5 Things I Realized After My First Year at Genesys

Thanks to everyone celebrated my work anniversary on LinkedIn and the phone. Yes it’s been almost a year since I joined Genesys, the market leader in omnichannel customer experience (CX) and contact center solutions, after 12 years I’ve spent at Microsoft. It’s always good to take the next step, and even better when you’re leaving your comfort zone, and start learning and reflecting something new, and I felt exactly the same. And thanks to all people I met here, with their help it didn’t really take too much time to figure out why customer experience is important and how the businesses are evolving and transforming to meet the rapidly changing needs of customers. When I look back after my first year, I’ve realized something those were not really on the top of my mind earlier, but really crucial to know. Here we go:

1. You Can’t Afford to Miss Customer Experience (CX) Opportunity: Today companies are selling almost the same products, providing almost the same services. In the age of customer, it’s getting more and more challenging to differentiate yourself against competition. And your biggest opportunity to achieve this is to be having a great customer experience, fulfilling needs of your customers in the fastest and best way. But if you prefer to ignore it, believe it or not, the market would ignore you very soon. Don’t forget, you are only as good as your customer thinks you are. 
2. Consistency of CX across Channels and Touchpoints is a Game Changer: You might have a great contact center with qualified agents having great skills, and they fix everything you need in a couple of minutes on the phone. However as a customer, you want the same level of service quality on the mobile app, on the web site or through Twitter. It’s not only having the prestige and a great reputation at customers’ mind, but also being able to capture much more opportunities and increase your sales and revenue. And it’s quite doable with an omnichannel approach for CX. 
3. Customers are not one-time callers, they are on a Journey: When I was working as a part time contact center agent during college, I was always curious of the reason why people are calling us after their issue is fixed (this was how we were calling it in those old times). Especially satisfied customers. Yes they are on a journey and fixing this issue is only a stop during this journey. Their next stop would be buying another product or service, may be just because they are satisfied with your company. And when you look at all these possibilities of channels, touch points and devices and keeping mind that you are responsible for this great journey, you’ll always be in a healthy, sustainable and growing business that makes your own journey. 
4. Discipline in Contact Centers is Inspiring: Working in a call center requires discipline to follow a flexible schedule, communication skills and the ability to multitask. Most of the times you get what you predict, so your customers. So what if you have the opportunity to get this perfectly working mechanism at your front office to the other departments in your company and have the same commitment level from everyone? Yes I’ve also learned this is possible and already seen lots of great examples such as Vodafone in Egypt.
5. CX Platforms are as essential as CRM Systems: CRM systems are fundamental for the companies of any size. They store the data in a great way, and give you a comprehensive view of the customers’ history. But when you look at what’s going on in the real time, to engage with customers in a more effective way so we would need a system of engagement, along with system of record what CRM provides to us. So this system should be able to utilize the data in CRM in real time, providing the opportunity to the agents or employees to give the best service in a personal and proactive way. And from any channel including phone, SMS, web chat or social media. Now you can talk about customer experience, but not only keeping the records of the customers.

Time flies.. It was a great year with lots of learning, and just wanted to summarize from my perspective. I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know if you want to discuss further on any points might have evoked something in your mind. And for sure.. Let the second year begin!  

Thanks for reading.