Companies want their customer satisfaction scores high because of high quality customer service and speed of response. It can be a challenge to have both high quality customer service calls and speed at the same time, so sometimes companies decided to put emphasis on one over the other. Often, the emphasis is put on speed and answering as many calls as possible while service quality is pushed to the side. In his recent article, Jeremy Watkin discusses this dilemma and points out that when a company first starts out, their number one priority is to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. However, when that company starts kicking into a higher gear and getting more business, the focus often ends up shifting from taking time to find the best solutions to customer inquiries to doing whatever it takes to play catch up and meet goals as fast as possible and answer as many customer calls in as short amount of time as possible. Once a company hits a certain level of success and have more customers to serve, the point of emphasis becomes helping as many as possible as opposed to spending a lot of time focusing on a few at a time.
A person could read that first paragraph and get very discouraged. It’s impossible to help customers quickly while still meeting and exceeding their expectations, right? Wrong. According to Watkin, it is possible to provide service that’s both fast and high quality. His article gives the following recommendations for how to use macros and technology to accomplish this combination of speed and quality.
Macros: These can be tricky if companies use them strictly as canned responses that don’t fit every customer’s emotional state or their specific inquiry. Watkin says that to use macros correctly, companies should ensure they create a consistent brand voice through writers who are subject matter experts and can constantly update them to remain relevant. In addition, macros should be personalized for each customer’s complaint. There are no one-size-fits-all responses to customer calls, so agents should be trained and given time to practice skills such as empathy and tailoring macros to fit each customer.
Technology: Watkin says that the less an agent has to focus on technical and mundane tasks, the better they’ll be able to focus on the most important goal of their job: providing a high quality customer experience. Technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) should be used to take away the routine/procedural aspects of the job. In addition, AI can be used to help assist agents in determining the right macros to use for the situation and how to tailor them to fit the specific customer call. Another way to use technology is to consolidate the amount of software and applications agents have to use into one CRM platform. Using one CRM that integrates all the necessary call center agent apps takes away tedious steps in the process and makes the agent’s job much easier.
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:
In Customer Service, You Must Choose Between Speed and Wow. Or Do You? – Jeremy Watkin
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