3 C’s of Accurate Documentation

As front­lin­ers in cus­tomer sup­port and/or after-sales ser­vice, we endeavor to equip call cen­ter agents with as much knowl­edge and com­pe­tence as pos­si­ble for them to respond and resolve issues and con­cerns at their level. All of it boils down to tick­ing the boxes in all the impor­tant met­rics, higher cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, lower cost, and ulti­mately a hap­pier bottom-line.

There are sit­u­a­tions, how­ever, when agents will be con­fronted with unique, some­times dif­fi­cult ques­tions that they may not imme­di­ately have the answers for. Some prob­lems and con­cerns are sim­ply beyond their com­pe­tence, exper­tise, or author­ity to resolve.

In those instances, we want our call cen­ter agents to still com­pe­tently han­dle the sit­u­a­tion. Not by sim­ply recit­ing their scripts, say­ing that they will refer the caller to the proper per­son to respond, or by leav­ing a promise for a call back. We want who­ever will han­dle the prob­lem, or whomever the buck stops at, to be armed with all the impor­tant infor­ma­tion. If the agent and the cus­tomer have already dis­cussed the prob­lem lengthily, hav­ing the cus­tomer repeat a nar­ra­tion or descrip­tion of a prob­lem twice or more is a sure-fire way to cre­ate dis­sat­is­fied, if not angry, customers.

One impor­tant skill that call cen­ter agents need to be pro­fi­cient on is doc­u­ment­ing the call. This is to ensure that when the call is trans­ferred, or endorsed to the per­son who is qual­i­fied to respond, the cus­tomer will not be both­ered with hav­ing to repeat him­self as if he’s mak­ing the call for the first time.

Here are the 3 C’s of accu­rate doc­u­men­ta­tion that we should add to our agents’ check­list of nec­es­sary skills. Doc­u­men­ta­tion impacts many of the impor­tant met­rics, includ­ing FCR, and TTR or time to resolution.

The 3 C’s of accu­rate documentation:

1. Be Clear. The first step in any prob­lem solv­ing is iden­ti­fy­ing the prob­lem and writ­ing it down as a prob­lem state­ment. What EXACTLY does the cus­tomer want? Why is he call­ing? Is he com­plain­ing about some­thing? Is he ask­ing a ques­tion? Does he want to be guided on a step– –by-step how-to in set­ting up or using a prod­uct? Before clos­ing the call, make sure the agent has sum­ma­rized the impor­tant issues raised in the call. Only when it is clear what we can do for our cus­tomers can we come up with the appro­pri­ate response for them.
2. Be Con­cise. Note-taking while lis­ten­ing and speak­ing to some­one on the phone may mean writ­ing in phrases. That is OK as long as the impor­tant key­words are iden­ti­fied. Train agents to use action words when appro­pri­ate to clearly state what the cus­tomer wants and expects the com­pany to do.
3. Be Com­plete. Some prob­lems are usu­ally con­nected because per­haps one causes the other. In this case, it is always good prac­tice to be one step ahead and offer infor­ma­tion that may be optional, but might be use­ful to a cus­tomer in the future. This will pre­empt a future call of the same nature—saving time, resources, and one dis­sat­is­fied customer.

Call Cen­ter Agents may be likened to first respon­ders in a med­ical emer­gency. Hav­ing the basic know-how is essen­tial but equally impor­tant is being able to ask the right ques­tions, to iden­tify what needs to be done, and prop­erly relay CLEAR, CONCISE and COMPLETE infor­ma­tion to a qual­i­fied med­ical pro­fes­sional when it arrives. Often­times, the wrong infor­ma­tion can have grave consequences.

Viewed from a cus­tomer ser­vice per­spec­tive, call cen­ter agents as first respon­ders can very well spell the dif­fer­ence between “life and death” of cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. Aside from hav­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and basic know-how, proper doc­u­men­ta­tion of an impor­tant call can spell the dif­fer­ence between yay or nay.