Tag Archives: CX

Appointments, News

Acoustic Appoints Mark Cattini CEO

SaaS industry veteran with over 20 years of CEO experience to lead next phase of innovation and growth

Acoustic, a global marketing and customer experience provider for B2C brands, today announced that Mark Cattini has been named Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately. Mark has served on the company’s Board of Directors since May 2022 and joins Acoustic as it evolves the marketing digital experience for its customers to meet the growing needs of today’s businesses. Mark brings on board Adam Stewart as Chief Technology Officer and Jay Schaufeld as Chief People Officer, underscoring the company’s continued investment in its technology and talent.

Acoustic helps customer-obsessed brands build closer customer connections with hyper-personalized, multichannel experiences. Mark’s appointment, as well as Acoustic’s recent investment from Francisco Partners, will accelerate the company’s vision to provide powerful technology to meet the needs of B2C brands across retail, financial services, insurance, tech and telecom, travel and hospitality, and more.

“I am thrilled to be asked by the Board to lead Acoustic as CEO during an exciting time for the company and the marketing industry as a whole,” said Mark Cattini, CEO of Acoustic. “Businesses today require easy-to-use solutions that can be quickly deployed to drive more value to their customers. Acoustic is uniquely positioned to help brands deliver personalized digital experiences and provides robust behavioral analytics to optimize customer journeys to increase loyalty and growth. I’m delighted to join Acoustic as it accelerates this platform vision on a global scale and look forward to working with our customers and partners to realize the next phase in our strategic growth.”

Mark brings over two decades of experience as a successful CEO at enterprise software companies, including MapInfo (NASDAQ: MAPS), Autotask, and ClickSoftware.

“As businesses grapple with market uncertainty, new privacy regulations, and evolving consumer expectations, they require a technology partner that can support their needs today while future-proofing their business for the challenges of tomorrow,” said Jared Hendricks, Senior Managing Director of Centerbridge Partners. “With Mark’s appointment as CEO, Acoustic is better positioned than ever to support businesses across industries as they tackle these challenges head-on. Acoustic’s combination of best-in-breed technology and proven SaaS leadership positions the company as a next-generation leader within this space. We’re thrilled to have Mark join as CEO to further Acoustic’s mission to bring hyper-personalized digital experiences to life.”

Mark along with Adam Stewart and Jay Schaufeld start their roles immediately. Adam spent 17 years at Autotask/Datto in the role of SVP, Engineering while Jay brings over 25 years of experience as a human resources leader, including serving as Chief People Officer at ClickSoftware.

About Acoustic, L.P.
Acoustic, L.P. helps businesses close the digital experience gap by giving them a holistic view into the customer experience and enabling them to deliver personalized experiences based on consumer needs and preferences. The Acoustic portfolio of products helps businesses across industries to grow customer lifetime value with award-winning technology and unbeatable client success teams. Learn more about the Acoustic portfolio at www.acoustic.com.

News

A quarter of UK webmasters worry web platforms stifle sales – Danebury Research survey reveals chief CMS concerns-

Odense, Denmark, 17th January 2022, a cross-sector survey conducted by Danebury Research and sponsored by Umbraco, has revealed that a quarter of respondents believe their company websites are costing them business. Over half of the survey participants said they need to extend website functionality by connecting to new technologies that enable analytics, personalisation and transactions. Almost a third (30%) report that their companies are paying for CMS features that will never be used. Despite these findings, 32% of respondents are delaying migrating to new content management systems (CMS) and digital experience platforms (DXP) that would allow them to gain the required functionality to meet customer demand.

What drives CMS selection:
The survey, conducted among 150 UK decision-makers with responsibility for websites, working at organisations with between 100 and more than 10,000 employees, found that the most important factors influencing CMS selection were the cost (43%), familiarity with the brand (35%) and personal recommendation of the CMS (35%).
For enterprises with more than 10,000 employees, brand familiarity, ongoing support and security updates, the ease and cost of adding new features and the ability to support multiple languages, heavily influence CMS selection.
Software licence fees and reduced time to market were the most important factors in CMS selection for enterprises with 5,000 – 10,000 employees.

