For today’s edition of #futurefridays let’s talk about Virtual Reality, and how it will change the Future of how Businesses operate today.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were trying to choose a resort to go to for your vacation, and you made your decision based on the pictures you saw?

What if there was a way to “try before you buy” by way of virtually immersing you into the resort, so you can experience what it’s like being there first-hand. Would that make your decision-making faster?

That’s what Virtual Reality can do for you. And it has many more use cases other than that.

Join me as we explore what Virtual Reality is and how it can be helpful in changing the way we do things within and around your business.

Let’s start with a video that defines what Immersive Technology like Virtual Reality is, and some examples of how it applies in the world today.

Video © TEDx Talks

I hope you learned a lot from this video.

Now let’s talk about some use cases where Virtual Reality can apply in businesses today.

Travel Industry

This is pretty much the example I gave you at the beginning of this article.

It’s how you can virtually be immersed into the location you want to visit without actually going there. That way, you’ll get a glimpse of what it’s like, which will help you make a better decision.

Gaming and Entertainment Industry

Well, this is pretty obvious, as this is really where VR has been adapted a lot. And people will continue to take things to the next level in this space.

Aviation and Drones

Particularly unmanned flight. The Air Force does this all the time, where they fly unmanned aircraft and drones remotely.

Even drone companies like DJI have come up with a way for you to pilot their drones while wearing a VR headset, giving you a unique experience as if you were flying like a bird in the sky.

Improving Safety for Hazardous Jobs

There are several use cases for this. For example, imagine being a crane operator at a shipping dock. How many storeys do you have to climb up and down just to get to and from your actual “work desk,” and what if you had to do that several times a day?

What if you can instead control the crane from the ground, safe inside an office cubicle, through Virtual Reality. How much safer and easier do you think your job will be?

Training

The way by which you train employees can be taken to the next level with the help of Virtual Reality, especially if it involves having to travel to certain locations just to learn a skill.

For example, if you need to train employees at a call center in the Philippines what it’s like being inside the main store of your business in London, so that when they talk to customers about it, they can relate to them as if they have already been there, then it would make better sense to let them experience it in Virtual Reality, rather than pay for their travel and accommodation just for them to experience it in real life.

Vehicle and Property Sales

For anything short of smelling the leather, you can probably use Virtual Reality.

For example, if you wanted to buy a new car, but wanted to see what the various color options of the Alcantara leather would look best, why not experience it via Virtual Reality?

Looking to buy a house, but couldn’t make a decision without seeing what it would look like fully furnished with all the beds and furniture? Well what if you could see it in Virtual Reality?

Ending Note

The use cases really span far and wide. I have given you just some of the examples.

Nevertheless, I hope you found this to be of value, and gave you a sense of what Virtual Reality is and where it can be utilized in real-world scenarios.

If you have any questions, reply with a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

And if you think this is helpful and you’d want to get updates on the next article, subscribe for updates, and get a free copy of my book – The Business Optimization Blueprint.

The post Virtual Reality and its Impact to the Future of Businesses appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

Some people use the terms Customer and Stakeholder interchangeably. But I would like to argue that they are different.

So for today’s #wisdomwednesdays I will simply draw the line and differentiate the 2.

Customer

A Customer is simply the recipient of the output of your process, whether that’s a product, or a service.

Stakeholder

A Stakeholder, on the other hand, does not necessarily have to be a recipient of your goods or services.

However, a Stakeholder does have a vested interest in how well your process performs.

A Stakeholder, as the name implies, holds a stake in your process.

Let me give you some specific examples.

Examples of Customers

There are 2 types:

1. Internal Customers
2. External Customers

Internal Customers are your process partners. They are usually in the same company or line of business as you, but are your downstream processes or department.

You yourself are an Internal Customer of the process or department upstream of yours.

External Customers are the clients who purchase your company’s products or services.

