Contact centers are the next big thing. Small businesses are either outsourcing to contact centers or operating them. If you outsource this service, it helps to know that your vendor is doing everything possible to ensure the highest success rate in providing outstanding customer service. This article, however, is for the small and not-so-small businesses that are operating and managing contact centers. (Although, in either case, money spent on in-house conversation training is an investment in the future of your company.)
When your customer service agents are happy, your customers – and their customers – know it. Here are the tools you need to ensure higher employee and customer satisfaction.
Customer Loyalty Starts With Employee Satisfaction
Finding out how to cut costs while still providing outstanding customer satisfaction isn't as difficult to accomplish as you might think. Take Harvard Business Review’s article, which discusses the "service-profit chain." The links of the chain show that profit and growth stem from customer loyalty, which comes from customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is influenced by the value of service. The value of service comes from “satisfied, loyal, and productive employees.”
We can accomplish customer loyalty by creating more clear and concise conversations with the contact center. This can potentially cost more initially, but the payoff is tremendous.
1. Listen to your people.
It’s important to take time to speak with employees not only to convey information but to receive information from them about their experiences at work. If employees are receiving training (some don't receive any at all), this training rarely, if ever, helps employees have more productive conversations with themselves and their co-workers. Especially as a contact center employee, it's usually (or perhaps always) geared toward conversations with customers.
Listening to your employees is important for a couple of reasons. First, it gives you the opportunity to hear firsthand what is going on in the office and any challenges they may be having. This is how you keep your finger on the pulse of the center. It also gives you the opportunity to praise your employees for a job well done, not because they asked, but because you took the time. Simple words of praise go a long way in motivating and encouraging employees to feel more confident and to continue to provide outstanding customer service.
Enlist the entire management and supervisory team to walk the floor an hour a week, at a minimum. This lets the staff know that you are available to hear their concerns or give them a pat on the back for a job well done. In my experience, the management team appears more accessible when they are seen engaging with employees on their own "turf." When we take the time to learn what our employees need or expect to do their job, we can improve their work experience. This will help to create more loyal employees and more satisfied customers. This creates more synergy in the workplace, which creates more synergy with customers.
2. Solve for absenteeism.
Absenteeism is one of the biggest challenges in contact centers. Without employee satisfaction, higher absenteeism can become an unwanted reality, and creating success in your contact center could be an uphill climb.
If contact center employees are stressed with no relief — such as mandatory overtime for weeks or months, or management is so focused on numbers they forget their employees are human — employees will start to call out sick or take vacation time. In my experience, when employees are not satisfied with their employment environment, they are less likely to think about the consequences of their absence.
In the past, I supported a contact center with a 12% absence rate when I arrived. In just six short months, that rate was cut in half. This was accomplished by having conversations that aimed to improve job satisfaction. Internal conversations like this are necessary to improve employee goodwill. It could mean simply recognizing the mutual benefits of the employee/employer relationship and being committed to continuing the healthy growth of it.
3. Create a flexible, positive environment.
It is important to allow flexibility and to reward your employees. One study by Zenefits shows that 68% of people believe work perks are just as important as health coverage, life insurance and other traditional benefits. Eighty percent of employees who had high benefit satisfaction also ranked job satisfaction as extremely or very high. A kind word or praise for a job well done will affect employee satisfaction more than you might imagine.
In conclusion, I leave you with two thoughts:
1. Allow your employees opportunities to speak with you or someone on the management team (other than their supervisor) about what works and what doesn’t. This applies to processes and personal challenges.
2. Be open and receptive to change in spite of the confines of the needs of the business.
Clear, concise conversations are minor shifts that provide major impact in a contact center while providing outstanding service to customers.
