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How Do Speech Analytics Improve Every Metric?

Are you looking for a way to improve your call center metrics? Incorporating speech analytics is actually a great way to improve many aspects of your call center. This tool can help you improve the overall customer experience through a better understanding of the following areas: Looking at Typical Response Times: How long does the average person wait on hold before getting through to a customer care employee? Minimizing this time can greatly increase customer satisfaction. Having a good understanding of the response time can help you figure out whether your resources are being used in the best way possible. Understanding Call Resolution: How many calls does it take for a customer’s problem to be resolved? If the answer is more than one, you can use the analytic software to figure out where your agents are going wrong by tracking certain keywords throughout the various phone calls. Getting more calls to be resolved without a transfer or follow-up can translate to higher employee satisfaction and lower operating costs as well. Focusing on Customer Sentiment: What attitude do your customers usually have while on the phone with your call center? You can monitor both positive and negative keywords used in average phone calls to understand whether people are happy, mad, confused or irate. You can use this knowledge to train your staff to avoid phrases that seem to make customers mad. Looking at the Management of Private Information: Do your employees properly handle private information? No matter what industry your company is in you likely have to deal with personal material. Mishandling customer addresses, billing data or history can lead to angry customers and even liability issues. This software can help you train and educate your agents, so they can perform better even in high-pressure situations. Learning About Broken Processes: Has it been a while since you have reviewed the processes of your business? The software that analyzes speech can make it easier for you to monitor, analyze and improve your existing procedures. While you may not want to fix something that works, many companies fall into a rut without realizing that their once successful methods are now outdated. A constant identification of failing practices can help you avoid this with your business. Keeping the Customer Satisfied: Do you know your average customer’s current thoughts on your company? Customer satisfaction surveys are a great way to get a person’s thoughts on his or her experience with your business after it is over. However, these surveys tend to lack context and may be too subjective to be completely helpful. Speech analytic software, on the other hand, gives you a recorded conversation you can review anytime you want. Once you have the speech analytics in place, you can monitor for keywords that you want representatives to either avoid or incorporate in their daily interactions with customers. This tool can improve all call center metrics because it gives you a window into who your customer is and what the typical experience with your business is like. In other words, you will be able to better understand the ways you can help your agents improve as customer liaisons for your company. Because this tool helps you monitor individual calls, you can even personalize the training to help individual representatives improve in their unique trouble areas. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.

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.

10 Ideas to Foster Leadership Every Day

In order for contact centers to operate effectively, call center leaders and managers must be skilled in their jobs. When management does not function properly, the chances of team success is almost nonexistent. The problem with this equation is that not all managers and team leaders have the skills needed to lead in the most beneficial way. What Leadership Qualities Should You Focus On? Knowing what leadership qualities you should practice is the first step in boosting the satisfaction rating of both your employees and customers. Here are a few that tend to make a noticeable difference: Improve yourself – Take time to understand all management styles and learn about more effective management styles. Being willing to make your own changes today will help your employees be more open to proposed changes down the road. Keep an open mind – Commit to an open and encouraging attitude when team members offer suggestions that they feel might add value to the company. Remember that they see and experience customer interactions from an entirely different perspective than you. Learn to serve – Take time to work with your employees when you notice that they might be feeling overloaded. Pattern the customer service behaviors that you preach as you take time to serve with them instead of simply standing above them. Encourage others – Being able to offer sincere words of encouragement is a talent that you will be able to use in many situations throughout your life. Make it a practice to not only notice what you employees are doing well but to stop and tell them what you saw and why it is great. You will notice that team members often work to be noticed and praised. Stop reacting – Make a goal to stop reacting and start responding. When the unexpected happens, taking time to think about the problem and possible solutions before you respond can make all the difference. Avoiding quick, harsh reactions is another way to bring your team closer together. Expect more – Contact center leaders spend many hours devoted to the task of evaluating statistics. At times when they fall flat, your typical reaction may be to point the finger of blame and accusation. Next time you see a drop in your numbers, perhaps you should gather your troops, give them a pep talk, remind them of how great they really are. Then stand back and expect more good numbers to follow. Start to really listen – Remember that listening involves more than the ears. In order to truly listen, you must learn to fully focus on the team member. At this point, you may notice body language, mannerisms, and expressions that can help you to really understand what your employee needs. Remember to ask – Once you have gotten into the practice of uplifting and serving your employees, don’t be afraid to ask what you can do better. Perhaps they have been afraid to offer suggestions that could be beneficial to the entire company. Don’t skip the review – Make it a habit to meet with your team and review any recent changes, updates or suggestions that have been put in place. By doing so, you will remind them that they are an important part of the successful call center machine. Keep at it – Self-evaluation is hardly comfortable; however, effective managers do not give up. Instead, they keep learning, serving and improving in hopes that their team will follow. Every Day is a New Day By learning what qualities will make you a better manager, you will be able to make changes in yourself, and in the call center. Remember that every day is a new day in which you can strive to learn more, do better, and help your team to reach its full potential.

How to Blend People and Machines for Better Customer Experiences?

You might be struggling to offer an optimum level of customer service as speed and convenience become more desired. How do you ensure customer satisfaction when they want both speed and traditional human interaction? Here’s how you can blend artificial intelligence (AI) with personal communication within your call centers to serve your customers more effectively. Create a Space Where Artificial Intelligence and People Work Together to Answer Questions Customers are increasingly tech-savvy and comfortable navigating technology without any human interaction. Gartner has reported that the vast majority of customers will manage their connections with companies without ever talking to a person. This means that you have to approach your customers as people who want a certain amount of independence. Despite this, there is still a need for a real person to be on the line. When customers need resolutions to complex problems or are asking a unique question, they usually prefer to speak in real-time with an actual person. You should work on improving both of these areas to dramatically improve your customer experience. When you deliver balanced, quick, and helpful customer service, you get repeat purchasers and loyal promoters. Where Automation Meets Empathy While automated systems will never be as empathetic as people, they can transform the way you assist customers. Technological breakthroughs have allowed computers to become continuously self-learning based on analytics. You can implement AI into your call center and it will monitor how your agents respond to inquiries. The technology will then be able to complete tasks and respond to questions on its own, meaning you can start to rely less on live agents. Using Analytics to Set Up the Process To start blending AI into your call center, rely on analytical tools and data. This will help you find out the best way to solve problems that customers call about. Your implementation will depend on the availability of live support and complexity of the inquiry. For example, you could set up an automated process to instruct customers to speak or enter a specific number that correlates with their question. The AI can provide helpful answers and information for each inquiry while providing a last-resort option to speak to a live representative. This is just an example of how you can utilize AI to streamline your customer service. Personalizing and Branding Your AI You want to provide relevant and helpful service based on preferences and demographics. Tracking trends can help you implement a dynamic call center experience that is automatically customized to previous customer interactions. Keep in mind that even your automated processes should be consistent with your overall brand experience. All content should be in line with your vision and goals. Getting started with automation and intelligence doesn’t have to be a daunting task. You don’t have to overhaul your whole IT department or throw up legacy systems. You can start off by choosing a single product to test your project for 2 or 3 months. Once you have perfected the process with one product, you can expand it across your entire platform. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.

3 Reasons Why your Business Should be Customer Centric

Every company’s top priority should be the customer. After all, the reason why you’re in business is to meet the needs and wants of the people, and to provide a service or product that ensures they come back. After all, without them you won’t have a company. It’s quite simple. A business will be more successful and will reach its set goals faster when all its operations and administrative efforts are focused on its most important assets; the available customer base or clientele. Customers who make daily use of your products do so in hopes that the experience will be effortless. The thin line between a one-time purchase and a customer who stays loyal to you and your company could be as simple as effective listening, constructive response and where it applies, and speedy and sustainable implementation. This post is the second in a series of blog posts which address the topic of customer centeredness and focus. Together, we will take an expository insight into the business which revolves around its customers and talk about the need for any business, including yours, to effectively link every business and operational action to its customers. So, let’s look at customer centeredness. Basically, customer centeredness is conducting your business with the goal of attaining a level of customer satisfaction or a measure of how a company’s products and services provided meet or go beyond the expectations of its customers. By now, you should already know why your business should be revolving around your customers. However, I’ll quickly share with you why your business needs to be customer centric and why customer centeredness should be a major priority when considering and implementing a business strategy. Your Customers Feel Valued Every customer will naturally feel more loyal and committed to a company they feel a certain emotional and sentimental connection to. When customers feel that a company is only out to make some quick and steady cash, doesn’t care about them or their feelings, or what it is that they want, they won’t be able to effectively relate to them and eventually they cut ties with such companies. Because of this, it’s more than important to be emphatic and sympathetic to the plights and feelings of your customers and to provide services and products that are aimed at directly and permanently providing for the immediate needs of your customer base. Originality is the key in this area. You need to show a service that is aligned to the needs of every customer and, although it’s a known fact that you can’t please everybody, you should be focusing on pleasing as many people as you possibly can. These aligned services are sure to attract, and more importantly, keep the customers that your business needs to maintain success. An ability to anticipate the needs of your customers will also be helpful in this regard. You should be able to foresee the needs that your customers will have. Study the trends in your specific area, research and be aware of social media trends, and ask your customers how you are doing. That way, when the needs eventually do arise, your customers won’t be running somewhere else to have them met. It Keeps You Competitive and Still in the Game Product development and comparison shopping have undergone a huge process of metamorphosis since the advent and widespread use of the internet. Now, it is much easier for customers to make purchases and find the best deals online in different marketplaces and platforms. In a world where every business is a competitor, it has become increasingly important for businesses to find areas of their operation that set them apart from the rest of the pack. Businesses which are customer centric excel exceedingly in this aspect because, as stated earlier, customers will be more loyal to businesses which they feel a personal connection to. Customers Could Help Increase Your Business’ Profitability Remember, your products and services are being provided to meet the needs of your customers. That being said, who better to know where you’re going wrong then the customers whose needs you are trying to meet? It doesn’t take much to create a detractor. In fact, one wrong customer interaction can spread like wild fire. However, the promoters of your business can have the same effect positively. Many of your loyal customers have a genuine concern for your business and will tell others if you continue to meet their needs. Communication is key. They could have ideas and tips on how you could improve in service delivery, what products you should carry, what products you should avoid, and in the long run, increase your clientele size and business profitability. However, if they don’t have an avenue to communicate with you, or if they don’t feel that connection to you, you might never have access to those ideas. Making services which are finely tailored to fit your customers creates an avenue for you to build relationships. If any of them have any ideas, and they usually do, they’ll be free to come to you and share their opinions. Apart from ideas, customers who feel heard and valued become those promoters we often talk about. They are a crucial part of successfully marketing your business. A customer who comes in for the first time and who has an awesome overall customer experience will be back and talk about their experience to others. Word of mouth is even more wide spread now through social media. The feedback your business may receive is almost instantaneous. So, take time to look at what you offer, what is working and not working, and make it a point to talk to your customers and align your products with their needs. Be customer centric!

Do You Have The Right Qualities to be a Servant Leader?

For many years, it was standard practice that the role of manager or team leader was often paired with strongly authoritarian descriptors such as controlling, sole decision maker, and unyielding. And while this type of management style was practiced for years, a newer and more effective style of management or leadership was introduced by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. Call center managers are among those who have realized that there are many benefits from learning how to manage by Servant Leadership. Some of the positive benefits that have been gained include an increase in employee satisfaction levels, in customer satisfaction levels, in innovative ideas, and a decreased rate of turnover. Each of these benefits then translates to increased revenue for the organization. Do You Have What it Takes? In order to be a successful servant leader, you must be willing to ask yourself if you truly have what it takes to lead with service instead of with force. This self-evaluation need not be a grueling or harrowing experience for contact center leaders, instead, it should be a way of pinpointing small changes that you can make that are sure to have a positive impact on the entire team. Some questions that you may want to review include: Am I empathetic? Do I understand how to listen? Am I aware of situations, undercurrents, and of myself? Do I believe that healing can happen? Am I able to see the big picture? Are big dreams to be encouraged or scoffed at? What am I doing to nurture my employees? Am I a good steward? Is the feeling of community important to me? Do I persuade or coerce? What Can You Do to Serve More Naturally? If you have conducted an honest self-evaluation, it is probable that you have come away with the knowledge that you need to work to be a more effective servant leader. For example, you may make the decision to research how to be more empathetic so that you can to treat each team member as a unique and valued individual, even if you must help to correct behaviors that may be hurting the productivity, overall attitude or the effectiveness of the call center. Striving to become more comfortable as a servant leader frequently leads to an increased awareness of more than just numbers. Instead, you will come to understand the struggles that your employees face each day. This clarity and awareness of values, ethics and personalities will help you to serve your employees and problem-solve more effectively. Expanding your own abilities to think big will also help in your efforts. When you take time to know and serve those on your team, you will also know where their hopes and dreams lie. Be prepared to listen, to encourage and to share your own dream. Serve Yourself So You Can Serve Your Team As you move through the process of becoming the type of servant leader you have envisioned, remember to take time out for yourself, so that you can practice, learn, and refresh. The increased knowledge and wisdom you gain as you take time to serve yourself are certain to benefit not only your own life but the lives of all those that you serve with each day.

