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Daniel Ord is a Certified Customer Experience Professional with an insightful background. Accumulating years of experience through other companies and his own, Daniel is no stranger to globe-trotting having worked in 40 countries and is experienced in the areas of Contact Center, Customer Service, and Customer Experience Strategy implementation.<\/span><\/p>\n During the course of this interview, discover advice on creating original and authentic customer experiences to make sure they align with customer expectations, the renewed focus of quality in the contact center<\/a>, plus the next big developments to come in Customer Service.<\/span><\/p>\n Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your background?<\/strong><\/p>\n I’m an American national with nearly 30 years in the Customer Contact industry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n After 12 years managing Contact Center environments in the U.S. and in Asia, I opened my company, <\/span>OmniTouch International<\/span><\/a> in 2001. Over the past 18 years, I\u2019ve facilitated practical and engaging workshops and speeches that develop Contact Center mastery, improve Customer Service delivery and advance Customer Experience know-how with more than 50,000 Participants across more than 40 countries.<\/span><\/p>\n I’m a CXPA Authorized Training Partner, a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), an ICMI Certified Associate, a Call Centre Industry Advisory Council Training Partner (CIAC), Net Promoter Certified (Owens CX) and the first to bring professional management level Contact Center certification to Asia back almost 20 years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n What is the objective of OmniTouch?<\/strong><\/p>\n Our focus is on practical and engaging workshops and speeches around mastering Customer Experience, Contact Centers and Customer Service.<\/span><\/p>\n To deliver on our objective, we have more than 25 formal courses in our curriculum with roughly half designed for management-level participants and half designed for frontline level participants.<\/span><\/p>\n What advice would you give for creating original and authentic customer experiences?<\/strong><\/p>\n To start, I\u2019m glad that the days of the Wow Factor, delighting customers, and \u2018going the extra mile\u2019 are finally behind us. Because there was so much nonsense spouted around these statements without a lot of rigor or practicality behind it.<\/span><\/p>\n Let me begin with what not to do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You can\u2019t create original & authentic experiences by obsessively scripting and squeezing your Frontline employees to be the source of these experiences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Some organizations still confuse Customer Service with Customer Experience and push the Customer Service function to own the experience.\u00a0 This is kind of a \u2018reverse silo\u2019 mentality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now on to ideas to create these kinds of experiences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Whenever a client approaches us for Mystery Shopper research, the first thing we do is go straight to the client\u2019s website, read their marketing communications, their vision, mission & values, digest their advertising.<\/span><\/p>\n We look for anything that tells us more about \u2018who\u2019 they are as an organization and what kind of brand promises they make.<\/span><\/p>\n When I owned an art gallery, we built our brand and identity around our tagline, \u2018Where Art & People Meet\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In OmniTouch we built our brand and identity around our tagline \u2018Helping & inspiring people to create great customer experiences.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n The key to designing experiences that are original and authentic for your customers is to make sure they tie to your identity and the role you\u2019ve chosen to play in people\u2019s lives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, research has a role too.\u00a0 Particularly the use of ethnographic research which is observing the customer in their own environment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Don\u2019t brainstorm around a conference table if you want to create amazing experiences.\u00a0 Get out there with customers and combine what you learn there with who you are. That\u2019s the formula.\u00a0<\/span> How important are messaging apps in the Contact Center?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m a big fan of text-based service. Especially synchronous text-based service where conversations happen. But with that said, I\u2019ll answer this as I\u2019d answer any client who asked me this question. It\u2019s the wrong question to ask.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s like asking \u2013 how important is serving Baked Alaska in your restaurant?\u00a0 If you\u2019re a cruise ship \u2013 super important. If you\u2019re serving Chinese fine-dining \u2013 probably not so much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because it\u2019s never a channel-first decision.\u00a0 I\u2019m conditioned by my experience to start with strategy first. When it comes to channel management, I look at my Customer Experience Strategy. And some of the most important strategy questions \u2013 for any new channel – include:<\/span><\/p>\n Messaging apps require planning & rigor to handle \u2013 as does any channel.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re struggling to manage your existing channels well then adding messaging apps isn\u2019t going to help. The discussion on execution \u2013 and the resources and effort to get it right on an ongoing basis – is what I see missing from discussions on \u2018which\u2019 and \u2018what\u2019 channels to offer Customers.<\/span><\/p>\n So yes \u2013 messaging apps can be a great addition to your Contact Center channel mix. I personally love them and the clients I have worked with to teach the operations & communications skills love them too. But approach the decision with rigor.<\/span><\/p>\n Download our white paper to learn How to Build a Modern Digital Customer Service Strategy with 10 Real-World Insights for B2C Leaders<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In Asia, what customer service trends are currently being implemented?