CMS evolution:
Over half (54.7%) of the respondents across all sectors agreed that they need to be able connect company websites with additional technology to increase functionality as their businesses evolve.
When asked about new demands on CMS, over half of the survey participants (50.7%) agreed that their websites need to deliver personalisation, analytics and transactions, in addition to the usual content management. This finding was highest among respondents from the retail (68%), manufacturing (56.3%) and technology (50%) sectors.

Empowering marketing teams:
Almost half of all respondents (46%) agreed that they need to empower their marketing teams to rapidly adjust content in response to customer needs. This figure rose to 60% in the retail sector, just over half (53.3%) in the public sector, and half (50%) of respondents from the technology sector.

Kim Sneum-Madsen, CEO of Umbraco comments, “These survey findings indicate that organisations are leaning more heavily on their digital platforms and demanding more of their CMS providers as they expand their digital services to engage with customers on their preferred devices and in their local language.”

Chief CMS concerns:
When asked about their chief CMS concerns, the ease with which new features could be added over time, the cost of doing so and the lack of internal development skills to enable the organisation to get the best out of the CMS were cited most frequently. For respondents from public sector and digital agencies, slow performance of the CMS was also a major concern.
Ensuring ongoing support and security updates for CMS is the chief concern shared by all organisations with between 500 and over 10,000 employees.

Almost half (48%) of respondents from the technology and retail sectors cited lack of in-house coding skill as their main CMS concern. However, this issue may be exacerbated by their choice of CMS. Almost a quarter (24.7%) of all respondents from technology, public sector, digital agencies and the retail sector agreed that their current CMS made their organisation less attractive to talented developers.

Lock-in indications:
Almost a third (32% of respondents) agreed that they were staying with their current CMS and shortcomings of their websites because re-platforming would be too expensive, despite 30% of respondents agreeing that they are paying for CMS features that their organisation will never use. This figure rose to 40% of public sector respondents paying for unused features. Over half of respondents from all sectors (54.7%) agree that they will need to be able to be able to connect their website with additional technologies and functionalities as their businesses evolve.

Commenting on the Danebury Research findings, Kim Sneum-Madsen, CEO of Umbraco said, “Content management systems have had to evolve to enable organisations to deliver omnichannel engagement, transactions and personalisation. As a result, we’ve seen increased adoption of composable digital experience platforms, with CMS at the core, that allow organisations to integrate new technologies that meet fresh business requirements. However, this survey indicates that many organisations are stuck on digital platforms that no longer meet their needs. As an open-source CMS company, Umbraco’s mission is to make it as simple as possible for companies to extend their CMS by integrating technologies that serve their immediate business needs and provide the flexibility to adapt over time. We recently launched Umbraco Marketplace to help our customers to find technologies that easily integrate with Umbraco, and other composable DXPs, so that they can expand content, marketing and commerce capabilities. The survey findings strongly validate this strategy.”

Key findings from the Umbraco survey:
● 30% of respondents report that they are paying for CMS features they will never use
● Over half of respondents (54.7%) agree that they need to connect to new technologies to extend website functionality
● Half of survey respondents (50.7%) need their website to deliver personalisation, analytics and transactions, in addition to content
● A quarter (25.3%) of respondents believe their company websites are costing them business
● Just under a quarter of all respondents (24.7%) and 30% of public sector respondents believe their current CMS makes them less attractive to talented developers.
● Nearly a third (32%) of companies are making do with outdated CMS because they believe it would be too expensive to re-platform.
Kim Sneum-Madsen concludes, “We understand organisations’ reticence to move off monolithic CMS. However, over time, this strategy risks making them more vulnerable to market changes and new competitors that are using more nimble technology architectures that deliver what customers want. Moving to a composable digital experience platform offers a more sustainable route that avoids wasting budget on unused features and allows organisations to select, connect and invest only in technologies that deliver to the business and the bottom line.”

