By Mike Smitheman, Senior Product Manager —
As an alternative to my day job, I spend time teaching kite surfing in the San Francisco Bay Area. The sport involves flying a large kite and using it to pull yourself across the water on a surfboard. We encourage students to be able to fly the kite blindfolded, with one hand behind their back, while performing some other random activity such as writing their name in the sand, as a way of getting comfortable with the actions required to effectively do the sport.
While such an approach works well for kite surfing, I feel like the same approach is often taken when dealing with Customer Service Reps (CSRs) in the contact center. They are often expected to be able to answer a call blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs. They have little or no visibility into what the customer has just gone through and are not given the tools to resolve the customer's issue...oh, and they are expected to handle the call as quickly as possible and keep the customer happy at the same time! A tall order, wouldn't you say?
No wonder CSR attrition rates often exceed 40% and that the contact center is seen as a cost drain since a large amount of money is spent replacing those CSRs. No matter our jobs and our roles—whether we're CSRs, managers or executives—the majority of us strive to do our jobs well and we should be given the tools and training to have the best opportunity to succeed.
As an alternative to my day job, I spend time teaching kite surfing in the San Francisco Bay Area. The sport involves flying a large kite and using it to pull yourself across the water on a surfboard. We encourage students to be able to fly the kite blindfolded, with one hand behind their back, while performing some other random activity such as writing their name in the sand, as a way of getting comfortable with the actions required to effectively do the sport.
While such an approach works well for kite surfing, I feel like the same approach is often taken when dealing with Customer Service Reps (CSRs) in the contact center. They are often expected to be able to answer a call blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs. They have little or no visibility into what the customer has just gone through and are not given the tools to resolve the customer's issue...oh, and they are expected to handle the call as quickly as possible and keep the customer happy at the same time! A tall order, wouldn't you say?
No wonder CSR attrition rates often exceed 40% and that the contact center is seen as a cost drain since a large amount of money is spent replacing those CSRs. No matter our jobs and our roles—whether we're CSRs, managers or executives—the majority of us strive to do our jobs well and we should be given the tools and training to have the best opportunity to succeed.
With the right tools and training, CSRs are capable of efficiently and effectively handling customer interactions as. This, in turn, increases agent satisfaction and will allow companies to address their large attrition costs.
One of the biggest frustrations for a CSR has to be having little or no context into what a customer is calling about, particularly when that customer has struggled to complete a transaction on the website or from a mobile device. Having to quiz the customer about what he or she was trying to do before calling is frustrating to both the customer and the CSR, and this practice often ends without a satisfactory resolution.
Contact centers that give their CSRs tools like Tealeaf, which provides visibility into the desktop web and mobile customer experience, empower those agents to provide a quality interaction with the customer. This inevitably keeps customers happy so they return, but it also reduces the call handle time, increases first call resolution rates, and improves CSR satisfaction and attrition rates.
Solutions that can be integrated into the CSR desktop experience—as Tealeaf does—are simple to use and greatly improve the service that the CSR can deliver. For a CSR, that means no more answering a call blind folded and with his hands tied behind his back.
Are you investing in empowering your front line CSRs to effectively and efficiently handle customer calls that spill over from the desktop web or mobile channel? If not, shouldn’t you?
Comments