Many companies see contact centre agents as an expensive resource which must be measured obsessively to ensure that they are delivering to the optimal benefit of the organisation they work for. However our experience in picking up the pieces after contact centres have been found to be failing, tells us that part of the problem is the way in which agents are being measured.
All too often the metrics being requested by senior management are not properly aligned with either the customer or the agents trying to deliver a positive customer experience. Agents find themselves having an unnatural conversation with the customer (e.g. trying to make a highly complex sale in three minutes over the phone) and as a result delivering a poor customer experience, all in the name of adhering with a number of internal performance metrics.
For example, we still see many contact centre agents being judged on their average call handling times. If they habitually take too long to get off the call then it is not uncommon for agents to be reprimanded. So to avoid the showdown with the boss, they might route a tricky customer query onto another agent regardless of whether that second agent has the right skills, experience or remit to assist further. Clearly this handing off of calls is highly counter-productive from the point of view of the customer. In some sectors like financial services this might mean they have to go through the process of identifying themselves several times and get increasingly frustrated as they find their query goes unanswered and unresolved. Valuable time is wasted. It also means that the agent does not get the job satisfaction that he or she craves. Poor morale inevitably follows. Agent turnover rises which itself is a key enemy of positive customer experience. The downward spiral can be rapid.
To break this cycle consider the three key tenets of positive customer experience in your contact centre – delivery of a Consistent, Cordial and Convenient service. A balance always has to be struck between these three elements, according to the channel through which the customer is making contact. For example, a customer who makes a query via text is almost certainly looking for a more rapid, if brief, written response than someone making a detailed and lengthy complaint by letter sent through the post. You need to agree quality standards and service level expectations for communication via each channel working with your contact centre operations team.
Part of the problem that contact centres are having with multi-channel communications is that agents are not being given detailed enough guidelines on usage of non-voice channels and so it remains difficult to ensure that agents deliver consistent, cordial and timely contact, through all channels of communication.
A few points to leave you with when you are trying to ensure customers are being treated in line with your brand values when they get in touch via one of your contact centres:
1. Do not seek to over measure agents to ensure they meet efficiency targets which may make sense internally but don’t really serve the customer
2. Find measures that you know will work for the agent ‘on the ground’ to help them do a better job
3. Make sure these metrics are fully aligned with customer expectations and your brand values
4. Make sure no metrics conflict with each other, thereby over complicating the communication
5. Ensure agents know what is expected of them when customers make contact via non-voice channels. Draw up guidelines for usage of email, text, web chat etc and closely monitor standards of communication initially to ensure the customer experience does not suffer as they move between channels.
6. Test any new agent measures to make sure they are not having a detrimental effect on the customer
Next time in Contact Point, I will look at how to put those metrics to work to iteratively improve customer services delivery in the contact centre.
Faraz Khan is managing director of ProtoCall One.
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