Reducing Customer Effort Scores

Making your events more accessible for blind & visually impaired people really isn’t as hard as you think. Here are my top tips. 1. Provide precise venue information. Include things like clear drop off and pick up point information, what the key features of the building are, a rough description of where the toilets are, describe where the reception desk is, and let us know in advance if you’ll need a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan completed. Bonus points for using a service like Euan's Guide or AccessAble to provide specialist access information. 2. Provide as much event information as possible. Share all key details in advance, ideally by email in an accessible format. Include timings, speaker names, attendee names, a brief agenda, and any known accessibility considerations. It helps us plan travel, support, and energy levels and it also helps us know who’s attending so when we’re surprised with a “Hey Robbie!” we can narrow it down to who it might be. 3. Food information is key. It sounds simple, but make sure menus are firstly available, then accessible - even for buffets. Relying on a fellow attendee to tell me something “looks chickeney” gives me the absolute fear. Include dietary details in an electronic format we can read with a screen reader, and avoid handwritten or printed-only menus. Tell us how food will be served so we can prepare (for example, buffet vs plated service). 4. Ask about adjustments - don’t assume you’ll know what someone needs. Just ask the question when people register. Keep it open and inclusive, such as “Do you have any access requirements you’d like us to be aware of?” 5. Provide complimentary +1 places as an adjustment - if someone needs a guide, PA, or support worker to attend with them, they shouldn’t be charged double. It’s an inclusion basic that makes a big difference. 6. Finally, provide training to your staff and event volunteers. Organisations like The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and RNIB can help you here with things like sighted guide training. And most importantly - don’t wait until someone asks before you do this. It won’t help just blind people, it’ll help everyone. Think about this list - is there anything on here that genuine would help you as a sighted person? Build accessibility in from the start and everyone benefits. #DisabilityInclusion #Disability #DisabilityEmployment #Adjustments #DiversityAndInclusion #Content

I just spent 3 years analyzing more than 30 organizations and their accessibility initiatives. Here are 3 trends I noticed: 1. Accessibility Statements = Lots of Promises, Little Action Many organizations have beautifully written accessibility statements, pledging inclusion and access for all. But when you dig deeper? Very few are walking the talk. It’s easy to pledge on paper, but what matters is the execution—action speaks louder than words. Takeaway: Don’t just craft statements—craft change. It’s time to move from promises to real, measurable outcomes. 2. Token Efforts = Great PR, Minimal Impact I’ve seen so many companies invest in token accessibility efforts—building one ramp or adding alt-text to a couple of images, just to check a box. It’s usually enough to get some positive press, but the actual impact on the disabled community? Minimal. Performative inclusion doesn’t solve the deeper issues of inaccessibility and ableism in society or within workplaces. Takeaway: Inclusion isn’t a one-off. Real accessibility requires continuous effort, investment, and a willingness to evolve. It’s not just about looking good; it’s about making a lasting difference. 3. Accessible Design = More Engagement and Satisfaction Organizations that prioritize truly accessible design—both digitally and physically—see better engagement not only from the disabled community but from everyone. Accessible design benefits everyone. It creates a user-friendly environment where people feel seen, heard, and valued, leading to increased loyalty and satisfaction. Takeaway: Make accessibility your competitive advantage. It’s not just about compliance; it’s about making everyone feel included and valued. The bottom line: If you’re serious about disability inclusion, don’t wait for the world to push you. Lead by example and start making changes now that actually impact lives. What are you doing to ensure your initiatives are more than just words?

