Delivering continuous improvement for more effective customer engagement
In my last blog I focused on how effective Workforce Management is a pre-requisite for a successful contact centre operation, however it's also about the space it gives you to focus on other Workforce Optimisation aspects such as Quality Monitoring and Coaching.
Our organisation offers cruises on our Cunard and P&O Cruises ships with packages ranging between £500 and £50,000. The whole concept of customer experience is critical to our success.
Our customer engagement strategy is about understanding, anticipating and responding to customer needs in ways that both delight the customer as well as deliver business value. Wherever possible we try to personalise the customer experience, creating the kind of loyalty and customer advocacy that keeps people coming back for more. Our CEO puts it simply, saying ‘we need to ridiculously exceed guest expectations!’
What’s exciting from a customer engagement perspective is starting to drive the more qualitative aspects of our agents’ performance. Our team leaders, for example, will be able to tie Quality Monitoring activities directly to the Customer Experience we offer. We’ll be able to score calls not just on traditional metrics but also on how we believed the call went for the customer and how well our agent did in helping to achieve a customer’s desired outcomes.
That’s really important for, as we’re keen for our agents to build stronger emotional connections with our customers. Our new Quality Monitoring approach helps here, with team leaders able to flag and share best practice customer engagement examples with other agents – contributing directly to our continuous improvement strategy.
Flagging also lets us act on those interactions where agents could have done better – perhaps missing an up-sell opportunity or failing to pick up on a specific customer signal. If, for example, one of our agents didn’t spot a chance to provide a customer with appropriate accommodation in New York, we can use our new Workforce Optimisation solution to schedule a coaching system via Workforce Management, and share relevant documentation and eLearning material prior to that session.
It’s this kind of in-depth integration that illustrates the ongoing benefits of working with an expert Workforce Optimisation partner such as Sabio. Before working with Sabio we had a committed Resource & Planning team who were staffing our contact centre without receiving the underlying Workforce Management support they really needed. After engaging Sabio we quickly noticed a positive change. Sabio not only understood all aspects of the Workforce Optimisation technology and were confident about its outcomes, but were also happy to take ownership of our project. This lets us really focus on unlocking the performance benefits that we’ll need to keep improving our customer engagement performance – each and every day.
To find out more about Sabio and its comprehensive Workforce Optimisation capabilities, get in touch at [email protected].
