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How to Be a Customer Support Hero in an IoT World

If you believe the hype about the Internet of Things (IoT), we are entering a world that’s seamlessly connected. From smart homes and wearables to connected cars and smart cities, the IoT enables innumerable ways for devices to share data and handle tasks on our behalf. 

But what happens when the system breaks? Who’s responsible for providing customer care when multiple devices automatically “talk” to one another but are vulnerable to equipment failures, cyberattacks, and connectivity issues? 

There’s no easy answer. That’s why human support is integral to an IoT world. People rise above the technology to connect the many service points across different devices with context.

The fragmented IoT landscape
In two years, 20.4 billion IoT devices such as smart TVs, fridges, and security cameras will be deployed, up from 11.2 billion connected devices in 2018, according to Gartner. For context, the human population is expected to reach 7.8 billion by 2020. 

Companies flooding the market with connected devices create a highly fragmented IoT ecosystem. This fragmentation has become one of the challenges in providing customer care for IoT devices and applications.

For example, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and 5G are just some of the common wireless networking technologies that are available for IoT-based solutions. Each of these wireless protocols has different characteristics that were designed for specific applications. As a result, consumers may have dozens of connected devices that operate across various communication networks with multiple data inputs.

Consider this scenario: An IoT-enabled printer is connected to Amazon’s Alexa, which lets you know when it’s time to order more toner. However, something goes wrong. The toner arrives in a battered box, the container is leaking, and it’s the wrong type of toner. 

Who’s responsible for the problem? Is it the company that manufactured the printer, the toner company, Amazon, or the shipping company? Who will understand all the pieces and provide customer care? You would most likely have to contact several customer service centers to rectify the issue, which makes for a poor experience on all fronts. 

Problems like this are only going to become more common and more complicated. There are already tens of thousands of different ways for smart devices to connect and interact with one another in a home or business on a constant basis. That creates myriad, unpredictable service points that represent a very complex headache for companies. 

Trouble-shooting IoT issues requires the ability to extract data from connected devices, analyze the various types of data input, identify patterns and insights, and develop standardized protocols and applications. 

The process becomes even more complex when factoring in differences in equipment OEMs and operating systems. Finally, cybersecurity is another issue, since each connected device is a potential weak spot for fraudsters to exploit. 

Support in an IoT world
Artificial intelligence-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service technologies address some of these challenges, but companies can’t automate their way out of the problem. Humans are needed to provide intuitive support that’s available around the clock.

For instance, Best Buy offers a Geek Squad 24/7 tech support plan. Depending on the plan, subscribers receive features such as unlimited access to online, phone, and in-store service, as well as assistance with device installations, tune-ups, and repairs. The services include assistance setting up a smart doorbell, router placement tips, and other types of smart device support. 

Expect to see more white-glove support services like this, where in addition to setting up IoT devices, trained specialists handle a wide range of customer support issues. Returning to the toner example, customers who pay for IoT support could have an associate connect the dots for them. 

For instance, if suppliers, sellers, and other partners agree to a standardized record management system like blockchain, the associate can review quality checkpoints on the toner’s journey to the customer to identify and resolve the problem. The associate could then give the customer options, such as to reorder the toner or receive a refund. 

Providing superior service
Another reason humans are needed to provide IoT support is that most customers simply want a human connection. In fact, the Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research report found that when service issues arise, 73 percent of customers prefer human interaction to a digital channel.

And as IoT support issues grow more complex, this is an opportunity for companies to stand out by providing higher levels of quality engagement. 

For example, let’s say your car is designed to make an appointment with the dealer when it needs to be serviced. However, a database malfunction causes many cars to make appointments that aren’t necessary. A customer support outsourcer’s AI system could detect the anomaly and flag it so that IT can fix the issue. At the same time, the affected customers would receive text messages or emails informing them that there was a problem with the appointment, but it’s being fixed and associates are standing by in case they have questions. 

When something breaks, customers want to know that they’re being cared for. And instead of angering its customers, the car company becomes the hero by proactively handling a problem before it snowballs into a larger issue. 

Connecting the data dots
To support an IoT customer base, companies must provide reliable service 24/7. But the intersection of brands in an IoT world presents a significant challenge for companies trying to serve customers. Customer support is no longer about individual manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, and internet service providers offering their own products. It’s about delivering on customer expectations for an uninterrupted service experience across the connected environment, while adding value to drive loyalty. 

While there isn’t a simple way to accomplish this, start by identifying the key touchpoints along your product’s customer journey and where it intersects with other devices. Then determine what areas your support team is best suited to take on, and where you may need to scale through a partner.  

