CX Assurance Blog

You probably are familiar with the line “Show me the money!” from the movie Jerry Maguire. In the movie, Jerry’s client asks Jerry, his agent, to show him the money.  He doesn’t want his agent to talk a good game or make a bunch of promises, he wants results. That line is now used in pop culture to mean delivering results. 

How does that apply to your IVR testing?  Well, aren’t you a lot more interested in the results of testing — finding issues and defects in your IVR — than you are in tracking how many test cases your testers wrote or how often they dialed your IVR to make sure it worked the way you wanted it to? Of course, you are. But, if that is the case, why are so many IVR testers focused on writing test cases and making manual dials into your IVR, instead of finding issues and defects?

Part of our work in the Domain Consulting team is advising Cyara customers on their Agile/DevOps journeys. Through this process, we've identified a path to DevOps in the contact center that I'd like to explore in more detail.

In the first post of this series, I talked about putting in the guard rails with design-driven assurance. In this post, I'll talk about how to accelerate the delivery of value using automated deployment and configuration of off-the-shelf contact center software, or implementing cloud contact center software. And in part three, I'll cover ways to reduce the cost of failure, through building solutions with testing and monitoring in mind, automated deployment and configuration, or using test data in production. 

Insurance is often referred to as a distress purchase, requiring the consumer to invest considerable time and effort in finding the right policy at the best price. This has given rise to many price comparison websites, which help the consumer find policies online. These sites have increased competition and disrupted the personal insurance industry, especially in the UK. And they encourage customers towards online and digital services, rather than the traditional voice or in-person channels, for their insurance needs. In response to this disruption, the personal insurance industry is undergoing a period of rapid change and adjustment.

We all know that customers want and expect to have the context of their interactions with an organization carry with them as they move from one channel to another. According to Salesforce, 75% of consumers expect consistency across channels (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer, 2016). And, 89% of customers get frustrated because they need to repeat their issue to multiple representatives (Accenture). Quite frankly, I wonder who are these people who don’t expect this consistency, and don’t get frustrated when they have to repeat themselves.

I couldn’t be more thrilled about Cyara 7.3. It’s packed with amazing new features aligning with two overarching themes:

• Personalization: With our new omnichannel testing and test data management features, we make it easier to test personalized customer journeys, ensuring that data and context is passed from one channel to another, and that users can test journeys designed for different segments.
• Global Reach: The other major theme is global reach — we can now make local calls in over 60 countries, enabling us to test toll-free numbers and monitor voice quality over local lines in a wide range of countries. We have also dramatically expanded our language support for our transcription services providing broader access to our discovery capability.

We’re all consumers of health insurance, and we’ve all gone through open enrollment. Every year we face a limited window in which we have to review options and make selections for the coming year. I don’t know about you, but I’m perpetually busy. And, truth be told, this tends to be a task I push out to the last minute. So, like so many others, I end up scrambling to get questions answered so I can complete my selections. To get answers, I pick up the phone and dial the toll-free number for my current or prospective health insurer. 

This is a make it or break it moment in terms of my relationship with my health insurance provider. If the published number does not connect, was no longer valid, or worse of all connected to a completely different company, I would not be pleased. And as my colleagues can tell you, you don’t want to poke the bear. 

Part of our work in the Domain Consulting team is to advise Cyara customers on their Agile/DevOps journeys. Through this process, we've identified a path to DevOps in the contact center that I'd like to explore in more detail.

In this first post of a three-part series, I will talk about putting in the guard rails with design-driven assurance. In part two, I'll talk about how to accelerate the delivery of value whether you're doing an automated deployment or configuration of off-the-shelf contact center software, or implementing cloud contact center software. In part three, I'll cover ways to reduce the cost of failure, whether through building solutions with testing and monitoring in mind, automated deployment and configuration, or using test data in production. 

For CX leaders who are in the trenches day-to-day, you know that paying careful attention upfront in the design stage can make or break the efficacy of your CX testing, and of course, ultimately the success of your CX. I’ve captured some best practices to keep in mind, start to finish — based on my years of experience as a developer myself, from working side-by-side with many Cyara customers and from a panel discussion I recently hosted with Cyara customers. 

I founded McIntosh & Associates to help businesses improve their customer experience by improving the performance of their contact center. We apply a data-driven approach to identify opportunities for improving contact center performance, and customer satisfaction. 

One of the thorniest issues we encounter is voice quality. It’s obvious that good voice quality is an important factor in delivering a great customer experience. Good voice quality is expected by your customers and its absence will result in significant dissatisfaction and negatively impact your NPS results.

The fact is, there can be many kinds of defects in software. Organizations are constantly working to minimize those defects. But to minimize any sort of defect most effectively, organizations need to look to the source. Most people think software defects come out of development because that is where the design is brought to life. But, is development truly the main source of software defects?