When it comes to seeking assistance from a company’s customer service unit, everyone does have their “breakpoint.” This was made clear in recent article in The Wall Street Journal headlined ”Everyone Hates Customer Service. This is Why.” However, while fascination with determining the point of “breakpoint” is as an interesting element in efficiently delivering customer service, there’s another, more important, one that cannot be overlooked – the need for competent, engaged and enabled customer service agents.
The article noted that a growing number of basic information requests and services are handled by technology, like checking account balances. An often-forgotten byproduct of this is that, when a customer eventually does escalate an issue above the automated service level, the service agent fielding the query really needs to be up to the challenge.
Moreover, with the proliferation of self-service channels and online FAQs, today’s customer has probably gone online to get as smart about their situation before even making the call, ensuring the agent will have to deal with a much more knowledgeable, and likely irritable client. While much was made in the article about using AI in such a situation to match the right “personality type” with the complaining customer, the magic of algorithms can’t be the cure-all, especially during peak calling times.
It should be the obligation of any company with a contact center to use employee training and performance management methods that motivate agents – a group decidedly millennial in age and attitude – to engage often with the training capability, and to good benefit.
I am not talking about having agents sit through hours of lectures, and view dozens of PowerPoint slides. Rather, I am suggesting an approach that blends real-time employee performance management, personalized microlearning, and advanced gamification – to make learning fun and effective. Such a solution can be available whenever, wherever, from an agent’s mobile device or desktop. With gamification, learning to be a better customer service agent can be as self-satisfying as the feeling one gets from the subtle buzz emitted by a fitness tracker, when the daily steps goal is reached. Also, we’re dealing primarily with a generation of digital natives, very comfortable with the construct of an electronic game. Not so incidentally, a global tech company using this solution saw a 16,100% rise in course completions versus its prior method. There is mounting evidence that agents with access to this training solution, check their progress multiple times a week, and seek to understand how they can further improve their performance and productivity.
A study by consulting firm Walker Information notes that by next year “…customer care is predicted to overtake product and price as the #1 way for businesses to differentiate itself.” Well-trained customer service agents, who are into their jobs and confident of their skills – a proven by-product of the sort of employee performance and development experience I cited – will do much to allow companies to attain that sort of competitive advantage. This is not hypothetical. Companies that use the kind of training I’ve cited have seen dramatic improvements in terms of agent performance and customer satisfaction; companies such as Microsoft, Novartis, Synchrony and Unilever, among others.
To cut down on customers complaining about service, improve customer service agent training.
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