The Future of Contact Center Leadership – What Needs To Be Changed
A true leader keeps changing and improving as and when the situation demands.
Contact Center
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Improving customer experiences is one of the important areas of focus for leading brands.
5 Useful Ways to Utilize Data to Boost Customer Experience within Your Contact Center
A contact center is more than just a support center; it offers actionable insights into the way that a company chooses to treat its customers.
Measuring ROI of Speech Analytics Implementation at Contact Center
Digitalization is optimizing the existing processes in many businesses. Adopting a new technology demands sheer determination, effective change management, and decent user adoption.
4 Simple Tips to Evaluate and Elevate Your Contact Center Operations
Your contact center is more than just a checkmark on the customer experience; it is a hallmark that displays how your company feels about the people they serve.
Effective Use of Contact Center Quality Monitoring Metrics: Which Should You Focus on Now?
Whether you’ve utilized a contact center for your business needs, contacted one as a customer, or worked as a contact center team member, you have an idea of what to expect when it comes to measuring quality monitoring metrics. Some global best practices are aligning with what many people may think of when considering how contact centers and their team members are rated for effectiveness. Some standard metrics utilized in contact quality monitoring include how long a customer waits before their call is answered, the duration of the call, and how satisfied customers are with these interactions. While many of these recognizable metrics have been relied upon by contact centers for years, the importance of some should be reconsidered if businesses want to continue growing, evolving, and providing unbeatable customer experience. The demand for streamlined and uncomplicated customer experience continues to grow, and companies making this their focus when it comes to the benefits of contact center quality monitoring. The Importance of Deciphering the Right Metrics Often, the reason why monitoring contact center performance doesn’t result in both team members’ efficiency and happier customers is that the right quality monitoring metrics aren’t being measured. Sometimes the results aren’t focused on as closely as others, or they are underutilized. Many contact centers rely on quality assurance managers to evaluate and score team member performance based on the average handle time of their calls or the average speed in which calls are answered. There’s no doubt these particular quality monitoring metrics are essential. Still, too large of a focus on them results in rushed calls where customer issues are left mostly unresolved on the first go-round. Focusing mainly on the speed of interactions serves to ensure things that are immensely important to customers are missed, such as displays of empathy. When a company is reliant on data gained from the wrong metrics, numbers shared on the inside may look like they’re hitting their marks while on the outside, customers feel unheard and dissatisfied. What Metrics Should Be Your Company’s Focus? First and foremost, if you consider a good company to be made up of well-trained and valued team members serving satisfied customers, then the goal should be to focus on quality monitoring metrics aligning with that vision. Ultimately, the right parameters for gaining continuous improvement depend on your particular company, its needs, and the overarching business goals. This means there isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all kind of answer to which ones should be chosen for every company. However, no matter which metrics your business decides on, it’s essential to take the data provided through technology and intelligence, optimize it, and put it into an actionable plan. While focusing on metrics relaying the length of call times may be less than stellar for overall customer experience and satisfaction, they can be great for team efficiency and can’t be banished altogether. Instead of doing away with them, companies should pay equal attention to customer satisfaction-centric metrics when it comes to quality monitoring. To be effective at monitoring and providing appropriate feedback for the continued development of team members, managers must review calls and note displays of empathy and the willingness of team members to take the interaction above and beyond the basics. Some points for managers to consider may include if team members are great listeners for their customers and if they are knowledgeable and capable while working to resolve issues. Once metrics are chosen, putting the results into an actionable plan is essential to getting the most out of the time, effort, and money put into collecting data from quality assurance metrics in the first place. Reviewing team member and customer interactions, providing timely feedback and putting appropriate plans in place is how you make a change and gauge overall effectiveness. Trust Your Company’s Strengths and Rely on Experts to Fill the Gaps Looking toward the near future, Forrester predicts more companies will feel compelled to operate their in-house contact centers rather than relying on outside partners. They also predict this could be incredibly detrimental to many businesses. Many companies will benefit from continuing to focus on what they do best. If that doesn’t already include operating and managing their contact center and customer experience, it’s likely best to seek and rely on already established experts. When seeking contact center and quality monitoring services, take into consideration what’s offered and how data is derived and disseminated. A company offering a combination of advanced technologies, artificial intelligence, and continuously developed team members ensures your company benefits from extensive data, corresponding actionable plans, and team members ready to serve customers and provide exceptional experiences. If this sounds like the type of partnership that would benefit both your business and your customers, check out the difference that Etech has to offer. Contact Etech today for additional information.
How to Build an Ideal Call Center Quality Monitoring Scorecard?
