CX Technology has evolved with the customer journey during the pandemic. Businesses were compelled to augment operations in cloud models to meet modern customer demands, especially in light of increased contact-less delivery.

Last week SOCAP hosted its much-anticipated CX Spring Symposium 2022 – Discovering New Pathways, sharing pandemic-transformation discoveries on the same topic, in which Premier was a sponsor partner. Our leadership was present at all the major industry sessions and gave insights into the event’s happenings, revealing what the experts had shared: industry best practices, emerging CX trends, and lessons learned from last year.

Here’s a short recap of all the exciting things that our leadership participated in during the conference, with exclusive takeaways from the following sessions:

  • Session by Dan Gingiss – How A Remarkable Customer Experience Can Be Your Best Sales and Marketing Strategy

  • Session by Miriam Liszewski (Google) and Jon Jessup (1440) – The Future of Consumer Engagement and Conversational Commerce

  • Session by Sylvie Di Giusto – You Have 7 Seconds

Premier Takeaways from SOCAP Spring Symposium

Premier Takeaways from SOCAP Spring Symposium

  • The W.I.S.E.R factor – 5 keys to creating a remarkable CX (Witty, Immersion, Shareable, Extraordinary, Responsive) – from the experience-maker (Dan Gingiss)

  • What customers want – 5 things in descending order:

    • Care
    • Trust
    • Excellence – How do you show this?
    • Creativity – Displaying the ‘wow’ moment
    • Clarity – Simplicity and precision in terminologies

  • Biggest challenge: Bringing culture and engagement into the WFH workforce

  • Giving customers what they don’t know they need

  • The power of word-of-mouth marketing

  • How to make rating an interesting experience

  • Pay and benefits are the largest factors in hiring agents (PTO, holiday, and insurance are must-haves)

  • The largest WFH global problems today are internet and connectivity

  • Proactive digital quality AI is the future

  • Utilizing BI chat for business communications

  • Employee engagement affects performance

  • 7 seconds to create an impression of yourself and others

  • Perception audit – how others see you, how you see you, and how you want people to see you.

  • Analyzing your strengths and weaknesses to improve yourself and your perception persona.

  • “Perception is not reality, but it is the customer’s reality” – Sylvie Di Giusto

  • 7 perceptions based on outlook (dressing) and their associated characteristics:

    • Explorer
    • Traditionalist
    • Cosmopolitan
    • Care-Giver
    • Avant-Garde
    • Grammarist
    • Dramatic

  • Responding instead of Reacting – Customer service, stress management, teamwork, leadership, innovation, and above all communication – Rick Lewis

  • Don’t judge a book by its cover – Know the story of your client, customer, and employee before reacting. Three types of people in a conflicting situation:

    • People who avoid or ignore
    • People who sympathize
    • People who compete or react aggressively

  • How to be the right type of person in the right situation and what suits your customer

  • Playing off of strengths for clients

  • Using technology and automation to augment existing CX processes

  • How to be the right type of person in the right situation and what suits your customer

  • Playing off of strengths for clients

  • Using technology and automation to augment existing CX processes

Premier Expert Insight

  • A recurring industry problem is employee engagement across remote teams with leadership involved. Premier is ahead of the curve with the WFH workforce engagement factor as:

    • We encourage the use of and provide branded materials to remote employees to enhance association and make them feel an extended part of the team
    • We proactively involve remote employees in brainstorming sessions to promote inclusivity; a regular “Pitch Fest” where all employees can participate and present ideas to senior management
    • We promote cultural immersion at all levels internal and external for all employees to better identify and associate with the brand

  • 7 seconds to perceived trust by a client, based on the first impression of you. Analyzing this in a remote setting:

    • Premier molds its perception persona according to what each client is looking for or what suits them
    • Learning from self-analysis to turn personal and team weaknesses into strengths
    • 5 things that customers want – Premier fully endorses and ensures these are part and parcel of our services
  • Responding, not Reacting; knowing the customer’s, client’s, and employee’s story:

    • Premier’s vision and mission endorse cultural immersion for tailored experiences for our clients, allowing us to become a seamless extension of their business. We also focus on providing professionals the opportunity to grow with collaboration, continuous learning, and mutual respect as part of our core values.
    • Premier supports and promotes a check-six culture based on wingmanship to enable true teamwork and excellence for our clientele
    • We also have a personal account of changes brought about from the learnings of Rick Lewis’s session

  • Handling each customer with personalization in omnichannel service delivery, to give them the choice of medium

Premier Experience

Commenting on the whole symposium happenings, networking with industry veterans face-to-face after a long time, and new experiences, Premier’s COO, Dave Shapiro said:

SOCAP this year has been one of the most memorable conferences we have attended, particularly Rick Lewis’s guest session, which we will recall even five years from now. We are happy to say that Premier has been proactively applying some of the essential CX elements highlighted during the conference to support our clients and their customers, right from the beginning of the pandemic. In terms of technology, our proprietary AI Engine, V.I.E.W. ensures home agent security and quality of service for our clients at all times. Overall, there was a lot to learn at the symposium this year and we look forward to future exchanges.

The final guest session was delivered by the motivational speaker Rick Lewis and left quite a footprint. Before the session, during lunch, our leadership along with the others became part of an illuminating social experiment that helped them significantly re-evaluate their responses to others in their personal and professional lives.

Tactfully highlighting the way people react to situations without thinking, Mr. Lewis helped his listeners link how customers respond to bad service and how you can help improve your reactions to situations moving forward.

Expressing how the session helped her transform her way of responding to others, one of our Business Development Directors, Michelle Pretty, commented:

We all had the same experience during the lunch act but perceived it in our own way. I had mixed emotions initially but the aftermath left a lasting impression that hit home a few days later. I was thrown into a similar situation during a personal event with a worker and my response instantly altered. Instead of getting angry at his incompetence and complaining to the manager, I offered to help; remembering to put myself in their shoes. The entire experience resonated with me when I learned about senior sensitivity a long time ago. This session helped me take a step back and analyze the situation from the other person’s point of view before making any judgments. I usually mirror other people’s emotions in a conversation, but now I have more understanding of looking beyond stereotypes and outer personas. As part of Premier, I will be able to comprehend different clients, customers, and employees better and treat them with a lot more respect, empathy, and positivity, than I did before.

Emphasizing the fact that we have advanced our technology faster by six and a half years today due to COVID-19, the symposium concluded this rapid evolution to be the major hurdle for many organizations to overcome. Technology has many applications and channels, but understanding the channel of choice for your customer is vital.

To get more details about the SOCAP Symposium 2022 agenda, sessions sponsored, and learning outcomes, you can also read our pre-event blog about select sessions curated by our experts: Read More.

About Premier

Premier strives to become a seamless extension of its client’s business processes by immersing itself in the client’s values and objectives. We provide dedicated resources that act in unison with our client’s team. We offer co-sourcing partnerships, a hybrid approach to outsourcing while sharing mutual risk and reward. Our focus is excellence in quality to deliver exceptional CX for our client’s customers. To learn more about how we work, visit our about us page.