First Call Resolution (FCR) is a key performance indicator for service call (contact) centres. The indicator pertains to success in achieving a resolution to a problem or an issue raised by a customer in his or her first call made to a contact centre. The metric of FCR success rate (%) usually concerns phone calls,… Read More
Shopping in Social Media Platforms
Next to socialising activities in online social media networks for leisure or work, in business or politics, users also engage in shopping activities on these platforms. In particular, consumers search and check information there on their prospective purchases. Moreover, consumers tend to spend more time in social media websites, especially the younger ones (i.e., Generations… Read More
Designing Customer Experiences Around Personas
When mapping customer journeys, it would help to design and direct them with regard to personas of customers, ‘profile’ concepts of plausible types of customers that seem real and approachable. Having the image of a customer before one’s eyes with human traits, background, attitudes and preferences, can make it easier to plan and prepare for… Read More
Smart Automation in Conflict
Smart automation is an integral part of the digital transformation of operations and services. However, automation goes much beyond the application of digital technologies and data when artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are recruited to fulfill any task. Smart automation entails using capabilities of learning from data (huge amounts of data), adaptation and autonomous execution… Read More
Drivers of Sharing More Personal Information on Smartphones
There must be something special about the relationship of consumers with their smartphones — they feel so close to the smartphone and confident in it that they are willing to disclose more personal and even intimate information in interactions on the device. Shiri Melumad and Robert Meyer, professors of marketing at the Wharton School in… Read More
Digital Transformation and the Corona Pandemic
The restrictions on movement and contact imposed in the battle against the Corona virus are forcing consumers to rely more heavily on digital channels and their tools for obtaining products and services. Companies are required to provide and support more extensive digital tools of self-service for customers to be used in their homes. Some companies… Read More
Whole Foods Market in the Hands of Amazon
When Amazon.com acquired the food retail chain Whole Foods Market in the summer of 2017 (for $13.2bn), it stirred bafflement mixed with speculations: What is happening here? To what aim does the giant e-commerce retailer need physical stores of a natural and organic food retail chain? Customers were worried out of concern about what Amazon… Read More
Into the Future of Unmanned Stores
Think of this: You enter a store and it is only you and the merchandise to choose from. There is no personnel in the store to talk to or to be served by. All operations are automated (robotic) by smart systems that watch, sense and “know” everything you do in the store. Thus you may not… Read More
Consumer / Shopper / Customer Behaviour 