Today’s contact center leaders are measured on how they move the needle on customer experience (CX). It probably ranks as the #1 KPI in today’s customer centric contact enters. There is a heavy focus on understanding the customer profiles, the complex journeys they undertake across channels and gleaning multiple customer satisfaction surveys. But best-in-class CX strategies do not rest entirely on strategies for customers themselves – they are only part of the equation. Equally important are the experience of contact center agents, who sit in the front line, engage with customers every single day and deliver exceptional experience.
If agents don’t have the tools and training to be the best resources to customers, how can customer experience (CX) be effective?
Our webinar on ‘3 Ways Agent Experience is Boosting Customer Experience’, touched upon the key aspects of agent experience that directly impact CX. Here is a recap of key learnings and point of view on some of the questions raised in the webinar.
Give your agents best-in-class tools and deliver faster service
Giving agents the best tools will make them much more efficient and give them the speed to solve customer issues. That is a big win especially given the #1 motivation for agents is helping customers and #1 challenge is navigating disparate tools.
The questions that some companies face is - what type of tools do I integrate? The first one would be channels, integrating multiple channels into one desktop giving agents the ability to pivot to the channel that best resolves issues.
Next comes key enterprise applications like CRM that get the customer context and UCaaS that can enable interacting with any expert within the company and solve the problem at hand, the first time. Next would be other key applications on Workforce Optimization that can enable easy access to training and coaching or performance in one single desktop. Following that would be several CX and digital experience tools that provide an ability to see the entire customer journey and customer analytics.
Get agents time to focus on trainings that matter, ones that can solve the most complex issues
There is very less time for ongoing training over 50% get less than 2 hrs of training and onboarding doesn’t focus on core customer service skills. So, we need to get time for the most impactful training – being smart and identifying the right agent skill gap with analytics on quality management and closing it. Another option is to get creative with administering bite sized training during lulls in the same integrated desktop.
Where have we seen an increase in skill set requirements in the last 5 years where the skill set has evolved ? The biggest is in omnichannel world. Universal agents of today are expected to not only learn newer tools and processes related to newer channels, but also manage multiple concurrent transactions across customers. We see that as a key challenge for a lot of companies today.
Get more consistency in your service by providing transparent and aligned agent goals
Agents get motivated when they have a clear and transparent goal that aligns to the overall organizational goals. That is #1 factor when it comes to engagement levels.
During the webinar we were asked,what do you recommend to keep the culture in a call center positive? Together with this transparent environment try to boost team based collaboration through fair and transparent approaches like gamification and include personalized incentives for each team member that could be a winning formula.
Get your agents the speed, skills and focus to deliver exceptional customer service. Learn more about this topic by listening to our webinar ‘3 Ways Agent Experience is Boosting Customer Experience’.
