In this month’s most-read posts, our authors offer insights on how the contact center agent’s role has evolved and become more complex, how best to engage with your WFH agents, how to improve your customer-centric self-service options, and how to harness the power of Institutional, Organizational and Operational processes to shape CX excellence and fuel efficiency.
Why Customer Service Is Not an “Entry-Level” Position
My 10-year-old son thinks I am so old, I roamed the earth alongside the dinosaurs! He is right in one way: I started in the contact center industry when things were very primitive. In fact, I began as an agent in the “Phone Age” (rhymes with “Stone Age”). Phone calls accounted for 99% of customer interactions; the other 1% was written letters sent by postal mail.
Customer-Centric Self-Service
The pandemic exposed two significant insights about the state of customer service:
- A poor customer experience coupled with pandemic-fueled emotions can push customers to the brink of tears; and
- Customers don’t have much faith in conventional self-service options.
7 Ideas to Build Engagement with Work-From-Home Agents
“Now that we’re working from home, no one else (in the company) knows who we are,” said a veteran contact center agent during one of my sales training classes.
26 Ideas for Engaging Your Contact Center Team
A few years ago, my team wasn’t doing too well. Morale was low, which impacted calls and led to agents not staying too long. So, I started experimenting with different ways to engage team members and show them some appreciation.
The Power of Process to Shape Customer Experience Excellence and Fuel Efficiency
Let’s face it. Most folks involved in contact centers today are there to help, provide service or sell something. Customer experience excellence is a desirable attribute of these encounters, and excellence has a great dependency on effective “processes.”