The onus will be on creating the best support teams, regardless of location or brand. Companies are already building remote workforces with central hubs in key cities and the IoT will only accelerate this trend. 

Also, as more care centers are distributed between IoT companies, collaboration will be essential. Technology will play a large role in facilitating this. Messaging apps and SaaS tools that allow for easy online collaboration will have a big part to play, not to mention tools for streamlining data across multiple platforms and permissions.

IoT adds many more layers to the customer’s experience with a brand—product complexity compounded by customer expectations and technology and network functions in an effort to work effortlessly. Disruptions are inevitable. When they happen, it’s important to have the right systems, tools, and teams in place to guide customers through this complex journey. 

This article originally appeared in the summer issue of TTEC‘s Customer Strategist journal.

Customer Transformation Defined in 5 Steps

I am proof that the work of the CCO is just one more ‘work stream’ added to the report going out. For example, I advocate a set of deliberate activities that evolve and mature leaders’ commitments and actions to embed critical new competencies and enable business transformation, but often I jump into this work with a plate full of projects. The work becomes too quickly attached to project plan movement rather than customer life improvement.

The CCO role hits a wall when the C-Suite isn’t united in understanding their roles and ongoing personal commitments in working with the CCO as a united team. Customer experience transformation and the work of this role also falter when too much work is layered on too soon and if the work isn’t broken into achievable segments. And often these roles are established without leaders agreeing to the tactics and energy necessary to achieve a customer-driven transformation.

To ensure greater success in their role, I encourage CCOs to move their work through the deliberate phases of my Customer Leadership Maturity Map. This work will be successful when CCOs take a stair-stepped approach to gaining leadership clarity and commitment to the framework and actions. As they embed new company competencies, over time, what the company stands for and its marketplace position will shift along with customer-driven growth. Starting with the lives of customers and employees will drive decision-making and elevate the brand in the marketplace.

Below is a summary of the milestones that define most clients’ transformation efforts in embedding the five competencies. For each phase of the maturity map, I’ve identified actions and behavior changes along the continuum of years one through five as the competencies are being embedded. After year five, it’s a matter of sharpening and improving these competencies for your organization. By their very nature, the five competencies are not a program, but rather a repeated cycle of one-company awareness, understanding, focus, and united action. We are finding that it takes about three years to have these become very comfortable inside the organization and up to five years until they are really embedded into the DNA of the business.

Commit: Gain leadership, clarity, and commitment to the five-competency framework or strategy. This work hinges on c-l-a-r-i-t-y. Executives need to understand with specifics the work that is ahead, both in terms of company action and their actions, decision-making, and behavior.

Unite and Build::Unite leaders and their organizations in competency-building and first round or experience reliability improvement actions. In this phase two outcomes are important: Initiating the build of your five-competency engine, and taking actions that focus on and improve priority experiences. Think of this as your beta version of this work. First, initiating your five-competency engine means to begin the process of building your first ‘clunky’ version of each competency. Don’t get caught up in the trap that they must be perfect to get started.

Embed: At this stage, the competencies are now part of how you do work inside your company. By this stage your leadership team should be united in driving accountability by customer journey stage, rather than silo-by-silo. Because they have now been an active part of the first generation of the five competencies, there should be an appreciation of resources necessary to sustain the cycle they establish as part of the operation. Employee teams should have been trained throughout the company on the “Customer Experience Development- CXD” process for improvement. The five competencies should now be embedded as part of building products, establishing services and conducting annual planning.

Mature: You are now actively engaged inexperience innovation and differentiation. By this phase, you should have tackled the majority of the irregular and unreliable customer experiences plaguing the customer journey along key touchpoints. This opens up resources for identifying and improving touchpoints for experience differentiation and innovation. Use the embedded competencies at this point to commit to differentiating moments in the customer journey. Employees should be able to work top down and bottoms up, practicing the five competencies, to build these experiences.

Elevate: Company differentiation. Your company and people are differentiated in the marketplace by how you conduct yourself in business. By now, the five leadership competencies have been embedded into your business engine and are part of the way people work, are compensated, and rewarded. Annual planning begins with an understanding of the growth or loss of your customer asset and the inflection points along your journey where opportunity exists. Experience reliability is managed, and leaders care about the process metrics which impact customer asset growth with as much rigor as they care about outcome metrics such as sales goals. You hire and enable employees guided by your customer journey framework.

Planning for 4 Types of Customer Experience

You’ll never be able to write a line of code or a business process rule that requires an employee to deliver a great customer experience; the employee has to want to deliver it.

Sooner or later every company encounters a situation that simply wasn’t anticipated in advance. So when a customer’s experience involves this kind of unforeseen event, especially if it is of great significance or importance to the customer, you want your employees to be willing and able to deal with it, even if it might mean overriding a standard practice, or making a judgment call on their own authority.

