4 Customer Experience Questions Your Contact Center Must Answer

Every contact center has it within their power to deliver an exceptional customer experience. With McKinsey research showing 70% of buying experiences are based on how customers feel they are being treated, it’s critical to invest the time and resources to make certain the customer experience is a positive one.

But what, exactly, defines a positive experience? Of course the answer is different for each individual customer. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to delivering a positive customer experience, there are key areas of focus for companies to be prioritizing.

Here’s a look at 4 customer experience questions your contact center must answer to ensure service quality meets (and exceeds) customer expectations:

 Are we coaching and training agents appropriately to be able to provide exceptional customer service?

Eighty percent of respondents who participated in a recent study from Five9 say delivering a superior customer experience is their top priority. To provide customers with a positive experience, nearly the same number of participants (77%) hire and train high-quality agents.

But delivering a positive customer experience shouldn’t begin and end with agent onboarding and training. To develop a team of knowledgeable and capable agents, managers and supervisors need to be consistently monitoring agent performance and providing quality feedback. With CallMiner’s myEureka speech analytics software, agents get feedback faster, prompting them to take action to improve their performance and your customers’ experience.

Are we providing a seamless customer experience across channels?  

Research shows the majority (84%) of customers get frustrated when an agent doesn’t have immediate access to their account information. The problem becomes exponentially worse when customers use multiple channels (phone, email, social, etc.) to communicate with a company, requiring agents to track interactions across channels. In fact, roughly a quarter of consumers who participated in American Express’ Global Customer Service Barometer say they’ve experienced being transferred from channel to channel without any resolution to their problem.

Solutions such as multichannel speech analytics help to analyze ever agent-to-customer interaction, regardless of the channel. By linking interactions across channels, multichannel analytics provides a complete picture of the customer experience journey, which helps agents deliver improved customer service.

How are we taking unique customer preferences into account with our customer service strategy?

We’ve all had customer experiences so memorable we’re still sharing them with family and friends days, weeks, months, or even years later – as well as those that leave us wishing never to do business with a company again.

When it comes to providing quality customer experiences, the stakes are high: It takes an average of 12 positive customer experiences to make up for even one experience. By personalizing the customer experience (e.g., addressing the customer by name, using CRM software to track and review call notes), agents can show they’re taking customer preferences into account and respond in a manner appropriate to the individual customer.

In what ways is our business focusing on customer-centricity?

In a recent interview with Smart Customer Service, Deepak Advani, IBM’s new head of commerce, outlines how companies need to be prioritizing a customer experience-centric culture. “Customers are being vocal about their service experiences, and companies are also starting to understand that consumers are on a journey where every touch point has to offer personalized engagements and conversations,” he says. “That means when they call with a service issue or question, the person that picks up the phone has to know exactly who that customer is and how to deliver the best experience to that customer.”

In order to compete in a business landscape that’s increasingly focused on the needs of the consumer, companies need to make sure they’re providing the types of experiences that will satisfy customers. There are many ways to prioritize customer-centricity (analytics insights, interdepartmental collaboration, agent training, etc.) – what’s key is to determine the best approach for your business and take the necessary steps to get there.

Final Thoughts

In today’s consumer-driven landscape, companies need to be asking – and, more importantly – answering – the types of questions that can help them to deliver the types of experiences their customers are looking to have. The above list is by no means exhaustive, but can help you get started thinking about what you need to do to prioritize the customer experience.

What are some of the questions your company asks to provide a positive customer experience?