CX QA Live! | The Agent-Centric Customer Experience Show

Your agents are capable of feats even greater than what you could ask or imagine. So why are contact centers still treating agents like order takers? We're not sure, but Nate Brown is happy to take the mic and develop the conversation even further as we take another look into why contact center leadership is unknowingly hindering it's maximum potential. Put on your listening ears, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to hear some hard truths from one of the greatest voices in CX. [5:10 - 5:54] We need challengers! It’s very important that we have people constantly pushing against the walls and trying to break out of the box. [11:59 - 13:16] We put a lot of heat on our education for the lack of challengers, but really the issue is in the onboarding. [14:13 - 16:05] We need to make sure that agents are being paid enough that they can be safe enough to be pushed to be challengers. They will do incredible things if they are able to push themselves to be challengers. [21:01 - 21:50] As customer experience leaders, we are always looking for variables that get clients to stay. So much of that decision comes from the customer service interactions. [22:14 - 25:37] The challenger sale isn’t only accomplishable with individuals, because CX isn’t just for individuals. We can also have challenger groups. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

Inspiration for good customer experience is all around us. We can be inspired from just about anything, should we choose to see it. Join us for a wonderful conversation with Stacy Sherman surrounding everyday inspiration for doing CX right! [3:57 - 5:28] There is a difference between simply having a customer experience moment and learning something from that moment from the perspective of the customer, and we don’t want to miss out on those opportunities to learn. [9:51 - 12:06] Sometimes the customer experience is just bad and the situation is difficult, but there are ways that we can still try to make these situations better from both perspectives. Making sure that you are giving feedback for the good and bad experiences is very helpful for this. [14:38 - 15:54] If leaders are not empowering their staff and training them well, then the customer can feel it and respond in unproductive ways. [24:37 - 25:38] Community and peer-to-peer education and support can be just as important in teaching agents how to provide good customer support. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

As we approach the end of the year, we reflect on all the major decisions we made, and we start determining what we need to do in the future to do better work. It's great when your leaders are in on the plan, but why are most contact centers leaving out the front line in the equation? We're listening in to Jeremy Hyde as we uncover why it's so vital to be transparent with your team, and how leaders can make the most of the feedback loop to ensure everyone is prepared for major changes. [6:21 - 7:31] You have to create a culture where you are transparent and honest so that your agents don’t just think you’re telling them what they want to hear. Your actions and words need to be aligned with each other. [9:30 - 12:22] It’s important that you are looking at and receiving feedback, not only from customers, but from your agents to see how things are going. [17:23 - 19:11] We need to have a plan for how we are going to properly communicate with our agents or it won’t get done. [22:19 - 24:28] You need to know what moves the needle and what your executive leaders care about in your organization to ignite change from those executives. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

November is "National Gratitude Month." What better time than to bring our friend Philip Bennett back on the show to discuss just how important it is for leadership (and not just in the contact center) to be grateful for their agents? We're going to learn just how big of an impact ungrateful leadership can have on your contact center, and as a result, your entire brand. We're not just talking about hurt feelings and poor culture; we're talking lost revenue and lost brand loyalty. Tune in to learn why you should ALWAYS be grateful for your contact center agents. [3:31 - 5:21] What gratitude looks like in the call center and how we can properly show gratitude to our agents. [10:19 - 12:40] Having ungrateful leadership will lead to a sense of resentment and disengaged employees, which will trickle down to customers. [15:36 - 17:33] When customers are calling in, they are usually frustrated and they can put that frustration onto the agent. The conversation needs to be turned around so that the frustration is directed at the company and not at the agent personally. [22:52 - 24:38] We should be looking for ways to make our agents’ jobs easier. If we can make their jobs easier to do, then it will be easier for them to want to stay. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

