It’s well known that the contact center is put in place to handle customer support. Management often looks at the number of calls handled within a certain time period, the percentage of issues resolved within first contact, the number of abandoned calls when the customer has to wait too long and the number of calls completed by an agent within a specified time period.

How many of these managers also examine call-center services to measure the satisfaction of the customer base?

For some, this step requires the implementation of measurements for Top Box (News - Alert), First Call Resolution (as a measurement of customer satisfaction, not productivity improvement for the call center) or Net-Promoter Score. For inContact, the focus is a measurement of the Customer Effort Score.

Highlighted in this inContact blog, the Customer Effort Score, or CES (News - Alert), is a measurement of the amount of effort the customer has to invest to resolve an issue, get an answer to a question or complete a transaction.

To be successful, contact center management needs to encourage agents to focus on reducing this effort as it increases the likelihood that the customer will return to the company, spend more money and share the positive experience they have had with others – preferably on social media platforms.

This approach demands a shift away from traditional contact center methods to one that demands agents not only anticipate and plan for problem resolution in the future; but also anticipate additional follow-up calls from the customer. This is a complete deviation from the First Call Resolution approach, but one that focuses on solving the problem, not rushing the customer through the process.

To develop this thought process further, inContact offers five things to focus on to reduce the customer effort and ensure ongoing success:

• While solving the current issues is key, it’s important to anticipate future problems and address them.
• Agents must be provided the necessary tools and training to ensure agents can address the emotional side of the interaction (which means the ability to go off script).
• Self-service channels should always be monitored and assessed for ongoing improvements.
• Feedback from customers should be used to reduce overall customer effort.
• Front-line agents should be empowered to deliver an experience for all customers that demands low effort.

In taking this approach to the customer experience, the contact center is making it very easy for the customer to do business with the company both now and in the future. This not only protects the customer base, it also protects future revenue opportunities.