No Images? Click here November 2017 Hi there, The end of the year might be on the horizon, however the customer service industry has shown no signs of slowing down. November has been a busy month for CSIA, with the organisation hosting two breakfast events in Sydney and Melbourne alongside Salesforce to showcase the winners and finalists of the 2017 Australian Service Excellence Awards. Some great insights came from both events, several of which are included in this newsletter. In other news, I recently wrote about the importance of aligning service and sales, and why a single view of the customer is critical. This follows an interview I filmed with Tony Hughes, respected B2B sales expert and author, on the future of customer experience in Australia, which you can find below. Also, watch this space for CSIA’s collaboration with Wisdom Learning to launch a new Leading Service Excellence training program for customer service professionals looking to advance their leadership and management skills. We’ve had plenty of other industry news and events keeping us busy this month. Read on to find out what we’ve been up to. Sincerely, CSIA and Salesforce’s Australian Service Excellence Awards breakfast eventsThis month, Salesforce and CSIA held breakfast events in Sydney and Melbourne which featured a panel of winners and finalists of the 2017 Australian Service Excellence Awards. Individual and organisational award recipients detailed their approach to best practice customer service, key challenges they faced, and learnings they have developed along the way. Moderated by Stephanie McCredie, APAC Director - Service Cloud Marketing, Salesforce, both events were interactive, with attendees hearing about innovative ways to implement customer service excellence within their organisation first-hand. Key insights were as follows: Building a strong team is step one Sydney panellists from Sydney Water, American Express, Stryker, and AMP Capital Pacific Fair agreed that recruiting a strong team of passionate people is the foundation of great customer service. “It’s a pivotal point that you have to get right, before you can take many steps forward,” said James Doyle, Director, Customer Experience at Stryker. Continuous training and coaching is vital The task of building a strong customer service team doesn’t end at the hiring stage – ongoing training and coaching is critical. “There's a huge investment in coaching in our organisation,” said Kelly Marr, Manager – Value Generation – Operations at American Express. “Every Customer Care Professional gets four and a half hours of coaching a month, with either their team leader or a coach.” Sydney Water has a dedicated performance capabilities specialist, and frontline staff get a 1:1 coaching session every four to six weeks. Quality human interaction Melbourne panellists from City of Casey, Stryker, AMP Capital and Melbourne Cricket Club discussed the need to focus on quality human interaction as the centrepiece of a strategic customer strategy. Donna Price, General Manager People and Culture, Melbourne Cricket Club outlined the critical role customers input played in the development of MCC’s award-winning CARE project, while AMP Capital talked through how the organisation put customers at the heart of its million-dollar re-development of Pacific Fair shopping centre on the Gold Coast - even training construction staff to help to continue the delivery of exceptional customer experience throughout the changes. For more informative insights from the Sydney and Melbourne events, and from ASEA winners and finalists, be sure to keep an eye on the Salesforce blog next Monday, 4 December, when the complete post-event wrap goes live. CSIA would also like to thank Stephanie McCredie for her fantastic moderation of both events.
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