Oops! 5 Things Your Call Center Leader Meant to Say

Forget walking the talk. Despite insistence that today’s business environment is all about the customer, many call center leaders do not even talk the talk.

With its own operational intricacies and customer bases, every business has reason to adopt a unique customer management strategy. At the same time, every business has access to the overarching best practices that define the bare minimum of customer-centricity, and it should be a given that call center leaders adopt those best practices into their strategic routines.

Rarely does that happen. More troublingly, rarely do those best practices even enter the conversation. Cliched as the rhetoric vs. execution argument might be, it does not tell the complete story about the failure of today’s customer management leadership. Many of them, aware that they have no intention of living up to the call of customer-centricity, do not even bother with the rhetoric.

Here, we examine failures at an early stage of customer management strategy—the conversation—and propose alternative dialogue that more adequately reflects today’s appropriate call center vision.

The leader says: We Need Bodies, Hire as Many as You Can
What He Meant to Say: We Need Empowered Agents, Recruit, Nurture and Retain the Best Ones You Can

In a classic case of the chicken and the egg, contact centers, fearing high turnover rates, hesitate to invest extensively in recruiting and agent engagement. Since the agents are "probably going to quit soon anyway," it makes sense to hire en masse and then replace as needed.

The problem, of course, is that said philosophy is one of the main culprits of agent attrition; agents do not feel empowered or valued in their organization, a fact cemented by their low salaries, and thus see little reason to commit themselves to the business. When a better opportunity arises, they leave at the drop of a hat, and contact center leadership rehires.

Organizations must bring that vicious cycle to an end. Seasoned, passionate, empowered agents are not only more comfortable and effective in dealing with customers but also more capable of meeting the business’ efficiency expectations. These agents know the business, know its customers and know how to deliver productive satisfaction across all channels.

As businesses face greater pressure to deliver valuable customer experiences and yet must remain committed to cost-efficiency, they need that crop of agents. They need agents who can seamlessly move from customer to customer—and channel to channel—while functioning as an impassionate representative for the brand. Coaching the agent pool to such a high level will not come free, but if done correctly, it will save the company thousands—if not millions—by averting costly customer service failures and investments into recruiting.

Knowing this, successful customer management leaders begin the agent empowerment journey at the recruitment level, collaborating with HR to identify, locate and onboard talent that gets the business, gets its customers and will commit to serving them. Through incentives, positive reinforcement and long-term career direction, as well as frank, candid coaching and assessments, organizations will more successfully integrate this agent class into the fabric of the company while enabling them to evolve as brand ambassadors and as customer service professionals. The result is a more harmonious contact center and a more satisfied customer base.

The leader says: Did you train agents on the new CRM system and script?
What the leader meant to say: Did you coach agents on their unique skillsets to assure personal development?

Training is essential, but it is only a small portion of the management role. The greater focus is on agent coaching, which assures they develop in a manner more consistent with the appropriate customer service attitude.

Knowing the call center technologies is essential, but understanding one’s brand, that brand’s customers and how he fits into the effort to satisfy those customers is invaluable. Training can only truly advise agents on what to do; it cannot advise them on how to do it, why they are doing it or who they need to be while doing it.

In essence, coaching asks managers to escalate beyond helping an agent become better at handling his tasks. It asks managers to connect with the individual personalities and then develop that personality in a manner beneficial to the agent, the business and the customers. The goal is not simply to make Joe Smith better at working in a call center; it is about making him a better, more customer-centric version of Joe Smith.

Through transparent feedback, an emphasis on unique relationships with each agent, career mapping and a desire to tailor the agent’s role to his strengths (and hone his strengths for the needs of the role), coaches develop the agents contact centers—and customers—require.

The leader says: We can’t afford to offer 24/7 service or to support customers in all channels.
What the leader meant to say: We’ll let customer demand dictate how—and when—we staff our multi-channel contact center.

Business savvy and cost control is essential for today’s contact center leaders.

So, too, is customer-centricity.

While leadership is encouraged to (and often must) find ways to optimize its costs and maximize contact center ROI, it does not get to rewrite the rules. The contact center is there to serve customers, and it must approach the cost needed to meet customer service demand as an unavoidable baseline.

If customers want 24/7 live chat support, a customer-centric business gives it to them. Once the customer commits his loyalty to a brand, he is entitling himself to that level of service. It is not his fault that the business faces cost challenges in delivering that service; the burden, instead, lies with the business to figure out how to manage the costs associated with a customer-centric experience.

Some businesses are comfortable accepting the risks associated with a limited customer service offering. That is fine. But in doing so, they must recognize that they—not the customers—are being unreasonable. And if their customers switch to a provider that offers more customer-friendly support, that customer attrition is entirely their fault.

The leader says: Make sure you focus on achieving an AHT below ___.
What the leader meant to say: Make sure you understand and commit to satisfying customers so that you can attain great feedback, high FCR and strong satisfaction scores.

Contact center leaders must focus on both efficiency metrics and satisfaction metrics. But when sending agents the right message regarding customer-centricity, only the latter matters.

Of course speed is important—both from an internal cost standpoint and a customer experience standpoint—but its relevance to the customer is already covered by a fundamental commitment to customer-centricity. If the agent is truly committed to acting in the customer’s best interest, he will naturally account for customer’s unique value matrix, including such issues as speed of answer and average handle time.

To the extent that AHT matters from a customer experience standpoint, it will be achieved in a customer-centric contact center.

Coaching agents to focus primarily on AHT ruins that commitment to the customer. Instead of driving agents to focus on the customer’s best interests, it asks them to focus on the organization’s best interests, which could result in a poor customer experience. Of course the organization should benefit, but it should benefit as a consequence of creating more customer satisfaction not as a result of actions that could prove detrimental to such satisfaction.

The leader says: Our call center must drive REVENUE for the business.
What the leader meant to say: Our call center must drive VALUE for the business.

The C-level is not remotely misguided for demanding the contact center prove its worth to the business. It should not exist as a sunk cost. Unfortunately, contact center leadership is misguided for interpreting that directive as a call to drive revenue.

Yes, by leveraging high-access and strong relationships with customers, contact center agents are in position to drive tremendous revenue for the business. But they have a multitude of options for creating business value, and if only geared towards the pursuit of revenue, they will sacrifice many of those options.

By focusing first and foremost on building customer satisfaction and loyalty, agents can turn existing customers into longer-term, more lucrative buyers and thus generate tremendous value for the business. By considering "voice of the customer" feedback, agents can push the types of improvements that make the business more attractive to customers and thus more valuable. By adapting service styles to proven success, agents can achieve deeper resolution on each call and thus minimize the frequency with which a customer needs to call back.

And, of course, by understanding gaps between what the customer needs and what the business provides, the agent can generate revenue through upselling and cross-selling.

Unfortunately, if management focuses only on that latter opportunity, it signals to agents that direct revenue generation is the surest—and only--ticket to value. As a result, agents divert effort away from other, experience-driven opportunities for creating value, undermining the multi-dimensional benefit of the multi-channel call center in the process.