The challenges:
Better listen to customers
Discover and share customer stories
Redefine benchmarks and customers voice
Understand customer silence
The digital equation
Difficult conversations with customers
The work environment
The Challenges
The Opportunities
Contact centres are currently facing a moment of truth. Most are dealing with exceptional situations:
- High call volumes
- Increasing online wait times
- Reduced and exhausted teams
The demand is so high that many contact centres cannot meet it. This demand is likely to remain high for some time. While some calls might decrease, others may well increase cancellation requests, payment deferrals, follow-ups on unprocessed requests, etc.
The way brands respond to their customers and their requests during this period will influence the perception customers retain. It will also impact the experience of their employees and their level of engagement.
This is their moment of truth.
This creates a challenge, of course, but also great opportunities. It’s essential to measure up and respond to them.
Better Listen to Customers
The crisis leads to action and focusing on the task. This is understandable. However, it’s essential to stay tuned to what customers are telling us to understand what they are going through, their needs, and how to help them. There are more opportunities than one might think.
Discover and Share Customer Stories
Assessing a contact centre’s objective ability to respond to requests is relatively simple. Several operational indicators exist – abandoned calls, online wait times, request processing delays allow drawing a picture of the situation.
But they also tell a story that needs to be deciphered.
In times of crisis, contact centre teams have several effective and quick levers to improve the situation. Reviewing choice trees (IVR), queue messages, call priorities, etc., allows prioritizing the most important calls and reducing abandonments and wait times.
These actions can also have unexpected consequences, especially when the technological infrastructure is aging, and expertise is lacking. They result in calls that lead nowhere, multiple transfers, endless waiting times…
Customers then multiply attempts, change channels, look for new numbers, communicate with executives, etc. It’s fascinating to see what they can do when they really need something. Imagine knowing the real efforts your customers make to reach you: where they call, how many times, how long they wait, how many times they are transferred.
Detailed analysis of operational performance tells this story. It provides the picture you need to act and improve your customers’ lives. “Human figures,” so to speak.
Redefine Benchmarks and Customers Voice
There’s another reason to go beyond just reviewing operational indicators. Everything has changed. What was unacceptable before the crisis has sometimes become more acceptable, or at least more tolerable.
Waiting an hour before being able to talk to an agent, letting an agent check the new procedure, hearing background noise from an agent working from home seems to many more acceptable today than yesterday. Obviously, our tolerance level also depends on the response to our request…
Benchmarks have changed.
And if you could improve your customers’ experience even without answering all their requests? You impact loyalty, retention, and even your brand’s reputation. To realize this, you need to go back to basics: listen to what customers are saying.
It sounds simple. It is. Indeed, there are many ways to evaluate customer experience:
- Customer experience measures:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Customer Effort Score (CES)
- Your customers’ comments in surveys
- Responses to sent emails
- Comments on social media
- What your employees hear
- Your customers’ complaints, including requests to speak with a supervisor.
- “Sentiment analysis” tools
There’s a world of opportunities waiting to be seized.
Deafening Silence
You hear nothing? Maybe it’s time to worry. Because the proverb “No news, good news” doesn’t apply when it comes to customer experience. Some things don’t change.
For the record, several studies tell us:
- 50% of customers who encounter a problem do not complain.
- Only 5% make a formal complaint.
- Customers who encounter problems involving monetary losses are more likely to make formal complaints. Think of the current actions against airlines…
Several reasons lead a customer not to complain:
- They think the company will follow up.
- They don’t want to confront the person responsible for the problem.
- They are unsure of their rights and the company’s obligations.
- They find it takes too much effort and time.
But let’s not be mistaken, just because people don’t complain doesn’t mean there’s no impact. On reputation first: on average, a bad experience is shared twice as much as a good experience. And we are increasingly aware of all the power we have through social media. Then on retention, where addressing customer problems positively impacts. Customers reward brands that take care of them. Imagine the impact you could have on your customers if you could know and address the problems they encounter with your brand.
By returning to listening to customers, what they live and feel, the urgency brings us back to what’s important: the intention we have as a company when we enter into a relationship with them.
The Digital Equation
Most companies have relied on their digital teams to better meet customer needs. These teams have let their genius run wild. COVID-19 dedicated web pages, FAQs, chats, chatbots, microsites, mobile applications have sprung up like mushrooms. These teams have truly shone! It was the most obvious solution under the circumstances.
Facing the difficulty or even impossibility of reaching contact centres or moving to their branches, customers are more than willing to try digital channels. The current crisis has solved one term of the digital channels adoption equation: customer motivation. The second term of the equation remains: customer experience.
This term is yet to be solved! Because the real impact of digital solutions depends on the experience customers have with them. However, contact centre leaders often know too well that these solutions do not always meet their needs. In fact, many customers call, frustrated not to have found their answer on sites not always designed for them.
When agents question customers, it’s not rare for them to discover that:
- The site is confusing and the answers hard to find,
- The information is unclear and expressed in expert language,
- The phone number is hard to find when it’s not absent.
A gap still too often seems to separate the intentions of digital teams and what contact centre teams live and hear. Silos are still very present, even in our “agile” organizations.
Imagine that this gap could be bridged: that these teams work hand in hand to develop digital solutions that meet customers’ needs. What a difference it would make! The impact would be considerable on customers’ experience, but also on short-term operations and medium-term costs. The entire organization would also be much better positioned to lead its digital transformation.
Difficult Conversations with Customers
In 2008, a book named “A Complaint Is a Gift” was published, whose main thesis is roughly this: “The problems that customers encounter are great opportunities that exist for companies to develop their customers’ loyalty.”
It can be said that these last few days, many companies see an increase in the number of these opportunities. Several factors contribute to the increase in problems raised by customers and “difficult discussions.”
Customers are anxious, and it’s understandable. They are increasingly calling to cancel a purchase, get a refund, request a payment deferral… And they are often frustrated to have had to wait a long time before being able to talk to someone. Agents, for their part, are starting to feel the effects of the high volume of calls they take one after the other. They also do not master all the policies recently put in place in a hurry. This results in a greater number of escalations to support teams or managers, higher conversation, and warning times. This obviously directly impacts the operations’ capacity to respond to other customers. There is also a risk to customer loyalty and the company’s reputation if these conversations are not resolved positively.
But all these problems can also be gifts. They are opportunities to make a difference for customers at a time when they really need it, to deepen the relationship you have with them. This is not about blindly accepting all customers’ requests.
Imagine simply that your agents quickly take charge of these requests are equipped and feel authorized to make more decisions to solve problems at the first point of contact. These actions would make a big difference for a very large number of people.
The Work Environment
Operating a contact centre in the current context is unprecedented. It’s not too much to say that the teams are true heroes. A large number has transitioned 100% of their operations to remote working at breakneck speed. In a few weeks, major changes, both human and technological, have been implemented. Technology teams have found answers to significant challenges in record time to ensure the continuity of operations. Customer service teams have adjusted to a new work environment. Due to the crisis context, this change and success risk being minimized. And yet, what an example of leadership and resilience of the teams! The time for recognition must not be forgotten.
When I think about this transition, I think of the movie “Apollo 13” where we see a NASA engineer challenge his team to fit a square into a round hole.
There is no limit to creativity with a clear objective, the right combination of people and skills, and the freedom to create. People are capable of incredible things.
The Challenges
Obviously, making such a change so quickly does not come without difficulty as the crisis persists. Very often the technology was not ready for such a significant shift. The solutions found work in the short term to meet the call needs for a while but cannot ensure the same reliability as technology developed over the years. Many employees answer calls relying on their personal installation and internet connection to make their systems work.
Many find themselves answering calls at their kitchen table and must deal with the closure of daycares and schools and the reality of their loved ones working from home. Anyone who has ever worked in a contact centre knows how important mutual help among colleagues is, especially when wait times for customers lengthen. The time between calls decreases, difficult conversations follow one another; one gets tired more quickly.
Connecting with colleagues or managers is healing, both for getting help and for decompression. This support is no longer available in the same way as before the crisis. We see many call centre agents realize this loss and miss their workplace.
The proximity of managers to their teams is one of the key factors of any contact centre. Team meetings, morning buzz meetings, morning greetings, informal coaching contribute to opening communication channels and creating trust between employees, and with managers. Managers are often agents who have been promoted after demonstrating their performance on the phone and their leadership. Their management training and coaching skills vary a lot, as does the coaching culture of organizations.
For many managers, adapting to remote management and restoring this proximity at a time when employees need it most is a challenge. This would certainly be the case for many experienced managers with teams of 15 to 20 agents, as is frequently seen in contact centres.
There is a real risk of falling into “management by numbers.” A cold management, whereas we mainly need warmth now. The impact could be significant on employee engagement, their retention rate – maybe not immediately but once employment is distributed – and the quality of the experience provided to customers. Managing solely by numbers is a very strong trend in contact centres where everything is measured.
And this is all truer as there is sometimes a real concern from workforce management teams who see performance levels drop. From the first days of the crisis, many contact centres have abandoned the adherence measurement that assesses whether agents respect their work schedules (start of shift, break and lunch hours, end of shift). It’s the right thing to do for employees who find themselves working from home, but then how will we ensure we have enough employees to respond to customers?
The Opportunity
The crisis and, more particularly, remote work accentuate a reality that already existed before this crisis: The customer experience delivered in contact centres is in the hands of hundreds of agents who talk to hundreds or even thousands of customers every day. What they do largely escapes the control of management teams.
What if this crisis was an opportunity to accelerate, or confirm for the most advanced organizations, a necessary change in every contact centre? What if you could take advantage of this crisis to let go of the need to control everything and create an environment based on more trust, empowerment, and mutual help?
Imagine giving your agents more freedom in the decisions they have to make, in the way they conduct conversations and the time it takes to respond to customer requests. Imagine you manage to mobilize your employees and align their daily actions with your organization’s initial intention. Imagine your employees supporting each other and sharing their knowledge through discussion forums and peer coaching.
The impact on the level of engagement of your teams and the experience of your customers would be simply incredible. It’s not as far-fetched as it might seem… That’s what the best organizations do.
A Moment of Truth to Transform
Contact centres are currently experiencing a moment of truth, both for their customers and for their employees. There are obvious benefits for organizations to take care of them, both in the short term and in the medium and long term: customer loyalty and retention, reputation, employee engagement. But there is also a benefit that may seem less tangible, or rather more human. Being there and helping thousands of people in a time of crisis. That’s also what it means to be a “customer-centric organization.” And it’s beautiful.
We don’t always need large transformation programs to make changes in organizations. That’s a truth that no one can deny anymore. In a few weeks, organizations have implemented changes that have been dragging on for months, if not years. And what about remote work, which seemed completely out of reach just 2 months ago?
Another truth: focusing on the short term can propel long-term strategic priorities. What if we learned from this period of crisis to change organizations differently? What if we were able to recreate the conditions that allow changes during a crisis, but in an organized way and without the associated stress?
We might end up with a change of approach that is more effective and so much more humane at the same time. This is also a moment of truth for anyone wanting to reinvent their organization in the coming months and years.
By Guillaume Delroeux
Guillaume is president and leader of customer experience practices at Promethee consultants and helps organizations with customer relationship centres make the most of their technologies to maximize their impact and create legendary customer experiences.