One way to visualize the issue is to use a diagram that categorizes the kind of customer experience you’ll be delivering, based on how standardized the business process is for a situation, and how engaged the customer is in it. Based on high and low levels of both process standardization and customer engagement, we can identify four different types of customer experience that must be planned for:

The vast majority of customer experiences with any sizable business will be in the lower right quadrant, “Business as usual.” Here you have a lot of repetitiveness and a high potential for standardization, while the customer considers the transaction or experience to be routine. Buying one more item from an online retailer, for instance, or making a call to your credit card company to check your balance, are business-as-usual customer experiences. And many of these kinds of experiences can be entirely automated, which gives the company the ability to deliver a completely frictionless experience simply by hard-wiring the right customer-centric processes into its computer system. When iTunes reminds you that you already bought an item you’re about to purchase, it’s not because anyone made an on-the-spot decision about how to treat you, but because they anticipated the situation in advance and built appropriate rulesinto their computer system.

In the upper right quadrant, “Predictable customer lifecycle events,” the customer experience is highly significant in the customer’s mind, but it is still predictable, and the delivery of that experience can be standardized, even though customers themselves are likely to be highly interested or engaged in them, and would probably not think of them as routine. One example might be when a customer receives his very first bill from the mobile carrier he just signed up with. He’s likely to be quite interested in understanding why the bill is higher than he had expected, and in many cases he’ll call the carrier to discuss it. But, because all new customers receive a first invoice at some point, and it’s not uncommon for them to call in to inquire about it, the mobile company can prepare for this customer experience in advance. It will likely have a standardized way to deal with these kinds of inquiries.

In the lower left quadrant, “threats to cost efficiency” are many of the kinds of customer experiences that weren’t anticipated and planned for already, including unusual requests or out of the ordinary events, in which the customer isn’t terribly interested or engaged. Your company still has to pay attention to them, however, and manually address these issues one at a time, because they undermine your cost efficiency. An example might be, for instance, when a hotel company’s website can’t automatically consolidate a customer’s duplicate frequent guest accounts because of an overlooked discrepancy in the address field, or some other minor problem. For the most part this is nuisance friction, and you should be logging each such problem as it comes up, in order to continually improve your process standardization and automation capabilities.

It’s in the upper left quadrant, however, where a negative customer experience can be the most threatening to a company’s profitability and reputation. The customer experience in this quadrant is one in which the customer is highly engaged, but the company itself has not prepared in advance to address the issue, and there is no standardized process in place. This might be because the problem was hard to anticipate in advance, or because the company hasn’t been careful enough in mapping out all its customer journeys to begin with. Either way, these “surprises, trials, and tribulations” will test a firm’s corporate culture.

So the question for your company is, when a customer is wronged or ill-served in some way, how easily can the situation be remedied by rank-and-file employees who get involved in the customer’s interaction?

The vast majority of employees-and particularly those in customer service jobs-want to work for a company that can be trustedby its customers. But if you want to be able to handle the kinds of problems encountered in this upper left quadrant effectively, then your employees must be (1) actively engaged with your firm and its mission, and (2) enabled to make the decisions and take action on their own.

Excerpted from: Customer Experience: What, How and Why Now (2106) by Don Peppers

Employee Engagement = Alignment + Empowerment

Office workers relaxing at break

Temkin Group research shows that engaged employees are valuable assets-they try harder at work and are more committed to helping the company succeed than their less engaged counterparts. In fact, in our 2016 Employee Engagement Benchmark Study, we found that compared to disengaged employees, highly engaged employees are:

  • Four times more likely to do something good for the company that is unexpected of them
  • Four times more likely to recommend the company’s products and services to someone who might need them
  • Four times more likely to make a recommendation about an improvement that can be made at their company
  • Two and a half times more likely to stay late at work if something needs to be done after their normal workday ends

So what does it take for companies to reap these benefits? They must recognize that employee engagement is not just about the employee; it’s about connecting employees with the goals of the organization. This requires that employees are both aligned and empowered.

  • Aligned: Employees feel they are responsible for helping the company achieve its goals and are committed to delivering on its values.
  • Empowered: Employees feel they have the responsibility and the capability to make decisions that positively affect customers

Without alignment, employees don’t feel a real connection with the company or any responsibility for its success. Without empowerment, employees may want to help the company succeed, but don’t see a way to do that in the role they play.

So how can companies ensure high alignment and empowerment? They can start by focusing on strengthening three areas-all of which strongly correlate to the productive, committed employee behaviors described above.

