Smart Contact Center Solutions: QA, Customer Feedback & Analysis

Tag: customer service agents

  • Gen Z Service Agents : How to Attract and Retain The iGeneration

    Gen Z Service Agents : How to Attract and Retain The iGeneration

    There are more Zoomers than Boomers in the workforce now. The World Economic Forum projected that by 2025  Gen Z will make up 27% of working people in the 38 OECD countries and one third of the world population. They are likely to become some of your customer service agents (and your customers). Are you prepared to meet their needs and retain the Gen Z service agents in your contact center?

    What Gen Z Wants

    Deloitte’s 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey is an international study across 44 countries that finds both generations favor career decisions based on their values. Work-life balance is the most important factor when choosing where to work. 73% of Gen Z employees specifically want permanent flexible work. Listening to your workers and finding a way to create such balance will be an important factor to attract and keep Gen Z service agents.

    They also want jobs that reflect their values. Compared to other generations they are more stressed at work, according to Gallup. They want employers that support their mental health. Considering the impact that stress has on performance and job longevity, it’s good business sense to support worker well being.

    word clouds in shape of hands showing empathy, presence, compassion, heart, speak, mutual, relationship, emotion reaching out to: I hear you, listening, soul, empathetic, awareness, safety, alive, connect, feelings, request, meeting, warmth speak etc.

    How Gen Z Sees the Bigger Picture

    It isn’t just about their immediate needs either. Zoomers want to build a positive future for themselves and beyond. Their concerns include environmental and financial issues with 51% indicating they live paycheck to paycheck. Many feel it will be harder or impossible for them to be homeowners or have a family.

    They also place great importance on climate change. Over half of the respondents to the Deloitte survey research company policies and impact on the environment before taking a job. One in six said they switched jobs because of these concerns and about a quarter plan to. Where your company stands on such issues may impact the talent you attract.

    Much of Gen Z recognizes that diversity is an important part of a company’s culture. This goes beyond the often recognized race, gender and sexual orientation to include neurodiversity. Awareness and discussions about these differences are increasing, and Gen Z is a big part of that change. If you want to engage these workers you’ll need to be able to have such discussions.

    The Gen Z Influence Will Only Get Bigger

    As stated by Edward Segal on Forbes: “The latest research underscores the growing influence of Gen Zers in the workplace and should remind business leaders they’ll have to contend with the challenges and issues unique to this segment of the labor market.”

    With more and more members of this generation entering the workforce you will likely have more and more of them working with you. Understand their needs and show that you value their contribution to your business by creating an environment they want to work in. Give them the tools to succeed in their agent role.

    CSAT.AI patented software not only provides automated quality assurance, but also notifies managers not only of customer sentiment but also agent abuse. This gives your team an opportunity to provide support for agents after difficult interactions and show practical investment in their well being. CSAT.AI acts as an ongoing training tool to enhance agent proficiency and so much more. 

  • 2023 Customer Service Trends: What the Data and the Pros Have to Say

    2023 Customer Service Trends: What the Data and the Pros Have to Say

    The new year brings new trends besides inflation, staffing issues and severe weather. The contact center and customer support industry continue to evolve. Data and customer service professionals have insight into 2023 customer service trends and the reasons behind them.

    Bringing the Store Experience to the Customer

    Ty Givens, a 20+ year customer experience solutions pro, sees this as one of the biggest trends for 2023:

    “As we continue to move into this hybrid work environment where people are working from anywhere. It’s become easy to connect with co-workers with the click of a button on-screen, and businesses will need to introduce that same flexibility for their customers. This year is all about bringing the in-store experience home.”

    – Ty Givens, Founder and CEO, CX Collective

    From 2019 to 2021 the number of people working from home tripled according to the  US Census Bureau. Data projections show that remote work will continue to grow in 2023.  Employees still prefer blending work from home (WFH) with in-person work. Similarly, customers became acclimated to digital buying options during the pandemic. Customers returned to in-store shopping, but still expect to have those digital options available. Plus they want the experience to be satisfying. 

    Improving CX

    According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index May 2022 release, customer satisfaction hit the greatest low in 17 years. Ouch. 

    Forrester’s research concurs. Their US 2022 Customer Experience Index showed that 19% of brands lost CX quality. That’s the largest brand percentage drop in a single year in the history of the survey. 

    Why? One thought is businesses stopped updating digital channels because customers returned to stores. The online experience that kept businesses afloat during the pandemic is being ignored. An, “It’s over now, let’s go back to the way things were,” mentality. Indeed, the Forrester data indicates that CX has fallen back to pre 2020 levels. The improvements seen in 2021 are gone.

    Others point to inflation, staffing shortages, and supply problems. These challenges are real, but so are the results of bad CX. Zendesk 2022 research shows that over 60% of customers will leave a brand after a single negative experience. That is 22% higher than the previous year. 

    “The most effective way to keep customers around is not by wowing them with free things or extravagant discounts, but by just making things easy and seamless for them when they need to get in touch with you. That means meeting your customers where and how it’s convenient for them. Like on any channel they want to reach you, whether that’s email, voice, messaging, social channels, text or live chat.”

    – Adrian McDermott, Chief Technology Officer, Zendesk

    Prioritizing Agent Recognition

    The fallout from the Great Resignation is still making waves in the contact center world. Businesses are waking up to valuing agents and improving the agent experience. 

    Five9’s 2022 International Customer Service Index (CSI) Business Decision Makers Survey shows 90% of business decision makers across 17 industries in the US, Europe and Canada are targeting agent/employee experience. They recognize the impact agent well being has on their business. They need skilled, empathetic agents more than ever, as 86% report an increase in call volumes. 

    Shep Hyken echoes this in his predictions for 2023. He suggests thinking of the customer service department as a “revenue generation department”.

    “A problem handled well gives the customer confidence to want to come back. When they do, they spend more. Eventually, they may even become loyal. As companies realize this, they will start investing more into the department and process traditionally known as customer support.”

    – Shep Hyken, Shepard Presentations

    Increased Focus on Digital/Non-voice Channels

    Non-voice channels are projected to continue to grow in 2023. Five9’s report indicates surges in usage of these channels with 91% of those surveyed indicating increases in email, chat and messaging, with 69% believing over 40% of interactions to be fully self-service by 2024. 

    The Salesforce State of Service report, 5th edition, reveals similar results. Text/SMS, mobile app, forums and video support show the greatest gains in usage from 2020 to 2022 with increases of 6% to 20%. Automation helps manage this increased volume. Solutions like CSAT.AI provide automated QA and CSAT for these channels that are becoming preferred retail platforms.

    In the US the average time per day in non-voice activities on mobile devices has steadily increased from 2019 to 2022, and is expected to continue to grow in 2023. According to Pew Research, over 75% of US Shoppers have bought items via their mobile phone. That percentage is even higher in the 18-49 demographic. It makes sense for those consumers to prefer using text/sms and social platforms to contact a brand over logging into a site or calling customer service. 

    The data and the pros have spoken. The game is always changing. The key is to be prepared for the changes, not playing catch up. Have the 2023 customer service trends taken you by surprise, or have you prepared for them?

  • An Unhappy Customer Service Agent is More Than a Meme

    An Unhappy Customer Service Agent is More Than a Meme

    Updated June 2022 (originally posted November 2019) An unhappy customer service agent is more than a meme, they are a person with difficulties that have solutions.

    Emotional Cost – Case in Point: Facebook Moderators

    In 2019, Rep. Katie Porter ( D-Calif.) called out Mark Zuckerberg during a House Financial Services meeting for the treatment of content moderators which she likened to “straight out of an episode of Black Mirror.” 

    Customer service whether it is as a content moderator, contact center agent or customer sales rep is emotionally taxing. Agents routinely have to match their emotional output with the professional standards set by the company. 

    This emotional output comes with a cost. There was a class action lawsuit in California that argued Facebook is responsible for PTSD and Trauma inducing working conditions affecting content moderators. It was settled in 2021 for $52 million.

    Facebook uses content moderators to facilitate a positive environment for their users and advertisers, but has yet to provide emotional support systems for these workers. 

    The Importance of Mental Health

    You might think that Facebook is a behemoth and their issues aren’t relevant to your business, but each business has emotional landmines. It takes serious work for a customer service rep to create an exemplary experience under duress with a smile. Benign customer service issues can rapidly morph into nightmares or there wouldn’t be so many hashtags for bad customer service: #CustomerServiceFail #badservice #refund #servicefail #noservice  #instabadservice #customerdisservice #waiting.

    It has only intensified. During the pandemic customer service agents began facing unprecedented behavior from customers alongside increased demand for service. This has put more strain on already stressed agents.

    Mental health awareness is one of the positives of the pandemic. Considering the historic numbers of people quitting their jobs in the Great Resignation, and the cost of agent churn, investing in supporting employee well being is both empathetic and a smart business move. There are many ways to do this. Here are a few:

    • Prepare agents with solid, ongoing training that gives them confidence in doing their job. Include the nuances particular to your company and products. 
    • Institute support systems to help agents recover from challenging interactions. 
    • Make communication between team members and between agents and management easy and non threatening. 
    • Offer tools like classes, apps and services to aid in stress management. 
    • Know your coverage needs, plan for overlap in duties and schedule for redundancy. Then if an agent needs time off the business is covered and the agent doesn’t feel pressure to work through burnout.


    Creating Empathy and Support – Case in Point: 23andMe

    Managing a customer contact center well includes addressing more than customer emotions. Agents shape brand identity. Unhappy customer service agents have a hard time presenting a positive image. Maintaining a positive agent environment is essential to an empathetic brand image. 

    Providing customer service is simple in theory. In practice it’s not only difficult, it’s nuanced. It requires agent support for emotional harassment, verbal abuse and enormous pressure. When management proactively connects with agents they can connect with customers. 

    Understanding the feelings of others and addressing them in a humane way is fundamental to empathetic culture, both customer facing and internal. Kent Hillyer, Head of Customer Care at genetic testing company 23andMe is known for intensive customer service training. 

    Agents train for months before engaging with customers. Not hours. Months! Agents are taught both sympathy and empathy with mock calls to prepare them for common uncomfortable conversations on genetic lineage. Sometimes the answer to “Who’s your Daddy?” is unexpected and upsetting. This is traumatic for both the customer and the contact center agent.

    “At 23andMe, Hillyer often encourages representatives to go for a walk after an intense call, or cracks open a bottle of wine to help them decompress.”  This is a far cry from what Rep. Katie Porter accused Zuckerberg of in the House meeting where she detailed a limit of nine minutes of supervised crying in a stairwell for content monitors of Facebook.

    Let Technology Help – CSAT and ASAT

    Technology does not equate to a lack of empathy. AI tools exist to facilitate a more empathetic company culture by alerting managers to agent abuse. Managers can then encourage agents to take that walk, to decompress, and to express their feelings in a safe space.

    Give agents the tools that make their jobs easier, not harder. 


    Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) is important, but don’t miss the ROI opportunities of agent satisfaction (ASAT). I helped design CSAT.AI, and I am proud of the feature that lets managers monitor agents specifically to assist with issues that can trigger anguish or trauma. CSAT.AI automates and streamlines the QA workflow with proactive feedback on 100% of interactions, monitoring of empathetic language and customer sentiment.  If you have any questions ask me, Kellyne Clapper, Director of Operations at Navedas.

    Kellyne Clapper Director of Operations
    Kellyne Clapper, Director of Operations at Navedas

  • Uber Banning Bad Customers: Is that Good Customer Service?

    Uber Banning Bad Customers: Is that Good Customer Service?

    Updated May 2022 (originally posted August 2019) Following our previous blogs which cover agent abuse is the question of banning bad customers. The goal is for both the customer and the agent to have positive experiences that benefit everyone and the bottom line. An abusive agent is detrimental to a company, as is an abusive customer. Is banning bad customers good customer service?

    Uber Banning Bad Customers

    Making headlines in 2019, for their for their passengers this time, Uber says they are banning low scoring customers. 

    Numerous videos and stories online document abusive passengers throwing food at drivers, even threatening them. Some might be staged for Youtube views but not all. Safety is a major reason people avoid ride sharing services. Who wants to put up with that in a gig style job with no benefits and erratic pay? 

    Uber might have taken this stance in part to take the spotlight off their abusive driver issue. Still, they are recognizing the importance of mutual respect: “Respect is a two-way street, and so is accountability. Drivers have long been expected to meet a minimum rating threshold which can vary city to city,” Kate Parker, Uber’s head of safety brand and initiatives

    Should you ban bad customers?

    This raises a question for all businesses. It’s even more significant after the pandemic brought out incredible behavior from customers. Stories like customers throwing out the food they ordered to show their displeasure at how long it took, and flight attendants duct taping a drunk passenger to his seat after he assaulted them became more frequent. The United Food and Commercial Workers’ union surveyed their workers who said 85% of customers were ignoring social distancing.

    How much does any person or business need to endure in order to remain financially viable? This isn’t just touchy feely business either. 

    The Cost of Bad Customers

    The is costs to dealing with customers who drain your support resources, whether through excessive interactions, harassing, or threatening your agents are too high. 

    Bad customers can cost you your workforce. The Great Resignation shows that workers aren’t willing to have their well being ignored with many indicating disrespect as a factor. 

    Quality assurance teams score your agents. It’s also worth it to score your customers. Yes, customer lifetime value (CLV) is important. Research has shown retained customers to have 5-25 times the value of new ones. However, customers with exponentially negative value need to be identified.

    This information benefits you in multiple ways. From  Erik Sherman at Inc.: “The information you can gather through rating customers can help you discover unexpected problems, such as processes that fall short or the engendering of unreasonable expectations. The sooner you notice a negative pattern, the quicker you can find a solution before it adversely affects customer relations.”

    A Chance to Improve

    People are individuals and have varying levels of tolerance and different perceptions on what is acceptable behavior. Clearly defining your company’s limits of acceptable speech and action helps both sides know what to expect. 

    According to their blog Uber provides passengers tips on how to improve their rating before banning them. Giving customers an opportunity to adjust shows a willingness to create positive business relationships.

    A Note on Touchy Feely Business

    By the way, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business has been teaching Interpersonal Dynamics, colloquially known as touchy feely class, for over 50 years. It is one of their most popular and talked about business classes. A version of the class is also available for seasoned professionals. 

    Being a leader requires many skills that go beyond the technical, strategic and mathematical kind. These classes focus on self-awareness, emotional intelligence, giving and taking critique effectively. 

    This is metaphorical touching. However, Pino Bethencourt Gallagher on RealLeaders.com makes a great point about the balance of this for leaders “Real leaders touch many people’s lives every day. We impose our ideas and plans on others’ intentions, schedules and lives. We love change as long as it’s coming from us. But we need to understand how it feels to be touched physically in many different contexts in order to anticipate how our employees, clients, and other stakeholders are affected by our presence and push.” 

    As a customer service leader you have power to impact the lives you touch. Do your due diligence. Collect the KPIs. Create actionable plans that protect your people and your bottom line, even if it means banning bad customers. 

  • CX and EX: Balancing Company Policies And Customer Service Agent Needs

    CX and EX: Balancing Company Policies And Customer Service Agent Needs

    Updated April 2022 (originally posted December 2019)

    Business is business. We get it. Companies need to make money to thrive, and to have employees in the first place.  Policies are important to business. As they grow, clear policies help define brand, develop customer experience (CX) and assist companies to scale. However, people are people too.  Employee needs must be met for companies to benefit from their great performance. This builds positive employee experience (EX) for long-lasting relationships. Yeah, we know. Relationships are hard. But human beings (and businesses) don’t do well on an island alone. The 2020’s have brought that truth into sharp focus, along with the fact that many companies hadn’t invested in EX. The “Great Reshuffle” has been a response to poor employee experience hitting a wall. There are advantages to building your CX and EX together.

    Policies and Powerlessness

    Policies are necessary for consistency, brand building, and QA tracking.  They are tools that need to be conveyed clearly to employees so they can implement them.  When employee needs are at odds with company policy problems arise. For example, some companies don’t trust their customer service agents to use their accumulated knowledge and judgment. Instead, they restrict how agents can help customers.  With certain interactions, this renders the agent powerless to assist the customer (and wondering why they took the job in the first place). 

    Ridgid (and bad) customer service scripts also put agents at odds with customers if those scripts are insufficient to handle customer issues.  No one wants to look like an idiot in their job. Policies that force agents to repeat useless information instead of using critical and creative thinking devalue agent abilities. This also opens them up to customer abuse as customers become frustrated with the lack of resolution and what appears to the customer as stupidity, obstinacy or robotic responses.

    Imagine this scenario:

    “Think of an employee torn between obedience and customer-centricity. They may genuinely want to help a customer (helping boosts serotonin). But they also want to keep their job, so they grudgingly enforce policies they know make no sense, and they’re just as frustrated as customers at how absurd they are. When forced to choose, the long-term benefits of steady employment are more powerful than the short term satisfaction of meeting the customer’s needs.” – Megan Burns

    What we see here is the employee exits the interaction with a dissatisfying job while the customer exists the interaction without resolution. With each of them unhappy, the business is at risk of losing both agent and customer.

    ID 127500279 © Siri Wannapat | Dreamstime.com

    Jekyll and Hyde Business – CX vs EX

    Organizations need employees to interface with their customers, even at a distance. A company’s policies for its customers need to tell the same brand story as a company’s policies for its employees. A two-faced Jekyll and Hyde style company with one face for its customers and another for its employees backfires. 

    We see a lot of attention on CX, but it is important that companies don’t forget about EX. Sometimes agents are expected to put their needs aside for those of the company. That’s not a recipe for longevity. Like Megan Burns points out:  “You can’t have great customer experience without great employee experience (EX), at least not for long.” 

    The employee-company relationship is a symbiotic one.  When both are happy and successful together they create a successful business. 

    Customer effort and employee effort are also interlinked. Tethr researched about 1 million customer service calls for customer effort over multiple industries from March 11 2020-March 26 2020, the early days of the pandemic. On average their algorithm showed ‘difficult’ calls more than doubled. This was caused by more than long wait times. Many agents working from home were cut off from an immediate network of agents and managers to turn to in real time. The increased effort of agents increased the effort customers experienced while seeking resolution.

    With all of the pressures of the pandemic in general, agents were contending with a whole new way of working. Remote work is likely to remain a significant part of business. Putting management and training methods in place which allow for exchange of information and support in real time is key to businesses weathering challenges while retaining workers and customers. 

    How Companies Can Build EX

    Now it’s not that we want employees going rogue on company policy, but trust is a key component to relationships. (If you didn’t trust them why did you hire them?) 

    Policies are a roadmap, a guide to keep companies, employees and customers on the same, compliant page. But business, like life, isn’t always neat and tidy. Be prepared for surprises. They happen. As you evolve your company policies give yourself the opportunity to evolve your employee relationships by empowering your employees to use their accumulated knowledge of working with your customers and products every day. As Shep Hyken points out in his article, this kind of latitude helps businesses to keep customers as well.

    Take the more mundane, repeated tasks off agent desks with AI tools like CSAT.AI, that lighten the load. This frees up your experienced agents to help customers in unforeseen and unique challenges. 

    Engage in quality training so that your employees are as prepared as possible to handle customer inquiries with ease. We know it would be great if training was one and done, but it doesn’t work that way. As your company grows you need to keep your employees ahead of the curve. 

    Treat employees as human beings and invest in their overall well being. Wellness programs benefit both sides. Employees get tools to improve their health and employers have less absenteeism and more energized and engaged workers.

    There are companies, like tech company Alley, that have understood the importance of listening to their employee needs even pre-pandemic. They have a flexible hours allowing employees to fit work around life, not the other way around, putting trust in the people they hire.

    During the pandemic, LinkedIn instituted a program called LiftUp which included fun events, ‘no meeting’ days and days off for wellness. They intend the program to continue post-pandemic as they have learned the value of supporting the health and happiness of their workforce.

    For lasting customer-business and employee-business relationships, make sure your EX game is as strong as your CX game. 

  • The 2021 Holiday Buying Season – Employee Shortages, Angry Customers and Rising Costs

    The 2021 Holiday Buying Season – Employee Shortages, Angry Customers and Rising Costs

    The 2021 holiday buying season is riddled with post-pandemic challenges including:

    • Too few employees
    • Angry/stressed customers
    • Delays in shipping times
    • Increases in costs like fuel, wages

    Let’s look at the current crazy state of affairs for workers, customers and businesses.

    Employee Shortages – Not Enough Cooks in the Kitchen

    The employee shortage in certain sectors is putting a particular strain on increased holiday demands by shoppers. Companies are pulling back on what they offer to save money, but it has negative consequences across the board. This hasn’t just started with the onset of the holidays. An October article from NPR introduced us to skimpflation and its results:

    “Domino’s is taking longer to deliver pizzas. Airlines are putting customers who call them on hold for hours. Restaurants, bars and hotels are understaffed and stretched thin. The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere.”   

    Retail, fast food, hotels, customer service agents – these are not high level, career type jobs. They have high turnover and often a younger workforce. In 2019 it was common for fast food chains to lose 130% of employees per year. That’s more than their full roster of workers. This year it hit 144% turnover. 2021 has seen employees leave jobs in record breaking numbers. Is it really a surprise though?

    When service workers are faced with the decision between money and safety it is a tough call. In retail environments where managers and fellow employees disregard mask mandates other employees would rather quit. Company policy doesn’t mean much when it doesn’t accurately reflect what happens during the day to day slog. 

    Improvements in working conditions for these low paying jobs are a long time coming. Workers have more choice, more power and they are using it to send a message. The employee walkout on Thanksgiving Day at a Boston Market in Rancho Cucamonga, CA is an example. The no show was attributed to “several weeks of mismanagement.” The result was angry customers who had pre-paid for Thanksgiving meals that they never received. 

    Boston Market has more work ahead than just refunding those customers. They have to rebuild trust with customers and potential employees. Such an extreme act of solidarity from the employees does not make the company look like a quality work environment (and that’s an understatement).

    Take This Job and…

    Is $11.59 an hour worth it for work related stress that causes an employee seizures? What about the employees who have to keep their cell phones in their lockers and then endure a mass shooting? Or how about being threatened with a sledgehammer during a smash and grab?  

    Employees treated like collateral damage have little incentive to show up when the reward is so much less than the risk.

    Are employees leaving because customers suck too? Partly.  However, everyone is a customer and customers are also getting the short end of the stick.

    Skimpflation = Angry Customers – Paying the Same or More but Getting Less

    This Harvard Gazette article talks about customers berating wait staff (I first read it as “beating wait staff” which would be a whole other legal state of affairs) over long wait times. Stories about customers flying off the handle are common now.  As an example of the increase, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has 5,338 unruly passenger reports and over 1,000 investigations as of November 23rd, 2021 . Compared that to a total 146 investigations for all of 2019. (Ah, 2019. Those were the days.)

    Why are customers so enraged?

    As mentioned in the previous section, service is down all over. The aforementioned NPR article details how customers are paying the same or more for products that “kinda suck compared with what they used to be.” This is impacting the 2021 holiday buying season.

    The staffing shortage combined with increased fuel costs is causing delays that have a domino effect. All of that is true, but the real clincher is that customer expectations have not adjusted accordingly. Customers recall the good old days (remember 2019?) and they want them back. They have no awareness of the human and monetary costs involved to get them the t-shirt they ordered looking exactly as it does in the photo (which may have been enhanced for Instagram style aesthetics).

    Long wait times, less value, more rules, too few employees (or none at all!) – it isn’t a shock that customers, like employees, are reacting. 

    There are companies completely automating their customer service or worse, burying any access to it. If a customer does find a method of connecting often it doesn’t lead to a person at all, or an answer.

    Then there are the basic life stressors.

    Schools are closing on some days due to staffing shortages, daycares also. Parents are just having to deal with it. Those same parents are the customers, the managers, the customer service agents in the above scenarios. 

    Mask and vaccine mandates keep changing too. Businesses, workers and customers have to keep adapting in the midst of all of these challenges and the political, practical and  emotional impact. 

    Rising Costs – Businesses Struggling to Appease Workers and Customers

    The repeated refrain of employee shortage has been going on for months. Another one of 2021’s great additions to history will be The Great Resignation that started in April. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor report, 4.3 million quit their jobs in August. In September that number rose to 4.4 million.  

    Businesses have tried increasing pay, offering unique benefits, but the quit rates are at historic highs. 

    Even with the wage increases, many employees are still not making enough to account for the level of inflation. Rising gas prices are adding to the problem by affecting supply chains and reducing what customers would spend this 2021 holiday buying season.

    In customer service, if you’re having an employee shortage and angry customers taking it out on your staff, what can you do to hire and maintain workers? It is clear that workers want to be heard and appreciated, which reduces turnover. That empathy is more than wages. A study by Stanford indicated workers are willing to take a pay cut to work in a place that fit their values. 

    Considering the pre-pandemic cost of filling an agent’s seat was anywhere from $10,000 – $20,000, investing in keeping employees is even more worth the effort in 2021.

    Using tools that support both customer service agents and customers helps to retain both. AI based software that assists agents in real time to fully address customer issues reduces the number of interactions needed. 

    It makes sense to invest in tools for faster training, positive reinforcement, and empathetic customer service. Both sides benefit from a humane system to automate QA with AI assistance. Have you booked a demo with CSAT.AI yet? Our system was designed to reduce employee churn rates and improve customer satisfaction simultaneously.

  • Humor Creativity And Empathy In Customer Service: Know How To Read The Room

    Humor Creativity And Empathy In Customer Service: Know How To Read The Room

    Though there are great customer service experiences, they are not considered the norm.  You want to define exceptional customer experience, and make it standard at your company.  One of the keys to this puzzle is service agents who can “read the room”. They tune in to what your customer needs beyond their question or product issue. Using soft skills like humor, creativity and empathy in customer service, agents are able to change a mediocre customer experience into a memorable one.

    How to Read Your Customers

    A lot has been written on the psychology of body language, but many customer service interactions are not in person. Phone exchanges provide some information. Customer vocal tone, speed, volume and word choice help to convey how they are feeling. Talking fast with urgency, slowly and deliberately, shouting, speaking calmly with a smile in their voice all present different emotional states.

    In text, email and chat this is more challenging because there is no body language or vocal context to read. Humans don’t all communicate alike, but there are common patterns that can be learned to help identify customer sentiment. Look for word choices, speed of response and slang to understand where your customer is coming from. 

    Tchiki Davis at Berkley brought up an important point about bias: “When it comes to detecting emotion in texts, try to remember that unconscious biases affect our interpretations. The emotions we detect may be reflective of things about us just as much as they are reflective of the information in the text.” 

    Bias is a part of our human experience, but there are ways to become more aware of it and create a better customer experience. For example, The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services has a course on turning the tide of unconscious bias. Their presentation brings up talking points to help identify and discuss bias.

    Omnichannel Communication

    Different channels have different communication styles. Chat is known for short, rapid exchanges, where email leans toward longer, more detailed ones. Ensure that your agents are trained to use each channel skillfully or employ them on the channel they excel at.

    Though considered too casual by some, emoji’s help convey sentiment. The key is to know how and when to use them and sparingly. In chat they provide clarity that is missing without vocal and physical cues. This article at Whoson explains some parameters for using emojis in chat and how cultural differences impact their use: “…the thumbs-up emoji would be considered positive in the US or UK. In Iran, it’s considered an insult. Therefore, it is important to understand what the emoji means, what emotion you want it to convey, and which audience you’re targeting.”

    Follow Your Customer’s Lead

    Previous research, like that done by Software Advice detailed on Zendesk, indicates that most customers prefer a casual tone of voice. However, if your customer uses a formal tone it is best to respond in kind. 

    There are some situations where casual tone can come off as flippant too. When a customer is having a serious problem a response like “I get it. That’s terrible.” doesn’t help: “For example, according to Jay Ivey, customers are likely to interpret a casual attitude in a delicate situation as being insensitive, condescending, or otherwise inappropriate. It just may not create the most productive mood.”  – “How to Satisfy Customers Using the Right Tone of Voice”, Zendesk

    Create Brand Personality

    Speak with your customers, whether live or via a text method, in your brand voice. Defining phrases and style that represents your company helps agents in creating a brand focused customer service experience.

    If your company sells orchestral scores responding to a customer with “Dude, I totally get you” is not on brand. However, for a surfing company that may be a perfect response. 

    Along with humor, creativity and empathy that are good in customer service, there are some phrases that shouldn’t be used in customer interactions in general. Examples include: “I can’t”, “you should” or anything that over promises or comes off as a platitude. This is a starting point for putting your team on track for quality interactions.

    Have a Laugh

    A great example of picking up on customer cues with humor, is this Amazon exchange. The customer service agent, who may or may not have the first name Thor, tuned into the customer’s invitation to role play:

    from Bored Panda

    Both the customer and agent clearly had fun with this exchange and resolution. Hiring agents who have a capacity for humor can be a great fit for a brand with a fun vibe.

    Caught early enough in an interaction a skilled customer service agent can shift a call from frustration to laughter. Agents who can employ humor, creativity and empathy in customer service are highly valuable for CSAT and retention.

    I Feel You

    There is great power in empathy to connect customers with your brand. Micah Solomon believes a type of empathy is teachable in customer service: situational empathy. He explains the difference between this type of empathy and dispositional empathy is that the second is a personality trait. Situational empathy is a response to an experience. If an agent doesn’t share a similar experience with a customer they can learn about a customer situation through tools like roleplay and case studies. According to Zendesk, The Best Customer Agents Read Fiction. Do yours?

    Note that there is a difference between canned responses and true empathy. Your customers are wary of false expressions used to manipulate that sound more like a bot than human. That backfires. Train your whole team to convey empathy authentically while solving customer issues effectively. 

    Do you want help training your agents to be empathetic? Visit our booth at Zendesk Relate 2020.

  • Stop the Churn and Burn of Customer Service

    Stop the Churn and Burn of Customer Service

    High stress, low wages, abuse. We’re not talking about indentured servants, we’re talking about customer service. agents. Unfortunately, agents are often treated badly. It’s time to stop the churn and for businesses to take responsibility for the environment their employees work in by reducing employee harm.

    The industry standard for quality assurance (QA) monitoring is low. Call Center Helper research found of the centers polled,“41% monitoring fewer than four calls every month.” On average, only 1%-5% of customer engagements are reviewed. This is insufficient data for maximizing expensive customer service operations, and it has not reduced unnecessary hostile treatment. 

    When management has the right tools to identify the abuse they are able to intervene and even prevent it.

    Churn and Burn

    Whether in person, by phone, email or text, abuse of customer service representatives is rampant.

    Guy Winch, Ph.D. over at Psychology Today indicates contact center employees experience 10 hostile encounters per day on average that includes insults, threats, and vile language. This creates what Winch calls a “grossly uneven power dynamic between caller and call-center representative,” exploited by customers with agents often being told not to defend themselves. 

    An article by Jeyapal Dinesh Raja and Sanjiv Kumar Bhasin in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine details the difficulty of the contact center work environment including repressed emotions, sleep deprivation, stress and physical problems.

    In the US, because so many call center jobs have been sent overseas, there is a focus on obtaining ‘super agents’, as Lydia DePillis over on CNN Money states. These are agents that can handle multiple types of customer issues, but they require a greater investment to train.

    It is common to have a churn and burn attitude toward service agents, with the churning and burning happening to the agents. From Lewis Mills on LinkedIn: “These new Churn and Burn companies look at hiring employees not as adding to the value of their business, but as the means to an end…Over time the employees either burn out, are driven away by the practices of these owners, or are replaced by newer staff.”

    Women tend to experience more abuse, particularly sexual abuse.  There are more women in contact centers worldwide than men, and in lower level positions. However, harassment and abuse are human issues and all agents deserve a safe, respectful work environment. It’s time to stop the churn.

    The Economic Cost

    Harassment and abuse increase churn. It is costly to train new agents and costly to lose well-trained, high performing ones. The medical fallout from repeated workplace violence, even verbal violence, is connected to costs of turnover, absenteeism and impaired performance.

    The Societal Cost

    People treated badly carry that to their next interaction. A tool that supports verbal respect for both agent and customer helps to create a more respectful world. Those treated well in turn carry that forward too. 

    Every industry has customer service. Preventing abusive behavior on both sides of the interaction benefits all.

    Stop the Churn – Solution

    CSAT.AI automates the overwhelming process of quality assurance in customer satisfaction (CSAT). At the same time, CSAT.AI provides a tool to reduce the trauma incurred by agents. AI is employed to evaluate agent and customer interactions using traditional CSAT metrics, while simultaneously alerting management when agents receive aggressive, bigoted, sexual or other abuse by customers. 

  • My Personal Customer Service Story: Empathy and Support Inspire Innovation

    My Personal Customer Service Story: Empathy and Support Inspire Innovation

    Happy Customer Service Week!

    One of the things I feel most strongly about is that customer service professionals should never ever be sworn at, demeaned or abused.

    Sometimes agents feel powerless, and can’t tell a customer they’ve crossed the line. Agents are afraid that if the abuse is not accepted with a smile they’ll lose  their job. So they swallow the pain to get through the day, to get that paycheck. This is not acceptable for the agent, the managers or the next customer. When morale declines, CSAT declines, and good people leave.

    My Experience

    I had a couple of bosses that stepped up for me when I was young. The first was my manager at Bullock’s (bought by Macy’s), David Ghetty. I was a young college student working in the dress shirts and ties department. A customer had grabbed my buttocks after I had rung up his sale and I was crying in the stockroom. My boss looked flustered until I told him what had happened. Livid, he asked why I didn’t call security, call him over, or slap the guy. He thought it was my right to defend myself. 

    I told him that I was afraid the customer would return the sale and I would lose the commission. My boss said that would have been hard after banning the customer from the store. Until I heard that I didn’t know my boss had empathy for my situation and would support me. I didn’t want to be abused, but I needed to make rent. I felt frozen to act. My boss made a comment about it all being recorded and not to worry he had my back.

    That feels like another lifetime. I‘ve completed college, worked a number of jobs and owned my own business. I even changed professions, however, I still remember how my throat closed in fear during that disturbing customer behavior. It taught me empathy for the customer service professional dealing with an abusive customer. That empathy has never waned. I treat agents with respect and a smile, seeing my younger self in them.

    Empathy and Support Inspire Innovation

    Now I know I’m just one person and my smile doesn’t travel that far. The work I am currently doing does. I am proud to have worked on the first product on the market to address when agents are being harassed by their customers, CSAT.AI. This innovative tool is inspired by empathy.  It improves CSAT, ROI, and QA, but its ability to protect agents is near and dear to my heart.

    CSAT.AI monitors customer service interactions to boost company CSAT scores and notifies the managers so they can protect their employees from abuse and harassment.

    I know what it’s like to be in the moment wondering whether management has my back, and being afraid of losing my job/sale. In helping CSAT.AI assist companies and customer service agents, I’m supporting employees and managers who have their back like my previous boss.

    Celebrate Customer Service Week with improved customer and agent experience. I can help your company enhance CSAT, reduce agent harassment, and minimize QA costs with one product, CSAT.AI. Ask me about it, and tell me your story.

  • Creating Company Culture to Strengthen Customer Service Agent Support

    Creating Company Culture to Strengthen Customer Service Agent Support

    Customer service agent support is key. Agents have a tough job. Let’s be honest, the work is repetitive and dull. These are human beings tethered to a headset at a desk for hours listening to people complain. There are many demands from supervisors and executives. Agents are expected to be:

    • Fairy godmothers, solving customer issues with empathy and a smile
    • Gurus, knowing all company policies
    • Salespeople, upselling whenever possible
    • Admins, filling out all the necessary forms
    • PR, giving great customer experience with the brand voice in mind
    • Psychic, divining customer issues with little accurate information (or none at all)

    Agents are required to provide all of this while being abused by customers.

    The agents are only as good as the companies who employ and empower them. There are ways to strengthen customer service agent support resulting in quality work and reducing churn. With excessive turnover in contact centers impacting metrics, keeping great agents is good ROI.

    Quality Training

    Agents represent your business. Setting your agents up for success sets your business up for success, particularly for in-house contact centers where you create the training program.

    Confident agents inspire customer confidence. Agents are confident when they know company policies and how to effectively and efficiently handle customer queries start to finish. That is why training is so vital. Under trained employees are a liability. From Shep Hyken on Forbes: “Your company’s customer service can make or break you. Of almost 1,000 consumers polled, 92% say they would stop purchasing from a company after three or fewer poor customer service experiences.”

    Customer service agents aren’t just pawns to throw on the front lines. They are a part of your success framework. The companies that get that reap the financial and reputation benefits.

    Learn From the Masters

    Zappos has become synonymous with great customer service. They even have a “School of WOW” that helps other companies channel the Zappos customer service magic.

    Hubspot has a great in-depth article on customer service training that includes the importance of language used in interactions. They also touch on the LAST method for dealing with hard interactions: “LAST stands for Listen, Acknowledge, Solve, and Thank. Teach your team to pause, listen to, and acknowledge upset customers — these steps can make the difference between solving an angry customer’s problem and turning an angry customer into a satisfied one.”

    You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are companies that have laid a great foundation to draw from. 

    Integrated Tools

    It’s hard to cut a thick rope with a butterknife. Tools matter. Your customer service agents need tools that work as seamlessly as possible so that they can handle customer inquiries as quickly as possible. That’s just good ROI. 

    If agents are having to log out and then into different tools, or are missing key tools their job is not only harder it is slower. That increases cost per call. Integration is just as important as individual tools. 

    Ominichannel World

    Customer service is an omnichannel experience now. However, each channel has their own special spice. It is vital to understand the differences and plan your customer support with these channels in mind. 

    Nextiva makes a great point in their blog about having a separate social media service strategy. They give the example of the problem with using one Twitter handle for brand and customer service: “If that is the case, your support reps, PR manager, community manager, and QA all need access to your Twitter. You’re also going to get all kinds of tweets — refunds, billing, shipping, brand mentions. Phew! Imagine the chaos.”

    Instead, having a separate handle for customer service and training agents on how to handle these very public requests is clearer and better for the brand.

    Support Culture

    Training and tools are necessary, but your agents need human support too. Honoring achievements and listening to agent feedback are good starters, but a personal touch makes these efforts more powerful.

    Your agents are individuals. There are agents that like sharing their opinions with the room and there are agents that rather have a one on one. Take time to know them, and honor their preferences in regard to praise and reward. That creates real lasting relationships.

    Agent Abuse

    As detailed in a previous article, agents are subject to multiple forms of abuse. Per Psychology Today: “Customer service employees often average up to 10 hostile calls a day and must tolerate personal insults, screaming, cursing and even threats—regularly.”  

    Your company needs a plan to address such abuse, and not just before or during an episode. Agents needs support after abusive experiences. 

    Also from Psychology Today: “Not surprisingly, customer service representatives have one of the highest employee attrition rates in any industry because few workers can manage the heavy barrage of psychological and emotional assaults they sustain.” 

    These kinds of encounters have lasting physical and emotional effects if they are not managed healthily. Just as employee physical well-being is important to their performance, so is their emotional well-being.

    Creating a company culture where agents feel comfortable reporting abuse is important. Also, giving the agent time to recover may be needed. 

    It is difficult for some agents to come forward about abuse, especially when they are still emotionally affected by it. CSAT.AI removes the pressure from the agent. It gives management the information they need to take appropriate action, by alerting them when an agent is abused.

    Agents do a lot for your business. Help them to take a breath and recover.

    (Don’t forget to take a breath for yourself too.)

  • Human and Machine are Best Together: AI enhances CX

    Human and Machine are Best Together: AI enhances CX

    In an earlier blog we proposed the differing views on how AI will affect the contact center in the future. There is the doom and gloom approach that AI will take over jobs and dehumanize the experience. Alternatively, when used strategically as a helpful assistant , AI enhances CX.

    User Testing’s “The Rise of the Experience Economy: the 2019 CX Industry Report” alleges every aspect of a business totals the CX for the brand. That includes product to accounting. Companies that see the whole picture and embrace the latest technologies that improve CX stay ahead of the curve. That includes embracing AI.

    The report also references Forrester’s research showing companies utilizing quality CX exceed their peers in both stock price and ROI. 

    As Forrester’s recent “Light on the Horizon: The State of Customer Experience Quality” acknowledges, every innovation has a pivot point. They shift from a few early adopters to becoming widespread. It states CX appears to be near this tipping point. A company looking to build their AI strategy has both inward (agent facing AI), and outward (customer facing AI) options.

    Agent Facing AI

    Chatbots are now a familiar AI tool. However, per Kaye Chapman in Comm100’s “Building Strategy and Confidence in Contact Center AI”, the new opportunity is AI enhancing agent work to improve CX.  

    The Harvard Business Review conducted research over 1,500 companies, and found the mix of human and machine provide best results. “What comes naturally to people (making a joke, for example) can be tricky for machines, and what’s straightforward for machines (analyzing gigabytes of data) remains virtually impossible for humans. Business requires both kinds of capabilities.”

    AI tools that make an employee’s job easier and thereby their ability to serve a customer faster, are a double win.  When an AI tool gathers information on options swiftly and delivers them to the agent, that saves both the agent and the customer time. This frees the agent to focus on understanding a customer query in full, and implementing the best of those options.

    An AI tool like CSAT.AI assists agents in real-time. It even alerts management when agents are being abusive toward customers and when agents are being abused themselves. 

    Inward facing AI is a good start to incorporating AI into a business growth plan with more customers served in less time and with greater success.

    Customer Facing AI


    From Luc Burgelman:  “For organizations in customer-facing industries in particular (such as banks, media and retail), AI is an essential technology that needs to be implemented across all customer experience initiatives.”

    Some companies and industries, are already engaging customer facing AI. It isn’t just services like banking either. Beauty brand Sephora, named retailer of the year in 2017, uses an AI tool that allows customers to ‘try on’ colors virtually. They also have a tool that scans skin tone to assist the customer with finding matching foundation.  

    AI allows customers to have self-service when other channels are full. It also has the ability to help companies address client needs even before they arise. Tracking customer preferences over time AI can be used to create personalized experiences at scale and even predict customer behavior.

    Companies that are using AI to successfully service their customers directly are paving the way for widespread adoption of AI to improve CX. 

    Finding an AI Entry Point

    Though more businesses are trusting AI to service their customers, some are not ready for client facing AI. For those businesses just looking to get started, a plan of AI adoption is needed. 

    Per Matthew Jinx, also on Comm100’s webinar, jumping into customer facing AI can be a more risky AI entry. He mentions that the most successful companies they have using AI have started with agent facing AI. 

    It is clear that AI is growing in capacity and adoption. Per Entrepreneur: “The global AI market was worth $7.35 billion in 2018, where the largest portion of revenue was stirred from enterprise applications. The market is expected to catapult to $89.84 billion by 2025.”

    The question is not whether companies will adopt AI to enhance CX, but when and how.

  • Will AI mean Contact Center Doom or Boom?

    Will AI mean Contact Center Doom or Boom?

    Is AI still predicted to be contact center doom or boom?

    It depends on where you’re standing. 

    Is AI Killing or Changing Contact Center Jobs?

    How about this inflammatory post title: Bots and AI continue their march toward call center obliteration.  Really? Sounds like a sci-fi logline. Industry people are in two camps about this whole AI in customer service thing. 

    In this 2019 article from the Irish Times, Mike Corbat, Ceo of Citigroup paints a scary tale of workers replaced by machines. 

    The same article quotes Dorothy O’Byrne, the MD of the Customer Contact Management Association (CCMA), who says the industry welcomes AI and is “growing”.  She also says the real difficulty is in recruitment. The inquiries that are too complex for AI require agents with the skill to handle nuanced issues.

    Cameron Smith wrote over at Customer Think that AI doesn’t have to become a destroyer of worlds  (referencing the Manhattan Project). Instead, he indicates the tech will free agents to engage in prevention of issues and greater customer relationships. 

    Even with some data this is speculative because…

    AI is Still New and Evolving 

    Yes, AI has been around over 60 years as a concept, and in our sci-fi entertainment. Still artificial intelligence is young and rapidly changing in application.  With any new technology there are going to be unknowns that are hard to plan for. As with any many new products, not all glitches get worked out in the lab. Life tends to be more chaotic than a lab anyway. We can’t fully know how AI will affect the contact center, particularly in the long term, because the tech is still evolving. 

