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Virtual Hangouts

Home for breezy conversations during your coffee/tea breaks. Also, join us for our monthly hour-long discussions about a pre-determined topic! Subscribe to be notified about our next coffee chat episode.

  • 18 Topics
  • 664 Replies

18 Topics

bharath.chakravarthy
Skilled Expert
bharath.chakravarthySkilled Expert
published in Virtual Hangouts

The Coffee Booth: October 18 | Scrappy, Not CrappyLIVE

The Coffee Booth is now OPEN!  ✅ New Host✅✅ Topic of conversation ✅✅✅ Date & Time A little bit about meBeen with Freshworks for 7.5 years, starting in Chennai in the FD support team and since then moved to Berlin to be the first full time onboarding specialist. Currently, I lead a team in the CAA function in Berlin and work currently as both an Engagement Manager and also a Solution Architect for the CX product suite.I’m a keen photographer who loves to travel, hunting for that perfect frame (the Budapest Parliament building was one such frame); also a cricket purist who loves watching the longest format of the game and plays professionally here in Berlin.Excited to speak with you all and host MY first coffee chat - show some love in the comments! Here’s the low-down:🎧 A common challenge faced by many customer support representatives is not having an answer to a query. What processes do you have in place to ensure situations such as these are handled in the best manner?🎄With the

48965
finn
Skilled Expert
5 months ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
published in Virtual Hangouts

Coffee Chat on June 15 at 11:00 AM EST: Using customer service for growth

Our next Coffee Chat is here. We have @Jeannie_Walters  hosting it for us ☕️ 🎉It’s happening on Wednesday, 15 June 2022 at 11 AM EST.The topic of discussion is: Using customer service for growthPlease block your calendars for about 45 minutes to answer five questions and have an interactive session with @Jeannie_Walters! Here’s an introduction about, Jeannie! Jeannie Walters, CCXP is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker, and Founder of Experience Investigators, a firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences.Trailblazing the movement from "Reactive Customer Service" to "Proactive Customer Experience," Jeannie is considered the leading authority for improving both employee and customer relationships.Jeannie is a charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, having worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies including OrangeTheory Fitness, SAP, Comcast, and JPMorgan Chase; an

126689
milandrivertaxi
Community Debut
8 months ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
published in Virtual Hangouts

Coffee Chat on May 17 at 11:00 AM EST: Successfully implementing self-service within an organization

Our next Coffee Chat is here. We have @manns hosting it for us ☕️ 🎉It’s happening on Tuesday, 17th May 2022 at 11 AM EST.The topic of discussion is: Successfully implementing self-service within an organization.Please block your calendars for about 45 minutes to answer five questions and have an interactive session with Stephan Mann, Principal Analyst and Content Director at ITSM.tools  Be sure to mark your calendars for this one! Which challenges and opportunities drove your organization to adopt IT self-service capabilities? How would you rate your self-service success to date, and why? What are the most significant issues you faced in introducing your self-service capabilities? How does your organization encourage employees to use its IT self-service portal? In particular, how did/do you market your self-service capabilities? What are some of the good or best practices you’ve adopted to drive your self-service success? Have you extended your IT self-service portal to othe

2246104
manns
Skilled Expert
10 months ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Coffee Chat on March 23 at 11:00 AM EST: Career paths and growth in Customer support

Make way for our Coffee Chat 🎉It’s happening on Wednesday, 23 of March at 11 AM EST.The topic of discussion is: Career paths and growth in Customer supportPlease block your calendars for about 45 minutes to answer five questions. To keep this session as engaging as possible, I’ve chosen a topic that all of us can relate to, and here are the key-segments:How did you end up in a customer support role? Alternatively, what do you think makes for a good customer support rep? What are the opportunities and skills a customer support role can open up for a person? What is the kind of growth/career development a customer support agent can expect, say, 5 or 10 years down the line? How should customer support teams align themselves with other related functions like product, marketing, customer success, and operations? What advice would you give someone looking to pivot into a customer support related career?As always, here’s reminder about a few things to keep in mind Six important things to kno

