Call Center Management Featured Article
Contact Center Technology Returns Best Investment When Agents' Jobs Are Easier
When companies competing to succeed, particularly in the consumer market, allocate their budgets, they often send the lion’s share to marketing and sales, or advertising. Other companies sink big dollars into product and service development with the belief that the more product in the pipeline, the more profit. While it’s true that American consumers are attracted to new and shiny things, where they ultimately decide to put their money doesn’t really hinge on marketing, advertising or product development. It’s superior customer support that makes loyal, repeat customers.
“A recent survey showed that 55 percent of people stopped patronizing at least one business within the past year due to poor customer experience, even if they love the product/service the business offers,” wrote Jeanne Landau of CallFinder for Business2Community. “In fact, one bad experience can keep 40 percent of customers away from a company for two or more years. Yet it doesn’t stop there – 95 percent of customers are more likely to share bad experiences with their friends, as opposed to 87 percent of those who share good experiences.”
In other words, negative attention and publicity travels far faster and more widely than positive attention. It’s not fair, but it’s a reality that today’s company’s must deal with. A single catastrophic customer experience in the hands of a sophisticated social media user can circle the world by breakfast time, and reverberate throughout the competitive landscape. For this reason, companies would be wise to invest deeper in the customer support function. Send budget money to the contact center, pronto.
Do you have customers complaining of poor attitudes in your customer support experience? Use call recording and analytics technology to find these people and either retrain them or replace them. Are customers waiting on hold for a long time? It’s time to adjust workforce management and scheduling and learn from your mistakes. Are customers repeating themselves or receiving bad information? Time to streamline the agent desktop process and revamp the knowledge bases. Are agents giving customers different information based on which communications channel they choose? Are they failing at serving customers who use a combination of channels? Time to rip out the contact center foundation and replace it with an inherently omnichannel one. And while it’s helpful to ask customers about their experiences in order to diagnose problems, it’s a great idea to start with your agents: chances are, they already know exactly what’s wrong, and feel like they’ve been complaining into a vacuum.
“A call center needs to have the right technology to provide customers with superior service, but many of today’s call centers lack such means,” wrote Landau. “In fact, 71 percent of call center agents interviewed reported system complications and inefficient tools to help solve their customers’ problems, leading to frustrations on both ends. Agents are on the front lines with customers every day; having them use outdated, useless technology is like sending today’s soldiers into battle with muskets and bayonets.”
By providing agents with the right tools – and yes, it’s going to cost money – they’ll feel better prepared to help solve customer problems. Agents armed with the right technology and some authority to go off-the-script to please customers are a competitive force to be reckoned with. Not only will a properly equipped and managed contact center improve customer loyalty, it can also go a long way toward improving agent loyalty and employee satisfaction.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi