4 ways to help your team help themselves (and your customers)

Those who are called to be contact center professionals have a heart for customer service. It is in their nature to want to help callers and provide the best possible experiences. It is our job as contact center leaders to make sure that they are set up for success. Here are four ways to do just that.

Review your training program

The place to set expectations on what great customer service looks like in your organization is in the initial training for your contact center professionals. What are some ways you can do this?

• Include examples of scenarios that are frequently encountered in your environment and provide guidance on the best ways to handle those interactions.
• Cover your call evaluation guidelines and provide examples of what meeting and not meeting each criteria looks like.
• Have employees listen to “best practice” calls when an agent provides exceptional customer service, discussing the “wow” factors.
• Practice. Provide feedback. Repeat. Have new employees take mock calls, then provide them with feedback on what went well and where the service could have been improved. Repeat until everyone is comfortable with the level of service being provided.

It’s important that training and reinforcement of best practices extend beyond initial onboarding to ensure that operational standards are being met for all employees. This guarantees that service levels consistently align with organizational expectations and meet customer service satisfaction benchmarks.

Provide tools and resources

When you call a business and they don’t know the answers to the questions that you are asking, what impression does that give you? My guess — not favorable.

To set your agents up for success, they need answers to common questions at their fingertips. What resources, job aids or other tools are readily available for your team? Do you have a knowledge management system filled with information that your agents can access while on the call? If you don’t, building one is a great start. If you do, consider how you can make it more user-friendly, perhaps even leveraging AI to bring answers to your agents instead of having them look for the information.

Offer intraday support

Even with fantastic training, tools and resources, invariably your agent will get that call. You know the one — the caller with the once-in-a-blue-moon issue or question where guidance is needed from a supervisor or manager.  What is the process in your organization when this happens? How long does it take to get a question answered? Are supervisors and managers readily available or is this situation always going to result in a callback? How can your organization better support these real-time support scenarios so that your agents are able to assist confidently, accurately, and efficiently — all things that roll into providing that exceptional experience?

Share consistent, timely feedback

No matter how much customer service experience some has, in the contact center environment or in your organization, consistent and timely feedback is critical and necessary. Here’s what you should consider:

• Consistency: Feedback, both positive and constructive, should be given on a regular basis, whether that be daily or weekly. The goal is to point out what’s going well so that they can build on that foundation and then address any areas in need of improvement. This feedback can generally be done through call evaluations and surveys. Consider having agents submit their own calls to request feedback, too, as this promotes engagement.
• Timeliness: If there is something that didn’t go quite right, don’t wait until your next one-on-one to discuss it. Correct mistakes as soon as you can, otherwise you risk having the mistake happen again. On the flip side, when you get a rave compliment from a caller about the service provided by one of your team members, pull that call as soon as possible and point out the “wow” moments to your agent so that they know that you see and value the great service that they just provided!

While not every call will be a five-star service experience, laying the foundation for your staff by providing comprehensive ongoing training, helpful tools and resources, readily available intraday support, and consistent and timely feedback will go a long way towards getting those rave reviews from callers.