2020 was a particular year that shook the global economy revolutionizing rapidly the way people live their lives. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, people have been faced with many different restrictions, such as social distance, closed shops, and remote work, that have impacted their physical and mental state and also the life-work balance. All these aspects contributed to make people more anxious, cautious, and frustrated, and -as a result of restrictions – all their activities moved online increasing their demand for immediate and efficient customer services.
How has customer service changed from early 2020?
Customer service has rapidly become the most crucial part within the product/service experience. Understanding customers’ current state of mind and resolving their issues immediately or in a very short time has become the main challenge for most companies.
When people were not allowed to move, the traditional in-shop experience failed and the customer service department absorbed the subsequent increased demand for online support. This changed the customer experience (CX), and recent surveys and research say that this is likely to be an irreversible changeover.
Coronavirus pandemic is still affecting our lives and it isn’t easy to predict how long it will take for this situation to be solved. Fortunately, many companies understood that pandemic was about to change customer habits and reacted consequently adapting their customer service to the new reality. Maybe for the very first time, they gave due weight to agents’ experience (AX) and understood agents’ wellbeing makes the difference in a contact center: a happier staff makes a customer feel more valued.
That is why companies have now widely adopted UC applications that make work easier for their staff, especially when working remotely, decreasing their stress level and empowering their work.
“If you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”
Daniel Goleman
How to enhance AX and CX?
“Ok, but what should I do to make both my customer service more empathetic and my team more satisfied?”. Here are some tips:
- The complexity of your service must not be perceived by your agents: while speaking to customers, your agents should be able to easily connect with their supervisor, access the customers’ records or do any other action required to get the issue resolved. The technology behind the scenes is something that can boost your customer service, but cannot interfere with your agents’ workflow. That is why it is important for you that your contact center solution helps your team perform at best through customized IVR, CRM integration, collaboration platforms. The IVR feature, for example, filters incoming calls making sure that when customers get the line they are speaking with a representative from your company that can really help them solve their specific issue.
- Make sure you have a dashboard where agent’s metrics are collected and available for you to analyze. This is very important to keep agent’s productivity under control and step in as needed when your team needs help
- Support your teams: make agents feel connected with the company and they can count on you when they are in trouble. You can achieve this with internal communication tools or activating some support features in your contact center like, for example, the barge-in option.
- Trainee your team: it is very crucial that beyond their ability to provide technical support, they improve their active listening skills, as maintaining a positive and proactive tone with customers influences the way they perceive the service. If agents show empathy, customers can rate your service positively, even if you were not able to solve their problem immediately.
Automation is helpful as long as it is not at the expense of human relationships. You can invest in intelligent technologies and automation to help your service instantly answer FAQs, but remember don’t overdo it with automation. In this particular historical period, human interactions are rare and therefore valued.