    Per Nerys Corfield, Contact Center Specialist at Unify, AI is in an assisting phase, acting as: “…an interactive virtual assistant that collects training tools and helps track down service matter experts. When utilized in this way, productivity levels, competency curves, eSat scores, and EFCR (effective first-contact resolution) are increasing while hold times and transfer times drop.”

    The combination of delegating simpler tasks to AI and a savvy consumer base means human customer service agents must be more skilled, not disappear. This Customer Think article supports the idea of AI and human agents working together for the best result. 

    Not Everyone is Using it, Yet

    AI isn’t everywhere yet. Just like with contact center omnichannel data, there needs to be enough data from use over time to get a real picture of how AI is affecting contact centers overall. 

    This Contact Center Pipeline article from 2018 references Deloitte’s Global Human Capital  2017 and 2018 studies that indicate though execs in the industry believe in AI’s importance few at the time of the studies felt they fully understood its application or could implement it. 

    Business is Still a Human Thing

    However, there is an increased awareness of the importance of people. Initially mentioned in Deloitte’s 2018 report, the 2019 report reiterates the trend toward “social enterprise”: “organizations whose mission combines revenue growth and profit-making with the need to respect and support its environment and stakeholder network.” 

    Deloitte’s report goes further to say this shift is causing businesses to “reinvent themselves around a human focus.”  The stats support this with respondents putting societal impact at the top with 34% saying it is the most important metric for judging yearly success. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) (18%), Employee Satisfaction (17%), and Financial Performance (17%) are on par with each other in the report.

    Interestingly, most of the organizations polled plan to include more AI and that to maximize this tech requires focus on the human aspect of the jobs that surround it. Though the report was not solely focused on the customer service sector, trends of social enterprise, valuing societal impact and focus on the humanity within work touch all industries. 

    It looks like AI is bringing us closer to what makes us human, at least in the short term. It isn’t contact center doom. This opens the door to questions about AI and ethics, but that is a subject for another post. 

    What do you think? Do you see a Terminator in the AI future? Is your organization currently using AI technology? Are you preparing to? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

  • How Creative Brands Make Customers Feel Good

    How Creative Brands Make Customers Feel Good

    As I write this, Tony Bennett is singing “Make Someone Happy” which I realize is the essence of this post and the point of customer experience. If you make customers feel good they are likely to stay and more likely to share, like, subscribe, re-post and buy more.

    Make Customers Feel Good Through Unique Experiences

    Customers don’t just want products they want experiences. A great example is Dollar Shave Club. They were founded in 2011 and sold to Unilever in 2016 for $1 billion dollars. Seriously. Many other startup companies that have succeeded and sold haven’t even touched that. Plus they aren’t selling a new product. They sell razors, great f**king razors, according to their ads. With 3.9 million subscribers as of 2018 the product is probably good, but let’s be real. You can buy a razor at a dollar store.

    What they provide is an experience. From the first video ad to their budget for customer service gifts to customers, they make razors fun. Their approach was unexpected and took the boring out of a daily drudge of an activity.

    As a result, their customers are loyal to their company as a personality, not just their their product and service.

    Make Customers Feel Good Through Creative Re-branding

    Even long-standing companies can update their personalities. Fruit of the Loom pulled a unique marketing campaign using LinkedIn’s feature of celebrating member job changes. The underwear company offered those who changed jobs a free ‘change’ of underwear which also came with a $5 off coupon for their next purchase. A memorable and fun brand experience.

    How about Old Spice? Quite a challenge to make a product that’s been around since 1937 feel fresh and new. The product even has ‘old’ in the title. In 2010 they brilliantly re-branded their product from something only your grandad might wear to a sexy, fantasy-fulfilling scent with “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” ad.

     They doubled-down on this with an interactive Youtube campaign that caused them to blow up, in the good way: “The stats show that Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ campaign was the fastest growing interactive campaign in history. There is no denying that the campaign was a huge success for the brand, catapulting them into the number 1 spot for men’s body wash and making Old Spice a legend in the world of online marketing.”

    The love of these ads brought love to the product. Old Spice is still kicking it with an interactive online game called Big Lavender, to boost their new lavender scented body wash (wait…what was that about not smelling like a lady again? Lol. I like lavender.). Give it a try. I just blasted digital lavender with an energy bazooka for research and I feel good.

    Make Customers Feel Good Through Authenticity

    Though clever, trendy ideas are good your customer base is smarter than you might think. If it’s not authentic it smells bad. More than ever customers wants to buy from trustworthy companies and part of trust is authenticity. If it feels like a company is just jumping on the bandwagon people are less interested.

    Customers may even blacklist or social shame a company. A 2019 example, Wet n Wild, has been touting it’s cruelty-free platform for years. However, blogger Cruelty Free Kitty discovered the brand is selling in China, which allows post-market animal testing. Wet n Wild plastered their Instagram with images of bunnies and captions indicating they are cruelty free. This resulted in a backlash of customers calling them out for this and for not being forthright about how they are being sold in China. The issue is not giving the customer base clear information from which to make a purchase in line with their values.

    People purchase on the basis of more than just price and availability. Many purchase items in line with their lifestyle and beliefs they are passionate about. They develop relationships with a brand and become fans. Fans are a huge asset to a brand. If they feel betrayed they can also be a brand’s greatest detractors.

    Make Customers Feel Good by Making Customer Service Agents Feel Good

    Feeling good is contagious. Investing in how employees feel is investing in customers also. Treating agents like customers and giving them excellent tools enables them to provide customers with feel good experience.

    Are your creative juices flowing? What are your ideas to make customers feel good? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.



  • Disrupt Live Chat – 3 Considerations on How to End Interactions

    Disrupt Live Chat – 3 Considerations on How to End Interactions

    Beth contacted her wireless provider via chat to ask about data upgrade options for her phone plan . The customer service rep, Dale, answered her question with ease. Beth thanked him. They talked about how cool the most recent “Game of Thrones” episode was, and then Beth closed the window. The chat, however, was not ended. Will the interaction time out and the chat end if Dale waits? Is there an option on Beth’s end of the interface for her to clearly ‘end’ the chat? Does Dale end the chat on his end? These questions are important because they impact the analytics of the chat. Here are some considerations to positively disrupt live chat and end interactions.

    1. Waiting for the Customer to End the Chat

    Some argue that waiting for the customer to end the interaction is respecting their needs. However, if the agent waits for the customer to end the chat or the agent waits for the chat to time out it does not give an accurate time frame for the length of the chat. This impacts Average Handle Time and Average Time to Resolution metrics.

    There is a limit to how many windows an agent can have open to answer multiple customer inquiries. It depends on how many agents a customer service department has and how many tickets agents can address simultaneously while still creating positive customer experience (and retaining agents).  With such limits, a chat in limbo can reduce agent efficiency. The agent could be helping another waiting customer. This impacts Average Wait Time (AWT), number of open tickets and average backlog metrics.

    When making data comparisons with chat bot interactions this is also important. How is the chatbot configured? Does the bot wait for a specified amount of time and then end the chat? Is there a seamless option for a customer to transfer from a chatbot to a live agent? Comm100s CCW Disruptive Technology Report: Live Chat indicates such easy transfers are positively ‘disruptive’ making for a powerful use of the chat interface improving agent and customer experience.

    2. The Question of Responsibility

    Waiting for a customer to end the chat is putting the responsibility on them. Once their question is answered they are done, unless they wish to rate or comment on the chat.

    An agent can ensure that the customer is finished by asking if they have any further questions before concluding the chat. If they do not receive a response there can be a predetermined amount of time the agent will wait before sending a message that they will end the chat. The agent can thank the customer and conclude taking the responsibility off of the customer’s plate and maintaining usable metrics.

    3. Give Your Customer Options

    Enabling the agent to end the chat doesn’t mean it’s necessary to remove the ‘end chat’ option from the customer widget. It is important for them to feel they can exit a chat if they wish to.

    The method of closing the chat should be easy and clear for the customer. If it is buried in a menu or confusing that frustrates the customer.

    Another helpful option for the customer is to shift from a chatbot to a live agent. This ensures the customer receives more assistance when the inquiry goes beyond a chatbot’s capabilities. It is especially helpful if the live agent has access to the chatbot interaction so the customer does not have to repeat themselves. The result is improved resolution time which benefits your agent, your customer and your bottom line.

    With all of the customization options and chat interface providers there is a solution that fits your business. Whether it is a chatbot or a live agent, when an interaction ends affects important KPIs. Define in advance the kind of customer experience you wish to provide with your chat channels, before collecting impaired metrics or hearing from customers “How do I end this thing?”

    Does your chat interface have a clear customer ‘end chat’ button? Yes or no?

    Why or why not?

    How does your chat interface empower your agent?

    Weigh in on the conversation and polls on Facebook or Twitter.