1.Make sure employees understand the mission of the company. It’s impossible to align any group of people in the same direction if they don’t know where they’re headed. A company needs to ensure that its mission, values, and goals are easy to understand and remember so that employees can use them to guide the myriad decisions they make every day. This includes identifying specific employee behaviors so that employees understand explicitly what they can do to contribute to the company’s (and their own) success. A critical tactic to deploy-leaders at all levels must reinforce the company’s mission, goals, and values on a consistent and persistent basis, not only through what they communicate, but also through how they act.

2.Provide employees with the training and the tools they need to be successful. No company can expect its employees to magically know what they are supposed to do and how to do it. Employees need opportunities to develop and practice the knowledge and skills required to succeed. This happens through activities like formal training, on-the-job coaching, and peer reinforcement, to name a few. Companies also need to make sure they are making it easy for employees to take the right actions. If employees are constrained by things like out-of-date systems that require work-arounds or frustrating policies they have to enforce with customers, then neither employees nor customers will have a positive experience.

3.Ask for employees’ feedback and act upon their input. When a company makes its employees part of its improvement and decision-making processes, their commitment levels significantly increase. Employees are a fountain of valuable information, so companies should be applying the same rigor to employee feedback as they apply to customer feedback and voice of the customer programs. Employee listening programs can encompass activities beyond a formal engagement survey. Take advantage of employee councils, employee social network discussion boards, along with ad hoc employee feedback sessions, to capture input around specific initiatives or projects. But companies can’t stop with listening-they must close the loop with employees by sharing what was learned, what actions they are taking, and why other ideas won’t be moving forward.

Companies that come out ahead will be those that understand that raising employee engagement is not the charge of any single function, but rather a team effort involving senior executives, middle managers, Human Resources, Customer Experience, Marketing, Communications, IT, etc. These companies will take a look inside their four walls and ensure that there is an environment in place where the culture and operating processes are aligned with the goals of the company, and that this environment enables employees to deliver consistently great customer experiences.

The work involved is not easy, but it is worth it. Our research shows that organizations that are successful benefit from not only more engaged employees but better customer experience and financial results.

What You Need to Know About BPO

Many individuals find it difficult to admit when they need help. But for companies that stand to lose loyal customers over poor service experiences, embracing business process outsourcing (BPO) demonstrates strength, not weakness.

For modern contact center directors, today’s landscape may appear daunting, as new channels emerge to challenge the traditional status quo. While conventional leaders leveraged BPO to support rapid growth and reduced cost, current consumer behaviors and expectations have companies scrambling to evolve alongside the customer.

“Today, BPOs are being leveraged for much more increasingly complex customer engagements,” explains Mayur Anadkat, vice president, product marketing at Five9. “Companies are keeping a keen eye on the customer journey, which includes providing newer channels such as social and mobile. Whether that’s improving sales or customer service, the focus is always on improving the overall effectiveness of a contact center. Benefits include expanding a company’s business reach geographically, achieving flexibility with staffing, agents, and technology; and powering increased productivity and growth.”

But, as companies look to establish BPO partnerships or advance current outsourcing relationships, they must not only look outwardly at what providers have to offer, but also internally to determine what they seek from these dealings. Here are three questions every leader must ask when developing and maintaining BPO partnerships:

What’s driving our partnership?

For many contact centers, outsourcing represents the ideal way to cut costs and reduce repetitive tasks that distract from deeper customer engagement initiatives. Leaders are also driven by these providers’ technological appeal, as they don’t have to bear the expensive burden of periodic system upgrades to remain in sync with the overall market.

“These sorts of tasks drag down an organization not just because of the costs, but also because employees in these functions usually have no upward mobility in the company, which drags down morale and diminishes drive to innovate,” says Michael Gravier, associate professor of marketing and supply chain management at Bryant University. “The prime benefit of a BPO partnership handling the contact center should be to have the best expertise at a much lower cost. The BPO organization has created an entire professional career path for its employees to focus on improving processes that other companies need on a much smaller scale. It also helps that assets and obligations required to own world-class capability largely sit on someone else’s books, bolstering efficiency measures.”

However, to achieve the level of innovation that comes along with these technology investments, companies cannot depend upon procurement to lead the provider selection process. As Katrina Menzigian, vice president, research relations at Everest Group, emphasizes, cost may be one of the deciding factors, but it can’t be the only deciding factor. Partnerships must also be evaluated based on their inevitable business and process impact. Cost may present strong short-term benefits, but operational synergy will aid the desired long-term trajectory of such relationships.