Examples of Stakeholders

As with Customers, there are also 2 types of Stakeholders:

1. Internal Stakeholders
2. External Stakeholders

Examples of Internal Stakeholders are your Employees, the Management and Leadership Team, and the Owners of the Business.

Examples of External Stakeholders are the Government, Regulators, Investors and Shareholders, Suppliers and Vendors.

What about those who are both Customer and Stakeholder?

There are some instances wherein the lines are blurred. Still, it’s important to make a distinction between a Customer and a Stakeholder.

For example, Internal Customers are also Employees. Therefore they are both Stakeholder and Customer at the same time. However, as an Internal Customer, their concern is the accuracy and timeliness of the output of your process. But as an Internal Stakeholder, their stake in your business is their job security and safety.

Same line of thinking goes for Suppliers and Vendors, like if you outsource work to them.

Another example would be employees, management, and leadership who also own stocks of the company. In this scenario, you can be an Internal Customer (I need the output of my upstream process to match my process’ input requirements), Internal Stakeholder (stake in job security and safety), and External Stakeholder (stake in the company performing well such that I’ll be getting return on investment) at the same time. It’s worth noting that your mindset is different for each.

Ending note

Customers, specifically External Customers, are more powerful than Stakeholders.

This is because these Customers have the power to fire you, your boss, and everyone in your company, including the CEO and all Stakeholders, simply by taking their business elsewhere.

So take good care of your employees, because they will, in return, take good care of your customers.

Once you take care of your customers and your employees, your business process will thrive, so long as you keep improving and innovating, and your stakeholders will be happy.

I hope you learned something today.

If you want to learn more, download a copy of my book for FREE (for a limited time only) – The Business Optimization Blueprint, and learn how you can improve your business process and take it to the next level.

The post I Bet You Didn’t Know the Difference between a Customer and a Stakeholder appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

It’s #wisdomwendesdays so it’s time to share some of my knowledge.

If you’ve ever been tasked to solve Customer Satisfaction or Customer Experience problems for Contact Center Operations, didn’t you ever wish there was some sort of industry standards document that you can refer to and see what the rest of the industry is doing, what standards they are implementing in terms of stuff like metrics, forecasting, performance management, and so forth?

Well, lo and behold, there is one. And this will be a great starting point and reference for you to be able to solve Customer Experience related problems.

It’s called the COPC Standard, and you can learn about it more on the video below.

After which, click on the link below to get access and download the COPC Standard documentation.

https://www.copc.com/copc-standards/

For more articles on CSAT improvement, visit: https://robbieagustin.com/category/blog/customer-experience/

The post How to Become Good at Solving CSAT Problems for Contact Centers appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

Have you ever experienced being part of the management team in a customer contact or any customer-facing environment?

If so, you very well know that one of the most important metrics is Customer Experience.

Now how many times have you been in a situation where the biggest pain point in your team was poor conversation skills?

How many times have you tried to create skill builders to improve the ability of your employees to provide great Customer Satisfaction? Have you ever been frustrated to find that a lot of these didn’t work out as planned?

How many times has the blame been put on the recruitment team for not having an effective hiring process?

If you can relate to the above questions, and one of the main problem areas that you’re looking to solve for is how to create a better hiring process, then I’d like to share with you what is probably one of the best ways to hire for good conversation skills.

I call it “Speed Dating Audition Hiring.”

I just called it that but I didn’t invent it, really. It’s the innovative hiring process being used at Menlo Innovations – a software company based in Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

How it works is no secret as there’s actually an article at INC that describes this in detail.

But the gist of it is that instead of the traditional hiring process where you invite interviewees for scheduled interviews with canned questions that they can anticipate and provide canned responses for, and then interviewers and hiring managers spend hours and hours to finish interviewing 50 or so candidates, how it works is as follows:

1. 20 to 50 candidates come in all at the same time for a 2-hour interview schedule in a large venue with tables and chairs
2. The interview process will be like a speed dating event where the candidates must get to talk to at least 3 other candidates during the 2-hour period, as if they’re auditioning for a role
3. All the interviewers and/or hiring managers have to do is to set the ground rules and discussion points, and then they go around the venue to observe and take notes
4. Once the 2-hour event is over, the candidates can leave, and then the interviewers and/or hiring managers can sit down for the next 3 hours or so to deliberate on each candidate

The deliberation process is simple too. They just go through the list of candidates one by one, and based on their notes:

1. If they unanimously say yes, then the candidate can move on to the next phase of the hiring process, which can be an exam or a traditional panel interview
2. If the unanimously say no, then the candidate will not be hired
3. If they have a discrepancy, where some say yes and some say no, then that’s the only time when they need to discuss, deliberate, and decide.

Ultimately this will save a lot of time for both the interviewers and interviewees, and shorten the entire hiring process as well.

The post The Best Way to Hire for Good Conversation Skills appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

These are things that may have been going on under your noses and you probably never noticed.

1. Not Being Agreeable

Whatever the customer says at the start, agree to it (you’re right, I agree, I’m with you, etc.).

Even when you think the customer is wrong, you have to agree. Because in his mind, he is right, and he’s reaching out to you to make it right.

If you greet his concern with a “you’re wrong” remark, the customer will carry that remark throughout the rest of the conversation.

People like to associate themseves with other people who agree with them. Like how we sit with people we know when we’re out in an event, iť’s because we want to be with people who agree with us.

So agree with the customer. Be agreeable.

2. Not Gauging the Customer’s Emotions, and Influencing the Change

What is the customer feeling at the onset of the conversation? Dissatisfied? Neutral? satisfied?

How can you influence the customer to change his emotional state within the discussion?

For example, you can “influence” a neutral customer to become happy by ensuring your positivity is contagious.

You can influence a satisfied (positive) customer to remain happy by mirroring his/her positivity.

If you’re neutral on your emotions, you will influence your positve customer to become neutral like you.

As for customers who are already Dissatisfied from the get go, be positive. Your customer may forget everything you say, but he/she will not forget how you made them feel.

The recap and closing question technique will help in this case e.g. you reached out to us regarding X, Y, and Z concerns (and you were feeling negative at that time), and what I did was A, B, and C, and here are the next steps/what’s going to happen next and I assure you that fill in the blanks (which I hope makes you feel positive now) and say that with complete reassurance, confidence, and positivity.

3. Not Being Positive!!!

You need to have a positive can-do attitude all the time. But make sure the responses are appropriate.

For example, if a customer reaches out to vent their dissatisfaction, and your response is “I’d be more than happy to assist you…” then it’s probably not appropriate given that scenario.

I think that being Positive is such an important point that it deserves to be highlighted.

If there’s at least one thing you would take away from this article, it should be this, as you will impact both being agreeable (#1 above), and influencing the change in the customers emotions (#2 above).

Make it a policy so that the entire workplace is surrounded by positivity. Keep the environment positive. Highlight positivė behaviors.

Make it known to the people around uou that you do not tolerate negativity. Have it as a policy: No Negativity allowed here; Only Positivity allowed here.

4. Not Focusing on the Customer

When speaking to the customer, focus on the customer as if he/she were the only person in the world at that point in time

Don’t sound busy, distracted, or as if you’re doing something else like trying to reiterate what the customer was saying while pulling up information.

If you’re not able to fluidly multi-task, do one thing at a time, and set expectations if you need to check on something.

5. If you cannot explain the problem better than the customer, they will not associate you with the solution

This is probably self-explanatory but you get the picture right?

And that’s it! 5 quick and dirty insights on some of the most stupid things people do that negatively impact customer satisfaction.

This article is part of the Customer Experience series.

What do you think? Did I miss anything? Comment below if you think there are more!

The post 5 Stupid Things People Do that Impact Customer Satisfaction appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

Have you ever been the recipient of an escalation, where the customer is completely flustered, angry, and irate?

What was it like dealing with situations like that? Stressful isn’t it?

What about your colleagues, how do they deal with similar situations? I’m sure you’ve heard them go through the endless apologies to try and appease the customer.

But the thing is, customers are not after your apology. That wouldn’t do anything for them, and it will not get them closer to achieving what they want.

What they want is a result. And that’s what you should be focusing on.

Ask your customer this question:

If this call were to accomplish everything you could have possibly hoped for, what would that look like?

See how that changes things, and take it from there. For example, your customer might say things such as:

• “First I want you to investigate why the person I am complaining about gave me a false promise. I want an email update to be sent to me regarding that.
• Second, I want you to tell me what the situation really is, why things are not progressing based on the agreed timeline.
• Lastly, I don’t want to go out of my way to proactively reach out to you again to follow-up. I want you to contact me at this time of the day, any day this week, to give me an update.”

Take note of what your customer said, and work on addressing those.

Most importantly, do the Recap and Closing Question technique to wrap up everything that was discussed, and ensure the best chances of getting a high CSAT score.

If you want to learn more CSAT improvement techniques applicable to just about any industry, read my article on The 4 Proven Building Blocks for Best-in-Class Customer Satisfaction.

And if you haven’t yet, download your FREE (for a limited time only) eBook – The Business Optimization Blueprint, where I show you a straightforward 5-Step Process how to transform your business and take it to the next level.

The post How to deal with Irate Customer Escalations appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

This is one of my favorite techniques that always yields great results when it comes to moving the needle on CSAT.

I call this The Recap and Closing Question technique. Let’s talk about how it works.

Imagine you have a customer – Vincent, who was calling to about a negative experience during his previous call.

He might go and say:

• “First I want you to investigate why the person I am complaining about gave me a false promise. I want an email update to be sent to me regarding that.
• Second, I want you to tell me what the situation really is, why things are not progressing based on the agreed timeline.
• Lastly, I don’t want to go out of my way to proactively reach out to you again to follow-up. I want you to contact me at this time of the day, any day this week, to give me an update.”

Take note of what your customer said, and work on addressing those. Most importantly, do the Recap and Closing Question technique to wrap up everything that was discussed, and ensure the best chances of getting a high CSAT score.

For instance, you can recap by saying:

“Alright Vincent, to recap what we have agreed:

1. First, we will investigate why you were given different expectations compared to what actually transpired, and we’ll send you an email regarding that.
2. Second, I’ve explained to you the actual process, where we are currently, and what the next steps will be, and you have also agreed to the new timelines of 3 business days from today by when this should be completed.
3. Lastly, as agreed, I will contact you 3 business days from today at 9am to give you an update on the completion status.

With that, were we able to accomplish everything you were hoping to get done in this call?”

Tip: If you have a CSAT survey that goes out at the end of the call, ask your closing question using the same keywords used in your CSAT survey.

For example, if the question in your CSAT survey asks the customer: “Have all of your concerns been resolved in the call? Yes/No.”

Then your closing question after the recap should be:

“Apart from that, have I resolved all of your concerns in today’s call?”

If the customer says “Yes,” then there is a great chance that when the survey comes, your customer will immediately recall saying “Yes” to the exact same question during the call, and would therefore stay consistent on the survey.

If you want to learn more CSAT improvement techniques applicable to just about any industry, read my article on The 4 Proven Building Blocks for Best-in-Class Customer Satisfaction.

And if you haven’t yet, download your FREE (for a limited time only) eBook – The Business Optimization Blueprint, where I show you a straightforward 5-Step Process how to transform your business and take it to the next level.

The post How to improve CSAT with The Recap and Closing Question technique appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then this article is meant for you, as I will share with you the 4 crucial building blocks on how to improve customer satisfaction.

Hint: It’s not just about Empathy and Rapport. If you do any sort of customer service, then it is assumed that you are already doing proper Empathy and Rapport. The strategies I’m about to share with you extend beyond that.

For over 10 years, I have used these strategies with great success, regardless of whether your service center is in-house, or a BPO.

My objective in sharing this is to help make this world a better place. Imagine a world where everywhere you go or anyone you speak to, you’ll be treated with excellent customer experience.

I hope that this article would bring value to you as a reader, and that you implement some of the best practices indicated below, as applicable to your organization, so that you, your children, and the next generations can experience a world filled with great customer experience.

From my experience doing process improvement and consulting in the customer service space, whether captive or outsourced, the post above from Daniel Ord summarizes it so well, I couldn’t think of anything else to add.

What I could do though, is expound on each item, and talk about it in detail based on my own personal experience.

Here goes…

The 4 Building Blocks for Improving Customer Satisfaction

1. Establish the right success measures
2. Implement a training and coaching system
3. Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement
4. Establish a Customer Feedback Mechanism

If you want me to expound on each item, then read on.

1. Establish the right success measures

“We’ll measure you on the right things so you can focus on producing great conversations”

Let me give you a specific example.

In Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, there was study done in an insurance company that covers doctors for cases regarding medical malpractice. The purpose of the study was to find out the likelihood of each doctor to get sued.

A common approach that you would normally do is to check the training and credentials of each doctor and analyze historical data to see how many errors they’ve made over the past few years, would you agree?

However, a better approach that was taken was to listen to brief snippets of discussions between the doctors and their patients, quite similar to how you would do call listening in a contact centre environment. The results were mind-blowing.

It was found that patients don’t really file lawsuits because they’ve been harmed by bad medical practices, especially so if it’s a doctor that they like. The reason that they sue is because of bad medical practices and something else happens to them – something to do with bad conversation behavior.

The bad conversation behaviors they felt were when the doctors were:

• Rushing you
• Ignoring, disregarding, or not listening to you
• Talking down on you, or not treating you with respect

Apparently, the worst behavior that a doctor could ever do is establish dominance over the patient.

These exact same behaviors apply to a customer support environment, and any other conversation for that matter.

That being said, if you look at the other side of the spectrum, good conversation behaviors were also identified. Visits to the most liked doctors usually went like:

• The doctor would start by setting expectations with the patient e.g. “First I will examine you, then we will talk about your ailment, the possible solution/s, and then I will leave time for you to ask any questions.”
• They also are good at active listening e.g. “Go on, tell me more more about that…”
• They are very positive to be around with – they laugh and tend to be funny

Now if you want to take this approach to the next level, you can utilize the Kano model.

On this diagram, you’ll see 3 lines:

1. Basic Needs – these are the most basic expectations of your customer, such that if you fail to provide these, you’ll get immediate customer dissatisfaction. In our doctor example, that would be having the bad conversation behaviors.
2. Performance needs – these are usually the things that differentiate you from the others, and make your customers like you over your competitors. The more of this you do, the greater the customer satisfaction. In our doctor example, we can say that it would be the good conversation behaviors of the most liked doctors.
3. Delighters – these are the things that would “wow” your customers. But what differentiates a delighter from a performance need is that if you fail to provide a delighter, it has no negative implication on the customer.

To give you an example, I brought my wife to see the doctor recently due to asthma attacks. He’s one of our favorite doctors as he exhibits all the proper behaviors that I’ve mentioned earlier.

But the “wow” factor that he provided was when he gave my wife a free inhaler, went on the explain the advantages over her previous inhaler, and even demonstrated how best to use it.

It was completely unexpected, though he mentioned it was just stock that was given to him by a medical representative, and was going to expire in the next 4 months. But nonetheless, it would have cost us more than the consultation fee if we were to purchase that.

As an additional “wow” factor, he even provided a spacer for the inhaler, to ensure my wife gets the most effective intake of the medication.

Had he not provided these freebies, he would still have been one of our favorite doctors. But what he did was definitely a delighter for us.

To sum things up:

• Identify Dissatisfiers and do less of those or eliminate them completely
• Identify Satisfiers, find out how you can replicate and do more of those
• Listen to your top performers to identify Delighters, and share those best practices to everyone

Ultimately, it’s all about a changing your mindset. Instead of having a transactional relationship with your customers, how do you turn it into a transformational relationship that will make a significant impact to their life because you made a difference?

2. Implement a training and coaching system

“We’ll help you through ongoing training and coaching to keep you sharp”

First of all, I firmly believe that one key to making this successful is that your supervisors, trainers, and coaches should be the top performing people when it comes to CSAT. Why? Because they should be able to set an example, and be a role model for their people as to how to give great customer experience. Dan Lok talks about this to a great extent.

For example, if a customer service representative is not performing as expected, the supervisor can pinpoint what works and what doesn’t, and show the right way of doing things.

e.g. “The line you used here can still be improved. Try saying this instead…” or “At this portion of the conversation, your tonality was like this. Try increasing your tonality when you say this phrase…”

Second, your training should be targeted. I understand that there are processes that everyone should adhere to, such as call flows, policies and procedures, standard working instructions, scripts, disclaimers, regulatory requirements, etc. Those are all process-related and I get that. But that’s not what I mean when I talk about targeted training.

What I mean by targeted training is to identify the competencies and opportunities of individuals or groups of individuals, and help them be better at what they do by providing them with specific action plans that target their greatest opportunity area.

Yes, area, not areas. They key is to not confuse them with so many action plans. As James Schramko would say, it’s not about how much stuff you implement, it’s all about results.

He goes on to say that you should think about what you can do to remove distractions, and allow them to deliver a great result with the least amount of things.

Implement less stuff, increase your frequency of contact, and your people will get significantly better results.

There are a number of ways by which you can segregate the population, and do a further deep-dive analysis. Some examples based on what I’ve done in the past are by:

• Performance buckets (top, middle, bottom, or by quartiles, or another option can be consistently meeting or exceeding the goal, close to achieving the goal, far from goal)
• Skillset / complexity
• Call arrival pattern by time in the day, day of the week, week of the month, etc. (I’ve found that some people tend to be inconsistent at maintaining the proper behaviors that drive good CSAT)
• Shift buckets
• Teams or Supervisors
• Tenure
• Background (in one study I did I’ve found that those that do not have call center experience but have a background in nursing or care giving tend to do well)
• Behaviors (empathy, tonality, knowledge, use of scripts, compliance to action plans, good and bad conversation behaviors as indicated above)

Third, coaching should be a positive experience. Managers would usually say praise your people in public, and give feedback for course-correction in private.

I would argue that there’s a more effective way of doing this. You must praise the positive behavior that we want to reinforce by catching them when they’re doing something good. This is a strategy used by the best coaches in the world, and is probably one of the best ways to build self-confidence in every individual within your team.

Here’s a video that talks about how effective coaching builds self-confidence for your coachees.

Lastly, when it comes to coaching, the best implementation in my experience was where people are coached on behaviors, rather than on numbers.

For example, when you are doing call listening to see how an agent is performing, the usual output is a filled-out audit checklist with a score based on how many items the agent was able to comply to on that checklist. That is usually turned into a % percentage score and will be the basis of the agent’s performance for that specific call.

Instead of that, the most effective approach based on my experience is to evaluate what behavior the agent needs to be coached on, and have them focus on improving that one single behavior that is common across all of his calls.

The behaviors you want may differ from one industry to another, but a great starting point, if you haven’t determined any yet, would be the good and bad conversation behaviors that we’ve talked about above in #1. Establish the right success measures.

3. Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Ultimately, the goal should be to achieve Zero Call Resolution. What that means is customers don’t have to reach out to you in order to get their problems resolved. Though that concept is beyond the scope of this article, you can let me know in the comments below if you’d want me to write a separate article regarding that.
Meanwhile, this article focuses on what you can do from within the contact center team.

