The real crunch for a company is the service they provide on every interaction and the impression that is left with the customer when they hang up the phone.
What Customers Want
We often lose sight that we’re all consumers – everyone that works in customer service is a customer and with that comes a tremendous amount of experience and expertise. Figure out what your customers want by tapping into your own experience as a customer. We often approach our own product or service through the company’s eyes and have a hard time looking beyond the organizational chart for solutions. When you’re able to make this transition in your mind, you’ll find that customers are pretty simple and just want a few things:
Promptness and accuracy – get to me quickly and don’t make me wait too long. And once I’m being serviced, I need you to do it right.
Quality for the time invested – my investment in your company is time. My time is valuable and I’d like you to make sure you respect the fact that I am taking time out of my life to work with you and I expect a return on that investment.
Real first-contact resolution – let’s try and get this done the first time without any further action on my part…meaning, I just want to tell you my problem once and you find a way to fix it. I don’t care about your internal silo, relationships or departments – just go do it when I tell you.
A choice in automation – this isn’t my first time doing this and I know what I can do myself and you are speaking to me because I want to talk to someone because I know that I need to. Let me decide how I want to interact with you – after all, as the customer, I have the choice to go elsewhere.
Let’s Revisit Quality and productivity
As discussed earlier, customers are, for the most part, simple. And with that in mind, our quality and productivity measures, processes, reports and improvement initiatives should also be simple. It may sound strange, but making it simple is really easy. Just look at your world through the customer’s eyes and make the connection with agent quality and productivity.
Start by reviewing the questions that customers ask, and see if they’re addressed by your current agent measures and focus. Looking at the world from the customer’s standpoint will immediately highlight the opportunities for your current productivity and quality metrics.
Questions a customer will ask themselves after an interaction with the consultant
Was it right and do I feel comfortable? This is the easiest of all – was the right solution provided and did the customer feel good at the end of the call. Sounds simple, and is. Something that should be included in every discussion on quality: Did you leave the customer feeling comfortable? This is easily assessed, but often overlooked.
Do I feel valued? At the end of every interaction, the customer asks themselves if they moved forward with a feeling of value. This is easy – did you make them feel good about calling on their terms or did they hang up feeling like they cost you money?
Did I get everything I needed? There are many agents that don’t get it right and shortchange the customer…leaving them with a desire to speak to you again to get the rest of the solution. When customers feel this way it’s frustrating for everyone – particularly the customer.
How much time was taken from me? In most cases, the customer looks at every interaction from their own time perspective. This isn’t a bad thing and is something that every contact center must embrace. When customers are interacting with you, it’s their time….and their life – be respectful from every angle.
Did I feel rushed? You want to take as little of the customer’s time as possible, but you don’t want anyone to feel rushed and/or leave the transaction feeling like they were an inconvenience.
Was someone available when I wanted? You have to make the connection with productivity and the customer requirement. In real-time contact centers, the customer wants service when they choose. Rescheduling and calling the customer back when he wants you to is a key indicator of how much you care about being there when the customer wants you to be.