The L&D community is still treating Accessibility as an afterthought, and it's hurting our learners. Too many learning designers are checking accessibility boxes without genuinely understanding or prioritizing their audience's diverse needs. Here's why this is a problem: 1. "Compliance Over Care" Mentality: Too often, Accessibility is approached as a compliance issue rather than a genuine commitment to inclusive learning. This mindset leads to bare minimum efforts that don't serve our learners. 2. Lack of Proper Training: Many learning designers haven't received adequate training in Accessibility best practices, which causes them to design courses that unintentionally exclude or frustrate learners with disabilities. 3. Accessibility Added as an Afterthought: Waiting until the end of a project to consider Accessibility means it's often rushed and poorly implemented, leading to subpar learning experiences. 4. Ignoring Diverse Learning Needs: The one-size-fits-all approach is too common. Every learner is different, yet many courses don't account for this, especially regarding cognitive or sensory differences. 5. Limited Tool Familiarity: Many designers aren't familiar with the tools that can make their content more accessible. This lack of awareness limits the quality and effectiveness of the learning materials. How do we fix this? 1. Shift the Mindset: Accessibility should be a core component of learning design, not just a checkbox. It's about creating a better experience for everyone. 2. Invest in Training: Organizations must prioritize training their L&D teams on Accessibility. It's not just about knowing the rules; it's about understanding the why behind them. 3. Design from the Start: Make Accessibility a foundational part of your design process, not something you tack on at the end. Use the Right Tools: Familiarize yourself with and use tools that enhance Accessibility. Don't just rely on what you know—explore new resources that can help. 4. Get Feedback: Actively seek feedback from learners with disabilities and incorporate their insights into your design process. What is your organization doing to make its e-learning content more accessible? Let me know in the comments below!

I recently read a fascinating opinion, and it reinforced my belief: AI agents won’t take our jobs—they’ll be our assistants for everything we do. While much of the narrative around AI agents revolves around replacing us as designers, engineers, marketers, and more, I’m captivated by a different vision: AI agents assisting us in our work and even acting as proxies for us as consumers. These agents are set to revolutionize how we interact online, serving as intermediaries to handle tasks like purchasing products, gathering information, and streamlining experiences. This shift presents exciting new opportunities for businesses—but it also raises a critical question: How can we make our websites AI-friendly? I believe the answer lies in accessibility. Here’s why: 1️⃣ Accessibility isn’t just for humans—it’s for AI agents too. If your website works seamlessly with a screen reader today, it’s already on the path to being AI-agent-friendly tomorrow. Both users with disabilities and AI systems rely on clear, accessible structures to navigate your site. 2️⃣ Accessibility drives revenue. Improving accessibility has been shown to increase revenue by unlocking a larger audience and building trust. This isn’t just about compliance—it’s a competitive advantage. 3️⃣ It enhances the user experience for everyone. A site designed with accessibility in mind improves satisfaction and loyalty for all users. It’s better for people, better for AI, and better for your bottom line. This isn’t just a “nice-to-have”—it’s a must-have. 👉 Nagarro has developed a free Website Accessibility Checker to help assess and improve your site’s accessibility. This tool can identify areas that need enhancement, ensuring your website is both user-friendly and AI-ready: https://lnkd.in/dSWR4quU By focusing on accessibility, you’re not just preparing for the future of AI—you’re creating a more inclusive, impactful, and profitable website today.

Question: If you had a bad experience with a company or product, would you buy from them again? The answer is "no" right? For disabled people, 75-80% of customer experiences are failures. That means that 75-80% of transactions for our community aren't repeated. That's pretty bad right? The impact of a negative experience resonates far beyond a single transaction. It can influence a customer's decision-making process and brand loyalty for the long term. In striving for improvement, businesses must recognise the importance of inclusivity and accessibility. By investing in accessible design, empathetic customer service, and continuous feedback loops, we can create an environment where every customer feels valued and understood. Here are some actionable steps to enhance the customer experience for everyone: * Prioritise accessibility: Ensure your physical and digital spaces are accessible to disabled people. This includes wheelchair ramps, accessible websites, and accommodating customer service practices. * Educate your team: Educate your staff to the diverse needs of customers. Training programmes that emphasise empathy and understanding can go a long way in fostering a positive and inclusive customer experience. * Feedback mechanisms: Establish channels for customers to provide feedback easily. Actively seek input from disabled people to understand our unique challenges and implement necessary improvements. * Adopt universal design: From product packaging to online interfaces, adopt a design philosophy that considers the diverse needs of all customers. Universal design benefits everyone and creates a more positive overall experience. * Transparent communication: Be transparent about your commitment to inclusivity. Communicate the steps you are taking to improve accessibility, both internally and externally. This fosters trust and demonstrates your dedication to positive customer experiences. Remember, creating a truly inclusive business environment not only improves the lives of disabled people but also enhances the overall customer experience for everyone. It's a win-win strategy that builds lasting connections and fosters brand loyalty. #InclusiveBusiness #CustomerExperience #AccessibilityMatters

If you want to transform adult social care, health, or public services more generally, stop obsessing about ‘demand management’. Start with citizen contact. Not as a call centre. Not as a cost to minimise. Not as a front door you try to keep shut. Citizen contact is the system’s main sensing organ. It’s where people tell you, in their own words, what’s going wrong. It’s also where you either build capability – or manufacture dependency. Here’s the ugly bit: most ‘managing demand’ is just delay, deflection, denial. It doesn’t reduce demand. It distorts it, shifts it around the system, and then congratulates itself for ‘handling volume’. That’s how you create repeat contact, failure demand, and collapsing trust. The better framing is simple and operational. Make the front door the place where demand turns into one of three things, quickly and well: 1 resolution (problem solved), 2 enablement (person leaves more able than when they arrived), 3 or legitimate escalation (specialist work only when it’s genuinely needed). Everything else is pinball. People bounced between teams, forms, scripts, channels, referrals, ‘signposting’. And we call it success because a spreadsheet says ‘referred onward’. A form is a conversation in slow motion. A script is a conversation under pressure. If you design either for speed, you get speed and rework. If you design for first contact resolution, you start fixing the actual system defects: confusing forms, poor signposting, broken handoffs, downstream processes that can’t deliver. And the most counterintuitive point is cybernetic: measures create purpose. - Measure average handle time and you will get short calls and repeat demand. - Measure problems solved and people enabled and you’ll get learning, redesign, and demand genuinely falling rather than being pushed elsewhere. That’s #SystemsThinking in practice, not slogans. So yes, this is ‘customer contact’. But it’s also strategy. It’s service design. It’s #publicservicereform. And it’s the most practical route I know to doing #adultsocialcare and #health differently, because it forces you to design against real demand rather than imagined processes. If your front door suddenly became your main learning system – not your main cost centre – what would you have to stop measuring, even if it made this month’s performance report look worse?

Excited to share that our latest research article, “𝐓𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞-𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐨-𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬,” has been published in the Journal of Systems and Software. This collaborative work between the University of Adelaide, Monash University, and Singapore Management University introduces 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐇𝐏𝐀, an AI-driven extension of our previously developed auto-scaler, 𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐇𝐏𝐀 (presented at the International Conference on Software Architecture ICSA 2024). ProSmart HPA not only 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 to effectively manage resource requirements but also enables 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 among microservices in resource-constrained environments. 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: - 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 25.40% vs. Smart HPA (25.73% vs. Kubernetes HPA) - 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: 28.24% vs. Smart HPA (86.43% vs. Kubernetes HPA) - 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: 25.34% vs. Smart HPA (26.73% vs. Kubernetes HPA) - 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 2.17% vs. Smart HPA (20.75% vs. Kubernetes HPA) For more insights, check out the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/gBQDQHau Grateful to A/Prof. Claudia Szabo, A/Prof. Markus Wagner and A/Prof. Christoph Treude for their invaluable insights and contributions to this work. Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Adelaide University #SoftwareEngineering #CloudComputing #AutoScaling #microservices #optimization #AI #DevOps #kubernetes #innovation

We've published the *second edition* of our Help! guidance. This now describes over 120 different support needs and reasonable adjustments that firms can make for either their disabled customers or customers in vulnerable circumstances. https://lnkd.in/eg6-PKpi The second edition contains new guidance on *transporting customers*, as well as an updated calculation of the *Purple Pound* (which is often used in discussions about the spending power of disabled households, and employed to make the case for more accessible services and products). Based on a review of what support needs and adjustments are already being made in financial services, energy, water, telecommunications, delivery, retail, and transport, the guidance brings this all *into one place* to allow firms to take the action needed. Written by a group who have been involved in work on support needs, vulnerability, and disability over the last decade, and who have given their expertise in an independent capacity, our authors are: Amy Kavanagh, Christine Tate, Dan Holloway, Edward Grant FPFS, MSc, EFP, FRSA, Dr Elizabeth Blakelock, Faith Reynolds, Jamie Evans, Jo Giles, Johnny Timpson OBE, Kevin Still, Lee Healey, Liz Brandt, Martin Coppack, Mike Adams, Peter Tutton, Steve Crabb, Steven Donovan, and Vanessa Northam With special thanks also to Paul Lamont, ACMA, James Taylor, and Tanvi Vyas MBE for their help in making different elements of the guidance possible.

