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. A successful contact center rewards customers for their business and helps create loyal customers even when issues arise.
We live in a dynamic world, where the needs of customers and employees are constantly evolving. To remain relevant it is imperative to continuously evolve your contact center strategy. Below are some helpful points to consider as you evaluate and elevate your contact center.
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Know Your Goal
Even if you have worked with contact centers for years, it can be helpful to disengage from your previously held beliefs and go back to the start with fresh eyes.
What purpose does your contact center serve in your customer journey and what does excellence look like? It is so important to have clarity here and to ensure everyone in the contact center understands what success looks like, their role in helping to achieve, and how they will be measured.
Reviewing the team structure, operations, and purpose of a contact center while also discussing the measurables can help you determine if your contact center is working as well as it could. Agent performance, overall survey results, and customer satisfaction are all factors that determine if there is room for improvement (spoiler alert- there is always room for improvement). The goal is to support and meet the needs of customers and employees, so consider feedback from both groups as you evaluate.
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Communicate Your Goal
Sounds simple; however, is often times unclear or missed altogether. One of the most important things we do as leaders is communicate. When we do this effectively, our team is so clear, they are able to articulate it back without hesitation. To set your team for success, every person in the organization must have absolute clarity on what the priorities are, and what part they play in accomplishing those priorities.
When JFK famously asked a janitor what he was doing while he toured NASA for the first time in 1962, he must have been impressed when the janitor declared, and “I’m helping to put a man on the moon”. Does every member of your team know what they are doing, and how what they do specifically makes a difference in meeting the needs of your business and ultimately your customers?
Communicating your goals in company kick-offs is a great way to get started. Documenting roles and responsibilities in a letter of expectation can help bring both alignment and clarity for every person in your organization. Reinforcing in monthly progress updates is a way to keep all of your team updated on progress. Creating scorecards and making them visible with day over day, week over week, and month over month progress is another way to keep everyone abreast of progress.
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Inspect Your Progress
There are many tools to inspect progress. Having transparency by leveraging online reporting tools is one way to create visibility within your organization. Reviewing calls, chats, and emails is another way to stay close to your customer experience and that of your frontline team.
Leveraging AI effectively can be critical in ensuring you are focused on the big picture versus spending all your time and energy on scenarios that are one-off. There are many AI solutions in the marketplace. The most important will be to identify a trusted partner who can help to program your AI to meet your needs and identify behaviors that will support team and customer success.
Through inspection, you may identify gaps that need to be addressed. By leveraging AI you will be able to aggregate the voice of your customer to help solve, and leverage transactions from your best agents to enhance existing training to prevent these opportunities in the future. Leveraging microlearning tools can assist shore up any gaps with your existing team.
Training, procedural improvements, and technology could all be possible opportunities for improvement. Feedback from the team will be critical to help identify solutions and ultimately get the team on track with meeting the expectations.
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Recognize Success
The best way to reinforce positive behavior is to recognize them and do so timely. Rewards and recognition programs go a long way at showing your team you value their contributions. Getting to know each person on your team and how they like to be recognized is a great way to strengthen morale. While some team members may be motivated by praise and affirmation, others may prefer the opportunity to have more responsibility, a different schedule, time off, an opportunity to participate in special projects, earn additional compensation, prizes, or tokens of appreciation.
By making recognition for a job well done timely and personal, you will reinforce positive behaviors, increase employee morale, positively impact attendance and retention, and ultimately the level of service your customers receive, strengthening your brand.
Question to Help You Enhance the Contact Center Operation
Even the best contact center has room for improvement. One of the marks of remarkable leadership is acknowledging that there is still room to grow. Now is a great time to step back and take time to zero in on your current approach to managing contact centers and identify areas that could be improved.
Is the current approach sustainable? Are the right tools and resources in place or need to be redeveloped? Are you getting the desired results? Do you have the budget to invest in tools to support your vision?
There are many ways to reshape your contact center with or without affecting your budget. Most take time, creativity, and abstract thinking to accomplish. It is worth the effort however as even contact centers with minimal budgets have seen positive effects of elevating their contact center strategy.
Transform Your Contact Center
Step one of boosting your contact center operations is admitting you need an update; step two is learning how to make that transformation happen. If you are on the verge of revamping your entire contact center this is a great time to contact Etech.
You can reimagine your contact center operations by optimizing resources and comparing daily results to top contact centers across the globe. Small changes that reflect what is working at major contact centers can lead to large gains.
Are you struggling to manage your contact center effectively? Etech provides call contact center quality monitoring solutions that can help you improve your customer experience ratings. Contact us today to learn more about how to transform your contact center experience.
