The problem
If your company makes use of a contact center, you know how much it depends on that service. The feedback from your clients and the quality and speed of your responses are invaluable assets. You may have made the decision to outsource the contact center or taken the plunge and organized one for yourself. In either case, you’ll be faced with certain challenges. Perhaps you’ll recognize this one?
One of the issues for the agents in your contact center might be a lack of eyes. This is when customers try to describe what’s on their screen and it’s up to the agent to interpret that language. Describing things takes time, which is why novels are so much longer than movies. Since most customers aren’t very good at describing their problems, the agent is forced to ask them a lot of questions, which ends up being an annoying time sink for both of them.
What’s causing it
One of the main reasons why these challenges creep up is because contact centers lack some technological options that should be pretty standard in this day and age, such as co-browsing.
Other problems will also arise due to a lack of technology. It will be more difficult to assign the right person to the right task and your agents will lack in-depth knowledge about the contacts.
How it damages your company
The impact of these problems on your company is not to be underestimated. First of all, the AHT of your calls will be considerably higher than it should be. In addition, slow and frustrating communication reduces general customer satisfaction.
First-time-right rates will be quite low, meaning that it takes two or three attempts before a problem is solved. And yes, the inevitable result is that customer retention will be lowered because of that. Don’t be surprised. This is normal because when interaction with a company turns out to be a frustrating process, clients will lose their loyalty.
Last but not least, due to a lack of information and understanding, a lot of companies will drop sales and miss sales because most people are much more likely to buy from a physical store or a salesman than online. This is because clients and prospects feel misunderstood in the digital environment, due to the lack of “eyes” on the part of the agent.
What you can do about it
So what should companies that use a contact center strive for? The final goal is this:
to deliver the best customer experience by equipping the most appropriate agents with the right information at the right time.
If a company wants to find out how to reach this goal, they should contact SmartConnect.
