The four steps to creating a growth-driving customer experience team are: 1) Obtain the right talent; 2) Train the talent thoroughly; 3) Retain the experienced talent; and 4) Maintain high performance through transparent monitoring.
What explains the customer experience disconnect?
We know that treating customers well is essential to keeping them. In fact, 88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services.
Yet almost 40% of customer service leaders say that their company views customer service as an expense instead of a driver for growth. This is a mistaken belief.
Done right, customer experience (CX) pays for itself by pushing the brand forward. Talented, empowered agents who solve customers’ problems and turn them into evangelists for a brand are invaluable.
of customers say positive CX prompts repurchase
of customers say excellent CX will remedy a company mistake
Additional premium customers might pay for a preferred brand
94%—Source: Salesforce.com; 80%—Source: Salesforce.com; 200%—Source: Forrester.
The hurdles that block companies from delivering good CX
So why don’t more companies invest more heavily in CX? Because, frankly, it’s hard.
Finding, training, and retaining talented agents who understand and care about your business is a challenge. Agents have a demanding job, and turnover rates can reach 45%.
But it’s not impossible.
Four steps to creating a growth-driving customer experience team
Obtain the right talent. In addition to obvious requirements like reliability and integrity, empathy is an indispensable trait for an effective CX employee.
Train your agents thoroughly so they can handle interactions with knowledge and skill. Training should include a focus on active listening and other techniques designed to build rapport with customers.
Retain your knowledgeable, empathic staff by providing room for personal growth. Give them continual support and training as well as opportunities for advancement.
Maintain excellent performance with transparent monitoring and feedback loops.
Outsourcing CX works—if done very carefully
If you can’t master those four steps effectively in-house, look for outside help. An experienced CX outsourcing partner takes care of all staffing requirements and infrastructure support. A strategic partner handles the work more efficiently than you can because it marries teams of subject matter experts with economies of scale.
But obviously, you need to vet potential outsourcers diligently. A hastily chosen CX partner can cause significant damage to customer loyalty and leave you worse off than when you started.
Ideally, a CX provider should:
Tailor their approach to your company after spending the time to develop a deep understanding of your industry, your business, your processes, your culture, and your customers.
Employ empathetic agents who receive comprehensive, ongoing training and are empowered to solve problems, not just read from a script. The CX provider should create a positive employee experience to retain well-trained, experienced agents who understand your business.
Deliver the agility you need to scale up and down both staff and technology, backed by built-in redundancy across contact centers for business continuity.
Provide ongoing, tech-driven monitoring, tracking, and reporting to ensure efficient and effective service levels. They should build a transparent reporting framework aligned with your larger strategic goals.
Creating a great customer experience is an investment that pays off in continued customer loyalty and recommendations that generate even more business. Neglecting CX is never the right move.
Ubiquity can help you meet your CX challenges. To understand our process, see how we helped StockX achieve a 90% average customer satisfaction score, even during peak volume.
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