Prepping for a customer support conversation can sometimes feel like gearing up for a battle.
A friend or family member may even feel they need to offer coaching beforehand.
“Make sure you mention this, this, and this, because they won’t ask,” they might say.
Why? Because the friend-turned-CX life coach feels like they know more than the actual employees. That’s a problem. After all, customers should never feel they have to be experts on a company’s products, policies, or processes. If they do, trust is already broken.
Expecting Resistance & Customer Sludge
Ultimately, past experiences condition customers to expect resistance. That starts long before a customer reaches a service rep.
Think about chatbots that don’t resolve anything, long hold times, dropped calls, or instances where customers have to jump through hoops before they can talk to anyone.
In fact, just getting through to a human is often a customer’s biggest pain point, and all these examples are far too familiar.
Indeed, many customers refer to these incidences as “sludge.” The term has gained traction online, as many accuse brands of putting up barriers to speaking with the support team, hoping they’ll eventually give up.
Whether that’s the hope or not, these obstacles result in customers, who are prepared to go to battle, becoming even more frustrated and defensive when they eventually reach a service rep.
A Better Approach
Of course, there are reasons why contact centers put up blockers to engage with humans. They want customers to default to self-service solutions and ease the pressure on support staff.
However, to stop customers running riot, consider this five-stage approach.
1. Equip the Team
Human agents should never feel like customers know more than they do. So, train employees to be true experts and give them the tools to resolve common issues.
Agent assistance tools are popular here. But, implement them carefully and monitor continuously to ensure they deliver results. Unhelpful pop-ups will only frustrate the team.
2. Simplify Processes
Don’t design systems that force customers to over-explain, chase follow-ups, or navigate endless policies. Of course, compliance is necessary, but clear, simplified communication is key.
Instead, orchestrate the most common customer cases carefully, blending humans and AI, ensuring a smooth exit path if something goes wrong. Even better, collaborate with other departments to stop the contact coming in at all.
3. Close the Loop
Customers shouldn’t have to keep checking in. Build systems that ensure updates and follow-ups happen automatically. Otherwise, things fall through the cracks and erode trust.
Again, journey orchestration is key here with planned interventions. Yet, so too is continuous assurance, so contact centers are confident that AI communications are reaching customers.
4. Treat Every Interaction as Critical
After just one negative experience, 32 percent of customers will abandon their favorite brand, according to PWC research. That reflects how each interaction can build or destroy trust. Mediocrity in the moment can undo years of goodwill.
So, stop pressuring agents on time-based metrics, like occupancy (which, frankly, is out of their control), give them breathing space, and ensure they are set up to make a difference.
5. Keep an Ear to the Ground
Involve human reps even as agentic AI starts to make its way into the contact center. After all, they understand better than anyone where journey pain points lie. Customers tell them every day!
Yet, agents and analytics tools only give clues as to infrastructure issues, and, as AI makes the tech stack ever more complex, these problems will only become trickier to spot. That’s where Cyara comes in.
Cyara Pulse 360
Voice infrastructure, carrier networks, IVRs… contact centers need to know these elements are working as anticipated. Otherwise, journeys will break down, customers and agents will become frustrated, and contact center leaders will be left tearing their hair out.
Cyara Pulse 360 offers a solution. It continuously simulates real customer journeys and proactively identifies performance issues, spanning the core contact center infrastructure, before they affect real customers.
Going deeper, Janet Vito, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Cyara, said:
“With Pulse 360, Cyara offers a true safety net for CX leaders: complete visibility into every customer channel, real-time alerts, and automated diagnostics that help teams resolve issues quickly to assure excellent customer experiences.”
“Instead of just alerting you that an issue occurred, Pulse 360 pinpoints the problem, identifies the impact, and suggests steps to resolve it.”
“With AI anomaly detection, the more historical data you compile over time, the more Pulse 360 can alert you to potential future issues based on trending data,” concluded Vito.
To learn more about Pulse 360, visit: cyara.com