It’s crucial for call centers and QA managers to understand the Importance of using a call center QA scorecard and very few know how to build an ideal call center quality monitoring scorecard. With a successful call center monitoring strategy, companies can significantly improve customer satisfaction, employee retention, as well as their bottom line. Decision-makers can understand what does call center QA quality monitoring mean, quickly identify problems, maintain call quality standards, and improve team performance while enhancing customer satisfaction ratios. Putting in place a quality monitoring scorecard, however, can be tricky. Here is a guide to help you navigate the implementation of a functional call center monitoring scorecard strategy. Set Your Goals & Objectives What is call center quality monitoring? Most call centers have a system in place to track, evaluate and improve CX interactions, , however, every call center is unique in the way it monitors those experiences, so it’s crucial to ensure that all elements included in the scorecard are specific to your own customer and business needs, to help you measure what’s important. Ensure you know where you want to see yourself so you can create specific and actionable goals that make your support vision come to life. For instance, are you looking for ways to increase the quality of phone calls, provide faster solutions, ensure adherence to guidelines, or create a foundation for agent’s training and coaching? Accurately Define KPIs What KPIs are essential for your call center? Choosing optimal key performance indicators (KPIs) is the key in assessing call center performance. You will want to choose KPIs that align with your company’s mission, vision, and goals. Indicators that are considered to create the most significant impact on the desired goal must be prioritized. Some components to consider include customer service quality, protocol compliance, and agent’s problem-solving abilities, follow up service or call center etiquette. Make sure that the KPIs are clearly understood by everyone involved. Solicit the Input of Stakeholders Hold a meeting with your whole team to discuss the processes, strategies, and how you are going to execute the quality assurance process. See if anyone has inputs and recommendations to improve your plan. After all, agents are always on the front lines, dealing with customers daily so their experiences can provide valuable input that helps determine the benchmarks that make their customer interactions successful. When your whole team is actively involved in the process, you will have a better chance of adjusting behavior as people will show a stronger commitment to measuring up to the benchmarks they helped define. Determine the Call Center QA Monitoring Scorecard Criteria The effectiveness of your quality monitoring scorecard goes as far as the items included in the evaluation form. If you’re working with a poorly designed call scoring evaluation scorecard, you will eventually have inaccurate data that does not correctly assess agent performance or misses vital performance areas. Once you determine which metrics to hold your customer agents accountable to, creating QA criteria is easy. Develop a checklist taking into account the various metrics that suit your call center, your employees, and your company goals/values. Anywhere between 10 to 15 questions should be ideal. Instead of overwhelming your QA scorecard with dozens of questions, concentrate on the aspects of your team’s interactions that matter most to you. When it comes to the weighting criteria of each of the components, discuss how important each element is and from that determine how it should be weighted. Gather Data for Feedback QA analysts, team leaders, and analysts can gather invaluable data from a collection of scorecards, gaining a broad overview of the employees’ efficiency. From this data, you will have a better understanding of what opportunities are being missed, what areas demand improvement as well as where you are doing well. This paves the way for targeted training that builds your staff’s skills. Continually Review KPIs and Revise Your Plan as Necessary You’ll need to check your KPIs regularly to make sure your changes are maintaining an efficient and effective call center. Check your metrics and tweak them as desired to suit your workforce’s evolution and development. If the metrics on your scorecards fail to correlate with business goals, then you should consider updating them to reflect your company’s values and goals. Always solicit feedback from agents and communicate any changes you made as a result of their input. Multiple scorecards can be developed to evaluate calls, emails, live chats, social media engagements, or whatever elements you want to measure. Your call center scorecard is the foundation of your QA process, so take time to create a proper one that works perfectly for your unique business. With an effective call center monitoring system, your company not only benefits from improved quality scores but will also keep ahead of the competition and build a loyal following. To learn more about how Etech can optimize your current QA department, or help you develop/fine-tune your current QA Processes, feel free to contact us via our website.
Are Your Contact Center Quality Monitoring Parameters Effective?
Artificial intelligence is rapidly revolutionizing the world of business. Almost every process is now automated in one company or another. When it comes to contact centers, managers may even use AI for quality monitoring to provide call center quality assurance. This is just one of the many ways that businesses can ensure a consistently good customer experience. Before companies can expect customer service reps to meet quality standards, they must set quality monitoring parameters. These criteria help agents to know what expectations they need to meet. In a large contact center, however, the obvious problem is that it’s not possible to monitor every call. Here are some of the ways managers can pair artificial intelligence with a human touch to determine effective parameters. 1. Evaluate the Parameters When managers notice a quality problem, their go-to solution is often to try to improve how reality matches up with expectations. Instead, managers should first take a good look at the expectations. Parameters are not effective if they are not clear and reachable. Because these are objectives, they should meet the same criteria as SMART goals, i.e., they should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-constrained. When looking at the different aspects of SMART goals, managers must also be realistic. When managers do not play an active role in the day-to-day activities their team handles, they may fail to do this. Other times, managers may set big goals stretched over a long period. This makes it difficult to track progress. Creating milestones can help employees to better move from Point A to B as they work hard to meet company objectives. 2. Automate Some of the Process It is impossible for a supervisor to manually go over every phone call to or from the contact center. Because of this, many companies turn to automation with the assistance of artificial intelligence. In these instances, AI can transcribe and analyze phone calls. Bots can scan the transcripts for problematic words or phrases that indicate the need for a closer look. This is where the value of human touch comes in. Supervisors will need to listen to these flagged calls to better understand what went wrong if anything went wrong at all. AI systems do make mistakes, and tone can significantly change the meaning of a sentence or word. Sarcasm, for instance, may require a human ear to detect and understand. Some AI systems are even capable of alerting supervisors of noncompliance concerns in real-time, while the customer is on the phone. This creates the opportunity for timely intervention. Supervisors can then deescalate the situation before it costs the client a valued customer. 3. Use Artificial Intelligence for Sorting Managers focus most of their attention on the phone calls and chat histories that agents have with customers. However, this is not the customer’s first point of contact with a business. The first point of contact occurs when the customer calls or initiates a chat. An automated operator or chatbot then provides the customer with options to direct them to the best possible team for solutions. Sometimes customers become frustrated at this point before ever speaking to an agent. When consumers have to navigate numeric options, 73% skip the AI operator and press zero to reach a human being. In addition to this, 55% of customers prefer to speak to a human agent, but 54% would gladly take the chatbot instead if it saved them even just ten minutes. Even so, the first contact may have also occurred at 2:30 in the morning, while the business and customer service lines were closed. If the company has a chatbot at the ready, it could help to provide solutions to the customer. Failing this, it could schedule an appointment with the customer for a representative to follow up at a later time. The Bottom Line: The Need for a Human Touch While artificial intelligence provides many initial benefits for a company, it is the human touch that makes all the difference. Yes, when it comes to solving a problem, 56% of consumers prefer to reach out via chat before calling the company. However, as illustrated above, this is often to avoid the wait time before reaching a human being. At Etech, we understand the importance of an omnichannel approach to communicate with different employees in the ways they prefer. We also appreciate that they just want to have all the queries and problems solved as soon as possible. For more information on how we combine artificial intelligence with a human touch to satisfy the needs of our clients and their customers, contact us today. This blog was earlier published on LinkedIn.
The Top 5 Contact Center Trends for 2019
Contacting a company in the hopes of resolving an issue only to receive less-than-impressive service is likely a scenario you’ve personally encountered at least once in your lifetime. It should come as no surprise that negative customer experience with a company’s contact center poses a huge threat to the consumer’s loyalty to that product or brand. Customers have more options than ever, and competition is fierce. Most businesses understand what’s at stake each time a customer needs to reach out, so what’s being done to ensure more positive experiences? While CSAT scores and KPIs still rule for some companies, others are taking a more customer-centric approach that has managed to completely alter the landscape of what contact centers could be. Zappos is a perfect example of this. They’ve eschewed the typical game plan of emphasizing the importance of low call times by instead focusing on the opposite: high call times. Taking the pressure of finalizing customer calls as quickly as possible off the table allows agents to focus on really connecting with the customer and resolving their issues. I call this the “love the one you’re with” approach. While many companies may not strive to recreate the Zappos customer experience model, most want to continue evolving to meet consumers’ needs in a way that builds brand loyalty. Here are five trends to consider employing to elevate the level of service offered by your business in 2019. Pick and Choose Technology and Tools Wisely New advances appear almost daily, so realizing your company’s needs, and which tools will meet them, is key to ensuring the business isn’t left in the dust with outdated systems or weighed down with bloate, technology. Some industries, such as healthcare, are seeing benefits from utilizing newer digital care coordination technologies. Although some industries are reporting increased efficiency from new technology such as this, it doesn’t automatically mean utilizing it would bring the same benefits to your business. Think of what your employees need most to assist customers best, and then seek out solutions that will fulfill your company’s own specific set of needs. Consider your administration staff, clients and overall ease of usability when selecting technology. Don’t Overlook the Importance of Employee Engagement With the customer experience always top of mind, it can be all too easy to overlook those who most directly influence consumer satisfaction. Your agents are invaluable assets with great insight into the needs, wants and frustrations of your customer base. It’s true that the happiness of your employees often correlates with the happiness of your customers. Ensure agents have the tools they need to be successful, including equipment, training, and thoughtful feedback. To have the largest impact, feedback shouldn’t focus solely on KPIs, but rather also on individual experiences that can be discussed. Consider focusing more on coaching effectiveness and ensuring your leaders are equipped to transfer knowledge effectively. Confidence through knowledge makes a world of difference in your people, and you only get it through effective training and coaching. Your people aren’t interacting with your C-Suite every day – they are interacting with your customers! Involve your frontline employees in CX problem-solving. Your employees (and customers) already know everything YOU need to know – just ask them what you can do better and actively listen to the response. Fine Tune System Connectivity In today’s market, many companies want to give customers various outlets for contact. Most brands offer options of connecting via phone, email, chat, social media and SMS. An omnichannel solution is a key contributor to positive customer experience and low customer effort. Best practices for applying self-service options are – Make self-serve effortless, comfortable and inviting Provide multiple options – insure self-serve is not the only option available Content consistency across all channels and refresh content frequently Ask for customer feedback about your self-serve options using surveys or other feedback tools Stop making your customers repeat themselves! Use intelligent, integrated technologies that ensure a frictionless experience and secure information pass-through. It’s frustrating for all involved, hindering the customer experience when the same information needs to be continuously repeated, and the customer journey isn’t fully known or readily available. Efficiencies improve when the systems within contact centers are easily interchangeable and communicate with each other. Fine tuning is not a one-time event – establish a rhythm and a consistent update strategy that’s aligned with your marketing plan to make the most of your omnichannel approach. Consider the Benefits of Remote Work More and more employees yearn for work that can be completed remotely. With the benefits it can bring to a customer-focused environment, it’s in the best interest of many businesses to consider the possibilities. Hiring more remote agents, or allowing those already employed to work away from the typical office environment not only frees up precious space in the contact center and lowers costs, it improves productivity by an average of 24%! Remote employees have 82% lower stress levels and 69% lower absenteeism. Distractions like water cooler gossip, impromptu meetings, and loud colleagues are a non-issue. Happy employees = Happy Customers and nothing have more of an impact on customer experience than agent experience! Invest in the Type of Engagements Customers Want It has long been believed that when given the option, customers do not speak to another human to resolve their issue, even though surveys continue to point to this being untrue. CIO reported that 80 % of customers who pay for TV would prefer to resolve issues via digital channels such as chat or email. This emphasizes that many companies aren’t tuned in to the customer experience and voice of the customer. Even though it seems that most consumers still reach out through calling, other means of communicating such as chat, messaging and text to continue to experience exponential growth. Whether your focus this year will be on inbound, outbound, quality, analytics and experience management or live chat services, Etech has a wide range of solutions meant to elevate the customer experience effectively. Contact us today
Artificial Intelligence: Streamlining Contact Center Technology
It is hard to believe it now, but artificial intelligence used to be nothing more than a futuristic dream. It was portrayed in old movies as the vehicle that would completely change the world and propel our culture to unimaginable heights. Now, artificial intelligence—the stuff of the future—is all around us, and we are still learning just how much it can benefit us. In addition to improving our daily lives by helping us find restaurants, driving us around in our vehicles, and even controlling the lights and appliances in our homes, AI is also improving the world of business in a variety of ways. Automated systems are especially helpful for call centers, and Gartner predicts that non-voice interactions in customer service settings will likely rise to 85 percent by the year 2020. Many contact centers are discovering how artificial intelligence can benefit them and help them turn a greater profit while serving customers’ needs more effectively. If your contact center does not currently make use of AI, you may be spending more than you need to and missing out on your full potential to appease the needs of your customers. Consumers are increasingly desiring self-service options, but they still want the ability to speak with a live customer service agent if needed. When you offer digital solutions that recognize and predict the needs of your customers, you create a seamless user experience. While artificial intelligence should never replace the human component of your contact center, it can be used to help busy call centers handle larger call volumes with greater efficiency. How Artificial Intelligence Drives Effortless Customer Experience With Human Touch One of the most universal challenges experienced by businesses of all types is the constant struggle to improve the customer experience. In fact, 72 percent of businesses list customer experience improvement as their top priority, according to recent data published by Forrester. Call centers that experience a high volume of customer service calls may consistently struggle to deliver a quick and effective customer service experience. Since recent research from NewVoiceMedia reveals that