3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

Most contact centers measure something. It might be average handle time, it might be service levels, or it might be something else. Generally, however, companies measure things that are important to contact center…not the customer. Customers don’t care about average handle time; they simply want their problems solved.

To ensure consistent excellence in customer service quality, companies would be better served to measure “softer” outcomes, such as customer satisfaction and voice of the customer. Of course, it’s not as easy as measuring average handle time. That’s why it’s so critical.

UK-based customer engagement specialist Rapide recently released a list of best practices for measuring the voice of the customer, an increasingly critical metric that involves listening to what customers say and extrapolating that information into actionable intelligence. Three of the most critical tips include:

Combine hard metrics with softer human insights. While companies should still measure internal metrics such as AHT, completion rates, etc., they need to add customer experience measurements. This might involve recording customer calls and listening to them later, monitoring live calls or using analytics solutions to mine data. For many companies, this is best accomplished with the help of a third-party call quality monitoring service provider, such as BPA Quality, which has the expertise and solutions to turn customer noise into actionable data.

Give customers a choice of channel. Trying to herd customers into the channels that are convenient for you won’t work. Customers will have a variety of communication preferences, and it’s critical that each channel be serviced in a universal queue so you can ensure that some customer contacts aren’t falling by the wayside. The same goes for leaving feedback: The more channels you add, the better the information you can gather.

Anticipate customers’ needs. If you’ve gotten to know your customer via a voice of the customer program, chances are pretty good you’ll be better positioned to understand what your customers needs. By providing it even before the customer asks, you can reduce the pressure on the contact center and raise the likelihood of upselling and cross-selling, not to mention impressing the customer enough to win his or her loyalty. By doing this customer outreach through less expensive channels such as e-mail, text or recorded outbound voice, you can move the customer relationship along well while saving money.

A well designed voice of the customer program can erase a number of the biggest barriers to providing excellent customer service today. While many companies tell their customers how they operate, too few allow their customers to tell them how they’d like to operate. At this juncture, it’s critical to remember that the contact center exists for the customers, not the other way around.