Customer journey in a call center is a multi-stage process, the course of which significantly affects the customer experience. What is the customer path in the contact center and which moments are the key to maintaining a positive relationship with the consumer?
Customer Experience in the Omnichannel Era
According to research, 92 percent companies that recognize customer experience as an important differentiator enables customers to communicate through multiple channels. Their multitude complicates the study and arrangement of the customer path, which can be completely different in each channel. However, striving to optimize customer journey and the final combination of all paths into one can bring good results – clearly indicate how to organize the process and which moments in the path are worth improvement.
It is widely known that a well-written customer path has a large impact on consumer satisfaction in terms of comprehensive customer service. Which moments in the call center path are crucial?
. That is why a strategic approach to its design is so important. One of the key tools is mapping the customer path – that is, determining all stages of communicating with the company along with the corresponding feelings and the channels and tools used.
Customer Experience Path in the Contact Center
- The “zero” moment
This is a situation in which the customer finds himself before making a decision about the necessity to communicate with the contact center.
Sometimes it is an emotionally neutral moment – e.g. when a customer wants to get a personalized offer. However, it is often associated with the emergence of a problem and a feeling of discomfort (e.g. inability to find the necessary information about the company or its product / service), profession (e.g. the need to return) or reluctance towards the brand (e.g. product spoilage and the need to complain about it). - Searching for a solution to a problem
Contacting customer service is not always the first choice when trying to get help. According to Zendesk data, as much as 67 percent. consumers prefer self-service to contact with a consultant. Most customers will be looking for information on the website, so it is important to include a FAQ with answers there.
If the client is unable to obtain the relevant knowledge on his own or his problem is not universal and he needs to get more information – he will certainly be looking for ways to contact the company. - Searching for contact options
At this stage, the client is actively looking for information on how to communicate with our company – e.g. via the Google search engine, on the website, on the company’s Facebook profile.
It is extremely important that the consumer can easily find information on how to contact the customer service department. Difficulties and obstacles in gaining knowledge about how to contact the company (phone number, e-mail address) may – even before making a phone call or writing a message – cause or aggravate a negative attitude. - Choosing the way of contact
We can help the client choose the method of contact that will be most suitable for his needs – for example, provide a telephone number for quick quotes or an e-mail address to consultants dealing with returns handling.
Informing about communication channels for individual types of cases is a great help for the client. It will certainly speed up the process of obtaining information and reduce the need to contact many consultants. If the customer chooses a phone call … - IVR
Usually, the first voice of our company is not a human, but a message previously recorded or generated by a speech synthesizer. The more friendly stage of interactive voice service will allow it to become an unambiguously positive experience on the map of contact with the company.
Whether this happens or not depends often on the customer’s needs. A situation in which he needs a quick answer to one question, and he encounters obstacles related to queuing or the need to select a consultant’s specialization, will be difficult for the client and will not bring positive impressions.
However, in the vast majority of cases, IVR allows you to increase the quality of service and increase the chances of a high First Call Resolution ratio. Not only thanks to the possibility of choosing the department of the company with which we want to talk, but also the preferred language of the consultant or quick verification of identity by entering a PIN number or password. - Interview with a consultant
Only now, after taking many steps, the client starts a conversation with a representative of the company. He has already put a lot of effort into solving his problem and expects a sufficiently high quality of service and a positive and as soon as possible solution to the problem.
There are many scenarios for conversations, and their nature depends on the purpose of the conversation. When designing them, one must bear in mind all the moments of the conversation, in which the client is doomed to difficult situations – such as the need to wait during the conversation, switch to another consultant, receiving information about a negative consideration of the case. The implementation of facilitations for the client will certainly increase his satisfaction level. - Satisfaction
survey That is, a survey after an interview with a consultant is one of the important tools to verify the quality of call center work. The client still feels the emotions that accompanied him on his path – and, courtesy, he can take a moment to convey them to us.
Therefore, it is worth betting on the format of the survey that will be the easiest for him and will take as little time as possible. It may be asking one or two questions at the end of the conversation, or a request to send back a text message with an evaluation of the consultant’s work. After the research, the customer should be thanked for his time and opinion, which will shape the further functioning of the service department.
What if the customer decides to use a different form of contact, such as e-mail, text message, chat or sending messages via Facebook Messanger? The path will look different, it may have different critical moments and indicate other improvements that are worth implementing. However, there is something that they all have in common – the result of their design should be a satisfied customer.