Customer Centric Strategy by Kerri Shields is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Customer centricity is about organizational transformation making the customer the focus for business decisions, processes, product development, services, and procedures.
Some companies purport to be customer centric but they fall short in connecting this concept throughout all functional areas of the business. While it is important to offer superb customer service, being customer centric is far more than that. It’s about mapping the customer journey to discover customer needs and wants, what’s working and what is not, then taking action to improve the customer experience.
Customer loyalty is built through providing exceptional customer experiences. This in turn increases revenues through positive company image, referrals, and increased customer lifetime value.
Most organizations today realize that they must focus on the customer to remain competitive.
Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to customers throughout the customer journey; before, during and after the sale. Humans usually provide customer service to other humans, but some service comes from machines, technologies, animals, etc. The service a customer receives becomes part of the experiences they have with the company.
For example, if you purchase a product and need to return it because it is missing a part, you might drive to the store, get the product out of your back seat, put it in a cart, wheel it into the store, visit the return counter, speak with an employee about your return, and so on. You may even phone the store before driving there. In this example, your perception of the company and your experience with the company will be based on many factors:
Now, imagine if when you first phoned the store, the representative at the return counter had informed you that many customers have had this same issue, and that the manufacturer is able to send you the missing part free of charge in express 2-day delivery. As well, the manufacturer will include a small gift, an accessory item for your product, due to the inconvenience. Will you now decide to keep the product? You may or may not, but you will feel that the information the customer service representative shared with you over the phone was valuable and you will appreciate that they did so. This touch-point, over the phone, is an experience that should leave you with a positive view of the manufacturer and the retail store, even though the manufacturer made an error in not including one of the parts in the first place. Would your perception of your experience have been negative if the representative on the phone did not share this information with you, and you found out only after you had driven all the way to the store, put the product in a cart, and stood in the return line-up for some time? Most likely it would not be as positive as hearing this information before you put in the effort to return the product. That is why it is so important for leaders and managers to build a culture of customer centricity, train employees, build standards and measure performance pertaining to customer service. Companies need to retain customers to stay in business. You will read more about these concepts in subsequent chapters.
A final note on the above scenario, the retailer is actually a customer of the manufacturer (product supplier or vendor); therefore, the manufacturer also has a desire to keep the relationship positive with their customer (the retailer). If the manufacturer did not satisfy the retailer’s customers by offering a free replacement part with express shipping, the retailer’s customers would become angry at the retailer (the place they purchased from) and the retailer would most likely begin to look for another product supplier or at least stop purchasing that product from that specific supplier. So not only is it important to keep individual customers happy in business-to-consumer sales (B-2-C), it is also important for businesses to keep their business customers satisfied in business-to-business sales (B-2-B).
In subsequent chapters you will learn about providing customer service in both a face-to-face retail environment as well as in a contact center environment, and about managing customer service teams and customer service technologies.
Poor versus Great Customer Service, YouTube Video at https://youtu.be/Zy1h49_L8ME
Customer experience is the result of an interaction between the customer and the company. It is how customers perceive their interactions with the company or brand. A customer touch-point is a point in time when the company connects in some form with the customer (e.g., website, phone, email, social media, retail store, returns, service, and products). There are many different customer touch-points, for example, when a customer phones the contact center for support, or when a customer first visits the company website to review its products, or when the customer visits the store. The customer will get an impression of the company from each of these interactions. If the store is unclean or the products are difficult to find or the staff are rude this could leave the customer with a negative impression of the company and they might perceive the store in a negative way, thus, having a negative customer experience. The customer’s perception IS the customer’s experience.
Companies work hard to create a positive experience for customers, but things do go wrong at times, and some customers will perceive that the company has not met their expectations in some way, thus, leaving those customers with a negative impression or perception of the company.
Over time, as the customer has more and more experiences with the company, these experiences may shape the customer’s perception negatively or positively, while too many negative experiences will most likely cause the customer to discontinue engaging with the company. They will visit a competitor’s store instead.
Consider the following questions:
There is a popular saying, “a company is only as good as its people”. This statement refers to the need to hire good people, train employees, and create a positive corporate culture. When the employees are happy working for the company they will most likely do their best work to help the company provide positive experiences to customers. Of course, while the interactions your employees have with customers are a large part of the customer experience, other factors are also important.
Customers have certain expectations of service and what they experience with the company, for example, when you shop at a Dollar Store (e.g., Dollarama, Dollar Tree, Dollar Store, Dollar Shop, etc.) you probably expect low prices and do not expect that every product the company sells is of high quality and comes with a warranty. You might expect those things from Apple, BMW, Harley Davidson, or other company that is known for high quality and prestige. From a dollar store, you expect the store to be clean and the products arranged in a manner that makes it easy to find the products you are looking for. You expect prices to be low. You probably expect the staff to be helpful, friendly, and professional. If for example, you walked into the store and the lights were not working, it might upset you, or if it was the middle of winter and the store had no heat, you might not shop very long. If the products were not on the shelves and there were boxes blocking the aisles, you might become annoyed.
What if you had received poor service at the store, the store was a mess, the cash register was not working the day you visited the store, and you could not find the product you wanted in stock? What would you do or say to the staff? What would you think about the store? Would you shop there again? Would you tell your friends about the poor experience you had? Most likely, you would not go back, you would think the store was not professional, you would not shop at that location again, and you would probably tell your friends and family what a bad experience you had there.
Organizations that do not improve their customer experiences through improved customer service, improve customer journeys, and improved customer centricity will not stay in business long in today’s global and technological world. Consumers can go online and buy whatever they need and want quickly and easily. Consumers can switch to a competitor, in most cases, with little risk or switching costs. Consumers today are savvy. They research and learn about products they want before they buy and they expect much from the organizations they patronize.
Customer experience (CX) is the new marketing battlefront. More than two-thirds of marketers responsible for CX say their companies compete mostly on the basis of CX, according to the 2017 Gartner Customer Experience in Marketing Survey. And in two years’ time, 81% say they expect to be competing mostly or completely on the basis of CX.
The customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with a company and its brands. It considers the complete path from brand discovery to purchasing and beyond. The focus is not on purchases made, but rather on how the customer feels about the interactions throughout their journey with the company.
In building a customer-centric business, personas and customer journey maps are important strategic tools that help provide an in-depth understanding of who a company’s customers are, what they need, and how they interact with the company across all touchpoints. These tools help to share customer insights across the organization and can be critical for building employee buy-in and helping teams take targeted action to improve customer experience.
Personas are fictional customer types created to represent real target customer groups. They are more than generalized customer segments because they have individual names and stories that reflect personal attributes and behavioural characteristics such as customer needs, motivations, and attitudes. For example, a company may target Reza, female, mid-40s, a college professor, a parent of three teenage children, shops online due to time constraints, orders delivery from restaurants a few times per week, enjoys exercise, eats vegan, etc. The company creates these personas to help them better understand all the needs of their target customers, which in turn helps them provide products, services, and processes that will meet or exceed the customers’ expectations.
Once a company fully understands the lifestyle and demands, responsibilities, attitudes, and desires of their target customer; they can map the customer journey. Mapping the customer journey will allow the company to identify where they may not be serving the customer to the best of their ability so they can make improvements to the customer experience.
The customer journey map is a visual depiction (diagrammed or written) detailing the path the customer takes from the time the customer first discovers the brand, to purchasing, and beyond. The customer journey map examines the full experience of being a customer with the company and examines all touch-points and channels.
A customer journey example:
Tom is shopping online for a new car (website touch-point). He decides to phone a car dealership to ask about a vehicle he saw online (phone touch-point). Tom is greeted in a friendly manner and has all his questions answered by a salesperson (employee touch-point). Tom makes an appointment and comes to the dealership to test-drive the vehicle he is interested in (location/organization touch-point). The salesperson, Jordon, who Tom spoke with on the phone greets him, answers his questions, demonstrates a friendly and professional manner while dealing with Tom and sending him out on a test drive (employee and product touch-points). Tom decides to purchase the vehicle and Jordon completes the paperwork, processes the sale and payment, and offers to deliver the vehicle within two days (employee and company policies/practices touch-points).
Jordon assures Tom that the vehicle comes with warranties, and should Tom change his mind on the purchase, he may return the vehicle within the first 30 days no questions asked (employee, manufacturer, and company policy touch-point). Jordon asks if Tom would like to register for a loyalty program whereby Tom will receive emails on future promotions and receive gifts for referring others (if they purchase a vehicle too). Tom is interested and Jordon gathers Tom’s email. Jordan provides Tom with a $100 gas card as a thank you gift for purchasing the new vehicle (employee and company policies touch-points). Later in the week, Tom tweets a picture of himself standing in front of his new vehicle and he mentions the dealership and the excellent service he received from Jordon. He even recommended the dealership on dealerrater.ca. A few months later, Tom feeling loyal toward the dealership, and remembering the loyalty rewards program, refers a friend to Jordon at the dealership.
It is important to create many personas and scenarios because every customer’s journey will be slightly different. It is also important for companies to talk to customers (and employees) to learn more about the customer journey and experiences customers have. Creating personas and customer journey maps will help organizations identify poor service issues so they can take action to improve their customers’ experiences.
Customer centricity is a way of doing business that fosters a positive customer experience before, during, and after the sale in order to drive repeat business, build customer loyalty (which leads to customer referrals), increase business growth, and gain a competitive advantage.
A customer-centric company is more than a company that offers good customer service. Anytime a customer-centric business makes a decision, it deeply considers the effect the outcome will have on its customers. An organization that forgets about customers is destined to fail. They will build the wrong products, invest in the wrong resources, and lose goodwill with customers.
Customer-centric organizations identify their most valuable customers and ensure their satisfaction. These organizations focus on ensuring employees understand how important customers are to the company. Often the organization’s mission, vision, and values include a customer-centric focus as more and more companies see a need to build relationships with their customers. Based upon the company’s mission, vision, and values the company aligns goals, distributes resources, develops products and services, defines processes, and develops strategies for competitive advantage.
Markets have moved from product centricity to customer centricity. Companies used to focus on design, manufacturing and logistics and in the past when products and services could achieve a clear product/service difference, sustainable and beneficial, a product-centric approach made sense. Today, we have informed consumers, competitive markets and few tangible product/service benefits—a combination that has resulted in the focus shifting to customers.
Don Peppers has a very good article on LinkedIn explaining why businesses have moved from an era of product centricity into an era of customer centricity. For a good read, visit Product-centricity and customer-centricity – source Don Peppers – read on LinkedIn
The main reason organizations should follow a customer-centric strategy is because if they do not acquire and retain customers they will not survive. Many company leaders believe their business is customer centric, but employees and customers do not always agree. Why do you think that is?
Why do so many companies struggle to get customer centricity right? The volume, velocity, and variety of customer data that now exists overwhelms many organizations. Some companies do not have the systems and technology to segment and profile customers. Others lack the processes and operational capabilities to target them with personalized communications and experiences.
Being customer centric is about more than just offering a good product or staffing a contact center. It becomes a cultural way of life for the company and impacts everything from employee engagement to customer experience. Forbes provides a list of 100 customer-centric companies from ten industries including Retail, Finance, Healthcare, B2B, Software, Hospitality, Insurance, Telecom, Manufacturing, Agriculture. Some of the companies on the list include:
If a company is committed to making customer-centricity a corporate priority for the organization, the absolute first step is to fully understand the customer’s needs and expectations. While much of this happens through the customer-facing employees, they will require the support of the rest of the organization to succeed. As such, everyone, regardless of department or role, should actively contribute information, background, tools, resources, and training to achieve a unified understanding of the customer. Once this happens, the organization will be well on its way to becoming customer-centric.
The service sector accounts for 75% of Canadian jobs and 78% of the country’s GDP. As a vital part of the Canadian economy, the most popular sector is retail with some big franchise names including Walmart and Future Shop. In recent years, the financial services, real estate and communications industries have grown exponentially, especially in the business hubs of Vancouver, Montréal and Toronto.
Services play a key role in economies around the world and Canada is no exception. The economy is divided into three sectors; the primary sector of an economy is the sector in which companies make direct use of natural resources, the secondary sector produces finished goods, while the tertiary sector, also known as the service sector, makes use of people’s knowledge and time to improve productivity, performance, and potential. This sector includes businesses that offer services in the following areas: transportation, government, health care, construction, banking and finance, communication, retail, tourism, education, utilities, recreation, social work, real estate, etc.
Many factors have caused an economic shift from manufacturing to service, some of which include globalization of the economy, government deregulation, government programs, customers expecting personalized experiences, and increased use of technology both by customers and businesses.
Consumers need products and services to function the way they need them to in order to solve their problems or desires, but companies can no longer rely on their products and services as their primary competitive differentiator; today, they can only compete based on delivering an outstanding experience. Customers want personalized experiences, they want companies to know their name and understand their needs and wants. Companies that offer these experiences are able to differentiate their brands and create competitive advantage.
“According to Janrain 48% of consumers spend more when their experience is personalized while 74% of people hate being shown irrelevant content. So what does this say about personalization? In customer experience, personalization is a winning strategy that can help companies advance their relationship with customers. 88% of marketers claim that they’ve seen a measurable improvement in their businesses after implementing customer experience personalization tactics.”
Millennials are prioritizing their cars and homes less and less, and assigning greater importance to personal experiences—and showing off pictures of them. This trend is ultimately helping fuel the growth of billion-dollar-plus start-ups like Uber, WeWork, and Airbnb.
Personalization has become integral to the customer journey and is now a key driver of brand loyalty across all channels. Consumers are much more likely to buy from brands, both in-store and online when offers are personalized. Consumers are also interested in purchasing more personalized products and services and are willing to wait longer to get them.
Canada Goose is getting personal with its customers, offering an immersive experience; it has a Cold Room that blends both entertainment and functionality, making it a good example of experiential retail that actually serves a purpose. It has a faux-rock crevasse, a room that snows, and a floor that cracks like ice, but it does not have any products the customers can take home. Customers can only order products for delivery later, with limited sizes and models to try on. In fact, the luxury coat retailer is not calling the store, a store, it is calling it “The Journey: A Canada Goose Experience.” Staff will guide customers through a series of themed rooms, before ending in an area where customers can browse a digital catalogue, talk to sales staff about fit and place an order. A certain proportion of people visiting the store do not intend to buy a jacket, but are just curious about the Cold Room experience. This gives the brand an opportunity to make a good impression on people who are not yet Canada Goose customers, but might be in the future. The Cold Room is a fun, unusual experience that helps customers make more informed shopping decisions.
The Running Room, which is a store for people who like to run, provides personalized customer experiences through training programs that meet the needs of a wide variety of customers, ranging from those who are just getting into a fitness routine to those contemplating a marathon. The store sells a selection of top brand-name running shoes and apparel and offers training programs such as Walking, Learn to Run, 5K Training, Marathon and Half Marathon training, 10K Training and For Women Only Running. The Running Room training programs are committed to educating customers on a lifestyle of fitness. Running Room’s free Run Club meets twice weekly, where runners of all levels run in a social, supportive group. This social component brought to running by the Running Room builds a true sense of community in each location. Communicating with its customers via its in-store team, its website, Running Room Magazine, forums, Twitter and Facebook keeps the company agile and innovative. “We believe that the Running Room philosophy and our in-store environment are unlike any other retail business in North America. While we offer clothing, shoes, products and accessories for walkers and runners, we also help people to change their lives through fitness activities,” says the Stanton family.
Conduct an Internet search for companies that are innovating with personalized customer experiences. Consider the following questions:
Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, resulting in fundamental changes in the way a business operates and the value they deliver to their customers. Digital transformation is forcing companies to change their business models and adapt to the new market reality. Today, customers expect relevant content in relation to what they are doing anytime, anywhere, and in the format, and on the device of their choosing. It is the customer’s journey that dictates the company’s strategy.
Customers have always wanted efficient, friendly, and reliable service, but with the development of new technology, their expectations have increased. Customers no longer tolerate poor service because there are just too many businesses out there that will meet or exceed customer expectations.
With online shopping and mobile apps, consumers have virtually every product they can think of available at their fingertips. The growth of online shopping has skyrocketed. In 2018, an estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide purchased goods online, and the global online sales amounted to $2.8 trillion; and, is estimated to grow to $4.8 trillion by 2021. An online store and social media presence are essential for companies selling in this global and digital business world. Customers want simple, direct and easy transactions; technology has taught them to expect it.
Customers today are more informed than ever before. They use technology to shop online, conduct research, and compare prices, products, and services among competing companies. According to Outerboxdesign.com, 80% of shoppers use mobile phones in-store to check product reviews, compare prices or find other store locations. With so many individuals owning cell phones today, social media is a great way to connect with customers.
In order to keep up with this new kind of “always-connected” customer, businesses must embrace technology to deliver unmatched customer experiences. Fortunately, putting the customer first is already at the center of many organizations’ strategies. According to research from IDC, two-thirds of the CEO’s of Global 2,000 companies will shift their focus from traditional, offline strategies to more modern digital strategies to improve the customer experience before the end of 2019 – with 34% of companies believing they will fully adopt digital transformation within 12 months or less.
Business intelligence (BI) leverages software and services to transform data into actionable insights that inform an organization’s strategic decisions. Business intelligence and performance analytics leverage software to transform data into crucial insights that inform company decisions, thereby empowering employees to make better business decisions.
Machine learning is a data analysis technique that automates analytical model building. Some advantages of machine learning include intelligent customer service chatbots, improved product search, and fraud detection and prevention.
Telecommuting is also referred to as telework, mobile work, flexible workplace, flex-hours, e-commuting or remote work and is a work arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central location instead they work outside the office location from various locations. Many workers can work from home (WFH) when they have access to the technologies they need to do their jobs. Telecommuting has become a popular choice and employee incentive in some cases for those who wish to work from home. Customer service and sales representatives need to learn how to use customer relationship building (CRM) software in order to meet customer expectations, whether working from home, at the office or on the road. With access to technology, employees can be located in the same city as the company they work for, or located anywhere in the world.
Customer-centric virtual and augmented reality (AR) retail applications today focus on helping consumers experience brands and products without having to go into stores. Beauty brand Cover Girl, for example, opened an AR makeup station in its flagship store in New York where shoppers can virtually try on a range of cosmetics and then share their makeovers on social media with friends. Pottery Barn offers an AR app for its Pottery Barn and PBteen brands that lets users drag and drop items in a room to see how they work with existing furniture and decor. They also can completely empty a room to start the design process from scratch, and shoppers can purchase the items they like right from the app. Swedish retail IKEA has a similar offering with its “Place” app, helping users to visualize how an item will look in their homes before they purchase it.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is made up of billions of smart, connected devices, and gives any “thing” a voice through the data it gathers, produces and distributes. With around 26 “smart objects” for every human being on Earth predicted by 2020, the ability for companies to leverage connected products and other sensor-generated data to enhance the customer experience is unprecedented. IoT devices will change ecommerce by turning everyday objects into potential sales channels for retailers. IoT products and devices include smart and digitized vehicles, laptops, smartphones, smart gadgets, and smart watches. You may already own some of these devices. Have you heard of the Amazon Dash Button? A device that connects over Wi-Fi to ensure that you do not run out of household items such as milk, bread, medicine, soap, dog food, ever again. Maybe, you have a Google Home Voice Controller. It allows you to enjoy features like media, alarms, lights, thermostats, control the volume and many more functions just using your voice.
Consider the following questions:
An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/customercentricstrategy/?p=25#h5p-5
“Customer service is both a type of job and a set of job skills. As a job, customer service professionals are responsible for addressing customer needs and ensuring they have a good experience. As a skill set, customer service entails several qualities like active listening, empathy, problem-solving and communication. Customer service is used in many jobs at every level. While traditionally you might think of customer care as a service from a business to a consumer, it is also applicable within a business. For example, you may be in a role that provides services to other, internal teams. In this case, you would want to ensure that you understood and were able to meet their needs.”
When you think of the people that work in a customer service role, who do you think of? Do you think of the person that greets you at the restaurant, or the person who answers the phone when you call your phone service provider for support, or the person who delivers the products you ordered online to your home? Each of these people are certainly working in a customer service role. What you might be surprised to know is that every job position has some degree of customer service embedded in the role. People who work in the information technology, human resources, or finance departments do not usually interface with the external customer on a day-to-day basis, but they do interact with their colleagues regularly. Internal customers are the company employees who need support, information or action from other employees. These internal customers may work just down the hall, in another building, or in another country, but they are still part of the company and working to help satisfy external customers. External customers are the customers who purchase products or services from the company. Employees who work in job positions that require them to interface with the external customers directly might be referred to as front-line/front-facing/front-end/customer-facing employees. Those that work to serve internal customers are working in back-end/back-office/behind-the-scene job positions.
An example of an employee working to serve an external customer might be a situation where a customer phones the store’s service desk and the employee who answers the phone listens attentively to the customer’s story, then places the customer on a brief hold while they check with the manager or another employee about the customer’s concern or query. The employee who is asking for help has become an internal customer at that moment in time, then they return the phone to follow-up with the external customer and finish the call. It takes a team working together to provide excellent customer service. Those external customers who purchase the products and services the company provides are the ones keeping the company in business, and ensuring employees have jobs. If there were no customers there would be no need for employees.
As a service professional, you are the “face” of your organization in customer interactions. Your primary function is to listen actively and gather the information needed in order to make a decision on what course of action is needed to best serve the customer in any given situation. This typically requires a polite, professional demeanor and effective and efficient answers to questions or resolutions to problems.
Some of the capabilities customer service professionals must have include the following:
How can employers ensure they are hiring the right people to represent their brand or uphold their company image? What skills can customer service professionals develop to get better at their jobs? There are many skills customer service professionals need to be excellent in their jobs, these include the ability to communicate clearly, use positive language, use positive body language, serve diverse customers, be persuasive, use active listening, interact positively in a team, learn continuously, manage time, and manage stress . They also need to be able to show empathy and think critically to solve problems creatively. These skills and more are critical to creating outstanding customer experiences, and most require a lot of time and practice to truly master. Below is a list of customer service skills that are necessary for success in this key role.
You might notice in some job advertisements the phrase, “must have a Customer Service Orientation”. Customer Service Orientation means that as an employee you are able to display positive attitudes and behaviors, and demonstrate an awareness of the importance of meeting or exceeding customer needs and expectations. Many businesses today think more about attracting new leads, maximizing sales, upselling, expanding market share, obtaining bigger “share of wallet”, than they do about meeting and exceeding customer needs. While increasing profit is important, a company with a genuine customer-first approach will care about customers and their needs because they understand that this is how they can grow profit.
In practice, it might mean that the company trains their service representatives not to upsell products or services to customers that do not need them or want them. It may mean that service representatives do not encourage customers to upgrade a subscription if the customer will not benefit from upgrading. Sometimes, it even means letting a customer go or referring them to a competitor if the solutions your company offers are not best suited for the customer. Have you ever shopped at a company and discovered they did not sell what you needed or wanted? Did a service representative suggest you visit a competing company for that particular product or service? Why do you think they referred you to a competitor rather than trying to sell you something else, or just saying, “We don’t carry that item”? There may be some good reasons for referring customers to competitors, such as, creating a positive company image, spreading positive word-of-mouth, connecting with other businesses in a joint effort that will benefit both your company and your competitor, supporting the values the company has around true customer centricity, building trust and loyalty with customers, and highlighting your company’s confidence in the products and services you do sell. A great example of this comes from Zappos, “Zappos ‘refer to competitor’ tactic (when they don’t have an item in stock)–reflects an incredibly strong customer-centric DNA. The primary focus is not only to maximize revenues but to get the customer exactly what they’re looking for. “ It’s also ‘un-corporation like’ to center on the customer to such a degree that you try to sell them something similar that is in stock that they don’t really want, instead of referring them to a competitor to get the exact product they want.
Service culture in an organization means putting customers at the center of the business model, developing policies, procedures, values, norms, and beliefs that are centered around focusing on customer satisfaction and understanding their needs and wants.
Company policies, procedures and employees actions contribute to the organization’s service culture. Employees communicate the company culture through their appearance, interactions with customers, product knowledge, skills, and attitude. Maintaining a friendly, positive and professional attitude in the workplace will take you far. Here are a few of the benefits of providing excellent customer service, for the employee, the company, and the customer.
It is important that a service professional fully understands the customer’s needs and is careful to clearly provide answers, directions, facts, or any other information required to make the sale or serve the customer and build a positive customer relationship. When communication is unclear, customers may misunderstand or misinterpret the message and this could lead to lost business. For example, a customer may ask, “Are there fries?” when they really mean, “Are fries included with the meal at no extra charge.” The service provider may answer, “Yes” only to discover that the customer is upset when the bill arrives to see that they were charged extra for the fries they thought were included in the price. A service provider may need to ask a customer some questions to clarify the customer’s expectations and needs before the food order is placed, and ensure nothing is left to doubt.
In its Employability Skills 2000+, the Conference Board of Canada lists “the skills you need to enter, stay in, and progress” in the 21st century workplace. The ability to apply fundamental work skills is one of the skills listed.
Specifically, communication skills:
Face-to-face communication is the richest form of communication because it allows for the simultaneous interpersonal exchange of cues from linguistic content, tone of voice, facial expressions, direction of gaze, gestures, and postures. Verbal communication coexists alongside non-verbal communication, which can affect people’s perceptions and exchanges in subtle but significant ways.
Verbal communication refers to the ability of a customer service representative to think of the right words in order to appease a customer and provide a solution. It does not necessarily mean that a service representative should sound too formal and robotic while communicating with customers. Though being too informal is not good either as it could leave the customer with a negative impression. Keeping a balance is what a customer representative should strive for.
10 Tips for Effective Communication with Customers
Non-verbal communication refers to gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, body language, posture, and other ways people can communicate without using language. Your nonverbal communication skills can create a positive (or a negative) impression. Crossed arms can seem defensive. Poor posture may appear unprofessional. A downward gaze or avoiding eye contact can detract from you being seen as confident.
During cross-cultural communication, one should follow one general suggestion: write or speak simply and clearly. Avoid slang, vague words, or colloquialisms. Listen carefully with a positive approach. Speak slowly and be specific. The more you learn about various cultures the better communicator you will become. It is suggested to avoid non-verbal hints because they have different meanings in different cultures; for example, some hand gestures have different meanings among different cultures, so be cautious when using them.
Positive language is the art of using words and phrases to communicate a positive, supportive tone to your customers (or anyone else for that matter). Using positive language is important for building rapport with others. Sharing bad news with customers is a part of being a customer service professional. Customer service professionals must learn how to share negative information without being negative. When sharing negative information that may make a customer upset, sad, or angry it is always best to speak face-to-face, but that may not always be possible and sometimes negative messages must be sent through email or postal mail.
Language is a crucial part of how we interact with others and the perceptions they form of us. For example, a customer may contact the company seeking a specific product, but the product happens to be on back-order until next month. The way the customer service professional uses words to convey that the product is on back-order will help to make or break the sale. Without using positive language, the sales might say, “Sorry, the product is on back-order and won’t be available until next month.” With positive language, the sales representative might say, “The product will be available next month, and I’m happy to place the order now for you and have it shipped directly to you as soon as it arrives.” Do you see the difference using positive language makes? The first example seems abrupt and impersonal and may upset customers, while the second example is saying the same thing but it focuses on when and how the issue will be resolved rather than focusing on the negative.
Active listening means that you focus on what your customer is saying. You try not to let your mind wander while your customer is speaking. You paraphrase what the customer has said and ask the customer if your understanding of what they have told you is correct. You may ask customers questions to obtain more details of what the issue is. You may have to calm an upset customer. Certainly, the customer is there to gather answers and see results so put yourself in the customer’s shoes, and really listen to their story so you can provide the best customer service you can.
Service breakdowns occur daily in all types of organizations. They happen whenever the product or service delivered fails to meet customer needs, wants and expectations. When the customer purchases a product or service that fails to meet the advertised promises or standards, dissatisfaction and frustration can result which may lead to confrontation and/or loss of business.
“Customer expectations can affect how service is delivered and perceived. Today’s customers are more discerning and better educated, have access to more up-to-date and accurate information. They also have many more options offered by your competitors. They are often more demanding than in the past. Their expectations about your products and services and the way that you will provide them may create a situation where little you do or say can meet their perceptions. In such cases, remain professional, positive and offer alternatives or concessions, if appropriate, in order to maintain the relationship and provide what the customer needs or wants.”
The training video below was posted on YouTube by Kantola Training Solutions and includes valuable tactics for dealing with angry, upset, difficult, or irate customers, and includes the following topics:
When dealing with angry customers it is important to use positive language, for example, let them know what you can do for them rather than what you cannot do for them to resolve their issue. Avoid saying, “We don’t.” If you are unable to offer something or provide a service the customer wants, then you might say, “What I can do for you is offer you is…” or “I’m sorry, we don’t actually sell that product, although we do sell something similar if you are interested,” or “I’ sorry, we do not sell that product, but you might try Best Buy,” or “I’m sorry, we do not have that item in stock, would you like me to check our other store locations for you,” instead of saying, “We don’t have that,” or “We don’t do that.” Avoid saying, “I cannot,” “Our policy does not allow for that,” or “No.” Instead try saying, “I understand why you may be upset. I might be in upset too in this situation. You have had the cell phone longer than the 30 day exchange window, so what I can do for you in this situation is…” or “I understand what you are asking for, and my manager will need to consider this request. Would you mind waiting a minute while I get my manager?”
Service recovery is a company’s resolution of a problem from a dissatisfied customer, converting them into a loyal customer. It is the action a service provider takes in response to service failure. It entails the organization taking actions in response to a service failure. The service failure may have occurred for all sorts of reasons–the service may be unavailable when promised, it may be delivered too late or too slowly, the outcome may be incorrect or poorly executed, or employees may be rude or uncaring. If you are the customer service representative serving a customer experiencing a service failure, you represent the company, therefore you need to apologize, solve the problem, compensate the customer with something of value. Managers need to create a service recovery process and train employees.
Another great way to solve customer problems is to apply a problem-solving model. A problem-solving model provides you with concrete, easy to remember steps you can work through when faced with any issue, customer service related or other. Your company may have its own version of how to approach customer problems, but here is a simple breakdown used by many customer service teams around the world in some similar variation.
Email is a business tool used around the world in millions of businesses. It is fast, inexpensive and can send a message to almost any place in the world. As a customer service representative, you will use email to correspond with managers, colleagues, customers, and partners. It is important to follow company guidelines when sending any correspondence. Often companies have guidelines for font size, type, letterhead, signature blocks, etc. It is equally important to use professional language, steer clear of text chat short-cuts you may use with your friends, and ensure a polite and caring tone; after all, you are representing the company.
The Indeed Career Guide offers 20 Best Practices for Email Etiquette in the Workplace and includes these tips:
Often you will be responsible for answering incoming phone calls or placing outgoing calls to customers. Starting each call with a greeting, then stating your purpose, and asking the right questions or providing insightful answers will be very important. Ending the call on a positive note is also important to maintain customer goodwill and keep the company image positive. Some companies, especially call centers, provide employees with scripts to guide their conversations with customers. Learning how to use the script without sounding robotic is a skill you will develop over time.
For many years now texting has been viewed as a personal communication method and was not used in business often. Today, however, texting is used to enhance communication between businesses and their customers, employees, and partners. Have you noticed that many service providers, such as dental offices, are using texting as a way to remind customers/patients of their appointments? Texting is not only being used to remind customers of appointments but also to confirm appointments or change appointments. Companies often have guidelines for when texting should be used and how it should be used.
Customer service takes place through many media and social media is one realm. Companies often have Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Web Chat platforms through which they communicate with customers. This may be one aspect of your job especially when working in a customer contact center. Many organizations offer customized training for employees to learn how to manage these technology tools in offering excellent customer service experiences.
Online meetings are often used to conduct business meetings when the participants are not physically in the same location. It is a good idea to practice with these tools before holding a meeting to ensure you can manage the settings for participants, audio, camera, etc. It is also a good idea to review best practices for holding an online meeting.
In its Employability Skills 2000+, the Conference Board of Canada lists “the skills you need to enter, stay in, and progress” in the 21st century workplace. The ability to apply personal management skills is one of the skills listed.
“Develop self-awareness. Learn to manage your emotions and gain awareness of your emotional triggers so you can manage your reactions positively and productively. Accept and reflect on feedback to assist as you learn and grow.” Professionalism leads to workplace success, a strong professional reputation, and a high level of work ethic and excellence. When you demonstrate positive attitudes and behaviours, are reliable and adaptable, work safely, and follow company policies and procedures you are working in a professional manner. Professionalism may include expert knowledge and skills in a specific area or subject. It may include your ability to consider customer needs and wants in conjunction with company goals and provide exceptional options to customers. Finally, professionalism may include your ability to work as part of a team and place team goals over personal preferences.
Mindtools describes professional as:
For tips on how to behave professionally in the workplace review The Five Zones of Professional Etiquette video below.
A positive attitude is a mindset that helps you see and recognize opportunities. It is not always easy to stay positive especially when things do not go as planned, or when dealing with angry customers. There are some practices you can put into place to help you stay positive throughout the day. Of course, being positive does not mean ignoring problems, it means dealing with whatever comes your way with an open-minded, solution-seeking, and forward-thinking attitude.
To maintain a positive outlook throughout each day, try these rituals:
“To provide the right answers, you must know your product, service or advocacy issues extremely well. Familiarize yourself with how the product works, special features and other uses and your company’s policies on warranties, returns and exchanges. If you are discussing a service, know the limitations and mention them in a positive manner at the appropriate time. There is no substitute for product knowledge when it comes to selling a product or service.”
In its Employability Skills 2000+, the Conference Board of Canada lists “the skills you need to enter, stay in, and progress” in the 21st century workplace. The ability to apply teamwork skills is one of the skills listed.
To be a valued team member you should make a commitment to the team goals, create a collaborative working environment, and support team decisions. “To work well together, team members need to trust each other and believe that everyone is working in the team’s best interest. If you have concerns about the decisions or believe it may cause problems, voice your concerns to the team. Do not try to undermine the decision by complaining about it to others when your teammates are not around.”
Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. It is important to participate in projects and tasks contributing to the team effort even when you are not that interested in your job or the project itself; otherwise your colleagues and managers may get a negative impression of you which will only hurt your ability to get promotions, bonuses, recognition or work on interesting projects you may wish to be included on. Even if you plan to switch jobs in the near future you may need references from your manager and possibly colleagues so you certainly do not want anyone to see you as non-participative, difficult to get along with, lacking in team spirit, or providing a low quality of work.
To present as a team, you must know each person’s part of the presentation so that should someone need help or become ill the day of the presentation you can step up and present their portion of the overall presentation. You should introduce each member of your team when you begin the presentation and have an introduction. Then as each member presents you use a transition between members; which is simply a sentence to transition from one member’s part to the next.
Each member will accept a task and complete their portion of the presentation, but also help the whole team finalize and make a professional final presentation. When using slides ensure there are no spelling errors and that each slide does not contain too much text. If giving presentations is a part of your job role then it would be wise to review a course or lesson on how to deliver a presentation.
Team meetings are crucial for sharing ideas, disseminating data to everyone at the same time, allowing for discussions, and making decisions. It is important to create an agenda for the meeting and send it out to all members prior to the meeting along with any accompanying documents that may be reviewed during the meeting. This will help keep the meeting discussion on track and moving forward. Often people complain that meetings are a waste of time because nothing gets accomplished. Using an agenda will help the meeting planner get through the tasks intended.
Identifying what causes you stress will help you manage stress. Managing your time will help you reduce stress; so keeping a calendar and recording when you have appointments or meetings, etc. will help you reduce stress by not panicking when you forget something that you need to do or somewhere you need to be.
Eating healthy foods and getting enough rest will help you have the strength you need to deal with stressful situations. Exercising regularly, doing yoga or meditation will also help you deal with stress better. Seek out social or professional support when needed and do not rely on drugs or alcohol to relieve stress as this may lead to bigger issues.
When dealing with difficult customers you can take a deep breath, count to three in your head, then address the customer in a calm and professional manner. Remember when a customer is angry is usually is not at you personally; their frustrated and upset about some interaction they had with the company. Ignore any personal attacks and exaggerations because a very angry, upset customer may not be acting rationally. Call your manager if the situation escalates and remember not to take it personally. Often upset customers are really nice people underneath it all, and once you fix the issue, they will probably thank you profusely. “Uncovering their expectations will help defuse the emotion, help you keep cool, and keep the conversation focused on problem solving. Keep focusing on what you can do to close the gap between their unmet expectations and their experience of your company’s services and products. When customers are dealt with sincerely and professionally, they are more open to alternative solutions.”
Try to keep a positive attitude and, in your personal life, surround yourself with others who think positively. Accept that there are events that you cannot control. Be assertive instead of aggressive by asserting your feelings, opinions, or beliefs instead of becoming angry, defensive, or passive. Do something every day that brings you joy.
Managing your time will make you more productive and reduce stress. Use a calendar or schedule book, whether paper or electronic, to keep track of tasks you need to complete. Make a list, assess the value of each task and prioritize tasks, and allow for flexibility. Watch the video below to learn more about time management techniques for stress-free productivity.
An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/customercentricstrategy/?p=41#h5p-7
“If you’re looking to improve your customer experience, start by creating a customer service philosophy for your support team. Having a shared philosophy keeps everyone focused on the same goal and helps them understand the holistic approach to achieving that goal.”
In an environment in which your front-line staff deal with an endless stream of unpredictable scenarios having a strong strong philosophy helps empower team members, provides a coherent story to understand where those values come from, and sets the foundation for a customer-first strategy that’s proactive rather than reactive. No matter which employee a customer interacts with, they will experience the same delightful service that epitomizes your company values.
“A customer service philosophy is a shared mission for your support team, a set of guiding principles that ensure you’re upholding your core values with every customer interaction.”
Generally, a customer service philosophy is composed of two parts: vision and values.
The first section of a customer service philosophy is a customer service vision statement, which Jeff Toister defines as “a statement that clearly defines the type of customer service employees are expected to provide.”
Your vision statement is followed by your team values. Customer service values impact the experience the customer receives and they help to define the personality and attitude the business is trying to put forth. Often companies offer training to employees on how to uphold these values. For example, “The staff at Apple retail stores are all screened and trained with a great deal of scrutiny before they make it out onto the sales floor to interact with customers. Apple’s Genius Training Student Workbook reveals a great deal about the extent to which the company goes to sufficiently train and produce the level of quality service anyone who’s visited an Apple store comes to expect. In fact, everything you’ve expected from the moment you arrive until the time you leave has been tediously thought out and most of it scripted. So what does A.P.P.L.E. really stand for when it comes to training staff how to sell? It actually means:
Approach customers with a personalized, warm welcome.
Politely to understand all the customer’s needs.
Present a solution for the customer to take home today.
Listen for and resolve any issues or concerns.
End with a fond farewell and an invitation to return.
Careful contemplation is the first step. Ask yourself some key questions. What is the purpose of your company? What the role of customer service within your company? What experience should the customer have for your company to fulfill this role? What does this look like for your customer service representatives? What are your company’s core values and how are they prioritized? What are the principles that should guide your employees who interact with customers daily? How will employees easily remember these principles?
There’s no fixed format to a customer service philosophy. But having it down on paper — preferably a digestible one-pager — will allow your service reps to reread and internalize it. Take your answers from above and integrate them into a coherent piece.
Although good customer service philosophies have a few things in common, no two should be the same. For a philosophy to succeed, it needs to align with your team’s specific values, goals, and long-term vision for your relationship with customers.
Service standards are guidelines for employees to follow when interacting with customers. Do not make them too rigid or strict as not all standards will apply to every customer situation. This gives employees the flexibility to adapt to each customer’s unique needs within a standard framework. Customer service guidelines should align with the company’s brand.
Standards may be as simple as:
As the Canada Revenue Agency puts it, “Service standards publicly state the level of performance that citizens can reasonably expect to encounter from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) under normal circumstances. The CRA is committed to developing, monitoring, and reporting on a full suite of service standards in areas of importance to taxpayers and benefit recipients. Service standards support the CRA‘s commitment to Canadians for transparency, management accountability and citizen-focused service.”
“Starbucks strongly believes in meeting customer service standards. For example, employees are taught to put effort into the visual look of each drink. When you order a caramel macchiato at Starbucks, it has a precise pattern of caramel sauce. It has a lattice of seven vertical and horizontal lines with two full circles around it. They also pay attention to every detail in the store — from the lighting to the furniture, they’re on point!”
Provide your team with clear documentation regarding how to handle common customer service complaints, what language to use and to avoid, how to document service issues, guidelines for escalation, the lengths employees can go for customers, and where to go with any questions or problems. The more process and procedure you can put into place, the easier it will be for your team to understand how to act in a given situation.
Setting customer service goals can serve an important role in managing service teams. Set SMART goals. Good goals focus attention on the right things, while poorly shaped goals focus attention on other things.
The service provided to customers, at every touchpoint, must be excellent and demand little effort from the customer in order to foster their loyalty. Customer service should make extra effort to ensure customer happiness and satisfaction. Customer interactions need to be pleasant experiences, customer problems must be resolved quickly and customers need to be totally confident in the services provided. Having a broad understanding of what ‘excellent customer service’ looks like is a good step toward defining specific goals along with a plan that will lead to their attainment.
S = Specific | Make your goals specific and narrow for more effective planning |
M = Measurable | Determine what evidence will prove you are making progress. Re-evaluate when necessary. |
A = Attainable | Ensure you can reasonably accomplish your goal within a certain time frame given available resources. Stakeholders agree it is achievable. |
R = Relevant | Goals should align with your values and long-term objectives. |
T = Timebound | Set a realistic end date. This will help with task prioritization and motivation. |
For example, a manager may set a goal for the service team to “increase customer satisfaction”, but this goal does not inform the team of how to obtain this goal or the specific amount of increase the manager is expecting. We might do better by saying, “increase customer satisfaction by 10% over the next month”. The manager and staff should know how customer satisfaction is measured and that a 10% increase is a realistic expectation. The manager would then provide strategies on how this might be done. As well, incentives might be set for the service team to encourage their best performance.
Goals for customer service include a wide range of areas:
We cannot blame a wait staff who fails to increase the number of customers served in a given week if we later discover that due to having live entertainment all week, customers were sitting longer at their tables which resulted in fewer table changeovers, meaning staff were serving the same customers longer rather than serving new ones. The goals you set for your staff will impact how the staff perform and what they choose to focus on. So if speed is your objective then customer care may suffer as staff become obsessed with serving each customer quickly rather than serving each customer exceptionally. You need a balance between efficient service and quality, effective service, and you must set goals that will drive employees in that performance direction.
“Profit-focused goals can hurt the customer relationship and unrealistic goals demotivate and burnout employees. The goal structure should be set in a way that if your customer support representatives achieve their goals it will propel the support manager closer to meeting his or her goals. Which in turn moves the director of support closer to meeting their goals. Typically, the goals of the director will be broad and align with specific company objectives. The customer support manager’s goals will be positioned more towards operational objectives – make sure everything is running smoothly and efficiently. Customer support representatives will have more direct customer-centric goals like reducing response times, and improving resolution rates.”
Investing the time and money in customer service training can prove to be an invaluable investment for businesses of diverse sectors and sizes. Teaching members of staff the competencies, knowledge and skills required to increase customer satisfaction and therefore customer retention is a shrewd way for businesses to ultimately increase their sales performance. Offering workplace training can provide staff with the necessary skills to strengthen their customer service skills, including communication, empathy, patience and consistency, as well as adaptability. Whatever industry a business operates in, if it deals with customers, strong customer service skills are essential in ensuring customers remain loyal and a high level of customer retention is achieved. Workplace training that is focused on customer care will give employees valuable insight into how to develop and fine-tune customer service abilities. Such training will empower course participants to have to knowledge and confidence to provide effective solutions when they are faced with problems or ‘difficult customers’.
First off, hire the right people. During an interview tell potential employees what your customer service philosophy is and share your company’s missions, values and goals. Then test applicants to see if they are a good fit.
Once hired, orient your new hire to the company and to the team of employees they will work with. Let them observe how things are done and how customer issues are resolved. Provide information on the company’s mission, vision, values, and goals and explain how your department/area fits into the overall company goals.
Provide specific training on how to serve customers, even the difficult ones. This may simply be working alongside an experienced employee for a while and learning how to do things that will delight customers as well as support company goals. Such programs are often termed, coaching, mentoring, on-the-job training, or job shadowing. Training may entail a more structured form such as classes teaching new employees how to use customer relationship management software, use phone systems; deal with service breakdown and service recovery; learn how to provide value to customers to encourage long-term loyalty, learn how to upsell or cross-sell in a way that customers will value; learn about the company vision, mission and goals; or manage social media platforms to serve and interact with customers.
The Disney Institute does a great job at training Disney employees, so much so, that they offer on-demand online training to other companies who may wish to provide customer service training to their own employees. Disney’s website states, “In this on-demand course, our team will highlight how excellent service is the result of truly understanding your customer expectations and how to put the right service standards in place to exceed them. Begin to learn not only how to start to differentiate your organization from competitors, but how to build customer loyalty through quality service. In this on-demand course, you will learn to:
Of course there are many other training programs a company may utilize, such as those offered in LinkedIn Learning or those created in-house that are customized to the way your particular company goes about performing operations and serving customers.
As a service manager you continually need to be evaluating the quality of customer care your team provides. Key performance indicators (KPIs) measure how effectively a company is achieving its goals against a set of targets, objectives, or industry peers. Organizations use KPIs at multiple levels to evaluate their success at reaching targets. Using KPIs in measuring how well your team is performing will help you
Listed below are some of the way in which you might measure service quality.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty metric that businesses use to gauge how their customers feel about them. It measures your customers’ willingness to recommend your company, product, or service to others. Companies with high a NPS are more likely to achieve long-term profitable growth.