“When selecting a BPO partner, it’s important to remember that the level of the service you receive is only as good as their people and service ability,” says Michael Mills, senior vice president, call center solutions for CGS. “Your outsourcing provider’s staff skill set needs to meet your requirements from industry experience to technical and soft skills. Whether outsourcing onshore, offshore, or near shore, providers should offer seamless team integration and awareness of cultural norms and sensitivities. A strategic partner should also be able to align its solutions to your technical and business objectives, while being flexible in meeting your needs.”

Alex Levi, vice president of sales for AI Foundry, advises leaders to consider the following when outsourcing service:

  1. How will this partnership impact overall brand reputation?
  2. How will these new forms of service influence the customer base?
  3. How will this financial investment advance revenue gains?

Ultimately, companies turn to BPO providers because operating contact centers isn’t their core business. According to Fred Weiner, founder and president of The Connection Contact Center, clients will gain greater value-of both the financial and experiential variety-by outsourcing versus managing customer service internally. BPOs specialize in branding for their clients. They know how to recruit, hire, train, and manage agents to ensure the client’s brand is replicated and represented exactly the way the client would expect. Partnerships should be driven by their mutual desire to improve customer service satisfaction.

Are we in the right frame of mind?

Companies must approach BPO partnerships with an open mind in order to grow and improve. BPO providers offer expertise, which allows them to uncover unknown issues and unmet needs that may be hindering the customer experience. Praveen Puri, president of Puri Consulting LLC, emphasizes that leaders need to treat BPOs as a partner or advisor and listen to their suggestions instead of treating them like vendors who merely follow instructions. Of course, there will be instances when the client might not want to hear what the BPO provider has to say, especially in cases where budget must be expanded to meet business objectives. However, this expert guidance promotes clear and honest communication, which remains paramount to long-term success.

“There are always three factors to consider in every relationship: time, quality, and price,” says Kathy Aman, senior vice president of sales and customer relationship management at Firstsource Solutions. “Getting the customer experience right takes time and it’s an investment to get quality service. Long-lasting BPO relationships need open communication, honesty, and flexibility. To support the longevity of the relationship, communication also needs to be two-way. BPO partners need to understand the outcomes companies are looking for in order for them to deliver the desired result.”

To synchronize with the client mindset, providers must engage in dialogue with leaders to understand their customer base, says Stephanie Eslinger, director of TeleTech@Home Sales & Support. Once both parties have defined expectations and assessed needs, providers can the build out an effective solution that caters to the client’s comfort level, while keeping cost and goals in check. “By getting to know the customers they’ll be serving, providers can creat a contact center solution that reflects the way the client already operates. Customer experience excellence translates to improved satisfaction, strengthening partnerships for the long-term.”

Gravier notes that contract development holds the key to setting realistic expectations because it forces both parties to assess needs,examinerisks, and determine the tone of the relationship. “As in archery, a small difference in trajectory atthe beginning has a huge impact on whether you hit the target,” he says. “Take time to think through andexpress in clear terms what’s desired out of the relationship, how each party will benefit over the longterm, and the specific process for resolving issues.

Weiner adds that, when setting proper and appropriate expectations, everything boils down to experience and transparency. Effective BPOs will take the time to truly understand what the company’s budget, program goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs) are, as well as what the desired customer experience looks like. BPOs will also proactively be able to identify areas for opportunity and improvement. Often times, expectations fall short when the budget and program goals collide with the customer experience. Sometimes providing the desired customer experience may take a little longer than the projected average handle time. It takes partnering with a provider that has experience in the industry-that understands this balance-to help set appropriate expectations. They must also be willing to push back when objectives and expectations don’t align. When expectations are clear and appropriate, then the likelihood of meeting those expectations and maintaining a positive partnership climbs.

Do our company cultures align?

While client and provider relationships must clearly align with regard to goals and objectives, these teams must also align when it comes to internal culture. Michael DeSalles, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, emphasizes that, in order to come together and provide the seamless customer service experience the client company hopes to achieve, both parties must share a similar mission and vision to ensure everyone’s working toward one common purpose.

“The nature of the relationship between customer and provider is vital to the long-term success of any outsourcing arrangement,” DeSalles explains. “It becomes even more important in the current market scenario because consumer expectations for excellent service delivery are extremely high, regardless of the vertical segment. Premium brands, in particular, want to be able to shape the customer experience. This requires a shared vision and a good cultural fit between an outsourcing vendor and client. It engenders a high level of trust, a synergistic relationship, and a great deal of transparency.”

Ideally, the BPO provider will take on the mindset of the company, enabling the agents who serve that given client to adopt their culture and experience, making them feel as if they’re part of the particular organization. However, not all partnerships succeed. “Poorly defined requirements and a lack of understanding between business cultures can produce service delivery gaps that are irreparable,” DeSalles adds. “Some providers have had contracts terminated for lack of ownership of the client programs and failing to treat them as their own. Clients are constantly reassessing contact center priorities to stay in tune with the market and remain competitive.”

