One of the key principles of a next generation customer experience is the ability to service customers on their channel of choice. While some customers prefer interactions through email, others require the reassurance of speaking to a live representative. Others still, led by the tech- and social-media-savvy “millennials,” are pushing the envelope further by demanding communications through their mobile devices and social networking accounts.
Yet, despite this growing mix of customer engagement, many contact centers are ill equipped to manage this myriad of interaction types. For starters, most agents—those on the frontlines of your organizations—lack visibility into social media communications, as marketing has traditionally managed this medium. However, in turn, critical data necessary to delight customers often times elude agents.
Thus, while it is essential to service customers on their channel of choice, it’s equally essential to give agents what they need to efficiently work—an integrated multichannel agent desktop—which is overlooked by most organizations. A cloud-based contact center with a 360-degree multichannel plus social and mobile view of the customer offers agents the ability to pivot customer conversations between channels, thus enabling brands to interact with customers in new, very flexible ways.
By providing agents with a single point of collection for critical customer data, organizations can ensure that their customers are being heard and responded to in a quick, efficient way. In fact, this improved agent experience has a direct impact on improving customer experience and overall profit contribution.
In a research report completed by Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, noted Social Media Author and Strategist, three companies were subjected to a time-motion study to monitor the effects of technology on customer service agents’ attitudes and how it relates to productivity, performance and profit contribution. More importantly, the results quantified measurable gains in standard agent KPI’s like a 25-50% gain in agent productivity as well as 50% reduction in repeat interaction costs. These factors all reinforce the strong connection between agent and customer experience.
In one study of a large, publicly traded electronics manufacturing company, agents had been measured on quality of contact and technical proficiency. Agents are assigned to specific channels like voice or email and typically do not monitor or engage with customers via social channels like Facebook and Twitter. The results of this case study strongly support the fact that if agents had a unified multichannel agent desktop to manage social interactions they would be significantly more productive and would also yield significant cost savings and much higher customer satisfaction. Of particular importance to note is the fact that agents would feel empowered to take corrective action via a socially integrated desktop to turn a potentially negative interaction into a positive one.
In the end, it all comes down to this: A Better Agent Experience = A Better Customer Experience = Better Customer Lifetime Value. This is the formula for customer success. Brands that are looking to deliver an extraordinary customer experience across multiple channels need to integrate both current and historical customer interactions across all channels including voice, chat, email, and social, and package it all on a single screen.
SUMMARY
Most companies, when asked today, would agree that one of their primary goals is to improve the customer experience. Yet most of these organizations fail to make the strong connection between improving the agent experience in order to improve the customer experience. In fact, these two outcomes are intimately related.
When polled 92% of consumers state that an agent’s attitude directly affects their customer service or support experience. Too often agents are being asked to do more and more to meet the demands of these consumers, but they are not being provided with the proper tools and technology to handle these multiple interaction types. It’s akin to asking a soldier to go into combat today wearing armor, not a good idea!
An integrated, socially capable multichannel contact center in the cloud is well equipped to meet these demands. By empowering agents to do their jobs across multiple, integrated channels in a single interface they’re often happier because they’re armed with the appropriate tools and in turn, their positive attitude results in a better service experience for the customer and better value for all in the end. 