Customer retention rate is another way to evaluate service quality. “Even a 1% improvement in retention means a 5% profit increase per customer. Think about that. It’s easy to see why every organization must do what they can to maximize customer retention.”
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) Surveys. Obtaining customer feedback through customer satisfaction surveys is one way to gain customer insights. Surveying employees and asking for suggestions on customer service processes and procedures may lead to customer service improvements. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a customer loyalty metric used by companies to gauge how satisfied a customer is with a particular interaction or overall experience.
Mystery shoppers and observation. Simply observing your team in action can help you identify common issues. Having a mystery shopper experience the service and processes your company provides then reporting this experience back to you can help you understand where service breakdowns may occur.
Customer engagement metrics. Customer engagement starts from the first touch point and incorporates subsequent interactions, including the time customers spend with your brand and the actions they take throughout their journey. Customer engagement metrics are effective in measuring service accessibility and the quality of customer experience.
Social media monitoring. Monitoring tools help understand what people are saying about you on social media. Insights like this paint a richer picture than simply relying on traditional media. Available in the market are the likes of Keyhole, Addict-o-Matic, CyberAlert, Sysomos among others.
There can be many obstacles creating barriers to your ability to provide excellent customer service. Some of which include the following.
As a manager, you must ensure incentives focus employees on the right performance. Incentives can be an obstacle to good performance when employees take actions to gain incentives at the expense of doing what is right or good for the customer. Have you ever wondered about the motivation of the auto-mechanic, when they tell you your car needs more work than you anticipated? What about when the salesperson sounds very convincing as they try to sell you more than you think you need? Employees may be tempted to bend the rules, working against the concepts of good quality service, in order to win incentives. Ensure incentives are set up to encourage better service and not encourage unethical behaviour.
Sometimes service systems just don’t work; maybe it’s cumbersome processes customers must follow, unreliable service (works intermittently), poor quality products, or procedures that just don’t work. Often customer service representatives get blamed by customers for these things, but in reality, these things are beyond the scope of the service representatives’ control. With that said, certainly, service representatives should alert their managers when they observe such issues. For example, if several customers have complained about the same thing, then it might be time to change it. As a manager, if your employees have informed you of processes that are not working you should examine them and consider how to make improvements.
A lack of policies, processes, or procedures can also be an obstacle to providing great customer service. If these are missing or lacking in structure, customer service agents will not be guided in providing exceptional service. If the company does not clearly communicate its customer service vision and provide the tools to employees to do their job, then lack of process and procedures will become an obstacle. On the other hand, if there are too many policies, processes, or procedures agents may be restricted in offering the best service they can. In either of these cases, customer service managers should work with the cross-functional management team to develop clear guidelines for policies, processes, and procedures and communicate those to employees in order to provide exceptional service.
A lack of communication or support from other departments can be an obstacle to providing great customer service. Often the front-line employee, those facing the customer, need support from other departments within an organization. This means depending on others within the company to do their jobs, and to do a quality job. Not every employee is dedicated to the company or performs quality work. As a manager, if your employees are having difficulty getting what they need from other departments you should step in and connect with the other department’s manager to discuss what can be done to make working together easier and more effective. They may not care about what is happening with your team, but they should care about fixing a problem that is costing the company money and customers.
Customer demand can exceed what was expected or the number of customers can be far greater than anticipated which can create an obstacle to providing excellent customer service. If customer demand is so great that your company runs out of product or not everyone can be served efficiently, then customers may become dissatisfied. If your company gets far more customers than anticipated there may not be enough staff on hand to serve each customer, again, this can lead to customer loss and dissatisfaction. Managers need to schedule enough employees to serve all customers and serve them through various channels. Managers may forecast demand by reviewing past trends or patterns in sales and service. They may anticipate demand through analyzing the environment, for example, if there is an event in town bringing in vacationers then maybe the company will require additional staff on hand that week. Managers may also hire contingent workers, or workers they can hire when short-staffed on an ad-hoc basis, but having them trained may be an issue.
According to this great quote from Sam Walton, “There is only one boss. The customer – and he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Great customer service is just the first stage, but by making sure you build in analytics and other ways of measuring this success, their hard work and effort can be quantified and your outstanding customer support teams progress can be measured.
Some of the things that annoy customers so much so they switch to another company, include:
One way to improve service quality is to empower your employees. Empowering employees means giving them the authority to make some decisions without needing approval. This way they can make decisions to resolve customer issues without delay or making the customer wait. You will eliminate the “let me ask my boss” barrier by handing over a level of the decision making power to front-line employees. You also need to empower employees by giving them access to data and systems they need in order to solve customer problems. Ensure boundaries are clearly defined, this may mean that an employee may be given the authority and be empowered to correct a customer issue up to a certain dollar amount.
Of course, to do this well, supervisors must be trained on how much power to give employees and in which areas; then, these supervisors coach their employees on making win-win decisions for their customers and company. When employees have the authority to solve customer problems, customers are served more quickly and receive more efficient and effective service thereby meeting or exceeding customer expectations. Customers who are satisfied with the service they receive become loyal and may even refer other customers.
Make it easy for customers to do business with you. If it is too cumbersome or too complex for customers to do business with you, they will go elsewhere. That might mean making your website easier to read and use, or offering a delivery option, or accepting several different payment methods. Make the processes customers use easy and clear. Customers who feel they waste too much time standing in lines, being transferred from one staff to another, waiting on answers, or sifting through web pages and papers to figure out what they need to do to return an item will certainly become frustrated and possibly take their business and recommendations elsewhere.
Train employees as needed and provide meaningful feedback in a constructive manner on a regular basis to employees. Feedback should be thoughtful whether you are providing encouragement on a job well done, or providing constructive feedback for a performance correction. You may need to offer specialized training when you observe your team is lacking skills in a particular area and this lack of skill is negatively affecting the quality of service being delivered. Orientation training or onboarding is not the only time you need to train your employees; when systems or procedures are updated, employees should be trained so they are able to offer the best customer service possible. Communication between management and employees is key in ensuring employees understand what is expected of them, what the company policies and procedures are, and how to serve customers in a way the company wants them to.
Reward your team for providing excellent service. A customer service incentive program can improve employee morale and job satisfaction, but there are some drawbacks you need to steer clear of. Focusing on monetary rewards won’t necessarily have the results you expect. It might look good initially but often ends up creating a competitive environment and a team pitted against each other. Implementing a reward system that aligns with clearly defined goals is the best approach. when it comes to monetary rewards. Many companies call this compensation based on performance results. These monetary rewards are targeted toward individuals meeting performance targets. On the other hand, monetary rewards that incite competition have different effects. For example, if you reward the person who sells the most product, then only one person on the team wins. This sets up the team to work against each other which has negative effects on team collaboration. Instead, you might have a threshold that when met, you reward your employees; in this type of system, several employees might meet the threshold. You also need to make the threshold attainable; something so difficult, that no one can attain the reward, will only have negative effects on employee motivation.
“With previous generations, employers focused on monetary rewards but the expectation of a healthy work-life balance by the millennial generation make cash rewards less appealing. Instead, time off and experiences are more highly valued which is a boon for employees and employers. Rather than offering bonuses for rewards programs, consider offering a long lunch, a shopping spree, a day off, a certificate of accomplishment posted in an area everyone can view, or an afternoon team building with the company. Time is more highly valued to employees and increases overall productivity for the company by allowing employees time to refresh. Implement rewards that value time over cash.”
“One reason that businesses cite not implementing a reward system for employee performance is temporary compliance. An employee of the month program may increase productivity the first month, but interest quickly dwindles. All the work of creating that program provides only short term benefits. To avoid employees lapsing back into pre-reward productivity, it’s important for employers to keep the incentive programs new and exciting. Change up employee reward systems quarterly or yearly to reignite excitement about the plan.”
You need to develop and improve your managerial skills on an ongoing basis as your career develops and as you meet new managerial challenges. Whether you manage a department or a project team, it is important to know how to get the work done right. You must develop not only your technical skills, but your management skills as well. Delegating, motivating, communicating, and understanding team dynamics are some of the key skills needed. With those skills, along with patience and a strong sense of balance, you can become a very effective manager.
A good manager sets their employees up for success. They provide the time and tools to accomplish tasks. They often have experience in the field of work they are supervising. They are capable of solving problems, managing time and money, and inspiring employees to perform optimally. A manager is responsible for the effective and efficient operations within a company, department, or team. A manager who is not able to create efficient schedules, keep employees motivated, or manage time and money will not perform optimally and may impede the ability of their subordinates to do the same. A bad manager may be someone who gives employees directives without any explanation, tools, or context. A good manager supports employees, chooses appropriate projects, and allocates resources (people, time, money, materials and equipment) where needed and when needed in a reasonable manner to support the company goals. Management skills are important to lead a team and move the organization in the right direction. If the manager has weak management skills customer service quality may suffer. To be a good manager it is important to have skills such as planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Managers need to create effective strategies, have good communication skills, be able to make decisions responsibly, be able to solve problems whenever they arise, be able to manage time effectively, be able to manage projects effectively, have conceptual skills, be able to motivate employees to lead their team, etc.
Some new managers are coached or mentored for the first few months on the job. Others take training courses in managing people and projects, emotional intelligence, negotiation, handling difficult people, sales, and management. To be a manager who is great at their job, you will need to:
In a highly competitive market, service-based businesses need to set themselves apart from their competitors. Listed below are a few ways to drive growth in your company by committing to exceptional service delivery:
When it comes to customers, there’s no such thing as over-communication — your clients feel more comfortable when they know what’s going on. That being said, the amount of communication is not so imperative as the timeliness, its context, and its ability to clearly identify the value added to the client. In a world of constant connectivity, your ability to cut through the flood of subpar information with quality and timely answers can go a long way.
Define for customers what level of service they can expect from your company. Keep your message consistent across channels and train staff to deliver service to meet the expectations the company has set. One example might be turn-around time. If you promise to get back to a customer within 24 hours make sure you do; even when you don’t have the answer, you can follow up to let the customer know you are still working on the problem. Under promise and over deliver is one way to exceed customer expectations. Do not promise to do something if you are not sure you can, this may result in a dissatisfied customer. You might say, “We will make every attempt to deliver by Friday, but I cannot promise it will arrive on time. I will try my best.” Then if the package arrives on Thursday or Friday you have delighted the customer.
Offer customers a choice of full-serve or self-serve processes. Today we see online shopping, self-checkouts at retailers and grocery stores, online accounts such as Amazon which allow customers to customize their options and subscriptions. Automation, when working optimally, can increase customer satisfaction, streamline processes and services, and reduce the workload on employees. Ensure automated systems are not difficult to use and are working optimally, otherwise, your customers may become dissatisfied and may decide to do business with your competitor instead. Shipping processes may be automated as well, and it is important to ensure speedy delivery because if your customers can get the item from your competitor faster, they just might. Implementing automated systems may reduce costs for a company in the long run, but there will always be some customers who prefer personalized service provided by a real, live person. Automation comes with a high upfront cost, but usually increases productivity so in the long run saves money and increases revenue.
Service organizations need to schedule employees in accordance with forecasted customer demand. For example, during holidays stores might anticipate an influx of customers and plan to have additional cashiers and customer service employees on the schedule. The company does not want too many employees working at one time when it leads to some employees standing around with nothing much to do. This is a waste of resources and costs the company money, it may also lower employee morale and motivation to do their best work. The company also does not want too few employees scheduled if they are so busy that customer service wains due to being rushed, exhausted, and frustrated. Situations such as these may lead to higher turnover rates (employees quitting), increased customer dissatisfaction, lower employee morale, and negative corporate culture. Managers should schedule resources (employees, equipment, raw materials) in accordance with current projects and sales forecasts, and ensure that no resource is over-or underutilized.
After establishing a feasible service concept, there is no other factor so instrumental to the success of a service organization as its culture. Employees should be aligned when it comes to a specific set of overarching principles — and, while methodology is crucial to service delivery, this should feel more like a philosophy. Don’t take it for granted that your culture is strictly internal — it shows up in your service delivery, your methodology, and your relationships and interactions with customers. The better employees understand the company’s service vision, the better it translates to customers. More often than not, your customers will know if you and your employees aren’t on the same page.
Bad customer service costs businesses $338 billion in revenue every year, globally. That’s the real cost of bad customer service.
Not listening to customers is one of the biggest mistakes companies can make. It may lead to angry customers, lost business, and damaged company reputation. In order to satisfy customers, companies have to keep up with the latest technological advances and train their staff on how to meet or exceed customer expectations. Social media is growing in popularity and customers will use it to talk about their customer service experiences, good and bad. Often disgruntled customers do not tell you or your employees directly, instead, they complain to friends, family, coworkers, and on social media about your company, products, and services.
An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/customercentricstrategy/?p=53#h5p-9
The first step to investing in a contact center is to determine which services and tasks you wish to support. That will help you determine the type of structure, technology, and resources needed. Here’s a brief definition of each type:
Outbound call center: In an outbound call center, agents call potential or existing customers rather than receiving calls from them. This type of call center is mainly used for sales, fundraising, promotions and customer surveys, but it’s not always the case. Some businesses choose to welcome their new clients with the so-called welcome call, during which agents provide further information on the company’s products or policies.
Inbound call center: Inbound call centers tend to focus on assistance for customers who need to solve their problems, questions bout a product or service, schedule appointments, dispatch technicians, or need instructions. For example, if your internet connection stops working or if it’s too slow, you can call your internet provider’s customer service center to report the issue and get it fixed. Apart from on-call support, inbound contact center agents often provide email response or chat support.
Blended call center: In a blended call center customer service agents take care of both inbound and outbound call operations. Agents can fill in for each other while handling all the calls. This functionality boosts a call center’s productivity.
Virtual call center: Many businesses have opted for virtual or cloud-based contact centers with blended services. Cloud-based call centers can be operated from anywhere, the set-up is very easy and quick and you don’t need any special programming skills or equipment. Users only need a computer or a phone with an internet connection to access the service. A huge advantage of virtual call centers is the possibility to integrate them with your existing tools, such as CRM or sales support systems.
International and domestic contact centers: Contact centers can be further divided into domestic and international contact centers. Domestic contact centers make and receive calls from people within the same country. So if the company contact center operates in France, agents will be in touch with customers living in France only. On the other hand, international call centers receive and make calls to people from all over the world. International call centers often use several local phone numbers or toll-free numbers to minimize fees for their customers.
Offshore and nearshore contact centers: Companies often outsource their customer service management to overseas call centers. India and the Philippines are the most prominent countries where offshore call centers are located. Overseas call centers typically offer lower rates, because the labor costs in these countries are much lower than in the U.S. However, it’s important that companies do not lose sight of what’s important if they are considering moving their call center operations overseas. Businesses need to make sure the provider they choose will not compromise their brand or the customer experience.
Nearshore call centers are designed to blend the quality of service found in domestic call centers with the cost-effectiveness of offshore call centers. These contact centers are typically located in Central America or the Caribbean and have significant numbers of bilingual agents as well as native English speakers. Nearshore call centers also tend to minimize cultural barriers because there is more travel back and forth between nearshore countries compared to truly overseas call centers.
Onsite configuration: With onsite configurations, contact centers are owned and operated by the company itself. This means that the company’s team takes care of the installation, configuration and maintenance with in-house software and hardware. This can be a costly choice but offers more control over setup, upgrades, customizable options, and changes when needed.
