Call Center Management Featured Article
The Quality of the Customer Experience Is Determined by Agent Attitude and Awareness
If there’s one overriding secret to providing great customer service, no one has found it yet, despite what you may read in “get ahead in business” presentations offered by self-appointed gurus who will charge you a high price to share their “secret.” Customer excellence is like a well-oiled clock: it has many moving parts, and it’s critical that they all work in synchronous harmony. If one part breaks down – a great infrastructure but a bad agent, or vice-versa – the whole process is negatively affected. That said, if you’ve changed your technologies, evaluated the customer journey for roadblocks, hired the right people and analyzed the heck out of your whole process and your customers are still unhappy, it’s time to help agents understand that even small mistakes on their part can kill the customer experience.
In a recent article for Business Savannah, Jim Porter recommends some points of awareness that should be built into the workforce of the average contact center.
Be aware. Each time an agent interacts with a customer, he or she should keep in mind that actions, either positive or negative, will be what sends the customer interaction in a positive or negative direction. The agent should ask herself, “Has this customer been on hold a long time? If so, he has a right to be annoyed. Has this customer called before on this same issue? I need to do everything possible to ensure he hangs up happy. Has this person been a customer a long time? If so, I need to get my manager on board so we can go above and beyond to keep him.”
Train agents to evaluate the quality of the interaction as they work with each customer, and treat agents precisely how they would like to be treated by a company.
Keep the attitude positive. Everybody had bad days now and then, but it’s vital that agents don’t let customers pick up on this, wrote Porter.
“A distracted comment. A disinterested nod. I have found that customers are really quick at picking up on you not giving your best effort,” he wrote. “Some days, no matter how good a game face you put on, you are just not giving customers your best, and they know it. Better to find a way to be less visible and be great at customer service another day.”
If an agent is having a bad day – he has a sick child at home, for example, and is sleep-deprived – consider finding a way to keep that agent off the phones and onto e-mail, where mood is less likely to be communicated to customers. In the long run, it helps to hire agents who are sunny, chirpy people by nature.
Help agents understand the impact. On a day-to-day basis, agents may not really believe that their actions make a big difference in the success of the company. Consider making a short presentation to agents and demonstrate that a single customer interaction is like a dominoes set-up: small actions create larger reactions, and a single wrong step can kill what would have otherwise been a profitable relationship.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi