BPA Featured Article

Customer service is an important face of an organization. It’s where people go when they have a problem and may be frustrated and ready to jump ship. It’s also sometimes the last contact a prospect has before buying a new product or service – or paddling away if they don’t get the answers they want.

Yet many businesses don’t manage, measure, or monitor their quality of service relative to customer experience. And many of those that do record and analyze things like contact center agent performance focus on internal metrics as opposed to customer experience-related ones.

But businesses that want to give customer service more than lip service can and should use monitoring and analytics to record and analyze communications and interactions via chat, email, phone. And they should review them to decipher whether those interactions align with their company’s brand and goals.

They might also want to ask themselves the following questions:

• Are there any specific problems callers mention that could be part of a bigger trend I need to address?

• If so, how should I address them?

• Are there any specific needs they convey by using certain language, words, or phrases that I might want to explore? If so what kind of new content, products, or programs would best fit the bill?

That said, you don't have to wait for customers to reach out to your customer service team with their complaints and questions. Businesses like yours may also reach out to customers proactively to get their opinions and needs.

Ask them for input in your email outreach, following customer support interactions, and/or as part of specific voice of the customer efforts. You can use automation – and artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language automation –to support such efforts – on the front and back ends for CX too. (As an aside, we’ll be discussing how AI, ML, and NLP can be used in customer service and for business in general at the Future of Work Expo early next year. Hope you’ll join us there.)

Plus you can use quality monitoring to inform coaching, hiring, and training efforts. Remember that agent training isn’t a one-and-done effort.

Use monitoring and analytics solutions to continue learning about both the not so great and the good interactions – and share these learning opportunities with your agents and with anyone in your organization that stands to benefit from them.