The heart and soul of customer service

Featured Commentator: Andrea Ayers, President, Customer Management

These are truly challenging times, especially in customer service.  The cost to serve continues to rise, yet the capacity to serve continues to diminish as budgets for internal customer service operations tighten.  And about half of all customers and employees believe that companies today truly do not understand or care about the experience they as customers have when interacting with a company and its agents.

I have worked in the service industry since my teenage years.  Understanding and appreciating the people element of good service is what has successfully contributed to me affecting a positive experience for customers and employees throughout my career. Over the past 20 years I developed my “people are first” perspective on customer service as a trainer of customer care agents, a manager of a contact center, and as a general manager of a business unit, where I oversaw thousands of agents, management staff, and customer accounts in domestic and international contact center locations.  Today, I oversee 60,000+ agents as president of Convergys’ Customer Management line of business.

There is no doubt in my mind that customer service is first and foremost a people business.  Technology has an important role as an enabler and cost container, but the people who interact with customers and make that service experience a positive one are the very heart and soul of good customer service.  It’s what can truly differentiate your business, for the good or for the bad.

I believe that customers are not looking for rocket science when it comes to customer service.  They are looking for useful, meaningful interactions that solve their problems quickly and satisfactorily.

There are several things an internal customer service operation may do to deliver that kind of customer experience and drive sustainable service excellence.

First, enable employees – your agents, supervisors, and site leaders — with the training and technology they need to deliver the superior service experience customers expect.  This one is easy to “ACE” with the right approach. Appreciate your talent.  Celebrate your talent.  Encourage them to take ownership and accountability.  Ultimately, investing in employees builds pride in the work and results achieved.  A great customer service experience always begins with enabled and empowered employees.

Consider this:
• Tie reward and recognition programs, from agents to management and training staffs, directly to customer satisfaction scores.
• Offer agents and supervisors customer service training frequently and often to brush up on customer handling techniques. This shouldn’t be a one shot deal during new hire training.
• Shelf “training in a box” and develop tiered agent training tailored to specific agents skill levels. This nets 15% – 30% savings and gives agents increased satisfaction as they graduate to new complex learning areas.

Second, automate for efficiency and quick resolution to simplify inquiries.  For instance, apply speech-enabled applications to increase ease of use, enjoyability, and customer satisfaction.  By using technology this way, you can give more time for your employees to address those customers who require human interaction and a human touch, whether the complexity of the problem calls for it or their value to the company warrants it.

Consider this:
• Apply email automation to drive double the productivity of your agents. Combining intelligence and text analysis with workflow automation significantly reduces the amount of human intervention needed in key business processes and gives customer answers to most frequently asked questions quickly and efficiently.

Third, provide anywhere, anytime, anyhow access to customer service.  It is paramount that you integrate channels so the customer’s story follows him or her, and customers are able to get service how they want it, when they want it, and where they want it.  Customers are people too.  It’s the golden rule of business to put ourselves in their place to better understand and serve them.

Consider this:
• Invest in relationship management technologies that integrate your contact center with self-service solutions so customer data travels through all stages of the transaction. Customers despise having to re-key information when transferring from voice portal to agent.

Fourth, make the experience personal and proactive to help the caller complete their goal. Use data warehousing and analytics technologies to anticipate customer needs and drive greater value for the company over the customer lifecycle.  Additionally, customer interaction data should be used to understand behavior patterns that lead to ongoing improvements and enhanced service delivery that positively impacts the customer experience.  By doing so, you provide knowledgeable agents, which in a recent Convergys survey was the number one factor that respondents said ensured a superior service experience.

Consider this:
• Use a rules-based, dynamic decisioning engine in front of voice portals to anticipate why customers are calling, direct them to their preferred channel and provide proactive messaging. This improves voice portal call containment, agent call handle time, and customer satisfaction. Initial implementation costs are quickly recouped.

Fifth, recognize your employees are people, too. Employees want to feel like part of a larger entity driving the business forward. Frequent communication about the state of the current market and its impact on business gives employees a sense of ownership. Consistent recognition and rewards across all levels of the organization drives loyalty. Engaged employees are more likely to stay and contribute in a meaningful way.

Consider this:
• Offer rewards and incentives that provide work/life balance and address current economic issues. When fuel prices spike consider gas cards. Grocery cards are a great incentive to employees during the holiday season.
• Partner with your vendors and clients to offer employees discounts to most frequented retailers. Discounts on communications and health goods appeal to any audience.

You may say:  this all seems fairly basic.  And it is.  I believe companies need to get back to the basics of customer service.  And from many industry surveys, including our own customer research, customers think so too.

What do you think?

You also may want to listen to our podcast for tips on closing the “customer experience” gap in your contact centers.

Tags: Agent training, Analytics, Automation, Communications, Customer experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Loyalty, Research, Retail, Self-Service, Speech, Technology