  • Trends in Customer Experience show Agents Need Support

    Trends in Customer Experience show Agents Need Support

    Presents on your birthday, a complimentary cup of tea, an invitation to the party, holiday bonuses: we all enjoy feeling valued. Customer service agents are no different. With the history of agent turnover it isn’t surprising when they don’t feel supported. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2019 45% of agents don’t feel they have sufficient tools for success. Why is that? How can you support your customer service agents and improve customer experience?

    Why Customer Service Agents Don’t Feel Supported

    There are a myriad of challenges for customer service reps to provide great customer experience.  Here are a few highlights from the recent Zendesk report.

    Greater Expectations

    Some companies have upped their customer service game and are killing it. As indicated in the report, these companies have become the gold standard against which other companies are compared. That’s rough if you’re a customer service agent working for one of those ‘other companies’.

    According to the same Zendesk report, 59% of agents surveyed say customers have increased expectations. Those expectations are placed on the agents as representative of their companies. When companies don’t give agents the support needed to create an excellent customer experience, their hands are tied.

    Too Much to Manage

    Image of person with paper bag on head and angry face drawn on it - showing a negative customer-agent experience

    Tools are a necessity. CRMs, Ticketing software, chat interfaces – agents have to engage with multiple software tools to do their jobs effectively.

    Lack of the right tools limits agent success. The size of your business, whether it is B2C or B2B and other factors inform tool choices.

    Additionally, non-integrated tools force the agent to log in and log out of each tool repeatedly, draining their time and their emotional battery.

    Ways to Support Service Agents

    Positive Customer Feedback

    Everyone enjoys a compliment. For CSRs those can come through customers directly or through feedback, like Sarah Chambers, a Customer Support Consultant from Vancouver writes:

    “Our job revolves around making you happy and helping you find success with our product. You know those pesky customer feedback surveys that you get after every customer support interaction? Someone on our team (it might not be us) actually reads every comment left for us. If we went the extra mile, mentioning us by name means a lot.”

    “5 Things Customer Support Reps Wish You Knew” – Zapier

    Make sure that positive feedback gets back to your agents.

    ID 137009246 © Siri Wannapat | Dreamstime.com

    Company Culture

    Positive customer feedback is great, but you can’t rely on your customers to be the only cheering squad for your agents. Show them they are valued and appreciated in the company culture you create.

    Set the tone of support culture. Managers don’t get the right behavior by asking for it, they get the behavior they encourage, nurture and reward. Managers should encourage positivism, risk-taking and facilitate career advancement.

    “Why Customer Service Employees Are Unappreciated” – Helprace

    Elements of support culture include: a healthy physical work environment; communication between agents and management; on and off-site events; ongoing training; and balanced valuation of metrics.

    An example of metric valuation: instead of focusing on speed, focus on excellent service. Using speed as a main metric puts pressure on agents and leads to customer dissatisfaction about being rushed. Not every business is a fast food service, but even then who wants to save time just for a crappy result:

    “Even if it takes 30 seconds to make and serve, a tasteless sandwich or rude service won’t make the customer happy…Customers want their needs met with full attention and without unnecessary pressure.”

    “How Speed Kills in Customer Service” – Helprace

    Tools

    Self-Serve Options

    Customers want self-serve options and so do agents. FAQs, help centers and information pages reduce the number of agent tickets opened by giving customers the opportunity to resolve problems in their own time. According to the Zendek report, 40% of customers start with these kinds of self-serve options even though only 20% of teams reported offering them. Step up the self-serve game!

    Integration

    A refined workflow improves resolution. It also eases the frustration of agents who can then ease the frustration of customers. Integrating software tools eases workflow.

    Also, making customer information available to all agents streamlines the experience for both customer and agent. From the Zendesk report:

    “The best teams push data in and out of their support software using APIs, apps, and integrations, so agents have the information they need, and customers don’t have to repeat themselves.”

    “The Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2019″ – Zendesk

    From another report by thinkJar:

    “84% of consumers are frustrated when the agent does not have information.”

    “50 Important Customer Experience Stats for Business Leaders” – Huffington Post

    It is clear that customers prefer to detail their issue only once to get resolution. Provide the data so your agents can meet that preference.

    Real Time Tools

    Offer your agents support that helps them succeed now.

    While an agent is interacting with a customer they are managing multiple levels of information. This long list includes the details of the problem, the customer’s history, the customer’s current sentiment, filling out forms, asking questions, opening tickets and more. They are expected to keep track of all of this while also being empathetic.

    CSAT.AI is a proactive tool to improve CX and reduce QA during interactions. Know in real time if your agents have answered customer questions, with empathy and that something extra, the wow! Support your agents who are supporting your customers. Schedule a demo.

  • AI and Empathy in Customer Experience

    AI and Empathy in Customer Experience

    “I’m sorry, that is not a valid entry,” is not the most empathetic response to a customer inquiry. Yes, AI and automated menus can streamline the customer service process, but don’t forget the human touch of empathy.

    AI Everywhere

    It is amazing how far artificial intelligence has come and how much we already rely on it. We are steeped in forms of AI like online recommendations based on interests (seriously, an ad for a mobile phone service just appeared on my screen. I was searching for a new provider earlier). Then there is smart tech: “Alexa, play Fall Out Boy”, and the simple joy of spam filtering.

    It may be a bit weird that all of our tech is tracking us, but the truth is we have become trained to it. Be honest, how would you feel if your spam filter just stopped working? (“Hey robot, I need a beer… Please?”)

    Still, we like to hear the voice of another human being who understands our issue when we have a problem. We really want to be heard.

    That goes for your customers too.

    AI as a Tool not a Human Replacement

    Offering customers self service for their problems is brilliant. Many customers love this and want this. For nuanced issues, however, nothing replaces the human touch. This Forbes article makes an important distinction between handling ‘high-urgency’ versus ‘high-emotion’ issues:

    “New AI tools are rapidly emerging in the support space that can address high-urgency situations quickly, but when it comes to high-emotion scenarios, no AI can replicate human empathy, so there’s still a distinct advantage to having a real person help a customer.”

    This is one reason the overall job loss some are afraid of is not in the immediate future:

    “It is widely believed that AI will kill off a lot of jobs, making people obsolete in the business world. Although AI will obviate the need for most traditional jobs, the truth is that AI technology will make the role of humans more important – not less.”

    As humans, when minutiae is taken off our plates we have an opportunity to focus on evolving our knowledge and soft skills too. This applies to customer service agents also.

    Giving agents a chance to use the detailed information they have amassed by assisting customers and build on it offers agents greater job satisfaction. It also offers your business greater customer retention and customers a better experience.

    AI Can’t Digitize Empathy

    For all of its power AI can’t exactly put itself into a person’s shoes, metaphorically speaking.It cannot relate. That is where the power of human empathy exceeds AI.

    When your customer is nearly in tears over their Mother’s birthday gift not arriving an AI tool is not able to ease the emotion of the situation.  A human agent has the ability to engage the customer from a place of having people they care about too. When a real live person says “I understand. I would feel the same,” from that vantage it rings true.

    “Customers want to know and feel that agents are people just like them – and what greater form of empathy is there than the golden rule: treat others the way you would like to be treated.”

    AI can’t be empathetic, but it can help determine when the customer service rep has been. It can also be used to help train agents to be empathetic.

    Keep an eye on Navedas, for more on this subject in upcoming posts.

    Have you had a less than empathetic customer service experience? Or have you had an excellent one? Share your experience with us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.


  • QA Challenges: A Philosophical Approach

    QA Challenges: A Philosophical Approach

    “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
    – Epictetus 55-135 CE


    Today it may sound like an overused phrase from a motivational speaker, but the Greek philosopher Epictetus made a point that is still valid today in life and in business. Customer service QA challenges don’t have to ruin KPI. Instead, they can be a call to action.

    “Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.”
    – Plotinus 204-270 CE


    Tracking is important to maintaining quality. You can’t improve something you can’t see.

    There is both a time-saving element and a motivational element to allowing agents to monitor their own performance. It has a positive effect as indicated in this Zendesk article:

    “Agents who are told by a QA specialist what they are doing right and wrong may feel like the outcome of their work is out of their hands, to be evaluated only from an outside perspective. On the contrary, agents who are entrusted with the task of monitoring their own work and making goal-oriented improvements will feel more in control of the outcome, and thusly be more motivated to put forth effort toward this end.”

    “He who will not economize will have to agonize.”
    – Confucius 551-479 BCE


    It is also important to effectively track with an economy of tools. Too many pieces of software that do not integrate well drain agents’ time and focus.

    Identify the tools that are most useful to your individual business and industry. Time taken to understand what a program offers and how it blends with your current structure will save you from costly errors.

    “Everything flows and nothing abides, everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.”
    – Heraclitus 535-475 BCE


    Like people, businesses and industries are constantly evolving. It is good to stay on top of trends without being waylaid by them.

    When a new method or tool becomes available the salient question is, does it benefit your business? The newest crop duster is of little use to a hair salon.