Are you using social media to connect with your customers?

Social Media has opened new avenues for businesses to connect with their customers. These days, it isn’t enough to have a website for your business; the customer buying journey extends to social media marketing sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. More and more people are using Twitter and Facebook for Customer Service as well. The millennials do not want to use the phone to connect to a customer service rep. They want to connect with you based on their preference, not the brands. Here are the main reasons why social media is important in a business: Learn about your customers and connect with them: Social Media enables a business to know its audience. A business can learn about the specific needs of its customer base. Analytics like Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics enables a business to understand major demographics and patterns of customer behaviors. It provides valuable insights that help craft effective Marketing campaigns or tweak the current ones to improve results. Social media helps connect on an individual level. Social media also enables businesses to target a set audience– you can read their tweets and status updates to get insights into their daily lives. Find new customers: Searching for certain hashtags on Twitter can help you find people who are interested or search for similar products as yours. It enables a business to reach a wider audience and connect with them. Improve Customer Service: As social media works best in real-time, it provides instant access to feedback from customers. Social media enables you to know an issue as and when it arises. Moreover, there are now many studies that show that consumers appreciate companies that respond to customer complaints. Create meaningful relationships and increase market share: Social media helps to find influencers in a particular niche. It also enables a business to reach them in a more meaningful way. Additionally, every post you make on Social Media is an opportunity for your customers to convert. When you develop a social media community, you will have access to new customers, recent customers, and old customers, and you’ll be able to interact with all of them. Establish the brand as a thought leader or as an industry expert: People follow a brand online because it adds value to them. It gives businesses an opportunity to educate and inform their customers about how to use the product better or present valuable industry insight that empowers a customer. It would then develop trust amongst your audience and help position you and your company as industry experts. Social media is still a relatively new area of culture for companies. With a guide like a social media policy in place, it educates your employees and sets down the ground rules. There are many examples of employees making comments on social media such as Facebook and Twitter that have brought firms into disrepute. Here is what a clearly defined Social media policy looks like: Take the guesswork out of what is appropriate for an employee to posting about your company on their Social networks. Minimize confusion about legal issues: Social media policies can also help entrepreneurs and managers avoid errors. A social media policy helps in raising awareness for your brand as it helps employees to understand ways they can use social media to help achieve business goals. It provides an interactive and convenient medium to share information. The millennial customer base is already using Social Media and knows its benefits, hence it is effective to reach them online where they spend most of their time inhabiting. Social media is a fast-changing medium. There are established social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. These established social media platforms are experiencing a decline in organic reach due to commercialization of the platform or a state of content shock, where content supply is more than the content consumption capacity of the audience. It is like an eventual growth phase in the life cycle of a social media platform. But they are here to stay as they make their pay-to-play strategies clearer and improve targeting that would enable brands to reach a larger, more targeted audience. Etech has a clearly defined Social media policy in place and has a strong presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Etech has designed social media campaigns that tackle business challenges, showcase Etech family’s culture and publish and distribute value-adding content and industry insights for our followers to gain from. Etech has an ongoing Social Hiring campaign where we reach potential employees and have them apply. We also promote our Organizational culture by promoting Etech’s activities, sharing employee testimonials, and other fun activities that showcase the strength and creativity of the team. Etech uses Twitter and LinkedIn to share industry-relevant, value-adding content that would help our audience overcome their business challenges and keep them updated about the current events in the contact center industry and leadership development areas of expertise. Etech also uses insights that are derived from the analytics of these Social media platforms to devise new campaigns that generate value for the customers and audience. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.

Servant Leadership: A Guide to Modern Customer Service

Because customers have so many more options than they did in decades past, we often refer to today’s business environment as the age of the customer. Technology is at the heart of increased customer options, providing them with the ability to shop online, request a real-time chat with a company representative, browse websites while they watch movies, and offer company reviews on a number of easy-to-use opinion websites. With all of these changes, contact center leaders must be willing to acknowledge the increased need for enhanced customer interaction and outstanding customer service. More often than not, it is not the team of employees that needs to change. Instead, managers and team leaders must learn about the new practice of servant leadership and figure out how changing their own perceptions, habits and attitudes can bring about an incredibly positive shift in the call center. With servant leadership, those in management positions are encouraged to serve first and then lead. Robert K. Greenleaf, who introduced the concept in 1970, encouraged managers and leaders to ask specific questions as they tried out this unconventional new management style. Each question was centered on helping team leaders take note and encourage their employee’s efforts in physical and mental health, personal growth and learning. How Can Servant Leadership Lead to Better Customer Service? If you are like many call center managers, you may be wondering just how changing your style of leadership will lead to your team getting higher customer satisfaction rates. In order to explain this phenomenon, you must stop thinking about being the manager and begin thinking about how you and each employee is an integral part of the team. Once you are committed to this style of thinking, you will be more capable of serving through the following methods: Instilling Pride and Confidence – Though there are several different theories about where the Golden Rule originated, however, the statement of “do unto others as you would have them do to you” is still useful today, especially when managers are working to learn how to serve employees. When you serve them, work with them, and offer praise and sincere encouragement, your team will begin to work harder to exceed yours and the customer’s expectations. Setting the Standard High – Once your team members come to the realization that your style of leadership has changed, they will watch more closely in order to learn what you are doing. In almost every case, once servant leadership has been established, employees will begin to mimic the service-oriented behavior with each other, and with each customer. Exceeding Customer Expectations – When your call center agents begin to truly serve the customers, they will begin to notice what makes them happy and what leaves them dissatisfied. In an effort to offer the best service possible, they may even offer beneficial suggestions in team meetings. Through this process, they will come to not only meet, but exceed employee expectations. Start Serving More Today The sooner contact center leaders take time to put servant leadership techniques into practice, the sooner they will be able to see the results of this service. This cannot be a half-hearted effort that is infused from time to time with the old authoritarian style of leadership. It must be a true conversion toward knowing and serving those you work with. Start serving today and enjoy seeing happiness and satisfaction touch every part of your organization.