companies in the United States lose approximately $62 billion each year as a direct result of poor customer service, it is imperative for companies to turn the statistics in their favor by taking actionable steps to improve the customer experience for their consumer base. One of the most effective ways to do this is by incorporating artificial intelligence into the call center customer service process. Using AI in the call center can improve customer service operations in the following ways: Improving business agility Achieving operational excellence Providing machine-centric intelligence with human-centric interaction Increasing versatility and flexibility Predicting customer behavior Maximizing available resources and reducing operating costs Delivering a consistent, reliable experience to each customer Meeting customer needs around-the-clock Creating relationship-based interactions instead of transaction-based interactions Speech recognition systems can be implemented to relieve the burden of high call volume from human agents. Such systems can also take care of after-hours phone calls when call center agents are not available. This benefit makes it possible for businesses to take care of customer needs around-the-clock, without paying call center agents for graveyard shifts or overtime. In a digital age, more customers expect businesses to be able to meet their demands 24/7, and implementing a speech recognition into your call center can help you live up to evolving consumer expectations. When integrated into the call center, advanced speech recognition systems, such as interactive voice response (IVR) systems, make it possible for customers to easily navigate through a menu of options by using their voice instead of the telephone keypad. Other call center speech recognition options include speech-to-text, voice search, call routing, and voice dialing. For many businesses, automating the telephone answering system is an efficient way to handle anywhere between 40-85 percent of incoming calls. More and more businesses are leveraging the efficiency and predictability of speech recognition systems to improve efficiency and anticipate customer needs. Achieving the ideal blend between an automated, self-service environment and live agent interaction in the call center is a challenge worth pursuing. Providing customers with the option to navigate self-service systems without taking away their ability to talk to a real person as needed comes with a variety of benefits, including cost savings, more efficient customer service and improved customer experience. How to Use Artificial Intelligence As an Effective Quality Monitoring Solution If you were to ask 10 different companies for the definition of “excellent customer service”, you would probably get 10 different answers. There is no single, universal definition of superior customer service that can be applied to all businesses. For this reason, it can be hard to nail down the standards that you need your call center team to adhere to in order to deliver the highest level of customer satisfaction. The challenge of determining, analyzing, and enforcing behaviors and actions that meet excellent service standards for your business most likely falls on the shoulders of your quality monitoring group. Their task is a monumental one, but it is necessary for delivering a concise, uniform approach to customer service. By using updated Artificial Intelligence software, it is possible to increase the effectiveness of your quality monitoring team. The highly accurate data provided by the AI software can direct your quality monitoring team to changes that may need to be made by call center representatives. The end result is an improvement in your contact center’s processes and methods for interacting with customers. Automating your quality monitoring system can provide some of the following improvements to your business: Reduced agent effort Better sales results Compliance with regulatory requirements Improved customer experience Artificial intelligence, when used correctly in a call center, can effortlessly monitor and gather valuable data from your team’s phone calls, chats and emails. It can also assist management in identifying opportunities to improve customer satisfaction, sales conversions and processes. Speech recognition technology is capable of anticipating customer needs and quickly delivering predictions and solutions that are specific to each
5 Things You Can Do to Become a Great Leader in the Contact Center
Great leaders aren’t born that way, and most dedicate their lives to learning, applying and mastering leadership skills. When it comes to being a leader in the contact center, don’t be discouraged if authority doesn’t come naturally to you. With a little training, hard work and perseverance, you have the capacity to become a respected part of your contact center leadership. Here are five things you can do to start transforming yourself into a leader. Promote Action : Contrary to popular belief, a leader isn’t someone who bends the will of others. A leader is someone who shows the way and encourages others to make their own choices. Even if you can see that someone’s decision is likely to lead to inopportune consequences, it is important to give them the freedom to choose. This doesn’t mean you can’t give them your opinion or try to help them see a better way, but you should never coerce them into doing things your way. Recognize Achievements : Never ignore the achievements of your fellow workers. Instead, publicly recognize their good work and genuinely congratulate them for their efforts. The best leaders are those that encourage the repetition of good behavior by giving praise and encouragement when it is due. While monetary reimbursement will always be excitedly accepted by the recipient, it is not always necessary. In most cases, employees are more than content to simply be recognized for their efforts and given a verbal “thank you”. You might also choose to randomly reward a superior performer with movie tickets or a gift card to a fancy restaurant. Keep generous monetary reimbursements reserved for special occasions or very rare achievements in order to keep them from becoming mundane and expected occurrences. Take Advantage of Training Opportunities : Training opportunities most likely arise on a daily basis, but if you aren’t actively watching you can easily miss them. When you see an opportunity to train someone, consider training the entire group at the same time instead of singling out one person. You may also want to reinforce the importance of proper training by holding annual or monthly training conferences. Always maintain a positive tone and focus on the way training can elevate the entire department and give them the knowledge necessary to further their skills. Listen and Learn : A good leader recognizes that there are always opportunities to learn from others. Make it a habit to carry a notepad and paper with you, and jot down notes anytime you hear or learn something new. When you listen to others and take their words to heart, you will make a positive connection with them and enhance your leadership qualities. Learn to Act : The best leaders are better at acting than hesitating. Rather than second-guessing yourself and letting opportunities pass you by, seize the moment and take action. If you see something that needs to be done in the call center, just do it, even if it doesn’t technically fall under your list of responsibilities. Being a leader is more than holding a position of authority. In fact, it is much more about becoming than being. Become the best call center leader you can be by following these five simple leadership tips. This blog was first published on LinkedIn
How Artificial Intelligence Improves Contact Center Industry