    Ty Givens, Founder of The CX Collective (formerly, The Workforce Pro,) has over 20 years of hands-on customer care. She builds customer service teams for businesses. Ty has this insight on incorporating new changes without interrupting customer service work:

    “I sometimes read up on things and think ‘We should do that with (said Client)!’ and I wholeheartedly mean it, but I have to remember that any new idea I have directly impacts many people. To keep from interrupting the work, I look at the value that the change would have and I decide if it’s worth it before proceeding.”

    Spend time and money on the tools which are most likely to save you time and money.

    “Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.”
    – Plato c 427 BCE


    Training is the backbone of your agent’s effectiveness. When there is high agent turnover it impacts the quality of data available to monitor and cost of training.

    Reduce turnover by addressing agent needs. Having a company culture in place that supports the agents’ work and their well being prevents churn. Don’t wait until the ship is sinking and pull out a teacup to bail it out.

    Make training solid and ongoing. An athlete trains regularly, not just on game day. Keeping your agents’ skills up to date and sharp prevents errors and improves resolution scores.

    The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”
    – Aristotle 384- 322 BCE


    The QA team is strongest when acting as a united front. Your QA professionals may each have individual opinions and methods which makes comparing their results challenging.

    Bring the team together:

    “In QA, text analytics is a huge deal. Businesses are now creating ways for us to hone in specific engagements to ensure the best overall experience. This is amazing, but if I’ve never told the team which words to avoid or always use, these analytics won’t help me in the short term. The best way to introduce new concepts, ideas and changes is to provide context. This cures disruption and gives the team the opportunity to understand the core of why you’re doing this work, the expected outcome and impact. If we keep one common goal: repeat buyers, any work done to support that isn’t disruptive. It’s supportive.” –Ty Givens, The CX Collective

    “Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy”
    – Lao Tzu 601 -531 BCE


    How much money is budgeted to QA in your center? What is the breakdown of that budget? Is there a dedicated QA team or are QA duties falling to supervisors?

    QA is necessary for consistency and growth. Being clear about what can be budgeted toward it can manage expectations. If supervisors have the QA load the number of contacts they can realistically monitor is fewer than a dedicated QA pro.

    The training aspect of the QA budget is dependent upon the industry and depth of knowledge required.

    “There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path”
    – Gautama Buddha c 480 BCE


    Happiness has a trickle-down effect. When your staff is happy they share that happiness.

    Creating a positive company culture is one step toward customer satisfaction. This Salesforce article makes a good point about treating your employees as ‘internal customers’:

    “Great customer service permeates every aspect of your company and depends on every single employee, vendor, and leader, whether they interact with your customers or not.

    You don’t need a customer service plan. You need a customer service culture, one that:

    -Makes happy customers a priority above all else
    -Supports and empowers your team to deliver that service
    -Offers everyday examples of great internal service that members of your team can’t help but pass on to your customers”

    Customer service is problem solving and prevention. Agents handle the fallout from a problem. Eradicating the cause eliminates the problem. To do that you need to trace it to the source whether it is a faulty part or a poor policy decision. Make sure your QA process incorporates all facets of your company.

    Take tips from the great philosophers and enhance your QA process with wisdom. Your customers and your business will benefit.

    When challenges appear, how will you react?




  • Don’t Assume your Customer Service Agent is an Idiot

    Don’t Assume your Customer Service Agent is an Idiot

    If your customer has been through the online FAQ, searched the product manual, tried finding a solution on Youtube but still needs help, their next step is a call to your customer service team. The quality of agent service they receive reflects directly on your supervisory and management teams. If customer service resolution isn’t meeting company goals don’t assume your customer service agent is an idiot. Take a close look at the policies and tools you are (or aren’t) giving them.  Empower your agents, as they are your path to resolution.

    Just Following Orders

    Agents execute company policy, they don’t make it. They’re like soldiers following orders, some of which may seem at odds with your customer’s goal, causing friction or delayed resolution. Agent empowerment comes from the top down. If you give them numerous details and rules to follow make sure they balance your company and customer needs in a way that is easy to convey.

    It is important that agents ask questions to make sure they understand the customer issue as clearly as possible. It is just as important to train agents to listen. Including both skills in initial and ongoing training benefits both sides. From  Salesforce:

    “it is the responsibility of the organization to supply the kind of high-quality customer service training necessary to provide customers with positive experiences. While one organization may opt to teach each employee valuable customer service skills on the job, another may prefer more formal customer service skills training through special customer service classes.”

    This Sounds Familiar

    There’s a good chance your agent has encountered the same customer issue before. That knowledge can speed resolution. In agent training review common scenarios identified by cumulative data from customer-agent interactions to get your agents up to speed faster.

    It isn’t only the agent’s knowledge that is valuable. It is to your benefit as a business to make sure company policies are easy for your customers to find and understand. Common business is not necessarily good business and was it ever your goal to be common?

    Watch the Fine Print

    Yes, customers are used to fine print. They are used to being tricked and scammed and feeling like they have no choice. But business is a living entity that is constantly evolving. The businesses who don’t realize this and try to do everything as they always did this will go the way of Blockbuster when streaming services like Netflix entered the game. Crash and burn.

    Customers desire transparency from the businesses they buy from now more than ever.  As this Harvard Business Review article states:

    “…companies need to become like more like living businesses, building and sustaining symbiotic ties with their customers as if those relationships are with a concierge, butler, or friend.”

    Also from the same article:

    “To succeed in this era of relevance, marketers and companies must be continuously willing to abandon the old. As new technologies shift customer journeys and expectations, they can (and should) also enhance companies’ abilities to engage with customers in the most relevant ways. Often, the greatest roadblock is a company’s lack of willingness to transform their processes, organizations, and mindsets as needed.”

    So Many Companies, So Little Time

    Customers also have options of where to take their business. Many are even willing to pay more for a business that offers superior service. Customers know what they want. If your business has it you get their money.  

    So instead of making your agents your accomplices in trickery or messengers of outdated policy, you have a choice to make them your collaborators in lasting healthy business.

    If best practices are not enough of a motivator, maintaining customer relationships is more financially beneficial than gaining new ones. From HBR:

    “acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.”

    To Move Heaven and Earth

    Agents only have the power to bend policy that you give them. However, if your agents are repeatedly faced with having to tell customers that they cannot help with their issue the customer may feel that the customer service agent is an idiot. Instead, it may be that their hands are tied and you have tied them. In Hubspot’s list of deadly customer service phrases, they indicate the reason an agent says ”I can’t help with that”:

    “This is a comeback that customer service and customer success professionals fall back on when they are limited by policies and protocol — when the organizations they work for put process over people.”

    It isn’t surprising then that many customers respond with frustration, anger or even abuse. If the processes you have put in place are confusing, laborious or have numerous dead ends you aren’t just making your agents look bad. Your customers know your agents work for you. You look bad too. From Seth Godin’s blog this year:

    “Reactive customer service waits until something is broken. We leave it up to the annoyed customer to go to the trouble of finding us, contacting us, and then, in real time, advocating for themselves until we finally manage to make things good enough (we rarely make them better than the customer hoped).

    Perhaps we ought to spend more time being proactive.”

    When you identify in advance what policies an agent is allowed to bend, and trust your agents with a defined level of discretion they are poised to facilitate resolutions, not block them. Maybe give your agents the option of offering $5 off to two customers of their choosing on a given day. They can use this to ease a situation or to appreciate a great customer.

    Building a company culture that empowers agents improves the retention of knowledgeable agents. They are one of your best allies in increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

    The Cards You’re Dealt

    It is profitable for both your company and your customer to employ software that retains customer information at every step. Not all companies have this or other CRM tools. Identifying the best CRM for your company is key before anyone picks up a phone.

    As this Forbes article by Jason Kulpa  indicates:

    “Almost every business can benefit from CRM software, and it is much better to start using a CRM for your business before it becomes necessary. It is important for companies to consider their operations and sales process when considering which CRM solution to use: What customer information is relevant to your sales process? How many times do you usually make contact with a client before they purchase? How important is repeat business to your company? As a business owner, not exploring your CRM options could be a huge oversight for your company.”

    Your agents are just as frustrated as your customer when a call is transferred without customer data entered when the interaction started. Sometimes agents cannot see the history of customer interactions with other departments either. The customer is then asked to repeat themselves. To the agent the information is new and they need it to resolve the problem.

    There are tools that exist which eliminate this kind of delay in resolution. Are you using them?

    The Devil’s in the Details

    The agent’s work is more than the time spent interacting with your customer. They have to open tickets, connect with other departments and fill out forms to complete work on the issue. Sometimes an immediate resolution is not possible and may require follow up for the agent and the customer. This isn’t ideal as it lengthens after call work and first call resolution which increase company cost and reduce client satisfaction.

    How complex is your company after call process? Are you using programs that do not integrate well together? Does the structure require agents to sign out and sign in to each platform? Do you have tools that give agents real-time data while on a call that reduces after call work and cost per call?

    Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Foot

    Ignoring the customer service arm of your business is shooting yourself in the foot.

    It is a customer’s choice to continue to do business with a company that has crappy service. Customer options are expanding. You roll the dice allowing your customer service agent to look like an idiot by denying them the tools to do their job effectively.