Blog Archives - Page 31 of 37 - Etech Global Services

Quality Metrics — Unveiling the Strategic Information for your Business

It is often said that if something cannot be measured it cannot be managed or improved. Some aspects of a business are easy to put into measurements – sales or revenue per hour, conversion rate, contact rate, etc. These key indicators are critical to determine sales success. Inbound channels have additional standards to ascertain the level of service being provided the caller – Service Level, Average Speed to Answer, First Contact Resolution to name a few. However, other areas of a business are more difficult to measure. Do you have a way to measure the impact of leadership development classes? Can you track emerging leaders who’ve participated in development courses to see if this investment made an impact on their team’s sales performance or attrition? What about Quality Assurance? Most track agents’ QA scores over time to observe changes but what other metrics can be used to track the customer impact of your interactions and more importantly, how does this effect your business? A metric is a verifiable measure stated in either quantitative or qualitative terms – ie; 95% quality monitoring score or as evaluated by our customers, we are providing above average service. A verifiable measure, metrics capture performance in terms of how something is being done relative to a standard. It allows and, actually, encourages comparison. In quality assurance we use metrics to translate customer needs and satisfaction levels into company performance measures. These metrics can be used to: spot trends both positive and negative identify necessary changes and then track performance of those changes predict future performance based on past results and outcomes The wealth of data that is contained in customer interactions can provide critical vision into the future strategies of the business. However, this data has to be transformed into measurable metrics in order to analyze the results. Once metrics are derived, the analysis must include actionable insights that can be communicated and turned into process improvement plans to drive any needed change. Quality metrics can also help you determine the break points in your service. Break points are used to determine the levels where improved performance will likely change customer behavior. For example: Waiting on hold for a customer service agent – How long will the average customer wait on hold before becoming dissatisfied? 2 minutes? Wait longer than 2 minutes — customer is dissatisfied 1-2 minutes — customer is satisfied less than 1 minute — customer is extremely satisfied Based on these findings, what steps should the company put in place to meet this expectation? How much is the company willing to spend (add more customer service agents, etc.) to meet this expectation? Will the higher customer satisfaction result in more revenue and offset the additional cost? In this example, understanding the break point will come in three steps: A trained analyst listens to calls and captures the customer feedback Sample data is transformed into measurable insight (metrics) Measurable insights are turned into actions For the most meaningful metrics, the sample size should represent a decent percentage of the interactions. As with survey and poll results, too small a sample may skew the findings. By transforming data into metrics, analysis will provide strategic information for the direction of a business. “We best manage what we can measure”. Click here or send us an Email to set up a meeting with the Etech team at Call Center Week 2016, June 27 – July1.

Five Reasons to Integrate Social Media Into Your Larger Marketing Strategy

In the old days, marketing was all about one-way communication with consumers via advertisements, newsletters, and hard calls to action. Now, with the advent of social platforms and live chat services, consumers expect to be able to communicate with brands in a much more transparent and immediate way. If the social strategy isn’t part of your marketing efforts, you could be missing out on much more than likes and shares. Here are five reasons to make social media a marketing priority. 1. Build Strong Relationships Marketing through social platforms is all about the relationship you have with clients. This is no place for the hard sell; it’s where you position your brand for open and honest two-way communication. There is a growing emphasis on transparency in business today, and that means that more and more brands are getting away from one-way advertising messages and focusing instead on relationship-building and making connections with consumers. Social media opens up limitless opportunities to engage visitors, and if you’re not online you’re surely missing out. In fact, some brands report increasing revenue by upwards of $1 million as a result of marketing on social. 2. Make Your Brand Accessible In the same vein as transparency comes accessibility. Once upon a time, it was sufficient to list your contact information on your business website and return calls and emails on your schedule. Now, it’s all about providing excellent customer service on your client’s schedule. People expect to be able to connect with you at any time and can access social media to do so. Having a strong presence online makes you accessible and welcoming to visitors, no matter what time it is. 3. Engage Your Target Audience If there were one single reason to integrate social into your marketing strategy, it would be an invaluable opportunity to pinpoint and connect with your target audience. Besides the relationship-building aspect, most social platforms also have their own analytics functions. This means you can quantitatively measure the number of likes, shares, and visits to specific content. Why does it matter? It matters because you can learn what types of content your target audience loves, which will help you craft an extremely insightful marketing campaign. 4. Leverage Social Media Advertising While the main point of bringing social media into your marketing strategy is to open up two-way communication and make connections with clients, these platforms also create new opportunities for advertising. Many social sites offer their own paid advertising space. It’s a great place to insert your brand and gain wide visibility among your target audience. If you have the budget for them, using these advertising services can give you measurable insight to the impact of your ads. 5. Create Shareable Content Finally, one of the best reasons to use social platforms like YouTube is to develop shareable content. Research shows that video content is some of the most viral on the web, and you can maximize your marketing efforts by creating a YoutTube channel for your business. The great aspect about creating video content on YouTube is that you can use the same videos across all of your social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and your business website. These are just five reasons to make your social strategy a marketing must. This blog was published on LinkedIN by Jim Iyoob

How Millennial Are Changing Management

Every generation makes a mark on the marketplace and labor force and as most millennial approach adulthood, the generation is poised to significantly shift the nature of business management. The baby boomers gave us employee support programs to ensure fair wages and respectful work environments. Generation X made tight-necked collars and stiff leather shoes obsolete with the spread of business casual office spaces. What will be the millennial contribution? They’ll ensure your boss balances your needs with those of the company and society as a whole. Productivity From a New Perspective Most millennials grew up with the infamous “nine-to-five from Monday to Friday” standard, but it’s far from the generation’s ideal. Moreover, you can burn those tired performance reviews that mimic your grade school rubrics. The metrics of productivity are experiencing a massive leap in evolution as millennial managers replace timed desk work with frequent, yet informal check-ins, because the need and principle of constant communication and feedback has leaked from these social media pioneers’ favorite platforms into their best business practices. Fluidity Over Rigid Work/Life Divisions Remember when parents and teachers thought if they blocked social media websites from school computers, students wouldn’t type in one of the memorized URLs of their current and rotating list of unblocked proxies to give the world a juicy life update? Well, now those same millennials are in the work place demanding a rework of Generation X’s work-life balance standard. They simply refuse to turn off their personal lives for 8 to 10 hours a day. In fact, the number of millennials working from home or flex hours for the sake of maintaining personal lives and commitments continues to rise. This generation wants the freedom to move fluidly between their personal and work lives, but that doesn’t mean they won’t respond to a business email promptly. In fact if they don’t respond in 10 minutes or less depending, their phone’s current signal strength is minimal or it’s is dead, which means they’re frantically looking for a charger anyway. The Innovative Price of the Millennial Generation’s Loyalty As of 2015, the millennials officially surpassed Generation X as the largest workforce in the country, but companies seeking to limit turnover will have to adapt their current “employee loyalty-inspiring” tactics to an entirely new gravitational field. A recent Brookings Institution study indicates millennials favor either high-tech enterprises or companies with strong ethical practices and forward-thinking employee benefits. First, the data supports the notion that millennials have no intention of supporting the status quo. This generation wants to improve and innovate; consequently, millennials seek empowering managers and environments that encouraging advanced leadership skills like creative problem solving and creative developments. Secondly, 63 percent of millennials and younger Generation Xers want to work for companies with high ideal regarding social, environmental and political causes. It isn’t enough to distribute paycheck on time or supply reasonable benefits. This generation prefers peace of mind to a financial bottom line in exchange for their loyalty as an employee. Millennial managers are as likely to invest in the employee as a social cause, giving new meaning to business leadership skills.

Improving Live Chat Agent Efficiency

E-commerce shares many similar traits to traditional sales, although it differs considerably in certain key areas. As websites are always open for business to buyers across the country (or possibly around the globe) there exists a greater need for productivity from what are often comparatively limited numbers of representatives. Keep your customers happy and keep the sales rolling in by referring to these helpful pointers to get the most out of your live chat service agents. Short and Sweet While online communications differ in many ways from real-world conversations, there are plenty of parallels between the two. One of the most important to remember: Keep responses succinct. Customers don’t care to be preached to in person, and they don’t usually care to read half-page replies to basic questions. When the need does arise for instructional or step-by-step instructions, advise your representatives to break things down into shorter one- or two-sentence replies to keep things simple. Canned Responses Canned responses aren’t always favorable, but in the case of live chat service, they can be a lifesaver if crafted correctly. Often times your reps will receive many of the same questions repeatedly, such as inquiries about sales or promotions, or information about popular products. By arranging preset responses which can be dropped in with the click of a mouse, agents stand to save considerable typing time, which allows them to assist more customers in a shorter period. First Come, First Serve When the volume starts to put a strain on your team, it’s important that they’re able to prioritize. Make sure that your support representatives give first attention to those in the queue who’ve been waiting longest in order to minimize lost sales opportunities resulting from those who run out of patience. The Customer’s Always Right Another basic parallel between brick-and-mortar and online customer service is the need for agree-ability. In other words, if a customer refers to products or promotions incorrectly, then make sure your team knows it’s not their priority to make corrections. Instead, they should adapt to the customer’s language, provided the misunderstanding doesn’t for example extend to differences in discounts. In other words, if a shopper makes reference to a “coupon” instead of a promo code, your chat agent should respond in kind. Double Vision Most website representatives have more to pay attention to than chat windows—they must often also monitor email, customer relationship management applications and more. It’s recommended to get these types of reps onto two-screen setups if at all possible. Dual monitors make it easier to keep tabs on everything without constant window-switching, upping efficiency throughout each day. Realistic Expectations You’ve heard the phrase or variations of it: Never enough time to get it right on the first try, but always enough time to try again. You should always take caution against overloading agents with too many simultaneous customer chats, as your ambition to increase productivity may actually work in the opposite direction if the quality of responses begins to suffer. Have your reps start small and work their volume up naturally. Conclusion In a perfect world, you’d have an available service rep for each and every customer who needed help. In the real world, it’s important to seek out efficiency without sacrificing quality. When you and your team are able to achieve that ideal balance, you’ll be sure to reap the rewards and encourage plenty of repeat business for the future.

How to Avoid Self-service Channels Becoming NO SERVICE Channels

As companies look for efficient ways to of offering excellent customer service with the challenges that face contact centers, self-service came into play to ease that burden. It is an option that enables your customers to get solutions online without talking to an agent. Regarding contact center efficiency, a self-service channel will help you deal with the repetitive, steady stream of questions that are low-level and can be answered without the help of an agent. When you relieve your agents of this burden, they will concentrate on the pressing issues that are escalated from the self-service channels. However, there is still a challenge on the customer’s end who feels that they are being ignored or have to fill in a lot of information online to get an answer. Some wonder why no agent wants to talk to them. This misunderstanding of the purpose of the self-service channel can lead to it becoming a no-service channel. Here are tips that can help you avoid your self-service channel from becoming a no-service channel. 1. Educate your customers on how to use self-service channel The main reason that the self-service can become a no service is that customers do not have enough knowledge of how to use the system. To ease the transition from calls and live chat to self-service, you need to educate your customers on how to go about getting the right information on your website. Educating the mass is not easy, but, you can simplify the user interface and also make the process straight forward. Avail a “how to use self-service” page should on your site to give the simple instructions to your customers. 2. Simplify the user interface As mentioned above on educating your customers, the user interface should be simple and easy to use. How many clicks does the customer have to click to get the information they are looking for? Do they have to hit a million links or a few? If they hit so many links, then they will get frustrated and give up, however, if the customer goes through a few links, they will be satisfied with the service. A user-friendly interface that leads the customer to the right information fast will serve its purpose and not fall into the “no service” channels. 3. Ensure your links are working Another key component of ensuring that your customers enjoy the self-service channels is to have working links. When you are updating the information or upgrading the systems, a notification should be available to the customer the moment they sign into the self-service channel. Otherwise, if they start the process only to reach halfway to a dead link, that service will have become a “no service.” Remember that the competition is stiff and customers have little time to keep going round in search of answers. Make their search as easy as possible by having working links. The links should also be few and go on and on. 4. Train your employees on the self-service option Even after doing all the above, you might still encounter customers who call in for help on how to use the self-service channel. All your agents should be knowledgeable about all the options and can explain to the customers how to use the system. Train them on how to handle customer fears and complaints. When customers get the right information from the agents, they will enjoy the self-service, which is a win-win situation. In summary, the self-service channels should facilitate your contact center to offer great customer service experiences. With the above four tips, you can avoid self-service channels from becoming “no service”, and you will end up with highly satisfied customers and employees. At the end of the day, an efficient self-service channel will create value for your customers.

Live Chat Etiquette: Making It Work

Giving and getting help via a live chat doesn’t have to be awkward. In fact, the experience can be an overwhelmingly pleasant one with the right etiquette. Fast and painless communication is made significantly easier when the chat operator and guest have overlapping goals. Here are some basic guidelines for operators and customers to follow for a smooth live chat support experience. Tips for the Operator As an operator, your main objective is to help a customer in need, whether they’re seeking assistance with troubleshooting, placing an order, or something else entirely. One of your priorities should also be to gain customer satisfaction. There are many ways to add value during the live chat experience, including: Super fast responses Friendly attitude One-stop service Unexpected extras Achieving Customer Satisfaction There are many different tactics for creating the perfect customer experience, but it boils down to excellence in three different categories: Knowledge: Know your offer, product, or service and be prepared to discuss in great detail. You should also know what your other resources are for telling customer about products, like where they can go on your website to learn more. Behavior: Be calm, clear, honest, and polite. Expect to listen patiently as find out what the root problem is so you can focus on solving it. Don’t panic if you need to transfer the customer to another agent; simply reassure them that all of their details will also be transferred. Technical: Simple is better. Refrain from using technical jargon and make sure to use proper spelling and grammar. Be sure to use a real photo as well as your real name in order to build trust.By honing in on these three core areas, you’ll be able to wow customers as you solve their problems. Tips for the Customer As a customer using live chat support, your main objective is to get your problem resolved. While you are relying on the operator for support, there are several actions you can take to simplify the process and make it easier for the operator to help you. These include: Knowledge: Gather any information that may be useful during your chat including order numbers, items purchased, or technical glitches encountered. Behavior: Follow all of the operator’s instructions and don’t hesitate to ask for clarification. Remain calm and patient as you wait for assistance. If you had a positive experience, it’s good etiquette to express gratitude to the operator. Technical: When it comes to troubleshooting, the details matter. Provide as many as you can and ensure that they are accurate. Answer questions honestly and be ready to elaborate if needed. It’s also considered a common courtesy to rate the assistance you received, typically in a follow up survey. Creating a Win-Win Experience The bottom line is that, when it comes to creating a perfect live chat experience, both parties should do everything in their power not to make things more difficult for the other side. By staying positive and trying to reach a common understanding, you’ll be on the fast track to live chat support success.

Top 8 Reasons Live Chat Enhances Conversions

Live chat service places your customers in control of asking for help. This process initiates an easy and convenient method for both them and for your customer service team. However, it goes beyond that. Live chat software is ideal for enhancing customer conversion for eight significant reasons: Customer Experience : Live chat provides the driving force behind positive customer experience by supplying an instant answer to a one-click request for support. Efficiency : Tag chats improve efficiency by eliminating the time it takes from engaging with customers who are not ready for assistance. Channel optimization : Live chat software provides valuable data about what sorts of concerns and questions are likely to be discussed via live chat rather than through content on your website. Website development : Chatting with customers provides details about the information that is hard to find or unclear on your website. During the course of a live chat conversation, customers will ordinarily explain that they tried to find or understand the answer they were looking for on your website but could not. Reduces expenses : Employees spend less time on the phone, enabling them to multi-task during chat conversations. Compared to a call center, this cuts the wait queue to a fraction of its former size. In addition to being a process improvement, it increases the likelihood of future sales. Increases sales potential : When customers have an agent who can immediately help them through a sale if they become confused, they are more apt to complete the purchase. Likewise, having a question answered promptly can land a sale. This helps reduce cart abandonment on retail websites and ensures that full shopping carts make it through the checkout and payment process. Provides a competitive edge : Live chat is a principal feature that websites must have to gain an edge on the competition. In fact, it provides a simple method to connect with and convert customers who spend a significant portion of their money online. Taps into points of customer frustration : Customers who use live chat want to guarantee that a product will perform as advertised or that they will receive the promotion or discount they expect. Also, as live chat representatives talk to customers, they can find out ways to improve a company’s products and services. You can enhance customer experiences and increase conversion rates by using the information gathered during live chat activity to update content on your website and revise the pre-made messages your live chat agents have accessible to them. Hiring agents with prior sales experience is also beneficial. The Bottom Line Live chat can enhance your sales potential, but only if it is executed correctly. In addition to training your team, tagged chat and live chat software enable agents to provide resources and a guide to those resources. Chatting is a powerful method to equip live chat agents with external tools necessary to direct customers to the website instead of handling the responsibility of providing all of the information themselves. The return on investment derived from the joint efforts of website content and live chat is invaluable.

Emotional Intelligence in the Call Center

I am an avid believer of excellent leadership skills in the call center. As a leader, people not only judge you by your training and expertise but also by how well you handle others and yourself. This means you have to work on your leadership style diligently. One way to ensure that you stay top of the game is to develop emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman introduced the term “emotional intelligence” in 1995 in his book, Emotional Intelligence. He wrote that although qualities like determination, vision, toughness, and intelligence are important, they are not sufficient to ensure the success of an organization. To be truly effective as a leader requires incorporating emotional intelligence through motivation, social skill, empathy, self-regulation, and self-awareness. For example, have you observed a high-performing employee promoted to a leadership position only to fail miserably? Or an average-performing employee promoted to a leadership position who does very well? These are common occurrences in business; the distinguishing factor is not in the employee’s technical abilities but in his or her soft qualities of dealing with people – such as using emotional intelligence, Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and manage your own emotions and the emotions of those around you. To bring it closer to home, as a call center leader, you need to be aware of your emotions, how they affect your agents, and thus influence their output. Let’s look at how to use the five components of emotional intelligence for effective leadership. 1. Self-Awareness: Self-awareness is connecting with your true self. It is the ability to understand what drives you, your emotions, and your needs. It is also being aware of your strengths and weakness and how your actions affect those around you.For example, if some of your agents do not show up for work on a regular basis, which causes additional stress, you should create a backup plan to resolve the issue. Remind yourself of the minimum level of service and functionality you are required to provide and set your contingency plans around it. This way you have a guarantee that everything will run smoothly, and you won’t have to deal with last-minute emergencies. If you are someone who is quick to anger, you should work alongside agents who do not test your limits. When you have a high self-awareness, you are confident in what you want from your people and how best to get it. 2. Motivation: Motivation is that extra push, the passion you have toward your work. Your energy and enthusiasm directly affects the energy your staff gives back. When you are self-motivated, nothing can stop you from achieving what you set out to do.As a leader, your key responsibilities include setting annual targets and formulating strategies and tactics to achieve those goals. What one thing keeps you on course? It is your self-motivation – your drive. What does is it mean to your organization when you are highly self-motivated? It means you set high-performance bars for yourself and your staff. When you keep hitting the bar, you pass on that energy and challenge to your staff to do the same. For example, have you ever worked with someone who is not motivated? Is it easy? No, it’s much harder because you have to keep motivating the person to see the big picture and modify his or her behavior. Unfortunately over time you will become exhausted and tired. As a result everyone loses; your work suffers and others will follow. The solution is to create a personal inner system in order to keep yourself motivated. Be your first and greatest cheerleader. 3. Self-Regulation: Self-regulation is synonymous to self-control. When you have self-control, you will not make emotional decisions, verbally attack people, or compromise your values. Instead you will hold yourself accountable for your own thoughts and actions. You are in charge of your feelings – not the other way around. If you lead by your feelings, the workplace mood will follow: people will be happy when you are happy and upset when you are upset. This is not the way to create trust in your staff.When you have self-regulation, you are reasonable. For example, if your team delivers a sloppy presentation, you can respond in two ways. You can shout at them, telling them how useless they are, or you can have a discussion with them to determine the cause of their poor performance. Which one makes you a self-regulated leader? In the two situations, how do you think your response will affect your staff? Self-regulation enhances your integrity, an important value both personally and corporately. Integrity determines what you will do when no one is looking. 4. Empathy: Friends and family members generally show empathy to each other, but when it comes to work, the word empathy does not sound businesslike, and others might perceive you as being “all mushy” with your employees.However, the meaning of empathy in business terms is thoughtfully considering your employees’ feelings as well as other important factors when making decisions. The way you communicate to them shows empathy.The main reasons why you should be empathetic to your employees are: You need to work with a motivated team. You know how crazy it can get trying to bring every team member into agreement. Everyone has his or her own opinion and wants to justify why his or her idea is better; emotions can easily flare. It takes empathy to recognize and understand different viewpoints and bring them together. You need to retain the best employees – a talented employee is an asset. Imagine all the work it takes to train employees – what happens when they leave? They take company knowledge with them, and you have to start all over again. Empathy helps you continually mentor your employees, and they feel appreciated, which increases their chances of staying with you. 5. Social Skill: Social skill is about building networks and relationship management. How well can you handle conflicts and diplomatically manage change? This is where social