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is the gold standard in call center quality monitoring, and for good reason. Today’s automated call center quality monitoring software is so seamless in its integration that efficiencies resulting from its use can be pressed into action quickly, fairly and effectively. Active call centers record billions of hours of customer interactions every year, and it is spectacular to consider reviewing every minute for quality assessment. AI brings the task not only into the realm of reality, but also into position as a transformational tool in improving operations, agent performance and customer satisfaction. The call centers need to understand the basic before implementing Artificial Intelligence. Let’s take a look at the benefits of working with Artificial Intelligence and the multiple advantages it brings to any operation in the call center that strives to offer the best quality assurance at every point in the customer-interaction process. AI Interaction in the Customer Service Experience One of the best aspects of AI is that it is fully customizable to call center’s needs. Not only does the software “learns” and improves over time, but as in-house processes evolves, AI can be adjusted to augment the quality monitoring standards quickly and effectively. That said, it is vital that each company assess its needs and desires before investing in AI so that it achieves the most efficient fit. Here are some of the aspects to be considered when weighing whether to take the leap into AI quality assurance software: The people factor No computer can show human emotion, which is conceived as the major downside of AI when used in a call center. Companies don’t want their customers to feel as if they are not being heard, especially when they are frustrated or upset, because an automated system cannot properly assess and respond to human emotion. However, AI benefits the call center agents to understand the upset points where the customers want special attention. This can help the call center agents to include sympathetic words to solve the issue which the customer is facing. In addition, AI benefits the call center employees to handle some of the upset callers when a problem gets too emotional. “AI Technology Combined With Conventional People Skills Can Deliver A Seamless Customer Experience By Balance Customer Interactions With Empathy” Departmental universality Customer service is a chief concern in every aspect of working with patrons. AI can be programmed to anticipate people needs in the case of an emergency and begin the process before the person can even sort out how to respond. Plus, AI can inform customers of possible solutions and products immediately, which demonstrate a level of urgency and personalization that will help retain customers with monthly subscriptions. Resolution-based self-service Self-service is a tricky tool, and it doesn’t take much for callers to get frustrated with a dizzying path they don’t feel is solving their problem. But from a company’s standpoint, automated self-service is a vital tool for maximizing work done by people. When AI enters the picture, customers—especially high-value clients—can get personalized responses with language that doesn’t sound “canned” or rote. In addition, AI software is able to decide when a caller requires a personal touch, at which point it connects the caller to a live agent. AI can also read triggers that indicate a customer is a high-value client and make sure that caller is treated accordingly. All of these measures help ensure a positive customer service experience. Benefits of Automated Call Center Quality Monitoring With these customer service efficiencies in mind, the next step in the Artificial Intelligence assessment process is to consider the benefits of integrating the software into call center quality monitoring. Of course, the most obvious benefit is efficiency. Each call center generates hundreds of thousands of recorded interactions each year. The only way to effectively evaluate all those calls is with software. Here are some of the upsides to AI in quality assurance: Objectivity When people are the ones doing the QA assessments, there will always be a risk that interactions are not being evaluated objectively. Using AI, there can be no bias based on a preference for certain agents or a dislike for others. Objectivity is built into the assessment software. Universality : Rather than selecting a small fraction of calls for evaluation by people quality monitoring agent, AI allows every single call to be monitored in a quick and efficient manner. Every agent’s interactions can be evaluated, which means the leaders get a full picture of agents’ work and are prepared. Immediacy Because all calls are screened quickly, trends–both negative and positive–can be discovered quickly and adjustments can be made in an efficient manner. There is no rush in the leader’s ability to implement a correction or new innovation that helps boost customer satisfaction levels. Performance As a result of the three benefits above, agent performance is much more likely to improve quickly. Timely, accurate quality assurance evaluations can indicate which agents need additional training. The overall agent performance helps the leaders understand better which agent’s performance can limit the delivery of effortless customer experience. Of course, there is no AI software, to this point, that can run without the benefit of people’s insight and interaction. It is the combination of people and Artificial Intelligence that produces the most complete data, intelligent insights, and helpful recommendations. With the automated functions in the call center, it is imperative to have people to monitor the transactions for quality services. The people make the whole AI functionality work to offer exceptional customer experience to the customers. Customers have always wanted seamless and effortless form of responses for their issues. According to Forrester’s report of 2014, understanding customer emotion and empathy are the most critical components to gain successful customer experience. Here, to touch the heart of the customer services being delivered, human touch is required. When you have both, your investment in AI software can facilitate a marked improvement in agent
The Multi-Channel Contact Center: More than Just Incoming Calls
Customers have a variety of ways in which they can communicate with businesses and organizations today, and it is no longer appropriate to handle all customer service requests via a telephone call center. All businesses and non-corporate customer-facing groups should be working towards creating a multi-channel contact center; but what does that mean in practice? Assessing your call center and implementing change Most legacy call centers will be adapted for dealing with incoming telephone calls in the most efficient manner. They will often be divided into distinct departments with protocols in place to manage the distribution of calls between them. The modern multi-channel call center needs to function as a unit, with all departments following the same basic procedures and working towards the same KPIs. Business owners need to use a mixture of market research and existing data to decide on which communication channels will be provided. Then they need to source the appropriate technology for the routing of enquiries, recruit or retrain staff and define and standardize KPIs. Sourcing call center technology The choice of call center technology is crucial to the success of a business in the same way that the choice of tools and equipment is vital to a tradesperson. In the multi-channel call center, the platform chosen must clearly be able to route enquiries from multiple sources (telephone, email, fax, web chat, social media, SMS, etc.) to the relevant agent. However, there are other questions business owners will need to ask technology providers before making a decision, and these will vary depending on their business need. Some examples of pertinent questions are: Can the system recognize individual telephone numbers and relate them to customer data? Can calls be routed to an agent with the appropriate language or industry skills? Can previous call history be accessed easily? Can agent scripts be pre-populated automatically with the customer’s name? Can the provider assist with deployment and training? Will the provider provide ongoing support and ‘health checks’ to ensure the call center is optimized? The multi-channel call center agent The multi-channel call center requires a high caliber agent who can blend the traditional qualities of efficiency, communication and charisma with the flexibility and resourcefulness to source the information the customer is in need of. Agents should also be empowered to deal with the calls they are likely to face, minimizing the need for call transfers or callbacks. Customer service agents should be assessed using a mixture of live call monitoring and analysis of historical calls to ensure performance is of a consistently high standard. This is why KPIs should be standardized across the whole call center so that agents can be compared with other agents more easily and the need for training or agent replacement identified. With customers able to contact businesses at any time of the day and through multiple channels, the ability to respond promptly and completely to all communications will raise customer experience levels and help ensure long-term customer loyalty.
