Contact center success depends completely on the quality of your customer experience. Today, brand loyalty rarely wins over poor customer service. As PWC learned in a survey, 32% of consumers will leave a brand after a single bad experience, offering little room for error.
If your contact center struggles to satisfy customers, you may need to evaluate your customer experience. There are many factors that contribute to your service quality, so it’s critical to consider everything from your agent support to the tools you use to connect with customers.
In this blog, we’ve covered some of the reasons you may struggle to satisfy consumers with your contact center’s customer experience. As you evaluate your customer service, these five potential issues are a great place to start.
1. Customers need multiple interactions to solve a single problem
Convenience is key for most consumers. If a caller has to reach out more than once or repeat their problem to multiple agents, there’s a significant risk of losing their business. According to Microsoft’s 2019 State of Global Customer Service Report, over 75% of consumers expect agents to have access to their previous history with the company. A CITE Research survey also found that 41% of customers have stopped using a service or product after they were passed from rep to rep during an interaction.
Giving agents access to tools that instantly show customer history can easily eliminate this problem. Consumers will get the help they need while your contact center can enjoy higher satisfaction results.
2. Your internal communication isn’t unified
It’s clear that customers don’t like talking to multiple agents, so what can your employees do when they don’t have the answer the caller needs? Providing an internal chat feature allows agents to quickly share information without putting customers on hold or transferring them throughout the company. Even if employees need to communicate across departments, your collaboration tools can optimize communication for increased first-contact resolution and quicker response times.
3. Agents lack adequate resources
When it comes to contact center tools, quantity is not the same as quality. Though your agents may have a tool for every action they need to perform, switching between these apps and programs may create more problems than it solves. Lacking the tools customers demand, such as omnichannel capabilities, can also set an agent up for failure. A disjointed or inadequate agent toolbox may lead to lost customer data, unnecessarily long handle times, excessive costs, and agent fatigue. Even worse, customers will suffer just as much as agents.
Rather than loading agent desktops with every app and software option they might need, look for a cloud contact center service that offers all of these features on a single, cohesive platform. You can keep agents equipped and productive, preparing them to wow your customers in every interaction.
4. Low workplace satisfaction
When agents struggle to find the resources or support they need to succeed, the interactions they have with customers tend to reflect their dissatisfaction and frustration. If an agent can’t quickly find the answer a customer needs, for example, the interaction can quickly escalate, even though the agent is trying their best to offer great service. The more frustrations agents experience, the worse their connections will be.
If your customer satisfaction ratings are low, employee feedback can help you pinpoint the problems your contact center is facing. Use this insight to understand how you can improve customer service processes for your agents so they can give customers the help they need.
5. Focusing on metrics over the customer experience
Lowering handle times is always important for a contact center, but focusing on the numbers over the customer experience can lead to problems throughout your operation. When lowering handle or wait times is your main goal, the pressure to work faster may lead agents to offer less-positive experiences. Instead, use your metrics to find the areas that need improvement and create actionable targets. Keep the focus on creating an exceptional customer experience and determine how your other goals fit within that mindset.
How would you rate your contact center’s customer service? Learn how to supercharge your customer experience by optimizing employee engagement with our new EX+CX guide.
Originally published Aug 17, 2020, updated Dec 30, 2022
