Friday, July 19, 2019

4 Trends Molding the Future of Customer Service

Technology adoption and consumer behavior shifts have altered customer support forever. The synchronised rise of traveling with a laptop, social networking, and altering census have aided an interruption that’s not even close to over. But because inevitable as change is, a lot of companies still use a 1995 playbook to resolve modern customer support issues.

The problem with this 1995 playbooks is within its results. 80 percent of companies think they deliver superior customer support. Only 8% of consumers think companies deliver superior customer support.

It’s here we are at this to alter. Listed here are four customer support trends that has to impact the way you communicate with your clients from here forward.

Positive Customer Experience


While answering customers on the internet is less costly than legacy customer support mechanisms like phone or email, the expense are really the and also the public nature of individuals pose risk.  Possibly the easiest method to invest your sources would be to legitimately enhance your customer experience so less individuals have whatever reason to become upset together with your business to begin with.



If you are having to pay focus on customer comments, you’re most likely conscious of the weak areas of your company. You realize when and where client satisfaction will probably dip. Rather of awaiting your clients to see individuals dips, proactively mind them off in the pass. The easiest method to handle unhappy or unsatisfied customers would be to get rid of the forces which make them unhappy or unsatisfied.

The very best customer problems are the type that do not need to happen to begin with.

Self-Service Solutions


If customers can certainly and completely address problems by themselves, they'll. Self-service is an excellent road to issue resolution because customers do not have to hold back in your business to reply.

Self-service makes lots of sense - on the client experience and price efficiency fronts. Based on Forrester, self-service increases client satisfaction and lowers costs for companies.

Forrester also discovered that 72 percent of shoppers prefer utilizing a company’s web site to answer their questions. Regrettably, companies aren't globally skilled at this method. Only 1 / 2 of customers will find the data they require online.

The very best self-service programs live microorganisms. They expand and morph and alter to suit customer questions and complaints. To get this done, managers must meet frequently with personnel getting together with people to discuss what questions and issues are emerging. Most of the questions is going to be repeats. Actually, one-third of customer questions are typical or repeat issues. The aim with self-services are to find out all individuals likely questions, after which provide solutions to customers in (ideally) multiple online formats.

Community-Based Service


If the best method of getting solutions to consumers would be to provide them with use of that information inside a self-service capacity, the following ultimate way would be to enable support from the customer community.

A primary reason community-based customer support tools are extremely effective is the fact that with each other, the city knows greater than anyone customer support representative possibly could. These programs also provide financial implications. Research from Gartner suggests companies that implement community-based support can help to eliminate costs by 10 - 50 %. There’s another business help to these programs: Social networks may also breed deep insights that enables companies and organizations to alter their choices, communicate better, and enhance customer support if this doesn't need to get offers for on the one-to-one basis.

Mobile Messaging Apps


Messaging has essentially altered the way you talk to each another, and it is causeing this to be transformation with gusto. Based on Statista, Facebook Messenger has greater than 1.3 billion active monthly users. WhatsApp (of Facebook) has greater than 1.6 billion active monthly users, and WeChat is nearing 1.1 billion.

Messaging has transformed the field of customer support, altering the way in which people be prepared to communicate with your company. Mobile usage research has shown Americans are delivering texts five occasions more frequently than they’re obtaining the telephone. In Asia Off-shore and Latin American countries, individuals same research has shown a powerful preference for that aforementioned chat apps vast amounts of artists are using globally. Within the U.S., this trend is much more prevalent with more youthful generations: 36 percent of Millennials would speak to a company more often when they could text. Messaging apps are larger than social systems and SMS. With regards to more youthful generations, messaging dwarfs communications vehicles like email and make contact with calls too.

Messaging apps would be the greatest pressure in communication today, as well as their functionality for just one-to-one messaging has all you need for customer support. They’re private, which companies love. They’re persistent, which customers love. They’re real-time, and they’re asynchronous. Asynchronicity is among the important aspects which make messaging apps so convenient and effective. Someone can begin a discussion having a business, make a move more essential, and get exactly the same conversation where she ended ten or twenty minutes later. The days are gone to be on hold and gone would be the expectations that standing on hold is common.

Monday, May 13, 2019

Cisco Has a New Innovation Engine

Innovation. It’s one of my favorite words because it shows how transformations can take shape when teams are performing well, and working together. Chuck Robbins has committed to an increased pace of innovation at Cisco, and we’ve been delivering – from the Catalyst family of intent-based networking switches, to security and multicloud advancements, to cognitive collaboration. But, our innovation doesn’t always come from inside Cisco. It comes from you, our partners! Our customers rely on your purpose-built applications, as an extension of the Cisco platform, to help them digitize their businesses and achieve valuable outcomes. And you rely on developing intellectual property to differentiate yourself, create greater customer loyalty, and generate more predictable recurring revenues.

According to IDC, the margins from application development services can be as high as 70%. So it’s good for your business. Partners are definitely catching on, as DevNet recently surpassed 500,000 members, many of whom are partner developers.

We want to challenge you to develop new solutions on top of Cisco. So, get ready to show us your apps with the 2019 Cisco Partner Innovation Challenge!

Cisco Partner Innovation Challenge


Last November at Cisco Partner Summit, I announced the winners of the 2018 Partner Innovation Challenge – Altus and MFEC. Luckily, Oliver Tuszik decided to keep the ball rolling – and keep the prize money growing – for 2019! This year’s 1stplace winner will receive $200,000, and 2ndplace will receive $50,000.

