According to 2020 Zendesk research, the most important aspect of good service is that customers can resolve their queries quickly.
Of course, website navigation, self-service, and proactive messaging have a significant role. However, once a customer reaches the contact center, quick resolutions primarily hinge on agent knowledge.
Again, other factors – including wait time – play their part. Yet, limited agent knowledge will only prolong queues as handling times increase, escalating costs in the process.
Therefore, by improving agent knowledge, contact centers not only bolster customer satisfaction but also cut costs and drive efficiency.
Contact centers have two options to achieve this: enhance their coaching program or improve the knowledge sources that rest at the disposal of agents.
Focusing on the second, here are three suggestions for refining contact center content, upgrading agent knowledge, and creating better customer experiences.
1. Review Contact Centre Scripting
A good script – which is mindful of customer expectations, factors in quick agent comprehension, and can adapt to various customer responses – is every agent’s secret weapon.
However, when contact centers fail to review their scripts, agents often create their own. Unapproved, these can lead customers down the wrong path and create dissatisfaction.
If this is the case, purge all agents’ private libraries, and review their scripts. In doing so, contact centers can remove troubling practices while also identifying some crafty new ways of working.
Build these into the updated scripts and follow further best practices. These may include removing jargon, using short sentences, and sticking to closed questions to keep the conversation “on-script”.
2. Tailor Training Content to Different Learning Styles
Training support materials are often generic. However, if coaches understand how their agents learn best, they can tailor content to meet these personal preferences.
Naturally, doing so on an individual basis is unrealistic. Yet, by creating auditory, visual, and read and write style support guides, contact centers can customize materials to meet a range of learning styles.
Also, the contact center can increase agent enthusiasm for learning fresh ideas, understanding the latest products/services, and getting to grips with new workflows.
3. Develop a Process for Creating Knowledge Articles
Knowledge articles sit inside the contact center knowledge base. Agents then delve in to find helpful information when solving tricky queries.
Yet, this knowledge often suffers from poor management. Unhelpful articles get in the way of the most crucial snippets of advice, information becomes outdated, and sometimes insights create confusion.
So, review knowledge base content, cut it back to leave only the bare bones of completing a task, and if agents need more information, they can click elsewhere.
Next, develop a style guide, so new content is easy to understand. Then, include agents in creating knowledge articles, following that style guide. After all, it is the people who take calls every day who will likely know how to best handle them.
Final Tips for Leveraging Better Contact Center Content
- Partner with an experienced copywriter when crafting content center scripts and live chat conversation flows. Instructional design experts can also help build a repository of training content.
- Explore different mediums of content for training and acknowledgement. For instance, you can have short video explainers for agent training and infographics on customer data instead of just barebones text.
- Begin with the most critical content first when reviewing knowledge base content. After all, these systems sometimes contain thousands of knowledge articles, which take time and resources to rewrite. So, start with where the contact center will get the most “bang for its buck”.
