Customer Experience, Online Learning | read
Online Learning is a fantastic way to increase your knowledge and skills in a unique, flexible environment with its own distinct strengths and opportunities.
Whether you’re trying online classes for the first time or looking for ways to strengthen your current habits and approaches, there are a few key areas to consider to set yourself up for success and take full advantage of all online learning has to offer.
In this collection of online learning best practices, we share tips and strategies to help you succeed in your learning journey, including ways to:
Self Care
Self-care is important to your successful learning experience. A healthy mind (and body) is a mind ready for learning.
Advocate for your learning needs
Ask for flexible ways of participating in the class that work for you. This is important for learners who require specific accommodations, such as a note taker or extended test time, but is also important for all learners.
Schedule breaks
Get up and walk around, go outside, schedule your distractions, don’t forget to move. Plenty of apps exist to keep you on task and turn off distractions, as well as remind you to get up and take breaks.
Maintain healthy habits
Your brain, like your body, needs rest and exercise. Get sleep, stay hydrated, go outside, eat well.
Time Management
One of the biggest benefits of online learning is flexibility, but too much freedom can pose new challenges. Find ways to structure and optimize your time for when and where you learn best and keep your learning on track.
Set aside time for learning
This doesn’t mean you need to find four-hour blocks, three days a week. Online learning is designed to be modular and flexible. You may find 15 minutes to watch a short video lecture and write a three-sentence reflection post. But of course, other learning activities will require more time. Be planful and dedicate time to learn as you would to exercise or spending time with friends.
Track deadlines
Add important due dates to a calendar so you don’t miss important deadlines.
Minimize distractions
As much as you can, minimize distractions both in your physical environment and your digital environment. Close web browser windows not relevant to your learning, keep the TV off, etc.
Looking for more strategies for online learning success?
Learn about online learning while experiencing it: Take our How to Learn Online course, where you’ll dive into some of the most powerful, science-backed techniques that you can start using right away and on any learning platform.
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Originally published May 3, 2020 12:21:10 PM, updated May 3, 2020
Topics: Customer Experience Online Learning
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Artificial Intelligence or AI is one of the most disrupting technologies of the 2000s. Machines are getting smarter each day. While AI can create tremendous time and cost savings, it promises even bigger, more meaningful returns in another area: customer experience.
Businesses across the world are discovering new ways to leverage AI and their enhance customer experience and engagement.
In recent research, Gartner indicated that “in a few years from now, 89% of businesses will compete mostly on customer experience”.
In this post we will discuss some ways AI is already disrupting customer experience across the industries.
Making self-service more efficient
Everyone knows how excruciating it can be to just stay on hold for several minutes when we call a customer care number for a simple issue.
One of the most favourable aspects of AI is that it eliminates the need to put the customer “on hold” for the next available agent to help them with a simple problem like billing, booking or any trivial question.
AI allows companies to use chatbots to answer common customer service questions, and let customers resolve their trivial issues in a jiffy.
Back in 2011, Gartner predicted that by 2020, 85% of customer relationships will be managed without human interaction.
Besides this, most customers don’t mind chatting with customer care chatbot. As long as they answer their question quickly, they leave as a happy customer.
Improving Personalisation for online services
Another important way AI is transforming the customer experience is by providing personalised content. Now a days we rarely have to search for the products that would fit our preferences. It’s so easy now to get a recommendation based on your past history.
For example: Audio & videos streaming services like YouTube, Netflix or Spotify or concerts and performances on Bands in Town. And anyone who has shopped on Amazon has seen products recommendations.
It is now possible for products and services providers to use technology to make intelligent and accurate recommendations to their customers based on their past purchase or browsing history.
Round-the-Clock Availability
AI never needs to sleep. Similar to empowering customers via self-service, AI also offers customers 24/7 support — something most companies would not be able to afford or staff just a couple of decades ago.
What’s more, 24/7 support isn’t just “good CX”— the stakes are high in today’s market. Most customers are not willing to wait until you open your doors to get answers to their issues. AI makes that possible.
Automated day to day assistance
Many households now a days use Alexa to turn on music or dim the lights. But more and more, companies are using Alexa, Google Home and other robotic AI to make their customers’ lives easier.
