Great customer experience is a result of a healthy work culture. It’s delivered mainly by your customer-facing employees who are able to serve consumers well through their purpose-driven performance. The work culture, on the other hand, is driven primarily by the leaders who instill purpose in their people.
Indeed, customer satisfaction is achieved if the whole company, from the smallest roles to the highest positions, work with a collective goal in mind and not simply to fulfill individual functions, as what we explained in a previous post. This holds true even when you’re outsourcing customer support. You may not be the one who’s directly managing your outsourced staff, but you should still be involved in propagating a purpose-driven work culture in your call center. Then what can you do to instill purpose in your customer service team? Here are some ways:
1. Daily reinforcement
Simply reciting a mantra of what customer service representative (CSRs) should accomplish won’t guarantee that they’d surely satisfy customers, but doing this is a good start. In occasional huddles and daily interactions with team members, leaders should remind everyone to not just meet the technical expectations but also to make sure that every customer puts down the phone with a smile.
2. Purpose-based metrics
Metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are meant to ensure quality in every call. But if these KPIs are only based on functions, CSRs will give you numbers that don t always mean good results. Sure, they are able to keep handle time and waiting periods at a minimum, but does this mean that callers get their problems solved? Give higher importance on metrics that truly measure customer satisfaction, such as first-call resolution.
3. Positive pressure
Peer pressure can be an effective reinforcement tool in a team setting. When top-performing members get commended for the extra mile they take just to make customers happy, the rest of the team will be pressured, or rather influenced, to do the same. Positive pressure works better than incentivized performance because CSRs will step up not just for the rewards, but because they want to keep up with the positive influencers.
4. More empowerment
Your employees should be empowered to exercise their independent judgment on certain cases. The ultimate goal of delivering great customer service can be done in varied ways that depend on each agent and can sometimes require actions that aren’t specified on the employee handbook. If a sales agent, for example, spends a long time on the phone with a buyer, don t look at this as a waste of time. The attention the current client gets will boost his loyalty, which will benefit your business in the long run.
Like all good things, customer satisfaction is a result of a patiently-relayed and well-collaborated cycle. In the business setting, this cycle starts with you, the leaders, so set a good example to your people to organically bring purpose in your workplace.