How can we improve efficiency without sacrificing the quality of customer interactions?

Improving operational efficiency while providing high-quality customer interactions is a significant problem. To remain competitive, contact centers must adapt and innovate as demand for high-quality customer care increases.

Let’s presume you already measure quality correctly; programs often do not. Let’s set that topic aside for a different day. Here are two less common ways to improve efficiency while maintaining the quality of your customer interactions.

Improve Your Data Analytics Capability

While nearly all operations use data to improve efficiency and customer happiness, they often lack a well-structured approach to data analysis and have poorly trained “analysts.”

Common Performance Improvement Pitfalls

We frequently encounter programs that use an “outlier management” approach to performance improvement. When we examine the details, we find that frontline managers often provide boilerplate “plans” to individuals, essentially just telling them to “talk faster.” However, opportunities for improving customer satisfaction (CSAT) and efficiency are typically at the process level, not the individual agent level.

Understanding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

It is not enough to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) such as average handle time (AHT), first contact resolution (FCR) and CSAT. Operations must understand the processes and inputs that form the basis for these outputs.

Designing Processes to Meet Customer Expectations

Are your processes designed to meet customer expectations? Where they are not, is this the result of a well-considered business decision to “push back” against customer expectations, or is it the result of poor design?

Identifying Process Issues

Solving efficiency problems means understanding where processes have gone wrong. At the program level, determine if current processes are well-designed and capable. Identify bottlenecks and common chokepoints that prevent agents from efficiently handling transactions in customer-preferable ways.

Identify the service journeys that customers undertake, then use data analysis to identify whether the processes you have designed streamline these customer service journeys.

• Where do your processes introduce unnecessary complexity? Where do your systems fail to communicate efficiently with each other?
  
  
• Where do agents lack clarity on the next steps?
  
  
• Is there wide variation in how agents use resources to solve common customer problems?
  • If so, does this variation stem from unclear processes, poor communication, inadequate training, or poor management and oversight?

Leveraging Analytical Skills in High-Performance Centers

High-performance centers have the analytical skills to use existing data to help answer some of these questions. They also have the knowledge to identify how to capture data that may not currently exist in already available dashboards to answer these questions.

Increase Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Through Skills-based Training

Employee involvement is directly related to the level and quality of service provided. Satisfied and motivated employees are likelier to provide excellent service, increasing operational efficiency.

• Do your employees feel they have the training and knowledge needed to handle the challenges customers present?
  
  
• Do they have the necessary authority to meet customer requirements?

Invest in comprehensive onboarding and regular training programs to efficiently prepare personnel to address customer inquiries. Recruiting must better identify candidates who match the company’s customers and transaction types. Often, we hold recruiting accountable only for providing the correct number of staff, not the right ones.

Recruiting often focuses on whether candidates are hirable rather than desirable. Addressing this shortcoming often requires changes to how recruiting thinks about its obligations to the operation and the implementation of data collection and analyses. Focus recruiting on identifying the candidate attributes most likely to lead to highly efficient staff who can maintain good customer relations.

Evaluating Training Effectiveness

To ensure training effectiveness, it is necessary to evaluate its output regularly.

• How effective are your training programs?
  
  
• Do they result in frontline staff who can quickly get up to speed on how best to process customer interactions in ways that lead to good customer experiences?
  
  • One way to assess this is by gathering feedback from employees and customers. Analyze performance data before and after training sessions for insights into the impact of training on operational efficiency and CSAT.
    
    
• Are agent feedback sessions skills-and-behavior-focused, or are they about numbers rather than skill-building?

Continuous development opportunities are crucial for maintaining high employee engagement and effectiveness levels. Schedule regular training refreshers, updates on new technologies and processes, and advanced training sessions to keep employees competent and motivated.

Develop a methodology for determining whether ongoing training improves agent performance. Frontline managers often jump from topic to topic in consecutive feedback sessions without determining whether agent skill levels have improved.

High-performance centers focus supervisors on improving the most impactful agent behaviors and skill gaps first, only moving on to the next issue once they’re certain they have improved the agent’s skills.

Conclusion

Fostering a positive work environment that gives frontline staff the authority and skills to meet customer requirements will lead to quicker resolutions and happier customers.

To dramatically improve efficiency while maintaining high standards of quality in customer interactions, you need to:

1. Understand your customers and their requirements.
   
   
2. Identify existing process and tool opportunities within your program that support customer journeys.
   
   
3. Maintain and improve the necessary structures, training, and skill sets to efficiently meet customer needs.

Brent Jernigan, Director at COPC, brings over two decades of expertise in customer experience process improvement, specializing in performance improvement, quality systems and workforce management. Brent has led enhancement efforts across five continents, improving contact center performance in diverse industries such as technical support, hospitality, airlines and healthcare.

Noted for his ability to translate complex analytical concepts into everyday language, Brent is a highly sought-after training facilitator. His primary focus areas include contact center certification, business transformation and training.