E-commerce stores have started to link Alexa and Google Home to allow customers to order products using voice commands. People can also purchase movie tickets and pre-order snacks before they even leave the house. These are just a few ways the AI is transforming the customer experience.
It can save significant costs
Our partner, Ubility AI recently supported two companies in France — DataSolutions & Retail Explorer in optimising their services using AI.
In the past DataSolutions and Retail explorer used to take all information in newspapers and magazines, scan them and identify prices and promotions from major retailers, enter it in their systems and then using the insights generated support their customers on how should they adjust their prices and offerings.
Until now this was a manual process. They used to scan all the pages and have people handling data entry manually loaded them into their system. This used to take on average 2-3 weeks costing EUR 50,000.
Using Ubility's image and text recognition they were able to automate 90% of the data entry tasks, which reduced the time required to do the job from weeks to days translating into EUR 40,000.00 savings per month.
Ubility AI is a leading provider of AI Solutions helping organisations optimise their work processes using technology.
Related: Meet the Experts: Khaled Dassouki, CEO, Ubility
As we can see, the entire goal of using AI to improve customer experience is to help your customers feel known and valued. Business should test the processes, re-test, and test again— from the customers’ viewpoint. The only thing worse than not using AI for CX today is using it inefficiently.
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You see the end product but we’re bringing you closer to the people behind it !
Among our recent partnerships, we joined forces with Ubility.
To bring the service provider closer to YOU, we sat down with their CEO Khaled Dassouki, to gain firsthand insight on the things they do and the types of human capital profiles that drive their success.
Khaled is a Lebanese national with an engineering background and PhD in Artificial Intelligence & Security obtained at Université de Technologie de Troyes, France.
As a result of over 20 years in the field, Khaled decided to establish Ubility in France and build it on a base of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Experience, which was considered to be highly innovative as it was a niche field.
Khaled was quick to notice that there had been a shift in the way business was carried out, the shift had been made to be more customer-focused. With that came new challenges, the ease with which customers can connect with the business led to a huge influx of queries and requests for support, which was very time consuming, tedious, and required businesses to grow their customer support teams leading to higher costs.
While growing their teams did solve some challenges momentarily, organisations were quick to realise that the complexity and average time required to resolve customer challenges was growing which eventually led to dissatisfied customers. Not only that, customer service agents were quickly burning out as they were answering an ever-growing list of routine questions rather than helping solve complex problems and offering innovative solutions.
Taking all that into account, Ubility offered an AI-powered platform that learns from interactions between an organisation’s customers & their customer care team to enable quick suggestions of appropriate solutions that could solve a customer’s challenge in seconds rather than minutes.
In addition to that, Ubility also offers AI training for professionals in the IT industry, a sales chatbot that is based on a recommender system and knows the sales cycle, and AI Consultancy in which they are recruited to build and implement AI services in response to an assessment of an organisation’s processes.
Success Story
Ubility was commissioned by a Telecom operator in the gulf to assess and analyse their IT processes. After a thorough analysis done by their team of experts, it was concluded that a huge portion of their IT processes had an opportunity for automation.
After studying the best ways in which they could automate their processes, they determined that incorporating AI would allow the elimination of a manual process by looking at historical data. Instead of their operational costs raking up to 50,000 USD a month, they were now cut by 80% to be only 10,000 USD.
Intrigued and want to learn more?
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If you are a customer experience newbie, the world must seem overwhelming to you.
Learning customer experience from scratch is tough, but following the advice of experts who have successfully done it can really cut down on your learning time.
There are far too many CX blogs, podcasts, and other resources to follow. You can tap into the expert’s advice without ever leaving your house.
The sheer volume of the available content out there makes finding legitimate resources a challenge in itself.
In this blog post, we’re taking a look at the top 10 customer experience influencers.
Twitter: @BlakeMichelleM
Blake is the customer experience futurist and one of the most passionate CX advocates.
Her vision of how high-tech solutions impact the future of customer experience is both intriguing and inspiring.
In her book, Blake shares tips on how to boost your customer service strategy and start offering “knock-your-socks-off customer experiences”.
In addition to writing amazing CX related content, Blake is a host of the weekly customer experience video series on YouTube and the podcast on modern customer service.
