Workforce Management Featured Article
4 Easy Ways to Drive Customer Experience
While the customer experience is always a priority, it’s more than just a phrase thrown around to make management and customers feel good. It should be a part of the overall culture to ensure your operations are doing what they are designed to do – protect the customer base and enable it to grow.
Workforce management solutions provider, Monet Software (News - Alert) is well-versed in the processes, policies and technologies that need to be in place in the call center to drive success. The company recently published a blog on this topic, focusing on the automotive industry and asking the question: What steps are involved in your automotive call center before the phone rings?
Here is a synopsis of the top four ways to establish policies that can boost customer service and how workforce management can help.
Goal Setting – it’s always a good idea to know where you want to go, but you need to be specific when you set your goals. Simply stating that you want to improve customer service or improve your training is not enough. You need to establish clear objectives, such as you want to improve customer feedback by 25 percent through improved call handle times. Then, establish exactly how you’re going to improve your call handle times.
Training – every call center makes grand statements about their training, the need to train agents according to products, customer service goals, etc. To truly drive improvements in the call center, it’s critical that training is specific, measurable and ongoing. Workforce management offers a Performance Analysis component, giving managers access to reports and analysis of all agent activities. This will better position you for effective training goals.
Quarterly Goals – avoid making goals for the year that you’ll only review and evaluate once a year. Instead, focus on quarterly targets so you will soon know whether or not your efforts are working. Workforce management provides for real-time monitoring and work history data so you can easily track progress toward quarterly goals.
Agent Burnout – there’s nothing worse that burning out your agents, the ones you trust to take care of your customers. As important as they are to your operation, they are people first who have families, goals, outside interests and even holiday plans they may want to keep. Keep flexible scheduling on the table so you can help create a team more likely to be productive and provide better service.
The ultimate goal is to achieve the improve customer experience that helps set you apart from the competition. Workforce management is a great tool to help in the process, but first, focus on these four areas to get going in the right direction.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi