Mike McCarron, VP of sales at Gladly, talks about how remote call centers can efficiently and effectively deliver personalized experiences to customers, and provide many other benefits.
The move to work from home (WFH) for agents within the customer service world has been gaining momentum over the past several years for all the right reasons. We know that consumers prefer customer service that feels personal – 84% go out of their way to spend more moneyOpens a new window with brands that deliver personalized customer service experiences. A remote call center can efficiently and effectively deliver personalized experiences to customers and provide many other benefits – including agent work flexibility, cost savings, access to on-demand surge-capacity resources, and general agent working environment – to companies and their agents.
With the onset of COVID-19, many brands were forced to adopt a WFH policy overnight if they hadn’t already done so. Some companies who have been forced to accelerate their WFH approach have done well to make the transition, whereas others are still navigating uncharted territory in terms of how to make it work.
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There are many lessons to be learned from those that have successfully made the move to a full WFH model. To run a distributed customer support team well, here are three areas to focus on:
1. Invest in the Tools to Do the Job Well
If you’re not using a cloud-based, fully-integrated platform that natively supports all of the communication channels to manage customer service, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity. Consumers have embraced the omnichannel service world faster than most organizations have been able to accommodate, largely due to having the wrong tools and solutions in place to engage customers as they move across channels. In fact, according to the Customer Expectations Report 2020Opens a new window , 86% of consumers expect conversations with agents to seamlessly move between channels. Most legacy customer service platforms claim to be able to deliver omnichannel service but fall well short of customer expectations if those customers move across channels for a given issue that they raise.
Now is a great time to close that gap by evaluating whether the systems are in place are adequate to deliver the desired experience you and your customers expect. Additionally, looking at ways to bring centralized knowledge, context of customer purchase history, CSAT feedback, and comprehensive insights and metrics across all channels helps agents and supervisors have a single view of the customer and all that is required to deliver great service.
2. Empowerment and Authority to Do the Right Thing
There are few things more valuable to a customer in the service experience than working with an agent that has the authority and is incentivized to solve their problem quickly and satisfactorily. There are also few things more empowering to an agent than feeling like they can resolve nearly every customer issue that comes their way. WFH agents need an extra portion of empowerment and authority, because their ability to walk down the hall or call in a manager in real time for “approval†may be more challenging than it once was.
Companies that have successfully migrated to the WFH model have put in place clear guardrails within which all agents can operate, and which gives them latitude to make the right decisions on behalf of their customers. In most cases managers and supervisors will approve 90% of the reasonable asks that come to them from customer service agents anyway, so why not streamline the process to give both customers and agents what they need to deliver great service. Additionally, celebrating the successes of agents delivering great service to customers while working within the approved guardrails is a great way to show agents the empowerment to solve the customer’s issue is real, and encouraged.
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3. Ongoing Training, Enablement, and Feedback
For teams that have traditionally worked from home, tips and insights that are shared in a centralized office are hard to come by. As a result, effective WFH teams have found ways to create an office communication culture digitally. Whether that’s a virtual “stand-up†where employees can connect via video to start their day or product trainings to ensure agents stay up to date on changes and new features, these types of regular communications with remote staff are essential to keep people connected.
Additionally, regular check-ins are critical to maintaining the feedback loops normally in place in an office, and ensuring that agents have what they need to be successful. If remote agents are struggling, there should be a way to share feedback to make sure they feel heard and understood, and that supervisors can address issues quickly to keep the team moving forward together.
As we look to the coming months – and the COVID-19 pandemic remains unresolved – there’s no doubt that the only way to keep customers and employees safe is by continuing to run call centers remotely.
But this begs an important question: will the call center ever look like it once did? It remains to be seen, but we’re bound to see the modern call center evolve out of this crisis into something that looks entirely new, and that is an exciting opportunity to explore.