SERVICE STRATEGY
Trends
The days of simply reacting to customers’ requests are no longer good enough when today we have access to more data channels than ever before.
Tapping into the customers most frequently asked questions and issues that arise during their sales process and account life cycle provides opportunities to move from a reactive strategy to a proactive customer service strategy. The challenge is tapping into this wealth of data that is virtually dotted across the organization.
Collaboration to leverage technology in order to manage the data and the process while simultaneously developing solutions to appropriately anticipate issues before they arise has become the new normal.
Preemptive Service
How can you preempt service? When you understand your customers and the sales and service process, you will discover spots where potential issues come up repeatedly. For example, many airlines avoid making a bad situation worse when passengers call about a cancelled flight. Their IVR can tell when the caller ID field matches a mobile phone that recently received a cancellation notice via text message. It skips the standard menu in favor of a single, context-aware question: “Are you calling about the text message we sent you?”
When you anticipate and stay ahead of your customer, they get the sense that “you feel my pain and are already taking care of it.” This type of preemptive service drives up customer satisfaction, loyalty and your social media “likes”. Get ahead of the question or concern!
Customer Service Technology Consolidation
Contact centers run on multiple software platforms. The top three are queuing and routing, customer relationship management (CRM) and workforce optimization technologies.
Today, integration of these three applications and any industry specific application is critical to an easy and complete customer experience. Customers now question “why are you asking for that? You have all my information. Why can’t you see it?” when prompted by several agents for the same information within the same contact transaction. CRMs and Workforce Management (WFM) solutions have evolved over many years and are rich in features and capabilities.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications are gaining daily in popularity. It will become easy for contact centers to support customers with a cost efficient end-to-end solution with only a handful of vendors.
Customers expect easy and effective transactions
Self-service is an example of making service easy and is the first step that customers take in resolving issues. Make it simple for the customer to get service over any touchpoint or communication channel. Self-service is outpacing live-assisted channels. Today people will try to resolve issues using online websites and apps first. Companies like it because it is cost effective for simple issues and customers like it because it is easy. People understand that more complex issues require live help.
Make getting live help easy with intelligent call routing and simple menu IVRs. The easier it is the more likely customers will use it over and over again. People more than ever value their own time. Forrester reports that 50% of adult online shoppers will abort their online purchases when they can’t find quick answers to their questions. Customer frustration due to how much effort is involved to get customer service sends them right to social media to voice their disappointments. Social media is here to stay and can quickly ruin a brand.
Emerging Channel
Customers move between communication channels and want to do so without repeating their situation.
Today’s customer wants time efficient features like automatic callbacks versus waiting in a queue. Contact centers are exploring new channels like Facebook Messenger and real-time voice biometrics to passively authenticate customers instead of the typical security interrogation. Using a variety of efficient channels improves the customer experience.
INDUSTRY SERVICE TIPS
1. Today’s consumer wants to talk less and use more self-service options. Use a customizable advanced multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system for the greatest amount of functionality.
2. Customers love the Automatic Call Back feature. No more listening to hold music or being tethered to a phone.
NEXT STEPS
Take the Next Step; Less than 10% of companies have developed the capability to replicate consistent, quality customer experiences. They have committed themselves to the systems, tracking the metrics and tweaking the process to insure the same repeatable experience with any employee in any location.
VIDEO FROM OUR EXPERTS
INDUSTRY EXPERTS
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NETWORKING FOR CONTACT CENTER PROFESSIONALS
ABOUT NACSMA
NACSMA brings together like-minded professionals focused on advancing the customer contact industry and creating career growth.
BEST-IN-CLASS
Management of a best-in-class contact center sites require the continuous review of Agent Sourcing Models, Organizational Training and Management Development Programs.
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IMPLEMENTATION
When a contact center organization expands to an additional site or requires new space, the steps to properly implement are unique to each organization but do have standard phases.