Anadkat echoes this sentiment, emphasizing that, in order to ensure a long-lasting relationship between the contact center and BPO, the outsourcer must be aligned with the company’s mission. “Solely focusing on cost and resource allocation has become pass?n the contact center industry, as contact centers look for more and more customer experience metrics to drive their decisions,” Anadkat says. “It’s no longer just a discussion of reducing cost. It’s also about which BPOs really understand the business and can improve the company’s overall customer experience. It’s also important that the BPO doesn’t feel like an outsourcer and doesn’t feel disconnected. Operations are more seamless when they speak the same business language.”

Company leaders must sit down with potential BPO providers to determine if both parties share the same beliefs and perspective. Aman notes that it’s increasingly hard for BPOs to differentiate their offering as their services are very similar.Companies that are passionate about customer experience, however, are the ones that can usually provide most benefits, rather than the simple transactional players. Providers that focus on meeting and exceeding the client’s business objectives will always blaze the trail for new and innovative solutions.

Ultimately, as Vikram Mago, director of operations for Capgemini Business Services, mature and experienced providers should be continuously innovating and transforming capabilities. Doing so positions them to bring contact center directors new and fresh ideas on how to improve their business processes, which is precisely what they seek. By asking (and answering) these critical questions, leaders can lay the foundation on which to build these long-term partnerships and enhance customer service capabilities.

On Trend: What’s New in Retail Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement has become just as complicated as the customer journey itself, for there are many moving parts contained within every interaction. For retailers, customer engagement remains particularly tricky, as shoppers always seem to be one step ahead with regard to technology adoption.

Yet, while the tools behind successful retail engagement may be perpetually in flux, the underlying sentiment remains simple-all supporting initiatives must provide consumers with the flexibility to choose and an overarching sense of purpose.

Because there are countless elements to consider with regard to the customer experience, it’s almost impossible for retailers to prepare for every hypothetical scenario imaginable. However, as Alan Lipson, global retail industry marketing manager at SAS, emphasizes, the retail customer engagement landscape continues to evolve, ultimately getting closer to the true one-to-one experience every retailer strives to achieve. Retailers need to establish strategies that push beyond generic coupons and promotions, for conversion rates are no longer the KPI of choice. Instead, the future of retail engagement relies on the culmination of experiences to foster long-term loyalty.

“How do I engage with my customer for this specific shopping experience?” Lipson asks. “Is the customer shopping for themselves, or shopping for a gift for someone else? How the retailer engages with the customer for each experience needs to be as different as the drivers compelling the customer in the first place. Differentiating the engagement and building true relationships with customers, rather than just incenting them with the next discount or more loyalty rewards points is key.”

Deep down, retailers must harmonize their customer engagement and customer relationship strategies, for these two elements exist at the core of customer experience. Here are five trends that will help retailers complete their current customer engagement goals and strengthen customer relationships throughout 2016:

1. Personalized Experiences Require an Underlying Omnichannel Strategy

As consumers begin to complete more purchases online, the ability to create highly engaging in-store experiences continues to disappear. Jeff Hirsch, CMO at SundaySky, explains that retailers will need to find new ways to connect with consumers and reinvent formal physical interactions within the online space in order to strengthen customer relationships using highly personalized experiences. Even in transactional environments, retailers must form relationships by using the vast amount of consumer data now available so they may adapt communications processes to appease the given customer’s specific needs and facilitate conversions.

“There’s no question retail consumers have gotten savvier and more demanding, but they’ve also become far more discerning,” says Cynthia Price, director of marketing at Emma. “Customers are increasingly seeking one brand they can turn to again and again, and not just because the store offers great prices, but also because they get an excellent experience. From relevant email promotions and personalized recommendations, to great customer service, retail consumers want it all and expect brands to deliver.”

Ian McCaig, CMO of Qubit, emphasizes that, to achieve next-level personalization, retailers must finally make their omnichannel dreams reality. Most have access to the data necessary to bring about such change, but few brands have the manpower and technology needed to carry out their goals. Retailers are buried under legacy systems that hinder their ability to develop the “golden record” of the customer, as these platforms are neither agile nor responsive. Therefore, poor data practices result in the “trash in, trash out” scenario that prevents the delivery of relevant communications and experiences. Moving forward, retailers will need to invest in data centralization, for this will be the only way to effectively engage their customer bases.

Companies such as GoldieBlox take marketing one step further by emphasizing the ‘personal’ in personalization. Not only does the brand create imaginative toys for young girls, but it also supports causes and leads social campaigns that truly reflect its organizational values. GoldieBlox doesn’t depend on its products alone to stir the creativity of young female minds. Instead, GoldieBlox continues to promote related organizations, such as Girls Who Code and the Society of Women Engineers, thereby employing its own toys as tools to spread the word about STEM careers and encourage girls to pursue their dreams-even if those dreams are normally confined to the boys’ department.

2. User-Generated Content Sparks Engagement and Produces Feedback

As social and mobile usage continue to grow, consumers have increased power to decide what content they see and what content they’ll bypass. Therefore, the days of brands force-feeding content out to the masses are over. Instead, as Jeffrey Soriano, senior director of demand generation at Offerpop, explains, participation will become an undeniable customer engagement trend in 2016. Brands will spend more time creating campaigns and programs designed to inspire customers to interact with and be part of the brand. Such campaigns should focus on lifestyles and emotions to build authentic and meaningful relationships in an effort to establish brand advocacy and promote engagement. User-generated will further extend the brand’s authenticity and trustworthiness because such material resonates with other consumers, as most prefer to engage with content created by their peers instead of the brand itself. McCormick, for instance, allows customers to upload photos and recipes. Contests encourage further engagement by empowering participants to vote on their favorite submissions. Such tactics enable McCormick and its customers to develop relationships that breed brand advocacy.

3. Technological Innovations Blend the Digital and Physical Experience

Retailers will need to do their homework given the number of new technologies presently on the market and ones expected to hit in the coming years. As Josh Marti, CEO and co-founder of Point Inside, suggests, retailers should start small with a pilot program in a few stores to test any given technology before deploying such tools across the company. Retailers will also need to invest in their underlying technology infrastructures to build a strong foundation for new projects, thereby making new tools easier and faster to implement. Once they’ve tested and deployed those tools best suited for their client bases, retailers must also continue to test and optimize their approaches in order to constantly improve engagement and experience.

For many retailers, mobile applications have become the technology of choice, as shoppers almost always have their smart devices within reach. During the holiday season, for example, Target‘s mobile app provided shoppers with interactive in-store maps, store-specific product search, and Black Friday doorbuster deal maps so customers could quickly locate the aisle number and shelf location of their desired products. Lowes Foods also employs mobile technology to provide its grocery shoppers with the ability to shop, plan, get store directions, and clip and redeem coupons directly from the palm of their hands. According to Klaus Werner, head of e-commerce, consumers are looking for robust online capabilities, such as interactive, personalized weekly ads and an online shopping experience that empowers them to make the best selections for them and their families, while also allowing them to maximize their savings. Such tools will allow Lowes Foods to strengthen customer relationships and bring the brick-and-mortar experience to life online.

4. Convenience Appeals to Customers’ Constant Need for Immediacy

Consumers typically pursue the path of least resistance when it comes to purchasing the goods they seek. For the retail industry, this new ‘convenience economy’ will come to play an increasingly important role. Also known as the on-demand economy, this approach depends upon creating the most convenient shopping experience possible for the customer in terms of time, effort, cost, and immediacy, says Chris Bryson, CEO of Unata. Retailers want to provide customers with an easy way to fulfill purchases the moment inspiration strikes. Mobile solutions will be at the heart of such expansion, for these tools are always within reach. For instance, Starbucks’ ‘Order& Pay’ service allows customers to place their order and pay via mobile before they even reach the retail location so their drinks will be ready and waiting for them once they arrive. PriceLocal, on the other hand, allows Amazon customers to browse local merchants who are willing to sell the same item in-store for the Amazon Prime price. Such tools allow shoppers to satisfy their needs in real time, while also promoting brick-and-mortar engagement, thereby increasing the likelihood of repeat patronage.

5. Store Relationship Management Rejuvenates Brick-and-Mortar Sales

Chris Taylor, CEO of Square Root, claims that retailers will discover the power of SRM-store relationship management-in 2016. Much like CRM software has enable retailers to use data to better understand who their customers are and how they like to shop, SRM will allow retailers to shift their focus to better understand and improve store performance, with a focus on data and knowledge sharing. With the adoption of SRM, training will get a major overhaul, time to value and knowledge loss due to turnover will decrease, stores will gain greater insight into performance against comparable locations, and they’ll be empowered to share and implement best practices.

“The use of mobile phones and smart devices increases the likelihood that consumers will make impulse purchases,” says Guy Yehiav, CEO of Profitect. “Since these channels are so visual and paint an idealized picture of what a product can do for a consumer, it’s vital that retailers are able to leverage these emerging channels more and more within physical storefronts. Whether it’s offering promotions using a certain hashtag, or opening a specialty pop-up shop within a traditional big box retailer, the more stores are able to appeal to today’s shoppers, the more luck they will have in the future.”

