Go BackDelivering exceptional customer experience via the contact centre
Contact centres are supposed to maximise and protect an organisation's greatest asset - the customer, so why are some still getting it so horribly wrong? Joe Brown, RightNow's EMEA General Manager puts forward 8 top tips to ensure the customer, and indeed agent, are happy.
In the current economic environment it has never been more important for companies to review their customer service initiatives - especially when customer acquisition can cost ten times as much as customer retention. According to the Customer Experience Index survey, run annually by Harris Interactive, just two years ago 6 out of 10 UK consumers would not return to a company following a bad customer experience, today it's increased to an alarming 8 out of 10. So how can the contact centre help keep customers happy?
Customers like to receive personalised service, tailored to their specific preferences and needs. On the other hand, agents need to feel they are empowered to provide that great service. The challenge is; how do you meet both these requirements, especially where there may be a large customer base and when budgets continue to shrink?
The answer is with knowledge, powered by technology that doesn't cost the earth. Today, it is possible to deploy technology that uses knowledge about customers, from across the business, to gain a true 360-degree view of the customer. This insight allows customer-facing staff to know who the customer is and serves as a record of their previous interactions, purchases and preferences. Armed with this knowledge, the service agent's ability to better serve customers is vastly improved and so encourages customer loyalty.
By creating a richer and more satisfying customer experience than their competitors, businesses can grow, improve margins, and build significant brand equity. As the frontline of any business, the contact centre is particularly important when creating a world-class customer experiences.
There are eight steps that any contact centre should abide by if they want to win their customers' loyalty:
Step one - Establish a Knowledge Foundation
A robust, well-automated source of knowledge is essential for supporting a differentiated customer experience. This knowledge should be easily accessible by employees and customers alike, and should contain two primary types of knowledge. The first is knowledge about your products, services and company. Think of this knowledge as answers to your customers' questions. The second type is knowledge about your customers. Examples include demographics, past purchases, interaction history, and explicit and implicit preferences. Armed with this knowledge foundation, employees will be well equipped to deliver a great customer experience.
Step two - Empower Customers with Self-Service
One of the most powerful ways to improve the customer experience is to expose this knowledge to customers through effective self-service mechanisms, such as on the Web or with voice self-service. By providing customers with easy, direct access to your knowledge foundation, you enable them to find the information they need whenever they want it. Many companies have found that by offering self-service options to customers they improve customer satisfaction because many customers want the convenience of self-service options that are available 24-7.
At the same time, when customers choose self-service options, call volumes decrease, giving agents more time for complex questions and personalised service, which enhances the customer experience.
Step three - Empower Frontline Staff
With access to information about a customer's previous interactions with a company, frontline employees can provide personalised assistance, demonstrate that they understand the customer's needs and preferences, and save customers from having to repeat themselves. They'll also be able to appropriately address any problems that may occur during the course of each customer's interactions with your company.
The more effectively you empower staff with knowledge, the more effectively they can respond to customer needs.
Step four - Offer Multichannel Choice
When interacting with organisations, today's customers expect to have a range of options - phone, email, website, chat, online forums and communities, fax, traditional mail, and in person. Because many customers will use them interchangeably, these options must be integrated to ensure a single, unified dialogue with each customer.
Everyone interacting with customers should be able to see all relevant previous exchanges with each customer, regardless of which channels were used. Information about previous exchanges should be current and complete, so that contact centre agents can deal appropriately with customers
Step five - Listen to Your Customers
Delivering a consistently excellent customer experience is impossible if you don't have a systematic way to determine what your customers are thinking. You must understand customers' opinions on everything from the quality of your products to the helpfulness of your website. Discovering that a customer is dissatisfied about an incident that occurred six months ago gives you little, if any, opportunity to correct the situation. By listening to and learning from customers, you will gain valuable feedback that can guide your entire organisation in delivering outstanding customer experiences.
Ask customers for feedback during or immediately after interactions, and make it easy for them to respond. For example, automatically email customers a short survey after they have completed a customer service call or received a shipment. Requesting customer feedback at the "moment of truth" typically drives greater response rates than do traditional, periodic surveys.
Step Six - Design Seamless Experiences
In many organisations, multiple teams interact with customers, yet they don't work closely with one another or communicate frequently, sometimes, they even use different systems and processes. The result is a less-than-optimal customer experience. Today's customers expect everyone they interact with at an organisation - regardless of function or department - to have access to current information about them and all their previous interactions with the company.
To break down operational walls, consider your organisation from the customer's perspective. Do business with your own company, and evaluate your own experience.
Step Seven - Engage Proactively with Customers
To deliver an outstanding experience, you must proactively interact with customers. Answering potential questions before they ask, providing them with information before they need it, and personalising communications based on previous interactions are all examples of proactive, exceptional customer service.
By using customer knowledge correctly, you can proactively interact with customers in an intelligent, compelling manner. Once you begin to anticipate customers' needs and preempt problems, their satisfaction levels will rise, loyalty will increase, and you'll see fewer customers defecting.
Step Eight - Measure and Improve Continuously
Providing an exceptional customer experience is a process, not a single event. Because market conditions, competitors, and consumer expectations are always changing, you must continuously measure your performance and improve your processes to keep pace. At the same time, you must foster a culture that drives continuous improvement.
Following the 8 steps.
It goes without saying that agent buy-in for the change is essential. As the frontline of any business it is the agent that receives both the good and the bad feedback from customers - that insight is invaluable and, from the very beginning of any contact centre change, agents must be encouraged to share their experiences so customer care processes can be continually refined. Transforming the contact centre is not going to happen overnight, it takes persistence and someone with the vision to champion change.
This person must also have the leadership skills to guide the contact centre to success. To that end its necessary to make any changes step-by-step, as massive "boil-the-ocean" projects can overwhelm employees and drain budgets. However, once these changes have been implemented an increase in customer and agent satisfaction will be gained and providing exceptional customer experience will no longer be an unrealistic goal.