Driving Quality Improvement in Your Center

Quality improvement is dependent upon a commitment to two things — to monitor customer interactions and to use those interaction evaluations within a performance improvement process. This article will provide tips on how to create and manage a performance improvement process utilizing a quality assurance team. The most effective quality monitoring process combines feedback from a third party QA team with onsite monitoring from the front line supervisors. Some add a third layer into the process with internal quality analysts to supplement the monitoring and coaching being done at the agent level. These QAs are more like coaches, they direct, instruct and train the agents with an aim to help them offer quality services to customers. However, these internal QAs cannot replace the third party team. An outside QA team is critical to: provide unbiased feedback to improve agent behavior conduct analytical studies on quality trends and the impact to the customer experience deliver customer sentiment analysis to better understand the impact of service on the customer’s attitude toward products and services An internal QA team should not replace the front line supervisor’s role in monitoring either. They simply supplement the process. It is critical that the supervisor monitor his/her team to provide adequate and relevant coaching. While an internal QA can certainly conduct side-by-sides to provide real time feedback, the most constructive coaching should come from the supervisor who has developed a relationship with the agent. The third party team can be utilized in different ways. Because of their expertise they should provide analytical reports to: identify trends and outliers group repeat offenders with performance trending showcase best practices from top performers recommend important scripting changes identify process improvement opportunities communicate marketing wins and losses point out competitor advantages The best monitoring program uses both side by side monitoring with remote monitoring via either real time listening or through recorded calls. If recorded calls are used, the evaluations should be done within 24 hours of the recorded call for optimum and timely coaching. Side by side monitoring gives the supervisor a good indicator of the agent’s true product, call flow, and process knowledge. They will be on their very best behavior during these monitoring sessions. If this side by side monitoring session shows deficiencies, it can be addressed through coaching and follow up monitoring or, in extreme cases, through re-training. Remote monitoring lets you hear or see what the customer is experiencing. For those agents who perform well during side by sides but show opportunities during remote monitoring, a “will” issue may be the reason. The supervisor must address these instances quickly and aggressively. While a “skill” opportunity can oftentimes be overcome with coaching and training, a “will” issue is most often due to underlying reasons. Until those reasons are resolved, there is a risk of continued poor behavior. A good performance improvement process will ensure that feedback from monitoring sessions is used effectively to coach and develop. A standard performance improvement process includes the following: Documentation of coaching sessions. This documentation can be either soft or hard copy. The most important aspect of the documentation is that it be reviewed by the campaign leader to develop the supervisor and to make sure that it is being used – not simply completed, signed and filed. The campaign leader should meet with the agents to inspect that the coaching documentation is accurate and the agent is improving based on the feedback. Simply inspecting a binder or folder will not establish the coaching routine that is needed for performance improvement. The documentation should show the follow up steps and then check off when the follow up occurs. Did it result in improvement? Was the improvement sustained? A quick check of agent stats could provide that information. Documentation of calibration sessions The QA team (either internal or external) should keep a folder with the minutes of all calibration sessions. The campaign leader must ensure that calibrations are held regularly, operations leaders are attending along with the QA team, and actionable steps are being created as a result of the sessions. It is extremely important for an external QA team to be in the loop of all script, product, and promotion changes as well as any process or application changes that may impact the call flow. These calibration sessions will help in closing any gaps in communication. Varied coaching techniques Supervisors must understand how to coach and develop employees. Any trainer can tell you that adults learn in different ways. The three primary methods are: Visual – See it Auditory – Hear it Kinesthetic – Do it A supervisor needs to understand how each member of his team learns so that coaching can be tailored to fit each agent. One to one discussion works for some while others need to role play or do a group activity. Supervisors should know their teams well enough to understand how best to coach each team member and be able to use multiple techniques to achieve success. Rewards and Recognition A performance improvement process must include some level of reward and recognition. Rewards do not have to be monetary. In fact, many find recognition to be the largest motivator. This recognition can come in many forms, from a shout out during a pre-shift meeting for a quality call to being asked to mentor a new team member. Your performance improvement process should be documented and shared with your team. It is important that this be a living document – updated regularly to ensure that all steps have been implemented and are being followed. As you calibrate the process be sure to make changes to the document so that it contains the most up to date information. Monitoring and feedback is only as good as the follow up to ensure growth. Without a plan to guarantee this follow up occurs, it will fall to the wayside. Ownership and accountability are essential to executing a successful quality monitoring and performance improvement process.