News

Acoustic Announces Strategic Growth Investment from Francisco Partners

Acoustic, a global marketing and customer experience provider for B2C brands, has obtained a strategic growth investment from Francisco Partners (“Francisco”), a leading global investment firm that specializes in partnering with technology businesses. Existing investor Centerbridge Partners remains the primary equity holder in the company. 

Acoustic helps brands deliver over 120 billion personalized messages each year using its single, unified platform that combines marketing automation with deep digital experience analytics. Acoustic empowers businesses to create seamless, data-driven digital experiences across email, web, SMS/MMS, mobile push, WhatsApp, social media and more. 

“We are thrilled to announce this new investment from Francisco Partners. As more consumer interactions take place digitally, customer experience becomes the deciding factor for whether consumers engage with your brand,” said Dennis Self, CEO of Acoustic. “This investment validates our strategy for creating unified digital customer experiences at scale. It will also help accelerate our platform vision and continue to create highly personalized multichannel experiences through our product suite that connects consumers’ online interactions with the buying experience. We’re excited to be working with two top-tier investors, Francisco Partners and Centerbridge, as we continue to evolve our platform and offerings to enable a new generation of consumer marketing and experience capabilities.”  

“Brands and marketers are looking for more effective ways to continuously improve the overall consumer experience while simultaneously maximizing the performance and ROI on their marketing investment,” said Peter Gingold, Managing Director at Francisco Partners. “Acoustic’s unified marketing and experience platform uniquely positions the company to emerge as a next-generation leader within the $344.8 billion MarTech industry. We’re excited to join Centerbridge Partners and the Acoustic team to accelerate this vision and the delivery of innovative solutions to create exceptional, personalized customer experiences across several key industry verticals including retail, financial services, insurance, tech and telecom, travel and hospitality, and more.” 

“We are excited to partner with Francisco Partners, a world-class firm specializing in investments of technology companies that are leading the way in innovation and growth, who, like us, believe in Acoustic’s vision and the value of its powerful marketing and experience platform and supporting capabilities,” said Jared Hendricks, Senior Managing Director, and Chris Litchford, Managing Director, of Centerbridge Partners. “Acoustic is a demonstrated leader in an ever-evolving industry. We are committed to helping Acoustic operationalize and scale its solutions through our continued investment.”  

SVB Securities served as financial advisor to Acoustic. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP acted as legal advisor to Acoustic. Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP acted as legal advisor to Francisco Partners. 

About Francisco Partners 

Francisco Partners is a leading global investment firm that specializes in partnering with technology and technology-enabled businesses. Since its launch over 20 years ago, Francisco Partners has invested in over 400 technology companies, making it one of the most active and longstanding investors in the technology industry. With approximately $45 billion in capital raised to date, the firm invests in opportunities where its deep sectoral knowledge and operational expertise can help companies realize their full potential. For more information on Francisco Partners, please visit www.Franciscopartners.com. 

About Centerbridge Partners, L.P.  

Centerbridge Partners, L.P. is a private investment management firm employing a flexible approach across investment disciplines – from private equity to credit and related strategies, and real estate – in an effort to find the most attractive opportunities for our investors and business partners. The firm was founded in 2005 and as of August 31, 2022 has approximately $34 billion in capital under management with offices in New York and London. Centerbridge is dedicated to partnering with world-class management teams across targeted industry sectors and geographies to help companies achieve their operating and financial objectives. For more information, please visit www.centerbridge.com. 

About Acoustic, L.P. 

Acoustic, L.P. helps businesses close the digital experience gap by giving them a holistic view into the customer experience and enabling them to deliver personalized experiences based on consumer needs and preferences. The Acoustic portfolio of companies helps businesses across industries to grow customer lifetime value with award-winning technology and unbeatable client success teams. 

Learn more about the Acoustic portfolio at www.acoustic.com. 

News

IPI and zsah team up to deliver CX innovation

Geospatial and analytical tools add data-driven intelligence to contact centre offerings

IPI, the contact centre specialist, today announced that it has partnered with cloud, data analytics and digital managed services provider zsah, to deliver cloud-based innovation, customer experience (CX) solutions, and next-level contact centre applications. Bringing together a combined portfolio that incorporates zsah’s unique set of analytical applications and IPI’s expert CX and contact centre consulting services, the partnership will focus on driving intelligence from information and data, empowering businesses and contact centres to optimise operations for themselves and their customers.

In particular, the partnership will include the functionality of zsah’s geospatial analytical tool, Eqolines. Integrated with visual analytics platform, Tableau, Eqolines helps organisations travelling to deliver a service and consumers travelling to consume a service to streamline their journeys and optimise their investments through data analytics. Eqolines will enable IPI’s clients, particularly those in the retail, public sector and utilities spaces, to deliver unique services to end-user customers and gain recognition for an excellent experience.

“Our partnership with IPI will take CX to the next level. Our portfolios are highly complementary, with zsah helping organisations extract maximum value from their tech investments and data assets, and IPI bringing its expert consulting services and CX knowledge to the table,” said Amir Hashmi, founder and CEO at zsah. “We want to enable organisations to regain control and make smart, evidence-based business decisions. This partnership solidifies what has been a long working relationship, and we’re delighted to be working with Dave and the team to build an exciting roadmap of innovation.”

Looking to the future, IPI and zsah plan to develop a consulting-based insight tool for combining multiple sources of relevant commercial data to deliver more valuable information to customers.

This software will collect and analyse multiple feeds of data, hugely prevalent throughout organisations in today’s digital-first world, and turn this data into value. With IPI’s consulting expertise around contact centre operations, and zsah’s capability for agile DevOps and analytics, IPI and zsah aim to create solutions that will deliver added value to customers, but also provide greater business intelligence to enable them to grow this value in the future.

“We are thrilled to be officially partnering with zsah, whom has been a close associate for over a decade. This is a natural point for us to combine our capabilities and leverage our collective skills and expertise to focus on helping all of our clients become more agile and deliver an improved experience to their own customers,” said Dave Glasgow, Director IPI. “The combination of zsah’s data analytics and IPI’s business intelligence gives us a strong foundation to continue innovating throughout our partnership.”

Appointments, News

Feefo appoints new CMO to drive growth and overseas expansion

James Shanahan will lead Feefo’s marketing team during the next stage of the CX insights and reviews platform’s rapid growth 

Feefo, the world’s largest verified reviews platform, is today announcing that it has appointed James Shanahan as its Chief Marketing Officer. The newly created leadership position follows a period of sustained growth for the company and the acquisition of the customer reviews business, Reevoo, earlier this year. James will lead the Feefo marketing team throughout the next stage of Feefo’s growth plan.  

 Shanahan joins the company at a pivotal stage in Feefo’s growth journey. The CX insights and reviews platform supports over 4,000 brands across the UK, USA and Australia including household names such as BA Holidays, Expedia, KIA, Next, AXA, and Iceland. Now, the company aims to establish itself as the only reviews platform who can give brands access to an unrivalled quantity of verified and trustworthy data as well as the analytics tools to transform and personalise customer experience journeys.  

 With a marketing career in the digital space spanning over 20 years, James joins Feefo from Bionic, an expert comparison service for SMEs, where he held the role of Director of Digital Marketing.  Prior to Bionic, James worked agency side for WPM and TDG, consulting on a mix of large corporates through to private equity scale-ups, and in-house for household names Virgin Atlantic and Comparethemarket.com. 

 In his new role, James will be responsible for developing global brand and marketing strategies to advance Feefo’s international expansion. Shanahan will also drive new and existing customer revenue growth with a best-in-class marketing and analytics team that will continually improve customer acquisition and retention metrics. 

