Omega Score Conference 2014
On May 21-23, Livegenic attended Omega Score Conference 2014 in Boston. Over the next three days, the conference zeroed in on many customer centric strategy topics and discussions, ranging from establishing Customer Experience Strategy to selecting and utilizing a wide array of technological solutions for measuring and bench-marking organizational performance. Keynote speakers, panel interviews, and numerous workshops dove deep into many aspects of the importance of customer satisfaction and what it takes to ensure a happy customer.
During the first day's workshops, Mike Phillips, Head of Feedback Strategy at Cevent described the importance of structured feedback for customer satisfaction, noting that timely feedback following a customer touch point, such as a sale or a customer service call, would greatly improve the ability to receive better response rate and the quality of the Voice of the Customer. Director of Customer Experience Analytics for CallMiner, Brian LaRoche, shared some of the modern innovations in the speech analytic technology that is utilized in numerous organizations and call centers to identify a multitude of patterns in a large number of customer service interactions. From real-time speech analytics to data mining speech transcriptions, Brian provided numerous scenarios where technology does a great deal in recognizing issues and improving the quality of customer service.
The following day, the conference hosted many panel interviews and great keynote presentations. Dayton Semerjian, General Manager of Global Customer Success and Support at CA Technologies, presented insights into several interweaving topics from customer service analytics to the benefits of increased employee engagement and empowerment. Most notable quotes from Dayton's presentation - "support contributing to growth" and "inclusion drives adoption" identify the true value of improving customer service and empowering employees to take ownership of customer's issues and lead the customer through the resolution. Vice President of Worldwide Quality and Customer Loyalty at Xerox Corporation, Charles Alexander, described the best approaches to bringing a Voice of the Customer to the C-Suite. His presentation focused on helping organizations quantify the value of customer-centric strategy in order to initiate changes within the company culture and processes. One of the most notable quotes pertaining to failed customer service initiatives said by Charles - "nobody funds what they do not understand". This quote resonates a frequent lack of quantifiable benefits as the main reason most organizations lag behind in launching timely customer service initiatives.
The evening ended with a Banquet Dinner recognizing recipients of NorthFace ScoreBoardSM and CEMPROSM Awards. The dinner was hosted by Bob Thompson, Founder and CEO of CustomerThink Corporation and an author of a fantastic customer service book titled "Hooked on Customers". Bob reinforced a real definition of Customer Experience strategy, one that resonates well with the organization and is purposefully and specifically selected for long term commitment to the customers. He also identified five habits that every customer-centric organizations should have and the value those key habits generate.
During the awards ceremony, we were surprised to learn that some of the recognized organizations have received this annual award for 14th time, meaning excelling in customer service for an impressive 14 years in the row. Those are very admirable achievements and we would like to congratulate all of this and prior year recipients.
A special thank you goes to Omega Management for welcoming us. We had a chance to network, meet great people, and share our vision. It was a pleasure to know that there are many dedicated leaders, relentlessly focused on breaking customer service status quo by constantly looking from the customer's point of view.