It takes many things to make a happy customer.
Of course, the product has to be top quality.
But service is right up there too.
That’s because today’s customer is a discerning, ruthless animal capable of switching loyalty fast if their experience is sub-par.
Nowhere is that critical tipping point more at play than in the contact center.
It’s where brands do much of their actual business: where the messaging and the marketing meet the real-life customer.
Making a purchase, seeking information, needing support, or returning an unwanted item: whatever the reason for the interaction, get it even slightly wrong and that customer may be lost forever.
It’s why the smarter organisations see their contact center agents as a vital link in the profit generation chain, not simply a component of the wider support operation.
And it’s why paying close attention to the issues which most affect their productivity is a strategy which can deliver big.
Here, Mike Winslow, Product Marketing Manager at global cloud communications provider Plivo, flags the top five – all of which its sister product Contacto, a modern cloud contact center solution, has the power to address…
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Swivel Chair/System Hopping
“The average agent has to switch between four and 10 different systems each time they interact with a customer. CRM, order management, product information database, returns, marketing – the list can go on and on. Agents get fatigued by all that flipping around but more importantly they also sense the customer’s frustration on the other end. It’s disjointed and clunky and causes delay. People have become used to the unified nature of their personal communications – slick apps and the joined-up nature of smartphone functionality. Agents want that experience in their professional life too. Integration is the answer; enabling agents to go wherever they need to go within an organisation’s systems, but with access from one single platform. What is seamless for an agent is also seamless for the customer.”
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Simple User Interface
“There’s a lot to be said for elegant UI design and how that correlates with the way an agent handles an interaction. Feature-bloat and poor information architecture can really have a negative impact. It’s made worse if the agent is operating in a complex domain where the products or solutions concerned are highly technical and there is a need to open additional windows or refer to a library or database. Minimizing a tab or pane needs to be super-easy in order to make the experience as smooth as possible. Agents hate not being able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Also, a screen that is over-populated and very busy is not easy on the eye. It’s about clearing the noise.”
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Team Lead Reporting
“The contact center is keen on several metrics – call volumes, wait times, handling times, agent utilization. These can significantly influence productivity and, in turn, profitability. If an organisation is not measuring that stuff, they don’t know what’s going on. And you can’t improve what you don’t know. In some extreme cases some agents look to game the system where they can; showing themselves as unavailable or idle or out to lunch while at their station. Conversely, some agents perform really well when handling certain types of enquiries. For team leads, that kind of insight can be critical to delivering on SLAs and diverting the right agents to the right tasks. Those agents then become specialists and get added job satisfaction. There is also added value to the wider business as that kind of data can help in the re-design of workflows and reduce staffing and overhead. Organisations need a system with reporting they can rely on to provide that kind of visibility.”
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Linking Contact Enquiries
“There’s nothing worse for the agent – and the customer – than having to repeat processes each time a related interaction occurs. They want to be able to see instantly that a caller has called before about the same or a related issue. At the very least, they want the system to recognise the customer and to display some basic information about them such as their name, mobile, or email. It’s about constant context; knowing what the customer is calling about or at least when they called last. It’s great when a brand that you like knows you to a degree that’s not creepy. It makes you feel valued and that you have a connection. From the agent’s perspective, they feel like they have a kind of superpower: that they can see who is calling – and perhaps why – before the interaction begins and, at the VERY least, they can say hello to a caller by their name without having to ask for it.”
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Routing & Automation
“Your agents WILL have an opinion on workflow branches and logic – so leverage that as an asset to improve efficiency. This component of your contact center platform is not just the reserve of system admins and configuration analysts. Fast, self-service workflows are good for low-cognitive inquiries, resulting in quicker resolution times for customers, and agents being relieved of the more mundane. That means the higher-cognitive, more complex inquiries can be routed to live agents, elevating the quality of the interaction. People still like the human touch if they have a particularly tricky issue, improving short-term transactional customer satisfaction and long-term relational loyalty.”
In this modern, new age of omni-channel, 24/7 communication, it seems it pays to give the call center agent everything they need to be the best they can
Do that, and it’s likely to serve everyone well…
- To learn how Plivo and its Contacto solution can help your and your customers’ businesses deliver improved service, visit www.contacto.com
