Best of CCIQ '11 Q4: Outrage Over Zappos, Disney & Bank of America IVR Woes, Live Reps

Call Center IQ is proud to present its Best of 2011. The following pieces received the most traffic for each respective month of Q4, 2011. The index (including links to the top pieces from Q1, Q2 and Q3, follows)

October

How Zappos Escaped Outrage Over Customer Service Problems– Amid all the outrage about how Netflix and Bank of America handled their recent price changes, it is interesting to see how customer service standout Zappos managed to survive a recent issue fairly-unscathed.

Disney’s IVR – Pooh on Customer Service- If I felt Disney did everything wrong from a customer service standpoint, I would not vacation there so often. Their IVR system, however, continues to aggravate me.

November

Verify This, Bank of America - Your IVR is Absolutely Terrible– If Disney struggles to appease customers with its IVR, what chance does Bank of America have?

Southwest Airlines’ Customer Management (Pt 1): How to Turn Bad Experiences into Loyalty, Profit- Stephen Blanchette, principal at LeapQ and a new contributor at Call Center IQ, recently interviewed Fred Taylor, senior manager of proactive customer service communications at Southwest Airlines. Part one of the interview follows.

Southwest’s Customer Management (Pt 2): Keys to Delivering the Unexpected "Wows"- In part one of Stephen Blanchette’s interview with Fred Taylor, the Southwest Airlines proactive customer service manager shared why and how his organization preemptively engages those customers who endured less than stellar experiences. Here’s part two, featuring insight on how Southwest delivers the unexpected "wows."

December

Nine Quick Steps for Fixing Your Customer Experience- The "Nine Easy Steps" whitepaper from Bloomberg and SAP, available for free download at Call Center IQ, highlights the following quick steps for tuning-up the customer experience. The analysis and framing is exclusive to CCIQ.

Why Bother Having a Live Customer Service Rep? - Sue me, I like the idea of live chat. In an era of doing almost everything on a computer, live chat is very conductive to multi-tasking. It is great for record-keeping. It allows me to easily look up account and transaction information as I interact with customer service. It helps flesh out issues and argumentation for swifter resolution. All of these benefits, however…

Q1 (January-March): Content on the rise of contact center complaints, Charlie Sheen’s Twitter, Disney’s customer experience and process excellence in the call center

Q2 (April-June): Content on why Twitter is overrated, how to track social media metrics, mistakes made on social media, Sprint’s customer experience overhaul and LEGO’s customer management culture

Q3 (July-September): Content on mistakes agents make when dealing with angry customers, Zappos’ and Apple’s customer experiences, Netflix’s pricing fiasco, why teenagers hate certain brands and why Google loves its call center