Contact Management Magazine Issue 2 2017

THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAGAZINE ISSUE 2 • 2017

The

Operations Issue ❯❯ Customer experience: The uncomfortable truth

❯❯ Creating a boutique experience at a big box store

❯❯ Power-up your customer interactions

❯❯ 10 ways to master customer complaints on social media

❯❯ Applying behavioural economics in contact centres

❯❯ GoodLife Fitness reveals its contact centre success secrets

The Operations Issue

Customer experience: The uncomfortable truth

By Andrew McNair

T

he world has formed a digital skin.

Business models and services have changed forever.

Customer expectations have matured in kind.

A tipping point is fast approaching as emerging customer experience (CX) robotics further enable a new reality. Digital transformation dominates most change agendas and virtual assistants (chat bots) have been voted the top channel growth focus for 2017. At the same time, IoT deployments are set to double.

A powerful wave is advancing. Demand for digital capability as standard is being forced by service consumers, but new research indicates that organizations are strategically challenged to keep pace with adaptive customer behaviors.

Digital crisis or redemption The digital dilemma is deepening and organizations urgently need to choose a path between digital crisis or redemption. The CX landscape demands a new approach, yet organizations around the world are failing to develop their CX strategies. In fact, just one in 10 organizations (9.5%) considers their digital business strategy to be optimized and it’s increasingly leading to disjointed CX solutions.

Under nine per cent can provide connected customer journeys that span across available contact channels.

This, alongside poorly designed solutions that lack the required functionality, means that digital is not displacing traditional phone interactions—or reducing cost obstacles—at 2 | contact management

Issue 2 • 2017

The Operations Issue the speed companies anticipated, as digital and automated channels fail to meet user needs. In fact, despite a plethora of channel choice, first contact resolution rates are worse in 2017 than they were two decades ago.

That’s all according to the latest research from Dimension Data’s 2017 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report – Digital crisis or redemption: the uncomfortable truth.

The report, now in its 20th anniversary edition, addresses all aspects of the CX spectrum—from organizations’ strategies to operations to technologies and more. This year, a record-breaking 1,351 organizations across industries and in 80 countries spanning the Americas, Asia Pacific, Australia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe participated in the research.

Disruptive innovators The results show that traditionally shaped organizations are witnessing disruptive innovators entering the market and reimagining ways of doing business. These digitally based challengers surf the wave of the digital opportunity, change the industry, drive customer expectations and reshape established behaviors.

Digital capabilities provide organizations with the opportunity to provide greater choice, ease and productivity. Yet, it’s clear from organizations’ responses to 2017’s research that there are leaders and laggards. Just 41% of organizations polled state their strategy for digital business is delivering and under a quarter of that believe it to be optimized. Fiftyone per cent do not have a digital strategy in place at all.

Results reveal an uncomfortable truth on the design and delivery of CX. Despite some 81% of organizations citing CX as a competitive differentiator and 71% listing it their top strategic performance measure there’s significant evidence of CX being more talk than action. The reality is that just 13% of organizations self-rate their CX delivery a nine out of 10 or better, and one in three organizations (36%) don’t have a manager appointed who is responsible for all customer experiences.

A connected customer journey Disparate systems are a challenge and disparate management is a threat. Omnichannel solutions are deemed critical, yet most organizations struggle to optimize their strategy for digital, if it even exists. It’s causing CX to become disjointed. CX transformation needs a strategy.

Connected CX journeys need design. Robotics is a reality and the speed of change means future proofing your technology and your approach on the human touch.

The challenge that most organizations are faced with is that they are not organizationally structured to manage CX holistically. Often customer interactions are owned or delivered across different functions and departments that are not aligned or which simply work differently.

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The CX operating strategy should entail clear guiding principles and cross-functional working groups or a representative CX governing body— supported by strong metrics and organization-wide calibrated data.

CX delivery is also being damaged by a lack of process

management, particularly across the expanding choice of digital pathways. Personalization, intelligent automation and the ability to connect customer journeys powered by intelligence from analytics will do Continued on page CM 10

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The Operations Issue

Power-up your customer interactions Applying behavioral economics in contact centres for better business outcomes

By Venkat Chandra

C

ontact centres are critical components of business strategy for sales, customer retention and care for many organizations. The quality and effectiveness of customer interactions is therefore a vital driver of value as the behavior of consumers has profound impact on business outcomes in a competitive landscape.

Needless to say, approaches that nudge consumer perceptions positively toward the brand will have significant economic benefits. Traditionally, companies have used standard call flow and scripts to guide the agent’s customer interaction. These call flows and scripts embedded common-sense techniques designed based on experience to drive consistent customer experience.

However, with the competitive landscape becoming increasingly crowded, companies have far greater stake to make each customer interaction count.

Today, many companies are seeking more innovative approaches to engineer customer experience. Behavioural economics (BE) presents a great alternative for contact centres to more effectively impact customer perceptions, leading to better business outcomes and higher customer satisfaction.

Behavioral economics (BE) 101 Behavioural economics is the scientific study and understanding of why people act and behave in a certain way and how they can be nudged toward a particular direction. BE combines economics and psychology to provide frameworks for interpreting and anticipating human behaviour and consumer decisions. The following are some of the key principles underlying BE: • Behind all customer decisions, there is there is a gut feeling, intuition or rule of thumb.

• People’s decision making is not always rational and affected by range of cognitive biases.

• Decisions are heavily influenced by context and how information (and choices) are presented.

Relevance of BE in contact centres Contact centre executives are increasingly under pressure given the fierce competitive landscape to deliver better customer experience at a lower cost while driving desired business outcomes. BE provides powerful new tools/ techniques to enable improved ROI: • Driving greater value from the interaction; • Building competitive advantage by differentiating 4 | contact management

customer experience; and • Creating loyal customers.

Applying BE—practical examples The accompanying chart presents samples of BE concepts that have wide applicability in contact centres, including examples of how they can be applied to drive better customer experience and improved business outcomes. This will provide a good framework to better appreciate the role BE can play in positively impacting the contact centre outcomes (see chart).

Critical success factors To successfully embed principles of BE in contact centres, the following are critical success factors that contact centre executives need to consider: • Be watchful of ethical boundaries: BE principles are focused on nudging consumers toward making decisions that are in company’s interests; however, its important to differentiate activities that might be manipulative as it walks a very fine line (e.g. ensure its used by properly trained agents).

• Leverage expertise: Application of BE requires domain expertise and ability to perform experimentation to validate results. Its important to leverage appropriate expertise for successful roll-out.

• Involve key stakeholders: BE initiatives require involvement of various stakeholders (agents, managers, etc.) from the beginning. It’s critical they feel part of the process and their feedback be constantly used to refine as appropriate.

• Performance management: For benefits to be sustainable, robust KPIs need to be established to measure/monitor success (including embedding it in agents’ and managers’ performance scorecards).

• Start small and follow a structured approach: Embedding BE requires a structured approach and it is important to start small.

The following summarizes typical steps to roll-out: • Define strategic goals; • Identify hypotheses and prioritize; • Select pilot and prove value/business case; • Develop pragmatic roadmap; and • Implement initiatives (based on priority sequentially).

Conclusion BE offers fresh tools and techniques to enable organizations to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of contact centres by driving greater value from customer interactions.

In a consumer-driven economy where “perception is reality” and organizations are working within a fierce competitive landscape, BE can offer tools to build distinct competitive advantage.

Venkat Chandra is CEO of Stratscient, a startup focused on delivering innovative strategic consulting solutions leveraging a renewed man-machinemethod ecosystem re-imagined to meet the complex client needs of the “New Economy.” Chandra has ~15 years of exceptional client service track record across North America working with top global consulting firms.

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The Operations Issue

BE Concept

Description

Application

Loss aversion

People value losing something more than gaining.

This concept has wide application across queues (particularly sales and retention) where, by articulating the loss potential, consumers may be nudged towards a better outcome.

Anchoring effect

Anchoring is a type of cognitive bias where consumers tend to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (“anchor”) when making decisions

Agents can use this by providing a less-desirable option for consumers that will create a mental anchor first. Then they provide an alternative that will be more desirable for them (thereby increasing the probability of the consumer picking it).

Social norm bias

This refers to the “peer pressure” effect. This is a tendency where if other people think something is good, people assume it may be good for them too.

Agents can enable consumer decisions in favour of an option by providing some peerrelated statistics around that particular choice (e.g. # of people in the same location making a particular choice).

Default effect

Consumers tend to select the option that will minimize cognitive effort. Because of which the nature of the default option impacts what they opt for.

An agent could present choices by stating/setting a default (that is optimal for the company) if no active choice is made by the consumer (e.g. “Most of our new customers start our services with bundle X. Do you want to subscribe to it or do you want me to provide details about other bundles?”).

Reframing

Decoy effect

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Avoiding negativity and framing these topics positively (e.g. “can’t,” “won’t” or “that’s not policy”).

Also called ‘asymmetrically dominated choice,’ refers to how preference for one option over another changes as a result of adding a third similar but less attractive option.

Agents can reframe the way they position their statements by consciously avoiding negativity. For example, saying “…let me walk you through the steps that may enable you to expedite your appointment” instead of “…cannot expedite your appointment unless you do…”

This can be very useful, particularly in sales queues where customers often have choices to make. For example, a sales agent of a telecom company may present three bundle options to buy with the third option (which is less attractive than the first two) added to nudge them toward one of the first two.

Do you make decisions about your marketing operations?

Are you responsible for customer acquisition, retention or loyalty?

Is your department in charge of fulfilling orders or customer service?

Sign up NOW for a free subscription to Contact Management magazine.

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Contact Management is a Lloydmedia, Inc publication.

Lloydmedia also publishes Financial Operations magazine, Canadian Treasurer magazine, Canadian Equipment Finance magazine, Payments Business magazine and Direct Marketing magazine and Contact Management magazine.

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The Operations Issue

Creating a boutique experience at a big box store

By Tara Kelly

W

hy do we love boutiques? Hip, independent stores with a beautiful, eclectic assortment of merchandise appeal to our sense of individuality. At a boutique, we can find something truly different, an item (clothes, jewelry, furniture, art— anything, really) that makes a statement about our own sense of style.

Another thing that makes shopping at boutiques so 6 | contact management

special is the personalized attention we receive in a small store, where the owner and assistants tend to know customers’ names and understand their taste. Can a big box store replicate that experience at scale?

Some say no, pointing out that size, automation and technology form barriers to intimacy. But with the

right strategy, the opposite can be true.

Digital isn’t the problem—it’s the solution Big box stores do more of their business online today than ever before, and critics cite an increasingly digital approach as a factor in the Issue 2 • 2017

The Operations Issue

With a digital strategy that captures and links data and delivers data-driven messages at the right points on the customer journey, retailers can generate higher sales. impersonal feel of a megastore visit. But that’s only true if the big box retailer fails to “think outside the big box” on customer outreach. With the right digital strategy, one that creates an exceptional customer experience, digital can be the gateway to a boutique feel in a big box setting.

The first step in creating the right digital strategy is to understand that you need data, and, just as crucially, that you must use it effectively. From the customer’s perspective, this strategy will only work if they feel that you know them as individuals and are offering genuine value. If you get that component right, customers are more than willing to interact on digital platforms and the relationship can grow.

Human-digital interactions are becoming more common and accepted—just ask Siri or Alexa! The thing to keep in mind is that multiple platforms are involved in creating the customer experience, including text, social media and automated voice interactions. Retailers who embrace all platforms and deliver a consistently excellent customer experience can gain a huge competitive edge.

The customer journey is the key Customers come to your store in search of a diverse array of items, but most have three simple requirements in common: convenience, minimal friction and one-on-one attention. Their interactions with your brand at every point along the customer journey will be evaluated by these standards and, if you deliver, you can increase sales and build loyalty.

To create a boutique-quality experience, start with mapping out the customer journey to account for every touchpoint between the customer and your brand. You’ll need to know where customer interactions take place (online, on the phone, in the store, on social media, etc.) and what happened as a result of each. It’s crucial to capture and link personalized data—and to make sure that you never get it wrong.