 Additional investment in talent is at the very heart of Feefo’s growth strategy. In order to keep up with its ambitious product roadmap, Feefo is hiring new members of staff across the organisation, with the software development team alone set to double to 65 over the next six to twelve months.  

 Commenting on his appointment, James Shanahan said, “Feefo is in an extremely exciting place just now. We’re working with over 4,000 fantastic brands and have a strong management team with a wealth of sector experience. There is a huge demand for our product suite and marketing is going to be key to tapping into this and taking Feefo to the next level.” 

 Tony Wheble, Feefo’s CEO, continued, “The reviews and customer insights space is ripe for disruption with the coronavirus pandemic making digital experiences more important than ever. We’re helping brands raise the bar for the customers who rely on reviews to make informed purchase choices. 

 “I’m delighted that James has joined Feefo. He brings a huge amount of digital marketing experience, from both the client and agency side, his expertise in digital interactions makes him a perfect fit for us as a digital-first brand intent on accelerating our growth. Feefo is committed to hiring best-in-class talent and James certainly falls into this category.”   

 

About Feefo: 

Feefo the world’s largest provider of verified reviews and a leading insights platform. Its mission is to empower brands to fully understand how their customers experience their product or service.   

The Feefo suite of software, combined with its technical solutions expertise, enables its clients to gain a deeper understanding of customer sentiment, behaviour and intent. This empowers them with insights to make better business decisions and improve their return on investment. With 96% of customers relying on reviews to purchase, Feefo also creates trust between consumers and businesses by adopting a unique approach to only collect verified reviews from real people.  

Feefo’s agile platform is trusted by more than 4,000 brands globally, including Kia, Iceland and Mamas & Papas, who rely on it to supply smart insights that transform their customer experiences and ultimately see better outcomes.   

News, Retail, Retail & E-commerce

Start Planning Yesterday for 2021 Peak Season

Start Planning Yesterday for 2021 Peak Season 

Amid headlines of supply chain delays and driver shortages, combined with greater demand than ever before, this peak season could put ecommerce retailers under extreme pressure to deliver an exemplary customer experience. But, with careful planning and the execution of relevant, timely marketing campaigns that take into account stock availability, delivery logistics and address real-time cart abandonment issues, they can indeed deliver just that, says Roy Jugessur, VP EMEA, at Acoustic. With the peak season retail customer experience key to sustaining medium- to long-term customer loyalty and sales, it is now more important than ever that retailers maximise the data available within their marketing portfolio.

Consumers Set to Embrace Black Friday

2021 looks set to be a bumper year for peak season retail. After what was, for many of us, a very disappointing Christmas in 2020 followed by a year of continued lockdown and staycations, British consumers are looking to go large. Research indicates that the majority of consumers are planning to spend the same amount or more this Black Friday and Christmas than they did in 2020 (70% and 78% respectively); more than four-fifths (82%) of shoppers will be the same or more engaged with Black Friday in 2021 than they were last year, and over half (55%) want to make Christmas their biggest celebration yet. Moreover, ecommerce remains key, as over half (54%) of consumers plan to make their Black Friday purchases online, Future PLC research found.

Careful planning will, therefore, be fundamental to the online customer experience (CX) this year. Ecommerce retail is crowded – with online marketplaces, independent retailers, and brand websites all vying for their slice of the online shopping pie. So, how do you cut above that noise? One key way is to ensure that your marketing communication in the run up to the peak season is timely, relevant, and personalised.

This isn’t just about making sure that your email is addressed correctly; it’s about making sure you know who you’re targeting, with which offers or promotions based upon previous purchasing history. It’s about using data to develop intelligent campaigns that help to highlight to the right customers those goods that are going to be of interest to them. And, fundamentally, with the average consumer researching potential Black Friday purchases 4.8 weeks ahead of the event and Christmas purchases 5.7 weeks in advance, you must share your communications well in advance so you can be in the best possible position to have your goods on consumers’ shopping lists.