Turning Conflict into Creativity

Conflict. It’s one of those buzzwords that people in the professional world run away from. To most, conflict means anger and frustration, which leads to a fracturing of employee morale, which then leads to poor or decreased production. Managers and team leaders understand that resolving team conflicts are an inevitable part of their jobs, yet few realize the team-building potential that they present. Just how can conflict have a positive influence on your team, you ask? First, you need to understand that conflict and creativity are born of the same thing: disagreement. The way a situation ends up depends largely on how you handle it. Disagreements that cause your team members to take a defensive position around those ideas and practices with which they feel the most comfortable will inevitably end in conflict. However, disagreements that cause them to look at alternatives outside of their everyday line of thinking are what lead to creative change. How to Control Disagreements How can you help push employee disagreements away from the potential of conflict and towards this more creative line of thinking? Simply exercise quality leadership by following these steps: Let your team know that disagreements aren’t always bad, and are even encouraged: One thing that many employees automatically assume is that, based upon their position, their opinions won’t be respected. This often keeps people from saying anything at all, allowing one voice to rule on all issues and decisions. Yet who’s to say that one voice is always right? Often, a dissenting view is needed in order to get a better understanding of the issue being dealt with. It’s all about how you react: Whenever an idea is set forward, the immediate assumption is that it’s in direct challenge to any others that have already been presented. This leads many to believe that if someone offers up another idea, it’s implying that their own was a bad one to begin with. That’s why so many often react defensively when their ideas are challenged. You need to let your team know that every idea has merit, and that any differing ideas put forward are not intended to be insults, but rather another way of viewing things based off of another’s unique knowledge and experience. Stress the importance of compromise: If you’re able to show that differing ideas each have their own strengths and weaknesses, then suggesting that the best portions of both be combined may not be that difficult. Those who presented the ideas originally feel that their opinions are valued, and they’re given the opportunity to acquire new skills and experience by working with those who offered a different viewpoint. Having worked with a number of different competing companies and departments, we here at Etech Global Services have seen plenty of examples of workplace conflict. In some cases, companies allow them to grow into high-level issues that threaten jobs and stability. Yet in others, forward-thinking leaders have used them as chances to improve both their employee relations and the effectiveness of their organizations as a whole. Knowing both the good and the bad, we understand which conflict-resolution techniques can work best in the management of your staff. We invite you to trust in our ability to help strike the delicate balance between conflict and creativity in your company.

What Makes a Great Agent?

“What makes a great agent?” This is a key question that every leader in the contact center asks. They understand that with great agents serving customers, all stakeholders will be happy and satisfied. Many aspects make an agent great, and I believe being a great communicator tops the list. In essence, we can talk about what makes a great communicator, and we will have our answer to what makes a great agent. A great communicator has a pleasing disposition and is a terrific conversationalist, which are great traits. However, when you possess critical thinking you will set yourself apart leading to greatness. Dictionary.com defines critical thinking as disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded and informed by evidence. Another equally interesting definition is, critical thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion. Let me take you back a little, an agent’s main responsibility is to assist customers. If the customer wants to purchase something online, they will close the sale, if the customer has a problem, they will offer them a solution, and much more. Overall, they will provide a solution to the customer. With the above in mind, look again at the definition of critical thinking. An agent, who is a good communicator and can think critically, will be an invaluable asset to the contact center. That agent will be able to listen to the customer’s issue/inquiry, understand it, analyze it with what he knows about the product, and give the customer the appropriate resolution or information. An agent, with critical thinking, understands that each customer is different, and they treat him or her as such. The agent seeks to give him or her best assistance; therefore, each customer is satisfied. The agent knows that as much as there is the set procedure for resolving customer issues, they can work around it as long as the customer will be satisfied and they will act according to the company code of conduct. How then can you encourage your agents to be critical thinkers? Here are two tips that can fast track this process for any leader in the contact center industry. Encourage out of the box thinking The first thing to do is to encourage the agents you see practicing thinking outside the box. It is common for an agent to stick to the script and not think of other solutions that may help the customer. For example, an angry customer tests the thinking of an agent. Will the agent simply follow the script? What is the customer doesn’t calm down even after following it word for word? In such a situation, if an agent thinks of a creative way of calming him/her down and therefore resolves the problem, they should be motivated to keep doing it. Acknowledge their effort and they will do more of that. Create Coaching Opportunities Coaching helps the agent to relook at their interactions with customers and think through it. If the agent does not see anything wrong with their conversations, you can assist by pointing them out and then asking him or her how they could have handled that situation better. Coaching is not only for pinpointing areas of improvement; but you can also use them to encourage critical thinking. An agent may not even know they did well to change the script. Remember to give the agents a chance to ask questions. In conclusion, the more agents you have who can think critically, the more empowered you customer care team will be. With an empowered team interacting with your customers, the quality of customer service will be great. Use the above tips to move your agents from good to great communicators.

6 Ways Social Media Boosts Customer Satisfaction

Customer experience is of great interest to most of us in leadership because we understand the ripple effect of a happy customer and the unhappy ones. With the stiff competition in this noisy market, offering excellent customer service will give you an edge over the competition. Excellent customer service will lead to high customer satisfaction levels. It is, therefore, important to utilize all the means that will help you offer that excellent effortless customer experience. In my experience, these six simple ways show you how using social media in the right way, will boost your customer satisfaction. 1. Rapid Response Time There is no better way of getting a real-time response from a company than through their social media platforms. A tweet or Facebook post to the company’s page that you need answers from will give you an instant response. Today’s connected customers know how powerful social media is, and they use it to their advantage. Other customers are also reading your page and taking notes, therefore, responding as soon as possible, will create a win-win situation. Social media platforms have also released the importance of rapid response time and are working with you. For example, Facebook has a response rate icon, they inform the percentage of your inbox messages response rate. 2. Strengthens Relationships Customer satisfaction is all about relationships. The relationship you create with your customer will determine their satisfaction level. Social media opens up a platform for you to be in constant communication with your customers. When they have a concern, they write to you and your quick response shows you care. You use your social media pages to inform customers of new developments or information on upcoming events. Social media is an asset in strengthening your relationship because the two parties are always in communication with each other. The trust also grows from these interactions leading to loyalty. 3. Gives You a Human voice Canned messages cannot work on social media responses because the questions asked are rarely the same and thus require a specific answer. When a customer tweets, they know they will get a human response. Remember the days before the emergence of Social Media; customers could only reach you via phone or in person. As more and more customers called, automation kicked in to help the agents manage the calls. However, social media enables you to give a personalized experience. For example, when you respond to a question, you use the person’s name and make it relevant to them. The customer recognizes that they are speaking to a human and your CSAT and NPS will go up. 4. Facilitates Targeted Communication You can reach to a specific consumer groups instead of all your consumers. All social media platforms give you the option of narrowing down to the target audience by their demographics. It is useful when you want to pass on information to a particular group or even advertise a product. The information will be relevant to them, and they will act on it. 5. Competition analysis From your competitor social media pages, you can gather a lot of information. You get to see their conversations with customers, what is working, what customers are complaining about among others. You can then capitalize on the information gathered to offer excellent customer experiences. Do not forget that they are also looking at your company pages as well. Do not give them a reason to take away your customers, be on top of your conversations. Customers are also reading both pages and comparing your brands. 6. Ease Negative Feedback Not all customers will be happy with your service. Occasionally, an unhappy customer will air their discontent with your brand. It can go viral within seconds and destroy your reputation. However, when you are active and alert on social media, you will see the post first and respond accordingly. As a bonus tip, try to resolve the problem on the same platform and do not ask the customer to call or go the private messages. Other customers will keenly follow that discussion to see how you resolve the issue. Social Media is a powerful tool that will help you to keep your customers engaged and happy. Use it well and you will turn your customers into brand ambassadors who rave about your brand. Original Source: LinkedIn

5 Ways to Boost Employee Loyalty

Your employees are your first line of defense. What do you do with your first line of defense? Think about the US Army, the country cares for our soldiers, protects and equips them to defend the country. Because of their loyalty to the country, they put their lives in danger just to ensure that the entire nation is safe. They are proud to be soldiers and to be associated with the United States of America. How then can you get your employees to that level of loyalty? That no matter how tough the situations get (and they do get tough), they will stand united with the company? Without any doubt, employee loyalty will lead to advocacy. Employee advocacy is when employees promote the organization through various channels from social media to word of mouth. By doing so, they become brand ambassadors. Here are 5 ways that you can boost employee advocacy to fuel your company growth beyond your wildest dreams. 1: Increase Engagement An engaged employee will want to talk about their company at all times, and the opposite is true. All your employees should be actively engaged, not just engaged for you to see real results. Tips on how you can increase employee engagement: Carry out an internal survey on engagement levels. Why the employees feel they are at that level. Address the issues that come up from the survey. Be careful not to confront an individual employee about a situation, find solutions that will rectify what is wrong. Implement the recommendations gathered after meeting with the employees. Make the surveys a continuous process; you need to gather feedback at all times to ensure that your staff is engaged. Employee engagement has a direct relationship with performance. Actively engaged employees are the highest performing employees. 2: Give them all information Provide your employees with all relevant information. Advocacy is about communication; you do not want a scenario where by your employees are passing on wrong information. Providing your employees with all the information shows that you trust them. You know they will use the information well and to the benefit of the company. This kind of trust empowers them to do the right thing. 3: Create a Content Sharing Plan Creating your plan starts with a set of clear objectives. What is the goal of employee advocacy? What results do you want to achieve? For example, you may want to create awareness of a new product, service or community event you recently participated in. With the objective in place, you need to create a plan on how the employees will share the content. If you do not set these, you will send your employees out in the world without a compass. The plan should include the messages to be shared. An elaborate plan will also help you measure the success of the advocacy program. 4: Be Consistent Consistency is very important to the company reputation. If your employees are active advocates on social media they should continue doing so, if not people may start to wonder why there are gaps. Consistency keeps you customers engaged and in touch with your organization. You can assign managers to be in-charge of employee advocacy program. They should be accountable to the organization and the employees they are leading. These managers will coach the employees. 5: Have Brand Champions Not all employees are motivated and engaged equally. You will have some who are actively engaged, and they should be your brand champions. The brand champions will help the other employees who are not engaged to follow suit. The success of the brand champions will motivate the other employees to become brand advocates and in no time join the brand champions. In conclusion, increasing employee engagement, giving employees all the information, creating a plan, being consistent and having brand champions are five ways that when used together will boost employee advocacy. Remember that employee advocacy is a cost effective way of communicating with your customers.

Importance of Ethics and Values for a Leadership Team

A team works together to accomplish a common goal. A leadership team takes that definition several steps further and incorporates the various goals of the individuals that those leaders are guiding. Thus a leadership team is quite important in itself. However, there are specific elements of a leadership team, such as ethics and values, that must be understood and implemented. Ethics and Values Ethics and values tend to go hand in hand. The values that a business adopts tend to lead its moral compass and determine how ethical its practices will be. Visa versa, an ethical company usually holds high values. Whichever way you look at it, a consumer looks to a company’s ethics and values to determine if it is a respectable business worthy of patronage. Importance Ethics and values give consumers a standard to hold the business to, which can help to build their comfort level with the company. This can help to strengthen business relationships with both customers and other companies. By the same token, the ethics and values in a leadership team give employees a standard to hold the leaders to, as well as a model that they as employees should strive to follow. Without proper ethics and values in place a business could succumb to or be accused of unethical practices, which could come with legal ramifications and even business closure. Considering this, it is easy to see why it is important to set high ethics and values and keep them in place. Implementation It is not only critical that you understand the value of ethics in leadership, but that you also understand how to implement these principles. There are four key steps that you can take: Brainstorm a value statement: You should take your time with this step and gain input from your employees, management staff, shareholders and anyone else expected to adhere to the values. Develop the value statement: Take all of the input you received and create a value statement that incorporates the majority consensus. Implement your values: It is not enough to just erect the value statement; you must incorporate it into the daily operations of your company. Take time to lay out expectations that coincide with the values. Evaluate: Periodically, you should survey your employees, management and shareholders to determine how effective the implementation of the values has been. As you do, take into consideration any suggestions or objections that you come across to help you fine-tune your company values so that they do not isolate or deter anyone expected to uphold them. By taking these steps you can effectively create, implement and evaluate your value system, starting with the leadership and going all the way down the ladder. There is a common saying that, “Where the head leads, the body will follow.” That saying is especially true in businesses. If the leadership does not practice and uphold strong values, neither will the employees. By understanding the importance of and implementing quality ethics and values, you can position your company for ethical dealings and a strong reputation.

How to Create An Exceptional Customer Service Experience

Offering exceptional customer service experience will win you some loyal customers. A string of loyal customers who rave about your brand is one of the key things you need to beat the competition. Exceptional customer service is making the customer feel they are the most important for the few minutes you are attending to them. You assure them that you will do that you can to make their day better. As a leader in charge of customer service, you want your team to deliver nothing short of exceptional customer service. However, as the days progress, you realize that new challenges arise. You have the perfect strategy and your customer service representatives are well trained and equipped but still you are not hitting the exceptional levels. Here are four steps that can help you craft a strategy always to offer exceptional customer service, Ask Ask your customers what they need. Asking is the fastest way of getting an answer. You may think that you know what customers need, but the answers they provide may surprise you. Most people ask through research when developing new products only. However, you will realize that customers will have feedback all the time. Ask your customers after a conversation for their honest feedback about your products and services. Do not forget to ask them how best they think you can serve them better. By asking your customers for feedback, they also feel you are you value their opinion, and that increases their satisfaction levels. Listen Asking without listening will be a waste of time. I advocate for active listening because after the conversation, you will remember all the points. Have you ever had a conversation with someone, and at the end you could tell they were not listening to you? Customers are like that too; they can tell when you are actively listening to them and when you are not. Another way of listening to your customers is through call monitoring. You can pick up information that will help you evaluate your current delivery and areas that need improvement. Develop policies You have asked your customers for feedback and actively listened to them. Now it’s time to develop procedures and policies in line with the information gathered. Your customers will respond warmly to you once they realize that you are implementing their suggestions. Policies and procedure help you to provide uniform services, and that consistency is important customers. Centre your procedures on what will drive the exceptional customer experience. Remain flexible As stated before, challenges arise when least expected. Do not be a stickler of policies and procedures. Some situations call for a different approach to resolving a customer’s problem. For instance, when an angry customer calls, the agent can figure out the best way to calm them down then resolve their issues Empower your agents to make decisions on the move. Evolve with your customers. In conclusion, asking customers what they need, actively listening to them, and developing procedures in line with the feedback gathered and remaining flexible will help you give exceptional experiences. Crafting is a continuous process, when you reach the third step, you are still working out the first two. You will provide exceptional customer service experiences by implementing these four tips.

Live Chat: How Long Can You Keep Customers Waiting?

Online shoppers have proven time and again that they’re not the most patient group, and it’s tough to blame them. With so many alternatives just a click away, it’s crucial to ensure that your web site’s support tools are both accessible and responsive at all times. This ranges from e-mail and phone communication to your live chat software, a sales tool which is becoming both common in its applications and more trustworthy in the eyes of consumers. The Clock is Ticking While particular industries and companies will notice varied results, most studies tend to show that individuals shopping online are willing to wait approximately one minute for a customer support chat to initiate. After this period, they’re more likely to move on to another web site in search of their purchase. Regardless of each shopper’s specific patience threshold, one of the key strategies is to ensure that your live chat service is prepared to handle spikes in customer volume. Even the largest company can only staff so many customer service agents at any given time, and there’s no guarantee that your forecasted schedule will line up with real-world demand. That’s why it’s vital to set up an effective queue for your chat system. Give a Number At a busy deli, you might take a slip of paper with a number on it to enter into the waiting list. Online, your live chat software should be able to perform similar functions in order to keep shoppers informed. If there is not an available service representative to accommodate a new chat request, the customer should immediately be notified of where they stand in the virtual line. While a numbered deli queue rarely runs into technical glitches, Internet applications are understandably more complex. This is why it’s also important to make sure your chat software allows for a variable to be set which will disconnect users after a defined interval. By ensuring that “dead” sessions are reset, there is a lesser chance that users will find themselves in a live chat limbo. Maximizing via Metrics One of the foremost considerations to make when implementing a support chat system is the software’s capability when it comes to analytics. It’s critical to review your live chat performance regularly to determine where your web site’s opportunities lie. Some of the most invaluable statistics can include: Average duration before chat request is initiated Length of average customer support conversation Number of missed or dropped chat requests Once you start connecting the dots, you should be much better prepared to address the particular needs of your business. By taking an informed approach to staffing, while offering proactive communication when customers will be made to wait, you’ll be much more likely to skew performance metrics in a favorable direction. Etech Global Services has been developing and implementing solutions for over 17 years and we’re no strangers when it comes to live chat support. Click here to read more about the services we provide and how we can help your business take the next step toward growth and greater success. Original Source: LinkedIn

The Decisive Tests of Leadership

As most readers are aware, there is an abundance of information out there concerning leadership which can only prove how important it is to company growth. Dwight D. Eisenhower captured it perfectly by quoting, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” Every waking moment, as you get things done through others, those around you are testing what you do as a leader; more so if you are in senior management. Everyone from the founders, stakeholders, fellow managers, and employees are testing your leadership capabilities and the impact you have to the organization. It is easy to lead willing people, they will follow your steps to the battlefield and anyone can do it. However, a real leader will lead different and challenging employees too. A genuine leader puts their best foot forward and leads every individual in their scope of influence well, without discriminating. Decisive or acid tests will not only challenge your self-concept as a leader but also expose your influence at work. What decisive tests can differentiate between a genuine and a non-genuine leader? Here are three exercises that I believe will test your leadership. No Title Test This is on a personal level, and you start by taking your own notes. Imagine you have no title or rank at the office. Imagine you have no powers or authority to reward good performance or punish under performance. Will you still be influential? Will you still have followers? If your answer is yes, you are a genuine leader. If no, you need to evaluate your leadership style. To take it a step further, ask a few trusted colleagues the above questions. If they would still follow you, you are an authentic leader. If not, seek to find out why and how you can improve. Vacant Chair Test This test targets the entire management team and is best when tried on the senior management. For example, a key member of the leadership team is unavailable for one year. The reasons for his or her absence can range from moving companies, taking charge of a new branch subsidiary in a different country, sick leave, or vacation leave. Whether the reason is good or bad, it does not affect the outcome of the test. His or her position is vacant and someone has to step in and take charge of that department. The test is… what will you do? Will you move on with current responsibilities without caring what will happen in that department? Or Will you step in and take charge of the functions that you can? Taking the second option shows your genuine concern for the company growth and not just what is spelled out in your job description. This test also shows how strong your collective leadership is as the whole management team. Humility Test This is a big one because it means putting your teams needs above your personal comfort. Another definition that brings this to perspective is the ability to give credit to others for your successes. Important to note is it does not mean denying your strengths. Look back at an instance your team performed very well. When congratulated, did you take in the praise? Or did you take the opportunity to mention how your team’s efforts made it possible for you to win? It is a character thing and once you get to understand its impact on your team morale, you will develop it. These simple tests –no title, vacant chair, and humility test – will help you to look inward and understand yourself better. This understanding will guide you to pursue your leadership passion and establish meaningful relationships. This blog was written by Dilip Barot, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Etech Global Services, and founder of Creative Choice Group, headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Etech employs 2,700 team members across the US, India and Jamaica. If you would like to learn more about Etech, contact info@etechgs.com for more information.”