AI has a variety of use cases, and we know how helpful it can be when assisting customers, but what if we were able to take advantage of it before we even deployed it out onto the front lines? How can we best use the advantages that AI provides us when it comes to training? Well, we've got Sheri Kendall with us yet again for another deep-dive into how your new agents and AI can coexist, and make your service teams even more efficient and empathetic. [2:25 - 4:19] As contact centers, we usually have a very limited learning and developing budget. AI, specifically ChatGPT, can help us in this space by improving and coming up with ideas for new ways to learn. [9:12 - 10:02] When we are using tools that allow us to become more efficient in the interaction with customers, it leaves space for us to develop power skills. Our power skills are what set each company apart. [14:19 - 15:20] People in learning and developing professions are excited to be allowed the space to define their skill set and get better. If you are not excited and you aren’t finding ways to integrate these new tools and technology into your practice, then you probably won’t be around in a year. [17:08 - 18:27] An issue that comes with having new technologies that are moving so quickly is being able to budget for them. You could start by using some free tools to demonstrate their efficiency, and make a case for the spending. You don’t have to have the money now, but starting to integrate and seeing the importance of these technologies is a good starting point to getting the money. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

Artificial intelligence has the ability to revolutionize the customer experience. Some would argue that AI can replace your service/support teams and provide customers with a more efficient experience. Stacy Sherman sees AI in a different way. There's so much value to human interactions and if we're going to do CX right, we need to recognize that AI is so much more than an agent replacement tool. In fact, we can use it to enhance the agent experience, creating better interactions for the agent and customer alike. Set your clocks appropriately, we've got a lot to learn from this special edition of "CX QA Live!" happening LIVE at 6:30AM from Reuter's CSX event in NYC!" [ 2:50 - 4:08 ] Whether you’ve been using AI in your contact center or you’re new to AI, there’s room for improvement for everybody. Here’s an example of a use-case: AI can be implemented to listen to calls, register when problematic words are used and give leadership a chance to coach the agent. Overall, let’s give the agent more tools to save them time. [ 5:01 - 5:28 ] When we talk about listening to the agent calls we aren’t listening to punish them. We are listening to be helpful. [ 8:18 - 9:29 ] Imagine being trapped in an elevator and calling the help line. Who would you rather talk to, AI or a human? [ 11:03 - 11:42 ] You can also switch the narrative and call outbound, not to sell anything or to do a survey, but to ask if your customers are OK and see if there is anything you can do for them. 11-12 The agents need customer service too. When their computer doesn’t work they can get fast help and not have to wait two days. Or, if they are trying to find the answer to a customer’s question they could use a chatbot to get the support they need. Use AI to solve a pain point for the agent. [ 17:26 - 18:13 ] Imagine using AI for training. It pretends to be a customer and the agent can practice in advance in a safe environment. This would be used for onboarding and ongoing training. [ 24:35 - 26 ] Here’s how to pick your AI vendor. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

We've all been there. At one point or another, we've felt helpless to circumstances beyond our control, and every failure has destroyed our spirit in some way. In the contact center, it's almost natural to feel like a victim when things go awry. However, Jeremy Hyde is going to help us shift that mindset and turn seemingly insurmountable obstacles into fantastic opportunities for growth. Get ready to own your mistakes, embrace your circumstances, and transform your contact center's destiny forever… [ 4:54 - 6:11 ] What does the victim mentality look like in the workplace? Let’s understand that it’s our job is to clean up problems. Let’s shift how we feel about it so we aren’t constantly upset. Think, “I’m the person that gets to help the organization get better!” [ 8-9:50 ] What does the hero mindset look like in the workplace? Taking ownership of challenges is empowering. [ 13:30 - 14:45 ] As a leader, provide your team a space where it’s safe to say, “This is what I could do better next time, and here’s how I can improve.” [ 14:46 - 16:10 ] Never try to assign blame to others. I don’t care who made the mistake, but I do want to understand it so it doesn’t happen in the future. It takes humility to own up to our mistakes. That builds the culture of accountability without any of the negativity that comes along with assigning blame. [ 17:52 - 20:44 ] How can we reprogram our brain so that we actually seei challenges as opportunities? As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