Reward your Loyal Customers

No retailer wants a repeat, loyal, high-value customer to lose out to a one-time buyer; the potential impact on brand value and revenue is too great. One way of achieving this could be to give your loyal customers access to special offers or rewards. This might include an advance booking time slot with the chance to fill their basket for a quick and easy check out on the day, while ensuring the goods they want don’t run out of stock. Or it might include an extra code at the check out that gives these customers a priority delivery slot. And, for those retailers with a ‘clicks and mortar’ offering, why not invite loyal customers to trial new products or services in advance or offer a VIP preview evening with a chance to order in advance? Customers benefit from feeling valued. This engenders brand loyalty but retailers also get a better handle on demand in order to optimise their delivery logistics – while minimising returns.  The best peak season loyalty marketing campaigns will consider all elements of today’s supply chain to ensure the best CX on the day.

Act in Real-Time

It is inevitable that you won’t be able to satisfy everyone. Regardless of how much forethought and planning might go into preparing for the holiday period, unforeseen issues can always arise. Even if you’ve done the hard work to ensuring that your ecommerce website is optimised for a seamless customer journey and tested to make sure it can cope with Black Friday visitor surges.

Did the product a customer put in their basket go out of stock? Was their preferred delivery time slot not available? Did they reject a purchase due to unexpected shipping costs?

By identifying anomalies that cause consumers to abandon their shopping cart, for example, and acting upon those specific points of failure in real-time with relevant communication, there is still the opportunity to convert customers that otherwise might be lost.

With real data that explains why a customer abandoned, the value and currency of their shopping basket and the specific products in it, you can proactively reach out with the right, personalised content. For example, someone might abandon a cart due to a back-end check out processing error. Traditional marketing might remind the customer there were items in their cart, only further driving them away. When you know the why, you can reach out, apologise for the processing error, and even offer a discount on the specific goods to make up for it.

Immediately your customer feels heard and recognised. You’ve successfully taken a bad experience and turned it around into a positive one. The customer is now more likely to complete their purchase, and your brand has exhibited consideration for your customers and their experience.

Conclusion

This peak season is arguably one of the most important moments in the ecommerce retail calendar; with consumers looking likely to spend more than in previous years, there is a huge opportunity to capitalise on changes in purchasing patterns. Consumer expectations have also changed, though.  This, combined with well-publicised supply chain challenges, makes this year’s peak season equally high-risk to get right.

By harnessing your valuable data and applying it to the key areas of good planning, rewarding loyalty, and taking real-time action – with personalised communications at the core – ecommerce marketers can help to ensure they successfully navigate the challenges and set their businesses up for both peak season sales and long-term customer loyalty.

News

Hootsuite acquires conversational AI leader Heyday for £35 million (CAD$60 million)

Hootsuite builds the future of social commerce, providing brands the opportunity to drive more sales via their social channels by leveraging the power of AI.

Hootsuite today announced its acquisition of Heyday, a Montreal-based conversational AI platform that enables brands to deliver personalised customer experiences through 1:1 messaging conversations. Commerce is rapidly moving onto social and messaging platforms. Hootsuite, a pioneer in the social media management category, has the largest customer base in the industry and with this acquisition will now allow brands to fully leverage conversational AI to create a better customer experience.

Heyday offers an enterprise-grade customer messaging platform that integrates seamlessly with e-commerce platforms and works with leading brands such as Lacoste, Decathlon, Cirque du Soleil, Danone, Rudsak, and Jack & Jones (Bestseller) to deliver more personalised and rewarding customer experiences via chat and video.

“Social is the new interface of commerce and customer care,” said Tom Keiser, CEO, Hootsuite. “Modern day brands have to manage a multitude of daily interactions and conversations at scale—which is impossible to do without AI automation. With the acquisition of Heyday, Hootsuite will now give AI capabilities to marketing, sales and support teams globally so they can deliver exceptional experiences at scale.”

