The preamble to the United States Constitution begins, ‘we,
the people.’ I feel strongly that we,
the people, are what make the difference in life, both personally and
professionally.
The interaction anyone has at any level with your employees,
including you, gives a customer-- whether current, potential, internal or
external--an opportunity to make a judgment about you, your company, all
companies like yours. I’m not just
talking about call centres here. All
technical support or help desk personnel are included as well. As a matter of fact, anyone who is in the
customer service business period.
With a continued focus on customer satisfaction, customer
retention, and lifetime value of the customer, it is no surprise that contact centre
operations continue to increase in importance as the primary hub of a
customer’s experience. For the customer, the person on the other end of the
phone is the company. The contact centre is still the most common way that
customers get in touch with businesses.
In fact, Gartner reports 92% of all contact is through the centre. And
it’s been reported that 70% to 90% of what happens with customers is driven by
human nature, having nothing to do with technology. State of the art technology is a necessity
today, but it is meant to enable human endeavours, not to disable them.
If we’re going to speak about world-class customer service,
let’s have a working definition it so we’re all on the same page. Customer service is those activities provided
by a company’s employees that enhance the ability of a customer to realize the full potential value of a product or service before and after the sale is made,
thereby leading to satisfaction and repurchase.
Let’s look at the first W which is Why?
The state of customer service today is not good, be it over
the phone or self-service. Because 92%
of people feel their call experience is important in shaping the image of a
company, this reinforces the importance of centres in branding the image of
their companies.
In a Mobius Management Systems Survey, here’s what happened
because of poor customer service:
60%
cancelled accounts with banks
36%
changed insurance providers
40%
changed telephone companies
35%
changed credit card providers
375
changed Internet service providers
Are you one of these statistics? I certainly am.
In a study done by Purdue University and
BenchmarkPortal.com, in answer to (1) how did agents satisfy your needs and
handle the call, and (2) based on any negative experience, would you stop using
this company in the future? the findings reveal a strong correlation between
the participant’s age and the tendency to stop using the company after a bad
experience.
What does this mean?
Younger participants were less tolerant and more likely to move to the
competition. People over 65 were found
to be more demanding than those in middle age.
What can you do? Give
younger callers a ‘wow’ experience--maintain their loyalty. People over 36 probably have more of an
‘emotional bank account’ with the company they are dealing with–maybe had some
good experience and therefore are more willing to ‘forgive.’
In a study (CRM Magazine/PeopleSoft Web Seminar on How
Usability Helps to Drive a Profitable Contact Center), the number of
applications required for agents to access customer inquiries were:
3.7% just
1
81.5% 2
– 5
7.4% 5
– 10
7.4% more
than 10
As you can see, the majority of applications are 2 - 5. The goal, of course, is to link every point
of contact to one central location for a customer-centric, synchronized
approach satisfying customer experiences with every interaction.
Strategies for success for world-class service should
include:
Respond
promptly
Handle
requests through the customers’ choice of medium
Be
brief and clear
Reduce
back and forth communications (especially in writing, i.e., email, kick it up
to a phone call if it goes beyond two)
Personalized
service
Delight
the customer
What do we mean by delighting the customer?
Inform
and educate them
Establish
your expertise and professionalism
Offer
options
Diffuse
upset, anger, when and if necessary
Escalate,
if required
Take
Ownership of the call
Remember we’re still on the first W – the Why. Today’s pressures on agents are different
than in the past. They are asked to
handle more customer, more volume, more complex and/or complicated calls. After all, if we could handle our issues with
self-service, we probably would not call.
But if we tried self-service and it didn’t work, now we’re upset and
it’s an escalated call from the get go.
They’re asked to provide more information, do it faster and
be available and accessible. But they
are to lower costs, generate revenue, incorporate new technologies, ensure
closure and commitment, deliver ‘great’ service and when? Yesterday, of course.
As a matter of fact, the CDC (Centres for Disease Control)
has said that the causes of death for people under 65 are:
21% -
environment – war, accidents, crimes
9% - health care system – doctors, hospitals,
medications
17% -
human biology – not because of lifestyle
53% -
because of the way people choose to live their lives!!!
This is good news and bad news. It’s bad news because it’s more than
half. However, the good news is that
this is something we can do something about, it’s about choice.
The #2 W is Who should be trained?
We suggest front line agents/representatives, supervisors,
team leads, managers, assistant managers, internal customers and other
departments – anyone who is a touchpoint so that they can learn to speak the
same language, and more importantly, not be in an adversarial position, but
rather, together they are serving the external customer or end-user.
The #3 W is Where should the training take place?
Offsite vs onsite, and there are advantages and
disadvantages for both.
Certainly, it is most cost-effective to have training on-site. However, distractions are rampant
as is the participant’s availability to a person or problem.
Offsite is more costly.
However, there are no distractions and the participants are unavailable
to other departments, their managers, or any issues. I believe there is psychic value in taking
people away from their work stations and off-site to acknowledge the touch jobs
they have.
The #4 W is What should be included in any training?
We believe the following modules provide a robust, powerful,
and succinct training curriculum:
Quality Customer
Service
|
Rapport Building
|
Customer Expectations
|
|
Perception Shifting
|
Conflict Resolution
|
Language Skills
|
|
Anger Management
|
E-Mail Protocol
|
Stress Reduction
|
Empathetic Responsiveness
|
Change Management
|
|
Communication/Listening Skills
|
Interaction/Role Play
|
Service with a Smile
|
Further suggested is university certification to up the
ante. The more professionally you treat
your employees, the more professionally they will treat your customers.
The #5 W is When.
We say for new hires, monthly, ongoingly, consistently,
whenever a change occurs, when stressors increase, and as needed.
We further suggest that each employee get a minimum of 24
hours per year of ongoing training, spread out over time for the most
absorption. Divide training into two four-hour
sessions per day and deliver 6 days per employee. Therefore, 30 people can participate in the
training per day. If there has been no
ongoing training, do four days once a month for four months and then a session
three months later, and then another three months later. In this manner, training is customized, in
real-time, and can address whatever challenges are presented when they occur.
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