How to Identify the Right Offshore Contact Center
Any business large or small that deals with a high volume of customers is bound to receive a constant flow of questions and enquiries. While your in house employees can generally handle the questions with ease, this will take up a significant amount of time and focus off of the core business activities. Utilizing a call center offers you an opportunity to outsource these processes to allow your business to keep running at a smooth and efficient manner. An offshore call center is an effective solution that acts as an extension to your business. Some of the most common benefits you will notice right away are: It is cost effective compared to having a fully-fledged in-house customer service department. They bring in expertise and experience in providing superior customer experiences. There are options such as Inbound, Outbound, or a mixture of channel Call Center’s that can specifically meet your needs. It saves you time and money from virtually every aspect. Training, hiring, production, etc. With the above benefits in mind, the next step is selecting one that will compliment your business. Here is list of factors to consider as you make that important business decision:- Location Most Contact Center companies nowadays have locations around the globe. You will hear terms such as Onshore, Nearshore, Offshore and descriptions of that sort. This is something that will need to be evaluated before you officially start “looking” for a partner in a Contact Center. While most Offshore or Nearshore companies have much lower rates than that what you would find Onshore, you may want to look a little deeper into issues such as poor government infrastructure as this could affect your call center’s quality of service in the long run. The other things to look into include the economy strength, exchange rate, environmental issues and culture. Call center specialization As you can imagine, there are numerous different types of call centers with very diverse specialties. It is imperative that the partner you ultimately select have a proven track record in performing the specific task or service that you are looking to outsource. For instance, if you are looking to outsource your Customer Service department and the Contact Center partner you have chosen has never handled this type of work, than you may see the negative side effects in your campaign’s performance. Language/Accent A growing concern/issue we are seeing with companies placing their work offshore is the feedback from our customers on the agent’s language or accent “barrier.” One of the most important aspects you need to make clear from the start to your offshore partner is that the quality of the agents who will be representing your brand and company be up to your standards. As the agent answering the phone or reaching out to a potential customer is essentially an extension of your brand, it is imperative that that agent sound and behave in a way that would make your company and customers proud. Company Information Security As always, security has to be an area of importance when selecting a partner. Before making the final decision, expect to dedicate a good majority of your time to ensuring that the partner’s IT security is in place and monitored, as these agents and your partner will most likely have access to vital company information. Flexibility The Contact Center industry is constantly evolving. Business processes and demands keep changing. Your partner of choice should have the flexibility to meet and grow with these changes as they are presented. As your business continues to evolve, you should expect the same from your Contact Center partner. Finding a partner who is willing and dedicated to making your process as seamless as possible is the ultimate goal. Management Communication The organizational communication structure of your chosen partner is another key area that needs to be evaluated. As this Contact Center and their management team will be handling your customers directly, you need to make sure that if there is ever an issue or if you want to ask a question about the operations, you aren’t going to be going through five different people before you get your answer. A partner with a clearly defined, effective, communication flow demonstrates that they are organized and experienced in handling issues in the way they need to be handled. Reliability In conclusion, the choice of outsourcing a part of your business to an Offshore Contact Center is a huge decision. These seven factors: location, specialization, accent, information security, flexibility, management communication, and reliability are just scraping the surface. I encourage you to dig deeper into the company history to make a wise decision and push your company forward. The right contact center can be a valuable asset to your business. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.
CALL CENTER METRICS: What are they and how do we measure them?
In the Call Center or Contact center world, there are a number of details that we monitor that help us to know how we’re doing. The industry term that we call these details is Metrics and as time and technology has progressed the number of metrics that we measure has progressed as well. While the early years of call center metrics tended to focus on efficiency, in more recent years, we have become much more concerned with quality. There are numerous metrics that can be measured, but I’d like to look at the top five. Quality Scores: These are probably the most important metric because they can provide a great overview for the call center as well as individual agents. We can look at the overall caller experience as well as the conversations the agents are having on their phones. Quality scores are typically measured between 5 and 10 calls per agent per month. First Call Resolution (FCR): This metric can also be known as “First Contact Resolution.” Basically FCR allows contact centers to see how many times a customer needs to call a company in order to get a problem resolved. While Quality scores measure from the Call Center perspective, FCR allows us to measure from the customer’s perspective. We can all relate to this, for each of us has, at one time or another, had a frustrating customer service issue that took a while to resolve. Believe me, call centers like to see high numbers on this metric; high numbers mean that issues are being resolved quickly and customers are not having to call over and over regarding the same issue. Sometimes this particular metric can be a bit murky in that often a customer may call within a seven day period about different issues. Here are some of the ways we measure FCR: Calls are monitored to determine if the agent can give a satisfactory answer the first time. Monitoring the number of callers that call back within a 7 day period. Monitoring the calling party number within a set period Monitoring the reason for call Using a post-call IVR survey Looking at the quality of answer and positiveness measured by a third party. Most importantly a call center must look at some of the benefits it can reap Significant reduction in the call volume Reduction in the operational cost Reduce Cost of complaint call Identification of customer problems Customer Satisfaction: The old favorite amongst call centers. Basically, this tells us if our customers are happy with the service they received from our agents. A simple way to improve this metric is to cultivate the culture in your call center and encourage the agents to always put the customer at the heart of your decision, be focused on problem solving and just not the process and you will see customer satisfaction growing. Capture the customer feedback, use them to identify opportunities within the call center and improve agents. This metric can be easily measured through an IVR survey, follow-up e-mail survey or mobile surveys. Service Level: While some in the call center industry may not see this as one of the top five, I certainly do. It was one of the very first metrics to be developed and it looks at the percentage of calls that are answered within a given time. For example: 80% of the calls are answered within 20 seconds or 95% of the calls are answered within 15 seconds. While this metric does measure efficiency, from the customer’s perspective, not having to sit on-hold for several minutes weighs heavily when it comes to offering their feedback. There can be many reasons that impacts the services levels such as longer call length, fluctuations in call volume, schedule adherence, inaccurate forecast and exception time. Average Handling Time: This metric is an efficiency metric looking at the total amount of time taken to handle a call. This includes talk-time, on-hold time and wrap-up. Some of the customers want low AHT and some don’t. Here are some of the questions you must ask yourself before you decide. What are the benefits of having low AHT? Do your customers want you to have low AHT? Are your agents ready to reduce AHT? As I mentioned above, there are many more metrics that can be measured, but these listed tend to be first and foremost among call centers and they have a way of helping call centers get “back to basics” so to speak when it comes to providing superior customer service. This blog has been written by Etech’s Matt Rocco, President and Managing Member. If you would like to learn more about Etech and our contact center technology and service solutions, please contact us at info@etechgs.com.
