Beyond Covid- 19: Pivoting for better CX

Shifting your business to a new strategy or “pivoting” is a necessary approach for many businesses to survive these days. Brick and mortar retail establishments are pivoting to virtual. Schools are pivoting to distance learning. Gyms are pivoting to online exercise classes. Brands are pivoting to work at home for customer service operations.   

COVID-19 has been the catalyst for countless pivots, but it’s not just pandemics that require a change in strategy. Sometimes the need to pivot comes from the market, the competition or customer demand. Think Slack, Yelp and Netflix. 

Amid cleaning up the fallout, how can you enable your customer service organization to pivot for the next crisis?

Better CX the next time you are faced with a need to pivot

Much like in basketball, history shows that successful pivoting starts by having one foot planted – setting a strong foundation -- then scanning for opportunities.

Here are a few ways to lay the groundwork for more agile, flexible customer service operations that pivot well during crisis or simply in response to a spike in call volume.

Focus on Employee Engagement

We know that culture helps your agents feel engaged and that highly engaged front line team members create superior experiences for their customers.  But it’s difficult to deliver exceptional customer service when the person doing the delivering is thinking about their job, their health, and their family’s welfare. Leveraging this time to focus on engagement and company culture may not be the easiest thing to do, but it will give your agents a sense of grounding, while building credibility and community for the future.

The best way to strengthen your company culture and commitment of empathy and understanding during this time, is to provide clear, confident, and consistent communication and support.

As much as possible incorporate your company’s values in your staff in meetings, emails, events, and activities. Leverage technology like videoconferencing to enable team members to maintain regular face-to-face interactions. Create and encourage team members to participate in fun virtual activities.

 Giving and receiving recognition are both behaviors that generate trust among people, which drives feelings of belonging and positivity and elevates employee engagement. Thank your employees. Acknowledge that they are critical to the company and recognize their contributions, whether it's a kind word, a free lunch, a or an award. Assure them that you’re committed to their safety and well-being. 

 Leverage Learning

Whether you are in a remote  environment or not, getting your training curriculum in shape now for inevitably more work at home stints makes a lot of sense.  Remote agents benefit from self-paced and self-directed learning, with gamification embedded in their workflows.

• Think about what systems and processes you have in place that will enable you to leverage internal expertise and assets as training resources. 
• Drill down into performance data and identify high performing agents who can then help pass on their skills and knowledge to others.
• Identify and leverage exemplary call recordings as training resources.
• Gamify the learning. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but as simple as earning badges as a reward for learning new product features. Add leader boards for that competitive push.

Review and update your knowledgebase

According to Forrester, 70% of customers prefer to use a company’s website to get answers to their questions rather than use phone or email to contact the customer service department. And while a chat with a live customer support agent can cost $6-12 per interaction, an automated interaction can cost as little as 25 cents. 

A knowledge base is one of the only customer-facing support channels that is constantly available from any device for self-service. It enables customers, staff, or the public to collect, organize, retrieve, and share information relevant to their needs. A well-structured, clearly written, and cleanly designed knowledgebase helps customers help themselves, acts as a learning tool for new staff, and is the underpinning of machine learning/chatbots.

So how user friendly is your knowledgebase? What is your customer adoption rate? Are you seeing staff contribution to improve content? Are agents turning over because of frustration and dissatisfaction with their tool kit? Are inquiries being resolved quickly or are multiple contacts and escalations needed? Maybe it’s time for a knowledgebase face lift.

Facilitate and encourage agent collaboration

Most customer service organizations have climates in which reps rely primarily on company policies and procedures when making decisions. This type of environment doesn’t bode well for customer effort according to a global, online survey of more than 7,500 service reps from across 38 different companies by HBR (Harvard Business Review). The results showed that service organizations where reps rely more on advice and guidance from colleagues perform 50% better than the average contact center. 

Maybe it’s time to liberate agents to engage with one another and share best practices and lessons learned. That means consider revising your agent scorecard by eliminating legacy productivity measures like Average Handle Time (AHT). Instead make sure your organization creates expectations of peer learning and sharing through incentives and metrics (rewarding reps for collaborating with others and sharing advice). You can also bring reps closer together both physically, by rethinking floor layout, and virtually, using tools like instant messenger, Slack and discussion boards.

Get Digital Support

Incorporating chatbots into your organization is such a smart move in preparing for future pivots. Chatbots give support and solve relatively basic and repetitive tasks with great speed and cost efficiency whether deployed on your website, app, or agent facing knowledgebase. They free up agents to handle more complex queries and are always on duty even when your workforce is sidelined due to illness or shutdowns.

But the key to the evolution and success of any chatbot is its integration with context and meaningful responses. A chatbot’s entire world is what you have taught it. If it isn’t getting things right, like a good teacher, you need to expand its knowledge and help it learn the right answers. This takes time, so starting with your chatbot now will prepare you for when you need it.

If you do nothing else focus on the customer experience

One thing you can do even if you do nothing else to prepare for the next curve ball is to make the most of each customer interaction. Retain as many customers as possible by reducing customer effort. This includes minimizing rerouting/redirecting of customers, removing uncertainty and negative language from conversations, and empathizing with clients and prospects. Update policies and training to reflect this.

The outcome of a good pivot is to be able to adapt quickly to the new environment so that you can continue, grow and succeed. But the only way you will be able to take advantage of pivoting is to be prepared. So engage with your agents and get your operations in the best shape you can, because the next opportunity to pivot may be just around the corner. 

About Me: I'm a customer interactions professional who writes about insights and strategies that drive customer value and loyalty. For over 20 years I’ve been collaborating with organizations to deliver global outsourced solutions that optimize their customer support operations and help build their brand. I am currently Vice President of Global Sales at TELUS International, a BPO outsourcer. If you would like to contact me, connect with me on LinkedIn.