34
finn
Skilled Expert
11 months ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
published in Virtual Hangouts

[JOIN IN] Hang Out with Hot Chocolate: Managing Customer Service During the Holidays ☕

Our next Coffee Chat session is happening on Tuesday, 7, December at 11 AM EST.In keeping with the season, we’re calling our discussion Hang Out with Hot Chocolate and we’ll be discussing a topic in line with the season as well: managing Customer Service During the Holidays. Grab a cup and join us as we talk about five key segments: How far ahead should customer service teams and leads begin planning for the holiday rush? How has your team prepped to meet the changes in demands around customer expectations during this time? How can customer service managers prevent and address increased stress/burnout among their teams during this time? What are some lessons and insights from previous years that have helped customer service teams perform better during the holiday season?  What is key towards managing both customer and employee satisfaction during the holidays? Lastly, how can teams/individuals best take advantage of a holiday “lull” - the proverbial calm before the storm. (Ta

152279
manns
Skilled Expert
1 year ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Coffee Hangout with Micah on Oct 19 at 11:00 AM EST: Building a customer service culture 

Our next Coffee Chat session is happening on Tuesday, 19th of October at 11 AM EST.@Micah Solomon will be our host and the topic of discussion: Building a customer service culturePlease block your calendars for about 45 minutes to answer five questions. To keep this session as engaging as possible, I’ve chosen a topic that all of us can relate to, and here are thekey-segments:1. What do you think about the concept of hiring for culture fit? 2. What are some of the key elements of creating a customer service-oriented culture?  3. What are some of the pitfalls you see that we should avoid falling into as we strive to achieve this?  4. How do you go about inspiring a team to offer personalized customer service/"wow" customer service to make your customer feel special?5. Give us examples of your favorite organizations that have built a great CS cultureBefore we close out, we’ll open the floor and everyone can questions about all things CX to Micah!  

73
alyssia.correa
1 year ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
published in Virtual Hangouts

Coffee Chat on 15 September at 11 AM EST: Handling Conflicts in Your Team ☕

Our next Coffee Chat session is happening on Wednesday, 15th of September at 11 AM ESTWe hope to hear from you during the chat!The topic of discussion: Handling Conflicts in your teamPlease block your calendars for about 45 minutes to answer five questions. To keep this session as engaging as possible, I’ve chosen a topic that all of us can relate to, and here are thekey-segments: 1. What are the different kinds of conflicts you see in a small/big team?2. Is there a protocol to deal with conflicts. Please give us details!3. When and how do you decide to escalate it to your HRBP?4. How is conflict management different remotely?5. How do you empower your teams to share clashing viewpoints comfortably? (edited)   

59658
S
Community Debut
1 year ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Coffee Chat: Best Practices for Customer Communication ☕

Hey everyone! Thank you for showing support by participating in our previous Coffee Chat. Please Subscribe to this post to get instant updatesOur next Coffee Chat session is happening on Wednesday, 18th of August at 11 AM ESTWe hope to hear from you during the chat!The topic of discussion: Best Practices for Customer CommunicationPlease block your calendars for about 45 minutes to answer five questions. To keep this session as engaging as possible, I’ve chosen a topic that all of us can relate to, and here are thekey-segments:  What are some general pointers to keep in mind when you’re talking to your customers? How do you turn down requests from customers which you can’t fulfill? How do you handle hostile or unreasonable customers without being rude? How often do you think communication with customers is necessary? (not just for updates, but in general.) What is the best way to apologize to your customers- feel free to share your stories, emails, and more here!