Continuous Process Improvement: A Part of a Call Center’s DNA
No matter what industry your call center is in continuous process improvement, a method of continually redesigning business protocols for increased efficiency is a vital cornerstone of business excellence. CPI can turn a struggling company into a major competitor in whatever industry your business is in. By systematically reviewing current company procedures and introducing incremental changes, you can provide the foundation for a breakthrough. As the changes are incorporated into day-to-day business protocols, you will notice an increase in efficiency that can lead to better response times, faster call resolution and a more positive customer sentiment. All of this translates to more success as a company. By improving processes regularly, contact centers can better prepare themselves to meet major business goals. Making Continuous Process Improvement a Habit If a business really wants to be successful, CPI has to be more than a talking piece. It must be a habit. It must be a predominant characteristic of a call center rather than a technique that is implemented occasionally and forgotten about the rest of the time. If the latter is the case for a company, the executives may find themselves wanting to change without knowing what strategies would be the best to bring about that transformation. What can you do to make CPI a part of your company’s DNA? Consider using strategies, such as: Planning for the change you want to see. If you want improvements to be successful, you need to know what the company’s goals are. Is it more important for the contact center to improve customer satisfaction or safeguard personal data? Once you know what areas need to be improved, you will have a better idea what sort of changes to implement on the current processes. Preparing the team for the upcoming change. In order to test out planned changes, you may want to make the alteration on a small scale first. Even so, you need to be aware that people do not like change. In order to avoid resistance from the workforce, you need to incorporate training and dialogue into the process of improvement. Listening to the feedback. Some business processes seem efficient on paper, but once you have tried out the change on a small group, you may come to realize that the efficiency is lacking. In order to really find out what the merits of your improvements are, you need to be willing to listen to the thoughts of your supervisors and customer service representatives. This is the time to make minor changes to your new processes, so you can better meet your business excellence goals. Implementing the change on a large scale. After the initial testing of the new process, you may be ready to introduce the procedure to the entire center. Remember to still incorporate adequate training, so the larger workforce is able to make the alterations a normal part of their interactions with customers. Incorporating this four-part, cyclical strategy into your business may make it easier for CPI to be a major part of the company. In order to really be successful with CPI, it has to be more than a fallback plan. It has to be etched into the DNA of your call center. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.
Why Do Leaders Require Vision to Drive Success?
Have you ever noticed how the word “boss” is often used in a negative context? Very rarely do people use the word in praise; rather, you more often hear terms like “the boss is getting after me again” or “my boss is so demanding.” Perhaps Theodore Roosevelt summed up the reason behind this trend best when he said “People often ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.” At face value, driving may seem simple. After all, you know where you’re going, and as long as your workforce is on board, everyone will arrive where you need to be together. Yet what if circumstances compel you to relinquish the wheel? Do the passengers traveling with you as you journey towards call center success know and understand the destination? Are they even aware of the route you’re taking? They are if you’ve made the decision to lead rather than simply drive. Do You Know Where You Going? Yet passing the vision of where your contact center may be going on to your employees requires that you first acquire it yourself. Do you have a destination that you are heading towards, or do your operations indicate that you are simply content treading water? Determining what your professional goals may be can turn your vision from a perceived desire to an achievable accomplishment. How Do You Show Your Staff How to Get There? Having a professional destination in mind helps in better leading your workforce towards improvements and success. It allows you chart a professional course by establishing the following five elements: A fundamental knowledge of what you’re doing : Too often, employees fall into the trap of doing what they do simply because that’s what they were told by their contact center manager. This can easily breed an atmosphere of content because they feel as though their only supporting his or her individual success. However, if you show them how what they’re doing supports your organization’s goals, your staff’s work becomes more purposeful. An operational framework : Once your workforce understands how the “why” gets them to where you all want to be, they then need to know the “how.” That comes by developing a framework designed specifically to help secure achievements rather than simply generating workflow. An achievable goal : Don’t allow your goals to simply be figurative; that makes it easier to justify not reaching them. Rather, establish a well-defined indicator of success that employees can see and experience once they reach help you to reach it. Continuous monitoring : It’s easy to get lost in your pursuit of an objective if you never assess where you currently are. Monitoring performance in relation to your goals allows you to become more engaged with your employees in your pursuit of success. Not only does it make plotting your course easier, but it allows you to identify areas where certain individuals are either struggling or over-achieving. An attitude of adaptability : Your plans will rarely go as you initially anticipated them. Thus, when new obstacles or opportunities present themselves, you need to be willing to adapt your operations if you see them leading you away from your objective. Every employee at every of a company is on a journey, and like all journeys, each must have a destination. It’s up to you as a leader within your contact center to convey your vision of where your organization’s journey will ultimately end up, and what collectively must be done in order to get there. Doing so ensures that you’re not simply driving a group of uninterested people along the pathway, but rather leading an engaged group of travelers.
How to Find Effective Leaders
While it’s great to have effective leaders now, call centers should be sure they’re looking toward the future for their next equally effective leaders. As careers advance and circumstances change, a contact center manager might leave and take her or his talents elsewhere. Being on the lookout for capable managers should always be a top priority, and here are few strategies for doing just that. Start Internally Rather than start your search externally, look at your current employees to determine which of them have the qualities of a leader. In addition to the qualities, these individuals should have the solid foundation of a leader, which is to say that the employee should display the character, knowledge and skills of an effective leader for your specific call center. Additionally, those you’re considering should have the charisma necessary to inspire other employees and give them the motivation necessary to accomplish the goals of the contact center. Any candidates you’re considering should be just as effective in the long-term as they are in the short-term. Recognize Leadership Identifiers Now that you know to start your leadership search internally, it’s time to learn the exact qualities of a good leader. One of the first things to do is gauge your potential leader’s commitment to your company. While an individual might display the qualities of a leader, those qualities won’t do you much good if that person doesn’t plan on remaining with your company for very long. Observe your candidates to see how eager they are to learn new things and help their fellow employees. Additionally, do your best to determine whether candidates are only gunning for a promotion or raise, or if they genuinely want to make the company better. Focus on the Future Generation The important thing to bear in mind about your next effective call center manager is that the individual should be aware of the changes taking place in the industry as well as the world around them. What this means is you shouldn’t neglect your millennial employees during your search. No matter how you might feel about how they work ethic or focus, you can’t deny the fact that they can serve as powerful resources for the success of your call center. Making a millennial a leader is sure to give you a unique insight that can’t be provided by an older leader candidate. Know the Different Roles of Leadership A truly effective leader is multifaced, able to change and combine roles as needed to lead a team and accomplish goals. What this means is you want a leader who sets standards and knows how to successfully keep the team on track. You also want a leader who excels at planning, team coordination and project management to take care of details great and small. Leaders should also work with their team rather than only give them orders. If you can’t find every role exemplified in a single candidate, consider a combination of leaders to bring out the best in your team and call center. With a little guidance, finding effective leaders is made much easier. Put these tips to good use during your search and you’re sure to be pleased with the results.
Customer Service Automation: A new way to Improve Quality in Contact Center
The modern contact center is always developing and contact centers need to evolve with time and technology. Before evolving your contact center, there are always components to be taken care of for improving and offering superior quality to all customers, which is an Effortless Customer Experience. If a contact center provides an effortless customer experience, the call center needs to develop a definition that the employees can relate to and deliver. To stay ahead of the competition, it’s important for all call center leaders to have an eye on trends. Customer Experience and Service has evolved over a decade with digital advancements. To set yourself apart in the market, you need to incorporate the customer service strategy focused on delivering an effortless customer experience, which includes go where your customers are, engage every employee, collect operational insights and gather competitive information. Here are 5 key differentiators that you need to recognize for a successful customer experience: Customer experience Customer experience reflects how the customer feels about your company and product. It is the mode of interaction between a customer and an organization over the duration of the relationship. Happy and satisfied customers grow from being customers to being loyal advocates. Create an Omni-channel Customers use various channels such as website, live chat, social media, and email. Businesses should be ready to deliver this effortless customer service on any channel. Creating an omni-channel experience for customers expect is crucial for success of any company. Engage all employees The best designed processes and systems will only be effective if carried out by the employees of the company. Rewarding your team is very important. Creating a great culture will be translated straight to the customers. Creating a winning culture is one thing which I have seen over the years that will brings business to the next level. Operational insights Using customer interactions to gather operational insights helps improve processes. This optimizes the customer experience approach, lower call volume and reduces repeat calls for similar problems and positively impacts the bottom line of business. Gather competitive information Gathering competitive insights will help you identify more up-sell, cross-sell opportunities. For a successful customer service, you need to make sure that you have the right employees to handle the customer service job who can deliver an effortless customer experience. The most important thing is to know what to look for in the potential candidates while interviewing them. The key is to understand who they are based on the answers they share during the interview. The days of hiring for Empathy are coming to an end, customers want their issue resolved on the first call therefore it’s important to hire people who can own the situation and take it to resolutions. This includes good communication, active listening, problem solvers and the right attitude to do the job. Hiring the right people that fit into the company culture helps to effectively serve your customers. A person needs to have a mind-set of effortless customer service, which is not only being ready to serve others but a willingness to go the extra mile for creating a truly positive and memorable customer experience and making customers happy. So, what type of employees does your company needs? The answer is simple – deliberate, detail-oriented people will go a long way in meeting the needs of your customers and for your company. The leaders here play a very important role. They are not only great examples for other team members to follow; they are excellent problem solvers, responsibility takers and decision makers. Leadership skills are critical in complicated situations when a customer expects someone to take the wheel and offer them a quick and efficient solution. To stay ahead of the competition, it’s important for leaders to have an eye on trends that have the potential to accelerate. Technology will allow companies to communicate with the customer and add value in new ways. Some of the important innovative trends in customer service are: Contact centers as engagement centers Today’s contact centers are seamless extensions of brands, and a place for constant feedback between your business and your customer’s ¬ a place where you can build personal relationships and transform customers into brand advocates. Customer experience Offering an exceptional customer experience wins 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 customers feel they are the most important for the few minutes you are interacting with them. You assure them that you will do that you can to make their day better. Live Chat We see brands proactively start to initiate chat interactions where a customer is detected fumbling through their online support environment. Chat has emerged as the most natural channel for customers to interact though as it gives customers all-important privacy, as well as the freedom to drop and pick up conversations later. Social Support Technology has made it easier for brands to provide a more compelling customer experience on social. It provides options to seamlessly take interactions off social media to a private phone call with an agent. The company’s Twitter account can tweet back to the customer with a custom link that works only for that customer. But in considering these emerging technologies, many brands are still very behind when it comes to social. Being in this competitive market, I have always believed that a properly developed brand can be worth billions! It’s all about creating the right experience which makes Etech Global Services a market leader. Every once in a while we hear a story about a brand which delivers an incredible customer experience. The experience described needs to be carefully planned, organized, and executed. Your customers are the reason we are still in business, and our job is to serve the customers to the best of our ability. In my opinion, it does not only take a certain person to provide customer care but
4 Benefits to Know Before Automating Contact Center Quality Assurance
Did you know that contact centers throughout the United States generate more than 20 billion hours of audio files each year for the purpose of quality assurance? This data reveals that the average U.S. contact center generates more than 300,000 hours of audio recordings annually. It is little wonder that QA staff are often overworked and struggle to maintain high call center quality standards on a consistent basis. What if you could relieve some of the burden on your QA team by automating much of the contact center quality assurance process? When you automate quality assurance, you will have an easier time avoiding employee burnout in your QA department. Here are four benefits you should know before automating your quality monitoring system in your call center. 1. Data Analysis and Interpretation When your QA team is expected to process hundreds or even thousands of audio files in a week, they may have to sacrifice accuracy in order to meet their quota. Since accurate call center data is essential for assessing agent performance, you are doing yourself and your agents a great disservice if you overload your QA department and force them to work with an incomplete data set. When you automate your contact center quality assurance, you can have peace of mind that your performance assessments are based on complete and accurate information. This is because an automated QA program checks every phone call and assesses every interaction between agents and customers. The resulting data will help you understand how well each agent is performing. Although automated systems are good at providing data, they cannot analyze the data or give you recommendations for improvement. For this reason, it is recommended that you use analytics technology in combination with human services that can interpret the data and provide you with suggestions for improvement. 2. Superior Agent Performance When agents know that their performance is being assessed accurately and fairly, they are more likely to step up their game. Additionally, when they receive performance feedback quickly, they can focus their efforts on improving certain behaviors and achieving a higher assessment the next time around. 3. Ease of Establishing Performance Trends No two phone agents are exactly the same in experience and ability, so how do you set realistic performance trends for each one? When you automate quality assurance, you receive regular reports that include information about each agent’s strengths and weaknesses. Once armed with this information, you can determine agent retraining needs and quickly establish performance trends for each agent. 4. Objective Agent Performance Assessments It can be nearly impossible to achieve unbiased performance assessments when you have one person evaluating another person’s performance. To avoid personal bias on a small or large scale, consider implementing an automated quality monitoring system. Doing so will eliminate subjective performance assessments and deliver reliable results. While automating your quality assurance processes can provide you with quick and accurate data, it should not be used to completely eliminate your QA department. In order to interpret the data you receive from an automated system, human understanding and recommendations for improvement are essential. This blog was written by Jim Iyoob, Executive Vice President for Etech Global Services. For more advice on creating a quality assurance team that drives CX or if you would like to learn more about Etech, feel free to contact us at info@etechgs.com . This blog was first published on LinkedIn.