People are at the heart of business. Always have been; always will be. However, managing your entire workforce can be daunting, and making even the smallest mistake can have drastic consequences. So what can you do to prevent that from happening? If you're Dan Smitley, you get that workforce engaged! We'll be focused on WFM strategy in today's discussion, but we'll also be breaking down Dan's session from ICMI last week, as well as going over the conference experience in general. If you missed out on the conference this year, don't miss out on this episode! [6:42 - 7:57] As a vendor, a lot of thought goes into the booth, its decor, and what you present, but the most important part of these events is the people. It’s such a magical moment when you are able to meet your online friends and really get to network with others. [8:21 - 9:11] Workforce Management (WFM) has three primary buckets: forecasting, scheduling, and real time management. In essence, we are asking how many calls or interactions we are getting, who's going to be taking them, and how we manage, in real time, when we are wrong about how many calls or people we have coming in. [15:04 - 17:08] Oftentimes, WFM removes themselves from conversations and being heard, because all they say is that it’s not their problem. What WFM needs to think through is if we are going to look at employee engagement and investing in the employee. Then they need to stay in these conversations of where the company is going. [22:47 - 24:45] To go after that paradigm shift and start breaking down silos, we first need to look at people complexly. People are more than just the numbers and there needs to be so much more curiosity in the people, before we start adjusting people’s life and working patterns. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

Coming to you LIVE from Orlando, FL! We've got a special episode of the show coming to you live from Vistio's booth (#805) at the ICMI Contact Center Expo! This time around we're turning the tables and show veteran Stacy Sherman has Rob Connelly in the hot seat on the topic of human-first AI. What does that entail? You'll have to tune in to find out! [ 3:22 - 4:39 ] Human-first AI is an implementation or use of AI that does not detract from the quality of life of the humans involved, rather, it takes tasks that aren’t ideal for humans, that don’t offer value to humans and gives them to AI to do instead. [ 10:02 - 12:24 ] Wondering how to pick a software vendor? Make sure that your software vendor’s vision is aligned with your own. The software vendors’ actual business goals in the long run will be facilitated by evaluating more longer term value that they bring to their customers through the problems that they solve with their software and the way that they solve it. [ 62:21 - 20:54 ] Speaking to the fear people are facing of losing jobs, let’s break down several layers of resistance. Agents are afraid of losing their jobs. People are concerned with AI in general. [ 22:05 - 22:45 ] We as humans need to feel connections in our work. We can’t just clock in and clock out. The quality of our work will decline. If brands are not creating for their agents a genuinely safe place to find human connection, agents will leave and go find it somewhere else. [ 25:04 - 26:36 ] We are all a little bit tired of the AI conversation. Many of us feel pressured to find an AI solution. At the end of the day any implementation needs comes down to understanding the opportunities and the problems of the contact center. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

We already know how important it is to optimize the customer experience. However, if you're hyper-optimizing each department individually, you could be creating siloed, disjointed experiences and not even realize it! Luckily, Dave Seaton is here to share how zooming out and analyzing the journey from start to finish will help you create better experiences for your customers AND agents alike! [5:11 - 6:23] The antidote to hyper-optimization is to zoom out, adopt a customer journey perspective and then go intentionally design your customer experience around those moments that actually matter. This is the most efficient way of creating a better experience for your customers, while not using up your resources. [7:24 - 9:15] A great tool to help organizations understand this is the customer journey map. This map helps visualize how decisions made affect the contact center, and really illustrates how the CX whac- a-mole works. [15:59 - 17:26] We always are in a hurry to get clients off the phone and solve their problems quickly, but what if we keep them on the phone a little bit longer and avoid them having to call back again in the future? If you understand the customer's journey, then you can proactively solve their next issue. [21:22 - 23:58] Using the customer journey map is like comparing gambling and investing in the stock market. Sure you have the chance of hitting the jackpot, but you are much more likely to make money in the stock market. You have the chance to have success without the customer journey map, but you are so much more likely to succeed with it. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

