Category Archives: Customer Service

I recently posted a poll asking which kind of transmission is easier to operate when learning to drive. Even though a couple folks picked manuals, which I am still shocked by, the results looked pretty much the way I thought they would.

I learned to drive on an automatic transmission but did learn to drive a manual thanks to my college roommate teaching me. Pop the clutch, shift gears, monitor rpm’s, all while trying not to roll backwards down a hill after being stopped at a red light was annoying.

My automatic did all that shifting, popping, monitoring for me. All I had to do was just focus on the road. Press the gas pedal to go and hit the brake to stop. That was it. The learning curve wasn’t even close to the same and I learned I was cool sticking with an automatic.

Going through training as a contact center agent reminds me so much of learning to drive a manual transmission. Instead of pop the clutch, shift gears, monitor the rpm’s it’s look up data, switch systems, rekey data, navigate to the correct module, etc.

We recently started working with a contact center that has 17 different systems that their agents might need to interact with on any given call. Think about that. Remembering where to go and what to do on any given call is flat out complicated.

With all the new systems and tools that have been introduced to contact centers since the 1990’s, why hasn’t the agent journey been given the same attention that the digital customer journey has?

I get it, self service is great. But can anyone else relate to me when I say that I am guilty of not being able to figure something out and then smashing 0 for the operator when I really need some help. It’s the reason why there are still over 6 million contact center agents worldwide. People need help with complicated stuff. And let’s remember, when the consumer gets to the point that they need to call in they’re not always in the best mood. It’s not hard to understand why agents quit when their days consist of being spoken to rudely while having to remember all the manual call mechanics to solve a customer’s issue.

No matter how many screens, or sticky notes, or flow charts, or days of training, or Slack and Teams channels, or conversational AI tools an agent has, they’re still having to do all that manual shifting themselves. It doesn’t have to be that way.

The future of contact centers doesn’t look like 2 month long training classes so agents can remember what to do and when. An average agent turnover rate of between 30 and 45% yearly doesn’t have to be the status quo. Agents don’t have to wake up with anxiety every day because of all they have to remember while trying to help a customer.

The future of the contact center is one that will be much easier to navigate not by changing your core systems but by upgrading from a manual transmission to an automatic to eliminate those manual call mechanics that cause hold times and mistakes.

There’s Nothing to Worry About: Reduce Fear and Frustration for Your Reps

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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.

Cue Selected as a Venture Atlanta 2021 Showcase Company

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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).

For more information, visit www.ventureatlanta.org. For updates, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, and visit our blog.

About Cue

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.

Tips to Avoid CMS Noncompliance for Call Centers Selling Medicare Advantage Plans (MAPD)

This is a guest post by Scott Klonowski.

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.

Cue adds CRM widget, expands telephony integration, and more.

Cue, an Atlanta-based software company, announced earlier this week the release of the newest version of their software solution that will further enable phone-based sales and service reps to improve productivity and drive results both during and after calls. 

By acting as an on-screen teleprompter, Cue helps inside sales and service reps navigate through conversations the right way, every time. Cue automatically updates fields in a customer’s existing system, which allows reps to complete work in real time that is historically left for post call wrap up. Cue also simplifies reps’ tech stack so reps no longer have to toggle between tabs and applications.

New features include:

  • CRM Widget: Cue’s new lightweight widget embeds directly into CRMs, allowing reps to gain the benefits of Cue while staying within a system they already know.
  • Telephony Integration: Handles inbound calls from new contacts within Cue and automatically creates new contacts in your CRM or other external system.
  • One-Step Integration: It’s easier than ever to connect Cue with your CRM, telephony and more thanks to Cue’s new one-step integration, Cue integrates with 200+ systems.

According to CEO & Founder, Michael Wilson, “Instead of having to change the way phone-based customer support and sales reps are used to working, companies can now simply embed Cue’s teleprompter-esque conversation guide right into the systems they’re already using. Between this CRM widget and our enhanced one-step integration, we’re excited to empower our customers to get up and running with Cue even faster and in turn, impact their sales and customer service success.” 

If you have any questions, please reach out to Cue at sales@itscue.com.

Thanks,

The Cue Team

Simplifying Re-Enrollment Through Your Insurance Contact Centers

Every industry is feeling the impact of 2020 differently. For insurers, one new challenge is remotely onboarding new contact center agents—especially during open enrollment. This is a challenge every year, and during a global pandemic all of the challenges are magnified: training new agents to learn your systems, manage the conversation, make sure they capture customer information correctly, ensure compliance, and hit their call metrics. Whether your agents are remote or in the office, their needs are different this year and your work requires a different approach – a guided conversation tool that plugs into your CRM.

Let’s face it. The CRM tools you are using don’t do enough to address the reality we’re facing. When it comes to ensuring compliance, onboarding new reps, and routing calls quickly and precisely, no one could have anticipated a global pandemic. And as you train your reps, there are so many clicks and “shortcuts” to learn—it makes ramp-up overwhelming. In a normal year, many firms suffer high turnover, training costs, and lengthy onboarding time. And if you’re not prepared this year, the business of open enrollment could be a minefield.

As new hires work to produce results and meet targets, they must trust their training and stick to the script—questions must be answered the correct way and proper steps in the process must be followed. Agents and leadership must constantly consider the highly regulated nature of their industry, while developing strategies to guide agents through the call simply. With Cue®,  your agents can have customized conversation guidance at their fingertips, from scripts and prompts to common objections and FAQs—ensuring compliance, reducing call times, and routing calls faster. In fact, the average Cue user sees a 50% reduction in training times. Get your reps trained and on the floor faster, save money, and reduce headaches for everyone.