59
N
Community Debut
1 year ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Coffee Chat: Building a Self-Service Portal  ☕

Hey everyone! Thank you for showing support to this post by hitting Subscribe to my previous post.We realized that July 7 is right after a good long weekend for most of us, so we’ve decided to host this coffee chat next week.So our new date is July 14, 11:00 am EST. Please block your calendars for about 45 minutes to answer five questions. To keep this session as engaging as possible, I’ve chosen a topic that’s one of our favorite. The topic of discussion is: Building a Self-Service Portal  Q1. How many of you use self-service. Why do you use or why don’t you use. Q2. What are the challenges you encountered while coming up with a self-service portalQ3. What are the common mistakes you see while people implement self-serviceQ4. How do you measure the effectiveness of your self-service portalQ5. What do you think is the future of self-service?@Bethany Wesley, @zachary.king, @manns, @chianne.shepherd - I look forward to hearing your thoughts. 

86
prashanthini.mande
Community Debut
1 year ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Welcome to our monthly coffee chats 🎉

To regularly hold informative conversations that will help you derive most out of the community, we are kick-starting Coffee Chats here. Each Coffee Chat session will give you a wide range of perspectives about a single topic we choose beforehand. Our first session will be held at 11 AM EST on Wednesday (7 July). Just subscribe to this discussion to be notified at the given time to participate. If you are not a part of the community yet, you can join here.

1
maxidoor
Community Debut
4 months ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

What are you learning outside of work

Have you picked up a new routine, skill, art, or any new activity? Talk to us and tell what you’ve been up to lately. As for me, I started cooking a lot and also started learning food styling and food photography. Can't wait to post my first picture. Reply to this thread to let us know! 

3
vijay_2am
Skilled Expert
1 year ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Take a moment to offer help here.

What can you offer to the community at the moment. Is there something that you want to teach your fellow community mates? Let us know and we'll help you help others. 

0
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
2 years ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Movie and TV Shows Galore

Tell us what are you watching these days. Here's why we put this thread together: So Kaavya and I don't have to scout for recommendations. It's good to keep your shows/movies organized

8
manns
Skilled Expert
1 year ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

What's your must-read book pick?

If you could recommend only one book to someone to read, which would it be and why? (Either fiction, non-fiction or education). Reply to this thread with your recommendations! 

2
manns
Skilled Expert
1 year ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Let's talk GIF's

What are some of the GIF’s you’d like to look after a long meeting? Here's a favourite from Kaavya and me: 

3
S
Community Debut
1 year ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Training and onboarding new agents

Hiring and training new agents is an essential process everywhere. Here are questions that we discussed and we've attached a PDF that has all the suggestions and processes our community members suggest when it comes to training and onboarding newbies. Q1. What are some things you do to make newbies feel comfortable? If you are a remote company, what do you do differently? Q2. How do you train them on your product/service, support best practices, tools, and company culture?Q3. How do you train newbies on soft skills like communication, empathy, and clarity, to name a few?Q4. Do you think a formal training program is necessary? Why/why not?Q5. How do you measure the effectiveness of your training?Q6. What are some qualities that you cannot train agents on (that you should probably look for while hiring)?

0
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
2 years ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

Having Difficult Conversations with Customers

We often need to talk to customers about hard topics. Whether it is acknowledging a mistake which you’ve made or telling them about a rise in subscription fees, you might be wondering the best way to go about it. Here are the questions that we discussed during the session and a few tips in the PDF that helps you. Q1. How can you inform a customer that you won’t be able to meet their targets or goals as promised?Q2. How can you tell your customer ‘no’, or that they are incorrect without sounding rude?Q3. How you can make sure you retain your customer’s loyalty even after you have messed up?Q4. How do you keep your team’s morale high even/after during stressful conversations?

0
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
2 years ago
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
akshara.sruthiSkilled Expert
posted in Virtual Hangouts

The Pros and Cons of Self-Service

Wondering if self-service is the right solution for your company? Here are the questions that we discussed during the session and a few points which might help you decide!Q1. How many of you use self-service? Why/why don’t you use it?Q2. If you have a self-service portal, what are the challenges you encountered while coming up with it?Q3. What are the common mistakes you see while people implement self-service?Q4. What do you think is the future of self-service?

0
akshara.sruthi
Skilled Expert
2 years ago

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