Tag: Leaders Talk

Leaders Talk CC-APAC: Enable Ecosystem for CX Innovation

Friday, March 11, 2022 – The 11th Leaders Talk CC-APAC hosted by ICCA discussed “Enable Ecosystem for CX Innovation” by inviting a professional speaker to the Asia Pacific contact center. This discussion was presented by Andi Anugrah, Chairman of ICCA Indonesia. The speaker Manoj Menon, Founder/CEO Twimbit.

Manoj starts the discussion by asking about the new definition of CX. He explains using a Gashapon machine as an example. “How many of you have played on this Gashapon machine. You know, how many have a lot of you played on this machine? Or you have children or you have taken the children to this machine?” ask Manoj.

He said what usually happens in this machine, the child will come, take a coin, and then play with this machine. Manoj also said that after we or our child get the toy, we 99% of the time don’t even use that toy. “We will leave it there and we go back to the machine to do it again,” said Manoj.

Then, Manoj explains that the machine is not for us to buy the product. The machine is making an experience for us. He said that we have to learn from Gashapon and make some more money from it. He also said that is what has happened in the world today. The only way we can differentiate is how you orchestrate that experience. And he said that is why we know and believe the experience is about the customer journey to use our product.

Manoj explains it is from the moment that the customer even thinks about using our product to the journey then consuming the product then to be a community member of our product for the rest of his life.

Manoj also shared about the ecosystem. He said that he is not making any money from the ecosystem, “I’m a research company,” said him. He wants every company to build a better strategy to grow their business. He also thinks building the ecosystem strategy is very important for every company. Either we build and develop our ecosystem, or you become part of somebody else’s ecosystem then, that we can innovate them because the future is an ecosystem.

Now, Manoj said that we got to move to the new era of strategy, which is to build that digital. Then, that is why he is talking about the ecosystem. We help companies develop and define and design their ecosystem strategy that is what we do (his company) as one of my offerings, but that is not the only offering. The ecosystem becomes a platform where everybody will be networking, such as networking for their potential and competency to deliver something.

For a closing statement, Manoj said that we have to learn about what is the ideal experience. And also, if we can start doing that automatically, he thinks we will see the improvement. For him, the biggest inspiration for customer experience is in sports. Because sport has fans and the fans are very loyal to their club. “Manchester United is not doing well for so long, but the fans are still so loyal,” said Manoj.

He said that what made them so much obsessed with it? Because there is that human connection. Then, now how do we create that because he thinks the sporting clubs do it very well. Technology is important but it is not the technology, it is about ritual. He explains that is about a great stadium, great stories of great players.

Then, the point he said is that customer experience for the companies is about great leaders in the company. “It is about the great physical storefront of the company. It is about great technology, and it is about great employees,” said him. Therefore, he asks all leaders to draw inspiration for their company and country, “Let’s make Indonesia very well known globally, for great customer and human experience,” said Manoj. (ANF)

Leaders Talk CC-APAC: Data Science and Data Analytics in Contact Center

Friday, March 4, 2022 – The tenth Leaders Talk CC-APAC hosted by ICCA discussed ” Data Science and Data Analytics in Contact Center.” by inviting a professional speaker to the Asia Pacific contact center. This discussion was presented by Andi Anugrah, Chairman of ICCA Indonesia. The speaker is Manish Shah, Vice President SE Asia Verint, Customer Engagement Solutions.

He thinks that basically, the biggest science is a practice that is happening right now because organizations are building analytics, who’s working there, and those with these rich datasets, like voice conversations and email conversations and chats. Then, he said that data science is more used to gain lessons that can improve marketing campaigns, improve customer service, or increase cross-selling opportunities to gain sales insights. In addition, it can also measure the best quality metrics for agents for employees and empower them to make decisions for successful outcomes.

Meanwhile, Manish explained that data analytics are used within the contact center where they focus on the entire company. Analytical data is not only applied to the voice channel or just to the email channel, but also to the entire channel.

Manish said that data analysis is more about how to study the practice, learn about what customers like and don’t like, and anticipate the next customer’s needs. Companies rely on data analytics not only to determine actions that are more focused on the contact center but for those who are more focused on the business. Then, data science is not only needed today but also needed in your future and it makes you ready to face the competition in the future.

He also gives tips for leaders if they want to develop their contact center in the era of data analytics in data science. He thinks that the most important is identifying the right partners, the right technology, and the experience behind supporting your companies.

And then identifying the right process and executives bringing executive sponsorship to it and then allowing the insight to be axed enable creating the process of culture to apply those inside to measure his impact. “I think this is what the leaders of today’s CXO and CEOs should be doing so that they could keep learning and keep improving,” explain Manish. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: Do the Strong Execution for Make Things Happen

December 17, 2021 – Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) in collaboration with Verint, presented Leaders Talk discussion with the theme “Digitalization in Financial Services.” In this leader’s talk, CC-APAC invited professional speakers of the contact center in the Asia Pacific. 

One of the speakers is Apirom Sutthinats, Contact Center Manager (Sales and Renewal Division), Roojai, Thailand. Apirom explained the challenge of digitalization and also the opportunity for financial services institutions. She said the challenge is they are really difficult to encourage and educate people. They are too difficult to tell everyone that online services were the best way to serve people for this time. This online makes flexible, and people can manage what they want anytime. 

She also shared that when the pandemic comes, she sees that the people’s behavior is changing. People are mostly more on their mobile phones and that is a mobile phone becomes the more essential into their life. Then, she advantages that situation now. They take the opportunity, such as improve a lot of customer experience, customer engagement, customer relationship, and also customer satisfaction. 

She also explains that people are not easy to adapt or accept this fast change, especially in this time everything is self-care online. “What do we need to do to handle these challenges, when we do change anything online?” ask her. Before we share with our customers, we need to prepare the training and ensure our staff clearly understand the rationale behind that change, such as what is the benefit to them? And also the benefit to the customer.

Same as another speaker, Apirom also gives tips to leaders to develop digital financial services. She said that leaders in the contact center are playing a really important law in business contribution, especially when it’s related to the customer. 

Therefore, leaders must be able to deal with any situation, such as paying attention to the customer, making what we doing currently better, and serve to the customer better. 

And also, as a leader, we always need to find a way to make our people work smart, minimize unnecessary work, and use technology or innovation to improve our contact center operations to work more efficiently. The last thing is execution. Not only plan and talk, but how strong our execution and action to make things happen. Therefore, she believes that everyone can make that change. (ANF) 

Leaders Talk: How to Build Momentum for the Leadership in Contact Center

December 17, 2021 – Interactive discussion initiated by Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) in collaboration with Verint, with the theme, “Digitalization in Financial Services.” This event is invited four professional speakers from the Asia Pacific contact center. 

One of the speakers who was invited to this discussion is Novie Marlika. She is Vice President Customer Experience, OVO, Indonesia. In this discussion, Novie Malika said that OVO are contribute the solutions to this challenge, especially financial literacy and inclusion. Why financial services? Because she thinks, financial literacy is an important thing in the country for the economic process. “The challenge is always to find the right products and services that are easy to use, secure, and affordable,” said Novie. 

Novie also said that is why OVO particularly adopts the open ecosystem approach, such as being open to collaborating with other stakeholders. By doing this, Novie thinks OVO can expand from digital payment, also can over-like investment insurance bonds to meet the growing needs of the community with ease. 

Not only that, Novie explains that is basically on the challenges, but the way OVO sees the digital payment as a gateway to the larger digital financial ecosystem, whereby it is an opportunity for financial institutions. Then, “During these four years, I think, OVO has received a positive acceptance amongst Indonesian people and to the general public itself,” said Novie. She also thinks OVO is committed to continuing to bring financial literacy and inclusion through accelerating digital transformation in Asia.

Novie also shared tips for leadership development. She said that the main word for the leadership in the contact center is building momentum. Before building momentum, there are things that we need to do. First, we need to keep up with our customer’s needs. “What do we say by keeping up with this customer’s needs?” said Novie. We have to ask them to join our journey. Because it’s digital, we have to understand them, and we should make it easier for our users to understand. 

In the long term, she thinks when we keep up with the customer needs is not about how we reach the specific finish, but we need to create a higher purpose. And we also need to consistently adapt to the changing environments. 

When the pandemic comes, we need to send more people to work from home. Then, they can stay safe, but on the other side, we need to make sure our operations will be able to monitor and run smoothly. 

The last from this, we need to gain CSAT. Then, it’s not only learning the satisfaction level, but we need to learn the dissatisfaction level. Furthermore, we need to look from a bigger lens, such as from social media. We can see the satisfaction level that we want to achieve from all those activities, such as in terms of efficiency, in terms of operational excellence, and also can see are they achieved all the performance or yet. 

The second thing we need before building momentum is to set up our team for success. She said that whenever we will start something new, we need to give our teams a higher purpose, such as why we need to go there. 

Therefore, she said that we should help agents with the suggested actions, and they need to do some escalation. She explains that we also need to optimize our contact center with data analytics. Then, of course, “Improve ourselves and it makes sure that we’ll be able to help all the operations,” said Novie. As a leader, we have to stand by and make sure that we provide the solutions, even though we do not have the answers to that agent’s problem. As a leader, we don’t have all the solutions in the world for all the cases. But we can help all the team to drive a solution for us. (ANF) 

Leaders Talk: Have a Competences Before Starting the Digitalization

December 17, 2021 – Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) present Leaders Talk discussion with the theme “Digitalization of Financial Services.” CC-APAC invited four professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

One of the speakers is Ridwan Nugraha, SVP, Customer Experience Center Head, PT Bank BTPN, Tbk, Indonesia. Ridwan explains what the challenges and opportunities during this pandemic situation are. He said that the challenge is how we can both create our unique value proposition. For example, the product is easier, smarter, safer, like finance for their daily activities via smartphones. 

The opportunities of this are very huge. He talks about the megatrends, for example, such as the smartphone penetration, internet penetration, and Indonesian population for the Asia Pacific is more than 270 million, and also this is dominated by the millennials. 

“So, I think it’s it’s quite promising that Indonesia is still an emerging country with very high potential for digitalization, as well as digital finance,” said Ridwan. He calls it of opportunity as well as, “Peluang sekaligus panggilan.”

At the end of the discussion, Ridwan shared some tips before starting the digitalization of financial services. He said that we should have competence. Competence means that we have strong knowledge, skill, and experience. We can earn it and also enrich it by navigating carefully. 

Furthermore, don’t forget to keep upgrading ourselves to stay relevant because he thinks that we can do it in various ways. The next is we can do self-learning or collective learning, such as joining the ICCA or the CC-APAC Awards. Then, the key is to keep on learning, be courageous, and be confident in all we do. 

And also, Ridwan said that contact center leaders work with others, they are not working alone. We should learn to lead by example. Then, we need to show good examples to our people, such as attitude, openness, and full accountability. “Don’t forget to keep fun at work, because the happy customers come from employees,” said Ridwan. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: 4 Things That Should We Do in This Transition Period

December 17, 2021 – In this Leaders Talk, the Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) in collaboration with Verint discussed the “Digitalization of Financial Services.” We invited four speakers who are professionals in the Asia Pacific contact center industry. 

One of the speakers is Reni Septiana, Senior Vice President Center of Digital, Halo BCA, PT Bank Central Asia, Tbk, Indonesia. The discussion started by talking about the challenges and opportunities of digitalization for its company. Reni said that there are two challenges they are facing. First, namely internal challenges. This is related to the coefficient of user-friendly, secure, and safe digital services. The second is an external challenge, like dealing with customer acceptance who depends on all of the digital services we offer. 

Reni also said that there are still new opportunities that they can optimize, even BCA is during those hard challenges. “The digital banking strategy has enabled us to get the business opportunities in the middle of a fast-moving customer transition into digital banking transactions,” said Reni. 

BCA keeps developing and making innovations, especially digital best initiatives for banking transaction services, such as mobile banking. Furthermore, this digital banking transaction plan avoids physical contact in the transaction conducted through mobile banking, such as online account opening. 