<\/strong><\/p>\n With that said here are a couple of points about Asia in general. Digital awareness and activity are moving quickly. In Singapore, the Government has embraced digital strategy which in turn has influenced the private & educational sectors there.<\/span><\/p>\n In Germany \u2013 where I live now \u2013 it takes me weeks to set up a new company. Paperwork and administrative requirements seem to be the rule here. In Singapore, I set up a few companies and it took a day or two at most. So much \u2018pain\u2019 has been taken out of interacting with the government there.<\/span><\/p>\n In Myanmar, I had a telecom client that closed down their email channel \u2013 drove down their voice channel and switched their customer care largely to Facebook Messenger. In Myanmar, everyone is on Facebook.<\/span><\/p>\n In any market, I look to the leaders.\u00a0 Because as we all know, Customer Experience isn\u2019t country-specific \u2013 it\u2019s organization specific.\u00a0 In any country, there will be a handful of organizations that walk the walk.<\/span><\/p>\n The key to designing experiences that are original and authentic for your customers is to make sure they tie to your identity and the role you\u2019ve chosen to play in people\u2019s lives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I think it also helps \u2013 a lot \u2013 to have a \u2018lens\u2019 through which to examine (a) the Customer Experience<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The 3Es model \u2013 originally developed by Dr. Elizabeth B.N. Sanders and published by Forrester \u2013 is pretty widely adopted and I find it extremely useful when I\u2019m examining an experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not all customer journeys nor all touchpoints along those journeys have equal weight in the mind of the customer nor to your business results.<\/span><\/p>\n Your job isn\u2019t to exceed all Customer Expectations all the time. Through research and experience design you can identify which journeys and which moments matter most for key customer personas.<\/span><\/p>\n In your opinion, what is the next big development for Contact Centers?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m one of those industry folks who have been hearing about the death of the Contact Center for years and yet the industry continues to thrive and grow and change. Exactly what I expected and still expect.<\/span><\/p>\n One trend I predict is that Contact Center Management will work to master Customer Experience Management.\u00a0 Customer Experience Management (CXM) and Contact Center Management (CCM) may overlap here and there \u2013 but they\u2019re not the same thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I tend to cringe when I hear that a Contact Center has been rebranded to the \u2018Customer Experience Center\u2019.\u00a0 The CX ecosystem incorporates the entire organization and I don\u2019t hear Finance, Engineering or Procurement departments rebranding themselves as Customer Experience Centers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But when Contact Center Management masters Customer Experience Management \u2013 and better understand their role in the overall CX ecosystem \u2013 it positively enhances how they view and run their operations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I also think that there will be a renewed focus on quality in the Contact Center.\u00a0 This might seem like stating the obvious.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But oft-quoted research from <\/span>The Effortless Experience<\/span> (2013, Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman and Rick Delisi) tells us that a Contact Center interaction is 4x more likely to result in disloyalty then it is loyalty.<\/span><\/p>\n Things \u2013 even today \u2013 simply aren\u2019t going as well for customers that interact with (a) the Contact Center as they should.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m also excited about the use of AI to help agents \u2013 not just customers.\u00a0 That\u2019s a big play that will make the agent job both more effective and more enjoyable (for the agent!).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Is there anything else you would like to talk about?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019d argue that the fundamentals are still as valuable today as they were back when Contact Centers were \u2018new\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n You can find out more about Daniel, his work with OmniTouch, and more by following him and the company on <\/span>LinkedIn<\/span><\/a> and at their website at <\/span>www.omnitouchinternational.com<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Daniel Ord is a Certified Customer Experience Professional with an insightful background. Accumulating years of experience through other companies and his own, Daniel is no stranger to globe-trotting having worked in 40 countries and is experienced in the areas of Contact Center, Customer Service, and Customer Experience Strategy implementation. During the course of this interview, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-customer-experience"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/us\/en\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Screen-Shot-2019-07-24-at-9.14.33-AM.png\")
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We help and inspire organizations \u2013 and the people who work in them \u2013 to create great Customer Experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n
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I lived and worked in Asia for 20 years. The first thing I say to any question that begins \u2018In Asia\u2019 is to reconfirm how heterogenous Asia is. Singapore is very different than Indonesia and China is very different as compared to India.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/us\/en\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Screen-Shot-2019-07-24-at-9.15.41-AM.png\")
Social media penetration rates across Asia are high \u2013 look at places like China, the Philippines, and Malaysia for example.\u00a0 As a result, social media interactions with customers take more prominence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn what way can Customer Experience expectations set by a brand be delivered?<\/span><\/h2>\n
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