While most retailers focused on customer-facing initiatives throughout 2015, Taylor adds, retailers will ultimately look to increase agility, boost the bottom line, and improve the customer experience through this renewed focus on internal operations in 2016. Retailers will be expected to do more with less in their physical stores, making efficiency and productivity pivotal priorities with regard to brick-and-mortar performance. The ability to try new things quickly to see what works and what doesn’t will be essential for retailers to thrive.

Ultimately, the next year will likely be the turning point for many retailers, as these trends indicate the critical need for change throughout much of the industry. Retailers must break from tradition to engage customers on their own terms in an effort to create the experiences that support long-term loyalty and advocacy.

“Much of the industry looks at the customer being loyal to the retailer,” Lipson explains. “Turn that idea on its head: Are retailers loyal to their customers in terms of their wants, needs, and desires? Are they true to how they treat their customer as a shopper? Customer engagement is a validation of that brand promise, and the best retailers go further to delight the customer. Fall short, disappoint the customer, disregard your brand promise, and your hard-won customers will likely take their business elsewhere.”

Once retailers recognize which engagement strategies need to change and which tactics resonate most with their customer base, leaders will be able to bring their company-wide goals to fruition.

Effective Employee Training Must Support Personal Growth

As job functions continue to evolve, employees have come to expect more from the training programs designed to advance their skills. While these programs provide employees with the knowledge necessary to fulfill their roles, employees also crave engaging lessons that empower them to grow and develop along their personal career path. By establishing programs that sustain individual improvement, leaders demonstrate their investment in both the business and their employees, for they understand that each staff member supports the company’s overall mission and bottom line. But what should these programs look like moving into 2016?Here, we speak with Luis Ramirez, director of marketing for digital media at InterCall, to examine what employees seek from their training experience and how companies can meet or exceed these expectations in the coming year:

1to1 Media: Why does training play an important role in so many employees’ decision to stay with their current company? Why are their expectations so high?

Luis Ramirez: Employees want to increase their opportunities for success by improving their skills and knowledge, and for their employer to share their goals for professional development. Training is one way a company can show it’s invested in an employee’s continued growth in and outside of the organization. When training is effective, it not only benefits the company, but also can help employees advance toward their long-term career goals, improve their job satisfaction, and increase productivity. The vast majority of organizations today offer some type of training, so employees expect their company to also invest in them. This is especially true for younger employees who value continued learning opportunities more than their older counterparts. Millennials are new to the workforce and are eager to learn more skills and move up the corporate ladder. Training is seen as one way to do this.

1to1: Why do so many employees feel their company’s current training programs aren’t a productive use of their time?

LR: Too many companies make the mistake of creating a general, “one size fits all” training program that isn’t relevant to every employee’s specific job, role, or career path. Offering training just for the sake of offering training is a waste of everyone’s time. In addition to being relevant, training needs to be engaging or the information presented will not stick. Although offering interactive and customized training requires greater investment, its impact will be much greater. Today’s online tools make it easier and more affordable for companies to create individual and interactive learning paths.

1to1: What elements do employees seek from these training programs? How can companies make their programs more interactive and engaging?

LR: Employees want training that is customized to their job function or career path. In addition, employees often prefer the freedom and flexibility to consume training on their own schedule and at their own pace. The majority of employees also want their training to be more interactive and engaging. Multimedia tools like video, quizzes, gamification, and Q&A sessions encourage engagement with the content and promote retention of information. With virtual classrooms, rapid authoring, and other online tools, learning professionals can update and create content quickly. Virtual learning environments simplify the development and distribution of customized learning paths that can include a variety of learning modalities specific to an employee’s role or individual goals.

1to1: How do employee training programs impact engagement and long-term retention? What challenges will companies have to face moving forward?

LR: One of the main goals of employee training is often professional development. When employees believe the training is in line with their career paths, they’ll perceive value that’s in addition to, and can even exceed, financial compensation. Relevant training initiatives can demonstrate to employees that they’re valued and that the company is invested in their future. This can ultimately increase employee engagement and productivity. It can be challenging for companies, particularly large ones, to determine whether training content is engaging and achieving the desired effects. Subjective input to this question can be obtained by continually seeking feedback from employees after each training session. For qualitative metrics, look to online tools like virtual learning environments that track a learner’s activity during the event, such as how much of the course was completed and when, content consumption patterns, interactions like Q&A and chats, and test results. This information can be integrated into a formal feedback loop to continually improve training programs.

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