Think of this process as customers inviting your brand into their lives—consider it an affirmative RSVP when customers share personal data, indicate preferences for contact methods, join a loyalty program, respond to an offer, check in during an in-store visit or attend an event.

Just as you wouldn’t insult guests in your home by calling them the wrong name, ensure that you can apply customer data accurately every time.

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What does a connected customer journey look like?

So, what does a connected customer journey look like? It fulfills all three requirements that customers are looking for in an interaction with your brand: it is convenient; it entails minimal friction and it features oneon-one attention. For a big box store looking to replicate the boutique feel, the connected customer journey can involve communication that is automated, data-driven and channel aware.

This might take the form of voice or SMS notifications that invite customers to special store events, notify them about a delivery or let them know an item ordered online is available for pickup in the store. The messages must be data-driven so that they accurately reflect the customer’s information and preferences (calls, texts, emails, etc.) as well as store inventory levels and other relevant operational data.

Retailers who want to communicate across multiple channels should ensure the data they have on customers is relevant and complete (e.g. mobile numbers versus landlines), secure customer permission for contact and obtain information on which channels the customer prefers. Loyalty programs and in-store check-ins (for example, via a tablet) are great ways to generate and update this information.

Cross-channel consistency is also critically important. In-store signage should match its digital counterparts.

Personalized messages sent at scale to customers should be consistent with communication they receive in the store, on social media or through

other channels. Not only must you know who your customer is, your customer should know who you are as well and consistency makes that possible.

Boutique in a big box Part of the appeal of boutique shopping is the unique and inspired merchandising, so retailers who are hoping to replicate the boutique experience will also want to pay close attention to displays, foot traffic flow, etc. They’ll need to motivate employees to deliver personalized service and build relationships, and loyalty program opt-ins managed via digital devices can be a critical part of that process.

Retailers have so much to gain by creating a connected journey and consistently delivering an outstanding customer experience.

Today, more people than ever do research online and then visit brickand-mortar locations, where they’re much more likely to buy. With a digital strategy that captures and links data and delivers data-driven messages at the right points on the customer journey, retailers can generate higher sales.

But a well-designed digital strategy can do more than boost sales numbers: when done correctly, it can connect customers and retailers on a human level, even in a big box setting.

Instead of placing distance between the retailer and the customer, technology and digital tools can bring them closer together. And what could be more human and personal than that?

A serial innovator, published author and founder, president and CEO of SPLICE Software, Tara Kelly (@tktechnow) is passionate about technology’s potential to change lives for the better. She has consistently channeled that belief into developing technologies that enhance operations, enable better service delivery and improve the customer experience. This has led to the creation of three customer experience companies and turning an innovative idea into a patented, proprietary technology (US Patent Number 9348812) that harnesses data streams to create personalized, automated messages.

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The Operations Issue

10 ways to master customer complaints on social media

By Nicole Klemp

C

ustomer service today is customer-driven and omnichannel. When someone is reaching out to your brand on social media, you need to be listening and ready to respond.

While we find that most companies want to include social as an integral part of their customer experience, many feel like they don’t have a good plan or strategy in place to address comments or inquiries. Regardless of where your social media effort stands, it’s always smart to evaluate your social response strategy. Based on discussions with our partners (of all shapes and sizes), we came up with 10 basic rules to follow when it comes to social response.

1. Always respond as fast as possible Quoted in a recent Forbes article, social media expert Jay Baer shares: “A lack of response is actually a response. It’s a response that says, ‘we don’t care about you very much.’”

It may seem like an obvious practice, but many organizations don’t respond to every comment or inquiry— good or bad.

There are always underlying factors that prevent companies from responding on their social media channels, like corporate bureaucracy. Companies operating in highlyregulated industries may be less inclined to respond on social, for fear of saying something that could “get them into trouble” (see rule number two). For those situations, it’s important to have approved responses on hand.

2. Make a plan, follow the plan and have official statements ready Whether it’s a critical issue that needs to be addressed by a service agent or a customer commenting “I really love your products”—in which case a simple “thank you!” will do—every interaction deserves attention. Employees need to be enabled to respond quickly to these comments and questions without the need to run everything past a PR or legal department first.

That’s where official responses and blanket templates come into play. Those statements are important for addressing complex issues or 8 | contact management

complaints from customers. Consider a car company doing a major recall that affects millions of vehicles, or a power company dealing with outages after an ice storm. In those cases, a number of customers are going to take to social media to ask questions, complain, or alert the company of issues. It’s important to, at the very least, let these customers know their concerns have been heard and direct them to more information if possible.

Responses prepared for frequent customer inquiries can also cut down on response time, which is important, as 42% of customers expect a response within 60 minutes and 32% expect a response in just 30 minutes.

3. Empower customer teams to respond consistently It’s important for every customer representative to be on the same page when it comes to social response. If customers are getting different answers to questions or different levels of service depending on who they talk to, it can be harmful to your reputation.

This is where tracking responses (rule number four) and having some responses prepared ahead of time (rule number two) can save a lot of time and prevent customer service headaches.

4. Track, track, track Tracking social activity can help you better serve customers. Since you’re treating every social interaction the same way you would treat a customer email or phone call, it should be noted in the customer record whenever possible. Being able to measure and take action on your customer data is an integral part of delivering a great customer experience. And keeping track of social activities and the appropriate responses can be useful for employee reference and training later on.

5. Be a real person It’s no surprise that people like to talk to other people—not robots. The more human you can make these digital interactions, the better. Companies like Zappos are nailing customer service by making interactions more personal and personable.

6. Align core messages with executives and company representatives on social Most organizations have official corporate social handles, but many also employ executives or other thought leaders who are active on public social channels. A corporate guide of social media dos and don’ts should be available to your employees.

If you have an individual who decides to go rogue and post inappropriate things on their social media accounts, it may be a good idea to ask them to dissociate those Issue 2 • 2017

The Operations Issue accounts from the business or set them to private.

It’s great to have individuals who act as a mouthpiece for your brand, as long as they are only tweeting/ posting/sharing things that align with your company values and messaging.

7. Know what folks are saying about you Other companies have a tendency to treat social media like the “comment box” at a restaurant.

If someone puts a card in the comment box, the staff will read it and respond to it if necessary. But instead of waiting for someone to put a card in the box, employees should be walking around the dining room listening to what guests are saying about the food, service, etc. The same logic applies to social media: Always be monitoring what people are saying about your company, products, services and industry. If you aren’t sure how to do this, there are listening tools available to help—like Social Studio on Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

8. Learn from competitor chatter In order to stay competitive, it’s just as important to listen to what people are saying about your competitors. Maybe people can’t say enough great things about Competitor X and their products, or maybe they’re getting berated with complaints—either way, knowing what customers and prospects like and don’t like is extremely valuable.

This tactic is also helpful for inserting yourself into a conversation. Say, for instance, that a competitor’s product lacks a feature that your product has and a customer is complaining about not having it on social media. A wellcrafted response could bring you a new customer.

the appropriate messages and responses.

10. Measure how effective your engagements are Social media engagements are important to map on the customer journey and, just like you may measure email activity or online shopping habits, knowing how your customers interact with your brand on social is just as important when it comes to providing a good customer experience. Are your social interactions with customers leading to more sales? Are customers less satisfied after interacting with you on social media? These are important marketing metrics to track. Surveys can be a great tool for collecting meaningful feedback and gauging customer satisfaction.

Whether you’re an organization of 10 people or 10,000, responding to your customers, prospects and fans on social media is worth the time and investment. Not responding to a customer question on social media is like not answering the phone in a call centre—not good for business.

And on the flipside, executing great social response can drive loyalty and wow customers. As Baer said: “If you’re willing to invest in customer service and customer experience at a level your competitors aren’t, that is a differentiator. That is the defining factor that will set you apart.”

Nicole Klemp is a staff writer at Appirio, a global cloud services company that helps customers create next-generation worker and customer experiences using the latest cloud technologies. Nicole has worked in digital marketing for nearly a decade, studied marketing at Indiana State University and has an MBA with a focus on management and leadership.

Continued from page CM 11

outside where it matters most: in the field, first as a general manager and then as a divisional manager of operations, working with the associates and members, understanding their needs.

This supplement—in the form of deeply understanding customer and staff needs combined with empathy—gives Julie rare insight into how exactly the contact centre, with all its bells and whistles, can better serve associates and members.

Now my question to you is: Are you supplementing your contact centre with a deep understanding of who you’re actually trying to help?

Well that’s a wrap for your very first contact centre Total Body Workout and insider look into how the world’s fourth largest fitness chain runs a successful contact centre.

To get your contact centre firing on all cylinders, use GoodLife’s FIT FIX 20 Minute Total Body Workout approach. Spend 20 minutes, three times a week working these success secrets into practice. That means determining how you can begin implementing these ideas—in practical ways—within your contact centre.

Emily Nielsen launched Nielsen IT Consulting, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations achieve breakthrough results using contact centre and unified communication technologies, in 1999. If you’d like such rewarding results you’re encouraged to contact Emily at enielsen@ nielsenitconsulting.com or by calling 519-473-5373.

For breaking news and in-depth features, visit our website at www.contactmanagement.ca

9. Be where the customers are Do your research and find out what social channels people are using to interact with or talk about your business. Your customers are unique and people tend to use different platforms depending on the industry. For example, a clothing retailer might get a lot of activity on Facebook, while a B2B services company might interact with customers more often on LinkedIn. No two companies are exactly alike, so it’s up to you to know your audiences and meet them where they are—and cater to them with Issue 2 • 2017

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The Operations Issue Continued from page CM 3

most to reshape CX capabilities in the next five years. CX has to adapt by committing to the opportunity created by the digital revolution.

Digital transformation Successful digital transformation will only be delivered by a strategy that re-engineers how processes, people, technology and the organization can be mobilized in an aggressive customer-orientated and change-orientated manner. One of the key focuses of a successful digital strategy must be the displacement of legacy methods of working and the associated costs.

This means not only changing the CX with a new application or with improved customer service but re-arranging the entire organization to become more agile and responsive to customer needs. Innovation is key and organizations need to build an internal competency that enables them to continuously adapt and thrive through explorative innovation and prototyping. The development of this competency starts with strong leadership and an innovative culture, which in turn best serves customer needs.

CX is core to digital transformation and digitally relevant businesses are focusing on aligning system user experiences, both internally and externally, to drive positive disruption. There’s an overwhelming appreciation from organizations on the importance of CX. Establishing trust is the leading driver of CX, followed by the matching of service experiences to brand values. It drives revenues, is proven to reduce costs and even adds to employee engagement levels.

The cornerstone of a CX strategy is to realize that knowledge is power considering data sources that are ever growing. Informed proactive integrated customer management will win versus reactive silos of customer experience. Customer journey mapping and underpinning processes will translate these capabilities to long-term customer acquisition and repeat business.

Leaders embrace CX The uncomfortable truth is that high performing companies that have committed to the opportunity created by the digital revolution are outpacing established market leaders. The benchmark research highlights that top quartile organizations are performing up to 10 times better than the typical standard.

We’ve seen that digital transformation both accelerates opportunities and causes disruption.

Pioneers of the digital age have reimagined business models and processes that have changed customer behavior forever. The height of the bar has been set by blue sky thinkers within green field organizations, where the competitive benefits of legacy and incumbency have a rapidly shortening runway.

The choices you make in your CX and digital strategies will define the future success of your 10 | contact management

organization.

The call to action is apparent: the time to act is now.

Andrew McNair is the editor of Dimension Data’s Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report, and holds overall responsibility—from

research and publishing to the design. He possesses exceptional industry insight, and a wealth of strategic vision which he applies operationally in his combined role as head of solutions. Andrew has over 20 years of consulting and practitioner experience in the CX industry.

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The Consultant’s Corner

GoodLife Fitness reveals the secrets behind its contact centre success If you’re looking for ways to improve your contact centre’s performance then here’s a behind-the-scenes look into how GoodLife Fitness does it (and how you can too)

By Emily Nielsen ecently, I had the special opportunity to take an insider’s peek into GoodLife’s contact centre located in London, Ontario.

At a closed-door meeting with Julie Pontes, director of member experience, I was let in on a wealth of incredible insights. In this no holds-barred interview Julie, with much excitement and enthusiasm, revealed some of her best-kept contact centre success secrets.

While taking notes, there were times when I could not believe what I was hearing and neither will you. Why? Because just one of Julie’s ideas alone could transform your contact centre. If you think I sound like I’m full of beans, then consider this: Julie is running the contact centre behind the world’s fourth largest fitness chain, with some 375 fitness clubs, 13,300 employees and 1.3 million members scattered across 10 provinces and four time zones! That’s an immense challenge. Yet she’s managed to make it work and work very, very well.

So, how do Julie and her team do it? What’s her secret to success? Well, much like with your personal health and fitness, despite what everyone wants to believe there is no “magic bullet.” However, there is hope because there are a combination of things you can do to improve the results of your contact centre’s performance.

Before I reveal some of Julie’s advice and what you can do to improve your contact centre, there are two things you should know about GoodLife first: 1. When you join a GoodLife gym one of the first things a GoodLife trainer will do with you is help you determine your desired fitness outcomes.

2. GoodLife clubs have something called a 20 Minute FIT FIX Total Body Workout. This is a circuit consisting of nine workout machines which would take you around 20 minutes to complete.

Want agents who can more easily handle your customers’ problems and questions?

Now, having said that and in the spirit of GoodLife and its 20-minute circuit, consider the following tips, tricks and secrets a form of a Total Body Workout for your contact centre led by your very own, very passionate personal contact centre trainer Julie Pontes.

Laid out before you now are the desired outcomes you may be striving for and the “exercises” you can do to achieve them. Now then, let’s begin your very first contact centre Total Body Workout.

If so, the exercise for this is to bring your call centre and marketing department together. This means bringing the contact centre “out of the basement” and placing it right into the heart of your business. By doing this Julie has started to provide the marketing team with the insight and exact changes they need to continually optimize self-service

R

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The exercise? There are a number of things Julie would recommend; however, the single most impactful thing you can do is this: hire from within your organization. Why? Because when you do your agents come with the customer experience, knowledge and company culture required to assist customers with more ease.

Want to empower front-line staff with customer-helping superpowers?

Many organizations leave frontline staff to fend for themselves when customers approach them with questions or problems. Often customers are left feeling unsatisfied with the answers received. Not at GoodLife. At GoodLife, Julie has empowered front-line staff (known as associates) with the power of superhuman customer-helping intelligence.

The secret? By running an internal chat line between the contact centre and associates, front-line staff can immediately tap into the knowledge needed to better help members.

Are your agents overwhelmed by inbound calls for basic information?

tools—the website and app—based on immediate customer feedback coming up from the contact centre agents.

Want to dramatically reduce agent turnover rates?

Here’s what Julie would do: Stop promoting the belief that the contact centre is just an entry-level position. Rather than allowing anyone with just a lick of contact centre experience in, try limiting the position to people within your organization. Start promoting a walk-in policy which encourages your current employees to check it out, get a feel for it and to see if they’d like to work in it or not.

The catch? Making this work will depend on your ability to elevate how your contact centre is perceived. At GoodLife, the contact centre was purposely placed alongside other key departments in the head office which is equipped with fitness equipment (obviously!), meditation rooms, pingpong tables and so much more. The result? People actually want to work here.

If there was a “magic bullet” this would be it!

If the previous four ideas are considered exercises then consider this last one a supplement. A magic bullet of sorts to boost your overall contact centre performance.

So here it is: Julie is an outsider.

Despite working at GoodLife for 17+ years, most of those years weren’t spent in the contact centre tinkering with technology or trying to decipher the cold facts and faceless figures contained in contact centre reports.

Rather, they were spent on the Continued on page CM 9

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