Does the service experience build loyalty? Are customers motivated to engage more with your company? Here are some insights from our recent webinar.
Being in the Age of the Customer means customers have voice, choice and power—and they’re constantly using all three. Customers demand real-time responses from brands that they expect to proactively “know me, remember me, listen to me and help me with personalized solutions.” It’s a tall order for even the best contact centers! How do you begin to deliver on all this?
Webinar presenters Amy Latzer, COO of 211 LA County, and JaNae Forshee, NICE CXone’s Sr. WFO Practice Manager, agreed that responding to customer service demands begins with deeper insights into what it means to actually be a customer. Contact center leaders can understand the customer experience first-hand by:
- Being the customer. Call your own contact center—and listen.
- Talking to others who call your center. Customers want to talk about their experiences and will appreciate the fact that you’ve even asked!
Next, how do you identify what matters most to customers—and then act on those insights? Customers don’t really care about impressive metrics, from satisfaction to FCR rates to measures of purchase and loyalty. All they’re interested in is the quality of the experiences they’ve had with your center. Therefore, Latzer and Forshee said, ALL supporting metrics need to roll up into a measure of the quality of the experience.
While most, if not all, metrics have value, nothing beats getting information, opinions and impressions directly from the customer, preferably immediately after the call. Two important tools for doing this:
- Post-call surveys that get feedback from the customer that is not influenced by the agent. This information can be used to change behaviors and even drive improvement in the culture.
- Speech analytics that analyze elements like callers’ tone and emotion. From this data, you learn the why’s behind the calls—key call drivers that can also signal problems early on.
Synthesizing various types of data enables you to “tell stories” in your organization that will help drive change and understanding on many different levels. This will also help you anticipate and model the customer experience for the future, because contact center leaders must understand the customer experience across all touch points and all channels. In fact, this profound knowledge of your customers will empower your entire organization to create experiences that are unique, individual and effective.
Latzer and Forshee agreed, too, that the impact of the agent on the customer experience can’t be overstated. They advised contact center leaders to take the time and make the investment in “getting it right” when hiring agents, including having candidates simulate calls, riff beyond the script and even, undergo some testing.
Missed the webinar, view the recording now.