The adoption and use of social media has increased dramatically since the start of the pandemic. Hootsuite’s Digital 2021 Report found that over 4.2 billion active social media users are spending on average two hours and twenty five minutes a day on social and messaging platforms.

A study by Edison Research found that 39% of social media users expect a reply from companies within sixty minutes, yet the average response time is five hours. Through Hootsuite’s combination of automation and AI, brands can now, for the first time, respond intelligently, with personalised responses at scale in real-time. Hootsuite’s acquisition earlier this year of Sparkcentral, and now Heyday, provides brands the tools to foster more meaningful customer relationships through all stages of the buying journey.

“Hootsuite believes in the power of personalised marketing and frictionless customer experiences that build trust and relevance,” said Keiser. “The new generation of shoppers want to engage with brands by making purchases and receiving real-time customer service on social. The relationship starts and ends on social, so we’re excited to offer brands a better way to deliver successful customer experiences at scale.”

Hootsuite’s expanded ability to enable brands and organisations to meet customers on social media and 1:1 messaging apps will create an opportunity for deeper relationships.

“We created Heyday’s conversational platform to make buying from a brand as easy as messaging a friend,” said Steve Desjarlais, Co-Founder, Heyday. “Together with Hootsuite, we will bridge the gap between physical and digital brand experiences by leveraging social and messaging channels as the anchor and golden thread of the customer journey.”

Data, News, Technology

Video chat for customer services sees 89% growth in UK

Webhelp, a leading global customer experience and business solutions provider, has today released new research regarding consumer preferences towards video chat. The research conducted during the pandemic found that, whilst COVID-19 has resulted in an uptick in the use of video calls across both personal and professional lives, consumer preferences for the use of video calling in a customer service setting have dramatically increased at 89%. This data is underlined by the increased opportunities that Webhelp is seeing to support its clients and their customers effectively with video chat as a new channel.

The research, which polled over six thousand consumers across the UK, France and Germany, found that prior to the pandemic, only 19% of British consumers had used video-calling in a customer service setting; however, since COVID-19, that number has grown substantially. The research highlighted that 36% of consumers are now using video to interact with brands; either the same amount or more, since the pandemic started. And when asked whether they would use video calls to contact businesses after the pandemic had subsided, 34% of consumers revealed they would likely use it the same, if not more.

Vincent Tachet, Group CIO of Webhelp, comments on the findings:
“As we go into 2021, consumer behaviours are understandably continuing to change dramatically as a direct result of the pandemic. Alongside improvements in technology, this is making video chat more accessible for consumers and more successful for brands, if used in the right context. Video chat makes full use of the capabilities of the technology devices now available to consumers and agents. The interaction itself can take many forms. For example, customers can share their cameras to help identify technical issues, or agents can co-browse with the user to show product features or benefits. This can help reduce overall contact time and therefore cost-to-serve or increase the opportunity for sales conversion and additional revenue – whilst also helping take the experience to the next level for brands. Even if it is not going to be appropriate for every customer interaction, we are seeing great success in high value sales, insurance claims, and during complex or critical customer service conversations. Similarly, for our clients who are looking for new and innovative ways to market their services, video has provided some real added value and set them apart from their competitors.”

Other key findings from the Webhelp research, conducted by OnePoll, include:

• Social networking and speaking to family were the most commonly adopted use cases for video-calling, both pre and post COVID-19.
• Customers were more likely to want to use video when dealing with insurance claims, accessing hardware and technical support and when entering into high value sales and mortgage conversations.
• 25% of British consumers said they would switch to a different brand if that brand offered video chat as an additional channel for sales and customer service.
• Citizens between 25-34 years old, and people who have used video chat when contacting organizations, are more likely to express a preference for this channel.
• 24% of UK consumers expect they will keep using video as much as they do now, whilst 10% predict that they will actually use it more after the pandemic.