In the customer experience (CX) industry, Average Handle Time (AHT) and repeat calls are two critical metrics that often have a direct impact on each other, but they represent different aspects of customer service quality. Average Handle Time (AHT): Definition:AHT measures the average time an agent spends on a customer interaction, from the moment the customer initiates contact until the issue is resolved, including time spent on hold and after-call work. Goal:Many companies aim to reduce AHT because shorter handling times often translate to operational efficiency and cost savings. However, focusing solely on reducing AHT can negatively affect service quality. Impact on CX:If agents rush through interactions to lower AHT, they may not fully resolve the customer's issue, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction. Repeat Calls: Definition:Repeat calls refer to instances where a customer has to contact support multiple times for the same issue because the problem wasn’t resolved during the initial interaction. Goal:The objective is to minimize repeat calls to improve first-call resolution (FCR), a key indicator of customer satisfaction. High repeat call rates often signal poor problem-solving or a lack of empowerment for agents to resolve complex issues. Impact on CX:A high repeat call rate can damage customer trust and satisfaction. Customers expect efficient solutions in one interaction, and having to call back increases their effort, making the overall experience less favorable. Balancing AHT and Repeat Calls: The key challenge in the CX industry is balancing AHT with minimizing repeat calls. Here’s how businesses can approach it: Focus on First-Call Resolution (FCR):Prioritise resolving the customer’s issue on the first call, even if it means allowing for longer call times. This might increase AHT in the short term but will reduce repeat calls and increase customer satisfaction. Empower Agents:Equip agents with the tools and authority to address issues more effectively. Well-trained agents can resolve issues quickly without escalating or requiring follow-up calls, improving both AHT and FCR. Quality over Quantity:While AHT is an important metric for operational efficiency, it should not come at the expense of service quality. Agents should focus on addressing the root cause of the issue, which often requires taking the necessary time to ensure a thorough resolution. Use of Technology:AI and automation tools can assist in handling repetitive tasks or simple queries, which can reduce AHT without impacting the customer’s need to call back. For more complex cases, technology can guide agents to provide better solutions. CX organizations should avoid fixating on AHT alone and instead look at it in conjunction with metrics like repeat calls and FCR. A balanced approach that prioritizes resolving customer issues efficiently and thoroughly can lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention in the long run.

Accessibility isn’t a “nice to have” — it’s the key to true inclusion. As long as Disabled and Neurodivergent customers Can’t access products, services, or workplaces We still have a long way to go. The DWP’s latest Private Sector Accessibility report makes that crystal clear. From 1,545 disabled people surveyed: 56% said banking services are inaccessible Barriers appear across retail, hospitality, beauty, tech and more. Challenges exist at every stage of the customer journey From researching to purchasing to actually using the product/service. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: We often think we’re being accessible But too much of accessibility is still designed by non-disabled people With no lived experience. Products pass compliance checks yet fail in real-world use. And when disabled consumers are shut out It’s not just unjust — it’s a huge commercial lost opportunity. The UK Purple Pound—the spending power of disabled households Is worth £274 billion a year to UK businesses (≈ $340bn). That’s on par with economies like Chile ($344bn) and Czechia($360bn). Would you ignore them? The Global Purple Spending Power is even more staggering! Estimated at over $13 trillion annually. If it were an economy, it would be the third-largest in the world Just after the USA and China! What’s needed: -Mandatory accessibility standards -Co-design with disabled people from day one: Not as an afterthought -Accessible environments (digital & physical) baked in from the start -Accountability & training at every touchpoint -Accessibility designed without lived experience isn’t accessibility; It’s guesswork. If we want true inclusion, we must build it with the people it’s for. I’m still staggered that so many organisations haven’t woken up to the sheer -Scale -And profitability Of this consumer market. The potential is huge. The time to act is now. #Accessibility #DisabilityInclusion #CustomerExperience #CoDesign #PurplePound #BusinessCase IMAGE ID: FIRST SLIDE: TEXT:Can you afford to ignore the world's 3rd largest economy? USA $27 Trillion, image of american flag, image of chinese flag China $17 Trillion, purple circle with wheelchair to symbolise global spending power of disabled consumers $13Trillion. 2nd Slide: Text: IF the UK purple pound were a country, it would rival Chile or Czechia. £274 Billion, would you choose to ignore them? Three circles with the flags of Chile, Czechia and the UK Purple Pound.