Quality customer journeys drive quality agent journeys.
How, through hiring, training and culture, can the contact center create great agent experiences? It all starts with a focus on creating quality customer experiences. The closer an agent is to understanding and delivering the contact center’s envisioned customer journey—driven by consistent quality experiences—the closer he or she is to experiencing his or her own quality journey.
Speed to Hire and Time to Efficiency
Perhaps the biggest challenge contact centers face in creating quality agent journeys aligned to customer journeys is making agents proficient as possible as fast as possible. Speed to hire and time to efficiency are difficult, especially given contact center complexity and the sheer amount of knowledge transfer required. But when a contact center knows the journey it wants to give to the customer, it can use technology to train and guide the agent through that desired journey and accelerate the overall process.
For example, agent proficiency can be improved faster with tools like speech and text analytics. These technologies can hear or see what is being said or chatted and direct agents to the right information the customer needs, and to training he or she needs. Intended customer and agent experiences are achieved.
The goal is to provide the highest possible quality customer experience and to deliver it consistently in every call. In this analytics scenario, the contact center is providing real-time, specific, and personalized experiences to both the customer and the agent. Teaching the agent the experience you want them to portray gives them a consistent, quality experience and accelerates their time to proficiency and efficiency.
Intelligently integrated workforce optimization (WFO) tools that reskill agents on the fly and direct certain call types to certain agents are very powerful. Matching the right customer to right agent improves the quality of the customer and the agent experience. And, once you measure the agent through tools like QA and Voice of the Customer, performance feedback is based on the actual customer experience and becomes even more personalized.
Hiring and Career Pathing
Standards and processes used to recruit the best candidates should also reflect your envisioned quality customer journey. Career pathing is important. My experience is that most contact center agents view the role as a stepping stone to learn and become a specialist in a particular field. Most agents don’t want to be agents forever. I was an agent for CompuServe because I wanted to get into the field of technology. I did it for less than a year, became a supervisor, and then kept moving up the ladder.
Demonstrate a future growth path at hiring, and continue to train along this proficiency path. The particular path is highly variable depending on the type of contact center, which may range from an outsourcer to a captive call center. And, different industries require different proficiencies—banking is a different world with different requirements than, say, technical support. But candidates for each industry may be looking to build skills and associations within that particular industry.
Gamification
The goal, again, is to deliver a consistent quality customer experience. Creating an environment in which agents act and behave the same way is key. At the same time, it’s advantageous to create a motivating environment. That’s why I am a big fan of gamification. It helps agents thrive as individuals and have some fun while meeting organizational needs.
Gamification creates friendly completion around key metrics such as QA score and handle time. And it allows for customized badges and recognition. Gamification is exciting because it lets agents dictate what games they play; it brings in the individual while also making uniform experiences and the overall culture fun.
Culture
A company and its leaders set the overall culture and tone. Create an environment where agents can integrate that culture into their own personalized experience, and make it fun for the entire contact center. Embrace company culture and help agents portray the brand to customers.
For example, think about Apple and Trader Joe’s. Each company builds a culture and sets the tone to the market. Apple portrays a simple and elegant experience, and they expect their service team to do the same. Trader Joe’s aims to create a shopping experience that reflects a relaxed attitude and lifestyle, so they encourage store employees to wear Hawaiian shirts and strike up conversations with shoppers. Another example is athletic retailer New Balance. When you walk through their contact centers, walls of shoes on display surround you.
Give your agents an easy way to access or use your products. Build the product or service into their personal experiences. Apple agents use Apple products; New Balance agents have access to and wear the shoes. Contact centers are very successful when they are part of the company and living the culture.
Passion
My final thought it this: passion. During the hiring and interviewing process, find the most passionate people you can. Ask candidates questions like: What brings you here? What do you know about the brand? What do you like about the brand? If you want to have successful experiences with agents by way of successful experiences with customers, find agents who are passionate about your industry and your brand.