The conversational art, 50 shades of voices
Could going to a specialized professional fair, for a few minutes or few hours, enhance the customer experience?
4 pictures that tell a lot and 2 enlightening numbers.
For the last twenty years, En-Contact’s editorial team has been at almost every edition of the event Stratégie Clients. What has the fair taught us this year?
That the customer’s voice must be heard, for it can transform, just by itself, a company and its products. It must thus be listened to on every channel, at every moment of the customer’s journey. The more the customer is known, the better we can offer and bring him a personalized, adapted, answer and at the right time. That is what CRM (customer knowledge) is all about.
Nuance Communications, Verint, Nice, all the great speech analysis specialists were present at the fair. Sometimes with this very short term logic* that some worldwide firms or groups listed on stock exchange have shown to have. And maybe this is why Acapela Group was the one to enchant us the most (let’s not forget Allo-Media, mentioned earlier): speech synthesis and its declinations which make so many things possible…read about it in En-Contact’s next issue.
28 billions of dollars, that is the CRM’s global market size, number one for the sales revenue in the software sector.
Taking into account customer knowledge is essential. Salesforce was not there, but a French challenger yes. And even if the company is named easiware, it does not go easy on the American rival, as the founders have defeated the latter in 90% of the consultations opposing the two in the last two years. A must-see? According to Meetic, yes: they have recently picked easiware and Diabolocom’s platform as a solution for their needs (see picture of Florian Schwarz, Diabolocom’s commercial director).
Novagile, the multi-channel?
Novagile is a French software publisher, soaring in the Sitel galaxy. Its platform can be realty convincing for large groups, thanks to its functional coverage. It is no surprise that the company’s development product is managed by a « lady » who knows her market and the meaning of a multi-channel platform: Ana Athayde, former Spotter and Akio, joined the company 18 months ago.
We have looked, in vain, for mystery shopping groups at the fair. Should not shops and their activities be tested and evaluated as well? Micro-headsets suppliers, temporary employment agencies, or players concerned by the symmetry attention could not be found either. Only the Académie du Service (Academy of Service) was here, bearer of propositions regarding this symmetry issue. Customer Expérience (former Luxury Attitude) have been spotted as well, under the brand IFG.
An evidence that robots are not going to overwrite everything in the customer experience sector? It was given during 3 days by all this young generation when they exchanged, shared information, engaged in conversations. Among them : Vanessa Isly of the B2S (now Comdata) commercial team, or even Alexia Alliot, the French Rachel Haot from the ANTS (Agence nationale des Titres sécurisés). A fair is made of booths, of encounter opportunities, of bounds that are tied or tied again, of conversations with no short term commercial aims but that are the foundation of commerce itself.
A full summary will be available in the next En-Contact issue, the number 104 of June 2018.
Translated by Lucy Lavabre
*A mystery prospect who stops at the booth of one of those great companies and details the needs of his project, modest in terms of size and potential revenue…is quickly dismissed: « oh but we only work with societies managing thousands of agents! »
Read our other articles in English here.