Workforce Management Featured Article
Contact Center Agents Support Efforts to Measure Support by Quality and Not Quantity
Companies today spend a lot of time and money measuring how their customer experience efforts are faring. They sink substantial money into customer support, it makes sense they would want a way to measure their return on investment. In an effort to build an omnichannel support environment, many companies are rushing to get the processes to customers, and it can be hard to determine which channels are working and why, and which channels aren’t. This is where research and feedback from customers comes in.
Surveying customers, while important, is expensive and time-consuming, and customers aren’t experts about the business of customer support. The people who ARE experts at customer support – the agents themselves – are often overlooked in this grand quest to qualify and quantify the customer experience. In addition, metrics that measure contact center cost controls and efficiency such as average handle time (AHT) aren’t necessarily measuring the quality of support being offered, according to a recent blog post by Monet Software (News - Alert) CEO Chuck Ciarlo, who discussed the results of a survey of more than 250 contact center agents.
“Agents are certainly aware of the importance managers place on KPIs [key performance indicators] like average handle time – but sometimes that leads to a choice between wrapping up a call more quickly and making sure the customer is happy,” wrote Ciarlo. “While nearly 40 percent of agents surveyed said they tried to complete calls in 5-10 minutes, 32 percent replied that effective problem solving may take longer, so they’ll take 15 minutes if necessary.”
Agents are particularly aware of the drain that waiting on hold creates for a customer relationship. Before the agent has even started communicating with the customer, he or she is already aggravated and sometimes hostile by the time a live agent is available. For this reason, many contact center agents say they support more advanced technologies such as virtual queuing.
“No one likes to be placed on hold, which is why 81 percent of agents support virtual queuing that allows customers to call back at a time when they will receive immediate agent access,” wrote Ciarlo. “However, some expressed concern that customers may neglect to call back at the right time, which can result in more frustration.”
Managers often treat contact center agents like commodities: one agent is much like another. The truth is that most call center agents actually want to do a good job. Being able to truly help customers is fulfilling (particularly for those with a real flair for customer support), and metrics designed only to save money in the short-term often get in the way of their ability to do their job.
Before you begin a quest for quantifying and qualifying the customer experience, start with your agents. Ask them what they believe makes a great customer support interaction, and let them share with you what they think the roadblocks to achieving this goal are. By de-emphasizing the “time” factor a little, you can easily boost the quality factor. Using technologies such as virtual hold can help space out contact center traffic in a way that allows agents to take a little extra time and be certain each customer is satisfied before he or she hangs up.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi