Agent experience: the key to outstanding customer service
When companies want to improve their customer experience, many look to customers for feedback and criticism to make improvements to their processes. Are inquiries answered too slowly? Do customers feel poorly looked after, or do they even find the service rude? These are all points the company should work on. In this article, however, we approach feedback and improvement from the other side and put the agent experience at the center. Read on to find out how this perspective can help you improve your customer service.
What is agent experience?
"Agent experience refers to the sum of work experiences, the resulting job satisfaction and the professional engagement of customer service agents in a contact or call center or customer service team." (1)
Put simply: when your service staff have good experiences at work, they're satisfied, and that's reflected in their interactions with customers. A service agent who enjoys their job is more likely to give your customers an exceptional service experience than one who just wants to kill time until the end of the shift. Stress, workload, relationships with colleagues and career prospects also play a role in how the work experience is rated.
How customers interact with your service agents and whether your employees feel comfortable and well looked after in your company influence the agent experience. And that brings us to the reason for this article: it's been shown that satisfied service agents lead to satisfied customers and outstanding customer service.
Challenges for customer service agents
Many call centers have a stressful atmosphere. The phone rings constantly, there are long queues, agents know customers are getting more and more impatient, and it's not unusual for service agents to be shouted at for mistakes that weren't theirs. On top of that, many customers ask the same questions again and again – quick to answer, but together they take up a considerable part of the working day. There's rarely time for more complicated or demanding tasks. No wonder many service agents leave the company after just a few years. In a survey of US companies, turnover rates across different industries and job functions were measured over a set period. At 17%, customer service/service centers had the highest average turnover rate – and only cases where employees resigned voluntarily were counted.
How do you improve the agent experience?
First of all, a positive agent experience makes agents more effective and more engaged. That means customers feel well looked after, well advised and understood. Customer satisfaction can therefore be increased. At the same time, your efforts to improve the agent experience show that your employees play an important role for you and aren't simply interchangeable numbers. The first step toward a better agent experience is a clear definition of what you want to achieve. Only when everyone in your company has a clear picture of it can progress toward this goal be measured and tracked.
Below, we've collected some ways you can improve the agent experience in your company:
Employee involvement & continuous evaluation
Your employees want to be heard and contribute to your company. Involve your service agents in designing and implementing changes. That way they see first-hand that the company is committed to improving their working conditions and takes their suggestions and requests seriously. This strengthens your employees' engagement and helps them approach their work with more motivation.
By using suitable metrics and feedback mechanisms to measure progress on the agent experience, you can make adjustments faster when needed and see whether your measures are working. Here too, you can involve your employees in a continuous feedback loop and implement their ideas. After all, who knows better than your service agents which measures work best or where there's still room for improvement?
Feedback and training
You should also give your service agents feedback. Regular feedback and transparent performance reviews can help your service agents develop and improve their performance.
Various trainings can help your agents improve their skills and become more confident with customers. Whether it's about communication, expertise or using new tools depends on where your employees need support. Offer them development opportunities to improve their skills and support their career growth. Strengthen their competencies and help them gain more confidence in customer care.
Work-life balance in the service center
We all know the debates about how younger generations in particular care more and more about a healthy work-life balance. In fact, a good work-life balance helps reduce your agents' stress and lowers the risk of burnout. You can support your service agents by offering flexible working hours and vacation arrangements. Support programs such as fitness offers, stress management seminars or family care programs can also contribute to a healthy work-life balance and keep your service agents in your company for the long term.
Technological support for your service agents
With innovative tech tools, you can support your service agents in their daily work. All the tools presented here fall under the category of agent assist: powerful technologies that help your service teams work more efficiently and increase customer satisfaction. Possible tech tools include:
Communication and collaboration tools & knowledge bases
Once you've found the right communication tool for your company, you enable your agents to interact seamlessly and share relevant information. A team that works well together also delivers better service. If you also integrate comprehensive knowledge bases, your agents can quickly access all relevant information and resources. That way, customer inquiries can be answered in a well-informed way with technological support.
AI-based assistance systems & process automation
AI-based chatbots can help you in two areas at once: recurring inquiries and frequently asked questions can be intercepted and answered by a chatbot, so your service agents' workload is significantly reduced. But a chatbot can do more than answer routine questions. It can also be a valuable tool for automating various tasks. For example, it can take over capturing customer data or filling out forms with customers, letting your employees focus on more complex inquiries, which raises the overall quality of your customer service.
Multichannel support & personalized customer interaction
Supporting different communication channels such as phone, email, chat and social media has the advantage that your service agents can meet your customers where they are. That ensures your customers get a seamless service experience and no customer gets lost between platforms.
At the same time, customer relationship management (CRM) systems let your service agents retrieve customer data in real time, so your customers don't have to repeat their information again and again, and frustration is prevented. Predictive analytics also helps offer personalized solutions and recommendations.
A day in customer service with a chatbot
Customers reach your company via several platforms and get an instant answer to simple questions from your chatbot. Your self-service portal is developed far enough that the chatbot can guide customers to the right information so they can solve their problems themselves. For inquiries the chatbot can't answer yet, it refers your customers to a suitable service agent via smart human handover. The chatbot can also use customer data to put the customer through to the service agent they've spoken to before, who ideally already knows their case. Because the service agent has access to the customer database and the information the chatbot has already gathered on the current case, they can help directly and personally. The service agent also has more time to respond to the customer, because many inquiries are intercepted by the chatbot. A more relaxed employee means a better customer experience.
Relaxed service agents and happy customers with tech tools
The link between customer service and agent experience should now be clear. By increasing your agents' satisfaction, you also increase your customers' satisfaction. When your employees feel comfortable in your company, that's crucial for high-quality customer service. It's not only your customers who want their concerns to be heard – your employees also deserve a sympathetic ear and the chance to help shape company culture. If you've already created a good working atmosphere, you can use other options to keep improving your employees' experience.
A big lever for improving your agent experience is innovative tech tools that assist your agents and let them respond to customers quickly and efficiently. Different providers offer these tools with different focuses. With AI, you can give your service agents suggested answers to chat inquiries or emails. In call centers, AI can even produce transcripts, which among other things allows better data analysis. AI can give your service agents real-time recommendations for the best answers or actions. melibo, for example, offers a comprehensive customer service automation platform that uses AI to improve every step of the customer interaction.
Overall, a positive agent experience leads to higher efficiency and employee satisfaction, which has a direct impact on the customer experience and therefore on the company's success.
Start here and read about the biggest challenges for your customer support managers.
