“In Our Ever Changing World, Are Customer’s Still Right?"
When listening to calls, I always ask myself, are the customer’s always right or could my customer service agent be right?
I have heard it all from customer's not liking a customer service representative saying "it's our policy" to yelling. I've heard the good, bad and the ugly.
One of the most important lessons, I teach my customer service agents is that it is a lot easier to get mad and be upset with a person you've never met or you can't see but if they were looking you straight in the face, do you think they would be mad or upset with you? Do you think they would have the tone of voice with you? It's a lot easier to be upset with someone you've never seen then it is with someone you're looking at smiling back at you. Also, I tell them, you are just the face of the company, please don't take it personally.
Getting back to my originally question about who is right: I have always felt that there is a fine line between the customer’s story and the customer service representative’s story and that fine line represents the truth. Thereforth, who is right, technically, no one.
The end of April, I listened to a podcast called “Do you have doubts about customer success?(1) by ScaleUp Valley(2) hosted by Ryan Foland(3) on Facebook were Kristi Faltorusso (4) from Better Cloud talked about empowering our employees to do the right thing for our customers/clients and to even to go off script from what we as call centers train our employees to do if need be. I agreed with that. I feel if we give our employees the necessary tools and empowerment and are allowed to have the ability to do whatever they can to help and service our customers/clients on the first call every time then our customer service agents are doing their jobs. Our customers/clients will be happy and this should lesson some of the management calls and social media complaints. One call resolution means lower costs for our companies. Also, I believe if the customer/client has the ability to work with one customer service representative during the duration of their issue, why shouldn't we, as a business allow that? Why should allow the customer/client have to callback and speak to several agents before they get their problem resolved. This to me makes no sense. I feel one customer/client issue should be addressed within one customer service representative. Of course, this will lead to issues with metrics such as talk time and work time but those are minor details when your talking about customer satisfaction.
Just as Kristi Faltorusso was talking in the podcast about empowering our customer service agents, I do believe this will give them better satisfaction in their job knowing they have the ability to help our customers/clients and they will want to go the extra mile to service them and to make them feel good about our company and will do everything they can to retain our customers/clients. If we can achieve this level of success with our employees, I believe our customer service agents will be happy and will stay with our companies longer and it will be easier for us to retain them because they know they're making a difference in their customer's/client's life that it isn't necessarily always about the company but know what that agent did for that customer/client meant the world to them is sometimes all it talks for a customer service representative to have a good day!
The other part of the podcast I found interesting was that both Kristi Faltorusso and Rachel Ruggieri (5) from Bizzao called their call centers, “Customer Success Centers.” I had never heard this term before. I have worked in call centers my entire life in various positions and thought it was a very unique term. Why still call our call centers "Customer Service Centers instead of "Customer Success Centers?" In our unique marketing strategies, it made complete sense to use the word "success" verses "care." Were no longer are just "caring" for our customers but we are now showing them that we are "succeeding" at their needs! We want our customer service representatives to succeed at what they are doing so why wouldn’t we change the name, as well?
Let me tell you a little bit about our customers. Currently, our baby boomers are about the bottom dollar and really didn’t mind waiting for a customer service representative. They just want their problem fixed and they were patient. The next set of generations: Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials and Gen Z (who are now just graduating from college), live in a now society. We want everything resolved quickly. We live extremely busy lives with our families, relationships, careers, ect. We don’t have time to spend on the phone or on a website looking for answers to questions. I believe that if we changed the name of our call centers to “Customer Success Centers” It would give more value and help our customer service representatives understand that this is how our market is changing. It will set them up for success. Also, I would consider changing the name of your customer service representative to “Customer Success Representative” so when your customer/client calls in, they know they are getting a top notch representative right away and they don’t have to worry because this representative has been empowered to do whatever it takes to do the right service for them the first time at the first call every time!
Please keep in mind that this process starts from the CEO down to the managers of every team. Everyone has to be on board with the fact that their customer success representatives are going to be empowered and at times, you will need to set guidelines but it's all about giving the employee respect that they will do the what's right for the customer/client. Again, there is a very fine line you will need to define but as a management team, you should be willing to give your marketing structure to your customer success representatives so they know not to give “away the bank” so to speak! Every customer deserves to have the best customer experience possible they can have from every company!
Credits:
Podcast:
(1) Facebook: Do you have doubts about customer success?
(2) Scaleup Valley
Facebook: @scaleupvalley
Twitter: @scaleup_valley
LinkedIn: @scaleup_valley
(3) Ryan Foland
Facebook: @ryanfoland313
Twitter: @ryanfoland
LinkedIn: @ryanfoland
(4) Kristi Faltorusso
LinkedIn: @kristiserrano
(5) Rachel Ruggieri
LinkedIn: @raeruggieri