Training your workforce for better e-sales and e-service

Call Center CRM Solutions, Aug 2000 by Feasel, Marnie

Training your workforce to provide better e-sales and e-service can make the difference between the success or failure of your business. Many call centers are making the transition from telephone calls as the primary method of customer contact to multiple channels. The goal is to enable customers to more conveniently contact the company by whichever medium they choose. The goal is that by offering customers many ways to contact you, more of them will become loyal to your business. After all, acquiring and retaining customers is what business is all about. While the telephone is still the preferred method of contact for many customers, e-mail, fax; postal mail and Web sites are increasingly necessary channels for most effectively serving customer needs. These changes represent great growth opportunities, but only if your training keeps pace.

This article will outline some challenges and best practices for preparing employees and managers to perform successfully in the new multichannel customer contact centers. Of course, one article cannot provide specific solutions to the issues facing your contact center. You will need a customized set of solutions to address your unique business goals and objectives. However, let me share the key steps that many successful contact centers are taking to train their workforces for the future.

The Situation

Let's assume your call center recently decided to join the growing number of businesses that make it possible for customers to do business through multiple channels. You added fax and mailin order forms as alternative methods of contact several years ago. Now, you are very proud of the Web-enabled communication channel your business has implemented through the Internet. Everyone is excited about the new business this additional channel is expected to bring to your company.

Instead, you begin hearing about complaints from this new Web-based side of your business! Your CEO just received a nasty e-mail about the lousy treatment and service a customer received from your contact center. This customer complained bitterly about the long time she waited for a live agent in your queue. She clicked on the option you provided to speak with someone because she had some questions that were not addressed on your Web site. When she finally reached a live agent (23 minutes later, according to the clock on her computer), she was told to send an e-mail outlining what she needed, and asked to include her contact information so her request could be forwarded to the right department for handling. She was also told a response would be sent to her within 24 hours.

Four days later, she still had no response, and now your company has a more drastically escalated customer relations problem. You may have lost her as a customer. The CEO's assistant is breathing down your neck because you are supposed to be ensuring these incidents don't happen!

What went wrong here? You have a training program in place and your agents are supposed to know how important it is to provide a high level of customer service. But does your training process truly enable your agents to help customers negotiate the complex network of e-commerce?

In many cases, training departments have not revised their methods of training new hired and current staff to enable them to provide high-quality service to customers who use the alternative methods of contacting your business. New approaches, along with some significant effort and commitment, are now required to train employees and managers of multichannel contact centers to be successful in this dynamic and highly competitive environment.

Think about how a multichannel customer contact center differs from a traditional call center. In the call center, customer contact is predominantly by telephone, either inbound or outbound. Customers know they can talk to someone if their need or issue is to be met or resolved. Customer service representatives (CSRs) are usually trained to talk to people about your products, services. systems and processes. However, most CSRs are trained to handle only routine calls, referring difficult or escalated situations to a specially trained team.

A very different situation exists in multichannel customer contact centers. Here, customers are working on their computers. either at the office, at home or on the road, and they expect to be able to start and finish an inquiry very quickly and with little hassle.

They want to be able to talk to a live person only if they cannot successfully address their situations electronically. When they do need to speak to someone, customers expect CSRs to be very knowledgeable and skilled in managing their situations and take time with them to uncover and solve their problems right then. If your staff is going to satisfy these customers, you must make sure they are trained to work effectively in those media.

The second major difference between traditional call centers and today's multichannel contact center is that the customer expects more control of the communication. Today, they want to connect to your site, navigate easily, complete an online order form or appropriate mechanism for telling you what they want, and then have the solution documented for them in real-time, right at that moment. They expect the solution to be accurate, fast and hassle-free. Why? Because they assume no human interaction will be necessary! In fact, many e-customers are seeking to aboid the human contact that was inherent in the traditional call center. These customers are tech-savvy and sophisticated. They want to move faster and with more confidence than ever before.