Are you able to keep on top of call center best practices and what’s on the minds of call center practitioners? How often do you take a moment to write down something you learned and plan to implement in the next month? Today’s blog gives you three actionable success tips that you can easily absorb before getting back into the daily fray.
A best practice often discussed is ensuring that your contact center relies on “one source of truth,” a contact center CRM that serves as the central hub for both collaboration and knowledge. But, have you designed your contact center CRM with both the customer and the agent in mind?
Success Tip #1
- Before mapping technology to your processes, involve your agents in the reframing or design of new workflows.
- Make sure your CRM allows you to meet your customers where they are. Enable agents to answer customer inquiries on their channel of choice. For example, if a customer inquiry comes in on Twitter, the agent should be able to respond through the corporate Twitter channel in 140 characters or less!
Cloud technology is bringing knowledge management to new levels in the contact center industry, with even small centers having strong searchable access to knowledge. This knowledge can be pushed to the customer via websites and portals. But, does your website align with the services that you provide in your support center?
Success Tip #2
- Create a quiz for your agents that asks them basic questions about the website. You will be surprised by what they do and don’t know.
- Schedule a class to train all agents on the website and ensure they can answer basic customer questions. If you have a self-help portal, do your agents have the ability to help customers navigate it?
- Consider eLearning modules for cost effective, self-guided, on-demand lessons that ensure scalable and consistent training.
Customer service and support teams have the all-important task of front-line customer interaction and, thus, the unique opportunity to capture customer knowledge. But, how are you sharing that knowledge across the business?
Success Tip #3
- Enable your agents by giving them a seat at the table. Your agents should meet with developers, designers, product managers, and marketers to facilitate visibility into customer interactions.
- Let agents use their expertise and experience to develop and share innovative, new ideas. It’s a great way to drive business value while improving agent morale.
For more tips on how to successfully solve some of your biggest contact center challenges, download the guide “Empower Your Agents to Engage Your Customers.” To get your questions answered and hear from industry thought leaders on these topics, register for our upcoming webcast on July 16th. You’ll hear from Bob Furniss (Customer Service Practice Lead, Bluewolf), Justin Robbins (Training and Development Manager, ICMI), and Molly Kittle (VP, Digital Strategy, Bunchball).