Also, Reni shared her tips for starting the digitalization of financial services. The first tips are resourceful and innovative. What is the meaning? It means that we should digitalize all business activity, such as services, business processes, and customer relations. And also, we can automate and make it efficient through bottom-up innovations, such as local programming and big data. The second is implementing agile working because BCA has a motto. “We have our motto is from good to great and great to agile,” said Reni. 

And the third is to believe that stability and change is powerful polarity. Stability means ensuring that the current business model is solid, efficient, effective, and stable. Then, the change means implementing those changes, which is necessary to be more competitive in the future. Next, we can play roles as a leader, such as becoming role models, collaborating, personnel appreciation, agility, responsiveness, and looking forward to meaningful goals. And also, don’t forget empathy and persuasiveness. “Always humble and serve others,” said Reni. And the last one is reliable on growing people and extra miles. (ANF)

Leaders Talk CC-APAC: New Challenges of Digitalization in Financial Services

Friday, December 17, 2021 – The seventh Leaders Talk hosted by CC-APAC in collaboration with Verint discussed “Digitalization in Financial Services,” by inviting four professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

This discussion was presented by Andi Anugrah, Chairman of ICCA Indonesia. The first panelist is Reni Septiana, Senior Vice President Center of Digital, Halo BCA, PT Bank Central Asia, Tbk, Indonesia. The second panelist is Ridwan Nugraha, SVP, Customer Experience Center Head, PT Bank BTPN, Tbk, Indonesia. The third is Novie Marlika, Vice President Customer Experience, OVO, Indonesia. And the last one is Apirom Sutthinats, Contact Center Manager (Sales and Renewal Division), Roojai, Thailand.

The discussion is started by talking about the challenges and opportunities of digitalization in financial services. First, Novie Malika said that OVO are contribute the solutions to this challenge, especially financial literacy and inclusion. Why financial services? Because she thinks, financial literacy is an important thing in the country for the economic process. “The challenge is always to find the right products and services that are easy to use, secure, and affordable,” said Novie. 

Novie also said that is why OVO particularly adopts the open ecosystem approach, such as being open to collaborating with other stakeholders. By doing this, Novie thinks OVO can expand from digital payment, also can over-like investment insurance bonds to meet the growing needs of the community with ease. 

Not only that, Novie explains that is basically on the challenges but the way OVO sees the digital payment as a gateway to the larger digital financial ecosystem, whereby it is an opportunity for financial institutions. Then, “During these four years, I think, OVO has received a positive acceptance amongst Indonesian people and to the general public itself,” said Novie. She also thinks OVO is committed to continuing to bring financial literacy and inclusion through accelerating digital transformation in Asia.

There is another challenge that Apirom Sutthinats shared. She said the challenge is they are really difficult to encourage and educate people. They are too difficult to tell everyone that online services were the best way to serve people for this time. This online makes flexible, and people can manage what they want anytime. 

She also shared that when the pandemic comes, she sees that the people’s behavior is changing. People are mostly more on their mobile phones and that is a mobile phone becomes the more essential into their life. Then, she advantages that situation now. They take the opportunity, such as improve a lot of customer experience, customer engagement, customer relationship, and also customer satisfaction. 

She also explains that people are not easy to adapt or accept this fast change, especially in this time everything is self-care online. “What do we need to do to handle these challenges, when we do change anything online?” ask her. Before we share with our customers, we need to prepare the training and ensure our staff clearly understand the rationale behind that change, such as what is the benefit to them? And also the benefit to the customer.

Ridwan Nugraha explains what the challenges and opportunities during this pandemic situation are. He said that the challenge is how we can both create our unique value proposition. For example, the product is easier, smarter, safer, like finance for their daily activities via smartphones. 

The opportunities of this are very huge. He talks about the megatrends, for example, such as the smartphone penetration, internet penetration, and Indonesian population for the Asia Pacific is more than 270 million, and also this is dominated by the millennials. 

“So, I think it’s it’s quite promising that Indonesia is still an emerging country with very high potential for digitalization, as well as digital finance,” said Ridwan. He calls it of opportunity as well as, “Peluang sekaligus panggilan.”