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

How To Reinvent Company’s Winning Culture?

The case has been made again and again concerning why the way of culture you make at your company matters. Despite the fact that you may perceive the significance of culture, it can be precarious to see the condition of your own organization culture. Much the same as fish don’t know they are in water since they are inundated each day, it can likewise be hard to plainly observe your own particular culture. It’s time to Reinvent Your Company Culture In the event that your organization has never discussed the culture you are making, it might be a great opportunity to focus on it. Furthermore, regardless of the possibility that you have examined culture before, here are a couple of key signs that your culture may require some consideration: Employees are leaving at quick rate Employees appear to be despondent and separated Employees performances has declined Your organization is experiencing a time of move (development or decrease) Even Facebook, after realizing with 400 employees and 80 million users that their culture still needed to defined, stopped and asked – who do we want to be when we grow up? Remember, if you don’t define your winning culture it will define you. If you have never spent time thinking about your winning culture, then now is as good a time as any to start. Steps to Reinventing Your Winning Culture Reinventing your culture can feel like an enormous undertaking. It is anything but difficult to fall over into the mantra; this is quiet recently that way things have dependably been finished. In any case, business achievement is seldom accomplished with that attitude. All things considered, you would not continue fabricating an item that does not offer or keep utilizing a similar promoting procedure that does not draw in any clients. The same goes for your company culture. Why keep doing likewise if it’s not helping you make a sound, cheerful work environment? So how would you reinvent your company culture? It takes helplessness, openness, straightforwardness and eagerness to change. When you have that, there are three key strides to the procedure: 1. Assess the present circumstance: Before you can enhance your workplace culture, you need to comprehend the condition of your working environment as it exists at this moment. Here are three stages to get the heart of your present circumstance: Take a gander at your company: Begin by recognizing the key issues you are confronting as a company. Don’t simply list the indications; however, get to the base of the issues. For instance, are representatives clearing out? Assuming this is the case that is only a side effect of a bigger issue. The foundation of the issue could be that representatives have doubtful sets of expectations, can’t discuss viably with their boss or are not being perceived for their work. Burrow further to locate the fundamental issues. Take a gander at yourself: A key to administration is the capacity to act naturally mindful and distinguish the part you have played in the culture turning into the way it is. How have you been a positive case to whatever remains of your group? Is it accurate to say that you are the pioneer you wish you had? Is it accurate to say that you are focused on your very own development and persistently improving as a pioneer for your company? Look to your employee performance: The best thing you can do to assess the condition of your company culture is ask the general population inundated in it every day. Execute approaches to effectively listen to your representatives and what they accept about the culture. Give unknown studies, have town lobby gatherings, and demand input from representatives at all levels. Not exclusively does this give you input straight from those influenced most, yet it permits them to feel a part of the procedure, which makes purchase in for the progressions that are to come. 2. Make a convincing vision: When you comprehend where you are, consider where you need to go as a company. This is your opportunity to dream! Puts forth these inquiries: What is do you need the eventual fate of your company to resemble? Recollect when you initially began your company – why did you begin it? What change would you like to find on the planet? What does a solid company culture look like to you? What do you remain for as a Contact Center Agents? What do you esteem? The responses to these inquiries will help you cast a convincing vision for the culture you need to make in your Contact Center Agents. To rehash your culture, it’s vital to get the 10,000 foot view right. Odds are if your culture is feeble you have dismissed your vision and qualities. These are the establishment of your culture. In the event that you don’t have center qualities, this is the ideal opportunity to make them. There are numerous assets accessible to help you decide your center center qualities, yet here is the thing that worked for us. As the originator or pioneer of your company, you can’t be the person who decides the culture totally all alone. In any case, you ought to be the main thrust and visionary behind it. Unite a group of influencers inside your company to characterize your culture and where you need to take it. Keep listening to all representatives and giving open doors for input. Support did this when they were deciding their center qualities to include workers. 3. Create a Winning Culture Plan: Since you have seen where you are and where you need to go – how are you going to arrive? It begins by making a culture arrange. By distinguishing your why and center qualities, you have as of now mapped out the establishment of your arrangement. Next, you should choose your needs for how you can make the correct environment and develop your group with a specific end goal to fortify your culture. You can do this

How to Improve Quality Assurance with Analytics?

Although there is more than one way to analyze the performance quality of your call center, they are not all equal in accuracy and usefulness. The best method to evaluate quality assurance is using people and analytics. When you have the right information, you then can make the right improvements in your customer experience. This increases your customer retention, reduces effort and delivers and effortless customer experience not to mention the bottom line. As technology, has undergone huge advances, it has become important for contact centers to reshape the current technology being used. It often makes me think, how should we combine quality assurance with analytics to embrace customer interactions? Here are 4 ways to obtain this beneficial domino effect: 1. Acquire a More Relevant Sampling A traditional mode of assessing your customers’ experiences with call agents is through random sampling. However, this approach does not provide an accurate picture because it does not extract the most relevant interactions. You are left to base corrections on data that is not completely reflective of reality. Instead, you can use analytics technology to find phone calls that reveal consistent areas of weakness. Instances to look for include: Customers who asked to speak to a supervisor Conversations that contain inappropriate language or incorrect information Interactions that got heated or displayed unprofessional conduct Interactions where customers showed signs of channel switching Being able to locate the right experiences will better show you where your call center agents needs to improve, which a random sampling alone cannot do. 2. Monitor Agent Behavior on and off the Phone The computer activity of your employees is just as important as their phone dialogue. They need to be using the right applications at the right times to ensure a smooth, informative, and timely interaction with callers. While screen recordings can inform you of what agents do during a customer service experience, they cannot disclose what agents do in between calls. Desktop analytics can. You need to know how your agents are spending their time on the clock and how it affects their performance. Even though communication does not take place in person, customers can sense when an agent is distracted or unprepared. You may discover the need to set stricter rules on permissible activities during down time. 3. Increase First Contact Resolution Customer satisfaction is highly dependent on if you resolve the person’s problem during the first contact. Subsequent calls decrease the customer’s perception of the competency and helpfulness of your company. This attitude reduces customer retention, hurting your profits. It becomes worse if the disappointed caller discourages friends and family from doing business with you. It may be the fault of an unqualified agent, or it may be due to a confusing or overgeneralized setup of self-service options. Whatever the cause, you cannot fix it unless you can identify it. Determine the source of repeat contact through analytic technology so you can eliminate this issue. 4. Reshape Quality Assurance The more versatility you have in how you evaluate quality, the more precise and useful your findings will be. This allows you to formulate the best plan on how to improve the customer service of your call center. You need not let limited technology limit your ability to rectify poor customer relations, refine employee training, and enhance overall productivity. Integrating analytics into your quality assurance strategy will give you the flexibility and precision you need to make truly informed decisions. This blog was written by Jim Iyoob, Chief Customer Officer 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.

5 Steps for Getting Your Team on Board With Organizational Goals

Creating call center agents who are productive and successful is a top priority for any manager, but there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all measuring stick. Agents may respond differently to performance goals and standard benchmarks. Therefore, managers must not only carefully and thoughtfully craft their improvement plans, but they must also establish concrete evaluation tools that can be tweaked to address changing priorities. Perhaps the first step in performance improvement is getting buy-in from the call center agents themselves. With universally understood team goals, measurable progress can serve as its own motivator. Here are five steps toward making benchmarks reasonable and achievable in order to prevent burnout or low morale. List Performance Areas and Targets Start by creating a list of the service types that needs to be addressed. This may be things such as first call resolutions, call times, customer satisfaction ratings or quality of calls. Next, set a goal for each performance area. This should be reasonable and attainable while still offering a “stretch” factor so that agents will be accomplished when they reach the goal. After setting your own numbers, ask for input from the agents. They might have some insights on achievability or ideas for additional performance areas. Bringing agents in on this part of the process gives them agency and a vested interest in attaining the team goals. Choose Flexible and Fair Goals Agents who feel the numbers are arbitrary or out of reach may become frustrated and unmotivated to strive for the goal. That’s why it is vital to keep the numbers realistic but still high enough that they require some adjustments for agents’ call-handling processes. Explain the Logic Behind the Numbers When you are explaining the organizational plan to your agents, you will need to be able to justify the numbers you set forward. Be prepared to answer questions about how the number was chosen and what successfully meeting the goal will mean for the health of the company and for customer satisfaction. Offer Strategies for Reaching Goals You can empower members of your team to reach goals by giving them tools to reach the desired result. This may be a more effective use of a script, ideas for keeping callers on topic or other suggestions they may never have considered. If you can demonstrate that the goals are achievable, agents will be more confident in their abilities. They might even have some suggestions you can use on a team-wide basis. Revisit Goals and Tweak if Necessary When it comes to evaluating agent performance, the process likely will be ongoing. Metrics may need to be adjusted as realities change. You may notice that an agent just doesn’t have the level of training he or she needs, or it could be a worker is missing an important resource, such as reliable and speedy technology. Be prepared to alter the team goals if new evidence indicates adjustments are warranted. It is not difficult to get your agent team on track for improved performance if you plan carefully, get them involved in the process and offer tools that can help.

Call Center Managers or Leaders?

What would best describe the leadership style of your call center managers; caretakers or transformers? Managers care for the continuation of an organization and its needs while leaders transform the way the organization exists. Some in the business world would define a manager as too concerned with the status quo to move into the future, and others would criticize a leader for having his head in the clouds and not being concerned about the daily functions of the company. Either criticism of these management styles is too harsh and unrealistic. Here are some of the differences between manager and leader styles of leadership and why they are both needed. Manager Management tasks involve taking care of an organization and enabling it to meet its demands. Managers inquire the absolutes of how a project can be done and when it will be achieved. Management includes forecasting, planning, and budgeting in order to achieve company goals. This involves logistics to make sure that the necessary resources are in place. Management institutes rules and procedures to regulate and standardize work output. A manager delegates tasks and guides team members to achieve goals. This structural approach which includes the monitoring of implementation is seen as paving the way to meet company objectives. This facilitates predictability and an emphasis on short-term results of timeliness and at or below budget. Leader Leadership tasks include positively transforming workplace culture. Leaders ask why a certain work policy is in place and wonder what can be done in the future so it will be improved. Even an average call center agent can turn into a leader by having a vision of how the organization can be optimized and a passion for carrying it out. A leader has a longer term vision of what direction will make the company successful and can see the big picture of what is needed to bring that vision to fruition. Leaders utilize both words and action in communicating their vision for the organization and place emphasis on cooperation and forming strong coalitions to succeed. They motivate other call center managers to look beyond obstacles formed by the status quo and plan to make positive changes that are dramatic transformations over the long term. Because a leader respects each call center agent’s inherent stake in the change process, efforts for change can be multiplied by many. In turn, the services a company provides will be sought after and profitability will rise. Merging Management and Leadership In today’s business world, precise planning and agile responses to consumer demands are both expected and necessary to stay relevant. It is possible that both the manager and leader styles can be combined for the best of both worlds in an organization. The truth is, every successful call center needs both managers to get the job done with adequate resources and leaders to foresee how the call center can re-envision and optimize operations in the future. A hybrid approach to management style can ensure that both the present and the future of the company has the best chance of being a bright one. Inspiration, empowerment, and transformation can exist alongside logistical planning, budgets, and defined procedures.

