this blog’s target audience, but sales reps and other team members could also benefit from Colleen Francis’ insights on pipeline management, productivity, and other best practices. If you’re looking for direct, approachable, and actionable sales strategy, this one’s for you.
An ever-increasing number of organizations are emphasizing social selling, and LinkedIn is often essential to a successful social selling strategy. Their blog provides the latest trends and techniques from experts in this transforming space, as well as basics for sales reps that are just getting started or implementing a new social selling strategy.
Anthony Iannarino, author of The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, updates his blog almost daily with insightful strategies and thought leadership content. Equal parts practical and motivational, his posts are easy to read and incorporate into a sales rep’s daily workflow.
How do you stay up to speed on the latest trends and insights?
For many businesses, customer-facing teams are essential to their success and customer retention. In fact, federal research estimates that customer contact centers will add the most customer service representatives between 2016 and 2026—projecting 36% growth.
And as your company grows, it may become clear that a new or bigger team is needed to focus on customer success. This team is on the frontlines helping your customers achieve their goals. Tasked with providing resources and support, a customer success team is the first indication of an organization’s reliability. Simply put, it’s their job to keep customers happy.
As you think about customer retention—and the essential functions of your customer success team—here are a few steps you can take to build a strong team:
Talk to Your Customers
This one might seem obvious, but the first thing your team can do is connect with the customers that have already given you feedback. Reach out to the ones that have reported success as well as the ones that have canceled or given negative input. Learn why they’ve given this feedback, positive or negative. Do you notice any trends? Take the feedback and strategize how to meet pain points and facilitate more positive experiences with your product or service.
Develop an Onboarding Process
You’re an expert in your product, and you’ve built it in a way that your customers will find easy to use. But even the most straightforward tools and services can benefit from a defined and effective onboarding process. Your customer success team can proactively engage and teach your customers the most effective way to use your products.This saves your customers time as they’re able to avoid common roadblocks. And it strengthens your relationship with them in the early stages of their customer journey.
Provide Self-Service Resources
Sometimes your customers don’t have the time or margin to get on a phone call. Creating a searchable FAQ or knowledge base can help provide these resources. Equip your success team with the answers to commonly asked questions for their customer interactions, but also create resources for common roadblocks, like how-to articles, webinars, or video guides.
Use Surveys
As your business grows, surveys are a sustainable and scalable mechanism for determining customer satisfaction and getting feedback. Many organizations use a Net Promoter Score® (NPS), but you can also add in surveys to other parts of the customer lifecycle. You might consider a survey after onboarding and or at the point of cancellation, for example. If and when cancellations happen, information is your most important asset. Understanding their needs and experience will help strengthen your customer success team and hopefully improve retention moving forward. Just keep in mind that customers can be deterred by too much communication, too—don’t overdo it!
As your customer success team grows and evolves, you may find your team collaborating with other departments, implementing new feedback tools, and coming up with new ways to measure your team’s success and metrics.
Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.
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