The last, opinion from Reni Septiana. Reni said that there are two challenges they are facing. First, namely internal challenges. This is related to the coefficient of user-friendly, secure, and safe digital services. The second is an external challenge, like dealing with customer acceptance who depends on all of the digital services we offer.

Reni also said that there are still new opportunities that they can optimize, even BCA is during those hard challenges. “The Digital Banking strategy has enabled us to get the business opportunities in the middle of a fast-moving customer transition into digital banking transactions,” said Reni.

BCA keeps developing and making innovations, especially digital best initiatives for banking transaction services, such as mobile banking. Furthermore, this digital banking transaction plan avoids physical contact in the transaction conducted through mobile banking, such as online account opening.

At the end of the discussion, all panelists give their closing remarks and tips about the development of digital finance in Indonesia. Are you curious about want kind of tips that they are shared? Then, stay tuned for another article on the CC-APAC website. (ANF)

Leaders Talk CC-APAC: How To Be a Good Young Leaders in Contact Center

October 15, 2021 – In this Leaders Talk, the Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) discussed “Young Leaders in Contact Center” by inviting three professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

This discussion was presented by Andi Anugrah, Chairman of ICCA Indonesia. The first panelist is Somruedee Songsaengrit, Distribution Manager, Roojai, Thailand. The second is Dian Ratna Furi, Operations Manager, VADS Indonesia. Then, the last one is Anne Purba, Corporate Secretary Vice President KAI Commuter, Indonesia.

Andi Anugrah as Chairman of ICCA Indonesia has led the discussion. The discussion started about the workstyle of young leaders can impact contact center operation. Somruedee said the impact is a consistently changing environment. It means one situation maybe work one way, but on the other hand, maybe can bring another huge problem.

Dian also said that so many young leaders would be born. They came up and bring new ideas and new perspectives, it is affected to contact center to leave all the traditional methods. Contact centers need to change and fast adapt to the condition.

Another opinion from Anne, she said that she has a work style urgency is efficiency. She needs to change the method from the traditional to the digital platform. She thinks that human touch and behavior change not about one or two years, but also every minute the technology is change.

The next discussion is regarding the capability that young leaders need. According to Somruedee, the young leader needs to get ready, be positive, and deal with a chance whatever is come. She also said that use skills and experience that learn from the past is necessary to apply. And to develop skills, Somruedee does from learning and practicing. She said that when she is learning, she is knowing, and then do coaching, especially when she led a contact center team.

For all young leaders, Dian said that we need to lead by example which contains the action to inspire. As a leader, she explains that we need to commit to the vision, mission, and even sharing the passion during coaching when meeting or individually. She also shared the experience when she got a big challenge for developing people who were older than her. She said that good communication is important to do.

Anne also agreed with Dian about how important communication is. Because make the expectation clear and with good communication, can also make it together even there is young people or old people.

In the middle of the discussion, there is some question from a participant regarding how to deal with the old and the young generation. Somruedee gives the opinion about how to deal with the old generation, she said that it’s a little bit difficult because they are experts in something and sometimes, they have more experience than the young generation. However, understand the older generation is needed and knowing them in person and make a good relationship is helpful.

Dian also explains that having good communication for dealing with elder people is very necessary. The young generation needs to understand their sensitivity during the works and their sensitivity about what they need when they aim in this organization. On the other hand, she found a millennial who likes to speak faster than action. Like she said before, the leader needs to give them an example containing action that can inspire them.

The Leaders Talk event closed with tips from all three speakers about how to be a good leader in the contact center, especially for the young, women, and old generation. Want to know more detail about their opinion? Check the newest article on the CC-APAC website. (ANF)

Workforce Optimization

By Andi Anugrah, Chairman of ICCA Indonesia

Friday two weeks ago, I invited three leaders from 3 leading technology vendors, Genesys, Nice, and Verint. Of course, contact center users are quite familiar with these provider technologies. We discuss workforce optimization in various aspects and its development. We increase labor productivity during the pandemic, in addition to balancing it with service quality. Also discusses the experience of agents and provides adequate tools for them to work.

Present as panelists were Andy Hardy from Genesys, Aryan Sunil from Verint, and Mark Harington from Nice. We also discussed the business objectives of the application of WFO technology. Along with technological developments, we also discuss sentiment analytics, especially customer analysis. There is a need to analyze more customer interaction data, both in real-time and historically. Not only limited to a certain sample but using technology to make it easier to capture various customer feedback. Likewise, we discussed gamification as a tool to motivate agents in various aspects of performance.

The three speakers highlighted that optimizing the workforce in the contact center needs to be a concern as part of the development strategy. For this reason, the contact center needs to integrate information about the workforce include performance management, e-learning, interaction analysis, quality management, and workforce management. It can involve a high-level framework that includes strategic contact center planning, agent recruitment, placement, monitoring, evaluation, improvement, and motivation, as well as corporate accountability and contribution.

Workforce optimization is a customer experience strategy that modernizes contact center technology and platforms. Through the use of digital channels, workforce optimization is for increasing employee engagement and increase customer satisfaction. Workforce optimization integrates technology into a single point of management to increase the visibility of customer interactions, employee performance, and business processes. By analyzing all customer interactions, businesses can leverage insights to train their employees and streamline workflows to improve the overall quality of customer service.

Not to forget, we also discussed the importance of collaboration in the application of technology. The importance of having a partner in building a contact center. For this reason, users need to build engagement with vendors, so they can get maximum results in the application of technology. Well, of course, all speakers are vendors, they hope to build relationships with users so that they can maximize the function of technology and provide benefits according to their business objectives.

In the last four months, we regularly invite contact center industry leaders to be part of the discussion forum. This is a regular event and activity for the Contact Center Association of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) to build relationships and networking with contact center leaders and executives. Hope you can participate in the next opportunity. Make sure to watch the recording on YouTube, Greetings are healthy and happy. (AA)

Leaders Talk: Realization What Is You Want to Achieve

September 24, 2021 – Interactive discussion initiated by Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC), Leaders Talk: Workforce Optimization in Contact Center, which invited three professional speakers in the Asia Pacific contact center.

One of the speakers, who was invited to this discussion is Aryan Sunil. He is Director Practice Backoffice and Retail, Asia Verint. Aryan also explained that optimization or workforce engagement management is evolving and has become very important, especially for the contact center.

This optimization concept is the way for us to develop them to be more engage in work. We must be able to determine the right number of people at the right time or look at the quality. That will have a lot to do with how we deliver better and faster results to our customer and in order to optimize the workforce in the company, we must consider the perspective from the employee’s side while trying to achieve what our contact center is. 

For example, a receptionist. Some people’s perspective of a receptionist is they job is just to answer the call, no one saw them that they were here for company business purposes. We don’t see them as a fancy calculation mechanism. We treat them well. They are here not to just answering the call, but they are here doing business and have taken a very remarkable journey. 

Aryan’s opinion of that strategy is sometimes we need to look at it from a third perspective view because we need to look at what matters to the center at that moment. Are we looking at cutting down costs or are we trying to increase our service because it depends on the stage of the organization? We may have to take one of those steps.

Workforce optimization integrates technology into a single point of management to increase the visibility of customer interactions, employee performance, and business processes. By analyzing all customer interactions, businesses can leverage insights to train their employees and streamline workflows to improve the overall quality of customer service.

Sunil Aryan also gives a summary and his opinion about today’s discussion. He said that the world is changing, and of course, vendors will try to bring something which will make your life easier. They are those who know your business better than you. The first point is you must realize that what is it that I want to achieve. The questions like, what is target to buy or target to fix a problem, please do not consider that solution.

None of these solutions work without a comprehensive. Sunil said that do the consultative approach with the person who needs to do it. That person who took a step forward to think of which solution needs to fix the problem.

The second point is, he thinks every one of us said that employees are the ones who give customer experience that they can be digital. Aryan said for example, all human beings always empower intelligent virtual assistants. Then, he asks a question to those bots. “Why is that answer different from what you are agent call center telling me or what is written on the website,” Sunil said. Then, don’t find these things in sight. He said that let’s have that as a unified platform. (ANF)