“We’ll fix problems so you don’t have to deal with the same issues over and over”

Getting from “Problem” to “Solution” isn’t as straightforward as it seems. But in its most basic form, you need:

1. A “Problem Identification” platform
2. An “Idea Generation” platform to solve these problem

The Problem Identification platform can come in different forms. One example is an Employee Feedback channel. But for this to be effective, it has to be focused on process-related issues.

Once a problem is logged, other employees who experience the same thing can “up-vote” problems, so the most painful ones come out on top.

Another example of a Problem Identification platform is a Risk and Issue log, where people take note of Risks (potential problems) and Issues (current problems) as you encounter them.

These are tracked over time and action plans must be put in place, especially for those that occur the most often.

Speaking of action plans, that’s where the Idea Generation platform comes into play. This is where employees become engaged and are empowered to submit solutions to the problems.

This is most effective when the solutions are created in the mindset of how you can solve the problem not once, but forever.

To ensure sustainability, all these effective solutions are logged in a Control Plan, where you will have preventive and corrective actions.

• Preventive actions are the things you do to ensure that the problem does not occur again
• Corrective actions are the steps you take in case the problem still occurs

Sometimes, there needs to be a bridge between what’s identified in the list of problems, and how to get to a solution. Because in certain cases, the solutions aren’t that obvious. Or sometimes, no matter what solution you implement, it just won’t work.

That’s where you need to do Root Cause Analysis, where Lean Six Sigma can be utilized to great effect.

That’s a whole new topic entirely. I have spent years practicing and honing this craft that it’s just not possible to write about it in one single article. But you can always read up on Value Stream Mapping, identifying the different types of waste, root cause analysis tools, the DMAIC approach, etc. to see what’s applicable in your organization.

Though if you’d like to learn Lean Six Sigma and even get certified, then head over to our courses page for details.

4. Establish a Customer Feedback Mechanism

“We’ll stay in constant contact with our customers – because their needs and wants change – we’ll have to adapt too. And when we adapt we’ll not just tell you how, we’ll tell you why.”

Most mature call centers already have this in place, in the form of a Customer Survey. Though the method and frequency may differ between companies or industries, what’s important is that we get to solicit feedback from our customers to check if we did well, and get it on a per call and per agent level.

Ideally you’d want to be able to capture feedback from the customer such as:

• How was their customer experience?
• Was their concern resolved?
• What behaviors specific to the agent that assisted them did the like or dislike?
• Free-form verbatim expressing details of their experience

But of course what matters is what you do with this data to help improve the business as a whole, as well as help the agent that assisted the customer become a better performer.

Though you can do call listening to find out what works and what doesn’t based on the survey responses, you’ll be very limited in coming up with high-impact solutions unless you do some additional analysis.

Good analysts can take that data and do some number-crunching to find out what behaviors drive good CSAT. And with a little more effort, do text analytics on the customer verbatim to find trends, opportunities, best practices, etc.

They can also help you create a bridge plans and a glidepath analysis using regression to forecast when you can possibly hit your goals depending on what interventions you put in place, and even find out at what point their performance will potentially plateau, unless you do something different.

These types of analysis are out of scope of this article but if you’d like to learn how to analyze through data science, then head over to our courses page for details.

Conclusion

Daniel Ord said it best

“We’re in the business of producing conversations. That’s what we ‘make’ here. So let’s focus on producing the best conversations ever.”

References:

1. Daniel Ord
2. Dan Lok
3. James Schramko
4. Malcolm Gladwell

I hope you found this article to be of great value, and that you learned something you can implement straight away.

Now there’s an entire science behind this. So if you want to learn Lean Six Sigma, be Certified, and take your career to the next level, then head over to https://robbieagustin.com/courses and enroll today.

Or at the very least, if you haven’t yet, download your FREE (for a limited time only) eBook – The Business Optimization Blueprint, where I show you a straightforward 5-Step Process how to transform your business and take it to the next level.

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