Helen Murray, Chief Client Solutions Officer, at Webhelp in the UK says:
“We are far from out of the danger zone when it comes to COVID-19, but given the roll out of the vaccine, we wanted to look at the impact of video calling in a post pandemic world. Our results are certainly a timely reminder that video chat is here to stay. We’re always looking at emerging channels here at Webhelp and video is fast becoming a way for our clients to differentiate themselves from their competitors. If done well and used in the right context, brands can not only improve their customer services, but also their sales too. Video calling could well give a brand a competitive advantage both now and in the future. This is certainly something we have been seeing across the brands we partner with who are already bringing this innovative channel into their customer experience journey armoury.”

News

Star winners of new Platinum status announced in annual Feefo 2020 Trusted Service awards

The White Company, Notonthehighstreet and Zurich Insurance are among the elite set of brands to attain the new and highly-coveted Platinum status in the annual Trusted Service awards created by Feefo, the reviews and customer insights technology company.

The new Platinum tier is for companies that achieve the outstanding feat of winning a Feefo Gold award three years in succession. Feefo’s customers prize the awards so highly they wanted a new category to recognise the highest level of achievement over a period longer than a year, which is why the new Platinum category has been created. The Trusted Service awards have been a runaway success since their inception, gaining more participants and greater prestige each year

Other brands scooping the new Platinum award this year include: Cargiant; Royal London; Donald Russell; Iceland; Mint Velvet, Hiscox, Iceland, AXA, Travelzoo and Walt Disney Travel Co.

Trusted Service Awards are only given to those businesses that use Feefo to collect genuine reviews and insights. Each must meet the required high standard, based on the number of reviews collected, and their average rating. The awards are a unique reflection of commitment to customer experience, relying purely on verified interactions with real customers.

Kate Parkinson, Head of Digital Customer Experience at The White Company, said:

“We’re thrilled to receive this Feefo Platinum Service Award recognising our commitment to customer service. Delivering the highest standards of customer service is core to our business and to developing life-long relationships with our customers. This award will give further reassurance to our customers that they can rely on first class customer service whenever they choose to shop with us.”

Samantha Owen, Communications and Relationship Manager at Zurich Insurance said

“Customer feedback is hugely important to us. Not only does it highlight what we’re doing well, it also helps us identify areas where we can improve. We are extremely proud to have received the Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award: it absolutely demonstrates our commitment to excellent customer service.”

Julia Bindley, Partner and Operations Director, at notonthehighstreet said of its new Platinum status,

“This award recognises the importance that we at notonthehighstreet, and the 5,000 small businesses who sell through us, place on providing a truly thoughtful customer experience. We’re delighted to have had our commitment to our customers recognised.”

Rob McFarlane, Director of Sales and Business Development, at mail order butchery firm Donald Russell, added:

“We value this Platinum award extremely highly because it is based on genuine reviews posted by our customers and we are always striving to improve our customer experience through their insights.”

To qualify for an award, a business must have collected at least 50 reviews rated between 4.0 and 4.4 between January 1st 2019 and December 31st 2019. The coveted Gold award requires a Feefo service rating of at least 4.5, with this year’s winners including:

Whistles
Mazda
Vauxhall
Plumbase
AA Car Insurance
AA Home Insurance
French Connection
Moss Bros

“The Trusted Service awards have always been about recognising companies that provide genuinely outstanding customer experience,” said Matt West, CEO at Feefo.

“This year we are very excited to award our new Platinum accolade to companies hitting the highest standard over three years – a tough ask by any standard.

All award-winners have worked very hard to earn the trust and approval of the most insightful judges out there – real customers. We’re looking forward to working closely with them over the next 12 months to help drive growth within their business even further.”

Feefo provides businesses with the tools to collect real, purchase-verified reviews and insights. Working with over 3,500 clients, Feefo ensures that all feedback is authentic by matching it to a legitimate transaction, in order to increase consumer confidence and enable businesses to make smarter business decisions from fast access to real customer insights.