Highlights:
- CSAT scores are a measure of customer satisfaction
- By tracking CSAT scores, you can improve the customer experience (and your bottom line)
- Offering flexible communication channels, self-service options, and tools to support agents all contribute to better customer satisfaction and ultimately, better contact centre CX
What’s your contact centre’s CSAT score? Good CSAT scores are 80 per cent and above. If your score is below that, there’s room for improvement.
How can you boost your CSAT score and provide a better customer experience?
What is a CSAT score?
CSAT scores measure a customer’s satisfaction with your business, a purchase, or even an interaction with one of your employees. You can determine a CSAT score by surveying your customers; you simply ask them, “How satisfied were you with your experience?”
The customer then gives a rating. Contact centres typically use one of three rating scales:
- One to three, with one being the worst and three being the best
- One to five, with one being the worst and five being the best
- One to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best
Calculate the CSAT score by adding up all of the positive responses, dividing them by the total responses collected, and multiplying that by 100. Here’s how the formula looks:
(positive responses/total responses) X 100 = CSAT
So, if you had 20 positive responses out of 50 total responses, your CSAT score is 40 per cent, which means your contact centre CX needs improvement.
Why measuring CSAT matters
By tracking CSAT scores, you come closer to understanding what kind of contact centre experience your customers have. Bad contact centre CX can cost you; research shows that over a third of customers would switch providers due to an unsatisfactory customer experience.
There are also benefits to a good contact centre CX: there’s a 60-70 per cent chance of selling to existing, satisfied customers, and after a satisfactory customer experience, 69 per cent of customers would recommend the business to others, while 50 per cent of people would buy from the company more often.
Improving your CSAT score for better contact centre CX
Here’s how you can improve your CSAT score for better contact centre CX:
- Offer customers the communication channels they want
- Minimise wait times
- Support agents with the right training and coaching
- Give your agents the right tools
- Offer self-service options
- Track analytics to determine what the customer experience looks like
Offer customers the channels they want
Ninety-eight per cent of customers jump between channels and devices over the course of a given 24-hour period. They feel comfortable starting a live chat, then switching to a video conference. Or, maybe they’ll start off on the phone and switch to co-browsing.
Improving your contact centre CX involves offering customers the channels they want: telephony, chat (either SMS or social media messaging), and video conferencing. When customers aren’t forced to choose a channel (especially one they don’t like), they have a better customer experience.
Minimise wait times
Research shows that 33 per cent of customers are most frustrated by waiting on hold, while another study states that 60 per cent feel that long holds and wait times are the most frustrating parts of the customer experience.
The right contact centre tools can minimise wait times. A well-designed IVR menu that integrates with business applications automates activities (for example, a customer calling to check an account balance doesn’t need to speak to a representative – the IVR menu could give that person the option to do so, and integration with the account system provides the balance). It can also deflect calls, meaning that it can encourage callers to use other channels (for example, an automated message could tell customers to try using the knowledge base or a chatbot).
Support agents with the right training and coaching
For agents to satisfy customers, they need the foundation of training, bolstered by coaching. In today’s remote and hybrid contact centres, training and coaching can be a challenge because you can’t meet with all your agents face-to-face.
Market-leading contact centre software solves that problem, though. Video conferencing capabilities, screen-sharing, text, and telephony ensure that you can train agents wherever they are.
Additionally, you can coach them once they’re on the job. With whisper coaching and barge-in functionality, you can keep interactions from going off-course.
Give your agents the right tools
Your agents can only help customers if they have the right tools. That means giving them the knowledge and the resources they need to succeed.
A knowledge base contains information agents need to assist customers. Integration with business applications (such as CRMs) provides vital information about a customer’s history with the company.
There are times when an agent needs someone else in the organisation to solve a problem. An internal directory with a presence indicator shows agents which internal experts are available to help.
Offer self-service options
Research from American Express revealed that over 60 per cent of US consumers prefer automated self-service options for simple customer service tasks. It’s not hard to understand why: self-service means they don’t have to wait on hold or for someone to respond to a live chat.
Self-service options such as knowledge bases or virtual agents help customers find information on their own, saving them time and creating a better customer experience.
Track analytics to determine what the customer experience looks like
When a customer reaches out to your contact centre, can an agent resolve the problem on the first try? What’s the average handle time for a call or interaction?
Measuring analytics helps you understand contact centre CX better. It gives you insight into what your customers go through when they reach out to your contact centres, as well as which channels perform the best. With that information, you can make better decisions about contact centre operations.
Improve contact centre CX with RingCentral’s contact centre software
RingCentral’s contact centre software offers the features you need to improve contact centre CX, including flexible channels, self-service options, and tools that support agents. To learn more, get a demo.
Originally published 24 Mar, 2022
