Is your center providing your customers with the same service you and your staff expect when they contact someone else?
How do you go about finding the answers to this question?
Meet with senior management of all departments that interact with your center and ask them how they and your center are fulfilling company strategies and vision/mission.
Keep in mind customers want to do business with you because you have the product or service they need and...
- You are easy to do business with.
- They trust you.
- You “keep in touch” in a timely manner.
My suggestion is to implement a task force whose charter would be to develop a “Get Back to Basics” document and roadmap. They will detail the purpose of your center, how it influences what consumers and your staff expect, adherence to the company strategy and mission/vision, and identify what needs to be done to correct shortcomings.
You will be faced with a monumental task of pleasing everyone. However, remember slow and steady wins the race and you just cannot please everyone.
...implement a task force whose charter would be to develop a “Get Back to Basics” document and roadmap.
The following are simple statements, yet they are instrumental in finding the answers to the question.
- Corporate philosophy: budgets, ROI, service standards, productivity, performance evaluation.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): voice of the customer (VOC), retention, loyalty, marketing, brand equity, sales, customer invoicing and payments, inventory management, customer care and support.
- Human Resources (HR): hiring, training, coaching, continuous training, soft skills training, forecasting, workforce management.
- Processes that support all you do.
- Technology: Digital transformation strategy that makes it easy for staff and customers to use and obtain what they need.
For this article, I plan to concentrate on CRM’s VOC and HR’s soft skills agent training.
CRM’s VOC
CRM isn’t a one-size-fits-all phenomenon: it is a strategy. You should always try to tailor your products and services to what your customers want and expect. This translates to the commonly used phrase Voice of the Customer (VOC).
You can collect VOC data in real time, post-experience, or through social channels.
- Real time: this is done through artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning, IVR, IVA, chatbots, text, email, and fax analytics, mobile integration, face-to-face interactions, videos, Internet of Things (IOT), translation between languages (voice and website), employee dispatching, focus groups, and contact center software.
- Post-experience: email and paper surveys, website messages, webchat, mobile, telephone surveys, and live-agent collection.
- Social: turn to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google, YouTube for good or bad comments on your pages.
...always try to tailor your products and services to what your customers want and expect.
To properly serve your customers, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- What percentage of customers does our company lose each year?
- What percentage of customers have been with our company for one year, two years, five years, or more?
- Are retention trends changing?
- What are the top five reasons our customers leave?
- What are our customers’ main service expectations?
- Do we know the lifetime value of a customer?
- How much does a customer buy during a typical transaction?
- In the last three months, have we contacted at least five customers to find out why they left?
- Have we mailed, yes “snail mailed,” a personal thank you note for being our customer?
Remember, your contact center is the most customer (internal and external) focused area in your organization and it is where:
- Centralized conversations/interactions take place.
- The VOC is amplified.
- The data captured is significant.
Regardless of a customer’s touchpoint, there should be no point of failure or frustration.
You should “think like a customer” (my mantra advice to clients) when developing products, services, and marketing campaigns. So you can help your staff create, cultivate, and retain customer relationships.
According to Pareto’s Law, 20% of your customers, regardless of the industry, will typically give you 80% of your sales and profits. Identifying these higher- and lower-performance customers — and aligning investment strategies commensurate with value — is critical to knowing who your customers are.
Regardless of a customer’s touchpoint, there should be no point of failure or frustration.
HR’S Soft Skills Training
Be sure your agents are engaged and not suffering from “Quiet Quitting Syndrome.”
To ensure your agents have what they need begins with a solid training and monitoring program that is based on quality not quantity.
When your staff interacts with a customer, their voice and words used express a positive, negative, or “I really don’t care” attitude. First impressions are lasting impressions, and they only have nine seconds to do it!
Here are a few questions to ask your agents that will ensure if they are providing empathy to your customers:
- Do I put a smile in my voice?
- Do I make it a point of never sounding impatient?
- Do I speak slowly and distinctly?
- Do I always identify myself early in the interaction?
- Do I keep calm when dealing with an irate customer?
- Do I maintain a friendly yet professional tone of voice?
- Do I try to convey a feeling that the customer is always right?
- Do I end my conversations in a positive?
Here are few examples of words to use:
- Don’t say “You have to.” Instead, teach “Would you please.”
- Don’t say “I’ll try.” Instead, teach “I will have to find out and call you back.”
- Don’t say “but.” Instead, teach “however.”
- Don’t say “it is against our policy.” Instead, teach “it is our procedure not to.”
- Don’t say “I will try to get back to you later this week.” Instead, teach “I will call you Friday morning at 11.” OR “I will contact you on Friday between the hours of (x to x).”
To ensure your agents have what they need begins with a solid training and monitoring program that is based on quality not quantity.
Agents must be taught:
- How to power talk or write for results.
- To service the caller on hold periodically.
- How to control and diffuse an angry customer.
- How to create the solution.
- Active listening and communication techniques to create rapport and empathy.
- To always use PLEASE and THANK YOU.
- To use the “HOLD button: fingers covering the headset mic doesn’t work.
There are seven “deadly sins” your staff must avoid:
- Ignoring the customers.
- Hiding behind their job descriptions.
- “Passing the Buck” to another department.
- Blaming the customers.
- Trying to prove they are right, and the customers are wrong.
- Talking to customers as if they are all the same.
- Assuming all problems that sound the same have the same solution.
The task force should interview marketing staff and your center’s supervisors, team leads, quality analysts, trainers, and senior and new-hire agents to determine how you execute VOC requirements and soft skills training.
They should identify what you do well and solutions for changes required. You are now one step closer to answering my question.
Employees want to work for you because they are paid well, well-trained, appreciated, listened to, promoted, mentored, and challenged. Complying with all of these will directly influence how your customers are delighted and satisfied with your company.