The challenge is designed to drive awareness and adoption of Cisco APIs across our global partner community. It’s open to any Cisco reseller who can develop a solution that showcases creativity in solving customer challenges, while harnessing the power of Cisco open APIs across any part of our portfolio. The challenge officially opened in March, and we already have 58 partner submissions! The deadline to submit an initial proposal isn’t until July 29, with final solution submissions due September 14 – so you still have time.



To learn more, visit cs.co/innovationchallenge2019. You’ll find details about the challenge process, criteria, and deadlines. Our Asia Pacific team also got on board, so you’ll find details about their regional prizes and winners spanning multiple countries.

Accelerating Platform Enabled Outcomes


We know it’s a big shift to transform your business with developer skills while also performing and running your day-to-day business. We’ve made exciting progress supporting partner transformations through DevNet, a community focused on new possibilities. To build on that, Cisco is creating more resources and programs to help you get started. Our global Partner Programmability Blitz includes a series of live and on-demand events designed for your engineering teams to start developing their own intellectual property on top of the Cisco platform. By the end of FY19, more than 95 partners will have participated. And more than 100,000 individuals across 790 partners will have received programmability enablement via online learning, in-person boot camps, and workshops from Cisco.

Join me at the next #CiscoChat on Thursday, May 9 at 10 a.m. Pacific to learn more. I’ll be joined by Alex Pujols, our Global Partner Org SE Leader, and Pete Johnson, our Cloud Principle Systems Engineer, via a livestream on Cisco.com and Facebook Live, where we’ll discuss programmability, APIs, partner enablement, and the Partner Innovation Challenge. We’ll also take your questions.

I’m excited to see what new innovations our partners come up with this year. And I’m always excited and humbled by the great partners and relationships we’ve established around the world. Together, we can do so much! So pull your developers together, throw and pizza party or hackathon, and get your creative juices flowing.

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Cisco CDA Advances Spain’s Secure Digital Transformation:



Cisco today announced its commitment to help advance Spain’s secure digital transformation under the company’s Country Digital Acceleration(CDA) program. The CDA program combines partnership and shared investment between Cisco, communities, governments, and businesses to utilizedigital as the foundation for their future.

Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO, Cisco: “Through Country Digital Acceleration, Cisco has the opportunity to positively impact communities, governments, and businesses around the world. We are excited to support the long-term economic goals of Spain and benefit their citizens in the digital economy.”

Called ‘Digitaliza’ in Spanish, CDA will align with the country’s goals for digitization. It will drive projects that advance citizens’ quality of life, create jobs and workforce education, and enhance global economic competitiveness. It foresees a collaboration with the public sector, the industry -including ICT, energy, finance, industrial companies, service providers, small medium businesses (SMBs), startups from any vertical, and partners- plus academia and will address the following areas:

  • Industry 4.0: Encourage the digitization of industrial companies, service providers, and utilities. Help close the digital gap for small medium businesses through innovation, with the ultimate goal to increase efficiency and competitiveness.
  • Smart Territories: Advance smart, inclusive, sustainable and attractive digital territories. Furthermore, help enable digital education and connected schools, and develop efficient smart mobility and transportation for people and goods.
  • Critical Infrastructures: Foster the deployment of intelligent and highly secure national networks and protect critical infrastructures with advanced cybersecurity.
  • Digital Jobs and Innovation: Develop digital skills (ICT/STEM) to help employability, with a focus on areas such as Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT) and cybersecurity, leveragingnearly 20-years of the Cisco Networking Academy program in Spain.


Ongoing initiatives

CDA builds on Cisco’s 25-year commitment to helping Spain realize its full digital potential in collaboration with public and private sector organizations. By bringing the CDA Program to Spain, Cisco continues to create positive impact for society and the economy. Some examples of initiatives already being implemented are:

  • Barcelona Co-Innovation Center. Inaugurated on January 28, 2019, the latest addition to Cisco’s global network of Co-Innovation Centers serves as a hub for open, creative collaboration. It focuses on urban innovation, healthcare and financial services evolution, helping to develop a vibrantco-innovation ecosystem.
  • Cisco Networking Academy program, designed to reduce the growing ICT professional’s gap and promote employability. This non-profit initiative has already trained close to 175,000 Spanish students since 2000 in state-of-the-art digital technologies, through more than 390 educational centers and 780 teachers. The ‘Digitaliza’ goal is to increase the total number of new students to 100,000 in the next three years.
  • Collaboration with regional and vertical innovation centers, such as Sevilla Futura and Zaragoza's Innovation in Retail Center (T-ZIR), providing Cisco mentoring and equipment to help local startups innovate.
  • Cisco DevNet Spain. Innovative companies can also connect with Cisco DevNet in Spain and globally, a community with more than 500,000 developers building applications over Cisco’s open digital platform.
Santiago Solanas, Vice President, Southern Europe at Cisco: “Our aim is to place Spain as a reference in digital transformation, contribute to economic growth and advance towards a more inclusive society. The pillars of the Digitaliza program have been designed to help our country, cities, companies and the entire innovation ecosystem in capturing the maximum value from digitization.”

About CDA

Cisco developed the concept of Country Digital Acceleration to stimulate global digitization. Cisco is collaborating with governments in selected countries to strengthen digital research and education, stimulate digital entrepreneurship, accelerate innovation, develop new economic clusters and improve national infrastructure. Each CDA programme has been developed to meet the needs of the respective country. So far, more than 300 projects have been launched on smarter transport, smart cities, eHealth, cybersecurity and connected education.

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