How to deliver a consistently great customer experience AND achieve employee engagement

“Sir, please kindly hold on the line while we check on the status of your enquiry.”

Music starts playing in what seems like an endless loop.

In the meantime, the customer grows increasingly frustrated by the minute, upset by the fact that it takes so bloody long to get a reply to a simple query.

The above is a common scenario that many of us encounter in our daily life. After all, the contact centre is an oft-used channel for consumers to interact and transact with brands and businesses. Unfortunately, in this digital age of instant gratifications, their experience frequently falls short of their (lofty) expectations.

Which really begs the question – why haven’t contact centres utilize lean six sigma thinking to optimize their customer journey? Wouldn’t it be great if contact centres can consistently provide a service that is both fast and efficient?

Well, with advances in technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA), this is no longer a pipe dream. RPA is essentially a software robot that mimics human activities, and connects multiple fragmented (and often legacy) systems without the need to alter your enterprise IT landscape.

With RPA, all the mundane, repetitive and time-consuming tasks that your agents are performing (while your customer is waiting impatiently on line) can be automated. Examples of such tasks include record retrieval and updates, checking order status, opening tickets, and many more.

The benefits? The robots are able to perform these tasks in a cheaper, faster, better manner than your customer service representatives (CSRs) can. As a result, your CSRs become more responsive to your customers. And because they are no longer spending precious time retrieving and updating records, your CSRs can spend more time empathizing and upselling to your customers. All this translates to a great(er) customer experience and ultimately, an increased share of the customer’s wallet.

Just as important, you will start seeing your employee engagement goes north, while your attrition rate, the industry’s bugbear, heads south. This alludes to the fact that great customer experience and an engaged CSR workforce is not mutually exclusive.

What most contact centres experience is the vicious cycle of angry, dissatisfied customers leading to high CSR turnover rate. By intelligently leveraging people, process and technology, we can instead transform this into a virtuous cycle. The fast and efficient attendance of enquiries will lead to happier, less agitated customers. This in turn gives your CSRs a greater sense of job satisfaction, and affirms that they are making a positive difference in their work. Consequently, they feel more engaged and are more likely to remain in the industry.

“There is no sunset industry; there is only sunset thinking.”

In summary, the opportunities to transform your contact centre are tremendous. The technology is ready. The only question that remains: are you?

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