Even in the toughest situations, your agents should handle every customer interaction with grace and compassion. What's the best way to do that? Well, if you're Sheri Kendall, you show your agents just that while you're coaching them. We're excited to bring back our resident training expert in this discussion where we'll highlight the benefits of coaching your agents with compassion. [4:44 - 6:13] The employee experience is the beginning of everything, and the first part of the employee experience is a commitment to their whole human self. We need to start by lighting up the brain and finding out what matters to them in the workplace. After we’ve accomplished that, you can create a coaching plan, like coaching with compassion. [11:59 - 14:32] Since business has taken a massive shift to being online, there need to be ways of having compassion with those who aren’t in the room. Even though it’s weird, a big part of this is making sure that when you are online, you have your camera on! If your goal is to build a connection, then being on camera is the correct move to make. [16:45 - 17:35] While the culture of making space for psychological safety is important, it’s Sheri’s mission to remind you that you matter! You can make a difference wherever your seat is. We don’t have to wait for the people at the top to make the change. [22:08 - 25:01] What we are not saying here is that compassion replaces business outcomes as the main goal. What we are saying is that one of the main ways of accomplishing the business outcomes that every business is looking for is by making sure that your employees feel compassion. It is our moral obligation to make sure that we are developing our employees. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

What's the biggest issue that contact centers face? Go ahead and point to your favorite performance or quality metric, but the issue extends far beyond your data. The real issue is that agents are treated as "glorified" order takers. Your agents are the literal lifeblood of your contact center, and Nate Brown is going to take us back to school to teach us all just how much value your agents have and the strategic advantage they can provide to the organization as a whole. [3:51 - 4:24] Agents should not be ticket takers. It may be part of their jobs, but there is so much more insight and connection that they have that they should do something greater with it. It’s important for agents and their leaders to know their worth. [10:54 - 12:02] We have successfully automated a lot of the transactional stuff, so now what we are left with are the complicated and creative interactions. These types of interactions can only be accomplished with agents. We need a great digital ecosystem that can give information to the agent so that they can help the customer in a way that only an agent can do. [18:36 - 20:24] If you are an agent who is hopping from contact center to contact center and remaining in a front line agent role, you need to get smarter and come into your power. Examine your interactions and find ways to go beyond this ticket-taking mode. You don’t have to be a leader to help the organization embrace new ideas. [24:47 - 26:45] It’s all about time. We want to be generating long term values and if we are really looking at how we can generate more long term value in 2024, then that needs to happen at the CX level. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

Let's be honest. Who aspires to be a contact center agent? It's a dead-end job that someone has to do in order for businesses to succeed... Except it's not! There are so many opportunities for agents to learn and develop into leadership roles. Lisa Guzman returns to the stage to show us how to embrace every skill and trait agents have that will transform them into the best leaders. [ 2:36 - 3:14 ] Agents are sometimes viewed as replaceable and there is a certain level of attrition that it just accepted in customer service, but that’s actually a really big loss of knowledge. [ 5:50 - 7:34 ] Agents can tell when they aren’t valued, but if you invest in them they’ll pay you back with their performance. Encourage them to be the CEO of their own career, and give them a track for career growth. [ 7:58 - 9:49 ] This human being is a very valuable asset. They know things you don’t know, and they talk to your customer all day. The contact center shouldn’t just be thought of as a cost. It’s a customer retention center. It’s an interface for the business and the customer. Q: How can we communicate this to leaders? A: Break down the silos that separate customer support from the other departments of the company. [ 15:17 - 16:24 ] Agents are trained to look at their metrics. As they move into leadership roles they need to learn that there are less concrete ways to show their value. They either need to save the company money or make the company money. [ 17:40 - 18:08 ] Don’t be disappointed if your idea doesn’t pan out and the company doesn’t go with it. The important thing is that you’ve shown yourself as a thinker. [ 22:20 - 23:50 ] Should agents continue pursuing higher education to move up in a contact center? Yes, empowering agents is the right thing to do morally, but it’s also the right thing to do for profitability. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

