Driving Excellence: Empowering, training, and incentivising employees to deliver unforgettable customer experiences

28/07/2023

Driving Excellence: Empowering, training, and incentivising employees to deliver unforgettable customer experiences

There are still a number of industry leaders and business owners who believe that a stand-out advisor (in person) experience is still at the heart of every leading customer experience. So how do you stay ahead of the game to ensure your employees are empowered, motivated, trained and incentivised to deliver exceptional customer outcomes, which in turn will ultimately lead to improved business outcomes and profitability?

Invest in your contact centre and more importantly in your advisors

Talking to customers is a privilege. Not every business function has the opportunity to build relationships, foster loyalty, drive lifetime value, and strengthen the bond between the customer and the products and services they buy. Companies that invest in the contact centre and customer experience are much more likely to see increased revenue and acquisition. That's why contact centre agents - the ones who speak with customers on a daily basis – are likely to be seen as an organisation's secret weapon in 2023. Agents that are empowered with advanced technology and tools like automation have the opportunity to drive significant business outcomes based on the information they learn from speaking with customers.

Employee Experience = Exceptional Customer Outcomes

During 2023 its expected more than ever, that employee experience will translate into customer experience. Over the course of the past few years, there’s been a lot of discussion around the employee experience and how it plays into attracting new talent. But in our current (and on-going) post-labour shortage, it will centre around retention and education. Employee satisfaction is at the forefront of every company’s mind, sometimes even more so than customer satisfaction. More often, businesses are realising that without an empowered and happy employee, you won’t be able to translate that to a confident and happy customer. It’s a completely symbiotic relationship. By giving your employees the tools and information they need to do their job well, they’ll be happier, more efficient, and impactful. In turn, this will enhance the customer experience – leading to a more dedicated customer, and a more loyal customer means increased revenue.

Do Customers Still Crave the Human Touch?

There is no doubt that in our current climate, we are seeing more and more consumers expecting an omnichannel experience, yet they crave human-to-human interactions for customer service. They expect a real, live, human agent to be available when they want one. In our growing digital world, voice still reigns when it comes to the customer experience. 2023 will be a year of empowerment for contact centres and managers need to shift perspective to position agents as brand guardians. Contact centres are a brands virtual front door to enriching customer experiences and need proper technology to meet the rising consumer expectations heading into 2023.

Real Time Coaching will Support Retention Strategies

In the Customer Contact Centre industry, more companies will invest in capabilities that deliver real-time coaching to agents. With turnover at the agent and supervisor levels continuing to negatively impact companies and the agent-experience delivered, real-time coaching helps smooth out the retention curve as it provides agents with insights such as reducing their rate of speech, using more positive language, tips to de-escalate, surface policy in real time based on what the customer is saying, and prompts to stay on brand to name a few. With supervisors having to take on more staff, real-time coaching tools will provide scale to supervisors so they can focus on agents requiring deeper levels of coaching. Finally, this capability will also be used as a retention tool and as a differentiator in the hiring process when looking for top talent.

2023 - the year of the Customer Service Employee – Here’s Hoping!

Turning our backs on the days when working in a contact centre was associated with low skills, low morale and low pay. When technology was introduced to lower staffing levels through indiscriminate automation - without thought for the impact on the customer. Tomorrow’s hero brands know that simplified and exceptional customer experience is the only way to ride out the current economic challenges and even claim more market share. And that this can only be provided when contact centre employees are valued, trained and supported to provide exceptional customer experiences.

Conclusion

Despite the investment in digital self-service tools, the demand for live help from a fellow human being remains strong. These are critical interactions and can make or break a relationship. However, successful live interactions require skilled, resilient, and empathetic agents enabled and supported by the right technology. But, labour markets worldwide are tight, and these types of individuals are in short supply. When you combine that with a perennially high attrition rate in the customer service space, particularly in contact centres, that poses a problem. Therefore, it is essential that brands increase their focusing on the employee (agent) experience as they seek to upskill, support and retain their existing agents and attract new ones. Those that do will survive and thrive and those that don’t will quite simply get left behind.