Customer experience is often measured from the customer’s perspective. While it isn’t out of place, however, neglecting the most important link – the agent – to exceptional contact center experiences would be at your detriment. This article addresses contact center agent experience and how your choice software plays a huge role.
Before we dive in, let’s look at a CCW study that shows Covid-19 accelerated consumers’ adoption (82%) of digital channels for resolving queries. Agents are at the end of these requests.
Customers want the best “treat me like your one and only customer” experience. But how can you achieve this?
It’s almost impossible to consistently deliver unique customer experiences when your agents do not have the best working conditions, significantly affecting their morale.
We discussed agents’ working conditions here – Avoiding employee burnout is an asset to your organization.
The UX of your contact enter software can also be called an agent experience.
What is Agent Experience (AX)?
Your agents are like engines of automobiles, and like engines, they need to be oiled to perform optimally.
Oiling can be in the form of providing them with the right tools to perform their tasks seamlessly, interacting with customers without much complexity.
Every cloud-based contact center software must be agent-centric by prioritizing user experience, keeping happy agents, and satisfied customers.
A great Customer Experience (CX) is a result of an even better Agent Experience (AX)
Contact center managers who are concerned about enhancing customer and agent experience should consider the following advantages of cloud-based contact center software;
Clean and user-friendly interface
When your agents focus more on navigating software than satisfying customers, that is a recipe for poor customer experience.
Your agents shouldn’t spend time figuring out the basic functionalities; neither should they require weeks of training before understanding a contact center software.
A fluid and user-friendly contact center software maximize a single dashboard to deliver an excellent agent experience.
Agents don’t need to navigate through numerous windows to sort customers’ complaints.
Systems that stress your agents, making customer experience complex, lead to low productivity, morale, and customer satisfaction.
The better equipped your agents are, the more convenient they can resolve customer challenges and increase your organization’s customer affinity.
Live software coaching and training
After several weeks of training and getting your agents to have complete knowledge of your cloud-based contact center software, it is sometimes unavoidable that they get to forget specific functionality.
Forgetting certain functionalities isn’t much of a worry when agents are new to the system and still trying to get the hang of things.
It is necessary to have software that offers quick tips to agents to perform optimally to get acquainted with the software.
An excellent contact center software also has built-in coaching tools to leave feedback on agents’ interactions.
Feedback serves as a guide/reference for your agents the next time they face any form of difficulty while using the software.
Agents can absorb feedback without stepping out of their queue and get acquainted with new tips while working.
Quick Channel transition
One of the struggles your agents shouldn’t have is opening too many apps to reach customers.
That is a frustrating process that reduces the morale of agents and costs a longer resolution time.
Your agent should be able to switch from one channel to another without having to end interactions.
Customizable reports with Google BI & Analytics.
Data helps a business make informed decisions. Metrics such as first-time resolution rate per agent, satisfaction rating, average call time, abandoned call rate, campaign success, and dropout rates are essential to understanding your contact center’s operations level.
With built-in Google BI & Analytics, you take advantage of real-time monitoring, contact history, and graphical custom reporting for fast insight into your team’s performance. In addition, KPIs and quality metrics are displayed in real-time and kept for as long as you need.
You can also access the performance of your IVRs to identify potential challenges such as call abandonment rate or drill down into specific branches of call flows.
Besides getting insight into serving customers better, supervisors can use this data to learn more about the challenges agents may be experiencing in real-time and improve their experiences.
If agents aren’t performing optimally, this can be spotted early and fixed in time.
Call Center Studio users benefit from the Data Studio integration that provides a fully customizable live report that the management can share periodically.
Cloud-based Contact Center enhances remote work.
Remote work has become a necessity for businesses in 2020, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A cloud-based contact center software that maximizes remote work functionality should be your choice to maintain agents’ safety.
The safety of agents should be your top priority while providing them with the necessary tools to get their job done seamlessly, efficiently, and conveniently.
Contact software features such as WebRTC allow your web browsers to participate in audio & video transmission and engage in screen sharing collaboration. WebRTC eliminates any expensive hardware system. It extends your contact center’s functionality with a single browser interface that works as a phone without burdening your agents with the need for plug-ins or telephony infrastructure.
Agents can work remotely from anywhere in the world and at their convenience. Here’s a customer success story from some of the world’s largest BPOs.
Platform integration
Overburdening your call center agents with several applications due to integration limitations eliminates the sting of delivering an excellent customer experience.
Some cloud call center software requires agents to use different tools to manage their operations rather than a single application that allows a seamless transition from one application to another.
Working with multiple tools slows down customer satisfaction delivery and leaves the agents in a state of mental fatigue.
Integrations increase your agent’s productivity, reduce wasted time, and help you deliver a better agent experience.
Call Center Studio has many built-in integrations, including popular applications such as SAP, Salesforce, Zoho, MS Dynamics, Ingenico, WhatsApp Business, Facebook Messenger, and Webchats.
Set up a proper AI-Powered IVR
An effective IVR takes the burden of repetitive requests off agents’ desks.
In industries with repetitive tasks such as cargo companies, fast food chains, an AI-powered IVR takes care of this, eliminating time spent by agents resolving customer requests.
Agents have more time to focus on more complex cases that require the human touch.
Also, a properly set-up IVR can reduce the need for customers to speak to live agents significantly.
AI-powered IVR equipped with Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), Speech to text (STT), Text to Speech (TTS), and Google Dialogflow features enables personalized conversational experience.
Sentiment analysis enhances customer experiences through understanding the caller’s intent and gauging their emotional state, providing a win-win experience for the agent and customers.
Scalability limitations
Some cloud-based contact center software puts a limit to scalability, which usually leads to agents being overburdened with work or having to work multiple shifts to deal with increasing call volumes.
That leads to agent fatigue, low morale, and often lack of emotional control when dealing with agitated customers.
Scalability ensures top performance and efficiency irrespective of changes in cycles – increased or decreased call volumes, upsizing, or downsizing.
Call center studio’s infinite scalability allows you to add or remove agents when the need arises. In the case where you need to add more agents, the process is straightforward.
You save your existing agents the trouble of increased call traffic, giving them a better experience working in your organization.
Final thought
While having happy customers is a fundamental goal for organizations, delivering a better agent experience will help your business achieve that goal faster.
Talk to your agents regularly to know their pain points when using the software. Please get to know the reason for underwhelming performances and work to fix it.
Supervisors must learn to listen more to agents because they are crucial to happy customers.
Do you have questions about cloud-based contact center software, or would you like to find ways to improve your agents’ experience? We offer a free consultation session to discuss any questions you may have about cloud solutions.
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