You can train your agents on your knowledge base, your process, and your entire system, but how do you train them to actually handle a call? Do you just send them into the queue with your fingers crossed? Heck no! We're joined with the Brohawk himself, Mark Brody as we explore why simulated customer interactions can help sharpen those ever-important soft skills agents need. [3:11 - 4:28] The number one reason why call simulations matter is because the mock calls that you do in training are just not good enough. We need to be able to simulate what the environment is going to be like when we don’t have training wheels on. [9:52 - 11:38] One of the biggest shortcomings of mock calls is the inability to build empathy. The mock calls are very focused on how calls can be managed from a green path, but call simulations focus on coming to the right resolution for that customer. [15:24 - 17:39] The importance of having an agent at the point of resolution so that the customer can have confidence in your brand's ability to resolve the customer's conflict is much more impactful than what any AI can accomplish. [21:00 - 22:56] Knowledge makes all the difference in a contact center. Your agent’s knowledge is only as good and accurate as their knowledge base is. So companies need to focus on knowledge alignment to develop the most experienced agents. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

What happens when you combine Rob Dwyer's "Next in Queue" with our weekly live discussion? You get ALL the value and twice the Rob! Make sure to join us for this very special episode of "CX QA Live!" [6:02 - 7:21] Put on your ears and really listen. It’s too easy as an agent to just get into the motions and not listen to what the other person is saying, but when we actually listen, we can build a rapport and a connection. [9:28 - 10:51] In a contact center world, we often look for experience, but experience is not the most critical thing that a person can bring to a role. There are other skills and qualities that can be found beyond the contact center that should be looked at. [18:45 - 20:09] Understanding how your customer is feeling and how the agent is representing themselves and the company is changing how we look at agent performance. There are always going to be metrics, and those are important, but we are on the cusp of where we can start to measure the human factor. [25:17 - 26:23] The culture in an organization starts at the top. If the executives in a company are not fostering a culture then it won’t exist. So as leadership in a company, what are you focusing on and are you building the environment that you want? As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

Where do you see the contact center of the future? Is everything self-service; are all agents just hyper-intelligent AI; are we handling CX in VR? In a "pre-GPT" era, we asked Thomas Laird these kinds of questions and we are long overdue for an update. Make sure to tune in and see the future with us together! [3:34 - 5:44] As we look further into the future, it is very likely that we will see a monstrous impact of AI on agents. This impact will likely cause a shift in skills needed for working, but it will also be used as a tool to help make the workload possible. [12:03 - 12:53] AI will make QA a done deal. The automation of QA forms using AI is something that is coming soon and it will likely replace QA. [19:28 - 20:17] We have the choice now to fully automate our system, but most people do not want that. You need to look at what an agent wants, what a supervisor wants, and what a call center wants. [25:37 - 26:32] The future of the contact center will be fully immersed in AI. It is likely that there will be a head count drop of 20-25% of agents, because of the improvements that AI can make. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

We're in for a treat today! We covered a lot of ground the last time we spoke with Sheri Kendall, but we've still got even more to go! AI and agent training feels especially topical in today's market, so we're diving back into the discussion and finding even more rabbit holes to go down that will help contact center leaders think about the relationship between agents and AI. [2:41 - 3:50] There are around 100 AI tools that can assist with efficiency. Some of these tools can even help improve coaching, so that we can provide ourselves with new knowledge and growth. [10:01 - 11:16] The AI tools need the training and information that we put into it, so we need to be very thoughtful about what information we are putting into it. The AI is interacting with both your employees and your customers, so we need to be aware of what it knows. [15:55 - 16:30] The reality is that if you don’t have agents thinking of working with you as part of their career, then they are going to have a lot of fear around being replaced. You don’t want your agents thinking this way, because you need their skills and intelligence to train the AI. [16:58 - 18:08] If your agents are worried about losing their jobs to AI, then we would encourage the leaders and organizations to really consider how AI can enhance their jobs rather than replace. If your agents are focused on the fear of losing their jobs then the quality of customer service is going to go down. [19:34 - 22:16] With the increased chances of emergency situations with a natural disaster, we need to be proactive. We need to have contingency plans put in place and know how to support our agents through these situations. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