Tips to Boost your Social Media Engagement

Building a social media presence for your company or brand is increasingly an essential part of doing business in the modern corporate world. Chances are good that you have already taken the plunge and started building your brand in the social channel of your choice. However, you may not be getting the results you had anticipated. If customer and employee engagement is down on your social media accounts, the problem may not be with your customers or clients. There are several steps you can take to boost social media engagement, most of which can be done with relatively minor adjustments to your regular posting routine. Include Pictures and Other Media Pictures, video and other visual media are an essential part of the social media experience on virtually every platform. Not only can you convey more with a a picture than with a long text post that people are less like to read, you can also use images as a clever way to get around character limits on platforms like Twitter. Just remember that including too much information in an image can cause access issues for customers who use screen readers. Blog at the Right Times Make social media posts when your customers are most likely to read them and don’t hesitate to repost content a couple of times to reach a larger audience. The ideal time to post varies between industries and customer demographics, so analyze the data you have before working out a posting schedule. A social media consultant can help you make sense of a large amount of data. Let Your Personality Shine Through Social media posts aren’t meant to be stiff and formal like press releases. Use humor and personality to engage your readers and make them feel like they are interacting with a real human being rather than a corporate-branded robot. Make your followers laugh, think, or even just smile and they will be much more likely to keep coming back. Engage with Your Audience If you want your audience to engage with your posts, consider just asking them. While asking for followers to like or share content may seem a little desperate, it works more often than you might think. However, make sure to take control of your intellectual property. If you create an image to share, watermark it or sign it with your company name so that it doesn’t become lost once it has been released into the social media wilds. Respond to Comments and Blogs Always make your customers and followers feel valued. Respond to posts on your social media pages, even if it’s just to say a quick thanks. Longer comments or questions may require longer responses, so make sure to carve out a little time each day for responding to posts. While you may get a little tired of typing out the same response multiple times, remember that each response is unique to the person who receives it.

Tips To Improve Quality Monitoring

We monitor calls to ensure that the set quality standards are achieved. However, call monitoring is not only for identifying problems and agent opportunities, but also for detecting what is working and cascading it to the entire team. Even as social media evolves and an increasing number of customers are reaching out through these channels, many still turn to chat and inbound toll free numbers for assistance. That makes call quality monitoring an essential process to ensure that customers receive an exceptional customer experience on all interactions. Here are tips that can help you improve quality monitoring: 1: Ensure you get the small things correct You already know the details of your monitoring operations and how your agents perform. To ensure consistent improvement — get the small things right. For example, verify that the agents have correct information about a product or service and responses to possible questions from customers. Also ensure that agents follow the laid out interaction flow structure. With the small things in place, you can use your time to work on the big issues. 2: Don’t make the employees nervous Agents are usually apprehensive to having their interactions monitored. To get your employees engaged, you need to explain why you are carrying out monitoring? Emphasize your intention is to help them be successful and to ensure quality customer service is delivered. To help your employees buy into the idea of quality monitoring, make the exercise collaborative and inclusive. It will help your employees understand the process better and what is required of them as they interact with customers. Remember to reprimand in private and praise in public. If you know there is a bad interaction, do not choose to play it in a calibration session that is attended by a large group. Take the agent into an individual coaching session to discuss the interaction whether it be a chat, call, or social media contact. 3: Hire Third Party to Monitor When a professional third party monitors your team, they will produce unbiased evaluations. If you run a large contact center, you will need to have an internal team of quality analysts as well. They should stay calibrated with your third party quality team to ensure that both groups deliver consistent results. Make sure that your internal team members have the right skills to monitor and provide feedback to agents in order to maintain the company quality standards. 4: Reward Best Performers Rewards are a great source of motivation. Come up with monthly awards like “quality agent of the month”. Non-monetary incentives oftentimes work as well as those with a cost to the company. The recognition of a “job well done” motivates employees to excel. 5: Invest in coaching the agents You must invest in training and coaching your agents. In addition to new hire training, ongoing product and soft skill training will enable your agents to continue to grow. The time and resources you invest in training your employees will bear fruits in quality customer service. Also use technology to guide your analysts and agents through the procedures. It might be costly at first, but in the long run it will be worthwhile. 6: Gather Feedback It is not enough to set quality processes without a feedback gathering mechanism. Internal calibration meetings should include both agents and supervisors to allow for an open question and answer session. Customer satisfaction surveys often tell the real picture. It can be surprising to learn that sometimes customers do not perceive the same quality of service that the internal team is assured they are providing. 7: Monitor across multi channels Today’s customer interacts with contact centers via multiple channels. It is advisable to monitor all sales and service channels to make an informed assessment. In conclusion, these seven tips will help you improve your quality monitoring. A quality interaction should provide an exceptional customer experience and showcase high performing teams.

How to Use Tagged Chat to Enhances Live Chat

Live chat provides solutions for web-based businesses in the form of efficiency and revenue reclamation. It’s convenient and useful for customers to get their questions answered quickly via live chat. Live chat also represents a powerful approach for mitigating shopping cart abandonment. In essence, it recoups revenue before it’s lost. Also, tagged chat facilitates best practices by focusing on: Energy, empathy, and etiquette Politeness, personalization, and fast response times Being prepared, informed and well-managed Employing pre-written messages in each instance is essential. They form a courteous, thorough response foundation that chat agents can tailor to meet the needs of a distinct chat conversation. Efficiency Customer support chat is the preferred channel for increased communication primarily because live chat service agents can field up to four conversations simultaneously. Pre-written messages are a fundamental component of this capability, and live chat software makes it even easier to utilize pre-written messages. For instance, when a chat agent types a tag word with a symbol, it brings up the list of possible pre-written messages containing that tag. From this bank of tagged chat choices, a live chat agent can select and polish the one that best meets the needs of the customer. By putting your customer in charge of asking for assistance, you create in them the desire to follow through on their purchase. It encourages them to self-select when they need you and rewards them with immediate and relevant assistance. Revenue-Reclamation Over 10 percent of shoppers abandon their carts because the checkout process is confusing. This is an ideal point for a customer service agent to assist in completing purchases. Others do not complete the purchase process for a variety of reasons, such as: Unexpected shipping costs Unable to locate a coupon code or it doesn’t work Lack of confidence in the security of the payment process If even a portion of these circumstances were handled properly by a live chat agent, e-commerce businesses would experience a 20 percent decrease in abandoned shopping carts. Visitor that has their expectations disrupted needs to be engaged immediately and competently. Tagged chat can support revenue-reclamation efforts by making it easy for agents to send a targeted message quickly to a faltering prospective buyer before they exit the website. If they are already considering leaving, they are unlikely to wait patiently for an agent’s carefully-constructed reply. Whatever you can do to promote quick answers will increase your chances of successfully leading customers to complete their purchases. Best Practices Courteous accommodation is also an essential feature of productive live chat. Globally-accessible live chat software and tagged chats enable anyone in the company to create and choose the preferred phrasing with which your team has been equipped and worked hard to refine. At a minimum, it can help avoid obvious harmful phrases. Tagged chat can enhance conversion rates by providing customers with instant access to a live support agent while they’re on your site. When practiced as part of your overall strategic customer service plan, live chat can become an indispensable promotional channel that encourages communication, builds loyalty, and convinces customers to take action.

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