Cloud-based configuration: Cloud-based configurations are hosted offsite in the cloud by a business phone service provider. Users access telephone service through an app installed on their computer or mobile device. This solution relies on internet access with sufficient bandwidth to comfortably accommodate all users, plus other internet activity. Your business or call center’s data is hosted on the cloud, and the corresponding servers either belong to the service provider, or to a third party.
Hybrid configuration: Hybrid configuration means that your call center’s software is hosted off-site and accessed through the internet or intranet. This solution combines the pros and cons of the previous two models, but it does have some drawbacks. The startup costs are cheaper than onsite solutions, and your business won’t need physical space to store servers. However, adjustments and troubleshooting still require third-party maintenance, making an on-premise solution less flexible than cloud solutions. Call routing structures can’t be changed at a moment’s notice, and users/numbers cannot be added as quickly. A combined onsite and virtual approach also has drawbacks in terms of security and overall expenses.
Call center software is software that allows businesses to make or receive phone calls to and from customers for the provision of good customer service. It offers certain features, such as inbound queueing, call routing, outbound contacting, interactive voice responses (IVR), automatic call distribution (ACD), call scripting, and call monitoring, to help the agents efficiently manage all the calls.
Contact center operations software includes traditional dedicated telephone-based call center technology as well as computer systems integration and management tools. These products integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) applications to access customer information and update customer records. Contact centers often integrate contact center workforce software, speech analytics software, and auto-dialer software solutions. Contact center operations features can overlap with telecom services software beyond adding communication channels–analytics, real-time call guidance for agents, and authentication or permission services, among others.
A contact center is supported by many technologies designed to enhance the customer experience and improve operating and management efficiency, or lower the overall costs of running a contact center. These technologies include:
ACD-–Automatic Call Distributor: ACD is a telephony system that recognizes, answers, and routes incoming calls to the terminal or agent that is best suited to handle the caller’s needs. Knowing where to send incoming calls before they are answered is a huge help for companies receiving a large volume of calls. ACDs help companies meet customer needs more efficiently. It can also create customer call waiting queues, collect phone system usage data, allow for call monitoring and coaching, allow for social media and CRM VoIP integrations.
Call Recording: Call recording enables agents and managers to record inbound and outbound calls. The recordings can be searched through and heard later for quality coaching.
Call Scripting: Call scripting helps agents follow a dialogue template for easy reference. They can fill their responses directly into the customer relationship management tool (CRM) to design workflows. Scripting is especially helpful to new agents who may not know what to say to a customer or to an experienced agent who may be dealing with a very difficult customer or complex problem. Scripting helps the company portrait a similar image to each customer and create a positive experience for each customer. While scripting helps agents follow a specific line of questions and answers it is important for agents to have the authority to deviate from the script when needed otherwise the script may be too rigid or not aligned with specific customers’ needs.
CMS–-Campaign Management System: A CMS is most helpful for outbound contact centers. The software provides the agent with a contact list, or other info needed to reach out to the right people.
CTI-–Computer Telephony Integration: CTI is a type of technology that enables computer and telephone systems to interact together. Contact centers implementing CTI can use computers to manage all telephone calls, which in turn leads to increased efficiency and better results. When agents using CTI receive incoming notifications, a screen is displayed, showing the caller’s account information on the agent’s computer screen. This saves time for both parties by giving the agent the customer info they need to lead the call and solve the problem. CTI screen pop is often used in tandem with a unified desktop so an agent has complete access to customer data.
CRM–Customer Relationship Management System: CRM software gives agents the 360° customer info they need to solve customer needs as quickly as possible. Contact center agents can also use the servicing application to document customer interactions that can be brought up if the caller needs more help in the future. Having a record can help agents resolve customer issues more efficiently. It can also help manage issues that need to be transparent to a sales team leader for further relationship building. CRM systems enable an organization to provide insight into all customer interactions across business units. Because they provide visibility into customer interactions with an organization, they also help with case and issue management: routing customer issues or cases through internal processes and keeping the customer apprised throughout the entire case lifecycle. Your call center software should integrate with your CRM solution. This would help you centralize all the data, including history of communication, agent notes on every interaction, customer issues, and the offers emailed to customers.
Email Response: Email response empowers agents to answer customer queries and manage requests across platforms, such as email, chat, or mobile apps, from a centralized interface. An email response management system is a computerized system that receives, acknowledges, analyzes, and organizes email inquiries submitted by customers and routes the emails to the appropriate resources for response. The system tracks the status of the inquiries from receipt to completion and provides tools such as auto-responses, auto-suggestions, and response libraries to help contact center staff respond to inquiries more efficiently.
Intelligent Call Routing: Call routing is a management process that routes calls as per categories, which are based on predefined business rules, wait time, and customer value. This allows agents to prioritize calls that need to be answered first based on their value, urgency, etc. They can also transfer the caller to another queue and define wait limits for the queues. It is also sometimes referred to as an automatic call distribution (ACD) system.
IVR–Interactive Voice Response: IVR is an automated telephony system that interacts with callers before routing them to the right agent or department, based on the required expertise. The feature aims to ease the situation for callers. The IVR greets them first and prompts them to choose from a series of options to talk to a team member, pay bills, check their account balance, and more.
KMS–Knowledge Management System: KMS is a computerized system designed to support the creation, storage, and dissemination of information. Such a system contains a central repository of information that is well structured and employs a variety of effective and easy to use search tools that users can use to find answers to questions quickly. One of the greatest challenges of running a contact center is making sure that customers are getting consistent, accurate, and timely information. KMS are developed to help contact center operators meet this challenge. By having answers to frequently asked questions in a central repository, agents and/or customers can search and retrieve the correct answers quickly and consistently.
Predictive Dialing: A predictive dialer automatically dials from a list of phone numbers. This saves agent time as the dialer will detect busy signals, voicemail messages, disconnected phone numbers, and when there is no answer. Predictive dialing is applicable across channels: mobile, text, social, chat, and email. It detects a customer’s channel of choice and delivers the interaction directly to an agent upon answer. It can also be used to deliver proactive outreach in the case of an emergency or to educate a customer on where their case is in the queue. This feature automatically connects agents to calls when an agent becomes available. The dialer runs through the calling lists and dials at the pace at which the calls can be handled to ensure higher contact rates and lower abandoned call rates.
QM-–Quality Management: QM applications give managers insight into employee performance so that any areas of weakness can be identified. Managers can also use QM to ensure that agents are adhering to internal policies and procedures. For instance, if contact center agents are not taking their break at the scheduled time, it could offset staff to customer demand levels. Knowing how contact center agents adhere to scheduling, training, and workload balance creates a more efficient contact center.
Social Listening: Social listening lets your agents listen to customer issues online using predefined keywords and hashtags on social media. Social media posts are immediately routed to agents and prioritized so that they can provide immediate resolution to customers. The feature also allows you to identify the problem areas based on the online feedback and then use it for improvement. Salesforce Social Studio is a software that helps marketing, sales, and customer service teams to come together and manage a brand’s social media presence all in one place. Hootsuite Insights is software that also empowers companies with social listening capabilities.
Here are few benefits of using Social Media Listening:
Texting Response: Mobile devices have become indispensable tools of the twenty-first century. Studies show that two-way text messaging systems offer a more direct and expedient means of contacting call centers.
Ticketing Software: A ticketing system collects customer support requests from all the sources and centralizes them with the customer data about contact history. Integrating ticketing software with a call center system allows your agents to respond to all the queries efficiently.
TDM-–Time Division Multiplexing and IP – Internet Protocol: TDM was developed in 1870 for large system telegraphy implementation. The technology transports contact center interactions by segmenting multiple data streams and then putting them in a single signal. IP has replaced TDM as the primary mechanism for transporting contact center transactions. IP offers easy access and value-added services such as instant messaging, video calling, and making phone calls directly from websites – all while moving through a less costly network.
Toll-Free Telephone Service: Toll-free or “800” service lets customers call the company free of charge. The company or agency pays the phone bill for all incoming calls. There are different levels of service, and depending on the package selected, it can accommodate callers from the U.S. and U.S. Territories, and Canada. With special arrangements, it can accommodate callers from other countries. The public doesn’t want to pay long-distance charges to obtain government information and services. Toll-free telephone networks can help your agency manage customer calls more efficiently and effectively. They offer a combination of toll-free telephone service and call routing services to optimize the operation and management of contact centers. You can serve a wide geographic region, with multiple locations and staggered hours of operation across time zones.
Trunk Circuit Networks: Used in the context of contact centers, a basic “trunk circuit” is a telephone line connecting the phones at the contact center to the telephone network. Each circuit can handle one phone call at a time. The number of circuits required depends on the number of simultaneous callers the contact center wishes to accommodate. For smaller contact centers, a special trunk circuit known as T-1 is commonly used to connect the contact center system to the telephone network. Each T-1 circuit can accommodate up to 24 simultaneous phone calls at a time. For example, if your contact center wishes to accommodate 36 simultaneous phone calls, you’ll need to put in 2 T-1s.
TTY/TDD Communications: A Text telephone is a special device that lets people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech-impaired use the telephone to communicate. The process is similar to chat on computers, where one person types text to the other on these devices. Both individuals in the conversation must have a TTY at each end of the telephone line in order to communicate. Some TTYs can be connected to the phone line by placing the telephone handset in an acoustic coupler; others can connect directly to the phone line.
Web Chat: Web chat is a real-time communications system between agents and the company’s customers that uses a simple, Web interface. Users need browser access in order to use the service. It allows agents to handle multiple chat sessions at the same time. Web chat can be implemented as a hosted service provided by a service provider or as an application on the organization’s server.
WFM – Workforce Management System: WFM is used to forecast the volume of customer voice and digital channel interactions. Contact center managers can use the forecasts to hire the optimal number of agents to ensure customer transactions meet a certain standard of service. WFM systems often tie into other workforce optimization solutions to provide the tools to empower contact center agents. Integrating this software will help contact center managers better manage agents’ productivity. Managers can plan agents’ schedules with a clear understanding of the call volume (derived from forecasting data).
Contact Center Technology Finally Enables You to Be Customer Centric. YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtwtDtsnosA
Some of the benefits contact center agents receive from using technology to improve customer service include increased productivity, accuracy, efficiency, better time management, and possible promotions/recognition/perks for a job well done.
Some of the benefits the company receives from using technology in contact centers include increased customer satisfaction resulting in increased customer retention, increased customer spending, increased referrals; improved employee retention as technology enables employees to be more efficient and effective, cost savings.
Some benefits customers receive from contact centers using technology include faster service, fewer errors in ordering and billing, reduced stress.
Some benefits of using customer relationship management software (CRM) include improved customer satisfaction, retention, and spending; better internal communication; more targeted and cost-effective marketing campaigns, easier analysis of performance as a whole thus gaining valuable insights such as revenue generated, leads, results of marketing campaigns enabling effective decision making thereby improving revenue in the long-run. A CRM system can help maximize your business performance by increasing your up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
“It’s unquestionable that automation technology provides significant cost savings. For every second bots shave off average handle times, contact centers save about $1 million in annual customer service costs. Businesses can reduce customer service costs by up to 30 percent by implementing conversational solutions like virtual associates and chatbots. Automation can, for certain business processes, replace humans (what usually is known as RPA or unattended automation). But there are many things bots can’t do. Bots can’t handle unusual or complex requests. They can’t match a human in expressing empathy. This is why enterprises that have blended automation with humans report that their customer service efforts are more effective at improving both customer satisfaction (61 percent) and associate satisfaction (69 percent).”
An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/customercentricstrategy/?p=29#h5p-14
“A Customer Service Representative (CSR) – also called an agent – is a person who works in a call or contact center and helps customers with their issues. They may do this using a variety of channels, including phone, chat, email and social media. Customer service representatives (CSRs) play an important role in influencing the customer experience.” The role of the customer service representative (CSR) is to offer outstanding service to customers in order to maintain satisfaction by meeting or exceeding customer expectations. A CSR must have many skills including good communication skills, excellent problem-solving skills, and strong interpersonal skills.
“A traditional call center, as the name suggests, is focused on voice calls. Even if a call center provides some multi-channel customer service, the interactions are siloed in the individual channels. This does not provide a clear view of the full customer journey. On the other hand, a modern contact center, as the name indicates, allows customers to contact a company not just via calls, but across whatever channel they choose.”
“A contact center is the central point from which all customer contacts are managed. This requires the coordination and integration of people, processes, and technology across the business. Contact center agents, for instance, need to be trained in the best practices of each channel for engaging customers.”
Contact Center vs Call Center: What’s the difference? YouTube video at https://youtu.be/HJtuLLY3gZk
Customer Service Representatives have the ability to help retain existing customers as well as help obtain new customers, so it’s a highly valuable position for any company. You may be wondering if a position as a contact center representative is the right job to begin your career.
Most likely you have interacted with a contact center at some point, but you may wonder what a day in the life of a customer service representative may include. “To work in a call center, you’ll need to be motivated by customer success. Call center agents are tenacious problem-solvers who are committed to enhancing customers’ experience with a company or brand. A call center agent’s workday is typically fast-paced and requires them to manage a handful of different responsibilities. Often times, agents need to be flexible with their workflow and capable of handling unexpected roadblocks. While this causes their workday to look different each day, agents will still perform the same core call center duties regardless of the task they’re completing.”
The job of a contact center agent can be quite varied and interesting. Responsibilities may include:
Agents may have to deal with a wide variety of issues ranging:
Agents must make sure that they:
Some call center agents work in-house, directly for their employer while others may be working for an outsourcing company and accept calls for a range of clients. Some agents work from home (also known as virtual agents), while others work from a central office and commute to work each day. Some companies operate their own contact centers while others outsource their contact center operations, or part of it, to an agency.
Depending on the specialization of the agent, they may handle calls falling into several of the above categories, or they may be focused on one or two specific areas. Some companies, such as financial companies, may assign high-value clients a designated “account advisor” agent who will answer the majority of their calls. This helpful customer retention strategy and ensures that the customer interacts with someone who knows the status of their account and who can answer their questions promptly. For complex issues and high-value accounts, this kind of continuity is essential.
All companies benefit from contact center computerized systems that pull together customer information into a reporting system (usually a customer relationship management (CRM) database) which makes it easy for any agent on the team to pull-up the customer’s history with the company, orders pending and filled, interactions such as complaints, and notes left by other agents before and during an interaction with the customer. This makes for a positive customer experience and aids in customer retention.
Contact center agents may be working in very busy environments and be expected to answer 50 or more calls per day. An agent may be working in an inbound center or an outbound center. Inbound centers are usually for customer service calls coming into the company from customers seeking information, looking for product support, returning products, or paying bills. Outbound centers are usually for calls initiated by the company going out to customers either attempting to make a sale, or provide information about a promotion, improve customer relationships, or solicit new business.
An agent not only takes phone calls but also works with various channels responding to customer inquiries and solving customer issues. Some issues take time and must be researched, reviewed with a manager, or collaborated on with other departments so an agent must set aside time for these tasks and follow-up with the customer later in the day or the next day (as agreed upon). Even if there is no resolution to the problem, the agent should contact the customer at the agreed upon time to provide a status update and let them know the problem is still being worked on.
“Depending on the nature of the calls, working in a call center can be quite repetitive. Agents who work in departments doing bill payments or inbound sales need to be good typists, since they must record addresses and card details quickly and accurately. Those working in support roles need to be able to complete ticket information accurately, demonstrate good listening skills, and communicate instructions clearly.”
