Five tips for delivering a better customer experience from Intradiem

Intraday management solutions provider recognizes National Customer Service Week

ATLANTA, GA (October 8, 2013) – In recognition of National Customer Service Week, Intradiem, the leading provider of intraday management solutions, is offering contact centers five tips to improve customer service. These tips are designed to help contact center agents deliver a better customer experience to positively impact the bottom line.

To improve your contact center’s customer experience operations, Intradiem recommends the following five tips:

• Start with your employees. Happy contact center agents = happy customers. To improve overall job satisfaction, diversify your agents’ daily activities. The more knowledge they have, the better performers they will be. Provide ongoing training that gives your agents immediate opportunities to use their new skills, and reward them for a job well done. Their happiness will naturally carry over when they’re interacting with your customers.
• Get real about customer perception. Customers are the ultimate judge and perception is reality. For example, customers often overestimate the time they spend on hold. (And let’s face it, no one likes waiting.) According to the 2013 U.S. Contact Center Decision-Maker’s Guide, customers perceive that they wait an average of 11.5 minutes to speak with an agent. However, the average speed to answer is between 20 to 30 seconds. Even though wait estimates appear to be subjective, minimize wait time by ensuring agents are readily available across channels to solve the problem quickly and neutralize negative perception by empathizing with the customer.
• Embrace multiple channels. In today’s digital age, customers expect more – both in terms of channel availability and reaction times. Whether they connect with an agent via phone, in-person, social media, or live chat, you should give customers every opportunity to reach out to you. Additionally, you must have well-trained, customer-facing agents available on each channel you offer. Because balancing the multi-channel contact center environment can be difficult, it’s imperative that you put a process in place so you can respond with agility and in real-time.
• Don’t wait to react. Part of customer service is being reactive, but contact centers should also be proactive in their interactions with customers. Agents must have a clear understanding of customer service expectations, and they should feel empowered to delight customers. Try leveraging social media for positive customer outreach, and pay attention to what your customers are saying online. You might be able to spot a common problem or question by monitoring online conversations and preparing agents for trending issues so that you can address it sooner rather than later.
• See the bigger picture. The customer experience involves more than just the contact center. Back office, field service or other departments are additional customer touch points and can create unintended consequences in the contact center, and vice versa. Pay attention to how this affects the overall customer service you’re delivering across all departments of your organization. Be sure to leverage customer service data, which can enable your organization to engage with your customers in a more meaningful way.“

In competitive business environments, customer experience is often the biggest differentiator for an organization. Delivering a consistent and high-quality customer experience requires planning and preparation,” said Matt McConnell, Intradiem CEO. “Companies that deliver an exceptional customer experience will create loyal customers and maintain a competitive edge.”

The International Customer Service Association created National Customer Service Week in 1984, and in 1992, President George H. Bush signed a Presidential Proclamation setting aside the first week of October as an annual National event. This year’s National Customer Service Week is Oct. 7-11, 2013.

Intradiem is the only complete Intraday Automation solution provider for frontline workforces including Contact Center, Back Office, Retail and Mobile. The SaaS-based solution automates intraday management and real-time processes and turns frontline workforces into real-time workforces that can adapt and respond to changing conditions and events throughout the day. The result is a more agile frontline workforce that can adjust in real-time to deliver a dramatically better and more consistent customer experience at reduced cost. Over 300,000 frontline workers use Intradiem's solution every day.
Media Contact
Melissa Spies, Marketing Manager, Intradiem
mspies@intradiem.com  |  888.566.9457