Put Your Tech Dollars Where They'll Improve the Customer Experience
March 18, 2014
By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor
Many contact centers today may be finding that their customer satisfaction is backsliding. This could be for a lot of reasons: perhaps budget cuts have required some layoffs among agents. Perhaps the contact center’s technologies are becoming outdated. In some cases, it may not be anything the contact center is or isn’t doing: it may simply be because customer expectations have risen as Americans want to ensure they get every possible bang for their buck.
If customer satisfaction is on the decline, any company worth its salt will take steps to remedy the situation. While ensuring the contact center is properly staffed is an important step, most companies will turn to technology purchases to try to improve productivity and efficiency and boost the quality of customer care. While procuring the budget for such a move may not be easy, what will be even more difficult is determining how to allocate those precious dollars. Technology purchases can be daunting, but they shouldn’t be.
Apple’s iconic leader, the late Steve Jobs (News - Alert), once said, “Start with the customer experience first, then work backwards to the technology.”
In other words, first find out precisely why customer satisfaction is slipping. Are customers waiting on hold too long? Are they being transferred too often? Are they getting wrong answers and having to call or communicate a second time? Is their media channel of choice improperly staffed? Do they think your products, services, shipping or return policies stink? Once you have identified the precise bottlenecks, then it’s time to determine what technology will address it. Bonus points go to a contact center that can find a solution that will solve more than one problem, according to a recent article by Adele Hallsal on Business2Community.
“By simply introducing one piece of software with many uses, you’ll multiply the functionality and intuitiveness of your call center tenfold, making it not only easier for your reps, but more enjoyable and convenient for your customers,” wrote Hallsal. “At the same time, don’t be tempted to invest in lots of new technology at once without knowing how it will be of use to you.”
Which solutions can make multi-pronged improvements?
For starters, there is workforce management, which can build better schedules, eliminate expensive understaffing and overstaffing, ensure service levels are being met and eliminate or reduce hold times for customers. Secondly, there is quality monitoring, which can identify weak spots in the call center workforce, ensure training is more targeted and effective and (when coupled with analytics) lead to insight into operations that can identify areas for efficiency improvements.
Depending on the areas you have identified as the largest sources of customer satisfaction, it may be worthwhile investing in callback solutions (if customers are complaining about waiting on hold), social media monitoring (if customers are broadcasting their displeasure), a new IVR (if your old one is driving customers crazy) and other self-service solutions such as a mobile app.
While it may seem to make sense on the surface to invest in all the best and brightest new technology in the face of slipping customer satisfaction, it’s likely to be wasted money unless the contact center understands precisely where the problems are occurring. It sounds intuitive, but long experience tells us that this isn’t the case.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson