You must deliver an amazing customer experience. Why? It is the competitive edge of new-era business—in any market and any economy. Renowned customer experience expert Shep Hyken explains how consistently amazing customers through stellar service can elevate your company from good to great. All transformations require a role model, and Shep has found the perfect role model to inspire your team: Ace Hardware. Ace was named as one of the top ten customer service brands in America by Businessweek and ranked highest in its industry for customer satisfaction. Through revealing stories from Ace’s over-the-top work with customers, Shep explores the five tactical areas of customer amazement: leadership, culture, one-on-one, competitive edge, and community. Delivering amazing service requires everyone in your organization to step up and be a leader. It doesn’t take a title. It takes the right set of tools and principles. To help you empower employees at all levels, Shep brings the content to a deeply practical level. His 52 Amazement Tools—like “Ask the extra question” and “Focus on the customer, not the money”—are simple, clear, useful for almost anybody, and supported with compelling research and stories. Between these covers, you will find the tools and tactics you need to transform your company into a seriously customer-focused operation that will amaze every customer every time.

In the rapidly evolving AI landscape, customer service and support professionals find themselves in a prime position to take advantage of this innovative technology to drive customer success. The AI Revolution in Customer Service and Support is a practical guide for professionals who want to harness the power of generative AI within their organizations to create more powerful customer and employee experiences. This book is designed to equip you with the knowledge and confidence to embrace the AI revolution and integrate the technology, such as large language models (LLMs), machine learning, predictive analytics, and gamified learning, into the customer experience. Start your journey toward leveraging this technology effectively to optimize organizational productivity. A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated to the nonprofit Future World Alliance, dedicated to K-12 AI ethics education. IN THIS BOOK YOU’LL LEARN About AI, machine learning, and data science How to develop an AI vision for your organization How and where to incorporate AI technology in your customer experience fl ow About new roles and responsibilities for your organization How to improve customer experience while optimizing productivity How to implement responsible AI practices How to strengthen your culture across all generations in the workplace How to address concerns and build strategies for reskilling and upskilling your people How to incorporate games, play, and other techniques to engage your agents with AI Explore thought experiments for the future of support in your organization “Insightful & comprehensive—if you run a service & support operation, put this book on your essential reading list right now!” —PHIL WOLFENDEN, Cisco, VP, Customer Experience “This book is both timely and relevant as we enter an unprecedented period in our industry and the broader world driven by Generative AI. The magnitude and speed of change we’re experiencing is astounding and this book does an outstanding job balancing technical knowledge with the people and ethical considerations we must also keep front of mind.” —BRYAN BELMONT, Microsoft, Corporate VP, Customer Service & Support “The authors of this book are undoubtedly on the front lines of operationalizing Gen AI implementations in customer support environments... and they know undoubtedly that at its core, support is about people and genuine human connections. This book walks you through their journey to keep people at the center of this technical tsunami.” —PHAEDRA BOINODIRIS, Author, AI for the Rest of Us

This book gathers selected papers presented at 5th International Conference on Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCCT 2023), jointly organized by Soft Computing Research Society (SCRS) and Rajasthan Institute of Engineering & Technology (RIET), Jaipur, during January 28–29, 2023. The book is a collection of state-of-the art research work in the cutting-edge technologies related to the communication and intelligent systems. The topics covered are algorithms and applications of intelligent systems, informatics and applications, and communication and control systems.

What makes a ‘getting acquainted’ a recognizable conversational activity, and how are interpersonal relationships established in a first conversation? This book presents a theoretical framework for the study of relationship management in conversation and an empirical study of a corpus of initial interactions. It provides detailed descriptions of the sequential resources unacquainted interlocutors use in order to: – generate self-presentation – introduce topics – establish common contextual resources It is argued that these sequential patterns embody conventionalized procedures for establishing an interpersonal relationship involving some degree of: – solidarity (mutual rights and obligations) – familiarity (mutual knowledge of personal background) – mutual affect (emotional commitment) The sequential analysis is based on a conversation analytic approach, while the interpretive framework consists of pragmatic theories of politeness, conversational style and common ground.

Digital marketing emerged as a natural response by companies and vendors to leverage and benefit from the significant consumer concentration on digital channels. This proliferation of IT applications and the enormous presence of customers in digital channels generate a large number of products and customer data. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are game-changing techniques in digital marketing to analyze this data. This analysis helps marketers to personalize the sales tools toward individuals, optimize their operations, and minimize expenditure. Contemporary Approaches of Digital Marketing and the Role of Machine Intelligence demonstrates relevant theories of digital marketing along with tools, techniques, methods, and strategies. It also identifies the research gaps for effective digital marketing tools, techniques, and methods and builds a bridge between digital marketing strategies and business plans for organizations. Covering topics such as digital marketing, metaverse, and visitor experience, this premier reference source is an essential resource for business leaders and managers, marketers, IT managers, data analysts, social media analysts, students and educators of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Chatbot Research and Design, CONVERSATIONS 2021, which was held during November 2021.Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online. The 12 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 25 submissions. The papers in the proceedings are structured in four topical groups: Chatbot User Insight, Chatbots Supporting Collaboration and Social Interaction, and Chatbot UX and Design.