Twitter: @Hyken
Shep is the Chief Amazement Officer at Shepard Presentations. He has used his knowledge and experience in customer service and helped businesses create amazing client and employee experiences.
Apart from that, Shep is also a public speaker. Thanks to his high energy and motivation, he is one of the most enjoyable, and inspiring presenters to listen to. Some of his books have appeared as bestsellers on New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and a few other prominent news agencies.
Twitter: @annettefranz
Annette is the CEO and founder of CX Journey.
Her years of experience, particularly in developing reliable customer experience strategies, deservedly puts her on the CX pedestal.
Annette philosophy is that customer experience is a journey that never stops and there is always room for improvements. That’s why she decided to name her blog CX Journey.
With over 25 years of experience, Annette has spent a chunk of her time studying and analysing companies and their employees, and applying her knowledge to the optimisation of their customer experiences. According to Business Insider, Annette is one of the 100 most influential tech women today.
For your weekly dosage of Annette’s CX related wisdom, check out #CXChat on Twitter.
Twitter: @CustomerIsFirst
Nate is the co-founder of CX Accelerator and director of customer service experience at UL EHSS.
Nate advocates that happy customers is what makes the businesses successful.
He pays great attention to making businesses understand the journey of customers. Nate has been writing about CX disciplines, survey process, customer programs, employee engagement, journey mapping and more. You can follow his expert advice on his blog, CX Accelerator.
Twitter: @JeanneBliss
Jeanne is the founder of Customer Bliss and co-founder of Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA).
Recognised as one of the foremost experts in CX, Jeanne advises enterprises on how to implement the best customer experience strategy.
Jeanne is also a bestselling author, and has published I Love You More Than My Dog and, more recently, Would You Do That to Your Mother? Both of these books provide solid tips on how to earn the admiration and respect of your customers.
Twitter: @ColinShaw_CX
Colin is CEO of Beyond Philosophy, a CX consultancy and training organisation.
Colin is recognised as a thought leader in customer experience. LinkedIn also named him one of the world's ‘Top 150 Business Influencers’. Brand Quarterly voted Colin one of the 'Top 50 Marketing Thought Leaders Over 50' for the last two years in a row.
Colin is also the co-host of a highly successful podcast, The Intuitive Customer, an accomplished keynote conference speaker and renowned best-selling author.
Twitter: @adamtoporek
Adam Toporek is the founder of CTS Service Solutions. He is an internationally recognised customer service expert, keynote speaker, and renowned corporate advisor who helps organisations achieve customer service.
As the author of Be Your Customer's Hero, the founder of the popular Customers That Stick blog and the co-host of the Crack the Customer Code podcast, Adam regularly shares his customer experience and customer service insights with a global audience.
Twitter: @bsdalton
Barry is a customer experience strategy and technology leader with achievements in developing and implementing strategy across marketing, sales and service, with particular industry focus on consumer products, pharmaceuticals, retail and technology.
Twitter: @Bob_Thompson
Bob Thompson has two decades of experience in customer-centric, sales, consulting and executive positions and another 15 years in customer management consulting, research and online community development.
He uses a collaborative platform to help business leaders understand how to create mutually beneficial customer relationships.
In his book, Hooked on Customers Bob reveals the five habits of leading customer-centric organisations. His other expertise include customer-centric business research, white papers and keynote speaking.
Twitter: @PeterLavers
Peter is a futurist for IBM. After spending nearly two decades in senior roles at Rolls-Royce and Bentley, Lavers has learned a great deal about CX. Today he is the director at WCL Customer Management, which helps companies find, engage, and satisfy customers.
His Twitter feed focuses on B2B and tech with advice on topics such as how blockchain tech is relevant to data science. He also writes for the IBM's Think Marketing blog on topics such as 3 behavioural mind-sets for accurate content personalisation.
Don't see you favourite CX Influencer here? Go ahead and nominate them.
Do you know a CX influencer who should be included in our next top picks? Message us on Twitter @ExceedersTeam to suggest your favourite influencer today!
Artificial Intelligence or AI is one of the most disrupting technologies of the 2000s. Machines are getting smarter each day. While AI can create tremendous time and cost savings, it promises even bigger, more meaningful returns in another area: customer experience.
You see the end product but we’re bringing you closer to the people behind it !
If you are a customer experience newbie, the world must seem overwhelming to you.