If you have a contact center, you're sitting on a goldmine of customer insights. Everyone knows that! What you may not realize is you also are able to get direct feedback from the people who deal with your process everyday. Longtime friend of the show and now our featured guest, Chafik Abdellaoui is here to share his ideas and experiences in attaining and applying this feedback in the contact center. [ 7:50 - 8:25 ] When you have a call center with an environment that is separated it’s harder to make sure that leaders actually receive the feedback from the reps and agents. Alternatively, when everybody reports to the leader, the feedback is implemented more quickly and more easily. [ 11:15 - 13:47 ] As a former agent who is now in a leadership role Chafik is convinced that the fewer barriers to feedback, the better. In feedback sessions and “town halls” the bulk of the time needs to be given to the front lines so they can share their feedback. [ 13:56 - 14:41 ] Remain connected. Listen to calls, whatever role you are in. And better yet, go a step further by doing shadowing sessions every quarter. [ 16:37 - 20:40 ] Agent feedback is priceless, but businesses make decisions using numbers. So where is the balance when you’re operating at a large scale? Make sure you’re shadowing agents from a variety of performance levels so the metrics are helpful in going head to head against the numbers. [ 27:26 - 28:38 ] People saying that something is a good idea is not real buy-in. The truth is, we just tend to be agreeable and often offer verbal support of ideas. It’s about actually seeing value and working together on the right ideas that deserves buy-in. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

Many would argue that business is all about sales and playing the numbers game. Guess what? They're wrong. The truth is, without customers, there is no business. Join us, along with Philip Bennett, as we reveal why focusing on customer experience agents is vital to servicing, not just your customers, but quite literally everyone. [ 3:57 - 4:29 ] What does your customer get when they choose you over your competitor? They get YOU! [ 10:34 - 11:43 ] My job as the manager is to assign the credit and take the blame. [ 11:56 - 14:09 ] We say ‘Fail hard, fail fast.’ But do we really allow people to do that? Or do we punish them? Management literally pays for agent’s to make mistakes We’re paying for their education so let’s keep them around so we can benefit from that! Kenneth adds “The leader takes the bullet. The team takes the glory.” That’s real buy-in and leadership. [ 16:54 - 18:12 ] What should CEOs say when they are asked the question, “What keeps you awake at night?” I never hear them answer the way I think they should. They should say, “What keeps me up at night is that the very person who talks to my customer, representing my company, using my voice, is the person who everyone in the company is trying to downsize, automate or outsource.” That’s the biggest shame in the world. [ 22:05 - 23:35 ] Asking front line agents for ideas is one of the best things you can do. [ 24:55 - 25:04 ] It’s the small ideas that are the great ones to implement, not the big, flashy ones. [ 26:32 - 29:14 ] After AI comes into the call center we may even need more agents because volume will increase, automation will take care of mundane tasks and agents will be needed for more intricate calls. Let’s remember that everyone is a customer, and customer experience is everything to our company. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.

CSAT. NPS. AHT. Nearly every contact center has held their agents accountable for metrics like this to evaluate success. Does everyone really understand the values behind the measurements, or do we all just go along with it because it's “the way it’s always been done"? We've got Doug Rabold in the hot seat, helping us realize the true merit of metrics and how they can impact agent performance for better... or worse. [6:21- 7:24] It’s important in any environment where you are looking at different metrics and various key performance indicators to look at them holistically. Each piece impacts another piece leading to a different performance. [10:39- 11:29] When a customer is calling in and they have a policy problem with how the company is treating the customer, there is nothing the agent can do about it. The agent could be fantastic, but if the policies are anti-customer then you aren’t going to figure that out with certain measurements. [14:12- 15:56] The biggest limitation of the metrics being used is how they only survey those who are consuming the service. They do not survey those who have given up on the service. These perspectives are just as necessary, if not more, in how to measure the service. [20:58- 22:16] There are the five questions that you can ask to better improve your surveying, to make sure all opinions are heard and your company can grow. The areas that you’d want to ask questions about are quality, speed, technical ability, approachability, and communication. As always, thanks for tuning in! To listen to a recording of this and other episodes, visit vistio.io/podcasts. And to join our show live each week, go to vistio.io/cxlive.