How to Enhance Brand Loyalty With Quality Assurance?

Just as important as getting new clients is retaining current ones to grow your business. Although many factors are involved in retention, call centers play a crucial role in building customer loyalty. Consumers want to know that when they have an issue, they will receive exceptional customer service that will resolve the problem. If this happens, the chances of them continuing to do business with and recommending your company greatly increase. Your call center can deliver this positive customer experience through the benefits of quality assurance. Evaluate the Performance of Employees The general purpose of quality assessments is to ensure your agents are doing their jobs correctly. You first must determine if each agent is providing the level of customer service that they are supposed to for clients to perceive your company as helpful and customer-oriented. This includes agents being knowledgeable and clear in their communication. They must also have a balance of friendliness and professionalism, and be able to resolve problems in a reasonable time. If these basics are lacking, you will have to focus on foundational skills before you can build upon them. Obtain In-Depth Quality Assurance Data If areas needing improvement are not readily apparent, you require a superior quality assurance program that can give you more accurate and thorough analytics. It can incorporate behavioral data for a more comprehensive look at agent performance and how it affects customer satisfaction. You can search for specific interactions for reviewal instead of relying on random sampling. Create Custom Coaching for Each Agent The greater options this kind of solution offers allows you to approach employee coaching with more personalization. It informs you of the precise areas in which each employee needs additional training so that you can give useful feedback. Not all agents have the same weaknesses or learn skills in the same way, so a more tailored method will lead to increased and quicker improvement. Enhance Customers’ Brand Loyalty Once your call agents have corrected their mistakes and refined their proficiency in delivering optimal assistance, the rest will take care of itself. The natural significance of pleasing clients will be stronger loyalty to your brand. They will trust your company and will see the reduced effort and improved customer experience. Increase Your Revenue With more loyalty to your brand, business will not only continue but also grow. It will be easier to upsell to current clients who already love you, and easier to gain and retain new ones due to referrals. There is no doubt that your company’s revenue is significantly dependent upon and influenced by your call center’s ability to deliver an extraordinary customer experience to every caller. With so many benefits, it is easy to see the value of integrating a versatile quality assurance program into your call center. It is more than cost-effective; it is profitable for your business. Using the analytics you obtain, will help you gain leverage over competitors because you will follow through best on what every consumer desires: an Effortless Customer Experience. This blog was first published on LinkedIn..

Omni-channel: New Multi-Channel To Customer Service Experience

The one thing in this recent fast-paced and virtual savvy environment which changes more hastily than technology is, the terminology used for references to technicalities and aspects of technology. Two such phrases which occupy the heart of customer service enterprise are “Omni-Channel customer service” and “Multi-Channel customer support”. Often, these two phrases are used interchangeably, however if you dive deep, you’ll find that there’s a big distinction between them. Customer service enterprise is expanding, with the inclusion of new ever developing technological improvements and attention-to-detail parameters and approaches. In such situations, it becomes more and more difficult to manage and regulate as per the norms specified. So, in case your call center is using Multi-Channel Customer Service or if it’s offering Omni-Channel Customer Service, your clients would set their expectancies accordingly. So, it becomes vital to recognize the distinction in these phrases and use it wisely. What is Multi-channel as compared to Omni-channel service? Customers reach out to companies and organizations in a diffusion of approaches nowadays, inclusive of web, text, mobile, e-mail, social media, and phone. Call centers that provide customer service on all of these channels in an included way, instead of in silos, deliver the steady customer experience every customer craves. Multi-channel service actually means the use of a couple of channels while delivering customer experience. Omni-channel service, specifically in retail, provides effortless consistency across all channels. Omni-channel services are vital, as these days, clients are making use of mobile phones more frequently to access the internet, in fact, more than they use desktop PCs. These customers may initiate contact with an organization on one channel and later interact with the company through another, frequently using more than one gadget at the same time. Technology is likewise pushing forth new platforms increasing the customer experience beyond simply gadgets. Technology and Customer Expectations Drive the Need for Omni-Channel Retail Solutions The days of people picking up the phone book to get in touch with companies are long over, as customers moved to the Internet at their home and then to tablets and smartphones to reach out to companies. A recent research study suggests that 63% of U.S. adults use mobile gadgets several times in a month to search for customer support, and 90% of them have had bad customer experience. These consumers are defining their customer experience by how properly businesses manage their interactions on their site, via mobile technology, and across the several channels through which they interact with brands. Getting this right, with steady delivery and relevant content that meets customer desires and needs at the right time and on their favoured channels, is important for success. Delivering an Omni-channel Service and the Benefits of Customer Satisfaction Great customer experience affects the bottom line in several ways: 45% of customers inside the U.S. abandon online transactions if their questions or issues aren’t addressed speedily. 89% of consumers stop patronizing call centers that gives bad customer experience. Customers are 2X more likely to spread bad customer service experiences than that of positive. Consumers are 4X more likely to buy from competitors if an issue is associated with service, as opposed to price or product-related problems. 33% of customers will recommend call centers that offer short, yet useless responses. 17% of customers recommend call centers that offer slow but perfect solutions. 12 positive customer experiences are needed to make up for just one negative customer experience. 70% of purchasing experiences depend on how clients feel they’re being attended to. 83% of clients require at least some support when making an online purchase. That’s why thriving organizations have already shifted their attention to a customer-centric technique with mobile responsiveness being a top precedence. So far, the records indicate that call centers making use of tools and techniques to improve customer experience are winning. Research additionally shows that customers will spend more money with a company that offers a wonderful experience. Customer expectations additionally have an effect on their level of satisfaction, and leading businesses have gone further FAQ pages to offer round-the-clock assistance with services that screens social media and the Internet for mentions by customers and social media experts who maintain a steady presence online. By giving customers a very fast and accurate response on social media, call centers often save their reputations and display a willingness to correct issues to ensure customer satisfaction. Omni-channel customer support experience additionally helps to lessen consumer churn, which attributes to bad quality customer service. Making Multi-Channel Retailing Consistent Call centers must try not to simply provide a multi-channel retailing experience, though. To give a great omni-channel retail experience, call centers must assume that customers will begin an interaction in a channel and then move to another while searching for a solution. But the focus should not be on the channels, rather, it should be on the customer. Customers are too regularly segmented by channel – assuming that the call center has “Twitter clients,” “Facebook clients,” and “mobile clients,” as an instance, when in reality call centers have a set of customers who just happen to interact with them on a large number of channels. Customers’ demands and needs remain consistent across all channels from which they have an interaction with a call center. Consumers should understand their transitions from one channel to another as being fluid. The best call centers are 30% more probable to optimize for omni-channel simplicity to gain consistency and meet the needs of customers across all channels. One of the most effective methods to improve a customer experience is to tap into customer analytics to determine the customer preferred channels and gain insights into the efficiency of the company’s content and knowledge base when addressing these issues in actual-time. Analytics also reveal which channels most efficaciously meet client expectations, so call centers can tailor their technique for laser-targeted, consistent delivery. Leveraging technology that reach customers across all channels and making use of available information to monitor and optimize the customer experience gives modern call centers a

How Automated Quality Assurance Impacts Your Team?

Is your call center quality assurance team currently overworked and overwhelmed? If so, they are less likely to consistently provide accurate performance assessments and may overlook negative interactions between agents and customers. Spot-checking phone calls due to limited resources is simply not an accurate way to measure performance or identify areas that need improvement. Thankfully, there is a fairly easy solution that involves outsourcing your contact center quality assurance responsibilities. When you automate quality assurance, you ensure that each and every phone interaction between your customers and your agents is recorded and analyzed. It is natural for QA staff to worry about being phased out in favor of automated systems, but the most effective automated systems are designed to be used in conjunction with a team of professionals who know how to interpret the data and use it to come up with improvement recommendations. So, how will an automated QA system really affect your team? Greater Efficiency Every good QA department is constantly looking for ways to improve efficiency, and an automated quality monitoring system can help. A standard speech analytics system reveals information about keywords used in phone conservations between customers and agents. This type of system gives your QA team the ability to rapidly review calls based on specific keywords. It also makes it easy to identify any agents who may be making forbidden statements while interacting with customers. If your QA department is expected to achieve higher level of analyzation detail without help from an automated system, a team member will have to listen to each call personally. This takes a significant amount of time and is not very efficient. By choosing to automate the process, you will give your QA department more time to review and analyze the data to identify specific reasons for poor call results. More Time for Call Center Improvement Tasks When your QA staff members are not expected to spend most of the day parsing through calls, they have more time to take care of other important responsibilities, including planning and implementing training for phone agents, reviewing automated analysis reports and coming up with recommendations for improvement. By choosing to automate quality assurance, you give your QA department greater freedom to work on big projects and long-term goals rather than being bogged down with day-to-day phone call analyzation responsibilities. Choosing to automate your contact center quality assurance does not mean you will need to eliminate your QA staff. Automation simply makes it easier for your QA team to quickly perform their daily responsibilities with maximum efficiency. Your QA team will still be needed to interpret the data received from automated systems and implement effective training solutions to continuously improve call center performance. For these reasons, QA automation should be seen as a way to improve your QA department rather than replace it. 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..

Accountability 101: Leaders Go First

What does accountability mean? Miriam Webster defines accountability as: the quality or state of being accountable. An obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions. Unfortunately, within many organizations, zeal for accountability may fall by the wayside because most employees still view accountability as a punishment for failure, versus a personal commitment to be responsible for a specific goal or task. Images of stuffy suits pounding fists on the table and grumbling, “someone must be held accountable,” or, “who is accountable for this mess?” can mistakenly be conjured if clear and visible definitions are not utilized and adhered to by all levels of your team. This mentality can also create many unintended consequences including finger pointing, lack of trust, lack of transparency, and lack of action for fear of failure; all negatively impacting the success of your business and team. On the flip side, accountability when clearly defined and executed can engage your workforce and drive unprecedented results. Below are three simple steps to help redefine accountability within your organization and get you started on the path to creating a more accountable workforce. Establish a Clear Definition The best way to ensure everyone is on the same page is to clearly define what accountability looks like within your team or company. Own it, define it, train it, and make it visible so everyone has the same message. It must be clear that accountability is personal ownership of an agreed upon goal or objective; a commitment to deliver a specific action and/or result. Own it, define it, train it and make it visible throughout your business! Communicate your definition in huddles, screen savers, posters, and newsletter articles; you cannot over communicate. Make sure you leverage several mediums to reach all parties. Set Clear Expectations After you have established and communicated an agreed-upon definition of accountability for your organization, the next step is to ensure that expectations are properly set. When should you do this? The correct answer is anytime an expectation is created or changed. It is critical to define who, what, why, how and by when. In addition, there must also be clearly defined consequences for both success and failure. Engaging your employee or team here is critical. Ask them, what will success mean for the business or individual? Conversely, what impact would failure have on the business or individual? This can help create buy-in and fuel understanding of how the individual and team fits into broader organizational goals. Lead by Example The best form of accountability is one where leaders go first by ensuring the conditions for accountability have been properly set. Next, leaders must also ensure that commitments to the team have been met in support of achieving the goal. Leading by example in this key area will not only build trust within your organization, but set a powerful example that others are willing to follow. Simon Sinek wrote a book titled, Leaders Eat Last, that highlights the importance of building trust within an organization and the benefits this creates through employee loyalty. People will give their all to accomplish the company vision as laid out by their leader when the employees believe their leader puts employee needs ahead of their own. This is a powerful concept that has been proven time and time again. This same theory is at play with accountability. Leaders Eat Last, but with taking accountability, Leaders Go First! In conclusion, by establishing a clear definition of accountability, setting clear expectations, and leading by example you will be well on your way to creating a culture of accountability within your organization.

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.

Are You Coaching Your Agents To Enhance Productivity?

Your call center performance is affected by the overall performance and productivity of your automated call center agents. Because of this, it’s enormously critical to set up and establish an effective agent training program to aid your agents’ achievement and promote quality assurance. There has in no way been a better time to educate your automated call center agents. Customer’s expectancy for service is constantly increasing making call center agents coaching a vital part of the puzzle. Improving overall performance control and coaching best practices in the automated call center is prime to keeping your customers happy. Customers depend on those organizations where they get a quicker result on their problems and get to engage with professional agents. This is why the agents need to be furnished with qualitative coaching for meeting the client’s expectations. Managers monitoring an automated call center understand that their agents require consistent trainings in order to deliver notable customer services. Regular coaching is critical for call center agents, whether or not it’s about any newly released product or adjustments in the already existing product. From taking orders to give customer support, difficult situations are bound to come up. But the way you deal with those conditions can be the difference between creating loyal customers and losing the business. Educate Agents in ways to create an emotional connection with clients Building upon core psychology of communication “it is not what you say, it’s how you say it”, the award-winning crew at Lebara Limited have translated a vision to “make lives better” into an effective operational tradition. This reinforces an emotional connection with clients. Training of workers to create these emotional connections with the customer makes for memorable customer experience thus promoting quality assurance. This emotional connection also can be achieved with the aid of the use of empathy statements that helps to enhance agent-customer rapport and by teaching agents to use high quality phrases, while keeping off bad language, along with “no”. Intensify the Agent’s Skill A fundamental part of the training periods need to be committed to the improvement of the agent’s skills. Here are the few elements to be covered to improve call center performance: Clear Intercommunication: Make sure the agents properly articulate words while offering something to the clients, whether or not they’re offering discount or giving them something complementary. Avoid jargons or the utilization of slangs. Empathy: Ensure your automated call center agents imagine themselves in the client’s shoes, this way; they will treat clients the way they would want to be handled. Look into their issues and offer them immediate help. They will actually appreciate the gesture. First Contact Resolution: A client would hate to call you over and over, and also repeat calls add cost to the call center. So, train your automated call center agents to perceive its significance. Link training to KPIs. Make certain that your automated call center agent training is focused. Having key overall call center performance indicators related to your training application will allow you to see patterns so as to spot issues and possibilities for improvement. Use these KPIs as the standards you’ll use to broaden your coaching program. Develop a positive remarks mechanism The agent’s level of overall call center performance should be measured and evaluated after each coaching session. It is carried out to recognize how much the agent has grasped from the coaching. And if a rep is lacking somewhere, bringing up their issues to them won’t be enough. It is vital to offer them the right directions, so, they would realize how they could make an effect in the near future. This is a part of the program that is majorly done to perceive as how many more classes are required with the aid of the reps or they’re already qualified for the activity. Handling calls during induction coaching Handling calls throughout the initial coaching session is a process that cannot be removed from the curriculum. This is what new hires were hired to do. Often either the device inside the lecture room doesn’t allow new hires to handle those calls or individual gadgets isn’t present for dealing with calls on the production ground. Maybe volume is so heavy on the call center ground that the new hires are requested to remove a session of call taking because of seating shortages. It is imperative that the brand new hires get practices in dealing with real-time calls. There isn’t any substitute for this experience. Role-play is ideal, but real call handling is crucial. Trainers have to make certain that equipments in the classroom work and are available for every “real-time” call handling session. Automated call center managers should make this a priority. Let agents pay attention to their call recordings Allow your agents to listen to their very own calls. When operating on a training objective, you can additionally, after the initial training, make them to give you a call where they assume they had been capable of implement that coaching. Running through this process will bring about the agent actively thinking about the coaching objective, so as to help them to embed the training into every call. Make them your Product Influencers Provide your agents with thorough product understanding. Your reps shouldn’t simply understand what you are promoting; they ought to even believe in it. Doing this will make your agents more like influencers and finally after they communicate to the clients, they will be perceived as an authority. This way they are able to impress the customers and establish a slim line of trust and credibility thus ensuring quality assurance. Along with the product capabilities, the agents have to even master the technological gear. The reps should get acquainted with CRM, ACD, dialers and different channels of communicating. Make certain it’s constant A coaching program that lacks structure and consistency can in the end do more damage than good. That’s why it’s so important to define your coaching strategies together with your call center supervisors before implementation. If

How to Build a Remarkable Team?

You may have the best individual employees, but unless you know how to make them into a team, their knowledge and skills will be of limited benefit to your call center operations. However, being a team entails more than simply working together toward a shared goal. There are certain characteristics that must be present in order for a team to be effective and successful. Some of it relies on the people you select for the group, whereas the rest relies on how they are managed. Here is how to involve both factors as you build a remarkable call center team. Choose the Right People Experience and intelligence are not the only qualities you should look for as you assemble a winning team. You also need to consider the following attributes: Do the members possess a variety of skills? You do not want people who have proficiency in the same exact areas or there will be an imbalance. Diversity fosters creativity. Can they work with others? There is no point in including an otherwise qualified person if he or she is unable to cooperate with teammates. This ability may depend on who the coworkers are, as well. An employee may not work well with some people, but may collaborate well with others. Are they the right fit for the job? Just because people are highly skilled does not mean they may be right for a specific assignment. Match employees to the project and do not hesitate to remove those who turn out to be a poor fit. Not doing so will negatively affect productivity. Do they understand the vision and purpose of the team? Everyone needs to be on the same page to avoid confusion, unnecessary conflict, and delays. Clear expectations bring focus, which boosts call center performance. Once you have selected the right team members, it is time to focus on your role in leading the group. Support the Team It is your responsibility to support the team in whatever way needed. You must have open and honest communication to help the team achieve the goal. You need to learn each agent’s strengths and weaknesses and how to use these to the team’s advantage. Share this information with all members so that they also may know how to work efficiently. Encourage discussions instead of trying to get everyone to agree. When each person feels safe and heard, there will be more participation and ideas. The team will benefit from expanding viewpoints, trying new methods, and giving and accepting constructive criticism. The better the employees work together, the less you will need to manage them. They will only require supervision. If conflict cannot be resolved, then you will have to become more involved. Provide Feedback One of the most helpful things you can do is give feedback. Doing so will keep the group on track while preventing too much management on your part. It is also important to offer praise and recognition to increase motivation and improve trust. By providing the right management style, you will create a remarkable team that will enhance call center operations.

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