Customer Service Reps

Women's handbag and accessories brand Vera Bradley recently opened a new line of communication with its customers: text messaging. The company is using text messaging to provide speedier and more personalized customer service. Prior to implementing the contact-center solution that enabled texting, Vera Bradley recognized its customers might be trying to send text messages to…

People still want what brick & mortar can deliver them, especially when customer service is based on a single view of the customer.

It can be hard being a small business today. How does one compete with industry powerhouses that offer millions of SKUs and free two-day shipping? Amazon Prime Now, for example, has over 940,000 products available across 32 U.S. cities, and Target has 39 distribution centers in the U.S. alone. The human and capital resources needed…

By implementing a self-service artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot solution, TechStyle Fashion Group (parent company of JustFab, Fabletics, ShoeDazzle) saved more than $1 million and was able to reduce the overall number of calls to its contact centers for transactional and traditionally self-service issues. In addition, the chatbot’s proactive, context-inclusive handoff of more complex chat sessions to live agents…

We’ve all been there. You’ve just entered a store to make a quick purchase. Your head is down in an attempt to avoid speaking with any overzealous retail associates. But it’s too late, they’ve found you. What do you do to avoid this conversation? Lie, of course. Voice of customer platform Usabilla surveyed 2,000 U.S. consumers…

We’re all guilty of yelling at Alexa or Siri. From sharp commands to making our virtual assistant the brunt of our jokes, niceties fall by the wayside when we interact with technology. Why? Because giving technology a human name doesn’t make it human. It still lacks the ability to feel the sting of our annoyance…

At a time when it’s routine for millions of consumers to ask digital assistants (e.g., Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri) to tell them a good joke or ask if they need an umbrella, it’s surprising most businesses are still in the early stages of implementing intelligent automation technologies for customer communication. Even fewer have made…

Brands that understand their customers and strive to continuously improve customer service will be successful. Why? Because these companies understand, care about and are obsessed with their customers. We live in a time where consumers can have anything they want at their fingertips, but it’s up to the retailer to deliver. You never know how…

With the busiest retail season of the year behind us, it’s the perfect time to assess performance and reflect on opportunities to improve and ensure an even more successful holiday season in 2018. The holidays always bring with them the highest ticket volume, as customers reach out to businesses with a flurry of questions around returns, password…

Not long ago, customers wanting to make a purchase had two choices: physically walk into a retail store or call a 1-800 number to place an order. While these seem limited in today’s world of omnichannel commerce, there were benefits. Most importantly, it supported the ability to create and maintain a strong brand. After all,…