Call scripting is one of the key elements that shape customer interactions, and depending on your use case, the script can make or break conversion or retention. Outbound contact centres rely hugely on scripts to guide prospects through the interest-desire-action journey. In inbound environments, scripts help to tackle thorny situations, where a customer raises an unexpected problem or grievance.
Whatever your use case may be, ensuring script adherence is a top priority for any contact centre, central to its performance as well as operational compliance.
What is Script Adherence in a Contact Centre?
Script adherence can be defined as the degree to which an agent sticks to a predetermined conversation script when interacting with a customer, meeting essential checklist components. If there are 10 must-say words/phrases on the call scripting checklist, and the agent mentions 8 of them during a conversation, then you can consider the agent’s script adherence rate to be approximately 80%.
In a real-world scenario, measuring script adherence is slightly more complex as there are myriad scenarios with myriad different scripts, and every interaction is unique in its own way. 100% script adherence every single time isn’t possible – or even recommended. Fortunately, contact centre software can help you monitor interactions, evaluate their outcomes, determine an acceptable adherence threshold, and score agents accordingly.
5 Tips for Ensuring Script Adherence in Your Contact Centre
Frequent script violations can lead to an inconsistent customer experience, across multiple contact centre hubs, as the teams are led by and trained by different people. In extreme cases, it could even lead to non-compliance – e.g., if the agent fails to obtain customer consent for call recording. You can prevent such risks by ensuring script adherence:
- Analyse call records for errors – A voice analytics solution can evaluate pre-recorded interactions and spot instances where the agent diverged from their preset script. Use these examples to train agents and bring about incremental improvements
- Adopt dynamic scripting – Dynamic scripting is a technology that auto-populates empty fields in a script with new information based on the ongoing interactions. The agent can read out from the newly updated script while being guided in a different direction as per incoming data
- Use voice analytics to follow-up on violations – If an agent missed out on a specific keyword or conversation point, use voice analytics to detect it, in near-real-time and follow-up immediately while the lead is still warm
- Measure the ROI of adherence – Script adherence should be getting you measurable returns – otherwise, you might need to revisit your call centre scripts. Map conversion, CSAT, NPS, etc., for calls adhering to scripts and those in violation, measuring if your scripts are driving the expected business outcomes
- Leverage technology integrations and not recall – Traditionally, contact centres urged agents to memorise scripts for various scenarios. But modern contact centre software lets you integrate scripts with agent assist technology, leaving your employee free to focus on in-the-moment personalisation and empathy, without diverging from the script
Finally, explore tools that pre-record specific conversation sections so that agents can playback a portion of the script (with customer consent), dramatically increasing adherence rates.
