VoC, UX Design, Customer Journeys and More: What to Expect at CCW Nashville

Forward-looking as always, CCW Nashville promises to be a precursor for the contact centers of 2019. Blending the latest research with best practices and networking opportunities for customer contact professionals, the four-day conference is rooted in the people, process and technologies organizations need to deliver world-class customer journeys.

Expect an agenda rich with predictions for the contact centers of 2019, CX intelligent automation, assessing digital transformation readiness and how omnichannel analytics technology works and applies today. With a keynote from hotly anticipated headliner Jenn Lim, CEO of Delivering Happiness, a company designed to inspire science-based happiness, passion and purpose at work and in everyday life, it’s sure to be a jam-packed and deeply informative four days.

As we gear up for the first day of CCW Nashville, here are five major customer contact issues we can’t wait to dive into.  

1. What is Voice of Customer research and how do I use it?

A living, breathing trove of real-time feedback for your business, Voice of Customer can yield insights into why certain customers don’t buy from you anymore, what your top customers love about your brand, what products you should be offering, and so much more. Richer than anything a survey can provide, these nuggets of qualitative information can come from conducting hourlong, one-on-one interviews with customers to scraping qualitative data from your speech analytics tools, online reviews, social media mentions of your brand, and much more.

At CCW Nashville we’ll take a deep dive into how to harvest VoC data, with Micki McCormick and Manny Marrero of Getaroom and Etech Global Service’s Jim Iyoob sharing ways to empower your customers to teach you the channels in which they want to engage and the journeys they prefer on Day 2. On Day 4, you’ll hear from executives at Whirlpool and IBEX on where to mine VoC data beyond the static survey.

2. How do I build a unified customer journey map?

A customer journey map charts all the touchpoints your customer has with your brand, from when they first visit your website and schmooze with your new chatbot to when they make that first purchase, then another and another. What convinces them to buy from you again - or not? Is there a particular touchpoint that excels or fails - and where does the customer go from there? By visualizing the sum of interactions your customer has with your organization, you can gain a clearer picture of customer intent and customer pain points.

CCW Digital principal analyst Brian Cantor will impart some of our latest research in journey mapping, while Alan Berkson of Freshworks will discuss proven ways to build a 360-degree view of the customer throughout the organization and how to curate a holistic customer journey from marketing to sales and support.

3. What technologies can I use to provide personalized, scalable customer support?

The rise of AI and CX automation gives contact center leaders an unprecedented choice of innovative technologies that purportedly speed and streamline customer service for maximum efficiency. From chatbots that provide instantaneous responses 24/7 and robotic process automation to offload monotonous work to AI-powered data analytics tools - the technology is growing increasingly sophisticated. It means that the humans that use it need to get smarter about how they interpret and act upon the data and how they deploy, optimize and maintain AI tools in the contact center.

During Technology & Innovation Focus Day, you’ll hear from Samuel Carrington, former help and service design manager at Lyft, on how to pair customer data with machine learning technology to create more personalized touchpoints. In another session, Ashley Welch of Lola and Ted Hunting of Bright Pattern will hold court on best practices for using chatbots in human interactions.

4. Why should I care about human-centered design?

Human-centered design - so in-vogue, yet so shrouded in mystery. It’s no longer an exclusive stomping ground for glamorous, Millennial-founded tech startups - heck, even seemingly ho-hum companies providing payroll and tax compliance services are investing in it. Put simply, human-centered design is a philosophy of designing products closely aligned with your customer’s pain points, needs and wants. For a software company, that means making the interface user-friendly; in the case of a retail company, it might be rethinking the in-store experience so busy customers can scan and pay for items on their phones.

It’s a philosophy of interviewing customers to learn about what they want, and then designing digital products aligned with that feedback. Expect to hear from Lori Cobb of Cummins Inc., who will make the case for using human-centered design to improve business, while Heidi Munc of Nationwide Insurance will impart her methods for using user experience design in the contact center.  

5. How do I break down silos in my organization?

Silos spring up everywhere - between different departments in your organization, between your various customer support channels, sometimes even between the contact center and the rest of the organization. A prevailing theme at CCW Nashville is how to create a unified vision for success - across the customer journey, among agents, between the sales, marketing and CX teams, and so much more.

Don’t miss the interactive discussion group with Subway’s Susan Sasso and Boris Grinshpun of LiveVox, who will shed light on curating an omnichannel strategy based on VoC data to deliver an overall world-class experience through connected channels. If your silos are geographical, take in the discussion by Vijay Thacker of Evolent Health on how to manage multiple global contact center operations.

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