Call Center Management Featured Article
Contact Centers: Hardware and Software Are Important - But So is 'Wetware'
So you’re a contact center manager. You’ve hired new workers, and explained what you expect of them. You’ve trained the on your organization’s support solutions, telephone system and knowledge bases. You’ve introduced them to the script. They’re ready to go, right?
Wrong, probably.
Most contact centers have a limited amount of time – they usually wear a dizzying variety of hats – so it’s frequently the “hard skills” that are emphasized. In reality, however, it’s the “soft skills” such as empathy, using language effectively, listening, staying positive and helping customers feel valued that will really cause an agent to succeed. According to Blake Morgan writing for Forbes, effective employees must be able to make decisions about things they sometimes have little knowledge about—or something that is not a frequently asked question. There is direct evidence that employees with soft skills training can sell more, raise the quality of customer relationships and keep customers loyal.
“Don’t think for one second your customer service agents aren’t part of the sales process,” wrote Morgan. “Every single experience, every single touch point, and every single conversation the customer has with your company—has an impact on how that customer views your company. Every interaction that customer is deciding two things: if they ever want to work with you again, if they would recommend you to anyone else.”
Harvard Business Review has theorized that while both hardware and software are important to the customer support process, it’s “wetware,” or human beings, that are the most vital asset. How you recruit and train your agents, and how you continue to coach them and offer remedial or additional training, will dictate whether your organization succeeds or fails in the customer support department. This is particularly vital in the omnichannel era, when agents may be called upon to communicate in a wide variety of communications channel both written and spoken, formal and informal.
“With both mobile and social, the pressure is on companies to communicate well with less word count,” wrote Morgan. “Not only can word counts be limiting, but language is key. Agents need to be good at understanding cultural nuance, the context of the customer question, and knowing how to translate internal jargon and acronyms externally into easy to understand information.”
Imagine an agent is reading a script to a customer, and the customer interrupts and says, “I don’t understand what you’re saying to me. Can you explain it in another way?” If you don’t have agents capable of doing that, you’ve probably lost the customer and the potential sale. This is a particularly important point when agents are serving customers from a different culture. According to Morgan, finding people with strong and diverse skills may require that they be interviewed by a more diverse array of managers.
“If HR and the hiring manager are the only people talking to this prospective employee—it’s likely the decision on the candidate will be biased,” she wrote. “However if you have the candidate chat with a few different types of people, the decision will be better because more people had a chance to test the people skills of this person.”
Confidence is important in agents, but so is empathy and listening. Adaptability and even playfulness (within reason) can be assets in the contact center. By building a culture where agents aren’t afraid to be themselves (again, within reason), companies can build a more friendly, relaxed and effective workforce for their customers.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi