Not all companies are as customer-focused as they believe, according to an article by Ian Golding. In order to have a sustainable customer experience program, businesses need a certain level of customer readiness; four phases of readiness, which Golding calls the “customer readiness scale”.
The scale covers four actionable concepts: Acknowledge, Diagnose, Action, and Improve. Companies need to be able to admit when their customer service has a problem. They need to dig deep, discover what is causing the problem, and come up with a game plan for fixing it. After the problem has been diagnosed, the most difficult stage to complete is to take action towards fixing it.
Golding says many executives change their minds after the “diagnose” stage and don’t move forward with the recommended actions. However, the execs that do approve of the action step will see big payoffs long term. The final stage involves constantly improving the program as the company progresses.
Your startup is growing. What used to be a small business out of your home has moved into its own office space or building and the number of employees keeps increasing. The evolution of a business can be exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. New tasks and responsibilities keep coming and some of them can be tough to keep up with, especially customer service. Something needs to change, and reinforcements are necessary. It might be time for you to consider contact center outsourcing.
- You can’t keep up with call volume: This is an easy one to notice. Your staff is missing calls while helping other customers, so you need to add more service agents. Outsource call centers can offer much more scalability than you’d be able to create in-house at an affordable price. If your customer service is currently being handled by employees with multiple responsibilities on their plates, then adding a contact center partner could take away one responsibility entirely if the employees’ main responsibilities are outside of service.
- You’re getting more messages during non-traditional business hours: This is related to increased call volume, but it’s not quite a scalability issue. This has more to do with hours of operation, especially late night or very early morning hours. For companies in this situation, it could be helpful to outsource with a contact center that offers a quality IVR system or even just an answering service.
- Your service levels are dipping: Have you noticed an increase in complaints or a decrease in your customer service metrics? It might be a good idea to find a contact center partner with a proven track record for positive CSAT scores and other valuable KPIs. Having a partner whose sole focus is making customers happy can take your business to a whole new level.
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the article, please click here!
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