Good conversations are the lifeblood of your business and ours. Ensure your agents can better assist customers, streamline training, reduce talk time, and eliminate after-call work—all with the confidence that they possess the right tools to engage every person they speak to. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Cue, please submit your information and a Cue representative will reach out to you within 1 business day.

 

Meeting Demand In A Crisis

The urgency of the current crisis is requiring companies to adapt to the challenges of the market conditions. It’s tough to balance the challenges of battling the pandemic with the need to keep the economy going. Some people even feel that business needs to suspend during this period. We respect their perspective.

At the same time, we feel that there are businesses introducing much-needed innovation that can aid our community and make a difference in the world. These organizations need to surge their ability to reach the market, but many don’t have the communications or business development skills to reach out effectively.

We also know that there is a significant pool of business salespeople who are effectively shut down: Either their companies cannot get product to sell, their core markets are not buying right now, or the company has to furlough or let them go.

At Cue, we want to help. We want to connect companies offering critical products and services with skilled B2B salespeople. And we’re uniquely positioned to do that with our SaaS contact center platform.

Our platform enables the rapid onboarding of new virtual contact center agents with simple scripting and contact management. We come from the telesales world, so we know what’s needed to make salespeople successful. And we have the ability to quickly set upx and train these individuals to support market expansion for companies that have a significant need to reach and educate customers on solutions that will help in this crisis.

There is one caveat:

At this time, we are only offering this service to companies that we believe solve an urgent need within the market. We want to ensure that we are adding value rather than distracting many of the potential decision-makers who are working hard every day to keep their operations going and support their employees. We’ve found a number of companies like this, and we’d like to find others in critical industries such as healthcare, cleaning, automation, and others that are providing essential functions to keep our economy going.

The more we can do today to keep the economy moving, the more it will aid in recovery when we have gotten the pandemic under control.

How We Can Help Your Business

Our team is connecting organizations on the frontlines with temporary help to meet market demand and continue their work in industries that need their services now more than ever.

If your organization is facing surges in inquiries, we want to help you get out there and do the most good with the valuable resources you offer. Our rapid-response program will help you drive outreach, engagement, and expand your ability to meet demand.

And we can get you up and running on our agent desktop quickly while addressing your organization’s unique needs.

How We Can Help Agents

As industries are assessing the individual and economic impact of the global pandemic, many of us are also facing uncertainties in our careers. Many businesses’ customers are temporarily shut down. And contact center agents and business development professionals have been furloughed or experienced layoffs.

We’ve set up a program to match skilled professionals with companies that provide critical services—and need people like you to help them respond to inquiries and rapidly get in touch with the organizations that need them most.

Our platform makes it easy for you to onboard quickly and help these organizations open up their sales funnel while they do the important work of mitigating the effects of this crisis.

Cue® provides a simple agent desktop that streamlines workflow and enables phone-based agents to complete all functions of their job in one place, instead of having to navigate between multiple systems. With Cue®, agents can better assist customers, streamline training, reduce talk time, and eliminate after-call work—all with the confidence that they possess the right tools to engage every person they speak to. 

Increase Your Contact Center Agent Efficiency

Break the 80/20 Rule to Scripting

The Pareto Principle

As with many things in life, the Pareto Principle, named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, applies to contact center efficiencies, too. And in a call center, it might mean that the 20% of calls that go off script require 80% of the time agents spend on the phone.

We also see it in the inverse relationship between call scripting and agent institutional knowledge.

You’re Not Alone

For most contact centers, efforts to manage this 80% usually go one of two ways. Leaders are faced with the problem of increased call volumes while trying to reduce call times. And many aim to streamline processes by making their scripts overly simple, leaving out crucial information that might be needed to complete a customer’s request or appropriately triage.

When this occurs, sales and service representatives have to improvise and use excuses such as, “Sorry, my system is running slow,” while they navigate their way to the tool that can help them help you. In even more frustrating scenarios agents can end up giving incorrect answers to specific questions or even immediately send the caller to 2nd tier support too early in the conversation.

Others make workflows so complex and rigid, that it can be a challenge for agents to grow comfortable and gain the knowledge required to be successful.

Simplifying scripting increases the training time required to establish institutional knowledge. But attempting to anticipate everything risks overwhelming new agents. Neither of these options serve the objective of increasing productivity, reducing handle times, and making training and coaching more efficient.

If this sounds relatable, you’re not alone. Businesses are constantly trying to solve this problem and get time back. Tools and trainings are offered constantly to help develop more robust documentation and agile scripts. But what if it’s easier than that?

Don’t Let Process Disrupt The Conversation

What would it look like for an organization like yours to rethink their agent desktop—to mitigate redundant conversations and duplicated efforts and reduce the volume of paper all over an agent’s cube? It shouldn’t feel impossible to make onboarding efficient or streamline your various systems and technology.

The 80/20 rule originated as a commentary on the distribution of wealth and became an essential business philosophy, informing the way we run our organizations and manage our teams. But it certainly isn’t the law. You don’t have to resign yourself or your team to long calls and inadequate scripts.

Think about what it means to break that rule. Perhaps you need to automate more of your process. Or maybe the key is in developing new ways to put knowledge at your agents’ fingertips. Whatever it is, implementing it successfully could optimize both scripting and training in the process.

What steps can you take to centralize your processes and ensure your agents are handling calls the right way, every time?

Cue® provides a simple agent desktop that streamlines workflow and enables phone-based agents to complete all functions of their job in one place, instead of having to navigate between multiple systems. With Cue®, agents can better assist customers, streamline training, reduce talk time, and eliminate after-call work—all with the confidence that they possess the right tools to engage every person they speak to. 

Strengthen Your Customer Success Team

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.

Get more visibility, build a stronger success team, and increase retention with Cue. Sign up for your free trial today!

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.