If you’re looking to gain insights into your agent performance and customer experience, you should consider adding an automated quality monitoring solution to your suite of contact center technologies.
If knowledge is power, then customers these days are stronger than ever before. With so many people of all ages having access to the internet practically 24/7, information is readily available whenever they want, especially when it comes to looking into goods and services. As a result, the expectations today’s customers place on their experience when interacting with businesses are particularly high, and most businesses are taking notice. Ninety-five percent of customer service decision-makers surveyed say providing an excellent customer experience is their top priority, while 75% believe they can use it to gain a competitive advantage [1].
However, while this intent is certainly admirable, the actual execution is somewhat more problematic. Many companies find themselves overwhelmed when trying to figure out just how to make their customers’ experiences better, especially in a long-term setting. But with a couple of tips, companies can gain a clearer understanding of just what their customers want, and how to give it to them.
This powerful data makes it a necessity for businesses with contact centers to add automated quality monitoring technology to their list of ‘must haves’ for 2017.
Listen to Customers – Make Informed Decisions Using Automated Quality Monitoring Tools
Despite (or perhaps because of) the increase of so many online options allowing the modern customer to interact with businesses anonymously, the majority of people would still prefer a more personalized experience. In other words, they would rather have a conversation with a real, live person, particularly via a telephone call. And those calls are invaluable, because each one contains useful information that can help businesses obtain far better insights into their customers’ wants and needs, and make decisions accordingly.
But this information may not always seem so obvious on the surface, and taking the time to listen to every individual call to glean data can be extremely time-consuming, particularly for businesses with high volumes of incoming calls. But with call mining tools such as speech analytics, companies can quickly scan thousands of phone calls for common words and phrases to detect common trends in agents’ conversations with customers. Then, they can use this data to make strategic business decisions in accordance with what their customers are really saying. Providing an excellent customer experience is no longer based on guesswork, but on real, solid evidence.
Give Agents Tools and Skills Necessary to Succeed
Another expectation of customers today is that information will be readily available to them. When they go to a company’s website, they not want to have to spend too much time finding the answers they need or waiting too long for a reply to a question submitted online (60% of customers expect a response in an hour – max).[2] When customers call a company, they expect the same promptness and well-rounded knowledge from agents. They have little time for agents who are unable to answer their questions or do not have sufficient know-how. In fact, the phrase “I don’t know” is almost universally hated by customers when they call a business.
So how can companies ensure agents are equipped with everything they need to always be able to help the customer quickly and professionally? Agents should know about the business both inside and out, as well as the goods and services it provides. They can also listen to recorded calls from other departments to learn answers to questions relevant to an array of arenas and how they are handled, so they can help customers without necessarily having to transfer them to someone else. And utilizing an automated quality monitoring solution like speech analytics can help train agents by pinpointing moments in calls when interactions with customers may have gone off-track, and then look at what methods proved to be detrimental, and which had a more successful outcome. Before long, both the agents and the customers will have full confidence in the agents’ abilities
A strong company-customer bond is essential to providing an exceptional customer experience, and said bond cannot be achieved in online interactions as well as in real-life conversations. With the right tools in place, companies can help guarantee their customers will always hang up the phone satisfied and wanting to come back.
Sources:
[1] http://www.customerexperienceinsight.com/customer-expectations-you-must-meet-now/
[2] http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/customer-engagement-talking-human-still-matter/