Being flexible and adaptable may help an agent overcome the boredom of the repetition of similar calls. Agents may be asked to work in both inbound and outbound centers, or offer support on more than one product, or answer bilingual calls, or swap between different communication channels. Having agents who can work in different areas and on different systems is a benefit for the employer too as it means less agent downtime.
“Call center work can be stressful if the callers become hostile, but it can also be quite rewarding if the callers are polite and are grateful for the help that they are given. Outbound sales agents, and those who do outbound surveys, can sometimes face hostile responses from call recipients. A good call center agent will handle it gracefully and remove the recipient from the database so they don’t get called again.”
Mock Call Sample Recording With Call Flow Guide. YouTube Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seQ5RRI6H4c
Many contact center agents earn minimum wage, but agents with multiple skills or who speak multiple languages often earn higher pay rates than those who handle only one type of customer call. Agents working in technical support, medical or financial areas often receive higher pay rates. Agents working in sales roles will usually earn commission on top of their regular salary.
“Because of the relatively low rate of pay for the entry-level positions, the turnover rate for office-based call center work is high. Virtual call center agents usually enjoy better job satisfaction, and a better pay rate in real terms, since they do not have to commute to work and don’t have to worry about packed lunches/eating out or buying work clothes. Since they work from home, their work day feels shorter and they may enjoy more leisure time while still getting the same rate of pay for the hours they work.”
Most organizations train their contact center representatives during the first few weeks on the job. Representatives need to become familiar with the company’s mission and vision and specifics around the image the company wishes to portrait to customers. After a few weeks of training, the manager will often coach and monitor new representatives on the job, correcting any service issues they observe. As new technology is introduced into the call center, customer procedures change, trends in service change, or legal or company policies change, representatives may need to be trained on the changes. Once an agent is trained they may be offered additional training to grow their skills and knowledge so as to work in multiple departments, for multiple customers, or learn more about selling or servicing various products.
How to Survive Your Call Center Training. YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FLgVBEHR14
When customers have questions, they want answers quickly. That means you need to be organized and capable of thinking on your feet. It also means that you need to be proficient with call center technology. Most agents will receive training during onboarding or orientation on how to use the computerized systems. You need to document and respond to tickets (issues to respond to) efficiently.
Observe recurring patterns or customer roadblocks. If several customers complain about the same thing then this may be a significant problem and you should report these issues to management. The company can then correct the issue whether it be a processing problem or a product flaw. Correcting the issue early means avoiding future angry customers and ensures a better customer experience. This makes your job as an agent easier too.
It’s tempting to provide a customer with an easy, short-term solution; however, it’s important to solve for the customer’s long-term needs and not for your own convenience. Customers will recognize the difference and will remain loyal to your business if you truly go above and beyond for them.
Stay calm under pressure, especially when dealing with angry customers. Your professionalism may be tested when dealing with angry customers, but doing a quality job means actively listening to complaints, calming the situation, and resolving the issue as effectively and efficiently as possible. This may mean following up with the customer after you have done some research on the problem. Sometimes you need to transfer the customer to a manager when you do not have the authority needed to solve the issue. Other times it may mean working with another department to get the customer issue resolved. All you can do is remain calm, work diligently, and reassure the customer that you are working in their best interest and trying to solve their issue quickly and effectively.
How to Deal With Angry Customers. YouTube video at https://youtu.be/8K19oXZyAAU
An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/customercentricstrategy/?p=39#h5p-10
The contact center manager sets objectives in service quality and analyzes metrics to see if the objectives have been met. The manager provides feedback to staff and arranges training as needed to ensure reliable, efficient support for customers. Very often someone starts out as a contact center representative then progresses into a contact center manager role after they have gained experience in customer service and the technologies used in contact centers. Below is a list of key responsibilities of a Contact Center Supervisor position posted at Indeed.
Key Responsibilities/Accountabilities:
5 Qualities of Great Customer Service. YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWaw3VosVhg
As a call center manager, you will face challenges from management, customers, your employees, and your technology.
Since a call center is so dependent on people being available to answer phone calls and resolve customer issues when workers are absent it increases the workloads for other agents who may already have lots of work to deal with. This creates extra stress for the agents working and may cause them to feel overworked and underappreciated or underpaid, thereby creating low morale. Managers should develop a policy for absences. Encourage employees to give notice or make arrangements in the event of a scheduled absence. Once a policy is enacted then managers must enforce it; hold employees accountable for being at work on time and as scheduled.
Call centers are a repository for customer data and typically use reporting and analytics software to analyze data and create reports that benefit organizational performance. Call center managers are mostly responsible for providing reports on various aspects to other departments. Sales and marketing require reports on outbound sales performance, finance requires reports on the operational cost of the call center, and the information technology team wants reports on the operational performance of the call center. With so many separate reports and systems jumbled together, getting accurate and consistent reporting becomes a colossal problem to call center managers.
When a call center loses an employee, they lose all the time, effort, and training that went into that person. Finding and hiring quality agents is difficult and retaining them can be just as difficult. To help reduce call center turnover rates be more selective when hiring and hire candidates who have shown longevity and loyalty to past employers. Offer competitive pay and rewards, sometimes just offering a bit higher pay can make for more reliable, productive employees. Provide employees with the software tools they need to excel at their job, like multiple communication channels, call analytics, computer telephony integration (CTI), interactive voice response (IVR), call recording, and call monitoring.
Call Center Turnover Rates by Job Title
When customers have bad experiences with companies they often post their stories, feedback, reviews on social media sites. This becomes a big problem for companies as they fear their company image will be damaged and this may result in retaining current customers or difficulty attracting new customers. A post on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter can be read by thousands in a matter of minutes. Call center managers should train their agents to be social-media savvy so as to respond appropriately and in a timely fashion to complaints, bad publicity, or angry customers sharing their stories in the public eye.
“Like any business, call centers require the support of multiple departments. When it comes to problems outside answering phones—like shopping issues or defective products—your employees can only do so much. In those situations, it helps to recognize your employees’ limits, but to also look for opportunities to improve relationships between departments. One way to accomplish this is to integrate databases across departments so every employee has a comprehensive view of your call center’s interactions with a customer.”
Maintaining employee enthusiasm in a contact center is difficult because the work is stressful and monotonous, and it’s easy for employees to become demoralized, which leads to absenteeism and turnover. Managers need to empower employees to help customers. Agents need to feel they have the authority to efficiently help customers. Automation can help by assisting agents in offering excellent service, often reducing the time needed to deal with each customer. Providing incentives for excellent service and meeting performance goals will help engage employees. Delivering timely feedback by letting employees know how they are doing on a regular basis and providing coaching and training as needed is also a way to engage employees.
Most contact centers strive to resolve customer issues on the first call (contact) as this is the most efficient approach and customers prefer not to have to call back several times or be transferred to several employees to resolve their issues. As customer issues become more complex, it gets harder to solve them during the first touchpoint and may take several follow-up calls or additional contact to resolve.
Some ways to help agents solve issues on the first contact, include:
“With digital and social channels reshaping customer expectations and increasing business competition has made it harder for call centers to meet customer expectations. And with evolving customer expectations, customer attrition tends to increase. Customers expect immediate service through the channel of their preference.”
Many customers prefer to use self-service channels so it is important to make it easy and efficient for customers to serve themselves. Increasing opportunities for customers to serve themselves frees up agents to handle more complicated customer issues, and it may increase customer satisfaction as well.
Much of an agent’s day-to-day operations entails continuously switching between multiple software systems and databases. This is only a problem if many failed first-call resolutions are because of an inability for agents to access data. Managers should integrate systems as much as possible to increase efficiency and training time. It is also important to buy from vendors who support their software, have user-friendly interfaces (GUI), integrate their various systems into one system.
How does a contact center know it’s consistently delivering high-quality service? It begins with setting metrics. Metrics is a method of measuring something or the results obtained from this. The right metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) should effectively measure a business’s specific capacities. Call center managers rely on historical and real-time data to make decisions. Traditional call center metrics include first-call resolution, speed to answer, and average handling time.
Here’s a list of the most crucial metrics that inbound call centers must measure.
In an inbound call center setting, the rate of abandoned calls refers to the total number of calls where a caller hangs up before an agent answers. The most common factors that lead to abandoned calls are lengthy wait times and unnecessary hold times. An inefficient IVR system may also cause callers to abandon the queue. To ensure compliance with the SLA, a 5% or lower abandoned call rate needs to be maintained. To compute for the ACR, divide the total number of abandoned calls by the total number of inbound calls.
A method of reducing the number of abandoned calls is to start off the call with ringing rather than going straight to the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. Pre-occupying a caller with the traditional ring can buy agents some time to wrap up current calls and handle the next call in queue. It’s also best to set expectations and be transparent with the wait time. Callers tend to wait longer when they know exactly how long they need to wait.
Offering self-help options via the website through your IVR system also reduces the volume of calls received. Aside from this, offer customers the option to leave a voicemail message to facilitate a callback. Lastly, curb abandoned calls by making sure the headcount during peak hours is enough to handle incoming calls.
The Average Speed of Answer (ASA) refers to the average amount of time wherein a call is required to be answered. It’s an essential part of the SLA where the service vendor promises to answer an X amount of calls within an X amount of time. Generally, a contact center’s ASA should not exceed 28 seconds.
To calculate, divide the total amount of waiting time by the total number of calls received within a certain period. For example, the waiting for 20 calls while the total waiting time is at 30 minutes. The ASA in this instance is 1.5 minutes.
The lower the ASA score, the fewer times customers spend waiting for their calls to get answered. A higher number indicates inefficiency and poor customer service. This metric affects Customer Satisfaction as today’s customers tend to lean toward immediate resolutions to be delighted. In fact, 82% of customers decide to discontinue doing business with a company that provides substandard customer service.
Not only is this crucial to achieving a high Customer Satisfaction score (CSAT), a lower ASA lowers the occurrence of abandoned calls while increasing the First Call Resolution rate.
Reducing the number of abandoned calls improves a contact center’s ASA score. Also, a contact center can easily improve its ASA by having streamlined call routing in place. Getting ahold of the right person the first time also ultimately improves the customer experience.
Average handling time (AHT) is the average time spent by an agent in handling customer issues or transactions. This also includes the amount of time a customer is placed on hold within the duration of the call and the after-call work time which the agent spends doing back-office tasks. The AHT is calculated by adding the agent’s total talk time plus the total hold time plus the total after-call work time. This is then divided by the total number of calls.
The Average Call Transfer Rate is a metric that monitors the number of calls transferred to another department, a supervisor, or a different queue. Customers can become frustrated when repeating the same issue to different representatives so it is important to monitor this metric.
The Cost Per Contact metric refers to the expenses related to running a contact center (i.e., operational costs, wages, benefits). To calculate the average cost per contact, the total cost associated with operating the business is divided by the total number of contacts handled. Whenever an agent picks up the phone, it costs a contact center money—salary, software, hardware, electricity, etc. This metric helps determine which channels are the most effective including phone, email, live chat, SMS, and social media.
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is one of the key statistics to track as part of a customer experience program. CLV is a measurement of how valuable a customer is to your company, not just on a purchase-by-purchase basis but across the whole relationship. CLV is often used by marketing managers to determine who the company’s best customers are and target these customers for specific promotions, services, or perks. The CLV may be used in a contact center to prioritize callers. For example, customers with higher CLV to more experienced contact center representatives or specific segment representatives to ensure the best service, while customers with lower CLV may be direct to the general representatives or less senior representatives. To measure CLV take Customer revenue per year x Duration of the relationship in years – (Total costs of acquiring the customer + total cost of serving the customer) = CLV “CLV is distinct from the Net Promoter Score (NPS) that measures customer loyalty, and CSAT that measures customer satisfaction because it is tangibly linked to revenue rather than a somewhat intangible promise of loyalty and satisfaction.”
The goal of every inbound contact center is to keep customers happy. The customer’s happiness equates to the organization’s profitability. A great indicator of customer happiness is the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). This metric is calculated by asking a question that pertains to the customer’s feedback on a particular interaction with an agent, “How pleased were you with your experience?” or “Was the agent able to handle your concern satisfactorily?”
CSAT scores can be improved through personalized coaching and training as well as ensuring that the best practices are observed for all other metrics.
Customer Retention (CRR) and Customer Churn (CCR) rates go hand in hand. Customer retention rate refers to the percentage of existing customers or users that are still part of the organization’s pool of consumers over a certain period of time. Customer churn rate refers to the percentage of customers you have lost over a certain period of time.
To calculate the CRR, you would need the total number of active customers you have in a given period (30 days, 60 days, 360 days, etc.), and subtract the newly acquired customers during the same period. The result would be the total number of customers an organization has retained. For example, the number of customers you began with 2800 customers. During a 60-day period you acquired 300 more and ended with 2600. {(2600-300) / 2800} x 100 = 82% retention rate.
The churn rate can be determined by dividing the number of customers who left by the number of customers you had started with and multiply it by one hundred. For example, in a span of 30 days, the client has lost 150 customers while you started with 1,500. The formula would look like this: (150/1500) x 100 = 10% churn rate.
These metrics determine whether an inbound contact center is capable enough to retain customers through providing excellent customer service. Generally a 5-7% churn rate annually is a healthy average. This means an organization’s monthly churn rate should only be .5% or lower.
To help increase retention rates and reduce churn, it’s important for an inbound contact center to have a Customer Retention team or department that handles complicated issues and cases that could possibly lead to customers churning.
The First Contact Resolution (FCR) metric shows how many customer requests were solved during the first contact. The industry standard is around 70-75%. First Contact Resolution (FCR) is an essential part of managing your company’s relationship with your customers. It is a direct reflection of an agent’s and a center’s capacity to solve problems, answer questions, and provide needs the very first time a customer calls. Simply put, it’s getting it right the first time and reducing customer effort.
First Contact Resolution: Managing Metrics. YouTube Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HartFWX83dA
Service level is the percentage of calls that are answered within a given time period. To calculate the Service Level, divide the total number of calls answered within the time period by the total number of calls and the total number of abandoned calls. A service-level agreement (SLA)documents the agreed-upon level of service between a vendor and a client. Numerical metrics are often assigned to determine the success or failure of the agreement, along with clear repercussions for failing to meet the service level standards. It’s most commonly used by technology and customer service providers. Then multiply the result by one hundred. It’s imperative for companies to enable customers to help themselves. This is achieved by maintaining a comprehensive knowledge base (FAQs) that customers can use as the first line of support.
To calculate agent productivity take the total time the agent is working (answering calls, doing administrative work, doing after-call work) and divide by the time the agent was scheduled to work, then multiply by 100. Formula = (Total Output / Total Input) x 100 = Labour Productivity
Using automated workforce management tools and agent scheduling software help to collect accurate data that will help a manager forecast labour needs accurately. Analyzing records will help identify busy times and slack times in customer service needs so that under-staffing and over-staffing do not become big problems costing the company money and customers. By precisely predicting the number of agents required at a given point in time, call centers can optimize scheduling to keep costs as low as possible while providing the best customer service possible. Automated workforce management tools also help track an agent’s non-productive hours and take the necessary steps to remedy the problem; thus, increasing the agent’s productivity. Managers do need to recognize that some customer issues require additional time and after-call work which would be measured in the productive time for the agent.
While many companies have inbound and outbound contact centers some also have work-from-home agents.
Companies benefit from the work-from-home agent setup as it makes it easier for them to provide customer service across multiple time zones. Since the customer service team is working from various locations, businesses with remote call centers can provide coverage during off-hours without having to put employees on different shifts. This makes employee scheduling significantly easier for companies that provide 24/7 customer support.
Some contact centers not only offer support online, on the phone, or through social media they also offer in-person support. Some companies outsource their contact center needs either locally or globally and pay to have trained agents answering calls from company customers, or to have trained agents calling potential customers to make sales.
Strategies for effective contact center management:
An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/customercentricstrategy/?p=55#h5p-11
Products are created to address customer needs, solve customer problems, and create customer delight. In a customer centric company, product innovation is all about the customer. Therefore, to launch, manage, and enhance products successfully, product teams must constantly consider their target customers. The most effective product teams partner with their customer experience (CX) counterparts. This ensures that best practice CX strategies are implemented and that the voice of the customer (VoC) is integrated into each stage in the process.
When creating products it is imperative today to conduct research into customer preferences, social trends, competitor behaviour, and sales patterns. As companies get further into new product ideation, they must consider what a high-level customer journey might look like; hypothesize their target customer market segments; and brainstorm what their customer personas might be.
There are many ways in which companies can ensure they are making products that customers want and will enjoy using. Here are five ways in which companies can gather customer insights before producing products customers won’t want, like, use or buy.
Customers, for the most part, want products that work as advertised, are easy to use, are reliable, and do not malfunction. The goal of customer centric product development is to provide customers with a good user experience (or “UX”). Apple is known for making products customers enjoy using, find easy to use, and have features that delight or exceed their expectations. Making products that delight customers helps build customer loyalty and creates customer advocacy. Many Apple consumers after having purchased their first Apple product become loyal advocates of the brand and continue to shop Apple, and only Apple will do, for many years.
“LEGO has long seen the value in co-creating products with customers (both young and old). For example, LEGO Ideas is an online community where members can discover cool creations by other fans and submit their own designs for new sets. Fans can vote on submissions and give feedback. If a project gets 10,000 votes, LEGO reviews the idea and picks a winner for an official LEGO Ideas set to be created and sold worldwide. The creator gives final product approval, earns a percentage of the sales and is recognized as the creator on all packaging and marketing. This concept celebrates loyal customers and rewards them for innovation, creativity and entrepreneurialism.”
Customers today are more concerned with the environment than ever before. Companies need to be environmentally sustainable both in the products they offer and in their internal manufacturing systems. Customers want to do their part to help the environment and are more likely to support companies that are responsible towards the world around them. Modern companies can’t truly focus on their customers while ignoring our planet’s many pressing challenges.
Disney is working to reduce the indirect greenhouse gas emissions through the reduction of electrical consumption. It has a zero net direct greenhouse gas emission policies within all its facilities. Disney also has a zero waste policy meaning that there is nothing that would end up in landfills. The entertainment giant also uses technology that saves water and is working on lowering the footprint of its product manufacturing and distribution. This is tied up to the company’s policy of having a net positive environmental impact that has made Disney a leader in environmental responsibility.
How to Do Market Research! YouTube Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-hDg7699S0
With the vision statement as “We seek to become Earth’s most customer centric company”, Amazon truly lives up to its mission by incorporating customer centricity in each activity and decision that it takes. Founded in 1994, Amazon is among the first companies to leverage the power of the Internet. While it started as an online bookstore, Amazon then went on to become a $430 billion worth company. Despite being such a large organization, how does Amazon manage to consistently rank amongst the most customer centric organizations in the world? Here are the secrets:
Keeps your ear to the ground.
Every manager at Amazon, including the CEO, spends two days every two years at the customer service desk. This ensures that he is listening to the customers and understanding their needs. As a consequence, every single employee has the customer’s perspective in mind all the time. Evidently, this practice helps the entire organization become more customer centric.
Have a customer centric leader at the helm.
Founder and Chief Executive of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos is known to be a customer obsessed leader. His empty chair story is a very famous story among all those who have read about the company. During the earlier board meetings, Bezos would leave a chair empty in the room, asking the executives to assume that it belonged to the most critical and crucial member of the company – the customer. He’d then encourage his employees to take all their decisions bearing the customer in mind.
Innovate with the focus on the customer.
Amazon has never left any stone unturned in the process of helping the customer derive maximum gains. From The Kindle to drone delivery, all of Amazon’s innovations are aimed at adding value to the customer. During the development of the Kindle, when one of the Finance executives asked Bezos how much they had to spend on the development of the Kindle, Bezos answered by saying “How much do we have?”
An amazing customer experience is one of the biggest competitive advantages a company can have. Instead of competing on price, more than two-thirds of companies now compete mostly on the basis of customer experience. With that said the customer experience is all that a customer experiences throughout the customer journey and this will include the service customers receive from employees as well as the impression the customer gest from browsing through the physical store, how user-friendly the website is, and whether or not the product works as expected. If the customer has a bad experience using the product or a bad experience interacting with the support team then the customer may perceive that they had a bad or negative experience with the company.
Companies such as Costco, Amazon, Ritz-Carlton, Starbucks, Lowe’s, UPS, Trader Joes, Zappos, and Harley-Davidson are known to be customer-centric in everything they do. Innovative companies are always looking for ways to better serve customers and improve their lives.
“Employees are the foundation of a strong customer experience, which means employee experience and culture are crucial in customer-centric companies. Successful organizations invest in empowering their employees and provide them with the right tools and culture to succeed.”
“Starbucks has a fiercely loyal following, in large part because of its mobile ordering and personalized rewards program that makes it easy for customers to order exactly what they want and pick it up with a minimal wait. Starbucks has the most popular app among major restaurants. In 2020, Starbucks focused on its employees with extra hourly pandemic pay and the option to stay home with pay, even if their location was open. Starbucks also extended its mental health benefits to cover 20 therapy sessions per year for employees and their families. As a leader in environmentally-friendly dining, Starbucks also set aggressive new sustainability goals, including reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.”
“If you’ve ever been to IKEA, you know it’s not just a furniture store – it’s an experience. They constantly improve to create better customer experiences, including elements in their stores like cafés and children’s play centers. Recently, they’ve even added augmented reality apps for smartphones, allowing customers to virtually design a room with their furniture.”
Founded in 1967 by Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines has bucked the trend of the loss making airlines. Its mission statement reads “Dedication to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride and company spirit.” It wanted to make every flight an unforgettable experience for its customers and what a wonderful job it does each time! In the process, it has also achieved a fiercely loyal customer base. Everything about the brand, from the napkins that say “I’d be happy to hold your drink” to the stock market ticker that is “LUV”, talks about the fun-loving and customer-loving brand that it is. Here are a few secrets of Southwest:
Understand that “Happy employees = Happier customers”.
The airline believes in keeping its employees first and keeping them happy. The website reads a message from its founder: “Our people are our single greatest strength and most enduring long-term competitive advantage.” It empowers its front line employees and backs them to make quick decisions that are critical for a good customer experience. Probably, that’s Why it is not surprising then that the employees stay with the airline even though they are paid less compared to other airlines.
Anticipate customer needs.
In his book ‘High tech, High touch customer service’, Micah Solomon recalls an experience when the gate agent of Southwest Airlines booked the tickets to the next flight to his destination when the one was supposed to fly was grounded due to bad weather conditions. All this was even before Micah requested it. What a wonderful example of anticipating a customer’s need and being proactive in helping the customer. What was supposed to be an inconvenience turned out to be a moment of pleasant surprise for the customer.
Apologize genuinely.
It’s not wrong to apologize when things go wrong on your end. Sometimes just an apology goes a long way than any monetary solution. And this is the mantra that Southwest Airlines lives by.
Founded in 1852, Toronto Dominion Bank has been delivering WOW!(in its own words) service to its customers for more than 150 years now. FYI, you can take your dog into the branch while you do your banking transactions. The company started as Portland Savings Bank in 1852 and through a series of M&As became People’s Heritage Bank in 1983. This was later rechristened BankNorth after some other acquisitions. Meanwhile, Commerce Bank was a very customer-focussed bank and it is here that the origin of the company’s customer centric culture lies. Later, TD Financial Services of Canada acquired both BankNorth and Commerce Bank and became what is now called TD Bank – America’s most convenient bank.
Be convenient.
True to its tag line, “America’s most convenient bank”, TD Bank operates 7 days a week and often up to 8 PM to serve its customers. TD Bank believes that the convenience that they offer to the customers has become a huge differentiator and a competitive advantage for it. It is confident that if it opens a new one in any locality, it would have more than 25% of the local marketshare within the next 5 years. Another example of its worth: The bank in Wall Street had 1 billion USD in deposits in five years!!
Listen from across all channels.
Keeping up with the increasing number of channels of customer engagement, TD Bank has persistently listened to its customers through all the channels and has been responsive to every customer feedback. As Theresa McLaughlin, Global CMO of TD Bank’s Canadian banking said in an interview with Marketing Magazine, “Doing it repeatedly is what differentiates us from the rest.”
Say Thank you.
Earlier, TD Bank would thank its customers through ‘Customer Appreciation Days’ on which it gave every customer a free coffee and cake at the local bank. In 2014, this went up a notch higher when the bank turned its ATMs into “Automated Thanking Machines” and then, magic happened! In an era where we hardly find time to write a thank you card to our friends and relatives, TD Bank took the effort to give personalised gifts to its customers.
In order to justify their premium prices, Ritz makes sure that its customers receive painstakingly good and personalized service. For example, Ritz takes things to the next level in this story covered on Bloomberg:
A family who had been staying in the Ritz-Carlton in Bali had brought specialized eggs and milk for their son who had numerous food allergies. Upon arrival, they saw that the eggs had broken and the milk had soured!
The hotel’s manager and dining staff searched the town but couldn’t find the appropriate items. Luckily, the executive chef at this particular resort remembered a store in Singapore that sold them. He contacted his mother-in-law and asked that she buy the products and fly to Bali to deliver them, which she agreed to do.
The words of Ritz-Carlton’s COO Simon Cooper show the control Ritz is willing to give their employees to empower them to deliver an amazing experience: The goal is to develop such a strong emotional engagement between the hotels’ staff and their guests that a guest will not consider staying anywhere else, even if they have an option.
Ritz-Carlton gives employees incentive and control to deliver an amazing customer experience, and place their priority on customers rather than regulations.
The way in which a company gets things done can have a positive or negative impact on the customer experience. If customers must wait in long lines, or can only contact the company through one channel, or has to fill out many forms before they can get service or have a problem resolved then the processes the company is using probably need to be reconsidered.
How many times, as a customer, have you become frustrated when you were asked to take a ticket and wait in line, or you were waiting on hold for an extended period of time, or you were trying to use an online system to solve your problem or get an answer to an issue only to discover the online system was not user-friendly and you could not figure out how to resolve the issue without having to use another channel to contact the company? When processes improve the customer experience and make the customer journey easy, fun, or memorable in a positive way, customers are more likely to continue their patronage with the company, increase their spending with the company, post positive online reviews, and refer others.
“Kaiser Permanente focuses on both employee and customer experience and uses innovative technology like virtual appointments that allow providers to see more patients more conveniently. It’s an example of making people’s lives easier and better, and we’ll only see more digital offerings from big brands.”
“Acxiom tracks more than 4,4000 health attributes in its patients to proactively connect them with the right provider and streamline referrals and check-in.”
“Best Buy, the tech store, went through a digital transformation to evolve with changing trends and streamlined its in-store and online experience to provide personalized advice, including visiting customers in their homes to find their best tech solutions.”
“Amazon, the e-commerce giant (and web host with Amazon Web Services), is constantly innovating with new customer solutions, including one-day shipping, easy returns and creative physical locations that integrate for a truly omnichannel experience.”
“Sephora, the beauty brand, uses technology to create a personalized experience with a comprehensive app, virtual try-on of makeup products and a strong online community for a seamless customer experience.”
“TELUS customers have a choice of how they get support help, from online tutorials to detailed instructions on any possible issue.”
“Zappos is an online retail company that is known for “going extreme” for its customers. Zappos’ customer philosophy may even seem risky for some – they offer free shipping for any number of back-and-forth transactions, offer a 365-days return policy if a customer is not satisfied with the product, and never outsourced customer service so as to capture the local culture and persona in their experience. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos says that this indeed costs them some money. However, the philosophy of Zappos is that most of the money they might ordinarily spend on advertising is being invested in customer service so that their customers will stay long-term with them and compensate for the lost marketing with positive word-of-mouth. Is it working for them? Astronomically!”
An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/customercentricstrategy/?p=31#h5p-12
Companies with strong service cultures take the time to clearly define what outstanding service means to them. They do this in their mission and vision statements, in their employee training, in their advertising, in the behaviour of their managers and leaders. They ensure their products, services, and processes are designed with consumer wants and needs in mind. Being customer centric means that every department in the company understands that the customer comes first and everything they do is to obtain, retain, and build relationships with customers.
A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets all employees working in the same direction. A strong customer service vision has three characteristics:
A Customer Centric Culture Needs a Leader. YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwTih30Qr20
Employees need to know that organizational success is defined by the customer service vision. Engaged employees help fulfill the vision with the customers they serve. There are three questions you can ask employees to evaluate employee engagement in a customer centric organization.
The customer service vision should be formally announced or introduced by the CEO or a high-ranking manager. Companies must hire for the right fit; hire candidates who agree with or have personal goals aligned with the company vision. Training should then be provided to employees to help them understand how their role aligns with the company’s customer service vision. Ensure employees receive some one-to-one coaching from their immediate supervisor as needed. The goal is to verify that employees can answer all three of the above questions consistently. Finally, empower employees to enable them to provide excellent customer service and care and sure company leaders are demonstrating their belief in the vision through their everyday behaviors, discussions, and decisions they make.
The 8 Habits of Customer-Centric Leaders. YouTube Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iqo6IEgnD2E
Example vision statements:
Amazon – “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”
Disney – “To make people happy.”
IKEA – “To create a better everyday life for the many people.”
Loreal – “To provide the best in cosmetics innovation to women and men around the world with respect for their diversity.”
Microsoft – “To help people throughout the world realize their full potential.”
Starbucks – “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”
Zappos – “To provide the best customer service possible. Deliver ‘WOW’ through service.”
Employee empowerment means giving employees the authority, right technology, systems, and freedom to go the extra mile to make customers happy. This requires thorough training of customer service teams to enable employees to identify and act on the opportunities to enhance the quality of support. Giving employees ownership for their own work will not only boost motivation but also increase service quality, team productivity, and quick decision-making.”
Empowerment doesn’t mean allowing employees to do whatever they want. It means enabling them to deliver service that’s consistent with the customer service vision. Empowered employees need resources to serve their customers, best known procedures for serving consistently and efficiently, and the appropriate level of authority to handle unusual or unexpected situations.
Empower employees in the following ways:
Customer Experience: Empower Employees with Decisions. YouTube video at https://youtu.be/_fpVNX3oPC8
Set goals that are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Goals for agents should be clear and attainable. Goals for the contact center should be realistic. All goals should be time-bound and performance measured.
If agents are rewarded, for example, for the number of calls they complete each day, then employees may rush to finish a call to take another one. This may reduce customer satisfaction and may leave some customers without their problems resolved. That would be an example of setting a bad goal. If time is measured on each call and an expectation or limit is set, then some agents might transfer the call or end the call before the customer issue is resolved, leaving the customer with a poor image of the company’s customer service. Again, an example of bad goal. Good goals rely on intrinsic or internal motivation while bad goals rely on extrinsic motivation like incentives.
An IVR can help streamline interactions by getting customers through to the right agent the first time they call. But if the IVR is not configured effectively it can result in an endless stream of frustrated customers connecting to your agents.
If your agents are not happy or satisfied this will come across to your customers. Happy employees = happy customers. Get every day off to a great start by getting the basics right. Comfy desk chairs, clean toilet facilities and tasty food in the cafeteria can all help to keep a smile on everyone’s faces. No agent will be giving their best if they are trying to balance on a broken chair, having just had a bag of chips for lunch!
“Customers frequently rank consistency as a primary driver of good customer service. To monitor the quality and consistency of your team’s replies, consider implementing quality assurance or conversation reviews. Providing ongoing feedback through reviews can ensure that your entire team is delivering excellent customer service.”
Sometimes there is resistance to creating quality standards as some managers feel these standards are too rigid and unnecessary. The best way to combat resistance is to demonstrate what quality is and the costs when quality is lacking.
“Enhancing your call center’s customer-centricity would be next to impossible without data. In order to make decisions that will positively impact your customers, your call center agents, managers and executives must be referencing real-time and historical data. Enhance customer-centricity by:
Historically, contact centers focused more on quantitative metrics such as Average Handling Time (AHT) and Calls per Hour. However, modern service centers recognize the importance of measuring customer experience and agent behavior more than quantitative metrics. Adopting a customer-centric approach to contact center management does not imply that there should be no productivity-based measures in place. Instead, it means that service centers should emphasize more on improving customer satisfaction than relying on increasing the number of calls.”
How to Reduce AHT in a Call Center. YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HysPD1vpkiU
Of course, every company should measure performance in alignment with quality standards, and much of this is done through metrics and using technology. There are other ways to assess the quality of service interactions, some of which include: observation, role-play, coaching sessions, recorded interactions, customer input, and mystery shoppers who use services and provide reports.
When measuring the degree to which quality standards are being met it is important to consider the scoring system as it should directly reflect your quality standards and behaviours you want to encourage. A flawed system may, in practice, under-emphasize critical behaviors and over-emphasize non-essential skills. You’ll need to test and modify accordingly.
“The uniquely cross-functional nature of effective customer-experience efforts puts a premium on smart governance. Adequately addressing the challenge requires a dedicated effort on three levels. First, a customer-centric leadership structure must ultimately report to the chief executive and should be designed to stimulate cross-silo activity and collaboration. Second, leaders must commit to demonstrating behaviors and serving as role models to deliver customer-experience goals to frontline workers and refine and reinforce those goals over the long term. Finally, it is necessary to put in place the correct metrics and incentives that are critical for aligning typically siloed units into effective cross-functional teams.”
Contact center leaders cited poor cross-departmental collaboration and lack of understanding and respect for the center as two of the top three challenges they’re currently dealing with (the No. 1 being agent attrition).
Research conducted by customer service provider Arvato revealed that businesses tend to rate the customer experience their company delivers higher than consumers do.
Despite the attention to customer experience that is widely stated in corporate missions, visions, and values, actions speak louder than vision statements. When it comes to resources and budget, CEOs tend to prioritize technology over people or process. Even when company leaders recognize that customer service could be better, they often will look to the latest technology to provide the solution without delving deeper into customers’ true wants and needs, or gathering insights from frontline staff.
Leaders in customer experience pursue a range of approaches to overcome such complexity of making customer experience a priority. Several elements form the core of their successful efforts. They include the following:
“Disney makes use of a simple leadership framework that links the delivery of business results to customer satisfaction and measures that satisfaction via two key indicators: “propensity to return” to a Disney experience and “propensity to recommend.” Disney’s framing also stipulates that the way to satisfy customers is through engaged employees. For Disney’s business leaders, the logic is clear: their task is to develop excellent employees, who in turn help to create satisfied customers, leading to business results.”
To create a customer-centric organization leaders apply the following principles:
An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/customercentricstrategy/?p=37#h5p-15
Since a call center is so dependent on people being available to answer phone calls and resolve customer issues when workers are absent it increases the workloads for other agents who may already have lots of work to deal with.
is the art of using words and phrases to communicate a positive, supportive tone to your customers (or anyone else for that matter).
To calculate agent productivity take the total time the agent is working (answering calls, doing administrative work, doing after-call work) and divide by the time the agent was scheduled to work, then multiply by 100. Formula = (Total Output / Total Input) x 100 = Labour Productivity
retail applications today focus on helping consumers experience brands and products without having to go into stores.
ACD is a telephony system that recognizes, answers, and routes incoming calls to the terminal or agent that is best suited to handle the caller’s needs.
is a metric that monitors the number of calls transferred to another department, a supervisor, or a different queue.
is the average time spent by an agent in handling customer issues or transactions.
refers to the average amount of time wherein a call is required to be answered.
leverages software and services to transform data into actionable insights that inform an organization's strategic decisions.
enables agents and managers to record inbound and outbound calls.
is a management process that routes calls as per categories, which are based on predefined business rules, wait time, and customer value. This allows agents to prioritize calls that need to be answered first based on their value, urgency, etc.
helps agents follow a dialogue template for easy reference. They can fill their responses directly into the customer relationship management tool (CRM) to design workflows.
A CMS is most helpful for outbound contact centers. The software provides the agent with a contact list, or other info needed to reach out to the right people.
can be operated from anywhere, the set-up is very easy and quick and you don’t need any special programming skills or equipment.
are hosted offsite in the cloud by a business phone service provider.
CTI is a type of technology that enables computer and telephone systems to interact together. Contact centers implementing CTI can use computers to manage all telephone calls, which in turn leads to increased efficiency and better results.
The contact center manager sets objectives in service quality and analyzes metrics to see if the objectives have been met.
metric refers to the expenses related to running a contact center (i.e., operational costs, wages, benefits). To calculate the average cost per contact, the total cost associated with operating the business is divided by the total number of contacts handled.
Being customer centric means that every department in the company understands that the customer comes first and everything they do is to obtain, retain, and build relationships with customers.
is a way of doing business that fosters a positive customer experience before, during and after the sale in order to drive repeat business, build customer loyalty (who refer others), and increase business growth.
refers to the percentage of customers you have lost over a certain period of time.
Customer engagement starts from the first touch point and incorporates subsequent interactions, including the time customers spend with your brand and the actions they take throughout their journey. Customer engagement metrics are effective in measuring service accessibility and the quality of customer experience.
is the result of an interaction between the customer and the company.
Companies should gather customer insights before producing products customers won't want, like, use or buy. They can do this in many ways, including: focus groups, surveys, gather customer feedback, track website clicks and emails, observe trends.
is the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with a company and its brands. It considers the complete path from brand discovery to purchasing and beyond. The focus in not on purchases made, but rather on how the customer feels about the interactions throughout their journey with the company.
is a visual depiction (diagrammed or written) detailing the path the customer takes from the time the customer first discovers the brand, to purchasing, and beyond.
is one of the key statistics to track as part of a customer experience program. CLV is a measurement of how valuable a customer is to your company, not just on a purchase-by-purchase basis but across the whole relationship.
CRM software gives agents the 360° customer info they need to solve customer needs as quickly as possible. Contact center agents can also use the servicing application to document customer interactions that can be brought up if the caller needs more help in the future. Having a record can help agents resolve customer issues more efficiently.
refers to the percentage of existing customers or users that are still part of the organization’s pool of consumers over a certain period of time.
A great indicator of customer happiness is the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). This metric is calculated by asking a question that pertains to the customer’s feedback on a particular interaction with an agent, “How pleased were you with your experience?” or “Was the agent able to handle your concern satisfactorily?”
is the assistance and advice provided by a company to customers throughout the customer journey; before, during and after the sale.
Setting customer service goals can serve an important role in managing service teams. Set SMART goals. Good goals focus attention on the right things, while poorly shaped goals focus attention on other things.
means that as an employee you are able to display positive attitudes and behaviors, and demonstrate an awareness of the importance of meeting or exceeding customer needs and expectations.
is a shared mission for your support team, a set of guiding principles that ensure you’re upholding your core values with every customer interaction
A customer service representative (CSR) – also called an agent – is a person who works in a call or contact center and helps customers with their issues. They may do this using a variety of channels, including phone, chat, email and social media. Customer service representatives (CSRs) play an important role in influencing the customer experience.
refer to the performance that customers can expect from the company. It encompasses various factors, like speed, accuracy, transparency, accessibility, empowerment, efficiency, and friendliness of the staff.
Investing the time and money in customer service training can prove to be an invaluable investment for businesses of diverse sectors and sizes. Teaching members of staff the competencies, knowledge and skills required to increase customer satisfaction and therefore customer retention is a shrewd way for businesses to ultimately increase their sales performance.
impact the experience the customer receives and they help to define the personality and attitude the business is trying to put forth. Often companies offer training to employees on how to uphold these values.
is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets all employees working in the same direction.
The first section of a customer service philosophy is a customer service vision statement, which Jeff Toister defines as “a statement that clearly defines the type of customer service employees are expected to provide.
A customer touch-point is a point in time when the company connects in some form with the customer (e.g., website, phone, email, social media, retail store, returns, service, and products).
is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, resulting in fundamental changes in the way a business operates and the value they deliver to their customers.
make and receive calls from people within the same country.
empowers agents to answer customer queries and manage requests across platforms, such as email, chat, or mobile apps, from a centralized interface.
means giving employees the authority, right technology, systems, and freedom to go the extra mile to make customers happy.
are the customers who purchase products or services from the company. Employees who work in job positions that require them to interface with the external customers directly might be referred to as front-line/front-facing/front-end/customer-facing employees. Those that work to serve internal customers are working in back-end/back-office/behind-the-scene job positions.
metric shows how many customer requests were solved during the first contact.
Inbound call centers tend to focus on assistance for customers who need to solve their problems, questions bout a product or service, schedule appointments, dispatch technicians, or need instructions.
IVR is an automated telephony system that interacts with callers before routing them to the right agent or department, based on the required expertise. The feature aims to ease the situation for callers.
are the company employees who need support, information or action from other employees. These internal customers may work just down the hall, in another building, or in another country, but they are still part of the company and working to help satisfy external customers.
often use several local phone numbers or toll-free numbers to minimize fees for their customers.
is made up of billions of smart, connected devices, and gives any “thing” a voice through the data it gathers, produces and distributes.
measure how effectively a company is achieving its goals against a set of targets, objectives, or industry peers.
KMS is a computerized system designed to support the creation, storage, and dissemination of information. Such a system contains a central repository of information that is well structured and employs a variety of effective and easy to use search tools that users can use to find answers to questions quickly.
is a data analysis technique that automates analytical model building. Some advantages of machine learning include intelligent customer service chatbots, improved product search, and fraud detection and prevention.
is a method of measuring something, or the results obtained from this. The right metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) should effectively measure a business’s specific capacities.
allows customers to contact a company not just via calls, but across whatever channel they choose.
refers to gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, body language, posture, and other ways people can communicate without using language.
With onsite configurations, contact centers are owned and operated by the company itself.
In an outbound call center, agents call potential or existing customers rather than receiving calls from them.
has become integral to the customer journey and is now a key driver of brand loyalty across all channels. Consumers are much more likely to buy from brands, both in-store and online, when offers are personalized.
are fictional customer types created to represent real target customer groups.
is a mindset that helps you see and recognize opportunities. It is not always easy to stay positive especially when things do not go as planned, or when dealing with angry customers.
is the art of using words and phrases to communicate a positive, supportive tone to your customers (or anyone else for that matter).
A predictive dialer automatically dials from a list of phone numbers. This saves agent time as the dialer will detect busy signals, voicemail messages, disconnected phone numbers, and when there is no answer. Predictive dialing is applicable across channels: mobile, text, social, chat, and email.
provides you with concrete, easy to remember steps you can work through when faced with any issue, customer service related or other.
is simply the attributes of a product or service.
QM applications give managers insight into employee performance so that any areas of weakness can be identified. Managers can also use QM to ensure that agents are adhering to internal policies and procedures.
refers to the total number of calls where a caller hangs up before an agent answers.
occur daily in all types of organizations. They happen whenever the product or service delivered fails to meet customer needs, wants and expectations.
in an organization means putting customers at the center of the business model, developing policies, procedures, values, norms, and beliefs that are centered around focusing on customer satisfaction and understanding their needs and wants.
To calculate the Service Level, divide the total number of calls answered within the threshold by the total number of calls and the total number of abandoned calls.
is a company's resolution of a problem from a dissatisfied customer, converting them into a loyal customer. It is the action a service provider takes in response to service failure.
are guidelines for employees to follow when interacting with customers.
is the agreed-upon, documented, level of service between a vendor and a client. Numerical metrics are often assigned to determine the success or failure of the agreement, along with clear repercussions for failing to meet the service level standards. It’s most commonly used by technology and customer service providers.
lets your agents listen to customer issues online using predefined keywords and hashtags on social media. Social media posts are immediately routed to agents and prioritized so that they can provide immediate resolution to customers.
Monitoring tools help understand what people are saying about you on social media. Insights like this paint a richer picture than simply relying on traditional media.
are for the requirements, specifications, guidelines, or characteristics established for customer service.
is also referred to as telework, mobile work, flexible workplace, flex-hours, e-commuting or remote work and is a work arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central location instead they work outside the office location from various locations.
Mobile devices have become indispensable tools of the twenty-first century. Studies show that two-way text messaging systems offer a more direct and expedient means of contacting call centers.
is a customer loyalty metric that businesses use to gauge how their customers feel about them. It measures your customers' willingness to recommend your company, product, or service to others. Companies with high a NPS are more likely to achieve long-term profitable growth.
A ticketing system collects customer support requests from all the sources and centralizes them with the customer data about contact history. Integrating ticketing software with a call center system allows your agents to respond to all the queries efficiently.
TDM was developed in 1870 for large system telegraphy implementation. The technology transports contact center interactions by segmenting multiple data streams and then putting them in a single signal. IP has replaced TDM as the primary mechanism for transporting contact center transactions. IP offers easy access and value-added services such as instant messaging, video calling, and making phone calls directly from websites – all while moving through a less costly network.
Toll-free or "800" service lets customers call the company free of charge. The company or agency pays the phone bill for all incoming calls. There are different levels of service, and depending on the package selected, it can accommodate callers from the U.S. and U.S. Territories, and Canada.
is focused on voice calls. Even if a call center provides some multi-channel customer service, the interactions are siloed in the individual channels.
Used in the context of contact centers, a basic “trunk circuit” is a telephone line connecting the phones at the contact center to the telephone network. Each circuit can handle one phone call at a time. The number of circuits required depends on the number of simultaneous callers the contact center wishes to accommodate.
A Text telephone is a special device that lets people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech-impaired use the telephone to communicate.
refers to the ability of a customer service representative to think of the right words in order to appease a customer and provide a solution
Web chat is a real-time communications system between agents and the company's customers that uses a simple, Web interface. Users need browser access in order to use the service. It allows agents to handle multiple chat sessions at the same time.
Companies benefit from the work-from-home agent setup as it makes it easier for them to provide customer service across multiple time zones. Since the customer service team is working from various locations, businesses with remote call centers can provide coverage during off-hours without having to put employees on different shifts. This makes employee scheduling significantly easier for companies that provide 24/7 customer support.
WFM is used to forecast the volume of customer voice and digital channel interactions. Contact center managers can use the forecasts to hire the optimal number of agents to ensure customer transactions meet a certain standard of service. WFM systems often tie into other workforce optimization solutions to provide the tools to empower contact center agents.