Call Center Management Featured Article
Trust Lies at the Core of Contact Center Quality Management
Perhaps one of the most under-discussed human traits in business today is trust. It was once the foundation of business – gentleman’s agreements and handshake contracts being the norm of the nineteenth century – but today, we seem to operate in a business climate in which we believe everyone else is out to get us, and only our guarded paranoia is what can save us. While no one is recommending going back to handshake agreements when it comes to large purchases, there is a place for trust to return to the workplace, if possible. It’s sorely needed.
It might seem a little over-the-top to lay out a lot of trust in the realm of customer support, which is generally all about “covering one’s backside” and “he said, she said” conversations. (Hey, there’s a reason call recording is used so heavily in the contact center, and it’s not because everyone loves the sound of their own voices.) When it comes to interactions between bosses and workers in the contact center, however, there is far too little trust, according to Monet Software (News - Alert) CEO Chuck Ciarlo in a recent blog post.
“For contact center managers, the trust issue is also central to the agent hiring and training process,” he wrote. “These are the people engaging with your customers – what they say reflects on the entire company. There may also be additional personnel at the company, such as legal and compliance, who are cognizant of agent-customer interactions and may want to participate in reviewing recorded calls and agent scripts.”
In other words, it may not be your inclination to trust these people, so you need to hire and thoroughly train people you can develop trust in. People who are under the microscope and under suspicion all the time will never flourish in their careers. They will never take the initiative to go the extra mile. They will never earn your customers’ trust, which is critical. To bring more trust into the contact center environment, everyone needs to understand the goals they’re working toward, and the methods that should be used to achieve them.
“Trust starts when all company personnel are on the same page as to what constitutes a quality engagement – this will likely be based on traditional compliance metrics and customer service data gathered through surveys and performance management reviews,” wrote Ciarlo.
Once everyone understands the goal, it’s time to provide them with the right tools to get there. This may involve going off script on occasion: do you trust your workers to do that? It also may involve permitting some agents to work from their homes. Do you trust that they’re actually working and not watching daytime television? (Quality management and other technologies can make sure they are, which brings the old adage “Trust, but verify” into play.)
According to Ciarlo, the real key to trust is going to be regular communication between agents and managers and supervisors, and agent teams with one another. Running a contact center without trust is a futile operation: you’ll be like salmon individually trying to swim upstream. Implementing quality management across the contact center and helping agents understand how it’s used for the benefit of everyone can help, too.
“It’s important that everyone understands how quality management and customer experience are related – and this can be achieved by getting reps from all departments together for a roundtable discussion. Discuss quality, discuss trust, and figure out the best way forward,” wrote Ciarlo.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi